But despite Walker it was a successful seminar, one of the best classes Stoner had ever taught. Almost from the first, the implications of the subject caught the students, and they all had that sense of discovery that comes when one feels that the subject at hand lies at the center of a much larger subject, and when one feels intensely that a pursuit of the subject is likely to lead—where, one does not know. The seminar organized itself, and the students so involved themselves that Stoner himself became simply one of them, searching as diligently as they. Even the auditor—the young instructor who was stopping over at Columbia while finishing her dissertation—asked if she might report on a seminar topic; she thought that she had come upon something that might be of value to the others. Her name was Katherine Driscoll, and she was in her late twenties. Stoner had never really noticed her until she talked to him after class about the report and asked him if he would be willing to read her dissertation when she got it finished. He told her that he welcomed the report and that he would be glad to read her dissertation.
The seminar reports were scheduled for the second half of the semester, after the Christmas vacation. Walker's report on "Hellenism and the Medieval Latin Tradition" was due early in the term, but he kept delaying it, explaining to Stoner his difficulty in obtaining books he needed, which were not available in the University library.
It had been understood that Miss Driscoll, being an auditor, would give her report after the credit students had given theirs; but on the last day Stoner had allowed for the seminar reports, two weeks before the end of the semester, Walker again begged that he be allowed one more week; he had been ill, his eyes had been troubling him, and a crucial book had not arrived from inter-library loan. So Miss Driscoll gave her paper on the day vacated by Walker's defection.
Her paper was entitled "Donatus and Renaissance Tragedy." Her concentration was upon Shakespeare's use of the Donatan tradition, a tradition that had persisted in the grammars and handbooks of the Middle Ages. A few moments after she began, Stoner knew that the paper would be good, and he listened with an excitement that he had not felt for a long time. After she had finished the paper, and the class had discussed it, he detained her for a few moments while the other students went out of the room.
"Miss Driscoll, I just want to say—" He paused, and for an instant a wave of awkwardness and self-consciousness came over him. She was looking at him inquiringly with large dark eyes; her face was very white against the severe black frame of her hair, drawn tight and caught in a small bun at the back. He continued, "I just want to say that your paper was the best discussion I know of the subject, and I'm grateful that you volunteered to give it."
She did not reply. Her expression did not change, but Stoner thought for a moment that she was angry; something fierce glinted behind her eyes. Then she blushed furiously and ducked her head, whether in anger or acknowledgment Stoner did not know, and hurried away from him. Stoner walked slowly out of the room, disquieted and puzzled, fearful that in his clumsiness he might somehow have offended her.
He had warned Walker as gently as he could that it would be necessary for him to deliver his paper the next Wednesday if he was to receive credit for the course; as he half expected, Walker became coldly and respectfully angry at the warning, repeated the various conditions and difficulties that had delayed him, and assured Stoner that there was no need to worry, that his paper was nearly completed.
On that last Wednesday, Stoner was delayed several minutes in his office by a desperate undergraduate who wished to be assured that he would receive a C in the sophomore survey course, so that he would not be kicked out of his fraternity. Stoner hurried downstairs and entered the basement seminar room a little out of breath; he found Charles Walker seated at his desk, looking imperiously and somberly at the small group of students. It was apparent that he was engaged in some private fantasy. He turned to Stoner and gazed at him haughtily, as if he were a professor putting down a rowdy freshman. Then Walker's expression broke and he said, "We were just about to start without you"—he paused at the last minute, let a smile through his lips, bobbed his head, and added, so that Stoner would know a joke was being made— "sir."
Stoner looked at him for a moment and then turned to the class. "I'm sorry I'm late. As you know, Mr. Walker is to deliver his seminar paper today upon the topic of 'Hellenism and the Medieval Latin Tradition.'" And he found a seat in the first row, next to Katherine Driscoll.
Charles Walker fiddled for a moment with the sheaf of papers on the desk before him and allowed the remoteness to creep back into his face. He tapped the forefinger of his right hand on his manuscript and looked toward the corner of the room away from where Stoner and Katherine Driscoll sat, as if he were waiting for something. Then, glancing every now and then at the sheaf of papers on the desk, he began.
"Confronted as we are by the mystery of literature, and by its inenarrable power, we are behooved to discover the source of the power and mystery. And yet, finally, what can avail? The work of literature throws before us a profound veil which we cannot plumb. And we are but votaries before it, helpless in its sway. Who would have the temerity to lift that veil aside, to discover the undiscoverable, to reach the unreachable? The strongest of us are but the puniest weaklings, are but tinkling cymbals and sounding brass, before the eternal mystery."
His voice rose and fell, his right hand went out with its fingers curled supplicatingly upward, and his body swayed to the rhythm of his words; his eyes rolled slightly upward, as if he were making an invocation. There was something grotesquely familiar in what he said and did. And suddenly Stoner knew what it was. This was Hollis Lomax—or, rather, a broad caricature of him, which came unsuspected from the caricaturer, a gesture not of contempt or dislike, but of respect and love.
Walker's voice dropped to a conversational level, and he addressed the back wall of the room in a tone that was calm and equable with reason. "Recently we have heard a paper that, to the mind of academe, must be accounted most excellent. These remarks that follow are remarks that are not personal. I wish to exemplify a point. We have heard, in this paper, an account that purports to be an explanation of the mystery and soaring lyricism of Shakespeare's art. Well, I say to you"—and he thrust a forefinger at his audience as if he would impale them—"I say to you, it is not true." He leaned back in his chair and consulted the papers on the desk. "We are asked to believe that one Donatus—an obscure Roman grammarian of the fourth century a.d.—we are asked to believe that such a man, a pedant, had sufficient power to determine the work of one of the greatest geniuses in all of the history of art. May we not suspect, on the face of it, such a theory? Must we not suspect it?"
Anger, simple and dull, rose within Stoner, overwhelming the complexity of feeling he had had at the beginning of the paper. His immediate impulse was to rise, to cut short the farce that was developing; he knew that if he did not stop Walker at once he would have to let him go on for as long as he wanted to talk. His head turned slightly so that he could see Katherine Driscoll's face; it was serene and without any expression, save one of polite and detached interest; the dark eyes regarded Walker with an unconcern that was like boredom. Covertly, Stoner looked at her for several moments; he found himself wondering what she was feeling and what she wished him to do. When he finally shifted his gaze away from her he had to realize that his decision was made. He had waited too long to interrupt, and Walker was rushing impetuously through what he had to say.