A Summer Place by Sloan Wilson

Author:Sloan Wilson [Wilson, Sloan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611871135
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2011-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Do You Ever Get Lonely?

Chapter Eighteen

COLCHESTER ACADEMY, which stood in an isolated section of the countryside about fifty miles from Hartford, Connecticut, was, as such things are counted, a good school. It catered not only to the children of the divorced, the widowed and the sick, but to those with intellectual or social ambitions unattainable at home. It was an old school, started in 1803, and many famous men had gone there. Barton Hunter himself was an alumnus of Colchester Academy, and it was his influence which enabled John to enter midterm, in March of 1954.

The morning John arrived, Mr. Nealy, one of the teachers, met him at the station. Mr. Nealy was a mournful-appearing man of middle age and size who had wanted to be a professor of the classics at Harvard, but he had failed to get his doctor’s degree, and for twenty-one years had been an instructor at Colchester Academy. He had foolishly bought a secondhand car in which to escape to Hartford for weekends, and the payments on it were more than his slender budget could maintain. His wife had told him that morning that the ache in her shoulder was persisting and that she might have to go to the hospital. Mr. Nealy was preoccupied when he met John, and there wasn’t much warmth in his handshake. The two of them rode silently to the office of Mr. Caulfield, the headmaster, who explained to John that he would have to work hard to make good at Colchester Academy.

“I’ll try, sir,” John said.

Mr. Nealy then took John to his dormitory and introduced him to his roommate, a thin boy named Bill Norris, who was also fifteen years old, and who had a slight stutter. “I’ma, I’ma, it’s good to meet you,” Bill said, smiling pleasantly. “I didn’t like rooming alone.”

“Could you tell me where the post office is?” John asked after shaking hands.

Before unpacking his bag, John crossed the muddy quadrangle of the school without even glancing at the handsome brick buildings which distinguished alumni had given to Colchester Academy because it had done so much for them. Following Bill’s directions, he entered a small room beside the dining hall which was used as a post office. There was a strange smell, a compound of paste, ink and the cheap perfume used by the janitor’s wife, who served as postmistress. No one was in sight. John knocked softly on a sliding panel beneath a sign reading STAMPS, and a female voice said, “Yes?”

“My name is John Hunter. Is there any mail for me?”

“No,” the voice said without any hesitation. “You new?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Wait a minute and I’ll give you a box.” There was a pause before a withered hand with a large artificial diamond ring placed a small slip of paper at the window. “Box 135,” the voice said. “There’s your combination.”

John read the figures: 18-25-02. Going to his box, he twirled the dials and opened it once or twice, just for practice.

Going back to his room, he sat down at his desk and wrote a letter.

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