Nevertheless he began to feel a joy in property and to know a comfort that he had not anticipated. His study was on the first floor off the living room, with a high north window; in the daytime the room was softly illumined, and the wood paneling glowed with the richness of age. He found in the cellar a quantity of boards which, beneath the ravages of dirt and mold, matched the paneling of the room. He refinished these boards and constructed bookcases, so that he might be surrounded by his books; at a used furniture store he found some dilapidated chairs, a couch, and an ancient desk for which he paid a few dollars and which he spent many weeks repairing.
As he worked on the room, and as it began slowly to take a shape, he realized that for many years, unknown to himself, he had had an image locked somewhere within him like a shamed secret, an image that was ostensibly of a place but which was actually of himself. So it was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study. As he sanded the old boards for his bookcases, and saw the surface roughnesses disappear, the gray weathering flake away to the essential wood and finally to a rich purity of grain and texture—as he repaired his furniture and arranged it in the room, it was himself that he was slowly shaping, it was himself that he was putting into a kind of order, it was himself that he was making possible.
Thus, despite the regularly recurring pressures of debt and need, the next few years were happy, and he lived much as he had dreamed that he might live when he was a young student in graduate school and when he had first married. Edith did not partake of so large a part of his life as he had once hoped; indeed, it seemed that they had entered into a long truce that was like a stalemate. They spent most of their lives apart; Edith kept the house, which seldom had visitors, in spotless condition. When she was not sweeping or dusting or washing or polishing, she stayed in her room and seemed content to do so. She never entered William's study; it was as if it did not exist to her.
William still had most of the care of their daughter. In the afternoons when he came home from the University, he took Grace from the upstairs bedroom that he had converted into a nursery and let her play in the study while he worked. She played quietly and contentedly on the floor, satisfied to be alone. Every now and then William spoke to her, and she paused to look at him in solemn and slow delight.
Sometimes he asked students to drop by for conferences and chats. He brewed tea for them on a little hotplate that he kept beside his desk, and felt an awkward fondness for them as they sat self-consciously on the chairs, remarked upon his library, and complimented him on the beauty of his daughter. He apologized for the absence of his wife and explained her illness, until at last he realized that his repetitions of apology were stressing her absence rather than accounting for it; he said no more and hoped that his silence was less compromising than were his explanations.
Except for Edith's absence from it, his life was nearly what he wanted it to be. He studied and wrote when he was not preparing for class, or grading papers, or reading theses. He hoped in time to make a reputation for himself as both a scholar and a teacher. His expectations for his first book had been both cautious and modest, and they had been appropriate; one reviewer had called it "pedestrian" and another had called it "a competent survey." At first he had been very proud of the book; he had held it in his hands and caressed its plain wrapper and turned its pages. It seemed delicate and alive, like a child. He had reread it in print, mildly surprised that it was neither better nor worse than he had thought it would be. After a while he tired of seeing it; but he never thought of it, and his authorship, without a sense of wonder and disbelief at his own temerity and at the responsibility he had assumed.
VII
One evening in the spring of 1927 William Stoner came home late. The scent of budding flowers mingled and hung in the moist warm air; crickets hummed in the shadows; in the distance a lone automobile raised dust and sent into the stillness a loud, defiant clatter. He walked slowly, caught in the somnolence of a new season, bemused by the tiny green buds that glowed out of the shade of bush and tree.
When he went into the house Edith was at the far end of the living room, holding the telephone receiver to her ear and looking at him.
"You're late," she said.
"Yes," he said pleasantly. "We had doctor's orals."
She handed him the receiver. "It's for you, long distance. Someone's been trying to get you all afternoon. I told them you were at the University, but they've been calling back here every hour."
William took the receiver and spoke into the mouthpiece. No one answered. "Hello," he said again.
The thin strange voice of a man answered him.
"This Bill Stoner?"
"Yes, who is this?"
"You don't know me. I was passing by, and your ma asked me to call. I been trying all afternoon."
"Yes," Stoner said. His hand holding the mouthpiece was shaking. "What's wrong?"
"It's your pa," the voice said. "I don't rightly know how to start."
The dry, laconic, frightened voice went on, and William Stoner listened to it dully, as if it had no existence beyond the receiver that he held to his ear. What he heard concerned his father. He had been (the voice said) feeling poorly for nearly a week; and because his field hand by himself had not been able to keep up with the furrowing and planting, and even though he had a high fever, he had started out early in the morning to get some planting done. His field hand had found him at midmorning, lying face down on the broken field, unconscious. He had carried him to the house, put him in bed, and gone to fetch a doctor; but by noon he was dead.
'Thank you for calling," Stoner said mechanically. "Tell my mother that I'll be there tomorrow."
He put the receiver back on its hook and stared for a long time at the bell-shaped mouthpiece attached to the narrow black cylinder. He turned around and looked at the room. Edith was regarding him expectantly.
"Well? What is it?" she asked.
"It's my father," Stoner said. "He's dead."
"Oh, Willy!" Edith said. Then she nodded. "You'll probably be gone for the rest of the week then."
"Yes," Stoner said.
"Then I'll get Aunt Emma to come over and help with Grace."
"Yes," Stoner said mechanically. "Yes."
He got someone to take his classes for the rest of the week and early the next morning caught the bus for Booneville. The highway from Columbia to Kansas City, which cut through Booneville, was the one that he had traveled seventeen years before, when he had first come to the University; now it was wide and paved, and neat straight fences enclosed fields of wheat and corn that flashed by him outside the bus window.
Booneville had changed little during the years he had not seen it. A few new buildings had gone up, a few old ones had been torn down; but the town retained its bareness and flimsiness, and looked still as if it were only a temporary arrangement that could be dispensed with at any moment. Though most of the streets had been paved in the last few years, a thin haze of dust hung about the town, and a few horse-drawn, steel-tired wagons were still around, the wheels sometimes giving off sparks as they scraped against the concrete paving of street and curb.
Nor had the house changed substantially. It was perhaps drier and grayer than it had been; not even a fleck of paint remained on the clapboards, and the unpainted timber of the porch sagged a bit nearer to the bare earth.
There were some people in the house—neighbors—whom Stoner did not remember; a tall gaunt man in a black suit, white shirt, and string tie was bending over his mother, who sat in a straight chair beside the narrow wooden box that held the body of his father. Stoner started across the room. The tall man saw him and walked to meet him; the man's eyes were gray and flat like pieces of glazed crockery. A deep and unctuous baritone voice, hushed and thick, uttered some words; the man called Stoner "brother" and spoke of "bereavement," and "God, who hath taken away," and wanted to know if Stoner wished to pray with him. Stoner brushed past the man and stood in front of his mother; her face swam before him.