"But it's for you and Grace, partly, at least, that I'm thinking about it. It isn't likely that I'll—go much farther in the department if I stay here."
"Oh," Edith said distantly, summoning bitterness to her voice. "That isn't important. We've been poor so far; there's no reason we can't go on like this. You should have thought of this before, of what it might lead to. A cripple." Suddenly her voice changed, and she laughed indulgently, almost fondly. "Honestly, things are so important to you. What difference could it make?"
And she would not consider leaving Columbia. If it came to that, she said, she and Grace could always move in with Aunt Emma; she was getting very feeble and would welcome the company.
So he dropped the possibility almost as soon as he broached it. He was to teach that summer, and two of his classes were ones in which he had a particular interest; they had been scheduled before Lomax became chairman. He resolved to give them all of his attention, for he knew that it might be some time before he had a chance to teach them again.
XI
A few weeks after the fall semester of 1932 began, it was clear to William Stoner that he had been unsuccessful in his battle to keep Charles Walker out of the graduate English program. After the summer holidays Walker returned to the campus as if triumphantly entering an arena; and when he saw Stoner in the corridors of Jesse Hall he inclined his head in an ironic bow and grinned at him maliciously. Stoner learned from Jim Holland that Dean Rutherford had delayed making the vote of last year official and that finally it had been decided that Walker would be allowed to take his oral preliminaries again, his examiners to be selected by the chairman of the department.
The battle was over then, and Stoner was willing to concede his defeat; but the fighting did not end. When Stoner met Lomax in the corridors or at a department meeting, or at a college function, he spoke to him as he had spoken before, as if nothing had happened between them. But Lomax would not respond to his greeting; he stared coldly and turned his eyes away, as if to say that he would not be appeased.
One day in late fall Stoner walked casually into Lomax's office and stood beside his desk for several minutes until, reluctantly, Lomax looked up at him, his lips tight and his eyes hard.
When he realized that Lomax was not going to speak Stoner said awkwardly, "Look, Holly, it's over and done with. Can't we just drop it?"
Lomax looked at him steadily.
Stoner continued, "We've had a disagreement, but that isn't unusual. We've been friends before, and I see no reason—"
"We have never been friends," Lomax said distinctly.
"All right," Stoner said. "But we've got along at least. We can keep whatever differences we have, but for God's sake, there's no need to display them. Even the students are beginning to notice."
"And well the students might," Lomax said bitterly, "since one of their own number nearly had his career ruined. A brilliant student, whose only crimes were his imagination, an enthusiasm and integrity that forced him into conflict with you —and, yes, I might as well say it—an unfortunate physical affliction that would have called forth sympathy in a normal human being." With his good right hand Lomax held a pencil, and it trembled before him; almost with horror Stoner realized that Lomax was dreadfully and irrevocably sincere. "No," Lomax went on passionately, "for that I cannot forgive you."
Stoner tried to keep his voice from becoming stiff. "It isn't a question of forgiving. It's simply a question of our behaving toward each other so that not too much discomfort is made for the students and the other members of the department."
"I'm going to be very frank with you, Stoner," Lomax said. His anger had quieted, and his voice was calm, matter of fact. "I don't think you're fit to be a teacher; no man is, whose prejudices override his talents and his learning. I should probably fire you if I had the power; but I don't have the power, as we both know. We are—you are protected by the tenure system. I must accept that. But I don't have to play the hypocrite. I want to have nothing to do with you. Nothing at all. And I will not pretend otherwise."
Stoner looked at him steadily for several moments. Then he shook his head. "All right, Holly," he said tiredly. He started to go-
"Just a minute," Lomax called.
Stoner turned. Lomax was gazing intently at some papers on his desk; his face was red, and he seemed to be struggling with himself. Stoner realized that what he saw was not anger but shame.
Lomax said, "Hereafter, if you want to see me—on department business—you will make an appointment with the secretary." And although Stoner stood looking at him for several moments more, Lomax did not raise his head. A brief writhing went across his face; then it was still. Stoner went out of the room.
And for more than twenty years neither man was to speak again directly to the other.
It was, Stoner realized later, inevitable that the students be affected; even if he had been successful in persuading Lomax to put on an appearance, he could not in the long run have protected them from a consciousness of the battle.
Former students of his, even students he had known rather well, began nodding and speaking to him self-consciously, even furtively. A few were ostentatiously friendly, going out of their way to speak to him or to be seen walking with him in the halls. But he no longer had the rapport with them that he once had had; he was a special figure, and one was seen with him, or not seen with him, for special reasons.
He came to feel that his presence was an embarrassment both to his friends and his enemies, and so he kept more and more to himself.
A kind of lethargy descended upon him. He taught his classes as well as he could, though the steady routine of required freshman and sophomore classes drained him of enthusiasm and left him at the end of the day exhausted and numb. As well as he could, he filled the hours between his widely separated classes with student conferences, painstakingly going over the students' work, keeping them until they became restless and impatient.
Time dragged slowly around him. He tried to spend more of that time at home with his wife and child; but because of his odd schedule the hours he could spend there were unusual and not accounted for by Edith's tight disposition of each day; he discovered (not to his surprise) that his regular presence was so upsetting to his wife that she became nervous and silent and sometimes physically ill. And he was able to see Grace infrequently in all the time he spent at home. Edith had scheduled her daughter's days carefully; her only "free" time was in the evening, and Stoner was scheduled to teach a late class four evenings a week. By the time the class was over Grace was usually in bed.
So he continued to see Grace only briefly in the mornings, at breakfast; and he was alone with her for only the few minutes it took Edith to clear the breakfast dishes from the table and put them to soak in the kitchen sink. He watched her body lengthen, an awkward grace come into her limbs, and an intelligence grow in her quiet eyes and watchful face. And at times he felt that some closeness remained between them, a closeness which neither of them could afford to admit.
At last he went back to his old habit of spending most of his time at his office in Jesse Hall. He told himself that he should be grateful for the chance of reading on his own, free from the pressures of preparing for particular classes, free from the predetermined directions of his learning. He tried to read at random, for his own pleasure and indulgence, many of the things that he had been waiting for years to read. But his mind would not be led where he wished it to go; his attention wandered from the pages he held before him, and more and more often he found himself staring dully in front of him, at nothing; it was as if from moment to moment his mind were emptied of all it knew and as if his will were drained of its strength. He felt at times that he was a kind of vegetable, and he longed for something—even pain—to pierce him, to bring him alive.