Stoner

"Can't let them get away with it, Bill," he said rapidly. A film of sweat like oil glistened on his round face, and his thin blond hair lay in lank strands over his skull. "No, sir. I'm going to join up. I've already talked to old Sloane about it, and he said to go ahead. I'm going down to St. Louis tomorrow and sign up." For an instant he managed to compose his features into a semblance of gravity. "We've all got to do our part." Then he grinned and clapped Stoner's shoulder again. "You better come along with me."

"Me?" Stoner said, and said again, incredulously, "Me?"

Finch laughed. "Sure. Everybody's signing up. I just talked to Dave--he's coming with me."

Stoner shook his head as if dazed. "Dave Masters?"

"Sure. Old Dave talks kind of funny sometimes, but when the chips are down he's no different from anybody else; hell do his part. Just like you'll do yours, Bill." Finch punched him on the arm. "Just like you'll do yours."

Stoner was silent for a moment. "I hadn't thought about it," he said. 'It all seems to have happened so quickly. I'll have to talk to Sloane. I'll let you know."

"Sure," Finch said. "You'll do your part." His voice thickened with feeling. "We're all in this together now, Bill; we're all in it together."

Stoner left Finch then, but he did not go to see Archer Sloane. Instead he looked about the campus and inquired after David Masters. He found him in one of the library carrels, alone, puffing on a pipe and staring at a shelf of books.

Stoner sat across from him at the carrel desk. When he questioned him about his decision to join the Army, Masters said, "Sure. Why not?"

And when Stoner asked him why, Masters said, "You know me pretty well, Bill. I don't give a damn about the Germans. When it comes down to it, I don't really give a damn about the Americans either, I guess." He knocked his pipe ashes out on the floor and swept them around with his foot. "I suppose I'm doing it because it doesn't matter whether I do it or not. And it might be amusing to pass through the world once more before I return to the cloistered and slow extinction that awaits us all."

Though he did not understand, Stoner nodded, accepting what Masters told him. He said, "Gordon wants me to enlist with you."

Masters smiled. "Gordon feels the first strength of virtue he's ever been allowed to feel; and he naturally wants to include the rest of the world in it, so that he can keep on believing. Sure. Why not? Join up with us. It might do you good to see what the world's like." He paused and looked intently at Stoner. "But if you do, for Christ's sake don't do it for God, country, and the dear old U. of M. Do it for yourself."

Stoner waited several moments. Then he said, "I'll talk to Sloane and let you know."

He did not know what he expected Archer Sloane's response to be; nevertheless he was surprised when he confronted him in his narrow book-lined office and told him of what was not quite yet his decision.

Sloane, who had always maintained toward him an attitude of detached and courtly irony, lost his temper. His long thin face went red, and the lines on either side of his mouth deepened in anger; he half rose from his chair toward Stoner, his fists clenched. Then he settled back and deliberately loosened his fists and spread his hands upon his desk; the fingers were trembling, but his voice was steady and harsh.

"I ask you to forgive my sudden display. But in the last few days I have lost nearly a third of the members of the department, and I see no hope of replacing them. It is not you at whom I am angry, but--" He turned away from Stoner and looked up at the high window at the far end of his office. The light struck his face sharply, accentuating the lines and deepening the shadows under his eyes, so that for a moment he seemed old and sick. "I was born in 1860, just before the War of the Rebellion. I don't remember it, of course; I was too young. I don't remember my father either; he was killed in the first year of the war, at the Battle of Shiloh." He looked quickly at Stoner. "But I can see what has ensued. A war doesn't merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that's left is the brute, the creature that we-- you and I and others like us--have brought up from the slime." He paused for a long moment; then he smiled slightly. "The scholar should not be asked to destroy what he has aimed his life to build."

Stoner cleared his throat and said diffidently, "Everything seems to have happened so quickly. Somehow it had never occurred to me, until I talked to Finch and Masters. It still doesn't seem quite real."