大学英语综合教程 第三册 6textA

[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.