|
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 pierglass 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
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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
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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,
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"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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