The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  George was like a walrus, tusks and all. Bill was a bleary-eyed, lank blonde, his sparse long hair and moustache still tawny as youth could desire for all his years.

  The two were preparing their evening meal when Messenger and Margaret rode up to their whare. George was sitting on an upturned bucket outside the door peeling potatoes, and they could hear the sound of frying from within. The old man waved his knife at them and loudly called: “Good day! Good day!” before they stopped. He eyed the girl admiringly, and small wonder, for she was indeed good to look upon that day. Bill came to the door and greeted them loudly.

  Messenger drew rein and asked: “How’s things, George? Business good?”

  The old fellow picked up a potato and said: “Well, yes. Them rabbits is just about as plentiful now as they were when we started in on ‘em. Have a look at the fences.”

  “I have been doing so. They’re the devils to breed, ay? Think I should put some more men on?”

  “Aw, well, please yerself. You’d need a hundred men to get rid of ‘em properly. No worry. We can’t do much. Make a whackin’ cheque on ‘em this year. Prices are sky high.”

  Messenger ran his eye along the fences surrounding the whare. Row upon row of them covered entirely with drying skins—thousands of skins. “A pretty cheque, all right,” he muttered, “and it will all go into the pubs. Bad business. I could have half a dozen families making money out of it.”

  “Get off and have a look in the shed,” invited Bill, returning from a visit to the fireplace.

  Both dismounted, and George, handing his pot of peeled potatoes to Bill, conducted them to the shed behind the whare and showed them bale after bale of dried skins packed ready for market. “Will send them to Dunedin next week,” he remarked.

  “Do you get many white skins?” asked Barry.

  “Very few. We have about twenty pure white out of the lot. Big money in the white ‘uns.”

  “Yes. Let me have all the white ones you get, will you? I want them for a rug for Miss Errol here.”

  “Sure thing. Yer weddin’-day termorrer, Barry, I hear. Shearin’ starts, too.”

  “Yes,” said Barry hastily. “The men arrived at the Chief’s to-day. We’ll get on, ay, Margaret?”

  George grinned sheepishly. “S’pose yer wouldn’t have a drink with us, seein’ as it’s yer weddin’-day termorrer?”

  “Why, certainly, old chap. You and Bill are two of my oldest friends. You’ll both be up at the house to-morrow. They’ll be having a hangi in the evening, I understand.”

  “You bet. It’s a pity yer ol’ Dad— But come inside. It’s rough and dirty, Miss, but—”

  “Nonsense!” said Margaret, smiling at him. Then she added impulsively: “Everything is lovely to me to-day, old man. I’m so happy.”

  Messenger looked at her adoringly.

  “Ah! Yer young, miss. Young, and as pretty as a picture. Barry here’s lucky. A lucky man.”

  They all entered the whare. Bill dusted a stool for Margaret to sit on while George brought forth a bottle of whiskey. “I’m sorry we ain’t got any wine for the Lass,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t drink wine, either, thank you,” said Margaret hastily. “But I will have a cup of tea with you. You make tea, don’t you?”

  The two old chaps were delighted. In the end the four sat down to a meal together. A meal of fried steak tough as leather, with boiled potatoes, served on tin plates. The tea was drunk out of enamel mugs, but Margaret vowed it was delicious. She grew excited and very talkative. Messenger could eat nothing for love of her, and the two old fogies hung on her every word. But by and by she remembered that Bill was a noted story-teller, so she insisted that he tell her a funny story. After a great deal of persuasion and hesitation he began: “Well, I remember something that was funny enough when yer think of it, something that happened ter me when I first came to the English countries. (Bill was a Swede.) It was in Sydney one night. I was walkin’ up George Street when I sees some eggs in a eatin’-house winder. Well, by an’ by, after walkin’ round town fer a while, I feels hungry, and decides ter go back ter that eatin’-house an’ have some of those eggs. So back I goes, but when I gets there I finds that the eggs had been taken outa the winder. Course I couldn’t speak much English in those days—hardly any, in fact. But by that time I wanted those eggs pretty bad, so in I goes an’ tries ter explain to the old lady behind the counter what I wanted ter eat. But she couldn’t cotton on at all. I made the shape of the eggs with my fingers, but still she couldn’t tell, and she began ter get ratty. So, bein’ kinda desperate like, I points ter the behind part of me (beg pardon, Miss) with my hand and walks round the shop callin’: ‘Cack, cack, cack’! just like that, and— What d’ye think the old fool did? She ran out and got a policeman and’ ran me in for a nut.”

  Margaret held her sides and laughed till the tears ran down her face. Afterwards she washed up the “crockery,” and then she and Messenger mounted their horses again and left the rabbitters’ whare to its usual inmates.

  “They will be wondering where on earth we have got to,” she said as they came out on the main road a mile from home.

  “Let them wonder,” he answered, putting a hand upon her reins. “It’s been such a wonderful day, Margaret. Let’s ride down to the river.”

  She looked at him silently for a long while, and then suddenly turned her horse’s head round towards the river road and set off at a hand-gallop. He followed her, and after a half-hour’s riding they came to the banks of a small river. Weeping willows lined the banks; thick lush grasses spread themselves beneath the trees.

  Messenger lifted her from the saddle. “I can’t put you down,” he whispered. “We’ll stay here till dark, ay? Margaret, Margaret, you are my wife—my wife! I shall love you for ever. I know it. Say you will love me so long as we both shall live.”

  The girl in his arms lay very still. She knew that for the man those were moments that come but seldom in a lifetime. She felt, too, that that day had meant more to the man than it had to her. She felt the passion, the ardour of possession, pulsating through him, but she knew that he was not dominated by it. She sensed that the dominating factor in him then was, and all day had been, a vast solemnity born of their union.

  She lay very still fathoming the man. There must have been more in this marriage of theirs to the man than to her. She knew that it had made no difference in her regard for him. It had neither strengthened it nor weakened it. She had loved him just as much, just as tenderly, last night as this.

  But in his regard for her— She knew—somehow she knew—that it had made an incalculable difference. Was this usual? Was it right and natural? A little pain for her, a sundering, a falling away, as it were, of something essential from her; a sense of a sacred privacy invaded, though the invasion had been willingly allowed and understood because of Love’s sanction, and then—a relief. Nothing added, as yet, to her love for him. No transcendental uplift of thought in regard to their changed relations had resulted from the act of consummation such as had happened with the heroines of the popular novels she had read. She felt no different from last evening.

  But Messenger!— No pain for him, no sundering or falling away of any part of the fabric of his being. She had seen and felt. That union, that embrace so almost negligible of results for her, had given to him a supreme ecstasy; had sublimated his reverence and love for her to the extent of positively sealing him in a world occupied by her alone. The union to him had been everything; it had brought to him complete satisfaction, it had meant to him the apogee of earthly joys and felicity.

  Man, in that union, had come into his own. Woman still but lay prepared, waiting for the awakening. He had taken from her utterly, but in taking he had not given. He had but prepared.

  But this he did not know, so he held his wife in his arms and asked for an assurance of her love “so long as we both shall live.” And her young-wise head, putting two and two together, sensed well enough the state of things. She th
ought: “If I had felt as he did then I should feel as he does now. He doesn’t understand. I can see that the physical relation itself means nothing, because I have experienced the physical relation and I don’t feel any different. It is the responsive element that draws together. When I have derived from a man’s embrace what he has got from mine to-day, I shall feel for the man what he feels for me now.”

  She gave him the assurance he craved. Why not? Subtleties of sex were beyond her. She realised what had happened and saw what could be, but her yet unawakened womanhood being naturally unsensitive to her love’s incompleteness, being filled with happiness and contentment with things as they were, she just naturally answered him: “I shall love you as long as we both shall live.”

  She tried to meet his mood. She tried to feel solemn and weighted with the importance of the day as he did. She was conscious all the time of a “littleness” of attitude towards this event which must surely be the greatest event in a woman’s life—her marriage. Was he putting her to shame? Her common sense told her not. More likely the popular ideas of marriage were humbug. After all, a wedding was a wedding, not a funeral. It seemed to her that weddings should be gay and jolly, not solemn. Lying in the thick lush grasses which smelled of the river she spoke hesitatingly of her thoughts: “You feel very solemn about this marriage of ours, Barry, don’t you? I don’t. You know, I only feel happy.”

  He held her tightly to him. “That is how I would have it. So help me, God. Girl, after to-day I would willingly die for you. I never dreamed anything so wonderful as you existed.”

  Margaret was silenced. Certainly this man had that day plumbed depths undreamt of by her. His love must be a terrible thing. It was awesome.

  CHAPTER VII

  Margaret and Messenger are married. The girl, so splendid in her gracious youth, is settling into her rightful place in the big house, still rather playing at keeping house, of course, and still a little in awe of her position as Mrs. Curdy’s mistress, but settling down nevertheless.

  The man is trying hard to use himself to the luxury of marriage in order that he might really, not only superficially, come back to earth and pick up again the ordinary routine of station work. This work had become a habit to which he now instinctively clung as the surest means of keeping his mental balance sufficiently to preserve appearances among his men. To be sure his solemnity had departed. To be sure his cup of happiness was brimming over, and, boy that he was for all his “solidity,” he found it difficult not to blazon the truth abroad. But shyness demanded of him suppression of naked feeling before his world. The girl ran about disseminating the sunshine of her happiness to all and sundry, thrusting it under everybody’s nose like a child with a new toy, but in this very fact was the shallowness of her love manifested. The man’s emotions were too deep, were to him too sacred, to be held up for public apprehension. Idling, the presence of his neighbour filled him with self-consciousness; working, he could at least assume semblance of his old self. He wished now that a honeymoon away from the station had been chosen.

  There were noteworthy and significant episodes in their life together during the next ten years, and the maturing and deepening of this girl’s body, mind and soul. No child, no inexperienced fledgling was she when her time of trial came upon her and brought her to the dust in the shambles of man-made laws. Life had ploughed deep in the fertile soil of her exuberant self. She was ready and fit as woman could be to meet the grim arbitraments of an inexorable fate.

  But those were the first weeks of her married life.

  Shearing time. Fine weather. The homestead in an uproar night and day with the frenzied blatting of animals. The pens around the sheds seething masses of grey backs from which rose clouds of mingled dust and breathings. Margaret sitting interminably upon the railings watching, absorbed, amazed, almost terrified by the spectacle. The noise of the dogs and the shouting of the “sheepos,” hardly distinguishable, the undulating buzz of the clipping machines, the singing of the Maoris on the boards, interspersed with raucous yells at a careless “Picker-up,” and overtopping all, the ceaseless, maddening “bah-h-h” of desperate mothers and lost little ones, all conspired to dazzle her and engulf her more firmly in her world of dreams. As a spectator sitting on a railing fence she saw only romance there. Not being one of the piece, she saw the work of the world through the eyes of the impractical visionary. Through the arduous labour of Messenger and his shepherds upon the ranges in the dread “lambing” season, through the patient mustering from far and near of countless animals, out of the grimy sweat and hurry of those brown men and women in the sheds, the choking dust of the yards, the noises and terrors and hurts of the animals, emerged the frock adorning her slothful little person. “This is Industry!” she exclaimed ecstatically to Messenger. “How wonderful it is!”

  “Yes, from your point of view I suppose it is,” he answered in his quiet, thoughtful way. “Sitting on the fence watching Industry, knowing that the product of it is going into one’s pocket, is doubtless conducive to a very pleasant frame of mind. Taking a part in Industry is a different matter. The ‘sheepo’ there, yelping as like a dog as possible, probably doesn’t see anything wonderful in his share towards your point of view. Neither does the shearer, breaking his back all day over the clippers for twenty-five shillings a hundred; and I should really like to hear the point of view of the sheep. Come into the sheds and watch awhile.”

  Margaret climbed off the fence, crestfallen. “Well, why don’t you pay the men more?” she asked vigorously, as she followed him into the long shed.

  “Aye? Oh, I don’t know. The Arbitration Court fixes a uniform rate of pay for the whole country and we pay it. If the men weren’t satisfied they would demand more.”

  “How many sheep does a man shear in a day?”

  “About two hundred and fifty—a good man. So you see that they make quite a cheque out of it.”

  “Yes, but for how long? You told me that the wool cut only lasted a month.”

  “Yes, here. But these men will go on to another place. They will work at different stations for a period covering several months, then live on their cheque through the winter. Some of the shearers, the white men, go back and forth from Australia to New Zealand, doing no other work than shearing. They are well off compared with the other country workers. But of course a man couldn’t work at the shearer’s high speed continually. He would knock up in no time. You come and watch them.”

  “Wait a bit.” Margaret was getting a new impression. She must know all about anything that took her interest. “One thing at a time. Isn’t it a job to talk in this frightful din? Suppose the men did demand more wages: would the sheep-owners pay it just for the asking?”

  Messenger laughed, amused, though proud at her interest in such a prosaic subject, then answered her soberly enough.

  Her chief fascination for the man lay in her intelligence. He could not use himself as yet to the combination of beauty and intelligence she presented. Fancy a lovely girl of seventeen being interested in such dry-as-dust subjects as that of wages! Other pretty girls he knew would have stared blankly at their mention.

  Messenger, never having wanted for anything himself, had no real conception of his wife’s poverty-stricken upbringing. Margaret had learned a lot about wages, and learned in a hard school. She knew what an expert financier her mother had necessarily been. She had not yet been long enough on the fair side of the fence to forget her experience on the other.

  Messenger hated to think that she had ever wanted for anything. He told her on their marriage day that as soon as the cheque for the wool cut came in he would insist on settling her people comfortably.

  “Well, no, probably not for the asking. If they could get a rise just for the asking there would be no limit to their demands. There used to be a lot of trouble with the shearers before the Arbitration Court was set up. Sectional strikes were always occurring all over the country, but now the men are organised into a union and work under a Dominion award,
and we have practically no bother with them. They take their grievances to the Court and abide by its decision.”

  “The Court must always give them what they want then. I don’t see the difference.”

  “No, no. Hardly ever. The men have one representative on the Court; we have one, and a judge of the Supreme Court has the casting vote. Naturally, being of our class, he votes with us. Judge —— stayed with my father two years ago, and I remember the discussion they had on the subject. It doesn’t seem fair to me. Of course it isn’t—but what can a fellow do? Dad was hard as nails with his men, though he worked as hard, or harder, than any of them himself.”

  “But I don’t understand. You say the men do not get what they want from the Court, and yet they are satisfied?”

  “Perhaps I should not have said satisfied. They are quiet. They accept the ruling of the Court, or their officials accept it for them. I suppose the operations of the Court have a fair appearance to them. You see, before they were organised into one big shearers’ union, each station looked after itself. Each group of men knew its own grievances, and dealt with them on the spot. Therefore, as the cut was in process and a strike might spell disaster to the owner, they usually won out. But with the union— The men report their grievances to their travelling representatives, and the union officials deal with them. These union officials are our strongest bulwarks. The men don’t know. They pay their union dues. I know of several cases— Oh, the whole affair is rotten! By the time the men’s grievances get an airing the cut is over and the men scattered. I don’t see anything else for it. No so long as union officials can be bought. Suits us all right. Perhaps experience will teach the men the uselessness of their union. I think they would be much better off without organisation.”

  Shrewd Margaret put her finger on the vital spot. “Are there plenty of shearers available always?”