欧亨利的短篇小说:THE GIFT OF THE MAGI(麦琪的礼物)
2011-07-03 20:48阅读：
读一百遍都会感动的小说
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
by O. Henry
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 imputationof parsimonythat 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
mendicancysquad.
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, 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. 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
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 depreciateHer
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: 'Mne. 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 fobchain
simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by
substance alone and not by meretriciousornamentation--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 truantschoolboy. 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 prayer 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 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 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 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 them 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. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are
wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi. 
(Be moved)
