The Last Leaf

Near Washington Square in New York City lies the quarter called Greenwich Village. There the turns and twists abound, and the winding alleys so interlace that a man comes back to the place he started walking from without knowing it.

The artists discovered the possibilities of this quarter — spacious rooms, large windows, and old brick houses cheap to rent that give their paintings a lovely local color — and they settled it, after naming it "the colony of the people of art."

There Sue and Johnsy met, and they took rooms on the second floor of an old brick house after they had become friends. And although Johnsy (a diminutive of the name Joanna) was from the province of Maine and Sue from California, they found their tastes alike in food, in ways of living, and in artistic theories.

Spring passed with the two living together, and likewise the season of summer. But in November pneumonia spread through the quarter, and Johnsy, with her slender body, was among those touched by the disease's icy, hateful fingers; she spent her days in her plain iron bed, looking through the window at the wall of the neighboring brick house.

After the doctor came out of her sickroom he said to her friend Sue, shaking the thermometer in his hand: "The measure of hope for her recovery does not exceed one in ten. And that faint hope is the measure of her love of life and her attachment to it, for love of life is the most effective medicine for the sick. But your friend has surrendered to death and despaired of life and of recovery. Has she nothing to live for? Some wish she would like to fulfill?"

"She... she would like to paint the Bay of Naples someday."

"Painting? Hm... is she thinking of anything worth attention? A man, for instance?"

Sue answered with distaste: "A man... is a man worth... no, there is nothing of that."

"There lies her weak point. If she had someone to live for... In any case I shall try my best and spend all my science, but when a patient begins thinking about who will walk behind her coffin, I can be sure of losing half the power of the treatment. Listen, my girl: if you can get your companion to talk — even with a single question — about the fashions of the coming winter, the measure of hope in her recovery rises to one in five instead of one in ten."

Sue went back to the studio downcast, took her drawing materials from it, and went into the bedroom humming a merry popular tune.

She stopped singing when she thought Johnsy asleep with her face toward the window, and then began to draw. She was drawing an illustration for one of the story magazines — for the people of art at the start of their careers draw pictures for the magazines, just as the people of letters at the start of theirs write stories for those same magazines.

Sue was absorbed in her work when she heard a faint, monotonous sound running on in whispers. She hurried to the bed and found Johnsy looking out through the window and counting backwards: "Twelve... then... eleven, then... ten... then nine... eight... seven..." almost together.

Sue looked out of the window to see what her friend could be counting, but she saw nothing except the back yard, a brick wall, and a large, worn-out vine that had climbed it; the cold winds had touched it and the greater part of its leaves had fallen, so that its branches showed bare, clinging to the old, crumbling wall. She asked her friend:

"What is the matter, Johnsy dear?"

She answered in a voice like a whisper: "Six... they are falling fast. Three days ago there were hundreds, and I grew dizzy trying to count them; but now the matter has become easy. There — another one is going. Only five are left..."

— "Five what? Won't you tell your friend?"

— "Leaves. The leaves of the vine facing the window. When the last leaf goes, I shall go with it. I have known this for three days... didn't the doctor tell you?"

Sue answered with vexation and mockery: "I never heard such absurd nonsense. What have the vine's leaves to do with your recovery? The doctor told me that the measure of hope for recovery was ten to one, and that is a natural measure for ordinary human beings when they ride the streetcars or walk past a newly built building. Try to take some warm broth now, and let me finish the drawings so I can sell them and buy you warm wine, and some nourishing cuts of meat for your greedy friend."

Johnsy said, her gaze still fixed on the window: "You won't need to buy wine anymore. No — I don't want any broth. There goes one, far away. I want to see the last leaf fall before the darkness spreads. Then my turn will come to go."

Sue's tone was agitated as she said: "Listen, dear. Promise me to close your eyes and stop looking out of the window until I finish my work. I must deliver these drawings tomorrow and I need the light; otherwise I would have drawn the curtains over the window."

Johnsy said with displeasure: "Can't you draw in the other room?"

— "I would rather stay near you, and I wish you would stop looking at those dreary leaves."

Johnsy said, closing her eyes so that she looked as rigid as a statue: "Tell me, then, as soon as you finish your work, for I want to see the last leaf fall. I am tired of waiting and weary of thinking. I want to be freed of everything and drift down to the depths, as these trembling leaves do."

— "Try to sleep. I shall call Uncle Behrman to take him as a model for the old hermit workman, and I shall not be away more than a single minute — so don't make a movement before I come back."

Uncle Behrman lived on the ground floor below them. He was an artist past sixty years of age, and with his long white beard he looked like a picture of Moses by the brush of Michelangelo. He often talked of the masterpiece he was going to paint one of these days. For forty years he had been passing his brush over canvases without drawing near the sacred temple of art; rather he had painted a few trifling pictures for the advertising companies. He lived on the meager wage he earned as a model for young artists whose material means did not allow them to pay the wage of a professional model. He was excessive in his drinking and in talking of his awaited masterpiece. He hated weakness and softness and tried to show himself a hard man, and he had set himself up as protector of the two artists, Sue and Johnsy.

Sue found him in his wretched, dark room, in one corner of which stood a blank canvas he had placed there twenty years before, to paint his masterpiece upon. The smell of drink hung about him as Sue told him of the delusion that had taken hold of her friend Johnsy, and how, in her state of weakness, she seemed like a trembling leaf, and it was not unlikely that she too would fly away if the world pressed too close upon her.

He cried out: "What? Are there people who think such childish twaddle? She dies as soon as the last leaf falls? I never heard of such a thing before. No... I will not be a model for the crazy hermit. Tell me — how did you let these silly ideas nest in her brain? Ah, poor little Miss Johnsy."

"She is very sick and weak, and the fever has left fancies and imaginings in her head. But I shall leave you, since you refuse to be a model — though that will not keep me from telling you that you are a rude old man, wicked as the devil."

He shouted in her face in a rage: "Truly you are a woman! Who told you I would not be a model? For half an hour I have been telling you that I accept this offer of yours. Good God! This is not a place where dear poor Miss Johnsy should have to bear the pains of sickness. One day I shall paint a splendid masterpiece and we shall all leave this place — yes indeed, by God!"

Johnsy was deep in sleep when they entered the room. Sue drew the window curtains and went with Uncle Behrman into the other room, and from its window they looked at the vine climbing outside. Their glances met without a word, for the rain was coming down steadily and hard, its stream mingled with some large flakes of snow. Uncle Behrman sat in silence while Sue passed her brush over her canvas.

Sue slept only a single hour, and when she woke the next morning she found Johnsy's eyes open upon the green window curtains, and she was whispering:

"Raise the curtains and let me see."

With resentful reluctance Sue obeyed her.

But... despite the strong rains... despite the winds that had stormed all through the night, one leaf remained — the last one — upon the vine. It was green, with the yellow of withering creeping through it, dark of stem and frayed at the edges, hanging near the wall on one of the branches at a height of twenty feet from the ground.

Johnsy said: "That is the last leaf. I thought it had fallen during the night, for I heard the storming winds. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same moment."

Sue leaned toward her and hid her head among the pillows, saying: "Listen, dear. Think of me, and of what will become of me after you, if you will not think of yourself."

But Johnsy did not answer. The idea of death had taken shape in her small head and driven from it every other thought, whether of friendship or of ambition — for the greatest loneliness a human being suffers is the loneliness of one preparing to set out on that long, mysterious final journey.

The day passed. At dusk they saw the leaf hanging by its stem, and in the night a fierce north wind blew while the rain poured down in torrents.

When morning came, Johnsy mercilessly demanded that the window curtains be raised.

And the leaf was in its place.

Johnsy lay a long while gazing at it, then called Sue, who was in the kitchen preparing a chicken broth.

The sick girl said: "I have behaved shamefully. Some hidden power kept that last leaf there to show me the evil of my fancies. When a person wishes to die, he has committed sin and wickedness. Bring me a little broth and some hot milk... but give me the mirror first, and prop me up on the pillows, for I want to watch you work."

And an hour later she said: "I want to paint the Bay of Naples someday."

Sue caught up with the doctor after he had paid her his afternoon visit, and he said to her: "We have begun to win the battle, and now you must attend to nursing her... I must go to see Behrman, as they call him — an artist, I believe. He has been stricken with pneumonia and there is no hope of his pulling through, for he is old; but I shall move him to the hospital so that he may have comfort in his last days."

And he said to her the next day: "The danger is over and you have won the battle; your friend needs nothing more now than care and good food."

That afternoon Sue came close to the bed of Johnsy, who was knitting a wool shawl, put her arms around her, and said:

"I have something important to tell you, dear. Uncle Behrman died today in the hospital, after being stricken with pneumonia. The janitor found him the morning of the day before yesterday, his clothes soaked with water and frozen upon his body, and no one could make out where he had been on a stormy night like that — until they found in the garden a lighted lantern, a wooden ladder, some scattered brushes, and a palette with a mixture of green and yellow upon it. Look out of the window — do you see that last leaf hanging at the tip of its stem against the wall? Did you never wonder how it neither stirred nor fell despite the storms and the winds? ... Ah, my darling, it is Behrman's splendid masterpiece — he painted it there the night the last leaf fell."