If Jim doesnt kill me, she said to herself, before he takes a second look at me, hell 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 oclock 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 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, 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
At midnight the café was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.
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.
My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new attraction there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a table dhôte[18] grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad[19]. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas[20] at Kealaikahiki. Presto[21]! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed. You would have addressed a letter to E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar System, the Universe, and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to him.
I was sure that I had found at last the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to his worldwide discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local note of the mere globe-trotter. But his opinions never fluttered or drooped; he was as impartial to cities, countries and continents as the winds or gravitation.
And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a great almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth, and that the men that breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities hem as a child to the mothers gown. And whenever they walk by roaring streets unknown they remember their native city most faithful, foolish, fond; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond. And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the Moon.
Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the Siberian Railway the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was Dixie[22], and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table.
It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafés in the City of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie[23] themselves to cafés at nightfall. This applause of the rebel air in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a fad in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentlemans in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now the war, you know.
When Dixie was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby[24] guerrilla yell and waved frantically his soft-brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table and pulled out cigarettes.