V
THE PIPE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
COBWEBS
I
The mats were drawn at the windows and the lamp was lighted in their “parlour.” It was a night of warm nervous wind, and, though the pounding of the surf produced a roar which neither rose nor fell, the jungle, stirred by shifting gusts, seemed full of nocturnal caprice, and sounded a broken note of tempo rubato—as so often it did, only to make the dreamy stillness of the following dawn more poignant.
It was a quiet evening at home. King had been enjoying a glass of after-dinner brandy, and, as was apt to be the case at such times, the exuberance of his mood brought a soft shine to Stella’s eyes. Just faintly of late it had been necessary to brush aside vexing little cobwebs that seemed, in spite of her, weaving question and debate about the edges of her romance.... But tonight she saw how unfounded were any quavers she might entertain—the kiss that had brought a frown—Tsuda’s sombre disclosures.... No, she would never let her mind drift into a web of ephemeral doubts again; she was done with morbid “premonitions” for ever—they were intruders.
Every marriage, she reasoned, must call for certain adjustments—concessions, if one preferred phrasing it that way. Whenever her husband seemed brusque or abstracted, inclined to forgetfulness of her, she would remind herself that he had a new business on his hands. How foolish to grope, ever; to feel perturbed, unequipped! And she would only laugh when a curious phrase of his came back to her: “Just imagine what it would have been like if I had come here alone...!” An oddly impersonal note it was, which had given her a jolt; though now she told herself it was because she had been in a mood of hyper-sensitiveness. Without realizing it, she softly laughed aloud, her thoughts playing in rumination.
“Tell us the joke, peaches!” he suggested in his bluff, magnetic way.