The Sound of Distant Bells"

The campus was a world of soft stone and ivy, nestled in the hush of an early spring that clung to the edges of the old buildings. Miriam always arrived early to her literature seminar, slipping into the second row of seats with a notebook already open and a pen in hand. She liked the quiet before others came in—the way the light fell through the tall windows, the way dust swirled invisibly until it caught the sun.

Dr. Ellis Wren was new to the university that semester, a visiting lecturer with a gentle British accent and a wardrobe of mismatched cardigans and suede shoes. There was nothing imposing about him, nothing that called attention in the way one might expect of a professor just ten years older than some of his students. But there was a stillness to him, an alertness behind his wire-rimmed glasses that made Miriam pause the first time he entered the room.

He rarely looked up while lecturing, preferring instead to write quotes from Woolf or Eliot on the board and then turn, slowly, to expand on them with the kind of reverence usually reserved for sacred things. He was not charismatic in the traditional sense—he didn’t entertain—but there was something in the care of his words, the unspoken promise that language mattered deeply.

Miriam was in her final year, already accepted into a graduate program in Edinburgh. She didn’t need this class; she had chosen it out of curiosity, a final elective to round out her credits. She found herself scribbling entire paragraphs in her margins, not because it was required, but because she wanted to hold on to the ideas. When Dr. Wren mentioned that he held optional discussions on Friday afternoons, she attended every one.

They met in the library once, by chance. Miriam had her arms full of books, and he held the door open without seeming to notice who she was. But then he did.

“Oh,” he said, with that quiet British restraint, “Miss Alavi.”

“Hi,” she said, adjusting her glasses.

“You’re reading Forster?” He gestured toward the book at the top of her stack. “A Room with a View?”

“I’ve read it before. I think I’m just... looking for something in it this time.”

“Isn’t that always the case?” he said, smiling faintly. “Books are not static things. They respond to the version of us that reads them.”

They walked a few steps together into the reading room, where the high ceiling swallowed sound and the smell of old pages hung in the air. He didn’t ask to join her, and she didn’t offer, but the moment lingered—unspoken, suspended in the space between politeness and something else.

Miriam thought of him more often than she liked to admit. Not in any inappropriate way, not with the breathless drama of a crush, but as one thinks of a particular line from a poem—something unfinished, something beautiful in its restraint.

At the Friday sessions, they sometimes stayed past sunset. A few students would remain, discussing the melancholia of Thomas Hardy or the defiant realism of Jean Rhys. Miriam always stayed the longest. Once, as she packed her things, Dr. Wren looked at her over the rim of his mug and said, “You ask very careful questions.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant, but she smiled anyway. “I suppose I like to leave room for answers.”

There were rumors, of course. There always are, in places like that. Other students sometimes looked at her sideways, and she heard whispers once in the hallway—nothing cruel, just curious. She didn’t answer them. There was nothing to deny, because nothing had happened.

But something had grown. A delicate, unvoiced intimacy that formed not from touch or confession, but from mutual understanding. He began to notice her mood from how she took notes—faster when anxious, more curved letters when calm. She could tell when he was distracted by how often he pushed his glasses up on his nose, how he paused longer between sentences.

One afternoon in April, he ended class early and asked her to stay behind. The room emptied, the door clicked shut. He stood by the window, looking out over the budding trees.

“I wanted to say something,” he said, without turning. “Before the term ends.”

Miriam’s breath caught.

“You remind me of someone I knew once,” he continued. “Not in appearance, but in... the way you listen.”

She said nothing. The silence felt heavy, sacred.

“I’ve been careful,” he said softly. “Because I must be. But I want you to know—this space we’ve shared, in thought and conversation—it’s meant more to me than I expected. Not in a way that crosses lines. Just... as a kind of rare understanding.”

She felt warmth rise in her chest—not flattery, not excitement, but something gentler. Gratitude, perhaps.

“I understand,” she said.

He turned then, and the light caught the silver at his temples. “You’re going far, Miss Alavi. I hope you write. You have that hunger for meaning that great writers suffer from.”

She smiled. “I plan to.”

They never spoke of it again.

Miriam graduated in June. The last time she saw him was at a reception, where he stood beneath a banner that read Congratulations, Class of 2025, sipping from a paper cup. They exchanged a small wave, nothing more.

Years later, in Edinburgh, she would walk into a bookshop and find a thin volume of essays authored by E.W. Wren. She bought it immediately, even though money was tight. On the inside flap, he had dedicated it “to those who listen carefully.”

She closed the book with a quiet smile. She never wrote to him, and he never reached out. But when she taught her own students years later, she found herself quoting him—never by name, but with the same reverence, the same quiet care.

Some stories are not about grand declarations. Some are simply the sound of distant bells, ringing softly through the corridors of memory.