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 letterbox
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 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. Ex-penses 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: "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 he
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 1 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. Delia 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 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 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? 1 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
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 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 for 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 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 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. Of all who give and receive
gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
( Copyright © 2001. O'Henry. Selected Stories. "The Gift of the Magi")
The pictures was taken from the movie.
