[00:00.00] When Johnsy fell seriously ill, she seemed to lose the will to hang on to life.
[00:07.78]The doctor held out little hope for her. Her friends seemed helpless. Was there nothing to be done?
[00:16.22]THE LAST LEAF By O,Henry
[00:26.15]At the top of a three-story brick building, Sue and Johnsy had their studio. “Johnsy” was familiar for Joanna.
[00:35.87]One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at a cafe on Eight Street and found their tastes in art,
[00:43.55]chicory salad and bishop sleeves so much in tune that the joint studio resulted.
[00:51.23]2 That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the district,
[01:01.88]touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Johnsy was among his victims. She lay, scarcely moving on her bed,
[01:12.07]looking through the small window at the blank side of the next brick house.
[01:17.66]3 One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a bushy, gray eyebrow.
[01:24.56]4 “She has one chance in ten,” he said. “And that chance is for her to want to live.
[01:31.32]Your little lady has made up her mind that she’s not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?”
[01:38.80]5 “She—she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day,” said Sue.
[01:45.56]6 “Paint?—bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice—a man, for instance?”
[01:55.70]7 “A man?” said Sue. “Is a man worth—but,no,doctor;there is nothing of the kind.”
[02:04.84]8 “Well,” said the doctor. “I will do all that science can accomplish.
[02:09.88]But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession
[02:15.58]I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.”
[02:20.43]After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried.
[02:25.63]Then she marched into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling a merry tune.
[02:31.93]9 Johnsy lay, scarcely making a movement under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window.
[02:39.06]She was looking out and counting—counting backward.
[02:44.23]10 “Twelve,” she said, and a little later “eleven”; and then “ten,” and “nine”; and then “eight” and “seven,” almost together.
[02:56.17]11 Sue looked out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen,
[03:03.82]and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away.
[03:07.92]An old, old ivy vine climbed half way up the brick wall.
[03:13.38]The cold breath of autumn had blown away its leaves, leaving it almost bare.
[03:19.55]12 “Six,” said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. “They’re falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred.
[03:29.87]It made my head ache to count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now.”
[03:39.53]13 “Five what, dear?”
[03:42.01]14 “Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?”
[03:53.51]15 “Oh, I never heard of such nonsense. What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well”
[04:00.59]Don’t be so silly. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were ten to one!
[04:09.03]Try to take some soup now, and let Sudie go and buy port wine forher sick child.”
[04:16.50]16 “You needn’t get any more wine,” said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. “There goes another.
[04:26.00]No, I don’t want any soup. That leaves just four.
[04:31.39]I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I’ll go, too. I’m tired of waiting.
[04:39.35]I’m tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything,
[04:45.18]and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves.”
[04:52.47]17 “Try to sleep,” said Sue. “I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old miner. I’ll not be gone a minute.”
[05:02.42]18 Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them.
[05:07.72]He was past sixty and had a long white beard curling down over his chest. Despite looking the part,
[05:16.11]Behrman was a failure in art. For forty years he had been always about to paint a masterpiece,
[05:23.92]but had never yet begun it. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists
[05:31.10]who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece.
[05:40.30]For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who mocked terribly at softness in any one,
[05:46.96]and who regarded himself as guard dog to the two young artists in the studio above.
[05:54.06]19 Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of gin in his dimly lighted studio below.
[06:01.72]In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years
[06:08.43]to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Jhonsy’s fancy, and how she feared she would,
[06:17.26]indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.
[06:25.59]Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt for such foolish imaginings.
[06:33.95]20 “What!” he cried. “Are there people in the world foolish enough to die because leafs drop off from a vine?
[06:42.08]I have never heard of such a thing. Why do you allow such silly ideas to come into that head of hers?
[06:49.68]God! This is not a place in which one so good as Miss Johnsy should lie sick.
[06:56.55]Some day I will paint a masterpiece, and we shall all go away. Yes.”
[07:04.83]21 Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down, and motioned Behrman into the other room.
[07:13.11]In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine.
[07:18.83]Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling,
[07:26.09]mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.
[07:35.71]22 When Sue awoke from an hour’s sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull,
[07:41.90]wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
[07:46.99]23 “Pull it up; I want to see,” she ordered, in a whisper.
[07:52.58]24 Wearily Sue obeyed.
[07:57.02]25 But, Lo! After the beating rain and fierce wind that had endured through the night,
[08:04.10]there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine.
[08:11.91]Still dark green near its stem, but with its edges colored yellow,
[08:17.71]it hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the ground.
[08:23.01]26 “It is the last one,” said Johnsy. “I thought it would surely fall during the night.
[08:29.83]I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time.”
[08:36.94]27 The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall.
[08:46.11]And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed.
[08:52.35]28 When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.
[08:59.19]29 The ivy leaf was still there.
[09:02.69]30 Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken soup over the gas stove.
[09:13.01]31 “I’ve been a bad girl, Sudie,” said Johnsy. “Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me
[09:22.52]how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little soup now,
[09:30.49]and some milk with a little port in it and—no; bring me a hand-mirror first,
[09:38.82]and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook.”
[09:44.99]32 An hour later she said:
[09:48.77]33 “Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.”
[09:55.54]34 The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.
[10:03.66]35 “Even chances,” said the doctor, taking Sue’s thin, shaking hand in his.
[10:10.69]36 “With good nursing you’ll win. And how I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman,
[10:18.74]his name is—some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old,
[10:25.55]weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital today to be made more comfortable.”
[10:35.27]37 The next day the doctor said to Sue: “She’s out of danger. You’ve won.
[10:41.62]The right food and care now—that’s all.”
[10:45.59]38 And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay and put one arm around her.
[10:53.19]39 “I have something to tell you, white mouse,” she said, “Mr.Behrman died of pneumonia today in the hospital.
[11:00.82]He was ill only two days. He was found on the morning of the first day
[11:07.06]in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold.
[11:16.02]They couldn’t imagine where he had been on such a terrible night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted,
[11:24.80]and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes,
[11:30.94]and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and—look out the window, dear,
[11:38.31]at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn’t you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew?
[11:47.45]Ah, darling, it’s Behrman’s masterpiece—he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.”
[11:56.59]watery extraterrestrial pessimist crisscross
[12:02.48]含水多的 外星人 悲观论者 交叉往返于
[12:08.37]brick studio chicory salad
[12:14.26]砖 画室 菊苣 色拉
[12:20.15]bishop sleeve in tune
[12:24.16]主教 衣袖 和谐的
[12:28.17]joint pneumonia stalk here and there
[12:34.65]共同的 肺炎 偷偷接近 各处
[12:41.13]icy victim scarcely hallway
[12:45.28]极冷的 牺牲者 几乎不 门厅
[12:49.44]bushy eyebrow bosh carriage
[12:54.41]密生的 眉毛 胡说 四轮载人马车
[12:59.39]subtract curative merry bedclothes
[13:04.86]减去 能治病的 高兴的 床上用品
[13:10.33]backward bare dreary ivy
[13:15.04]倒着 光秃秃的 沉闷的 常春藤
[13:19.74]vine in a whisper nonsense turn loose
[13:25.28]藤 低声地 废话 放手
[13:30.81]miner painter beard look the part
[13:36.78]矿工 画家 胡须 看上去很像
[13:42.75]gin to excess masterpiece fragile
[13:48.55]杜松子酒 过度 杰作 易碎的
[13:54.35]for the rest fierce mock softness
[14:00.49]至于其它 凶猛的 嘲弄 软弱
[14:06.63]dimly canvas easel fancy
[14:11.61]暗淡地 画布 画架 幻想
[14:16.58]stream hear of persistent mingle
[14:22.43]流 听说 持续的 混合
[14:28.28]upturned kettle pull up wearily
[14:34.04]翻转的 壶 拉起 疲倦地
[14:39.80]lo stand out wear away twilight
[14:44.26]看 显著 流逝 暮色
[14:48.71]lone cling merciless call to
[14:54.22]孤独的 抓紧 无慈悲心的 呼唤
[14:59.74]gas stove sin hand-mirror
[15:04.18]煤气 火炉 罪孽 带手柄的小镜子
[15:08.62]pillow sit up acute be wet through
[15:14.42]枕头 坐起来 急性的 湿透的
[15:23.22]灯笼 调色板 飘动
