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 butcher until 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 certainly 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.