As Archer Sloane had done, he realized the futility and waste of committing one's self wholly to the irrational and dark forces that impelled the world toward its unknown end; as Archer Sloane had not done, Stoner withdrew a little distance to pity and love, so that he was not caught in the rushing that he observed. And as in other moments of crisis and despair, he looked again to the cautious faith that was embodied in the institution of the University. He told himself that it was not much; but he knew that it was all he had.
In the summer of 1937 he felt a renewal of the old passion for study and learning; and with the curious and disembodied vigor of the scholar that is the condition of neither youth nor age, he returned to the only life that had not betrayed him. He discovered that he had not gone far from that life even in his despair.
His schedule that fall was particularly bad. His four classes of freshman composition were spaced at widely separated hours six days a week. During all his years as chairman, Lomax had not once failed to give Stoner a teaching schedule that even the newest instructor would have accepted with bad grace.
On the first class day of that academic year, in the early morning, Stoner sat in his office and looked again at his neatly typed schedule. He had been up late the night before reading a new study of the survival of the medieval tradition into the Renaissance, and the excitement he had felt carried over to the morning. He looked at his schedule, and a dull anger rose within him. He stared at the wall in front of him for several moments, glanced at his schedule again, and nodded to himself. He dropped the schedule and the attached syllabus into a wastebasket and went to his filing cabinet in a comer of the room. He pulled out the top drawer, looked absently at the brown folders there, and withdrew one. He flipped through the papers in the folder, whistling silently as he did so. Then he closed the drawer and with the folder under one arm went out of his office and across the campus to his first class.
The building was an old one, with wooden floors, and it was used as a classroom only in emergencies; the room to which he had been assigned was too small for the number of students enrolled, so that several of the boys had to sit on the window-sills or stand. When Stoner came in they looked at him with the discomfort of uncertainty; he might be friend or foe, and they did not know which was worse.
He apologized to the students for the room, made a small joke at the expense of the registrar, and assured those who were standing that there would be chairs for them tomorrow. Then he put his folder on the battered lectern that rested unevenly on the desk and surveyed the faces before him.
He hesitated for a moment. Then he said, "Those of you who have purchased your texts for this course may return them to the bookstore and get a refund. We shall not be using the text described in the syllabus—which, I take it, you all received when you signed up for the course. Neither will we be using the syllabus. I intend in this course to take a different approach to the subject, an approach which will necessitate your buying two new texts."
He turned his back to the students and picked up a piece of chalk from the trough beneath the scuffed blackboard; he held the chalk poised for a moment and listened to the muted sigh and rustle of the students as they settled at their desks, enduring the routine that suddenly became familiar to them.
Stoner said, "Our texts will be"—and he enunciated the words slowly as he wrote them down—"Medieval English Verse and Prose, edited by Loomis and Willard; and English Literary Criticism: The Medieval Phase, by J. W. H. Atkins." He turned to the class. "You will find that the bookstore has not yet received these books—it may be as much as two weeks before they are in. In the meantime I will give you some background information upon the matter and purpose of this course, and I shall make a few library assignments to keep you occupied."
He paused. Many of the students were bent over their desks, assiduously noting what he said; a few were looking at him steadily, with small smiles that wanted to be intelligent and understanding; and a few were staring at him in open amazement.
"The primary matter of this course," Stoner said, "will be found in the Loomis and Willard anthology; we shall study examples of medieval verse and prose for three purposes—first, as literary works significant in themselves; second, as a demonstration of the beginnings of literary style and method in the English tradition; and third, as rhetorical and grammatical solutions to problems of discourse that even today may be of some practical value and application."
By this time nearly all the students had stopped taking notes and had raised their heads; even the intelligent smiles had become a trifle strained; and a few hands were waving in the air. Stoner pointed to one whose hand remained steady and high, a tall young man with dark hair and glasses.
"Sir, is this General English One, Section Four?"
Stoner smiled at the young man. "What is your name, please?"
The boy swallowed. "Jessup, sir. Frank Jessup."
Stoner nodded. "Mr. Jessup. Yes, Mr. Jessup, this is General English One, Section Four; and my name is Stoner—facts which, no doubt, I should have mentioned at the beginning of the period. Did you have another question?"
The boy swallowed again. "No, sir."
Stoner nodded and looked benevolently around the room. "Does anyone else have a question?"
The faces stared back at him; there were no smiles, and a few mouths hung open.
"Very well," Stoner said. "I shall continue. As I said at the beginning of this hour, one purpose of this course is to study certain works of the period roughly between twelve and fifteen hundred. Certain accidents of history will stand in our way; there will be linguistic difficulties as well as philosophical, social as well as religious, theoretical as well as practical. Indeed, all of our past education will in some ways hinder us; for our habits of thinking about the nature of experience have determined our own expectations as radically as the habits of medieval man determined his. As a preliminary, let us examine some of those habits of mind under which medieval man lived and thought and wrote . . ."
That first meeting he did not keep the students for the entire hour. After less than half the period he brought his preliminary discussion to a close and gave them a weekend assignment.
"I should like for each of you to write a brief essay, no more than three pages, upon Aristotle's conception of the topoi—or, in its rather crude English translation, topic. You will find an extended discussion of the 'topic' in Book Two of The Rhetoric of Aristotle, and in Lane Cooper's edition there is an introductory essay that you will find most helpful. The essay will be due on—Monday. And that, I think, will be all for today."
For a moment after he dismissed the class he gazed at the students, who did not move, with some concern. Then he nodded briefly to them and walked out of the classroom, the brown folder under his arm.
On Monday fewer than half the students had finished their papers; he dismissed those who handed their essays in and spent the rest of the hour with the remaining students, rehearsing the subject he had assigned, going over it again and again, until he was sure they had it and could complete the assigned essay by Wednesday.
On Tuesday he noticed in the corridors of Jesse Hall, outside Lomax's office, a group of students; he recognized them as members of his first class. As he passed, the students turned away from him and looked at the floor or the ceiling or at the door of Lomax's office. He smiled to himself and went to his office and waited for the telephone call that he knew would come.