The Gift of the Magi

 

The Gift of the Magi

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 butcheruntil one's cheek 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 left 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 cer­

tainly had that word on the look-out 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, the letters of

'Dillingham' looked blurred, as though they were thinking seri­

ously 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.

Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the

powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a

grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow

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. Some­

thing fine and rare and sterling - something just a little bit near to

being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Per­

haps 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

colour 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 shin­

ing 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 of the door and down the stairs to the

street.

Where she stopped the sign read: 'Mme. 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, closelying 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 seven 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 of saying

little silent prayers 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 stepped 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 it 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. M y 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

labour.

'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 a 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 awhile 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 for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful

combs, pure tortoiseshell, 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 then 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 awhile. 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 unevent­

ful 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. Of all who give and receive

gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are

the magi.