The Trimmed Lamp, and Other Stories of the Four Million
John Stuart Mill · en
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 woolen 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 to-day in the 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 colors 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.”
THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST
One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue
boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young
lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a
plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed
languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot one
perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured his
name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan bowed with the grace and
beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him social, business and
political advancement, and erased the snuffy-brown one from the tablets
of his consideration.
Two weeks later Andy was sitting on the front steps enjoying his cigar.
There was a soft rustle behind and above him, and Andy turned his
head—and had his head turned.
Just coming out the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black dress
of _crêpe de_—_crêpe de_—oh, this thin black goods. Her hat was black,
and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as a spider’s
web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk gloves. Not a
speck of white or a spot of color about her dress anywhere. Her rich
golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, into a shining, smooth
knot low on her neck. Her face was plain rather than pretty, but it was
now illuminated and made almost beautiful by her large gray eyes that
gazed above the houses across the street into the sky with an
expression of the most appealing sadness and melancholy.