Stoner

V

They returned to Columbia two days earlier than they had planned; restless and strained by their isolation, it was as if they walked together in a prison. Edith said that they really ought to get back to Columbia so that William could prepare for his classes and so that she could begin to get them settled in their new apartment. Stoner agreed at once—and told himself that things would be better once they were in a place of their own, among people they knew and in surroundings that were familiar. They packed their belongings that afternoon and were on the train to Columbia the same evening.

In the hurried, vague days before their marriage Stoner had found a vacant second-floor apartment in an old barnlike house five blocks from the University. It was dark and bare, with a small bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and a huge living room with high windows; it had at one time been occupied by an artist, a teacher at the University, who had been none too tidy; the dark, wide-planked floors were splotched with brilliant yellows and blues and reds, and the walls were smudged with paint and dirt. Stoner thought the place romantic and commodious, and he judged it to be a good place to start a new life.

Edith moved into the apartment as if it were an enemy to be conquered. Though unused to physical labor, she scraped away most of the paint from the floors and walls and scrubbed at the dirt she imagined secreted everywhere; her hands blistered and her face became strained, with dark hollows beneath the eyes. When Stoner tried to help her she became stubborn, her lips tightened, and she shook her head; he needed the time for his studies, she said; this was her job. When he forced his help upon her, she became almost sullen, thinking herself to be humiliated. Puzzled and helpless, he withdrew his aid and watched as, grimly, Edith continued awkwardly to scrub the gleaming floors and walls, to sew curtains and hang them unevenly from the high windows, to repair and paint and repaint the used furniture they had begun to accumulate. Though inept, she worked with a silent and intense ferocity, so that by the time William got home from the University in the afternoon she was exhausted. She would drag herself to prepare the evening meal, eat a few bites, and then with a murmur vanish into the bedroom to sleep like one drugged until after William had left for his classes the next morning.

Within a month he knew that his marriage was a failure; within a year he stopped hoping that it would improve. He learned silence and did not insist upon his love. If he spoke to her or touched her in tenderness, she turned away from him within herself and became wordless, enduring, and for days afterward drove herself to new limits of exhaustion. Out of an unspoken stubbornness they both had, they shared the same bed; sometimes at night, in her sleep, she unknowingly moved against him. And sometimes, then, his resolve and knowledge crumbled before his love, and he moved upon her. If she was sufficiently roused from her sleep she tensed and stiffened, turning her head sideways in a familiar gesture and burying it in her pillow, enduring violation; at such times Stoner performed his love as quickly as he could, hating himself for his haste and regretting his passion. Less frequently she remained half numbed by sleep; then she was passive, and she murmured drowsily, whether in protest or surprise he did not know. He came to look forward to these rare and unpredictable moments, for in that sleep-drugged acquiescence he could pretend to himself that he found a kind of response.

And he could not speak to her of what he took to be her unhappiness. When he attempted to do so, she accepted what he said as a reflection upon her adequacy and her self, and she became as morosely withdrawn from him as she did when he made love to her. He blamed his clumsiness for her withdrawal and took upon himself the responsibility for what she felt.

With a quiet ruthlessness that came from his desperation, he experimented with small ways of pleasing her. He brought her gifts, which she accepted indifferently, sometimes commenting mildly upon their expense; he took her on walks and picnics in the wooded countryside around Columbia, but she tired easily and sometimes became ill; he talked to her of his work, as he had done in their courtship, but her interest had become perfunctory and indulgent.

At last, though he knew her to be shy, he insisted as gently as he could that they begin to entertain. They had an informal tea to which a few of the younger instructors and assistant professors in the department were invited, and they gave several small dinner parties. In no way did Edith show whether she was pleased or displeased; but her preparations for the events were so frenzied and obsessive that by the time the guests arrived she was half hysterical from strain and weariness, though no one except William was really aware of this.

She was a good hostess. She talked to her guests with an animation and ease that made her seem a stranger to William and she spoke to him in their presence with an intimacy and fondness that always surprised him. She called him Willy, which touched him oddly, and sometimes she laid a soft hand upon his shoulder.

But when the guests left, the facade fell upon itself and revealed her collapse. She spoke bitterly of the departed guests, imagining obscure insults and slights; she quietly and desperately recounted what she thought to be unforgivable failures of her own; she sat still and brooding in the litter the guests had left and would not be roused by William and would answer him briefly and distraughtly in a flat, monotonous voice.

Only once had the facade cracked when guests were present.

Several months after Stoner's and Edith's marriage, Gordon Finch had become engaged to a girl whom he had met casually while he was stationed in New York and whose parents lived in Columbia. Finch had been given a permanent post as assistant dean, and it was tacitly understood that when Josiah Claremont died Finch would be among the first to be considered for the deanship of the College. Somewhat belatedly, in celebration of both Finch's new position and the announcement of his engagement, Stoner asked him and his fiancee to dinner.

They came just before dusk on a warm evening in late May, in a shining black new touring car which gave off a series of explosions as Finch expertly brought it to a halt on the brick road in front of Stoner's house. He honked the horn and waved gaily until William and Edith came downstairs. A small dark girl with a round, smiling face sat beside him.

He introduced her as Caroline Wingate, and the four of them talked for a moment while Finch helped her descend from the car.

"Well, how do you like it?" Finch asked, thumping the front fender of the car with his closed fist. "A beauty, isn't it? Belongs to Caroline's father. I'm thinking of getting one just like it, so . . ." His voice trailed away and his eyes narrowed; he regarded the automobile speculatively and coolly, as if it were the future.

Then he became lively and jocular again. With mock secrecy he put his forefinger to his lips, looked furtively around, and took a large brown paper bag from the front seat of the car. "Hooch," he whispered. "Just off the boat. Cover me, pal; maybe we can make it to the house."

The dinner went well. Finch was more affable than Stoner had seen him in years; Stoner thought of himself and Finch and Dave Masters sitting together on those distant Friday afternoons after class, drinking beer and talking. The fiancee, Caroline, said little; she smiled happily as Finch joked and winked. It came to Stoner as an almost envious shock to realize that Finch was genuinely fond of this dark pretty girl, and that her silence came from a rapt affection for him.

Even Edith lost some of her strain and tenseness; she smiled easily, and her laughter was spontaneous. Finch was playful and familiar with Edith in a way, Stoner realized, that he, her own husband, could never be; and Edith seemed happier than she had been in months.

After dinner Finch removed the brown paper bag from the icebox, where he had placed it earlier to cool, and took from it a number of dark brown bottles. It was a home brew that he made with great secrecy and ceremony in the closet of his bachelor apartment.

"No room for my clothes," he said, "but a man's got to keep his sense of values."

Carefully, with his eyes squinted, with the light glistening upon his fair skin and thinning blond hair, like a chemist measuring a rare substance, he poured the beer from the bottles into glasses.

"Got to be careful with this stuff," he said. "You get a lot of sediment at the bottom, and if you pour it off too quick, you get it in the glass."

They each drank a glass of the beer, complimenting Finch upon its taste. It was, indeed, surprisingly good, dry and light and of a good color. Even Edith finished her glass and took another.

They became a little drunk; they laughed vaguely and sentimentally; they saw each other anew.

Holding his glass up to the light, Stoner said, "I wonder how Dave would have liked this beer."

"Dave?" Finch asked.

"Dave Masters. Remember how he used to love beer?"

"Dave Masters," Finch said. "Good old Dave. It's a damned shame."

"Masters," Edith said. She was smiling fuzzily. "Wasn't he that friend of yours that was killed in the war?"

"Yes," Stoner said. "That's the one." The old sadness came over him, but he smiled at Edith.

"Good old Dave," Finch said. "Edie, your husband and I and Dave used to really lap it up—long before he knew of you, of course. Good old Dave . . ."

They smiled at the memory of David Masters.

"He was a good friend of yours?" Edith asked.

Stoner nodded. "He was a good friend."

"Chateau-Thierry." Finch drained his glass. "War's a hell of a thing." He shook his head. "But old Dave. He's probably somewhere laughing at us right now. He wouldn't be feeling sorry for himself. I wonder if he ever really got to see any of France?"

"I don't know," Stoner said. "He was killed so soon after he got over."

"Be a shame if he didn't. I always thought that was one of the main reasons he joined up. To see some of Europe."

"Europe," Edith said distinctly.

"Yeah," Finch said. "Old Dave didn't want too many things, but he did want to see Europe before he died."

"I was going to Europe once," Edith said. She was smiling, and her eyes glittered helplessly. "Do you remember, Willy? I was going with my Aunt Emma just before we got married. Do you remember?"

"I remember," Stoner said.

Edith laughed gratingly and shook her head as if she were puzzled. "It seems like a long time ago, but it wasn't. How long has it been, Willy?"

"Edith—" Stoner said.

"Let's see, we were going in April. And then a year. And now it's May. I would have been . . ." Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, though she was still smiling with a fixed brightness. "I'll never get there now, I guess. Aunt Emma is going to die pretty soon, and I'll never have a chance to . .

Then, with the smile still tightening her lips and her eyes streaming with tears, she began to sob. Stoner and Finch rose from their chairs.

"Edith," Stoner said helplessly.

"Oh, leave me alone!" With a curious twisting motion she stood erect before them, her eyes shut tight and her hands clenched at her sides. "All of you! Just leave me alone!" And she turned and stumbled into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

For a moment no one spoke; they listened to the muffled sound of Edith's sobbing. Then Stoner said, "You'll have to excuse her. She has been tired and not too well. The strain—"

"Sure, I know how it is, Bill." Finch laughed hollowly. "Women and all. Guess I'll be getting used to it pretty soon myself." He looked at Caroline, laughed again, and lowered his voice. "Well, we won't disturb Edie right now. You just thank her for us, tell her it was a fine meal, and you folks'll have to come over to our place after we get settled in."

"Thanks, Gordon," Stoner said. "I'll tell her."

"And don't worry," Finch said. He punched Stoner on the arm. "These things happen."

After Gordon and Caroline had left, after he heard the new car roar and sputter away into the night, William Stoner stood in the middle of the living room and listened to Edith's dry and regular sobbing. It was a sound curiously flat and without emotion, and it went on as if it would never stop. He wanted to comfort her; he wanted to soothe her; but he did not know what to say. So he stood and listened; and after a while he realized that he had never before heard Edith cry.

After the disastrous party with Gordon Finch and Caroline Wingate, Edith seemed almost contented, calmer than she had been at any time during their marriage. But she did not want to have anyone in, and she showed a reluctance to go outside the apartment. Stoner did most of their shopping from lists that Edith made for him in a curiously laborious and childlike handwriting on little sheets of blue notepaper. She seemed happiest when she was alone; she would sit for hours working needlepoint or embroidering tablecloths and napkins, with a tiny indrawn smile on her lips. Her aunt Emma Darley began more and more frequently to visit her; when William came from the University in the afternoon he often found the two of them together, drinking tea and conversing in tones so low that they might have been whispers. They always greeted him politely, but William knew that they saw him with regret; Mrs. Darley seldom stayed for more than a few minutes after he arrived. He learned to maintain an unobtrusive and delicate regard for the world in which Edith had begun to live.

In the summer of 1920 he spent a week with his parents while Edith visited her relatives in St. Louis; he had not seen his mother and father since the wedding.

He worked in the fields for a day or two, helping his father and the Negro hired hand; but the give of the warm moist clods beneath his feet and the smell of the new-turned earth in his nostrils evoked in him no feeling of return or familiarity. He came back to Columbia and spent the rest of the summer preparing for a new class that he was to teach the following academic year. He spent most of each day in the library, sometimes returning to Edith and the apartment late in the evening, through the heavy sweet scent of honeysuckle that moved in the warm air and among the delicate leaves of dogwood trees that rustled and turned, ghost-like in the darkness. His eyes burned from their concentration upon dim texts, his mind was heavy with what it observed, and his fingers tingled numbly from the retained feel of old leather and board and paper; but he was open to the world through which for a moment he walked, and he found some joy in it.

A few new faces appeared at departmental meetings; some familiar ones were not there; and Archer Sloane continued the slow decline which Stoner had begun to notice during the war. His hands shook, and he was unable to keep his attention upon what he said. The department went on with the momentum it had gathered through its tradition and the mere fact of its being.

Stoner went about his teaching with an intensity and ferocity that awed some of the newer members of the department and that caused a small concern among the colleagues who had known him for a longer time. His face grew haggard, he lost weight, and the stoop of his shoulders increased. In the second semester of that year he had a chance to take a teaching overload for extra pay, and he took it; also for extra pay, he taught in the new summer school that year. He had a vague notion of saving enough money to go abroad, so that he could show Edith the Europe she had given up for his sake.

In the summer of 1921, searching for a reference to a Latin poem that he had forgotten, he glanced at his dissertation for the first time since he had submitted it for approval three years earlier; he read it through and judged it to be sound. A little frightened at his presumption, he considered reworking it into a book. Though he was again teaching the full summer session, he reread most of the texts he had used and began to extend his research. Late in January he decided that a book was possible; by early spring he was far enough along to be able to write the first tentative pages.

It was in the spring of the same year that, calmly and almost indifferently, Edith told him that she had decided she wanted a child.

The decision came suddenly and without apparent source, so that when she made the announcement one morning at breakfast, only a few minutes before William had to leave for his first class, she spoke almost with surprise, as if she had made a discovery.

"What?" William said. "What did you say?"

"I want a baby," Edith said. "I think I want to have a baby."

She was nibbling a piece of toast. She wiped her lips with the corner of a napkin and smiled fixedly.

"Don't you think we ought to have one?" she asked. "We've been married for nearly three years."

"Of course," William said. He set his cup down in its saucer with great care. He did not look at her. "Are you sure? We've never talked about it. I wouldn't want you to—"

"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm quite sure. I think we ought to have a child."

William looked at his watch. "I'm late. I wish we had more time to talk. I want you to be sure."

A small frown came between her eyes. "I told you I was sure. Don't you want one? Why do you keep asking me? I don't want to talk about it any more."

"All right," William said. He sat looking at her for a moment. "I've got to go." But he did not move. Then awkwardly he put his hand over her long fingers that rested on the tablecloth and kept it there until she moved her hand away. He got up from the table and edged around her, almost shyly, and gathered his books and papers. As she always did, Edith came into the living room to wait for him to leave. He kissed her on the cheek—something he had not done for a long while.

At the door he turned and said, "I'm—I'm glad you want a child, Edith. I know that in some ways our marriage has been a disappointment to you. I hope this will make a difference between us."

"Yes," Edith said. "You'll be late for your class. You'd better hurry."

After he had gone Edith remained for some minutes in the center of the room, staring at the closed door, as if trying to remember something. Then she moved restlessly across the floor, walking from one place to another, moving within her clothing as if she could not endure its rustling and shifting upon her flesh. She unbuttoned her stiff gray taffeta morning robe and let it drop to the floor. She crossed her arms over her breasts and hugged herself, kneading the flesh of her upper arms through her thin flannel nightgown. Again she paused in her moving and walked purposefully into the tiny bedroom and opened a closet door, upon the inside of which hung a full-length mirror. She adjusted the mirror to the light and stood back from it, inspecting the long thin figure in the straight blue nightgown that it reflected. Without removing her eyes from the mirror she unbuttoned the top of her gown and pulled it up from her body and over her head, so that she stood naked in the morning light. She wadded the nightgown and threw it in the closet. Then she turned about before the mirror, inspecting the body as if it belonged to someone else. She passed her hands over her small drooping breasts and let her hands go lightly down her long waist and over her flat belly.

She moved away from the mirror and went to the bed, which was still unmade. She pulled the covers off, folded them carelessly, and put them in the closet. She smoothed the sheet on the bed and lay there on her back, her legs straight and her arms at her side. Unblinking and motionless, she stared up at the ceiling and waited through the morning and the long afternoon.

When William Stoner got home that evening it was nearly dark, but no light came from the second-floor windows. Vaguely apprehensive, he went up the stairs and flipped the living-room light on. The room was empty. He called, "Edith?"

There was no reply. He called again.

He looked in the kitchen; the dishes from breakfast were still on the tiny table. He went swiftly across the living room and opened the door to the bedroom.

Edith lay naked on the bare bed. When the door opened and the light from the living room fell upon her, she turned her head to him; but she did not get up. Her eyes were wide and staring, and little sounds came from her parted mouth.

"Edith!" he said and went to where she lay, kneeling beside her. "Are you all right? What's the matter?"

She did not answer, but the sounds she had been making became louder and her body moved beside him. Suddenly her hands came out at him like claws, and he almost jerked away; but they went to his clothing, clutching and tearing at it, pulling him upon the bed beside her. Her mouth came up to him, gaping and hot; her hands were going over him, pulling at his clothes, seeking him; and all the time her eyes were wide and staring and untroubled, as if they belonged to somebody else and saw nothing.

It was a new knowledge he had of Edith, this desire that was like a hunger so intense that it seemed to have nothing to do with her self; and no sooner was it sated than it began at once to grow again within her, so that they both lived in the tense expectation of its presence.

Although the next two months were the only time of passion William and Edith Stoner ever had together, their relationship did not really change. Very soon Stoner realized that the force which drew their bodies together had little to do with love; they coupled with a fierce yet detached determination, drew apart, and coupled again, without the strength to surfeit their need.

Sometimes during the day, while William was at the University, the need came so strongly upon Edith that she could not remain still; she would leave the apartment and walk swiftly up and down the streets, going aimlessly from one place to another. And then she would return, draw closed the curtains of the windows, undress herself, and wait, crouched in the semidarkness, for William to get home. And when he opened the door she was upon him, her hands wild and demanding, as if they had a life of their own, pulling him toward the bedroom, upon the bed which was still rumpled from their use of it the night or the morning before.

Edith became pregnant in June and immediately fell into an illness from which she did not wholly recover during the full time of her waiting. Nearly at the moment she became pregnant, even before the fact was confirmed by her calendar and her physician, the hunger for William that had raged within her for the better part of two months ceased. She made it clear to her husband that she could not endure the touch of his hand upon her, and it began to seem to him that even his looking at her was a kind of violation. The hunger of their passion became a memory, and at last Stoner looked upon it as if it were a dream that had nothing to do with either of them.

So the bed that had been the arena of their passion became the support of her illness. She kept to it most of the day, rising only to relieve her nausea in the morning and to walk unsteadily about the living room for a few minutes in the afternoon. In the afternoon and evening, after he had hurried from his work at the University, William cleaned the rooms, washed the dishes, and made the evening meal; he carried Ediths dinner to her on a tray. Though she did not want him to eat with her, she did seem to enjoy sharing a cup of weak tea with him after dinner. For a few moments in the evening, then, they talked quietly and casually, as if they were old friends or exhausted enemies. Edith would fall asleep soon afterward; and William would return to the kitchen, complete the housework, and then set up a table before the living-room sofa, where he would grade papers or prepare lectures. Then, past midnight, he would cover himself with a blanket he kept neatly folded behind the couch; and with his length curled up on the couch he would sleep fitfully until morning.

The child, a girl, was born after a three-day period of labor in the middle of March in the year 1923. They named her Grace, after one of Edith's aunts who had died many years before.

Even at birth Grace was a beautiful child, with distinct features and a light down of golden hair. Within a few days the first redness of her skin turned into a glowing golden pink. She seldom cried, and she seemed almost aware of her surroundings. William fell instantly in love with her; the affection he could not show to Edith he could show to his daughter, and he found a pleasure in caring for her that he had not anticipated.

For nearly a year after the birth of Grace, Edith remained partly bedridden; there was some fear that she might become a permanent invalid, though the doctor could find no specific trouble. William hired a woman to come in during the morning to care for Edith, and he arranged his classes so that he would be at home early in the afternoon.

Thus for more than a year William kept the house and cared for two helpless people. He was up before dawn, grading papers and preparing lectures; before going to the University he fed Grace, prepared breakfast for himself and Edith, and fixed a lunch for himself, which he took to school in his briefcase. After his classes he came back to the apartment, which he swept, dusted, and cleaned.

And he was more nearly a mother than a father to his daughter. He changed her diapers and washed them; he chose her clothing and mended it when it was torn; he fed her and bathed her and rocked her in his arms when she was distressed. Every now and then Edith would call querulously for her baby; William would bring Grace to her, and Edith, propped up in bed, would hold her for a few moments, silently and uncomfortably, as if the child belonged to someone else who was a stranger. Then she would tire and with a sigh hand the baby back to William. Moved by some obscure emotion, she would weep a little, dab at her eyes, and turn away from him.

So for the first year of her life, Grace Stoner knew only her father's touch, and his voice, and his love.