Miss Winchelsea's Heart
Miss Winchelsea was going to Rome. The matter had filled her mindfor a month or more, and had overflowed so abundantly into herconversation that quite a number of people who were not going to Rome,and who were not likely to go to Rome, had made it a personalgrievance against her. Some indeed had attempted quite unavailinglyto convince her that Rome was not nearly such a desirable placeas it was reported to be, and others had gone so far as to suggestbehind her back that she was dreadfully "stuck up" about "that Romeof hers." And little Lily Hardhurst had told her friend Mr. Binnsthat so far as she was concerned Miss Winchelsea might "go to herold Rome and stop there; she (Miss Lily Hardhurst) wouldn't grieve."And the way in which Miss Winchelsea put herself upon terms of personaltenderness with Horace and Benvenuto Cellini and Raphael and Shelleyand Keats--if she had been Shelley's widow she could not have professeda keener interest in his grave--was a matter of universal astonishment.Her dress was a triumph of tactful discretion, sensible, but not too"touristy"--Miss Winchelsea, had a great dread of being "touristy"--and her Baedeker was carried in a cover of grey to hide its glaringred. She made a prim and pleasant little figure on the Charing Crossplatform, in spite of her swelling pride, when at last the greatday dawned, and she could start for Rome. The day was bright,the Channel passage would be pleasant, and all the omens promisedwell. There was the gayest sense of adventure in this unprecedenteddeparture.She was going with two friends who had been fellow-students with herat the training college, nice honest girls both, though not so goodat history and literature as Miss Winchelsea. They both looked upto her immensely, though physically they had to look down, and sheanticipated some pleasant times to be spent in "stirring them up"to her own pitch of aesthetic and historical enthusiasm. They hadsecured seats already, and welcomed her effusively at the carriagedoor. In the instant criticism of the encounter she noted that Fannyhad a slightly "touristy" leather strap, and that Helen had succumbedto a serge jacket with side pockets, into which her hands were thrust.But they were much too happy with themselves and the expeditionfor their friend to attempt any hint at the moment about these things.As soon as the first ecstasies were over--Fanny's enthusiasm wasa little noisy and crude, and consisted mainly in emphatic repetitionsof "Just fancy! we're going to Rome, my dearthey gavetheir attention to their fellow-travellers. Helen was anxious tosecure a compartment to themselves, and, in order to discourageintruders, got out and planted herself firmly on the step. MissWinchelsea peeped out over her shoulder, and made sly little remarksabout the accumulating people on the platform, at which Fanny laughedgleefully.They were travelling with one of Mr. Thomas Gunn's parties--fourteendays in Rome for fourteen pounds. They did not belong to the personallyconducted party of course--Miss Winchelsea had seen to that--butthey travelled with it because of the convenience of that arrangement.The people were the oddest mixture, and wonderfully amusing.There was a vociferous red-faced polyglot personal conductor ina pepper-and-salt suit, very long in the arms and legs and veryactive. He shouted proclamations. When he wanted to speak to people hestretched out an arm and held them until his purpose was accomplished.One hand was full of papers, tickets, counterfoils of tourists.The people of the personally conducted party were, it seemed,of two sorts; people the conductor wanted and could not find,and people he did not want and who followed him in a steadilygrowing tail up and down the platform. These people seemed, indeed,to think that their one chance of reaching Rome lay in keepingclose to him. Three little old ladies were particularly energeticin his pursuit, and at last maddened him to the pitch of clappingthem into a carriage and daring them to emerge again. For the restof the time, one, two, or three of their heads protruded fromthe window wailing enquiries about "a little wickerwork box"whenever he drew near. There was a very stout man with a very stoutwife in shiny black; there was a little old man like an aged hostler."What can such people want in Rome?" asked Miss Winchelsea. "Whatcan it mean to them?" There was a very tall curate in a very smallstraw hat, and a very short curate encumbered by a long camerastand. The contrast amused Fanny very much. Once they heard someone calling for "Snooks." "I always thought that name was inventedby novelists," said Miss Winchelsea. "Fancy! Snooks. I wonder whichis Mr. Snooks." Finally they picked out a very stout and resolutelittle man in a large check suit. "If he isn't Snooks, he oughtto be," said Miss Winchelsea.Presently the conductor discovered Helen's attempt at a cornerin carriages. "Room for five," he bawled with a parallel translationon his fingers. A party of four together--mother, father, and twodaughters--blundered in, all greatly excited. "It's all right, Ma,you let me," said one of the daughters, hitting her mother's bonnetwith a handbag she struggled to put in the rack. Miss Winchelseadetested people who banged about and called their mother "Ma."A young man travelling alone followed. He was not at all "touristy"in his costume, Miss Winchelsea observed; his Gladstone bag wasof good pleasant leather with labels reminiscent of Luxembourg andOstend, and his boots, though brown, were not vulgar. He carriedan overcoat on his arm. Before these people had properly settledin their places, came an inspection of tickets and a slammingof doors, and behold! they were gliding out of Charing Crossstation on their way to Rome."Fancy!" cried Fanny, "we are going to Rome, my dear! Rome! I don'tseem to believe it, even now."Miss Winchelsea suppressed Fanny's emotions with a little smile,and the lady who was called "Ma" explained to people in generalwhy they had "cut it so close" at the station. The two daughterscalled her "Ma" several times, toned her down in a tactless effectiveway, and drove her at last to the muttered inventory of a basketof travelling requisites. Presently she looked up. "Lor'!" she said,"I didn't bring them!" Both the daughters said "Oh, Ma!" but what"them" was did not appear. Presently Fanny produced Hare's Walksin Rome, a sort of mitigated guide-book very popular among Romanvisitors; and the father of the two daughters began to examinehis books of tickets minutely, apparently in a search after Englishwords. When he had looked at the tickets for a long time right way up,he turned them upside down. Then he produced a fountain pen anddated them with considerable care. The young man, having completedan unostentatious survey of his fellow travellers, produced a book andfell to reading. When Helen and Fanny were looking out of the windowat Chiselhurst--the place interested Fanny because the poor dearEmpress of the French used to live there--Miss Winchelsea tookthe opportunity to observe the book the young man held. It was nota guide-book, but a little thin volume of poetry--bound. She glancedat his face--it seemed a refined pleasant face to her hasty glance.He wore a little gilt pince-nez. "Do you think she lives therenow?" said Fanny, and Miss Winchelsea's inspection came to an end.For the rest of the journey Miss Winchelsea talked little, and whatshe said was as pleasant and as stamped with refinement as shecould make it. Her voice was always low and clear and pleasant,and she took care that on this occasion it was particularly low andclear and pleasant. As they came under the white cliffs the youngman put his book of poetry away, and when at last the train stoppedbeside the boat, he displayed a graceful alacrity with the impedimentaof Miss Winchelsea and her friends. Miss Winchelsea hated nonsense,but she was pleased to see the young man perceived at once thatthey were ladies, and helped them without any violent geniality;and how nicely he showed that his civilities were to be no excusefor further intrusions. None of her little party had been outof England before, and they were all excited and a little nervousat the Channel passage. They stood in a little group in a good placenear the middle of the boat--the young man had taken Miss Winchelsea'scarry-all there and had told her it was a good place--and they watchedthe white shores of Albion recede and quoted Shakespeare and madequiet fun of their fellow travellers in the English way.They were particularly amused at the precautions the bigger-sizedpeople had taken against the little waves--cut lemons and flasksprevailed, one lady lay full-length in a deck chair with a handkerchiefover her face, and a very broad resolute man in a bright brown"touristy" suit walked all the way from England to France alongthe deck, with his legs as widely apart as Providence permitted. Thesewere all excellent precautions, and, nobody was ill. The personallyconducted party pursued the conductor about the deck with enquiriesin a manner that suggested to Helen's mind the rather vulgar imageof hens with a piece of bacon peel, until at last he went into hidingbelow. And the young man with the thin volume of poetry stoodat the stern watching England receding, looking rather lonelyand sad to Miss Winchelsea's eye.And then came Calais and tumultuous novelties, and the young manhad not forgotten Miss Winchelsea's hold-all and the other littlethings. All three girls, though they had passed government examinationsin French to any extent, were stricken with a dumb shame of theiraccents, and the young man was very useful. And he did not intrude.He put them in a comfortable carriage and raised his hat and wentaway. Miss Winchelsea thanked him in her best manner--a pleasing,cultivated manner--and Fanny said he was "nice" almost before hewas out of earshot. "I wonder what he can be," said Helen. "He'sgoing to Italy, because I noticed green tickets in his book."Miss Winchelsea almost told them of the poetry, and decided notto do so. And presently the carriage windows seized hold upon themand the young man was forgotten. It made them feel that they weredoing an educated sort of thing to travel through a country whosecommonest advertisements were in idiomatic French, and Miss Winchelseamade unpatriotic comparisons because there were weedy little sign-boardadvertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings thatdeface the landscape in our land. But the north of France is reallyuninteresting country, and after a time Fanny reverted to Hare's Walksand Helen initiated lunch. Miss Winchelsea awoke out of a happyreverie; she had been trying to realise, she said, that she wasactually going to Rome, but she perceived at Helen's suggestionthat she was hungry, and they lunched out of their baskets verycheerfully. In the afternoon they were tired and silent until Helenmade tea. Miss Winchelsea might have dozed, only she knew Fannyslept with her mouth open; and as their fellow passengers weretwo rather nice critical-looking ladies of uncertain age--who knewFrench well enough to talk it--she employed herself in keeping Fannyawake. The rhythm of the train became insistent, and the streaminglandscape outside became at last quite painful to the eye. They werealready dreadfully tired of travelling before their night's stoppagecame.The stoppage for the night was brightened by the appearance ofthe young man, and his manners were all that could be desired andhis French quite serviceable. His coupons availed for the same hotelas theirs, and by chance as it seemed he sat next Miss Winchelseaat the table d'hote. In spite of her enthusiasm for Rome, she hadthought out some such possibility very thoroughly, and when heventured to make a remark upon the tediousness of travelling--helet the soup and fish go by before he did this--she did not simplyassent to his proposition, but responded with another. They weresoon comparing their journeys, and Helen and Fanny were cruellyoverlooked in the conversation. It was to be the same journey,they found; one day for the galleries at Florence--"from what Ihear," said the young man, "it is barely enough,"--and the restat Rome. He talked of Rome very pleasantly; he was evidently quitewell read, and he quoted Horace about Soracte. Miss Winchelsea had"done" that book of Horace for her matriculation, and was delightedto cap his quotation. It gave a sort of tone to things, thisincident--a touch of refinement to mere chatting. Fanny expresseda few emotions, and Helen interpolated a few sensible remarks, butthe bulk of the talk on the girls' side naturally fell to MissWinchelsea.Before they reached Rome this young man was tacitly of their party.They did not know his name nor what he was, but it seemed he taught,and Miss Winchelsea had a shrewd idea he was an extension lecturer.At any rate he was something of that sort, something gentlemanlyand refined without being opulent and impossible. She tried onceor twice to ascertain whether he came from Oxford or Cambridge,but he missed her timid importunities. She tried to get him to makeremarks about those places to see if he would say "come up" to theminstead of "go down"--she knew that was how you told a 'Varsity man.He used the word "'Varsity"--not university--in quite the proper way.They saw as much of Mr. Ruskin's Florence as the brief time permitted;he met them in the Pitti Gallery and went round with them, chattingbrightly, and evidently very grateful for their recognition. He knewa great deal about art, and all four enjoyed the morning immensely.It was fine to go round recognising old favourites and findingnew beauties, especially while so many people fumbled helplesslywith Baedeker. Nor was he a bit of a prig, Miss Winchelsea said,and indeed she detested prigs. He had a distinct undertone of humour,and was funny, for example, without being vulgar, at the expense ofthe quaint work of Beato Angelico. He had a grave seriousness beneathit all, and was quick to seize the moral lessons of the pictures.Fanny went softly among these masterpieces; she admitted "she knewso little about them," and she confessed that to her they were "allbeautiful." Fanny's "beautiful" inclined to be a little monotonous,Miss Winchelsea thought. She had been quite glad when the lastsunny Alp had vanished, because of the staccato of Fanny's admiration.Helen said little, but Miss Winchelsea had found her a little wantingon the aesthetic side in the old days and was not surprised; sometimesshe laughed at the young man's hesitating delicate little jests andsometimes she didn't, and sometimes she seemed quite lost to the artabout them in the contemplation of the dresses of the other visitors.At Rome the young man was with them intermittently. A rather"touristy" friend of his took him away at times. He complainedcomically to Miss Winchelsea. "I have only two short weeks in Rome,"he said, "and my friend Leonard wants to spend a whole day at Tivoli,looking at a waterfall.""What is your friend Leonard?" asked Miss Winchelsea abruptly."He's the most enthusiastic pedestrian I ever met," the young manreplied, amusingly, but a little unsatisfactorily, Miss Winchelseathought. They had some glorious times, and Fanny could not thinkwhat they would have done without him. Miss Winchelsea's interestand Fanny's enormous capacity for admiration were insatiable. Theynever flagged--through pictures and sculpture galleries, immensecrowded churches, ruins and museums, Judas trees and prickly pears,wine carts and palaces, they admired their way unflinchingly. Theynever saw a stone pine or a eucalyptus but they named and admired it;they never glimpsed Soracte but they exclaimed. Their common wayswere made wonderful by imaginative play. "Here Caesar may havewalked," they would say. "Raphael may have seen Soracte from thisvery point." They happened on the tomb of Bibulus. "Old Bibulus,"said the young man. "The oldest monument of Republican Rome!"said Miss Winchelsea."I'm dreadfully stupid," said Fanny, "but who was Bibulus?"There was a curious little pause."Wasn't he the person who built the wall?" said Helen.The young man glanced quickly at her and laughed. "That was Balbus,"he said. Helen reddened, but neither he nor Miss Winchelsea threwany light upon Fanny's ignorance about Bibulus.Helen was more taciturn than the other three, but then she wasalways taciturn, and usually she took care of the tram ticketsand things like that, or kept her eye on them if the young man tookthem, and told him where they were when he wanted them. Glorious timesthey had, these young people, in that pale brown cleanly city ofmemories that was once the world. Their only sorrow was the shortnessof the time. They said indeed that the electric trams and the '70buildings, and that criminal advertisement that glares upon the Forum,outraged their aesthetic feelings unspeakably; but that was only partof the fun. And indeed Rome is such a wonderful place that it madeMiss Winchelsea forget some of her most carefully prepared enthusiasmsat times, and Helen, taken unawares, would suddenly admit the beautyof unexpected things. Yet Fanny and Helen would have liked a shopwindow or so in the English quarter if Miss Winchelsea's uncompromisinghostility to all other English visitors had not rendered that districtimpossible.The intellectual and aesthetic fellowship of Miss Winchelsea andthe scholarly young man passed insensibly towards a deeper feeling.The exuberant Fanny did her best to keep pace with their reconditeadmiration by playing her "beautiful," with vigour, and saying "Oh!Let's go," with enormous appetite whenever a new place of interestwas mentioned. But Helen developed a certain want of sympathytowards the end, that disappointed Miss Winchelsea a little. Sherefused to "see anything" in the face of Beatrice Cenci--Shelley'sBeatrice Cenci!--in the Barberini gallery; and one day, when theywere deploring the electric trams, she said rather snappishly that"people must get about somehow, and it's better than torturinghorses up these horrid little hills." She spoke of the Seven Hillsof Rome as "horrid little hills!"And the day they went on the Palatine--though Miss Winchelseadid not know of this--she remarked suddenly to Fanny, "Don't hurrylike that, my dear; they don't want us to overtake them. And wedon't say the right things for them when we do get near.""I wasn't trying to overtake them," said Fanny, slackening herexcessive pace; "I wasn't indeed." And for a minute she was short ofbreath.But Miss Winchelsea had come upon happiness. It was only when shecame to look back across an intervening tragedy that she quiterealised how happy she had been, pacing among the cypress-shadowedruins, and exchanging the very highest class of information the humanmind can possess, the most refined impressions it is possibleto convey. Insensibly emotion crept into their intercourse, sunningitself openly and pleasantly at last when Helen's modernity was nottoo near. Insensibly their interest drifted from the wonderfulassociations about them to their more intimate and personal feelings.In a tentative way information was supplied; she spoke allusivelyof her school, of her examination successes, of her gladness thatthe days of "Cram" were over. He made it quite clear that he alsowas a teacher. They spoke of the greatness of their calling, of thenecessity of sympathy to face its irksome details, of a certainloneliness they sometimes felt.That was in the Colosseum, and it was as far as they got that day,because Helen returned with Fanny--she had taken her into the uppergalleries. Yet the private dreams of Miss Winchelsea, already vividand concrete enough, became now realistic in the highest degree.She figured that pleasant young man, lecturing in the most edifyingway to his students, herself modestly prominent as his intellectualmate and helper; she figured a refined little home, with two bureaus,with white shelves of high-class books, and autotypes of the picturesof Rossetti and Burne-Jones, with Morris's wall papers and flowers inpots of beaten copper. Indeed she figured many things. On the Pinciothe two had a few precious moments together, while Helen marchedFanny off to see the muro Torto, and he spoke at once plainly. Hesaid he hoped their friendship was only beginning, that he alreadyfound her company very precious to him, that indeed it was more thanthat.He became nervous, thrusting at his glasses with trembling fingersas though he fancied his emotions made them unstable. "I shouldof course," he said, "tell you things about myself. I know it israther unusual my speaking to you like this. Only our meeting hasbeen so accidental--or providential--and I am snatching at things.I came to Rome expecting a lonely tour . . . and I have been so veryhappy, so very happy. Quite recently I found myself in a position--I have dared to think--. And--"He glanced over his shoulder and stopped. He said "Damn!" quitedistinctly--and she did not condemn him for that manly lapse intoprofanity. She looked and saw his friend Leonard advancing. He drewnearer; he raised his hat to Miss Winchelsea, and his smile wasalmost a grin. "I've been looking for you everywhere, Snooks," hesaid. "You promised to be on the Piazza steps half an hour ago."Snooks! The name struck Miss Winchelsea like a blow in the face.She did not hear his reply. She thought afterwards that Leonardmust have considered her the vaguest-minded person. To this dayshe is not sure whether she was introduced to Leonard or not, norwhat she said to him. A sort of mental paralysis was upon her.Of all offensive surnames--Snooks!Helen and Fanny were returning, there were civilities, and the youngmen were receding. By a great effort she controlled herself to facethe enquiring eyes of her friends. All that afternoon she livedthe life of a heroine under the indescribable outrage of that name,chatting, observing, with "Snooks" gnawing at her heart. From themoment that it first rang upon her ears, the dream of her happinesswas prostrate in the dust. All the refinement she had figured wasruined and defaced by that cognomen's unavoidable vulgarity.What was that refined little home to her now, spite of autotypes,Morris papers, and bureaus? Athwart it in letters of fire ran anincredible inscription: "Mrs. Snooks." That may seem a little thing tothe reader, but consider the delicate refinement of Miss Winchelsea'smind. Be as refined as you can and then think of writing yourselfdown:--"Snooks." She conceived herself being addressed as Mrs. Snooksby all the people she liked least, conceived the patronymic touchedwith a vague quality of insult. She figured a card of grey and silverbearing "Winchelsea," triumphantly effaced by an arrow, Cupid's arrow,in favour of "Snooks." Degrading confession of feminine weakness! Sheimagined the terrible rejoicings of certain girl friends, of certaingrocer cousins from whom her growing refinement had long sinceestranged her. How they would make it sprawl across the envelopethat would bring their sarcastic congratulations. Would even hispleasant company compensate her for that? "It is impossible,"she muttered; "impossible! Snooks!"She was sorry for him, but not so sorry as she was for herself.For him she had a touch of indignation. To be so nice, so refined,while all the time he was "Snooks," to hide under a pretentiousgentility of demeanour the badge sinister of his surname seemeda sort of treachery. To put it in the language of sentimental scienceshe felt he had "led her on."There were of course moments of terrible vacillation, a period evenwhen something almost like passion bid her throw refinement tothe winds. And there was something in her, an unexpurgated vestigeof vulgarity, that made a strenuous attempt at proving that Snookswas not so very bad a name after all. Any hovering hesitation flewbefore Fanny's manner, when Fanny came with an air of catastrophe totell that she also knew the horror. Fanny's voice fell to a whisperwhen she said Snooks. Miss Winchelsea would not give him any answerwhen at last, in the Borghese, she could have a minute with him;but she promised him a note.She handed him that note in the little book of poetry he had lenther, the little book that had first drawn them together. Her refusalwas ambiguous, allusive. She could no more tell him why she rejectedhim than she could have told a cripple of his hump. He too mustfeel something of the unspeakable quality of his name. Indeed hehad avoided a dozen chances of telling it, she now perceived. So shespoke of "obstacles she could not reveal"--"reasons why the thing hespoke of was impossible." She addressed the note with a shiver, "E. K.Snooks."Things were worse than she had dreaded; he asked her to explain.How could she explain? Those last two days in Rome were dreadful.She was haunted by his air of astonished perplexity. She knew shehad given him intimate hopes, she had not the courage to examineher mind thoroughly for the extent of her encouragement. She knewhe must think her the most changeable of beings. Now that she wasin full retreat, she would not even perceive his hints of a possiblecorrespondence. But in that matter he did a thing that seemed to herat once delicate and romantic. He made a go-between of Fanny.Fanny could not keep the secret, and came and told her that nightunder a transparent pretext of needed advice. "Mr. Snooks," saidFanny, "wants to write to me. Fancy! I had no idea. But should I lethim?" They talked it over long and earnestly, and Miss Winchelsea wascareful to keep the veil over her heart. She was already repenting hisdisregarded hints. Why should she not hear of him sometimes--painfulthough his name must be to her? Miss Winchelsea decided it mightbe permitted, and Fanny kissed her good-night with unusual emotion.After she had gone Miss Winchelsea sat for a long time at the windowof her little room. It was moonlight, and down the street a mansang "Santa Lucia" with almost heart-dissolving tenderness. . . .She sat very still.She breathed a word very softly to herself. The word was "Snooks."Then she got up with a profound sigh, and went to bed. The next morninghe said to her meaningly, "I shall hear of you through your friend."Mr. Snooks saw them off from Rome with that pathetic interrogativeperplexity still on his face, and if it had not been for Helenhe would have retained Miss Winchelsea's hold-all in his handas a sort of encyclopaedic keepsake. On their way back to EnglandMiss Winchelsea on six separate occasions made Fanny promiseto write to her the longest of long letters. Fanny, it seemed, wouldbe quite near Mr. Snooks. Her new school--she was always goingto new schools--would be only five miles from Steely Bank, andit was in the Steely Bank Polytechnic, and one or two first-classschools, that Mr. Snooks did his teaching. He might even see herat times. They could not talk much of him--she and Fanny alwaysspoke of "him," never of Mr. Snooks,--because Helen was apt to sayunsympathetic things about him. Her nature had coarsened very much,Miss Winchelsea perceived, since the old Training College days;she had become hard and cynical. She thought he had a weak face,mistaking refinement for weakness as people of her stamp are aptto do, and when she heard his name was Snooks, she said she hadexpected something of the sort. Miss Winchelsea was careful to spareher own feelings after that, but Fanny was less circumspect.The girls parted in London, and Miss Winchelsea returned, witha new interest in life, to the Girls' High School in which she hadbeen an increasingly valuable assistant for the last three years.Her new interest in life was Fanny as a correspondent, and to give hera lead she wrote her a lengthy descriptive letter within a fortnightof her return. Fanny answered, very disappointingly. Fanny indeedhad no literary gift, but it was new to Miss Winchelsea to findherself deploring the want of gifts in a friend. That letter waseven criticised aloud in the safe solitude of Miss Winchelsea'sstudy, and her criticism, spoken with great bitterness, was "Twaddle!"It was full of just the things Miss Winchelsea's letter had beenfull of, particulars of the school. And of Mr. Snooks, only thismuch: "I have had a letter from Mr. Snooks, and he has been overto see me on two Saturday afternoons running. He talked about Romeand you; we both talked about you. Your ears must have burnt, mydear. . . ."Miss Winchelsea repressed a desire to demand more explicit information,and wrote the sweetest long letter again. "Tell me all about yourself,dear. That journey has quite refreshed our ancient friendship,and I do so want to keep in touch with you." About Mr. Snooks shesimply wrote on the fifth page that she was glad Fanny had seenhim, and that if he should ask after her, she was to be rememberedto him should. And Fanny replied most obtuselyin the key of that "ancient friendship," reminding Miss Winchelseaof a dozen foolish things of those old schoolgirl days at the trainingcollege, and saying not a word about Mr. Snooks!For nearly a week Miss Winchelsea was so angry at the failureof Fanny as a go-between that she could not write to her. And thenshe wrote less effusively, and in her letter she asked point-blank,"Have you seen Mr. Snooks?" Fanny's letter was unexpectedlysatisfactory. "I have seen Mr. Snooks," she wrote, and having oncenamed him she kept on about him; it was all Snooks--Snooks this andSnooks that. He was to give a public lecture, said Fanny, among otherthings. Yet Miss Winchelsea, after the first glow of gratification,still found this letter a little unsatisfactory. Fanny did not reportMr. Snooks as saying anything about Miss Winchelsea, nor as lookinga little white and worn, as he ought to have been doing. And behold!before she had replied, came a second letter from Fanny on the sametheme, quite a gushing letter, and covering six sheets with her loosefeminine hand.And about this second letter was a rather odd little thing thatMiss Winchelsea only noticed as she re-read it the third time.Fanny's natural femininity had prevailed even against the roundand clear traditions of the training college; she was one of thoseshe-creatures born to make all her m's and n's and u's and r's and e'salike, and to leave her o's and a's open and her i's undotted. So thatit was only after an elaborate comparison of word with word that MissWinchelsea felt assured Mr. Snooks was not really "Mr. Snooks"at all! In Fanny's first letter of gush he was Mr. "Snooks," in hersecond the spelling was changed to Mr. "Senoks." Miss Winchelsea'shand positively trembled as she turned the sheet over--it meantso much to her. For it had already begun to seem to her that eventhe name of Mrs. Snooks might be avoided at too great a price,and suddenly--this possibility! She turned over the six sheets,all dappled with that critical name, and everywhere the first letterhad the form of an E! For a time she walked the room with a handpressed upon her heart.She spent a whole day pondering this change, weighing a letterof inquiry that should be at once discreet and effectual, weighingtoo what action she should take after the answer came. She wasresolved that if this altered spelling was anything more thana quaint fancy of Fanny's, she would write forthwith to Mr. Snooks.She had now reached a stage when the minor refinements of behaviourdisappear. Her excuse remained uninvented, but she had the subjectof her letter clear in her mind, even to the hint that "circumstancesin my life have changed very greatly since we talked together." Butshe never gave that hint. There came a third letter from that fitfulcorrespondent Fanny. The first line proclaimed her "the happiestgirl alive."Miss Winchelsea crushed the letter in her hand--the rest unread--andsat with her face suddenly very still. She had received it just beforemorning school, and had opened it when the junior mathematicians werewell under way. Presently she resumed reading with an appearance ofgreat calm. But after the first sheet she went on reading the thirdwithout discovering the error:--"told him frankly I did not like hisname," the third sheet began. "He told me he did not like it himself--you know that sort of sudden frank way he has"--Miss Winchelseadid know. "So I said 'Couldn't you change it?' He didn't see itat first. Well, you know, dear, he had told me what it really meant;it means Sevenoaks, only it has got down to Snooks--both Snooksand Noaks, dreadfully vulgar surnames though they be, are reallyworn forms of Sevenoaks. So I said--even I have my bright ideasat times--'if it got down from Sevenoaks to Snooks, why not get itback from Snooks to Sevenoaks?' And the long and the short of itis, dear, he couldn't refuse me, and he changed his spelling thereand then to Senoks for the bills of the new lecture. And afterwards,when we are married, we shall put in the apostrophe and make itSe'noks. Wasn't it kind of him to mind that fancy of mine, whenmany men would have taken offence? But it is just like him all over;he is as kind as he is clever. Because he knew as well as I didthat I would have had him in spite of it, had he been ten timesSnooks. But he did it all the same."The class was startled by the sound of paper being viciously torn,and looked up to see Miss Winchelsea white in the face, and withsome very small pieces of paper clenched in one hand. For a fewseconds they stared at her stare, and then her expression changedback to a more familiar one. "Has any one finished number three?" sheasked in an even tone. She remained calm after that. But impositionsruled high that day. And she spent two laborious evenings writingletters of various sorts to Fanny, before she found a decentcongratulatory vein. Her reason struggled hopelessly against thepersuasion that Fanny had behaved in an exceedingly treacherous manner.One may be extremely refined and still capable of a very sore heart.Certainly Miss Winchelsea's heart was very sore. She had moodsof sexual hostility, in which she generalised uncharitably aboutmankind. "He forgot himself with me," she said. "But Fanny is pinkand pretty and soft and a fool--a very excellent match for a Man."And by way of a wedding present she sent Fanny a gracefully boundvolume of poetry by George Meredith, and Fanny wrote back a grosslyhappy letter to say that it was "ALL beautiful." Miss Winchelseahoped that some day Mr. Senoks might take up that slim book andthink for a moment of the donor. Fanny wrote several times beforeand about her marriage, pursuing that fond legend of their "ancientfriendship," and giving her happiness in the fullest detail. AndMiss Winchelsea wrote to Helen for the first time after the Romanjourney, saying nothing about the marriage, but expressing verycordial feelings.They had been in Rome at Easter, and Fanny was married in theAugust vacation. She wrote a garrulous letter to Miss Winchelsea,describing her home-coming, and the astonishing arrangementsof their "teeny weeny" little house. Mr. Se'noks was now beginningto assume a refinement in Miss Winchelsea's memory out of allproportion to the facts of the case, and she tried in vain to imaginehis cultured greatness in a "teeny weeny" little house. "Am busyenamelling a cosey corner," said Fanny, sprawling to the end of herthird sheet, "so excuse more." Miss Winchelsea answered in herbest style, gently poking fun at Fanny's arrangements and hopingintensely that Mr. Sen'oks might see the letter. Only this hopeenabled her to write at all, answering not only that letter butone in November and one at Christmas.The two latter communications contained urgent invitations for herto come to Steely Bank on a Visit during the Christmas holidays.She tried to think that HE had told her to ask that, but it wastoo much like Fanny's opulent good-nature. She could not but believethat he must be sick of his blunder by this time; and she had morethan a hope that he would presently write her a letter beginning"Dear Friend." Something subtly tragic in the separation wasa great support to her, a sad misunderstanding. To have been jiltedwould have been intolerable. But he never wrote that letter beginning"Dear Friend."For two years Miss Winchelsea could not go to see her friends,in spite of the reiterated invitations of Mrs. Sevenoaks--it becamefull Sevenoaks in the second year. Then one day near the Easterrest she felt lonely and without a soul to understand her in theworld, and her mind ran once more on what is called Platonicfriendship. Fanny was clearly happy and busy in her new sphereof domesticity, but no doubt he had his lonely hours. Did he everthink of those days in Rome--gone now beyond recalling? No onehad understood her as he had done; no one in all the world. Itwould be a sort of melancholy pleasure to talk to him again, andwhat harm could it do? Why should she deny herself? That nightshe wrote a sonnet, all but the last two lines of the octave--whichwould not come, and the next day she composed a graceful little noteto tell Fanny she was coming down.And so she saw him again.Even at the first encounter it was evident he had changed; he seemedstouter and less nervous, and it speedily appeared that hisconversation had already lost much of its old delicacy. There evenseemed a justification for Helen's description of weakness in hisface--in certain lights it was weak. He seemed busy and preoccupiedabout his affairs, and almost under the impression that Miss Winchelseahad come for the sake of Fanny. He discussed his dinner with Fannyin an intelligent way. They only had one good long talk together,and that came to nothing. He did not refer to Rome, and spent sometime abusing a man who had stolen an idea he had had for a text-book.It did not seem a very wonderful idea to Miss Winchelsea. Shediscovered he had forgotten the names of more than half the painterswhose work they had rejoiced over in Florence.It was a sadly disappointing week, and Miss Winchelsea was gladwhen it came to an end. Under various excuses she avoided visitingthem again. After a time the visitor's room was occupied by theirtwo little boys, and Fanny's invitations ceased. The intimacy ofher letters had long since faded away.
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