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Search - Mr Smith

Mr Smith
Author: Louis Bromfield

MR. SMITH By Louis Bromfield Hooiey-Sundschu Library AVilA COLLEGE HARPER BROTHERS PUBLISHERS-NEW YORK For ANNIE and DAVID RIMMER with the Affection and Gratitude of Louis BROMFDELD MR. SMITH Prologue IWO YEARS AFTER THE END OF THE WAR, I RECEIVED A telephone call from a stranger describing himself as Sergeant Burke. He asked for an appointment ... more »saying that he had with him a parcel which came from an old friend of mine. He had, he said, promised to deliver this parcel to me by hand. The old friend, he said, was someone called Wolcott Ferris from the town of Cres cent City where I was born. For a moment the name lay dead and unrecognized in the echoing spaces of a rather poor and fairly overburdened memory. It was the words Crescent City which gave me the clue. I told the Sergeant to drop in about five oclock and hung up the telephone. Then slowly, as I leaned back in my chair, the name of Wolcott Ferris became a reality and took form physically in my memory. But the form was not that of a man but of a boy of perhaps fifteen or sixteen years of age. I had not seen Wolcott Ferris in at least twenty-five years and I was puzzled as to why the Sergeant had referred to him as an old friend. True, he had been a friend of my boyhood, but I had not seen him since that happy period. In my memory I saw him again, slowly at first and then clearly, on one of those expeditions which the boys of our neighborhood used to make in the early spring, into the country along flooding streams and through woods where the first anemones were begin ning to show their pale blue and mauve blossoms among the fallen leaves. He was a cheerful fellow, good-looking, and never afflicted with the pimples that were the plague of most boys during adolescence. He belonged to the same Scout troop as I did and he was good at sports. I remember that even in those days he always seemed to me one of those people who had everything on his side. He came from a family which was prosperous and even rich, a family whose history virtually followed that of the town in which we lived. People liked him, and in high school he was, if anything, plagued by the attentions of the giggling girl students. He had everything that was needed to make for a pleasant, successful, happy life. And then I remembered that twice during the twenty-five years since I had last seen him he had written me rather friendly letters. I answered them although there wasnt much to say except to recall the pleasant times of our boyhood. The only clue as to why he should have written to me was contained in a single sentence or two which I remember only dimly. They ran some thing like this, Since we last met you have not only had a suc cessful life but a wonderfully interesting one. I often envy you the experience of knowing so many kinds of people and of having seen so much of the world. Sometimes I feel that I would like to take up writing, but of course all that is nonsense. It is too late to begin now, At the time I thought, He just thinks that through me he might meet a chorus girl or an actress I had had other letters from men like him who seemed to believe that I lived perpetually in a round of champagne, women, and gaiety. In both letters he had written that the next time he came to New York he would give me a ring. But he never did. Now I was puzzled as to why he should send me a parcel to be delivered personally by a third person. Why did he not deliver it himself Or send it by post Or why was he sending me a parcel at all The answer came at five oclock when the Sergeant appeared. He was one of those square, heavy, muscular men who seemed ageless, with unruly black hair and blue eyes. I guessed that he was about thirty-five, but he probably looked the same at twenty five and would look exactly the same at forty-five. He came in 2 shyly, impressed, I think, not by prosperity or prestige, but by what such men conceive to be evidence of superior brains and education...

ISBN-13: 9781406738919
ISBN-10: 1406738913
Publication Date: 3/15/2007
Pages: 288
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Spellman Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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