Glasses

“Why did you never write to me of your marriage?”

He smiled uncomfortably, showing his long yellow teeth and something more.  “I don’t know—the whole thing gave me such a tremendous lot to do.”

This was the first dishonest speech I had heard him make: he really hadn’t written because an idea that I would think him a still bigger fool than before.  I didn’t insist, but I tried there in the lobby, so far as a pressure of his hand could serve me, to give him a notion of what I thought him.  “I can’t at any rate make out,” I said, “why I didn’t hear from Mrs. Meldrum.”

“She didn’t write to you?”

“Never a word.  What has become of her?”

“I think she’s at Folkestone,” Dawling returned; “but I’m sorry to say that practically she has ceased to see us.”

“You haven’t quarrelled with her?”

“How could we?  Think of all we owe her.  At the time of our marriage, and for months before, she did everything for us: I don’t know how we should have managed without her.  But since then she has never been near us and has given us rather markedly little encouragement to keep up relations with her.”

I was struck with this, though of course I admit I am struck with all sorts of things.  “Well,” I said after a moment, “even if I could imagine a reason for that attitude it wouldn’t explain why she shouldn’t have taken account of my natural interest.”

“Just so.”  Dawling’s face was a windowless wall.  He could contribute nothing to the mystery and, quitting him, I carried it away.  It was not till I went down to ace Mrs. Meldrum that was really dispelled.  She didn’t want to hear of them or to talk of them, not a bit, and it was just in the same spirit that she hadn’t wanted to write of them.  She had done everything in the world for them, but now, thank heaven, the hard business was over.  After I had taken this in, which I was quick to do, we quite avoided the subject.  She simply couldn’t bear it.