Stoner

Then, abruptly, Edith began staying home. The three of them started taking their meals together again, and Edith even made a few movements toward caring for the house. The house was quiet; even the piano was unused, so that dust gathered on the keyboard.

They had come to that point in their life together when they seldom spoke of themselves or each other, lest the delicate balance that made their living together possible be broken. So it was only after long hesitation and deliberation about consequences that Stoner finally asked her if anything was wrong.

They were at the dinner table; Grace had been excused and had taken a book into Stoner's study.

"What do you mean?" Edith asked.

"Your friends," William said. "They haven't been around for some time, and you don't seem to be so involved with your theater work any more. I was just wondering if there was anything wrong."

With an almost masculine gesture, Edith shook a cigarette from the package beside her plate, stuck it between her lips, and lighted it with the stub of another that she had half finished. She inhaled deeply without taking the cigarette from her lips and tilted her head back, so that when she looked at William her eyes were narrowed and quizzical and calculating.

"Nothing's wrong," she said. "I just got bored with them and the work. Does there always have to be something wrong?"

"No," William said. "I just thought maybe you weren't feeling well or something."

He thought no more about the conversation and shortly thereafter he left the table and went into the study, where Grace was sitting at her desk, immersed in her book. The desk light gleamed in her hair and threw her small, serious face into sharp outline. She has grown during the past year, William thought; and a small, not unpleasant sadness caught briefly at his throat. He smiled and went quietly to his desk.

Within a few moments he was immersed in his work. The evening before, he had caught up with the routine of his classwork; papers had been graded and lectures prepared for the whole week that was to follow. He saw the evening before him, and several evenings more, in which he would be free to work on his book. What he wanted to do in this new book was not yet precisely clear to him; in general, he wished to extend himself beyond his first study, in both time and scope. He wanted to work in the period of the English Renaissance and to extend his study of classical and medieval Latin influences into that area. He was in the stage of planning his study, and it was that stage which gave him the most pleasure--the selection among alternative approaches, the rejection of certain strategies, the mysteries and uncertainties that lay in unexplored possibilities, the consequences of choice. . . . The possibilities he could see so exhilarated him that he could not keep still. He got up from his desk, paced a little, and in a kind of frustrated joy spoke to his daughter, who looked up from her book and answered him.

She caught his mood, and something he said caused her to laugh. Then the two of them were laughing together, senselessly, as if they both were children. Suddenly the door to the study came open, and the hard light from the living room streamed into the shadowed recesses of the study. Edith stood outlined in that light.

"Grace," she said distinctly and slowly, "your father is trying to work. You mustn't disturb him."

For several moments William and his daughter were so stunned by this sudden intrusion that neither of them moved or spoke. Then William managed to say, "It's all right, Edith. She doesn't bother me."

As if he had not spoken, Edith said, "Grace, did you hear me? Come out of there this instant."

Bewildered, Grace got down from her chair and walked across the room. In the center she paused, looking first at her father and then at her mother. Edith started to speak again, but William managed to cut her off.

"It's all right, Grace," he said as gently as he could. "It's all right. Go with your mother."

As Grace went through the study door to the living room, Edith said to her husband, "The child has had entirely too much freedom. It isn't natural for her to be so quiet, so withdrawn. She's been too much alone. She should be more active, play with children her own age. Don't you realize how unhappy she has been?"

And she shut the door before he could answer.

He did not move for a long while. He looked at his desk, littered with notes and open books; he walked slowly across the room and aimlessly rearranged the sheets of paper, the books. He stood there, frowning, for several minutes more, as if he were trying to remember something. Then he turned again and walked to Grace's small desk; he stood there for some time, as he had stood at his own desk. He turned off the lamp there, so that the desk top was gray and lifeless, and went across to the couch, where he lay with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling.