Stoner

Stoner was at lunch in the University cafeteria when the news came, and he immediately went home to tell Edith. The Merchant's Trust was the bank that held the mortgage on their home, and the bank of which Edith's father was president. Edith called St. Louis that afternoon and talked to her mother; her mother was cheerful, and she told Edith that Mr. Bostwick had assured her that there was nothing to worry about, that everything would be all right in a few weeks.

Three days after that Horace Bostwick was dead, a suicide. He went to his office at the bank one morning in an unusually cheerful mood; he greeted several of the bank employees who still worked behind the closed doors of the bank, went into his office after telling his secretary that he would receive no calls, and locked his door. At about ten o'clock in the morning he shot himself in the head with a revolver he had purchased the day before and brought with him in his briefcase. He left no note behind him; but the papers neatly arranged on his desk told all that he had to tell. And what he had to tell was simply financial ruin. Like his Bostonian father, he had invested unwisely, not only his own money but also the bank's; and his ruin was so complete that he could imagine no relief. As it turned out, the ruin was not so nearly total as he thought at the moment of his suicide. After the estate was settled, the family house remained intact, and some minor real estate on the outskirts of St. Louis was sufficient to furnish his wife with a small income for the rest of her life.

But this was not known immediately. William Stoner received the telephone call that informed him of Horace Bostwick's ruin and suicide, and he broke the news to Edith as gently as his estrangement from her would allow him.

Edith took the news calmly, almost as if she had been expecting it. She looked at Stoner for several moments without speaking; then she shook her head and said absently, "Poor mother. What will she do? There has always been someone to take care of her. How will she live?"

Stoner said, "Tell her"--he paused awkwardly--"tell her that, if she wants to, she can come live with us. She will be welcome."

Edith smiled at him with a curious mixture of fondness and contempt. "Oh, Willy. She'd rather die herself. Don't you know that?"

Stoner nodded. "I suppose I do," he said.

So on the evening of the day that Stoner received the call, Edith left Columbia to go to St. Louis for the funeral and to stay there as long as she was needed. When she had been gone a week Stoner received a brief note informing him that she would remain with her mother for another two weeks, perhaps longer. She was gone for nearly two months, and William was alone in the big house with his daughter.

For the first few days the emptiness of the house was strangely and unexpectedly disquieting. But he got used to the emptiness and began to enjoy it; within a week he knew himself to be as happy as he had been in years, and when he thought of Edith 'sinevitable return, it was with a quiet regret that he no longer needed to hide from himself.

Grace had had her sixth birthday in the spring of that year, and she started her first year of school that fall. Every morning Stoner got her ready for school, and he was back from the University in the afternoon in time to greet her when she came home.

At the age of six Grace was a tall, slender child with hair that was more blond than red; her skin was perfectly fair, and her eyes were dark blue, almost violet. She was quiet and cheerful, and she had a delight in things that gave her father a feeling that was like nostalgic reverence.

Sometimes Grace played with neighbor children, but more often she sat with her father in his large study and watched him as he graded papers, or read, or wrote. She spoke to him, and they conversed--so quietly and seriously that William Stoner was moved by a tenderness that he never foresaw. Grace drew awkward and charming pictures on sheets of yellow paper and presented them solemnly to her father, or she read aloud to him from her first-grade reader. At night, when Stoner put her to bed and returned to his study, he was aware of her absence from his room and was comforted by the knowledge that she slept securely above him. In ways of which he was barely conscious he started her education, and he watched with amazement and love as she grew before him and as her face began to show the intelligence that worked within her.