Her fury only doubled. Gone, vanished like the snows of long ago, was her painted idyll of domestic bliss.
“Cruel?” she said. “He’s never been anything but cruel. I’m black and blue with his atrocities.”
Very gently he tried to tell her that he did not believe it. “We must not exaggerate,” he said.
“Exaggerate!” she blazed. “Won’t you believe me till you see it? I’ll go upstairs and strip. Come when I call.”
He soothed her down at that, seeing that she was capable of doing herself some signal injury to call in evidence.
“Well, then,” she said, “I want my divorce: get me a divorce.” That was her simple demand of the priest who married her: it was why Peter took, unrepentantly, as much snuff in a night as he commonly took in a week, and why, with replenished stock, he continued next day to take snuff with a lavish hand.
It irritated Ada, though she had always associated Peter with a snuff-box, and the untidiness of the habit could not offend her, who was never offended by dirt, as any mechanical movement in another will irritate one whose nerves are ill-controlled. They had talked themselves to a standstill, and sat in moody silence, broken only by the deplorable sound of taking snuff.
She looked viciously at him. “If you do that again, I shall leave the room,” she said.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” he said, although, really, it was a pleasant threat; but when he did it again, it was through pure absent-mindedness, and he was terribly distressed at his selfishness when Ada flung out of the room. He had the feelings of a child put in a corner as a punishment, and to relieve them he took snuff again. She heard him from the stair, and heard him immediately afterwards poking the fire; and she thought the loathsome self-absorption of men and their utter callousness to the anguish of sensitive women were proved beyond the possibility of doubt. She threw herself on the bed in her old room, alone in a friendless world.... The bed had a warm eiderdown.
Peter poked the fire because it needed poking. It often did. The grate was one of those labour-making contrivances which must be periodically cleared of ash if the fire is to burn at all, and it was rarely cleared. The woman who “did for” Peter, did for him badly, and he was at the age when a man needs artificial warmth: a gaunt, shrunk figure as neglected as his house. Small wonder that, apart from his attachment to St. Mary’s, he was still a curate. They had considered him for the living when his vicar moved some years ago, they had considered the little circle of rich parishioners who made an oasis of civilization in that savage place, and they had decided that Peter lacked the social graces. They had seen his mittens, his unfinished coat... they had seen him eat an orange: and he remained a curate.