In contact with her stubborn folly his repentance and kindly resolutions were forgotten; he cut short her bid for sympathy with a curt “Get along with you,” caught her by the arm and started her with a push along the road—too angry to notice that, for the first time, he had handled her with actual violence. Then, bending his head to the sweep of the rain, he strode on, leaving her to follow as she would.
Perhaps her leg really pained her, perhaps she judged it best to keep her distance from his wrath; at any rate she was a hundred yards or more behind him when he reached the camp and, stirring the ashes that should have been a fire, found only a flicker alive. He cursed Ada’s idiocy between his chattering teeth as he set to work to rekindle the fire; his hands shaking, half from anger, half from cold, as he gathered the fuel together. When, after a long interval of coaxing and cursing, the flame quivered up into the twilight, it showed him Ada sitting humped at the entrance to their shelter; and at sight of her, inert and watching him—watching him!—his wrath flared sudden and furious.
“Have you filled the cookpot?” he asked, standing over her. “No? … Then what were you doing—sitting there staring while I worked?”
She began to whimper, “You’re crool to me!”—and repeated her parrot-like burden of futile suspicion and grievance; that she knew he wanted to get her out of the way so as he could leave her, and she couldn’t be left alone for the night! He had a sense of being smothered by her foolish, invertebrate persistence, and as he caught her by the shoulders he trembled and sputtered with rage.
“God in Heaven, what’s the good of talking to you? If you take me for a liar, you take me—that’s all. Do you think I care a curse for your opinion? … But one thing’s certain—you’ll do what I tell you, and you’ll work. Work, do you hear?—not sit in a lump and idle and stare while I wait on you! Learn to use your silly hands, not expect me to light the fire and feed you. And you’ll obey, I tell you—you’ll do what you’re told. If not—I’ll teach you. …”
He was wearied, thwarted, wet through and unfed since the morning; baulked of fire and a meal by the folly that had irked him for days; a man living primitively, in contact with nature and brought face to face with the workings of the law of the strongest. It chanced that she had lumped herself down by the bundle of osier-rods he had laid together for his basket-making; so that when he gripped her by the nape of the neck a weapon lay ready to his hand. He used it effectively, while she wriggled, plunged and howled; there was nothing of the Spartan in her temperament, and each swooping stroke produced a yell. He counted a dozen and then dropped her, leaving her to rub and bemoan her smarts while he filled the cookpot at the stream.
When he came back with the cookpot filled, her noisy blubbering had died into gulps and snuffles. The heat of his anger was likewise over, having worked itself off by the mere act of chastisement, and with its cooling he was conscious of a certain embarrassment. If he did not repent he was at least uneasy—not sure how to treat her and speak to her—and he covered his uneasiness, as best he might, by a busy scraping and cleaning of fish and a noisy snapping of firewood. … A wiser woman might have guessed his embarrassment from his bearing and movements and known how to wrest an advantage by transforming it into remorse; Ada, sitting huddled and smarting on her moss-bed, found no more effective protest against ill-treatment than a series of unbecoming sniffs. With every silent moment his position grew stronger, hers weaker; unconsciously he sensed her acquiescence in the new and brutal relation, and when—over his shoulder—he bade her “Come along, if you want any supper,” he knew, without looking, that she would come at his word, take the food that he gave her and eat.
They discussed the subject once and very briefly—at the latter end of a meal consumed in silence. A full stomach gives courage and confidence; and Ada, having supped and been heartened, tried a sulky “You’ve been very crool to me.”
In answer, she was told, “You deserved it.”
After this unpromising beginning it took her two or three minutes to decide on her next observation.
“I believe,” she quavered tearfully, “you’ve taken the skin off my back.”
“Nonsense!” he said curtly. Which was true.
The episode marked his acceptance of a new standard, his definite abandonment of the code of civilization in dealings between woman and man. With another wife than Ada the lapse into primitive relations would have been less swift and certainly far less complete; she was so plainly his mental inferior, so plainly amenable to the argument of force and no other, that she facilitated his conversion to the barbaric doctrine of marriage. And his conversion was the more thorough and lasting from the success of his uncivilized methods of ruling a household; where reasoning and kindliness had failed of their purpose, the sting of the rod had worked wonders. … Ada sulked through the evening and sniffed herself to sleep; but in the morning, when he woke, she had filled the cookpot and was busied at the breakfast fire.
They had adapted themselves to their environment, the environment of primitive humanity. That
