Eighty-seven cents and one dollar. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved each and two in turn by destroying the food merchant the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheek ignited with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it: eighty-seven cents and one dollar. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was no choice but to lie down on the drab little couch. And howl. So Della did it. This instigates the moral reflection that life comprises wails, sneezes, and grins, with wheezes prevailing.
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.
There was a letterbox below the vestibule where no letter could 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.
Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She Stood glumly by the window and observed a grey cat walking along a grey fence in a grey backyard. She only had $1.87, Christmas Day being tomorrow. 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 piercing between the room's windows. 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 mighty pride One was Jim's gold watch which had been his father's and her granddad'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 presently Della's lovely hair fell about her, undulating and sparkling like a fountain of earthy colored 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 practiced 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 running the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There she had turned all of them inside because it was unlike anything else in the stores. Out. It was a platinum fob chain with a clean, uncomplicated design that only demonstrated its value through its substance and not through pretentious decoration. 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 hair-curling accessories or lit the gas and went to work fixing the assaults made by liberality added to cherish. 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 87 cents and a dollar?' The coffee was prepared at seven, and the frying pan on the back of the chops was ready to cook on the hot stove.
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 stairs 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.
When he smelled quail, Jim was as steadfast as a setter as he entered the door.
Della caught his attention with an expression that suggested she could not read, which frightened her. It was not outrage, not shock, not dissatisfaction, not frightfulness, not any of the opinions that she had been arranged for.
Ā 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 hairstyle off I sold it because I couldn't have survived Christmas without you an offering.
Ā You won't mind when it grows back out, will you? I just needed to make it happen.
My hair grows 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 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.
Ā Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it on the table.
Dell, he warned, "Don't make any mistake about me." I don't believe that anything that could make me uncomfortable, such as a haircut, shave, or shampoo less like my girl.
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 jeweled rims just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair.
Ā 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.
Ā 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!'
Then Della sprang to her feet and yelled, "Oh, oh!" like a tiny singed cat. 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?
To locate it, I searched the entire city. You will need to examine the time now 100 times per day.
Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.'
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch put his hands under
the back of his head, and smiled.
Ā '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.'
You are aware that the magi were brilliantly wise men who gave the baby gifts in the manger.
Ā They created the art of gift-giving at Christmas. Their gifts were, without a doubt, wise, possibly bearing the right to trade in the event of duplicates. Additionally, I have lamely discussed to you, the uncomplicated story of two foolish children living in a flat who most rashly gave up the most valuable possessions in their home to save each other.
However, as a final note to the sage of this time, let it be noted that of all the people who give gifts, these Out of all the people who give and receive gifts, two were the most sage.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.