One
dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.
Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable
man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony
that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and
eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly
nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did
it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles,
and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home
is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the
home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description,
but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an
electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining
thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
The
"Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity
when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk
to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming
D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above
he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already
introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her
cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and
looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow
would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present.
She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty
dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated.
They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour
she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and
sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being
owned by Jim. There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps
you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may,
by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain
a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered
the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass.
her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty
seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which
they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's
and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived
in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window
some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon
been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have
pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard
from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining
like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost
a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she
faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn
red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat.
With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered
out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the
sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran,
and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked
the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair,"
said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting
the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor.
She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present. She found it at last. It surely
had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the
stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain
simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone
and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even
worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It
was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one
dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With
that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company.
Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the
old leather strap that he used in place of a chain. When Della reached home her
intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling
irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity
added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made
her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in
the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me,"
she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like
a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar
and eighty- seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan
was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was
never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the
table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair
away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had
a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and
now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The
door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious.
Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed
a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door,
as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della,
and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified
her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the
sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with
that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and
went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I
had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without
giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had
to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be
happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at
that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor. "Cut it off and sold
it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair,
ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair
is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for
it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve,
boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,"
she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love
for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?" Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly
to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny
some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a
million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you
the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.
This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from
his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake,
Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut
or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll
unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream
of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails,
necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord
of the flat.
For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back,
that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise
shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair.
They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned
over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the
tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But
she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes
and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!" And them Della leaped up like
a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful
present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious
metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look
at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it
looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put
his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's
put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use
just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now
suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully
wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of
giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly
bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely
related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who
most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house.
But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give
gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they
are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
by O.
Henry |
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