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.
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