Stoner

The only person in the University who seemed untouched by the general excitement was Archer Sloane. Since the day of America's entrance into the war he had begun to withdraw into himself, and the withdrawal became more pronounced as the war neared its end. He did not speak to his colleagues unless departmental business forced him to do so, and it was whispered that his teaching had become so eccentric that his students attended his classes in dread; he read dully and mechanically from his notes, never meeting his students' eyes; frequently his voice trailed off as he stared at his notes, and there would be one, two, and sometimes as many as five minutes of silence, during which he neither moved nor responded to embarrassed questions from the class.

William Stoner saw the last vestige of the bright, ironic man he had known as a student when Archer Sloane gave him his teaching assignment for the academic year. Sloane gave Stoner two sections of freshman composition and an upper division survey of Middle English literature; and then he said, with a flash of his old irony, "You, as well as many of our colleagues and not a few of our students, will be pleased to know that I am giving up a number of my classes. Among these is one that has been my rather unfashionable favorite, the sophomore survey of English literature. You may recall the course?"

Stoner nodded, smiling.

"Yes," Sloane continued, "I rather thought you would. I am asking you to take it over for me. Not that it's a great gift; but I thought it might amuse you to begin your formal career as a teacher where you started as a student." Sloane looked at him for a moment, his eyes bright and intent as they had been before the war. Then the film of indifference settled over them, and he turned away from Stoner and shuffled some papers on his desk.

So Stoner began where he had started, a tall, thin, stooped man in the same room in which he had sat as a tall, thin, stooped boy listening to the words that had led him to where he had come. He never went into that room that he did not glance at the seat he had once occupied, and he was always slightly surprised to discover that he was not there.

On November 11 of that year, two months after the semester began, the Armistice was signed. The news came on a class day, and immediately the classes broke up; students ran aimlessly about the campus and started small parades that gathered, dispersed, and gathered again, winding through halls, classrooms, and offices. Half against his will, Stoner was caught up in one of these which went into Jesse Hall, through corridors, up stairs, and through corridors again. Swept along in a small mass of students and teachers, he passed the open door of Archer Sloane's office; and he had a glimpse of Sloane sitting in his chair before his desk, his face uncovered and twisted, weeping bitterly, the tears streaming down the deep lines of the flesh.

For a moment more, as if in shock, Stoner allowed himself to be carried along by the crowd. Then he broke away and went to his room near the campus. He sat in the dimness of his room and heard outside the shouts of joy and release, and thought of Archer Sloane who wept at a defeat that only he saw, or thought he saw; and he knew that Sloane was a broken man and would never again be what he had been.

Late in November many of those who had gone away to war began to return to Columbia, and the campus at the University was dotted with the olive drab of army uniforms. Among those who returned on extended leaves was Gordon Finch. He had put on weight during his year and a half away from the University, and the broad, open face that had been amiably acquiescent now held an expression of friendly but portentous gravity; he wore the bars of a captain and spoke often with a paternal fondness of "my men." He was distantly friendly to William Stoner, and he took exaggerated care to behave with deference toward the older members of the department. It was too late in the fall semester to assign him any classes, so for the rest of the academic year he was given what was understood to be a temporary sinecure as administrative assistant to the dean of Arts and Sciences. He was sensitive enough to be aware of the ambiguity of his new position and shrewd enough to see its possibilities; his relations with his colleagues were tentative and courteously noncommittal.