Stoner

XVI

The years of the war blurred together, and Stoner went through them as he might have gone through a driving and nearly unendurable storm, his head down, his jaw locked, his mind fixed upon the next step and the next and the next. Yet for all his stoical endurance and his stolid movement through the days and weeks, he was an intensely divided man. One part of him recoiled in instinctive horror at the daily waste, the inundation of destruction and death that inexorably assaulted the mind and heart; once again he saw the faculty depleted, he saw the classrooms emptied of their young men, he saw the haunted looks upon those who remained behind, and saw in those looks the slow death of the heart, the bitter attrition of feeling and care.

Yet another part of him was drawn intensely toward that very holocaust from which he recoiled. He found within himself a capacity for violence he did not know he had: he yearned for involvement, he wished for the taste of death, the bitter joy of destruction, the feel of blood. He felt both shame and pride, and over it all a bitter disappointment, in himself and in the time and circumstance that made him possible.

Week by week, month by month, the names of the dead rolled out before him. Sometimes they were only names that he remembered as if from a distant past; sometimes he could evoke a face to go with a name; sometimes he could recall a voice, a word.

Through it all he continued to teach and study, though he sometimes felt that he hunched his back futilely against the driving storm and cupped his hands uselessly around the dim flicker of his last poor match.

Occasionally Grace returned to Columbia for a visit with her parents. The first time she brought her son, barely a year old; but his presence seemed obscurely to bother Edith, so thereafter she left him in St. Louis with his paternal grandparents when she visited. Stoner would have liked to see more of his grandson, but he did not mention that wish; he had come to realize that Grace's removal from Columbia—perhaps even her pregnancy—was in reality a flight from a prison to which she now returned out of an ineradicable kindness and a gentle good will.

Though Edith did not suspect it or would not admit it, Grace had, Stoner knew, begun to drink with a quiet seriousness. He first knew it during the summer of the year after the war had ended. Grace had come to visit them for a few days; she seemed particularly worn; her eyes were shadowed, and her face was tense and pale. One evening after dinner Edith went to bed early, and Grace and Stoner sat together in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Stoner tried to talk to her, but she was restless and distraught. They sat in silence for many minutes; finally Grace looked at him intently, shrugged her shoulders, and sighed abruptly.

"Look," she said, "do you have any liquor in the house?"

"No," he said, "I'm afraid not. There may be a bottle of sherry in the cupboard, but—"

"I've got most desperately to have a drink. Do you mind if I call the drugstore and have them send a bottle over?"

"Of course not," Stoner said. "It's just that your mother and I don't usually—"

But she had got up and gone into the living room. She riffled through the pages of the phone book and dialed savagely. When she came back to the kitchen she passed the table, went to the cupboard, and pulled out the half-full bottle of sherry. She got a glass from the drainboard and filled it nearly to the brim with the light brown wine. Still standing, she drained the glass and wiped her lips, shuddering a little. "It's gone sour," she said. "And I hate sherry."

She brought the bottle and the glass back to the table, sat down, and placed them precisely in front of her. She half-filled the glass and looked at her father with an odd little smile.

"I drink a little more than I ought to," she said. "Poor Father. You didn't know that, did you?"

"No," he said.

"Every week I tell myself, next week I won't drink quite so much; but I always drink a little more. I don't know why."

"Are you unhappy?" Stoner asked.

"No," she said. "I believe I'm happy. Or almost happy anyway. It isn't that. It's—" She did not finish.

By the time she had drunk the last of the sherry the delivery boy from the drugstore had come with her whisky. She brought the bottle into the kitchen, opened it with a practiced gesture, and poured a stiff portion of it into the sherry glass.

They sat up very late, until the first gray crept upon the windows. Grace drank steadily, in small sips; and as the night wore on, the lines in her face eased, she grew calm and younger, and the two of them talked as they had not been able to talk for years.

"I suppose," she said, "I suppose I got pregnant deliberately, though I didn't know it at the time; I suppose I didn't even know how badly I wanted, how badly I had to get away from here. I knew enough not to get pregnant unless I wanted to, Lord knows. All those boys in high school, and"—she smiled crookedly at her father—"you and mamma, you didn't know, did you?"

"I suppose not," he said.

"Mamma wanted me to be popular, and—well, I was popular, all right. It didn't mean anything, not anything at all."

"I knew you were unhappy," Stoner said with difficulty. "But I never realized—I never knew—"

"I suppose I didn't either," she said. "I couldn't have. Poor Ed. He's the one that got the rotten deal. I used him, you know; oh, he was the father all right—but I used him. He was a nice boy, and always so ashamed—he couldn't stand it. He joined up six months before he had to, just to get away from it. I killed him, I suppose; he was such a nice boy, and we couldn't even like each other very much."

They talked late into the night, as if they were old friends. And Stoner came to realize that she was, as she had said, almost happy with her despair; she would live her days out quietly, drinking a little more, year by year, numbing herself against the nothingness her life had become. He was glad she had that, at least; he was grateful that she could drink.

The years immediately following the end of the Second World War were the best years of his teaching; and they were in some ways the happiest years of his life. Veterans of that war descended upon the campus and transformed it, bringing to it a quality of life it had not had before, an intensity and turbulence that amounted to a transformation. He worked harder than he had ever worked; the students, strange in their maturity, were intensely serious and contemptuous of triviality. Innocent of fashion or custom, they came to their studies as Stoner had dreamed that a student might—as if those studies were life itself and not specific means to specific ends. He knew that never, after these few years, would teaching be quite the same; and he committed himself to a happy state of exhaustion which he hoped might never end. He seldom thought of the past or the future, or of the disappointments and joys of either; he concentrated all the energies of which he was capable upon the moment of his work and hoped that he was at last defined by what he did.

Rarely during these years was he removed from this dedication to the moment of his work. Sometimes when his daughter came back to Columbia for a visit, as if wandering aimlessly from one room to another, he had a sense of loss that he could scarcely bear. At the age of twenty-five she looked ten years older; she drank with the steady diffidence of one utterly without hope; and it became clear that she was relinquishing more and more control of her child to the grandparents in St. Louis.

Only once did he have news of Katherine Driscoll. In the early spring of 1949 he received a circular from the press of a large eastern university; it announced the publication of Katherine's book, and gave a few words about the author. She was teaching at a good liberal arts college in Massachusetts; she was unmarried. He got a copy of the book as soon as he could. When he held it in his hands his fingers seemed to come alive; they trembled so that he could scarcely open it. He turned the first few pages and saw the dedication: "To W.S."

His eyes blurred, and for a long time he sat without moving. Then he shook his head, returned to the book, and did not put it down until he had read it through.

It was as good as he had thought it would be. The prose was graceful, and its passion was masked by a coolness and clarity of intelligence. It was herself he saw in what he read, he realized; and he marveled at how truly he could see her even now. Suddenly it was as if she were in the next room, and he had only moments before left her; his hands tingled, as if they had touched her. And the sense of his loss, that he had for so long dammed within him, flooded out, engulfed him, and he let himself be carried outward, beyond the control of his will; he did not wish to save himself. Then he smiled fondly, as if at a memory; it occurred to him that he was nearly sixty years old and that he ought to be beyond the force of such passion, of such love.

But he was not beyond it, he knew, and would never be. Beneath the numbness, the indifference, the removal, it was there, intense and steady; it had always been there. In his youth he had given it freely, without thought; he had given it to the knowledge that had been revealed to him—how many years ago?—by Archer Sloane; he had given it to Edith, in those first blind foolish days of his courtship and marriage; and he had given it to Katherine, as if it had never been given before. He had, in odd ways, given it to every moment of his life, and had perhaps given it most fully when he was unaware of his giving. It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the flesh; rather, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance. To a woman or to a poem, it said simply: Look! I am alive.

He could not think of himself as old. Sometimes, in the morning when he shaved, he looked at his image in the glass and felt no identity with the face that stared back at him in surprise, the eyes clear in a grotesque mask; it was as if he wore, for an obscure reason, an outrageous disguise, as if he could, if he wished, strip away the bushy white eyebrows, the rumpled white hair, the flesh that sagged around the sharp bones, the deep lines that pretended age.

Yet his age, he knew, was not pretense. He saw the sickness of the world and of his own country during the years after the great war; he saw hatred and suspicion become a kind of madness that swept across the land like a swift plague; he saw young men go again to war, marching eagerly to a senseless doom, as if in the echo of a nightmare. And the pity and sadness he felt were so old, so much a part of his age, that he seemed to himself nearly untouched.

The years went swiftly, and he was hardly aware of their passing. In the spring of 1954 he was sixty-three years old; and he suddenly realized that he had at the most four years of teaching left to him. He tried to see beyond that time; he could not see, and had no wish to do so.

That fall he received a note from Gordon Finch's secretary, asking him to drop by to see the dean whenever it was convenient. He was busy, and it was several days before he found a free afternoon.

Every time he saw Gordon Finch, Stoner was conscious of a small surprise at how little he had aged. A year younger than Stoner, he looked no more than fifty. He was wholly bald, his face was heavy and unlined, and it glowed with an almost cherubic health; his step was springy, and in these later years he had begun to affect a casualness of dress; he wore colorful shirts and odd jackets.

He seemed embarrassed that afternoon when Stoner came in to see him. They talked casually for a few moments; Finch asked him about Edith's health and mentioned that his own wife, Caroline, had been talking just the other day about how they all ought to get together again. Then he said, "Time. My God, how it flies!"

Stoner nodded.

Finch sighed abruptly. "Well," he said, "I guess we've got to talk about it. You'll be—sixty-five next year. I suppose we ought to be making some plans."

Stoner shook his head. "Not right away. I intend to take advantage of the two-year option, of course."

"I figured you would," Finch said and leaned back in his chair. "Not me. I have three years to go and I'm getting out. I think sometimes about what I've missed, the places I haven't been to, and—hell, Bill, life's too short. Why don't you get out too? Think of all the time—"

"I wouldn't know what to do with it," Stoner said. "I've never learned."

"Well, hell," Finch said. "This day and age, sixty-five's pretty young. There's time to learn things that—"

"It's Lomax, isn't it? He's putting the squeeze on you."

Finch grinned. "Sure. What did you expect?"

Stoner was silent for a moment. Then he said, "You tell Lomax that I wouldn't talk to you about it. Tell him that I've become so cantankerous and ornery in my old age that you can't do a thing with me. That he's going to have to do it himself."

Finch laughed and shook his head. "By God, I will. After all these years, maybe you two old bastards will unbend a little."

But the confrontation did not take place at once, and when it did—in the middle of the second semester, in March—it did not take the form that Stoner expected. Once again he was requested to appear at the dean's office; a time was specified, and urgency was hinted.

Stoner came in a few minutes late. Lomax was already there; he sat stiffly in front of Finch's desk; there was an empty chair beside him. Stoner walked slowly across the room and sat down. He turned his head and looked at Lomax; Lomax stared imperturbably in front of him, one eyebrow lifted in a general disdain.

Finch stared at both of them for several moments, a little smile of amusement on his face.

"Well," he said, "we all know the matter before us. It is that of Professor Stoner's retirement." He sketched the regulations —voluntary retirement was possible at sixty-five; under this option, Stoner could if he wished retire either at the end of the current academic year, or at the end of either semester of the following year. Or he could, if it were agreed upon by the chairman of the department, the dean of the college, and the professor concerned, extend his retirement age to sixty-seven, at which time retirement was mandatory. Unless, of course, the person concerned were given a Distinguished Professorship and awarded a Chair, in which event—

"A most remote likelihood, I believe we can agree," Lomax said dryly.

Stoner nodded to Finch. "Most remote."

"I frankly believe," Lomax said to Finch, "it would be in the best interests of the department and college if Professor Stoner would take advantage of his opportunity to retire. There are certain curricular and personnel changes that I have long contemplated, which this retirement would make possible."

Stoner said to Finch, "I have no wish to retire before I have to, merely to accommodate a whim of Professor Lomax."

Finch turned to Lomax. Lomax said, "I'm sure that there is a great deal that Professor Stoner has not considered. He would have the leisure to do some of the writing that his"—he paused delicately—"his dedication to teaching has prevented him from doing. Surely the academic community would be edified if the fruit of his long experience were—"

Stoner interrupted, "I have no desire to begin a literary career at this stage in my life."

Lomax, without moving from his chair, seemed to bow to Finch. "I'm sure our colleague is too modest. Within two years I myself will be forced by regulations to vacate the chairmanship of the department. I certainly intend to put my declining years to good use; indeed, I look forward to the leisure of my retirement."

Stoner said, "I hope to remain a member of the department, at least until that auspicious occasion."

Lomax was silent for a moment. Then he said contemplatively to Finch, 'It has occurred to me several times during the past few years that Professor Stoner's efforts on behalf of the University have perhaps not been fully appreciated. It has occurred to me that a promotion to full professor might be a fitting climax to his retirement year. A dinner in honor of the occasion—a fitting ceremony. It should be most gratifying. Though it is late in the year, and though most of the promotions have already been declared, I am sure that, if I insisted, a promotion might be arranged for next year, in commemoration of an auspicious retirement."

Suddenly the game that he had been playing with Lomax— and, in a curious way, enjoying—seemed trivial and mean. A tiredness came over him. He looked directly at Lomax and said wearily, "Holly, after all these years, I thought you knew me better than that. I've never cared a damn for what you thought you could 'give' me, or what you thought you could 'do' to me, or whatever." He paused; he was, indeed, more tired than he had thought. He continued with an effort, "That isn't the point; it has never been the point. You're a good man, I suppose; certainly you're a good teacher. But in some ways you're an ignorant son-of-a-bitch." He paused again. "I don't know what you hoped for. But I won't retire—not at the end of this year, nor the end of the next." He got up slowly and stood for a moment, gathering his strength. "If you gentlemen will excuse me, I'm a little tired. I'll leave you to discuss whatever it is you have to discuss."

He knew that it would not end there, but he did not care. When, at the last general faculty meeting of the year, Lomax, in his departmental report to the faculty, announced the retirement at the end of the next year of Professor William Stoner, Stoner got to his feet and informed the faculty that Professor Lomax was in error, that the retirement would not be effective until two years after the time that Lomax had announced. At the beginning of the fall semester the new president of the University invited Stoner to his home for afternoon tea and spoke expansively of the years of his service, of the well-earned rest, of the gratitude they all felt; Stoner put on his most crochety manner, called the president "young man," and pretended not to hear, so that at last the young man ended by shouting in the most placatory tone he could manage.

But his efforts, meager as they were, tired him more than he had expected, so that by Christmas vacation he was nearly exhausted. He told himself that he was, indeed, getting old, and that he would have to let up if he were to do a good job the rest of the year. During the ten days of Christmas vacation he rested, as if he might hoard his strength; and when he returned for the last weeks of the semester he worked with a vigor and energy that surprised him. The issue of his retirement seemed settled, and he did not bother to think of it again.

Late in February the tiredness came over him again, and he could not seem to shake it off; he spent a great deal of his time at home and did much of his paper work propped on the day bed in his little back room. In March he became aware of a dull general pain in his legs and arms; he told himself that he was tired, that he would be better when the warm spring days came, that he needed rest. By April the pain had become localized in the lower part of his body; occasionally he missed a class, and he found that it took most of his strength merely to walk from class to class. In early May the pain became intense, and he could no longer think of it as a minor nuisance. He made an appointment with a doctor at the University infirmary.

There were tests and examinations and questions, the import of which Stoner only vaguely understood. He was given a special diet, some pills for the pain, and was told to come back at the beginning of the next week for consultation, when the results of the tests would be completed and put together. He felt better, though the tiredness remained.

His doctor was a young man named Jamison, who had explained to Stoner that he was working for the University for a few years before he went into private practice. He had a pink, round face, wore rimless glasses, and had a kind of nervous awkwardness of manner that Stoner trusted.

Stoner was a few minutes early for his appointment, but the receptionist told him to go right in. He went down the long narrow hall of the infirmary to the little cubicle where Jamison had his office.

Jamison was waiting for him, and it was clear to Stoner that he had been waiting for some time; folders and X-rays and notes were laid out neatly on his desk. Jamison stood up, smiled abruptly and nervously, and extended his hand toward a chair in front of his desk.

"Professor Stoner," he said. "Sit down, sit down."

Stoner sat.

Jamison frowned at the display on his desk, smoothed a sheet of paper, and let himself down on his chair. "Well," he said, "there's some sort of obstruction in the lower intestinal tract, that's clear. Not much shows up on the X-rays, but that isn't unusual. Oh, a little cloudiness; but that doesn't necessarily mean anything." He turned his chair, set an X-ray in a frame, switched on a light, and pointed vaguely. Stoner looked, but he could see nothing. Jamison switched off the light and turned back to his desk. He became very businesslike. "Your blood count's down pretty low, but there doesn't seem to be any infection there; your sedimentation is subnormal and your blood pressure's down. There is some internal swelling that doesn't seem quite right, you've lost quite a bit of weight, and—well, with the symptoms you've shown and from what I can tell from these"—he waved at his desk—"I'd say there's only one thing to do." He smiled fixedly and said with strained jocularity, "We've just got to go in there and see what we can find out."

Stoner nodded. "It's cancer then."

"Well," Jamison said, "that's a pretty big word. It can mean a lot of things. I'm pretty sure there's a tumor there, but—well, we can't be absolutely sure of anything until we go in there and look around."

"How long have I had it?"

"Oh, there's no way of telling that. But it feels like—well, it's pretty large; it's been there some time."

Stoner was silent for a moment. Then he said, "How long would you estimate I have?"

Jamison said distractedly, "Oh, now, look, Mr. Stoner." He attempted a laugh. "We mustn't jump to conclusions. Why, there's always a chance—there's a chance it's only a tumor, non-malignant, you know. Or—or it could be a lot of things. We just can't know for sure until we—"

"Yes," Stoner said. "When would you want to operate?"

"As soon as possible," Jamison said relievedly. "Within the next two or three days."

"That soon," Stoner said, almost absently. Then he looked at Jamison steadily. "Let me ask you a few questions, Doctor. I must tell you that I want you to answer them frankly."

Jamison nodded.

"If it is only a tumor—non-malignant, as you say—would a couple of weeks make any great difference?"

"Well," Jamison said reluctantly, "there would be the pain; and—no, not a great deal of difference, I suppose."

"Good," Stoner said. "And if it is as bad as you think it is—would a couple of weeks make a great difference then?"

After a long while Jamison said, almost bitterly, "No, I suppose not."

"Then," Stoner said reasonably, "I'll wait for a couple of weeks. There are a few things I need to clear up—some work I need to do."

"I don't advise it, you understand," Jamison said. "I don't advise it at all."

"Of course," Stoner said. "And, Doctor—you won't mention this to anyone, will you?"

"No," Jamison said and added with a little warmth, "of course not." He suggested a few revisions of the diet he had earlier given him, prescribed more pills, and set a date for his entrance into the hospital.

Stoner felt nothing at all; it was as if what the doctor told him were a minor annoyance, an obstacle he would have somehow to work around in order to get done what he had to do. It occurred to him that it was rather late in the year for this to be happening; Lomax might have some difficulty in finding a replacement. The pill he had taken in the doctor's office made him a little light-headed, and he found the sensation oddly pleasurable. His sense of time was displaced; he found himself standing in the long parqueted first-floor corridor of Jesse Hall. A low hum, like the distant thrumming of birds' wings, was in his ears; in the shadowed corridor a sourceless light seemed to glow and dim, pulsating like the beat of his heart; and his flesh, intimately aware of every move he made, tingled as he stepped forward with deliberate care into the mingled light and dark.

He stood at the stairs that led up to the second floor; the steps were marble, and in their precise centers were gentle troughs worn smooth by decades of footsteps going up and down. They had been almost new when—how many years ago?—he had first stood here and looked up, as he looked now, and wondered where they would lead him. He thought of time and of its gentle flowing. He put one foot carefully in the first smooth depression and lifted himself up.

Then he was in Gordon Finch's outer office. The girl said, "Dean Finch was about to leave . . ." He nodded absently, smiled at her, and went into Finch's office.

"Gordon," he said cordially, the smile still on his face. "I won't keep you long."

Finch returned the smile reflexively; his eyes were tired. "Sure, Bill, sit down."

"I won't keep you long," he said again; he felt a curious power come into his voice. "The fact is, I've changed my mind —about retiring, I mean. I know it's awkward; sorry to be so late letting you know, but—well, I think it's best all around. I'm quitting at the end of this semester."

Finch's face floated before him, round in its amazement. "What the hell," he said. "Has anyone been putting the screws on you?"

"Nothing like that," Stoner said. "It's my own decision. It's just that—I've discovered there are some things I'd like to do." He added reasonably, "And I do need a little rest."

Finch was annoyed, and Stoner knew that he had cause to be. He thought he heard himself murmur another apology; he felt the smile remain foolishly on his face.

"Well," Finch said, "I guess it's not too late. I can start the papers through tomorrow. I suppose you know all you need to know about your annuity income, insurance, and things like that?"

"Oh, yes," Stoner said. "I've thought of all that. It's all right."

Finch looked at his watch. "I'm kind of late, Bill. Drop by in a day or so and we'll clear up the details. In the meantime— well, I suppose Lomax ought to know. I'll call him tonight." He grinned. "I'm afraid you've succeeded in pleasing him."

"Yes," Stoner said. "I'm afraid I have."

There was much to do in the two weeks that remained before he was to go into the hospital, but he decided that he would be able to do it. He canceled his classes for the next two days and called into conference all those students for whom he had the responsibility of directing independent research, theses, and dissertations. He wrote detailed instructions that would guide them to the completion of the work they had begun and left carbon copies of these instructions in Lomax's mailbox. He soothed those who were thrown into a panic by what they considered his desertion of them and reassured those who were fearful of committing themselves to a new adviser. He found that the pills he had been taking reduced the clarity of his intelligence as they relieved the pain; so in the daytime, when he talked to students, and in the evening, when he read the deluge of half-completed papers, theses, and dissertations, he took them only when the pain became so intense that it forced his attention away from his work.

Two days after his declaration of retirement, in the middle of a busy afternoon, he got a telephone call from Gordon Finch.

"Bill? Gordon. Look—there's a small problem I think I ought to talk to you about."

"Yes?" he said impatiently.

"It's Lomax. He can't get it through his head that you aren't doing this on his account."

"It doesn't matter," Stoner said. "Let him think what he wants."

"Wait—that isn't all. He's making plans to go through with the dinner and everything. He says he gave his word."

"Look, Gordon, I'm very busy just now. Can't you just put a stop to it somehow?"

"I tried to, but he's doing it through the department. If you want me to call him in I will; but you'll have to be here too. When he's like this I can't talk to him."

"All right. When is this foolishness supposed to come off?"

There was a pause. "A week from Friday. The last day of classes, just before exam week."

"All right," Stoner said wearily. "I should have things cleared up by then, and it'll be easier than arguing it now. Just let it ride."

"You ought to know this too; he wants me to announce your retirement as professor emeritus, though it can't be really official until next year."

Stoner felt a laugh come up in his throat. "What the hell," he said. "That's all right too."

All that week he worked without consciousness of time. He worked straight through Friday, from eight o'clock in the morning until ten that night. He read a last page and made a last note, and leaned back in his chair; the light on his desk filled his eyes, and for a moment he did not know where he was. He looked around him and saw that he was in his office. The bookshelves were bulging with books haphazardly placed; there were stacks of papers in the corners; and his filing cabinets were open and disarranged. I ought to straighten things up, he thought; I ought to get my things in order.

"Next week," he said to himself. "Next week."

He wondered if he could make it home. It seemed an effort to breathe. He narrowed his mind, forced it upon his arms and legs, made them respond. He got to his feet, and would not let himself sway. He turned the desk light off and stood until his eyes could see by the moonlight that came through his windows. Then he put one foot before the other and walked through the dark halls to the out-of-doors and through the quiet streets to his home.

The lights were on; Edith was still up. He gathered the last of his strength and made it up the front steps and into the living room. Then he knew he could go no farther; he was able to reach the couch and to sit down. After a moment he found the strength to reach into his vest pocket and take out his tube of pills. He put one in his mouth and swallowed it without water; then he took another. They were bitter, but the bitterness seemed almost pleasant.

He became aware that Edith had been walking about the room, going from one place to another; he hoped that she had not spoken to him. As the pain eased and as some of his strength returned, he realized that she had not; her face was set, her nostrils and mouth pinched, and she walked stiffly, angrily. He started to speak to her, but he decided that he could not trust his voice. He let himself wonder why she was angry; she had not been angry for a long time.

Finally she stopped moving about and faced him; her hands were fists and they hung at her sides. "Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"

He cleared his throat and made his eyes focus. "I'm sorry, Edith." He heard his voice quiet but steady. "I'm a little tired, I guess."

"You weren't going to say anything at all, were you? Thoughtless. Didn't you think I had a right to know?"

For a moment he was puzzled. Then he nodded. If he had had more strength he would have been angry. "How did you find out?"

"Never mind that. I suppose everyone knows except me. Oh, Willy, honestly."

"I'm sorry, Edith, really, I am. I didn't want to worry you. I was going to tell you next week, just before I went in. It's nothing; you aren't to trouble yourself."

"Nothing!" She laughed bitterly. "They say it might be cancer. Don't you know what that means?"

He felt suddenly weightless, and he had to force himself not to clutch at something. "Edith," he said in a distant voice, 'let's talk about it tomorrow. Please. I'm tired now."

She looked at him for a moment. "Do you want me to help you to your room?" she asked crossly. "You don't look like you'll make it by yourself."

"I'm all right," he said.

But before he got to his room he wished he had let her help him—and not only because he found himself weaker than he had expected.

He rested Saturday and Sunday, and Monday he was able to meet his classes. He went home early, and he was lying on the living-room couch gazing interestedly at the ceiling when the doorbell rang. He sat upright and started to rise, but the door opened. It was Gordon Finch. His face was pale, and his hands were unsteady.

"Come in, Gordon," Stoner said.

"My God, Bill," Finch said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Stoner laughed shortly. "I might as well have advertised it in the newspapers," he said. "I thought I could do it quietly, without upsetting anyone."

"I know, but—Jesus, if I had known."

"There's nothing to get upset about. There's nothing definite yet—it's just an operation. Exploratory, I believe they call it. How did you find out anyway?"

"Jamison," Finch said. "He's my doctor too. He said he knew it wasn't ethical, but that I ought to know. He was right, Bill."

"I know," Stoner said. "It doesn't matter. Has the word got around?"

Finch shook his head. "Not yet."

"Then keep your mouth shut about it. Please."

"Sure, Bill," Finch said. "Now about this dinner party Friday —you don't have to go through with it, you know."

"But I will," Stoner said. He grinned. "I figure I owe Lomax something."

The ghost of a smile came upon Finch's face. "You have turned into an ornery old son-of-a-bitch, haven't you?"

"I guess I have," Stoner said.

The dinner was held in a small banquet room of the Student Union. At the last minute Edith decided that she wouldn't be able to sit through it, so he went alone. He went early and walked slowly across the campus, as if ambling casually on a spring afternoon. As he had anticipated, there was no one in the room; he got a waiter to remove his wife's name card and to reset the main table, so that there would not be an empty space. Then he sat down and waited for the guests to arrive.

He was seated between Gordon Finch and the president of the University; Lomax, who was to act as the master of ceremonies, was seated three chairs away. Lomax was smiling and chatting with those sitting around him; he did not look at Stoner.

The room filled quickly; members of the department who had not really spoken to him for years waved across the room to him; Stoner nodded. Finch said little, though he watched Stoner carefully; the youngish new president, whose name Stoner could never remember, spoke to him with an easy deference.

The food was served by young students in white coats; Stoner recognized several of them; he nodded and spoke to them. The guests looked sadly at their food and began to eat. A relaxed hum of conversation, broken by the cheery clatter of silverware and china, throbbed in the room; Stoner knew that his own presence was almost forgotten, so he was able to poke at his food, take a few ritual bites, and look around him. If he narrowed his eyes he could not see the faces; he saw colors and vague shapes moving before him, as in a frame, constructing moment by moment new patterns of contained flux. It was a pleasant sight, and if he held his attention upon it in a particular way, he was not aware of the pain.

Suddenly there was silence; he shook his head, as if coming out of a dream. Near the end of the narrow table Lomax was standing, tapping on a water glass with his knife. A handsome face, Stoner thought absently; still handsome. The years had made the long thin face even thinner, and the lines seemed marks of an increased sensitivity rather than of age. The smile was still intimately sardonic, and the voice as resonant and steady as it had ever been.

He was speaking; the words came to Stoner in snatches, as if the voice that made them boomed from the silence and then diminished into its source. ". . . the long years of dedicated service . . . richly deserved rest from the pressures ... esteemed by his colleagues. . . ." He heard the irony and knew that, in his own way, after all these years, Lomax was speaking to him.

A short determined burst of applause startled his reverie. Beside him, Gordon Finch was standing, speaking. Though he looked up and strained his ears, he could not hear what Finch said; Gordon's lips moved, he looked fixedly in front of him, there was applause, he sat down. On the other side of him, the president got to his feet and spoke in a voice that scurried from cajolery to threat, from humor to sadness, from regret to joy. He said that he hoped Stoner's retirement would be a beginning not an ending; he knew that the University would be the poorer for his absence; there was the importance of tradition, the necessity for change; and the gratitude, for years to come, in the hearts of all his students. Stoner could not make sense of what he said; but when the president finished, the room burst into loud applause and the faces smiled. As the applause dwindled someone in the audience shouted in a thin voice: "Speech!" Someone else took up the call, and the word was murmured here and there.

Finch whispered in his ear, "Do you want me to get you out of it?"

"No," Stoner said. "It's all right."

He got to his feet, and realized that he had nothing to say.

He was silent for a long time as he looked from face to face. He heard his voice issue flatly. "I have taught . . ." he said. He began again. "I have taught at this University for nearly forty years. I do not know what I would have done if I had not been a teacher. If I had not taught, I might have—" He paused, as if distracted. Then he said, with a finality, "I want to thank you all for letting me teach."

He sat down. There was applause, friendly laughter. The room broke up and people milled about. Stoner felt his hand being shaken; he was aware that he smiled and that he nodded at whatever was said to him. The president pressed his hand, smiled heartily, told him that he must drop around, any afternoon, looked at his wrist watch, and hurried out. The room began to empty, and Stoner stood alone where he had risen and gathered his strength for the walk across the room. He waited until he felt something harden inside him, and then he walked around the table and out of the room, passing little knots of people who glanced at him curiously, as if he were already a stranger. Lomax was in one of the groups, but he did not turn as Stoner passed; and Stoner found that he was grateful that they had not had to speak to each other, after all this time.

The next day he entered the hospital and rested until Monday morning, when the operation was to be performed. He slept much of that time and had no particular interest in what was to happen to him. On Monday morning someone stuck a needle in his arm; he was only half conscious of being rolled through halls to a strange room that seemed to be all ceiling and light. He saw something descend toward his face and he closed his eyes.

He awoke to nausea; his head ached; there was a new sharp pain, not unpleasant, in his lower body. He retched, and felt better. He let his hand move over the heavy bandages that covered the middle part of his body. He slept, wakened during the night and took a glass of water, and slept again until morning.

When he awoke, Jamison was standing beside his bed, his fingers on his left wrist.

"Well," Jamison said, "how are we feeling this morning?"

"All right, I think." His throat was dry; he reached out, and Jamison handed him the glass of water. He drank and looked at Jamison, waiting.

"Well," Jamison said at last, uncomfortably, "we got the tumor. Big feller. In a day or two you'll be feeling much better."

"I'll be able to leave here?" Stoner asked.

"You'll be up and around in two or three days," Jamison said. "The only thing is, it might be more convenient if you did stay around for a while. We couldn't get—all of it. We'll be using X-ray treatment, things like that. Of course, you could go back and forth, but—"

"No," Stoner said and let his head fall back on the pillow. He was tired again. "As soon as possible," he said, "I think I want to go home."