The Rupa Book of Heartwarming & The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  There was the admiral's wife too—childless herself—who, from long dealings with men, had acquired a brusque, almost masculine manner. As soon as he had satisfied himself that she evinced no outward desire to 'slobber,' the Periwinkle admitted her to his friendship. He subsequently confessed to the sister that, for a woman, she read aloud extremely well. 'Well, I must be going',' she said one day at parting. 'I'll bring John up to see you tomorrow.' When she had gone, the Periwinkle smote his pillow. 'John!' he gasped.

  'John' was the admiral.

  Even the crew of his cutter—just the ordinary rapscallion duty-crew of the boat he had commanded—trudged up one sweltering Sunday afternoon, and were ushered with creaking boots and moist, shiny faces into his ward.

  'Bein' as we 'ad an arfternoon orf, sir,' began the spokesman, who was also the coxswain of the boat. But at the sight of the wavering, sightless eyes, although prompted by nudges and husky whispers, he forgot his carefully-prepared sentences.

  'We reckoned we'd come and give you a chuck-up, like, sir,' concluded another, and instead of the elaborate speech they had deemed the occasion demanded, they told him of their victory in a tree-mile race over a rival cutter. How afterwards they had generously fraternised with the vanquished crew—so generously that the port stroke—" 'im as we calls 'Nobby' Clark, sir, if you remembers"—was at that moment languishing in a cell, as a result of the lavish hospitality that had prevailed. Finally, the Periwinkle extended a thin hand to the darkness, to be gripped in turn by fourteen leathery fists, ere their owners tiptoed out of the room and out of his life.

  III

  The Periwinkle found blindness an easier matter to bear in the ward of a hospital than on board the P. & O. liner by which he was invalided home. A naval sick-berth steward attended to his wants, helped him to dress, and looked after him generally. But every familiar smell and sound of ship-life awoke poignant memories of the ship-life of former days, and filled him with bitter woe. He was morbidly sensitive of his blindness, too, and for days moped in his cabin alone, fiercely repelling any attempt at sympathy or companionship. Then, by degrees, the ship's doctor coaxed him up into a deck-chair, and sat beside him, warding off intruders and telling stories with the inimitable drollery that is the heritage of the surgeons of P. & O. liners. And at night, when the decks were clear, and very throb of the propellers was a reminder of the home they were drawing near to, he would link his arm loosely within the boy's and together they would walk to and fro. During these promenades he invariably treated the Periwinkle as a man of advanced years and experience, whereby was no little balm in Gilead.

  Many people tried to make a fuss of the boy with the sullen mouth, whose cheek-bones looked as if they were coming through the skin, and who had such a sad story. Wealthy globe-trotters, Anglo-Indians, missionaries, and ladies of singular charm and beauty, all strove according to their lights to comfort him. But by degrees they realised he never wanted to play cat's cradle or even discuss his mother, and so left him in peace.

  But the boy had a friend beside the doctor, a grizzled major from an Indian frontier regiment, returning home on furlough with a V.C. tacked on to his unpretentious name. At first the Periwinkle rather shrank from a fresh acquaintance—it is a terrible thing to have to shake hands with an unknown voice. But he was an incorrigible little hero-worshipper, and this man with the deep steady voice had done and seen wonderful things. Further, he didn't mind talking about them—to the Periwinkle; so that the boy, as he sat clasping his ankles and staring out to sea with sightless eyes, was told stories which, a week later, the newspaper reporters of the kingdom desired to hear in vain.

  He was a philosopher too, this bronzed, grey-haired warrior with the sun-puckered eyes: teaching how, if you only take the trouble to look for it, a golden thread of humour runs through all the sombre warp and woof of life; and of 'Hope which… outwears the accidents of life and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death.'

  This is the nicest sort of philosophy.

  But for all that it was a weary voyage, and the Periwinkle was a brown-faced ghost, all knees and elbows and angularities, by the time Tilbury was reached. The first to board the ship was a lady, pale and sweetly dignified, whom the doctor met at the gangway and piloted to the Periwinkle's cabin. He opened the door before he turned and fled, and so heard, in her greeting of the Periwinkle, the infinite love and compassion that can thrill a woman's voice.

  In a corner of the railway carriage that carried them home, the Periwinkle—that maimed and battered knight—still clung to the half to the haft of his broken sword. 'I meant to do so jolly well. Oh, mother, I meant you to be so jolly proud of me. The flag-lieutenant said I might have been… if only it had been an arm or a leg—deaf or dumb… but there's nothing left in all the world… it's empty—nothing remains.'

  She waited till the storms of self-pity and rebellion passed, leaving him biting his fingers and breathing hard. Then little by little, with mysterious tenderness, she drew out the iron that had entered the boyish soul. And, at the last, he turned to her with a little fluttering sigh, as a very tired child abandons a puzzle. She bent her head low—

  'This remains,' she whispered.

  THE LAST LEAF

  O. HENRY

  In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called 'places'. These 'places' make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

  So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a 'colony.'

  At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. 'Johnsy' was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine, the other from California. They had met at the table d'hote of an Eighth Street 'Delmonico's', and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

  That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy finger. Over on the East Side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown 'places.'

  Mr Penumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by Californian zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

  One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow.

  'She has one chance in—let us say, ten,' he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometre. 'And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?'

  'She—she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day,' said Sue.

  'Paint?—bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice—a man, for instance?'

  'A man?' said Sue, with a jews'-harp twang in her voice. 'Is a man worth—but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind.'

  'Well, it is the weakness, then,' said the doctor.

  'I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will
promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten.'

  After the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing-board, whistling ragtime.

  Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

  She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

  As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horse-show riding trousers and a monocle on the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

  Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting—counting backward.

  'Twelve,' she said, and a little latter, 'eleven'; and then 'ten,' and 'nine'; and then 'eight' and 'seven,' almost together.

  Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half-way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

  'What is it, dear?' asked Sue.

  'Six,' said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. 'They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now.'

  'Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie.'

  '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?'

  'Oh, I never heard of such nonsense,' complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. 'What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were—let's see exactly what he said—he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street-cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self.'

  'You needn't get any more wine,' said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window.

  'There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go too.'

  'Johnsy, dear,' said Sue, bending over her, 'will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out of the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by tomorrow I need the light or I would draw the shade down.'

  'Couldn't you draw in the other room?' asked Johnsy coldly.

  'I'd rather be here by you,' said Sue. 'Besides, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves.'

  'Tell me as soon as you have finished,' said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, 'because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves.'

  'Try to sleep,' said Sue. 'I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move till I come back.'

  Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in anyone, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.

  Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly-lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

  Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.

  'Vass!' he cried. 'Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I vill not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der prain of her? Ach, dot poor little Miss Yohnsy.'

  'She is very ill and weak,' said Sue, 'and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old—old flibberti-gibbet.'

  'You are just like a woman!' yelled Behrman. 'Who said I vill not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Goot! Dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go avay. Gott! Yes.'

  Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

  When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

  'Pull it up! I want to see,' she ordered, in a whisper.

  Wearily Sue obeyed.

  But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the ground.

  'It is the last one,' said Johnsy. 'I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time.'

  'Dear, dear!' said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow; 'think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?'

  But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.

  The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.

  When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.

  The ivy leaf was still there.

  Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.

  'I've been a bad girl, Sudie,' said Johnsy. 'Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and—no; bring me a hand-mirror first; and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up
and watch you cook.'

  And hour later she said—

  'Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.'

  The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.

  'Even chances,' said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. 'With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is—some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable.'

  The next day the doctor said to Sue: 'She's out of danger. You've won. Nutrition and care now—that's all.'

  And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.

  'I have something to tell you, white mouse,' she said. 'Mr Behrman died of pneumonia today in hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colours mixed on it, and—look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece—he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.'

  MY FRIEND, THE MOUSE

  ROBERT FONTAINE

  I made a friend of a mouse. I had never known a mouse before, and this new comradeship taught me a sad lesson in love and loyalty.

  Sometimes I took shortbreads to be to keep under my pillow and munch while I read fairy tales. This was forbidden, but I knew that Maman expected me to do it anyway, and that her only interest in the matter was keeping her conscience and record clear. So I disregarded the injunction. The Mouse, I soon discovered, was gnawing on the shortbreads while I slept. I caught him in the act one morning. Fortunately, Maman had not yet had time to teach me to fear mice. I wished him to remain with me so that I might have him for a pet. Fervently I asked the Lord to make it so that no one would see The Mouse and set a trap.