Stoner

At the far end another door led into a sitting parlor, which was adjacent to the long, narrow dining hall. The double doors of the hall were open, revealing a massive walnut dining table covered with yellow damask and laden with white dishes and bowls of gleaming silver. Several people were gathered around the table, at the head of which a young woman, tall and slender and fair, dressed in a gown of blue watered silk, stood pouring tea into gold-rimmed china cups. Stoner paused in the doorway, caught by his vision of the young woman. Her long, delicately featured face smiled at those around her, and her slender, almost fragile fingers deftly manipulated urn and cup; looking at her, Stoner was assailed by a consciousness of his own heavy clumsiness.

For several moments he did not move from the doorway; he heard the girl's soft, thin voice rise above the murmur of the assembled guests she served. She raised her head, and suddenly he met her eyes; they were pale and large and seemed to shine with a light within themselves. In some confusion he backed from the doorway and turned into the sitting room; he found an empty chair in a space by the wall, and he sat there looking at the carpet beneath his feet. He did not look in the direction of the dining room, but every now and then he thought he felt the gaze of the young woman brush warmly across his face.

The guests moved around him, exchanged seats, altered their inflections as they found new partners for conversation. Stoner saw them through a haze, as if he were an audience. After a while Gordon Finch came into the room, and Stoner got up from his chair and walked across the room to him. Almost rudely he interrupted Finch's conversation with an older man. Drawing him aside but not lowering his voice, he asked to be introduced to the young woman pouring tea.

Finch looked at him for a moment, the annoyed frown that had begun to pucker his forehead smoothing as his eyes widened. "You what?" Finch said. Though he was shorter than Stoner, he seemed to be looking down on him.

"I want you to introduce me," Stoner said. He felt his face warm. "Do you know her?"

"Sure," Finch said. The start of a grin began to tug at his mouth. "She's some kind of cousin of the dean's, down from St. Louis, visiting an aunt." The grin widened. "Old Bill. What do you know. Sure, I'll introduce you. Come on."

Her name was Edith Elaine Bostwick, and she lived with her parents in St. Louis, where the previous spring she had finished a two-year course of study at a private seminary for young ladies; she was visiting her mother's older sister in Columbia for a few weeks, and in the spring they were to make the Grand Tour of Europe--an event once again possible, now that the war was over. Her father, the president of one of the smaller St. Louis banks, was a transplanted New Englander; he had come west in the seventies and married the oldest daughter of a well-to-do central Missouri family. Edith had lived all her life in St. Louis; a few years before she had gone east with her parents to Boston for the season; she had been to the opera in New York and had visited the museums. She was twenty years of age, she played the piano, and had artistic leanings which her mother encouraged.

Later, William Stoner could not remember how he learned these things, that first afternoon and early evening at Josiah Claremont's house; for the time of his meeting was blurred and formal, like the figured tapestry on the stair wall off the foyer. He remembered that he spoke to her that she might look at him, remain near him, and give him the pleasure of hearing her soft, thin voice answering his questions and making perfunctory questions in return.

The guests began to leave. Voices called good-bys, doors slammed, and the rooms emptied. Stoner remained behind after most of the other guests had departed; and when Edith's carriage came he followed her into the foyer and helped her with her coat. Just before she started outside he asked her if he might call on her the following evening.

As if she had not heard him she opened the door and stood for several moments without moving: the cold air swept through the doorway and touched Stoner's hot face. She turned and looked at him and blinked several times; her pale eyes were speculative, almost bold. At last she nodded and said, "Yes. You may call." She did not smile.