The Gift of the Magi

Della counted the coins again, palms numb from cold, and felt the room tilt toward a single, sharp need: she must find a gift for Jim.

She turned the coins over in her fingers; their metal sang a thin, unwilling music. The radiator clanged in the next room and the kettle clicked; the flat smelled of stale soap and frying fat. Each small sound made the one-dollar-and-eighty-seven-cent total feel heavier and more urgent.

She had one dollar and eighty-seven cents and the thin hope that it might mean something. Pennies had come one and two at a time, pressed from the grocer, the vegetable man, and the butcher until her cheeks burned with the quiet shame of thrift. She counted them three times. Tomorrow would be Christmas.

There was nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and let the chest ache. Della let it out in a single, truthful sob, then smoothed her face with the powder rag and stood looking out the window at a gray cat on a gray fence. Twenty dollars a week didn't go far; expenses had been larger than she imagined. Only $1.87 for a gift for Jim.

A pier-glass stood between the windows. A thin, agile person could, by scanning himself in a rapid sequence of narrow strips, get a fair notion of appearance. Della, being slender, had learned that art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes shone, then her color fled. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

The Dillingham Youngs owned two things they adored: Jim's gold watch, passed down from his father and grandfather, and Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived across the air-shaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels. Had King Solomon been janitor with all his treasures piled in the basement, Jim would have drawn out his watch to make him ache for it.

Della's hair fell about her in a rippling, shining cascade. It reached below her knee and made almost a garment of itself. Then she caught it up again nervously and paused while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

She put on her old brown jacket and hat and, with a whirl of skirts and the bright sparkle still in her eyes, hurried down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up she ran, panting, and collected herself before the door. Madame, large and chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take your hat off and let me see it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.

"Give it quick," said Della.

The next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. She moved through the shops with a quick, bright pace, eyes scanning, hands opening boxes, whispering at shopkeepers. Crowds brushed past; a bell tinkled overhead; a clerk wrapped a small parcel with careful, patient fingers. She ransacked the stores for Jim's present.

At last she found it: a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste, fit for his watch. It was quiet and valuable, like Jim. The metal sat in her palm as if it were waiting to prove itself worthy. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with eighty-seven cents. With that chain on his watch Jim could be properly anxious about the time in any company.

At home, Della's exuberance gave way to prudence. She heated the curling irons, lighted the gas, and set about repairing the ravages made by generosity. Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection long and carefully.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said, "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 seven the coffee was ready and the frying-pan was hot for 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 he always used. Then she heard his step on the stairs and she turned white for a moment. She had a habit of small, private prayers and now she whispered: "Please, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in, looking thin and serious. Poor fellow, only twenty-two and burdened with a household. He needed a new overcoat and had no gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at scent. He stared at Della with an expression she could not read, and it scared her. It was not anger nor disapproval nor horror; he simply looked.

Della slid off the table and went to him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow back—you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it.

My hair grows fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a beautiful gift I have for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" Jim said, as if it were a slow surprise.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well? I'm me without my hair, aren't I?"

Jim looked about the room.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold and gone. It's Christmas Eve.

Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she added with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Jim seemed to wake from a trance and enfolded her. For ten seconds let us look away at some inconsequential thing in another direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it on the table.

He stood for a moment, hands strangely gentle as if he had handled fragile things all his life. The parcel was small and neatly wrapped in plain paper; a string circled it twice, and the end had been tucked with care. His eyes had a quietness that did not match the thinness of his coat.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said. "I don't think a haircut or a shave could make me love my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why I held you in suspense a while."

Della took the paper with trembling fingers. She slit the string, peeled back the brown wrapper, and found the combs hidden like a small, bright secret. An ecstatic scream of joy rose in her, then quick tears and sudden wails that called for Jim's immediate comforting arms.

There lay the combs—the set she had worshipped: side and back combs of pure tortoise shell with jeweled rims, the exact shade to wear in her vanished hair. They were costly combs; her heart had longed for them without hope. And now they were hers, but the tresses to adorn them were gone.

She hugged them to her bosom, looked up with dim eyes, and smiled. "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his present. She held it out on her open palm. The dull metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright 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 on the couch, put his hands under his head, and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them a while. They're too nice to use just now. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, wise men, brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving.

This is the simple chronicle of two foolish children in a small flat who chose to meet need with cost. They unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. Yet their choice holds a stubborn clarity: generosity can carry a bill.

After the exchange, the flat fell into a quieter economy. The combs lay on the table like pale islands against the dark wood. The watch, now without its chain, rested in a drawer beneath a folded handkerchief.

Steam rose from the coffee cup and smelled of burnt sugar. They sat close, hands finding one another in the small, ordinary dark, and the room kept the sound of their breathing as if it were something valuable. A single lamp hummed on the table and the city noises softened to a distant pulse; their hands warmed to one another and held a quiet promise that softened the sting of loss.

There was awkwardness, of course: combs without hair and a chain without a watch-chain. There was also warmth—an unexpected reassurance that each had chosen another's comfort over their own appearance. That decision had a cost as real as a cold stove or a bare coat, and it left an image: two people with empty pockets and warm hands, still holding on. In that quiet, their foolishness read less like failure than like a kind of wisdom that measures by sacrifice rather than by calculation.