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, dont look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldnt have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. Itll grow out again you wont mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say Merry Christmas! Jim, and lets be happy. You dont know what a nice what a beautiful, nice gift Ive got for you.
Youve 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. Dont you like me just as well, anyhow? Im me without my hair, aint I?
Jim looked about
the room curiously.
You say your hair is gone? he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
You neednt look for it, said Della. Its sold, I tell you sold and gone, too. Its 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.
Dont make any mistake, Dell, he said, about me. I dont think theres anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if youll 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 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.
Isnt it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. Youll 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, lets put our Christmas presents away and keep em a while. Theyre 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.
A Cosmopolite in a Café
And then a cosmopolite[13] sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites.
I invoke your consideration of the scene the marble-topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largess-loving garçons[14], the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the mélange[15] of talk and laughter and, if you will, the Würzburger[16] in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk[17] that the scene was truly Parisian.