Stoner

It was some time before Stoner recognized the source of his attraction to Hollis Lomax. In Lomax's arrogance, his fluency, and his cheerful bitterness, Stoner saw, distorted but recognizable, an image of his friend David Masters. He wished to talk to him as he had talked to Dave; but he could not, even after he admitted his wish to himself. The awkwardness of his youth had not left him, but the eagerness and straightforwardness that might have made the friendship possible had. He knew what he wished was impossible, and the knowledge saddened him.

In the evenings, after he had cleaned the apartment, washed the dinner dishes, and put Grace to bed in a crib set in a corner of the living room, he worked on the revision of his book. By the end of the year it was finished; and though he was not altogether pleased with it he sent it to a publisher. To his surprise the study was accepted and scheduled for publication in the fall of 1925. On the strength of the unpublished book he was promoted to assistant professor and granted permanent tenure.

The assurance of his promotion came a few weeks after his book was accepted; upon that assurance, Edith announced that she and the baby would spend a week in St. Louis visiting her parents.

She returned to Columbia in less than a week, harried and tired but quietly triumphant. She had cut her visit short because the strain of caring for an infant had been too much for her mother, and the trip had so tired her that she was unable to care for Grace herself. But she had accomplished something. She drew from her bag a sheaf of papers and handed a small slip to William.

It was a check for six thousand dollars, made out to Mr. and Mrs. William Stoner and signed with the bold, nearly illegible scrawl of Horace Bostwick. "What's this?" Stoner asked.

She handed him the other papers. "It's a loan," she said. "All you have to do is sign these. I already have."

"But six thousand dollars! What's it for?"

"A house," Edith said. "A real house of our own."

William Stoner looked again at the papers, shuffled through them quickly, and said, "Edith, we can't. I'm sorry, but--look, I'll only be making sixteen hundred next year. The payments on this will be more than sixty dollars a month--that's almost half my salary. And there will be taxes and insurance and--I just don't see how we can do it. I wish you had talked to me."

Her face became sorrowful; she turned away from him. "I wanted to surprise you. I'm able to do so little. And I could do this."

He protested that he was grateful, but Edith would not be consoled.

"I was thinking of you and the baby," she said. "You could have a study, and Grace could have a yard to play in."

"I know," William said. "Maybe in a few years."

"In a few years," Edith repeated. There was a silence. Then she said dully, "I can't live like this. Not any longer. In an apartment. No matter where I go I can hear you, and hear the baby, and--the smell. I--can't--stand--the--smell! Day after day, the smell of diapers, and--I can't stand it, and I can't get away from it. Don't you know? Don't you know?"'

In the end they accepted the money. Stoner decided that he could give up to teaching the summers he had promised himself for study and writing, at least for a few years.

Edith took it upon herself to look for the house. Throughout the late spring and early summer she was tireless in her search, which seemed to work an immediate cure of her illness. As soon as William came home from his classes she went out and often did not return until dusk. Sometimes she walked and sometimes she drove around with Caroline Finch, with whom she had become casually friendly. Late in June she discovered the house she wanted; she signed an option to buy and agreed to take possession by the middle of August.

It was an old two-storied house only a few blocks from the campus; its previous owners had allowed it to run down, the dark green paint was peeling from the boards, and the lawn was brown and infested with weeds. But the yard was large and the house was roomy; it had a bedraggled grandeur that Edith could imagine renewed.

She borrowed another five hundred dollars from her father for furniture, and in the time between the summer session and the beginning of the fall semester William repainted the house; Edith wanted it white, and he had to put three coats on so that the dark green would not show through. Suddenly, in the first week of September, Edith decided that she wanted a party--a housewarming, she called it. She made the announcement with some resolution, as if it were a new beginning.