The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
considered her the vaguest-minded person. To this day she is not sure
whether she was introduced to Leonard or not, nor what 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 young men
were receding. By a great effort she controlled herself to face the
inquiring eyes of her friends. All that afternoon she lived the life of a
heroine under the indescribable outrage of that name, chatting, observing,
with "Snooks" gnawing at her heart. From the moment that it first rang
upon her ears, the dream of her happiness was prostrate in the dust. All
the refinement she had figured was ruined 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 an incredible
inscription: "Mrs. Snooks." That may seem a little thing to the reader,
but consider the delicate refinement of Miss Winchelsea's mind. Be as
refined as you can and then think of writing yourself down:--"Snooks." She
conceived herself being addressed as Mrs. Snooks by all the people she
liked least, conceived the patronymic touched with a vague quality of
insult. She figured a card of grey and silver bearing 'Winchelsea'
triumphantly effaced by an arrow, Cupid's arrow, in favour of "Snooks."
Degrading confession of feminine weakness! She imagined the terrible
rejoicings of certain girl friends, of certain grocer cousins from whom
her growing refinement had long since estranged her. How they would make
it sprawl across the envelope that would bring their sarcastic
congratulations. Would even his pleasant 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 pretentious gentility of demeanour
the badge sinister of his surname seemed a sort of treachery. To put it in
the language of sentimental science she felt he had "led her on."
There were, of course, moments of terrible vacillation, a period even when
something almost like passion bid her throw refinement to the winds. And
there was something in her, an unexpurgated vestige of vulgarity that made
a strenuous attempt at proving that Snooks was not so very bad a name
after all. Any hovering hesitation flew before Fanny's manner, when Fanny
came with an air of catastrophe to tell that she also knew the horror.
Fanny's voice fell to a whisper when she said _Snooks_. Miss
Winchelsea would not give him any answer when 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 lent her, the
little book that had first drawn them together. Her refusal was ambiguous,
allusive. She could no more tell him why she rejected him than she could
have told a cripple of his hump. He too must feel something of the
unspeakable quality of his name. Indeed he had avoided a dozen chances of
telling it, she now perceived. So she spoke of "obstacles she could not
reveal"--"reasons why the thing he spoke 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 she had given
him intimate hopes, she had not the courage to examine her mind thoroughly
for the extent of her encouragement. She knew he must think her the most
changeable of beings. Now that she was in full retreat, she would not even
perceive his hints of a possible correspondence. But in that matter he did
a thing that seemed to her at once delicate and romantic. He made a
go-between of Fanny. Fanny could not keep the secret, and came and told
her that night under a transparent pretext of needed advice. "Mr. Snooks,"
said Fanny, "wants to write to me. Fancy! I had no idea. But should I let
him?" They talked it over long and earnestly, and Miss Winchelsea was
careful to keep the veil over her heart. She was already repenting his
disregarded hints. Why should she not hear of him sometimes--painful
though his name must be to her? Miss Winchelsea decided it might be
permitted, and Fanny kissed her good-night with unusual emotion. After she
had gone Miss Winchelsea sat for a long time at the window of her little
room. It was moonlight, and down the street a man sang "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 morning he
said to her meaningly, "I shall hear of you through your friend."
Mr. Snooks saw them off from Rome with that pathetic interrogative
perplexity still on his face, and if it had not been for Helen he would
have retained Miss Winchelsea's hold-all in his hand as a sort of
encyclopaedic keepsake. On their way back to England Miss Winchelsea on
six separate occasions made Fanny promise to write to her the longest of
long letters. Fanny, it seemed, would be quite near Mr. Snooks. Her new
school--she was always going to new schools--would be only five miles from
Steely Bank, and it was in the Steely Bank Polytechnic, and one or two
first-class schools, that Mr. Snooks did his teaching. He might even see
her at times. They could not talk much of him--she and Fanny always spoke
of "him," never of Mr. Snooks--because Helen was apt to say unsympathetic
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 apt to do, and when she heard his name was
Snooks, she said she had expected something of the sort. Miss Winchelsea
was careful to spare her own feelings after that, but Fanny was less
circumspect.
The girls parted in London, and Miss Winchelsea returned, with a new
interest in life, to the Girls' High School in which she had been an
increasingly valuable assistant for the last three years. Her new interest
in life was Fanny as a correspondent, and to give her a lead she wrote her
a lengthy descriptive letter within a fortnight of her return. Fanny
answered, very disappointingly. Fanny indeed had no literary gift, but it
was new to Miss Winchelsea to find herself deploring the want of gifts in
a friend. That letter was even criticised aloud in the safe solitude of
Miss Winchelsea's study, and her criticism, spoken with great bitterness,
was "Twaddle!" It was full of just the things Miss Winchelsea's letter had
been full of, particulars of the school. And of Mr. Snooks, only this
much: "I have had a letter from Mr. Snooks, and he has been over to see me
on two Saturday afternoons running. He talked about Rome and you; we both
talked about you. Your ears must have burnt, my dear..."
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 she simply wrote on the
fifth page that she was glad Fanny had seen him, and that if he
_should_ ask after her, she was to be remembered to him _very
kindly_ (underlined). And Fanny replied most obtusely in the key of
that "ancient friendship," reminding Miss Winchelsea of a dozen foolish
things of those old schoolgirl days at the Training College, and saying
not a word about Mr. Snooks!
For nearly a week Miss Winchelsea was so angry at the failure of Fanny as
a go-between that she could not write to her. And then she wrote less
effusively, and in her letter she asked point-blank, "Have you seen Mr.
Snooks?" Fanny's letter was unexpectedly satisfactory. "I _have_ seen
Mr. Snooks," she wrote, and having once named him she kept on about him;
it was all Snooks--Snooks this and Snooks that. He was to give a public
lecture, said Fanny, among other things. Yet Miss Winchelsea, after the
first glow of gratification, still found this letter a little
unsatisfactory. Fanny did not report Mr. Snooks as saying anything about
Miss Winchelsea, nor as looking a 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 same theme, quite a gushing letter, and covering six
sheets with her loose feminine hand.
And about this second letter was a rather odd little thing that Miss
Winchelsea only noticed as she re-read it the third time. Fanny's natural
femininity had prevailed even against the round and clear traditions of
the Training College; she was one of those she-creatures born to
make all her _m'_s and _n'_s and _u'_s and _r'_s and _e'_s
alike, and to leave her _o'_s and _a'_s open and her _i'_s
undotted. So that it was only after an elaborate comparison of word with
word that Miss Winchelsea felt assured Mr. Snooks was not really "Mr.
Snooks" at all! In Fanny's first letter of gush he was Mr. "Snooks," in
her second the spelling was changed to Mr. "Senoks." Miss Winchelsea's
hand positively trembled as she turned the sheet over--it meant so much to
her. For it had already begun to seem to her that even the 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 letter had the form of an
_e_! For a time she walked the room with a hand pressed upon her
heart.
She spent a whole day pondering this change, weighing a letter of inquiry
that should be at once discreet and effectual; weighing, too, what action
she should take after the answer came. She was resolved that if this
altered spelling was anything more than a quaint fancy of Fanny's, she
would write forthwith to Mr. Snooks. She had now reached a stage when the
minor refinements of behaviour disappear. Her excuse remained uninvented,
but she had the subject of her letter clear in her mind, even to the hint
that "circumstances in my life have changed very greatly since we talked
together." But she never gave that hint. There came a third letter from
that fitful correspondent Fanny. The first line proclaimed her "the
happiest girl alive."
Miss Winchelsea crushed the letter in her hand--the rest unread--and sat
with her face suddenly very still. She had received it just before morning
school, and had opened it when the junior mathematicians were well under
way. Presently she resumed reading with an appearance of great calm. But
after the first sheet she went on reading the third without discovering
the error:--"told him frankly I did not like his name," the third sheet
began. "He told me he did not like it himself--you know that sort of
sudden, frank way he has"--Miss Winchelsea did know. "So I said, 'couldn't
you change it?' He didn't see it at first. Well, you know, dear, he had
told me what it really meant; it means Sevenoaks, only it has got down to
Snooks--both Snooks and Noaks, dreadfully vulgar surnames though they be,
are really worn forms of Sevenoaks. So I said--even I have my bright ideas
at times--'If it got down from Sevenoaks to Snooks, why not get it back
from Snooks to Sevenoaks?' And the long and the short of it is, dear, he
couldn't refuse me, and he changed his spelling there and then to Senoks
for the bills of the new lecture. And afterwards, when we are married, we
shall put in the apostrophe and make it Se'noks. Wasn't it kind of him to