Stoner

Nevertheless he began to feel a joy in property and to know a comfort that he had not anticipated. His study was on the first floor off the living room, with a high north window; in the daytime the room was softly illumined, and the wood paneling glowed with the richness of age. He found in the cellar a quantity of boards which, beneath the ravages of dirt and mold, matched the paneling of the room. He refinished these boards and constructed bookcases, so that he might be surrounded by his books; at a used furniture store he found some dilapidated chairs, a couch, and an ancient desk for which he paid a few dollars and which he spent many weeks repairing.

As he worked on the room, and as it began slowly to take a shape, he realized that for many years, unknown to himself, he had had an image locked somewhere within him like a shamed secret, an image that was ostensibly of a place but which was actually of himself. So it was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study. As he sanded the old boards for his bookcases, and saw the surface roughnesses disappear, the gray weathering flake away to the essential wood and finally to a rich purity of grain and texture--as he repaired his furniture and arranged it in the room, it was himself that he was slowly shaping, it was himself that he was putting into a kind of order, it was himself that he was making possible.

Thus, despite the regularly recurring pressures of debt and need, the next few years were happy, and he lived much as he had dreamed that he might live when he was a young student in graduate school and when he had first married. Edith did not partake of so large a part of his life as he had once hoped; indeed, it seemed that they had entered into a long truce that was like a stalemate. They spent most of their lives apart; Edith kept the house, which seldom had visitors, in spotless condition. When she was not sweeping or dusting or washing or polishing, she stayed in her room and seemed content to do so. She never entered William's study; it was as if it did not exist to her.

William still had most of the care of their daughter. In the afternoons when he came home from the University, he took Grace from the upstairs bedroom that he had converted into a nursery and let her play in the study while he worked. She played quietly and contentedly on the floor, satisfied to be alone. Every now and then William spoke to her, and she paused to look at him in solemn and slow delight.

Sometimes he asked students to drop by for conferences and chats. He brewed tea for them on a little hotplate that he kept beside his desk, and felt an awkward fondness for them as they sat self-consciously on the chairs, remarked upon his library, and complimented him on the beauty of his daughter. He apologized for the absence of his wife and explained her illness, until at last he realized that his repetitions of apology were stressing her absence rather than accounting for it; he said no more and hoped that his silence was less compromising than were his explanations.

Except for Edith's absence from it, his life was nearly what he wanted it to be. He studied and wrote when he was not preparing for class, or grading papers, or reading theses. He hoped in time to make a reputation for himself as both a scholar and a teacher. His expectations for his first book had been both cautious and modest, and they had been appropriate; one reviewer had called it "pedestrian" and another had called it "a competent survey." At first he had been very proud of the book; he had held it in his hands and caressed its plain wrapper and turned its pages. It seemed delicate and alive, like a child. He had reread it in print, mildly surprised that it was neither better nor worse than he had thought it would be. After a while he tired of seeing it; but he never thought of it, and his authorship, without a sense of wonder and disbelief at his own temerity and at the responsibility he had assumed.

VII

One evening in the spring of 1927 William Stoner came home late. The scent of budding flowers mingled and hung in the moist warm air; crickets hummed in the shadows; in the distance a lone automobile raised dust and sent into the stillness a loud, defiant clatter. He walked slowly, caught in the somnolence of a new season, bemused by the tiny green buds that glowed out of the shade of bush and tree.

When he went into the house Edith was at the far end of the living room, holding the telephone receiver to her ear and looking at him.

"You're late," she said.

"Yes," he said pleasantly. "We had doctor's orals."

She handed him the receiver. "It's for you, long distance. Someone's been trying to get you all afternoon. I told them you were at the University, but they've been calling back here every hour."

William took the receiver and spoke into the mouthpiece. No one answered. "Hello," he said again.

The thin strange voice of a man answered him.

"This Bill Stoner?"

"Yes, who is this?"