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 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.
January 08, 2018
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