The Umbrella Man and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

pleasant alliance between Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel continued without a hitch. They met so seldom—twelve times a year is not much when you come to think of it—that therewas little or no chance of their growing bored with one another. On the contrary, the long wait between meetings only made the heart grow fonder, and each separate occasion became an exciting reunion.
    “Tally-ho!” the Colonel would cry each time he met her at the station in the big car. “My dear, I’d almost forgotten how ravishing you looked. Let’s go to earth.”
    Eight years went by.
    It was just before Christmas, and Mrs. Bixby was standing on the station in Baltimore waiting for the train to take her back to New York. This particular visit which had just ended had been more than usually agreeable, and she was in a cheerful mood. But then the Colonel’s company always did that to her these days. The man had a way of making her feel that she was altogether a rather remarkable woman, a person of subtle and exotic talents, fascinating beyond measure; and what a very different thing that was from the dentist husband at home who never succeeded in making her feel that she was anything but a sort of eternal patient, someone who dwelt in the waiting room, silent among the magazines, seldom if ever nowadays to be called in to suffer the finicky precise ministrations of those clean pink hands.
    “The Colonel asked me to give you this,” a voice beside her said. She turned and saw Wilkins, the Colonel’s groom, a small wizened dwarf with grey skin, and he was pushing a large flattish cardboard box into her arms.
    “Good gracious me!” she cried, all of a flutter. “My heavens, what an enormous box! What is it, Wilkins? Was there a message? Did he send me a message?”
    “No message,” the groom said, and he walked away.
    As soon as she was on the train, Mrs. Bixby carried the box into the privacy of the Ladies’ Room and locked the door. How exciting this was! A Christmas present from the Colonel. She started to undo the string. “I’ll bet it’s a dress,” she said aloud. “It might even be two dresses. Or it might be a whole lot of beautiful underclothes. I won’t look. I’ll just feel around and try to guess what it is. I’ll try to guess the colour as well, and exactly what it looks like. Also how much it cost.”
    She shut her eyes tight and slowly lifted off the lid. Then she put one hand down into the box. There was some tissue paper on top; she could feel it and hear it rustling. There was also an envelope or a card of some sort. She ignored this and began burrowing underneath the tissue paper, the fingers reaching out delicately, like tendrils.
    “My God,” she cried suddenly. “It can’t be true!”
    She opened her eyes wide and stared at the coat. Then she pounced on it and lifted it out of the box. Thick layers of fur made a lovely noise against the tissue paper as they unfolded, and when she held it up and saw it hanging to its full length, it was so beautiful it took her breath away.
    Never had she seen mink like this before. It
was
mink, wasn’t it? Yes, of course it was. But what a glorious colour! The fur was almost pure black. At first she thought it
was
black; but when she held it closer to the window she saw that there was a touch of blue in it as well, a deep rich blue, like cobalt. Quickly she looked at the label. It said simply, WILD LABRADOR MINK . There was nothing else, no sign of where it had been bought or anything. But that, she told herself, was probably the Colonel’s doing. The wily old fox wasmaking darn sure he didn’t leave any tracks. Good for him. But what in the world could it have cost? She hardly dared to think. Four, five, six thousand dollars? Possibly more.
    She just couldn’t take her eyes off it. Nor, for that matter, could she wait to try it on. Quickly she slipped off her own plain red coat. She was panting a little now, she couldn’t help it, and her eyes were stretched very