The Four Million
New York City, I misdoubt that all the fortune-tellers doing business
could milk good luck from ye. But the lines of Danny’s hand pointed to
ye fair, and I’ll assist him to experiment with ye until he’s convinced
ye’re dry.”
After that the man turns, sudden, to laughing. He leans against a
corner and laughs considerable. Then he claps me and Tobin on the backs
of us and takes us by an arm apiece.
“’Tis my mistake,” says he. “How could I be expecting anything so fine
and wonderful to be turning the corner upon me? I came near being found
unworthy. Hard by,” says he, “is a café, snug and suitable for the
entertainment of idiosyncrasies. Let us go there and have drink while
we discuss the unavailability of the categorical.”
So saying, he marched me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon, and
ordered the drinks, and laid the money on the table. He looks at me and
Tobin like brothers of his, and we have the segars.
“Ye must know,” says the man of destiny, “that me walk in life is one
that is called the literary. I wander abroad be night seeking
idiosyncrasies in the masses and truth in the heavens above. When ye
came upon me I was in contemplation of the elevated road in conjunction
with the chief luminary of night. The rapid transit is poetry and art:
the moon but a tedious, dry body, moving by rote. But these are private
opinions, for, in the business of literature, the conditions are
reversed. ’Tis me hope to be writing a book to explain the strange
things I have discovered in life.”
“Ye will put me in a book,” says Tobin, disgusted; “will ye put me in a
book?”
“I will not,” says the man, “for the covers will not hold ye. Not yet.
The best I can do is to enjoy ye meself, for the time is not ripe for
destroying the limitations of print. Ye would look fantastic in type.
All alone by meself must I drink this cup of joy. But, I thank ye,
boys; I am truly grateful.”
“The talk of ye,” says Tobin, blowing through his moustache and
pounding the table with his fist, “is an eyesore to me patience. There
was good luck promised out of the crook of your nose, but ye bear fruit
like the bang of a drum. Ye resemble, with your noise of books, the
wind blowing through a crack. Sure, now, I would be thinking the palm
of me hand lied but for the coming true of the nigger man and the
blonde lady and—”
“Whist!” says the long man; “would ye be led astray by physiognomy? Me
nose will do what it can within bounds. Let us have these glasses
filled again, for ’tis good to keep idiosyncrasies well moistened, they
being subject to deterioration in a dry moral atmosphere.”
So, the man of literature makes good, to my notion, for he pays,
cheerful, for everything, the capital of me and Tobin being exhausted
by prediction. But Tobin is sore, and drinks quiet, with the red
showing in his eye.
By and by we moved out, for ’twas eleven o’clock, and stands a bit upon
the sidewalk. And then the man says he must be going home, and invites
me and Tobin to walk that way. We arrives on a side street two blocks
away where there is a stretch of brick houses with high stoops and iron
fences. The man stops at one of them and looks up at the top windows
which he finds dark.
“’Tis me humble dwelling,” says he, “and I begin to perceive by the
signs that me wife has retired to slumber. Therefore I will venture a
bit in the way of hospitality. ’Tis me wish that ye enter the basement
room, where we dine, and partake of a reasonable refreshment. There
will be some fine cold fowl and cheese and a bottle or two of ale. Ye
will be welcome to enter and eat, for I am indebted to ye for
diversions.”
The appetite and conscience of me and Tobin was congenial to the
proposition, though ’twas sticking hard in Danny’s superstitions to
think that a few drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good
fortune promised by the palm of his hand.
“Step down the steps,” says the man with the crooked nose, “and I will
enter by the door above and let ye in. I will ask the new girl we have
in the kitchen,” says he, “to make ye a pot of coffee to drink before
ye go. ’Tis fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes for a green girl just
landed three months. Step in,” says the man, “and I’ll send her down to
ye.”
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
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, 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 grey cat walking a
grey fence in a grey 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 honour 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 colour 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 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 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 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