Stoner

XVII

"Oh, Willy," she said. "You're all eaten up inside."

He was lying on the day bed in the little back room, gazing out the open window; it was late afternoon, and the sun, dipping beneath the horizon, sent a red glow upon the underside of a long rippling cloud that hung in the west above the tree-tops and the houses. A fly buzzed against the window screen; and the pungent aroma of trash burning in the neighbors' yards was caught in the still air.

"What?" Stoner said absently and turned to his wife.

"Inside," Edith said. "The doctor said it has spread all over. Oh, Willy, poor Willy."

"Yes," Stoner said. He could not make himself become very interested. "Well, you aren't to worry. It's best not to think about it."

She did not answer, and he turned again to the open window and watched the sky darken, until there was only a dull purplish streak upon the cloud in the distance.

He had been home for a little more than a week and had just that afternoon returned from a visit to the hospital where he had undergone what Jamison, with his strained smile, called a "treatment." Jamison had admired the speed with which his incision had healed, had said something about his having the constitution of a man of forty, and then had abruptly grown silent. Stoner had allowed himself to be poked and prodded, had let them strap him on a table, and had remained still while a huge machine hovered silently about him. It was foolishness, he knew, but he did not protest; it would have been unkind to do so. It was little enough to undergo, if it would distract them all from the knowledge they could not evade.

Gradually, he knew, this little room where he now lay and looked out the window would become his world; already he could feel the first vague beginnings of the pain that returned like the distant call of an old friend. He doubted that he would be asked to return to the hospital; he had heard in Jamisons voice this afternoon a finality, and Jamison had given him some pills to take in the event that there was "discomfort."

"You might write Grace," he heard himself saying to Edith. "She hasn't visited us in a long time."

And he turned to see Edith nodding absently; her eyes had been, with his, gazing tranquilly upon the growing darkness outside the window.

During the next two weeks he felt himself weaken, at first gradually and then rapidly. The pain returned, with an intensity that he had not expected; he took his pills and felt the pain recede into a darkness, as if it were a cautious animal.

Grace came; and he found that, after all, he had little to say to her. She had been away from St. Louis and had returned to find Edith's letter only the day before. She was worn and tense and there were dark shadows under her eyes; he wished that he could do something to ease her pain and knew that he could not.

'You look just fine, Daddy," she said. "Just fine. You're going to be all right."

"Of course," he said and smiled at her. "How is young Ed? And how have you been?"

She said that she had been fine and that young Ed was fine, that he would be entering junior high school the coming fall. He looked at her with some bewilderment. "Junior high?" he asked. Then he realized that it must be true. "Of course," he said. "I forgot how big he must be by now."

"He stays with his—with Mr. and Mrs. Frye a lot of the time," she said. "It's best for him that way." She said something else, but his attention wandered. More and more frequently he found it difficult to keep his mind focused upon any one thing; it wandered where he could not predict, and he sometimes found himself speaking words whose source he did not understand.

"Poor Daddy," he heard Grace say, and he brought his attention back to where he was. "Poor Daddy, things haven't been easy for you, have they?"

He thought for a moment and then he said, "No. But I suppose I didn't want them to be."

"Mamma and I—we've both been disappointments to you, haven't we?"

He moved his hand upward, as if to touch her. "Oh, no," he said with a dim passion. "You mustn't . . ." He wanted to say more, to explain; but he could not go on. He closed his eyes and felt his mind loosen. Images crowded there, and changed, as if upon a screen. He saw Edith as she had been that first evening they had met at old Claremont's house—the blue gown and the slender fingers and the fair, delicate face that smiled softly, the pale eyes that looked eagerly upon each moment as if it were a sweet surprise. "Your mother . . ." he said. "She was not always . . ." She was not always as she had been; and he thought now that he could perceive beneath the woman she had become the girl that she had been; he thought that he had always perceived it.

"You were a beautiful child," he heard himself saying, and for a moment he did not know to whom he spoke. Light swam before his eyes, found shape, and became the face of his daughter, lined and somber and worn with care. He closed his eyes again. "In the study. Remember? You used to sit with me when I worked. You were so still, and the light . . . the light . . ." The light of the desk lamp (he could see it now) had been absorbed by her studious small face that bent in childish absorption over a book or a picture, so that the smooth flesh glowed against the shadows of the room. He heard the small laughter echo in the distance. "Of course," he said and looked upon the present face of that child. "Of course," he said again, "you were always there."

"Hush," she said softly, "you must rest."

And that was their farewell. The next day she came down to him and said she had to get back to St. Louis for a few days and said something else he did not hear in a flat, controlled voice; her face was drawn, and her eyes were red and moist. Their gazes locked; she looked at him for a long moment, almost in disbelief; then she turned away. He knew that he would not see her again.

He had no wish to die; but there were moments, after Grace left, when he looked forward impatiently, as one might look to the moment of a journey that one does not particularly wish to take. And like any traveler, he felt that there were many things he had to do before he left; yet he could not think what they were.

He had become so weak that he could not walk; he spent his days and nights in the tiny back room. Edith brought him the books he wanted and arranged them on a table beside his narrow bed, so that he would not have to exert himself to reach them.

But he read little, though the presence of his books comforted him. He had Edith open the curtains on all the windows and would not let her close them, even when the afternoon sun, intensely hot, slanted into the room.

Sometimes Edith came into the room and sat on the bed beside him and they talked. They talked of trivial things—of people they knew casually, of a new building going up on the campus, of an old one torn down; but what they said did not seem to matter. A new tranquillity had come between them. It was a quietness that was like the beginning of love; and almost without thinking, Stoner knew why it had come. They had forgiven themselves for the harm they had done each other, and they were rapt in a regard of what their life together might have been.

Almost without regret he looked at her now; in the soft light of late afternoon her face seemed young and unlined. If I had been stronger, he thought; if I had known more; if I could have understood. And finally, mercilessly, he thought: if I had loved her more. As if it were a long distance it had to go, his hand moved across the sheet that covered him and touched her hand. She did not move; and after a while he drifted into a kind of sleep.

Despite the sedatives he took, his mind, it seemed to him, remained clear; and he was grateful for that. But it was as if some will other than his own had taken possession of that mind, moving it in directions he could not understand; time passed, and he did not see its passing.

Gordon Finch visited him nearly every day, but he could not keep the sequence of these visits clear in his memory; sometimes he spoke to Gordon when he was not there, and was surprised at his voice in the empty room; sometimes in the middle of a conversation with him he paused and blinked, as if suddenly aware of Gordon's presence. Once, when Gordon tiptoed into the room, he turned to him with a kind of surprise and asked, "Where's Dave?" And when he saw the shock of fear come over Gordon's face he shook his head weakly and said, "I'm sorry, Gordon. I was nearly asleep; I'd been thinking about Dave Masters and—sometimes I say things I'm thinking without knowing it. It's these pills I have to take."

Gordon smiled and nodded and made a joke; but Stoner knew that in that instant Gordon Finch had withdrawn from him in such a way that he could never return. He felt a keen regret that he had spoken so of Dave Masters, the defiant boy they both had loved, whose ghost had held them, all these years, in a friendship whose depth they had never quite realized.

Gordon told him of the regards that his colleagues sent him and spoke disconnectedly of University affairs that might interest him; but his eyes were restless, and the nervous smile flickered on his face.

Edith came into the room, and Gordon Finch lumbered to his feet, effusive and cordial in his relief at being interrupted.

"Edith," he said, "you sit down here."

Edith shook her head and blinked at Stoner.

"Old Bill's looking better," Finch said. "By God, I think he's looking much better than he did last week."

Edith turned to him as if noticing his presence for the first time.

"Oh, Gordon," she said. "He looks awful. Poor Willy. He won't be with us much longer."

Gordon paled and took a step backward, as if he had been struck. "My God, Edith!"

"Not much longer," Edith said again, looking broodingly at her husband, who was smiling a little. "What am I going to do, Gordon? What will I do without him?"

He closed his eyes and they disappeared; he heard Gordon whisper something and heard their footsteps as they drew away from him.

What was so remarkable was that it was so easy. He had wanted to tell Gordon how easy it was, he had wanted to tell him that it did not bother him to talk about it or to think about it; but he had been unable to do so. Now it did not seem really to matter; he heard their voices in the kitchen, Gordon's low and urgent, Edith's grudging and clipped. What were they talking about?

. . . The pain came upon him with a suddenness and an urgency that took him unprepared, so that he almost cried out. He made his hands loosen upon the bedclothes and willed them to move steadily to the night table. He took several of the pills and put them in his mouth and swallowed some water. A cold sweat broke upon his forehead and he lay very still until the pain lessened.

He heard the voices again; he did not open his eyes. Was it Gordon? His hearing seemed to go outside his body and hover like a cloud above him, transmitting to him every delicacy of sound. But his mind could not exactly distinguish the words.

The voice—was it Gordon's?—was saying something about his life. And though he could not make out the words, could not even be sure that they were being said, his own mind, with the fierceness of a wounded animal, pounced upon that question. Mercilessly he saw his life as it must appear to another.

Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that . . . He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine."

And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else?

What did you expect? he asked himself.

He opened his eyes. It was dark. Then he saw the sky outside, the deep blue-black of space, and the thin glow of moonlight through a cloud. It must be very late, he thought; it seemed only an instant ago that Gordon and Edith had stood beside him, in the bright afternoon. Or was it long ago? He could not tell.

He had known that his mind must weaken as his body wasted, but he had been unprepared for the suddenness. The flesh is strong, he thought; stronger than we imagine. It wants always to go on.

He heard voices and saw lights and felt the pain come and go. Edith's face hovered above him; he felt his face smile. Sometimes he heard his own voice speak, and he thought that it spoke rationally, though he could not be sure. He felt Edith's hands on him, moving him, bathing him. She has her child again, he thought; at last she has her child that she can care for. He wished that he could speak to her; he felt that he had something to say.

What did you expect? he thought.

Something heavy was pressing upon his eyelids. He felt them tremble and then he managed to get them open. It was light that he felt, the bright sunlight of an afternoon. He blinked and considered impassively the blue sky and the brilliant edge of the sun that he could see through his window. He decided that they were real. He moved a hand, and with the movement he felt a curious strength flow within him, as if from the air. He breathed deeply; there was no pain.

With each breath he took, it seemed to him that his strength increased; his flesh tingled, and he could feel the delicate weight of light and shade upon his face. He raised himself up from the bed, so that he was half sitting, his back supported by the wall against which the bed rested. Now he could see the out-of-doors.

He felt that he had awakened from a long sleep and was refreshed. It was late spring or early summer—more likely early summer, from the look of things. There was a richness and a sheen upon the leaves of the huge elm tree in his back yard; and the shade it cast had a deep coolness that he had known before. A thickness was in the air, a heaviness that crowded the sweet odors of grass and leaf and flower, mingling and holding them suspended. He breathed again, deeply; he heard the rasping of his breath and felt the sweetness of the summer gather in his lungs.

And he felt also, with that breath he took, a shifting somewhere deep inside him, a shifting that stopped something and fixed his head so that it would not move. Then it passed, and he thought, So this is what it is like.

It occurred to him that he ought to call Edith; and then he knew that he would not call her. The dying are selfish, he thought; they want their moments to themselves, like children.

He was breathing again, but there was a difference within him that he could not name. He felt that he was waiting for something, for some knowledge; but it seemed to him that he had all the time in the world.

He heard the distant sound of laughter, and he turned his head toward its source. A group of students had cut across his back-yard lawn; they were hurrying somewhere. He saw them distinctly; there were three couples. The girls were long-limbed and graceful in their light summer dresses, and the boys were looking at them with a joyous and bemused wonder. They walked lightly upon the grass, hardly touching it, leaving no trace of where they had been. He watched them as they went out of his sight, where he could not see; and for a long time after they had vanished the sound of their laughter came to him, far and unknowing in the quiet of the summer afternoon.

What did you expect? he thought again.

A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne in on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure —as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been. Dim presences gathered at the edge of his consciousness; he could not see them, but he knew that they were there, gathering their forces toward a kind of palpability he could not see or hear. He was approaching them, he knew; but there was no need to hurry. He could ignore them if he wished; he had all the time there was.

There was a softness around him, and a languor crept upon his limbs. A sense of his own identity came upon him with a sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.

His head turned. His bedside table was piled with books that he had not touched for a long time. He let his hand play over them for a moment; he marveled at the thinness of the fingers, at the intricate articulation of the joints as he flexed them. He felt the strength within them, and let them pull a book from the jumble on the tabletop. It was his own book that he sought, and when the hand held it he smiled at the familiar red cover that had for a long time been faded and scuffed.

It hardly mattered to him that the book was forgotten and that it served no use; and the question of its worth at any time seemed almost trivial. He did not have the illusion that he would find himself there, in that fading print; and yet, he knew, a small part of him that he could not deny was there, and would be there.

He opened the book; and as he did so it became not his own.

He let his fingers riffle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive. The tingling came through his fingers and coursed through his flesh and bone; he was minutely aware of it, and he waited until it contained him, until the old excitement that was like terror fixed him where he lay. The sunlight, passing his window, shone upon the page, and he could not see what was written there.

The fingers loosened, and the book they had held moved slowly and then swiftly across the still body and fell into the silence of the room.