A short determined burst of applause startled his reverie. Beside him, Gordon Finch was standing, speaking. Though he looked up and strained his ears, he could not hear what Finch said; Gordon's lips moved, he looked fixedly in front of him, there was applause, he sat down. On the other side of him, the president got to his feet and spoke in a voice that scurried from cajolery to threat, from humor to sadness, from regret to joy. He said that he hoped Stoner's retirement would be a beginning not an ending; he knew that the University would be the poorer for his absence; there was the importance of tradition, the necessity for change; and the gratitude, for years to come, in the hearts of all his students. Stoner could not make sense of what he said; but when the president finished, the room burst into loud applause and the faces smiled. As the applause dwindled someone in the audience shouted in a thin voice: "Speech!" Someone else took up the call, and the word was murmured here and there.
Finch whispered in his ear, "Do you want me to get you out of it?"
"No," Stoner said. "It's all right."
He got to his feet, and realized that he had nothing to say.
He was silent for a long time as he looked from face to face. He heard his voice issue flatly. "I have taught . . ." he said. He began again. "I have taught at this University for nearly forty years. I do not know what I would have done if I had not been a teacher. If I had not taught, I might have—" He paused, as if distracted. Then he said, with a finality, "I want to thank you all for letting me teach."
He sat down. There was applause, friendly laughter. The room broke up and people milled about. Stoner felt his hand being shaken; he was aware that he smiled and that he nodded at whatever was said to him. The president pressed his hand, smiled heartily, told him that he must drop around, any afternoon, looked at his wrist watch, and hurried out. The room began to empty, and Stoner stood alone where he had risen and gathered his strength for the walk across the room. He waited until he felt something harden inside him, and then he walked around the table and out of the room, passing little knots of people who glanced at him curiously, as if he were already a stranger. Lomax was in one of the groups, but he did not turn as Stoner passed; and Stoner found that he was grateful that they had not had to speak to each other, after all this time.
The next day he entered the hospital and rested until Monday morning, when the operation was to be performed. He slept much of that time and had no particular interest in what was to happen to him. On Monday morning someone stuck a needle in his arm; he was only half conscious of being rolled through halls to a strange room that seemed to be all ceiling and light. He saw something descend toward his face and he closed his eyes.
He awoke to nausea; his head ached; there was a new sharp pain, not unpleasant, in his lower body. He retched, and felt better. He let his hand move over the heavy bandages that covered the middle part of his body. He slept, wakened during the night and took a glass of water, and slept again until morning.
When he awoke, Jamison was standing beside his bed, his fingers on his left wrist.
"Well," Jamison said, "how are we feeling this morning?"
"All right, I think." His throat was dry; he reached out, and Jamison handed him the glass of water. He drank and looked at Jamison, waiting.
"Well," Jamison said at last, uncomfortably, "we got the tumor. Big feller. In a day or two you'll be feeling much better."
"I'll be able to leave here?" Stoner asked.
"You'll be up and around in two or three days," Jamison said. "The only thing is, it might be more convenient if you did stay around for a while. We couldn't get—all of it. We'll be using X-ray treatment, things like that. Of course, you could go back and forth, but—"
"No," Stoner said and let his head fall back on the pillow. He was tired again. "As soon as possible," he said, "I think I want to go home."
XVII
"Oh, Willy," she said. "You're all eaten up inside."
He was lying on the day bed in the little back room, gazing out the open window; it was late afternoon, and the sun, dipping beneath the horizon, sent a red glow upon the underside of a long rippling cloud that hung in the west above the tree-tops and the houses. A fly buzzed against the window screen; and the pungent aroma of trash burning in the neighbors' yards was caught in the still air.
"What?" Stoner said absently and turned to his wife.
"Inside," Edith said. "The doctor said it has spread all over. Oh, Willy, poor Willy."
"Yes," Stoner said. He could not make himself become very interested. "Well, you aren't to worry. It's best not to think about it."
She did not answer, and he turned again to the open window and watched the sky darken, until there was only a dull purplish streak upon the cloud in the distance.
He had been home for a little more than a week and had just that afternoon returned from a visit to the hospital where he had undergone what Jamison, with his strained smile, called a "treatment." Jamison had admired the speed with which his incision had healed, had said something about his having the constitution of a man of forty, and then had abruptly grown silent. Stoner had allowed himself to be poked and prodded, had let them strap him on a table, and had remained still while a huge machine hovered silently about him. It was foolishness, he knew, but he did not protest; it would have been unkind to do so. It was little enough to undergo, if it would distract them all from the knowledge they could not evade.
Gradually, he knew, this little room where he now lay and looked out the window would become his world; already he could feel the first vague beginnings of the pain that returned like the distant call of an old friend. He doubted that he would be asked to return to the hospital; he had heard in Jamisons voice this afternoon a finality, and Jamison had given him some pills to take in the event that there was "discomfort."
"You might write Grace," he heard himself saying to Edith. "She hasn't visited us in a long time."
And he turned to see Edith nodding absently; her eyes had been, with his, gazing tranquilly upon the growing darkness outside the window.
During the next two weeks he felt himself weaken, at first gradually and then rapidly. The pain returned, with an intensity that he had not expected; he took his pills and felt the pain recede into a darkness, as if it were a cautious animal.
Grace came; and he found that, after all, he had little to say to her. She had been away from St. Louis and had returned to find Edith's letter only the day before. She was worn and tense and there were dark shadows under her eyes; he wished that he could do something to ease her pain and knew that he could not.
'You look just fine, Daddy," she said. "Just fine. You're going to be all right."
"Of course," he said and smiled at her. "How is young Ed? And how have you been?"
She said that she had been fine and that young Ed was fine, that he would be entering junior high school the coming fall. He looked at her with some bewilderment. "Junior high?" he asked. Then he realized that it must be true. "Of course," he said. "I forgot how big he must be by now."
"He stays with his—with Mr. and Mrs. Frye a lot of the time," she said. "It's best for him that way." She said something else, but his attention wandered. More and more frequently he found it difficult to keep his mind focused upon any one thing; it wandered where he could not predict, and he sometimes found himself speaking words whose source he did not understand.
"Poor Daddy," he heard Grace say, and he brought his attention back to where he was. "Poor Daddy, things haven't been easy for you, have they?"