Stoner

"I know," Stoner said. "It doesn't matter. Has the word got around?"

Finch shook his head. "Not yet."

"Then keep your mouth shut about it. Please."

"Sure, Bill," Finch said. "Now about this dinner party Friday --you don't have to go through with it, you know."

"But I will," Stoner said. He grinned. "I figure I owe Lomax something."

The ghost of a smile came upon Finch's face. "You have turned into an ornery old son-of-a-bitch, haven't you?"

"I guess I have," Stoner said.

The dinner was held in a small banquet room of the Student Union. At the last minute Edith decided that she wouldn't be able to sit through it, so he went alone. He went early and walked slowly across the campus, as if ambling casually on a spring afternoon. As he had anticipated, there was no one in the room; he got a waiter to remove his wife's name card and to reset the main table, so that there would not be an empty space. Then he sat down and waited for the guests to arrive.

He was seated between Gordon Finch and the president of the University; Lomax, who was to act as the master of ceremonies, was seated three chairs away. Lomax was smiling and chatting with those sitting around him; he did not look at Stoner.

The room filled quickly; members of the department who had not really spoken to him for years waved across the room to him; Stoner nodded. Finch said little, though he watched Stoner carefully; the youngish new president, whose name Stoner could never remember, spoke to him with an easy deference.

The food was served by young students in white coats; Stoner recognized several of them; he nodded and spoke to them. The guests looked sadly at their food and began to eat. A relaxed hum of conversation, broken by the cheery clatter of silverware and china, throbbed in the room; Stoner knew that his own presence was almost forgotten, so he was able to poke at his food, take a few ritual bites, and look around him. If he narrowed his eyes he could not see the faces; he saw colors and vague shapes moving before him, as in a frame, constructing moment by moment new patterns of contained flux. It was a pleasant sight, and if he held his attention upon it in a particular way, he was not aware of the pain.

Suddenly there was silence; he shook his head, as if coming out of a dream. Near the end of the narrow table Lomax was standing, tapping on a water glass with his knife. A handsome face, Stoner thought absently; still handsome. The years had made the long thin face even thinner, and the lines seemed marks of an increased sensitivity rather than of age. The smile was still intimately sardonic, and the voice as resonant and steady as it had ever been.

He was speaking; the words came to Stoner in snatches, as if the voice that made them boomed from the silence and then diminished into its source. ". . . the long years of dedicated service . . . richly deserved rest from the pressures ... esteemed by his colleagues. . . ." He heard the irony and knew that, in his own way, after all these years, Lomax was speaking to him.

A short determined burst of applause startled his reverie. Beside him, Gordon Finch was standing, speaking. Though he looked up and strained his ears, he could not hear what Finch said; Gordon's lips moved, he looked fixedly in front of him, there was applause, he sat down. On the other side of him, the president got to his feet and spoke in a voice that scurried from cajolery to threat, from humor to sadness, from regret to joy. He said that he hoped Stoner's retirement would be a beginning not an ending; he knew that the University would be the poorer for his absence; there was the importance of tradition, the necessity for change; and the gratitude, for years to come, in the hearts of all his students. Stoner could not make sense of what he said; but when the president finished, the room burst into loud applause and the faces smiled. As the applause dwindled someone in the audience shouted in a thin voice: "Speech!" Someone else took up the call, and the word was murmured here and there.

Finch whispered in his ear, "Do you want me to get you out of it?"

"No," Stoner said. "It's all right."

He got to his feet, and realized that he had nothing to say.

He was silent for a long time as he looked from face to face. He heard his voice issue flatly. "I have taught . . ." he said. He began again. "I have taught at this University for nearly forty years. I do not know what I would have done if I had not been a teacher. If I had not taught, I might have--" He paused, as if distracted. Then he said, with a finality, "I want to thank you all for letting me teach."