The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  It was the hand of Man. She felt it. Such terrible rage assailed her that she was blind herself. It was with difficulty that she regained her seat on horseback. Once there she lashed at her horse with her whip, again and again, until it literally flew along the highroad. To get home! To Barry! Succour for the dog and vengeance on the perpetrator of the atrocity. She flung off her horse at her front door and rushed indoors, calling loudly for him as she ran.

  Mrs. Curdy came hurrying from kitchenwards. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”

  “Barry! I want Barry!”

  “He’s not home yet. What’s the matter?”

  Margaret clutched at the wall for support. “Not home!” she gasped, then turned and flew to the men’s quarters.

  Potts, the gentle giant, was there, and Bill and Bob McClure, talking to the cook. Potts was eating a slice of bread and treacle, also, when Margaret rushed in among them. They all started up. She had difficulty in speaking. She stood among them panting, her trembling hands pressed upon her breast, trying to compose herself enough to speak.

  “Why, God bless me soul, Missis! What’s the matter?” asked the cook.

  She fixed on Potts. She knew from Barry what manner of man he was. “Potts!” she gasped. “There’s a dog down in the near home paddock, between the copse of birch and the road. It has been tortured. Go and shoot it, Potts, go and shoot it at once! Take my horse and gallop. Then come back to the house and tell my husband what you saw.” She collapsed. She took hold of Potts’ arm and began to sob chokingly. “Oh, Potts! It has been tortured. Hurry!”

  “Sure, Missis,” he said quietly, and put an arm around her. “Come into the house and I’ll hurry away. You are upset.”

  “Yes,” she said, and then quietly fainted away.

  The big man lifted her and carried her quickly into the house, where Mrs. Curdy and Maire agitatedly attended to her.

  The other three men looked at each other significantly. The cook wiped his knife on his apron and after a while remarked casually: “The ‘Prince,’ I suppose, as usual. The Boss’ll be after his scalp this time.”

  “Huh,” mumbled Bill McClure uneasily.

  The cook began to whistle to show his unconcern; Bob picked up Potts’ half-eaten slice of bread and treacle and ate it absent-mindedly.

  Messenger and Tutaki clattered into the yard amid the yelping of their dogs and the three sauntered out to them. Barry made a rush for the bathroom, eager, as usual, for the company of his wife; but before he reached it Mrs. Curdy called him from the front verandah.

  A quantity of flowering shrubs separated the yard from the house and lawns, and through these he pushed his way. “What is it?” he asked impatiently. “I’m not washed yet!”

  “Your wife wants to see you at once.” Mrs. Curdy stepped close to him. “She is badly upset, Mr. Messenger. She is hysterical.”

  “Where is she?” He was at the door in a trice.

  “In her room.”

  He took the stairs three at a time. Margaret heard him coming and sat up on the bed. Maire sat on the window-seat much bewildered at all this to-do over a cur. She knew a thing or two about the way sheep-dogs were treated.

  “What is it, Love? What has upset you?” He had his arms around her.

  She told him what she had seen, hysterically, with bursts of weeping. His face took on a curious pallor as he listened and his eyes grew hard and cold. He held her tightly to him.

  “You’ll find out who did it, Barry—someone must know whose dog it is—and get him punished?”

  He did not answer. Just held her closer. She tore herself away from him. “If you don’t I’ll—I’ll leave you! Won’t you? If you don’t you will be as bad as the one that did it.”

  He took her hands again and held them tightly. “You won’t need to leave me,” he said quietly. “I promise you the man shall be punished. Will you try to compose yourself while I go and see about it. Remember all this may affect the little one, Margaret.”

  “I’ll try, Barry. Forgive me for what I said. But this place is so horrible. Mrs. Roderick shoots cats for a hobby, and some—some beast about the place tortures dogs.”

  “I must go now, Margaret, and see which man comes in without a dog. Lie still, dear; I’ll return as soon as possible. You stay with her, Maire.”

  He hurried out into the yard again. Potts had just returned. All the shepherds except Hortry and little Tuhi were there, standing in a group around Potts. When Messenger appeared they dispersed unconcernedly. “Potts, come here,” called Barry.

  Potts walked over to him. “Was it very bad?”

  “Rotten!” Potts gave a lurid account of the dog’s condition.

  “Whose dog was it?”

  The big fellow turned half away from the other and gazed thoughtfully on the ground. Messenger added hastily: “Never mind, Potts; I can guess, anyhow.”

  “Well, I’d rather not have a say-so about it, Barry, for sure. I’d sooner smash the swine up myself than peach on him. You can go down and have a look at the dog yourself. I’ll go down after tea and bury it.” The tea-gong sounded as he spoke.

  “Right you are. I’ll jump on my horse. Won’t take ten minutes.” Which he did.

  Hortry and Tuhi came in while he was away, going, of course, at once to the bathroom. Messenger was back before Hortry emerged from there. He put his head in at the dining-room door and asked: “Is Hortry in yet?”

  “Yes,” someone said gruffly. “He’s bathing.”

  So Barry stepped inside, his riding-whip in his hand, and sat down and waited. The men noisily ate their meal. Tuhi came first, then Hortry whistling cheerily. His “boss” rose as he entered. Hortry never even glanced at him, just drew a chair back and sat down at table. He did it gracefully, as a cultured woman would have. The sight crystallised Messenger’s rage. Well, he wouldn’t be so graceful after he had finished with him.

  “Where is your dog ‘Nip,’ Hortry?” he asked, in a voice that trembled with suppressed rage.

  Hortry did not look up even then. He arrested his eating for a few seconds, obviously considering, then answered: “I am not accountable to you for my dogs, Messenger. They are my property.”

  “You are going to be accountable to me for this one. You maimed it and left it living down at the birch copse to-day, didn’t you?”

  The “Prince” looked up at him then, calculatingly.

  Messenger was clothed in his usual riding pants and drill shirt open in front enough to expose his massive chest. His sleeves were rolled up almost to the shoulders, baring his swelling muscles. All present knew the strength in those arms and shoulders. Time and again they had seen it. Hortry gave a little shiver. He glanced towards the door, then asked abruptly: “What’s biting you? First I heard that a boss controlled the private actions of his men.”

  “I told you in this room in front of these men that if any act of deliberate cruelty were committed on this station again, I should deal with the offender as a man, not as a boss. Get up and take your medicine, you cur! I can’t gouge your eyes out as you did the dog’s, but I’ll beat you to a pulp, and then throw you out on the road. Get up!”

  Hortry made a leap for the door, but Barry was too quick for him. He caught him by the hair, which was fortunately long, and almost lifted him by it out into the yard.

  At least, Hortry took it well. He did not cry out, though he was unable to rise from the ground when the enraged man had finished with him and thrown him aside.

  Messenger then trembled like a leaf. He looked down on the man and felt slightly ashamed; so he picked him up, and, carrying him into his room, threw him upon his bunk. “When you’re fit, come for your pay-sheet,” he said gruffly, and then went for his belated bath.

  For sure Margaret’s unhappiness did not last for long. The sunshine of her youth and love soon melted the snow of despond in her heart, but of course—such episodes leave a mark. A little she was wakened from her world of dreams. Sin and shame had dwelt in this world
as goblins of fearsome shape, now they began to assume aspect of vague reality. Mrs. Roderick’s words having awakened in her disquietude, she consulted a doctor about her condition for the first time. He cheerily assured her that she need have no fear for any ill effects resulting to the child from her agitation, but, nevertheless, when the child came, she and Barry had sense enough—

  CHAPTER IX

  For the child, a boy, proved, as it left its birthday weeks and months behind it, to be extremely delicate and nervous. It was beautiful (as indeed were all their children), and quite big, but preternaturally alert, fitful, startled to infantile hysteria by slight noises.

  Margaret’s youth was a blessing to her then. Where the mature woman would have fretted and pined, she hoped and builded on the future. Messenger secretly worried a lot. It was a sorrow to him that his first-born was not everything a child could or should be. Together he and Margaret agreed that the trouble had resulted from her agitation. Neither was silly about the matter. They did not rush to the doctor on every conceivable pretext; they did not pamper the child or over-indulge it to any extent. Extraordinarily commonsensible they were, considering their youth; but it is the prerogative of youth nowadays to be commonsensible, “scientific.”

  Margaret’s exuberant personality began to bloom like an exotic flower under the stimulus of motherhood. She “moved out” in all directions. And her world of dreams crashed to pieces about her feet. To the world at large she was the same girl, with but an added charm. Even Barry had no idea of the dream-world ruins that lay about her, for Barry had not known of the dream-world’s existence. Herself only became aware of it when its ruins toppled about her. Sometimes she would ruminate upon the matter; she would wonder whether all girls lived in dreamland until the crushing actuality of the moving world around them was forced upon them by pain. The pain had done it. She saw that only pain could have done it. Joy, happiness, embedded her more firmly in it. Only great pain or sorrow could have shaken her from her nest among the clouds down to earth.

  She did not become immersed in a sea of domesticity because of the babe. She came properly to life and dealt most practically with the problems that necessarily surround the nursery. She looked after her baby herself entirely—she and Barry, that is to say; but the fabric of her make-up was too extraordinary to permit of complete absorption in any one direction. Unconsciously she assumed the proper attitude towards parenthood; saw it in its right relation to all other things. The bringing forth of young she saw as awesome and wondrous, right enough; but since Nature in this made man its puppet, at one with the lowly worm, why regard it as the supreme achievement and worship at its shrine to the exclusion of all other interests?—as the woman of her world almost invariably did.

  Unconsciously, she assumed this proper attitude towards her parenthood. She did not drag her thoughts away from the nursery; they wandered freely. She knew the tremulous delights and sweet miseries of motherhood in common with all natural women; she wove dreams of future companionship the while her fingers lovingly fashioned tiny garments; perhaps her rare beauty of mind and soul lent her added joy, above the general, in the communion of mother and babe; but yet her thoughts played freely upon other phenomena in the world around her. Her dreamland dissipated, she began to analyse critically (charitably, of course) everything and everybody, herself included. Her old habit of fibbing harmlessly about trifles she discarded as being unworthy of a grown-up person.

  She struck up a real friendship with Jimmy Tutaki. His presence about her just rounded off her world sufficiently to prevent the quiet station life from irking her. He did her the world of good from the viewpoint of real development. Uncovering his own versatility, he showed her the meagreness of her own attainments so that she hungered.

  Seldom could she hold her own in argument with him, and Margaret loved argumentation; so she contracted a habit of close thinking. “Less talk and more thought,” she told Barry one Monday night, would be her motto for the future.

  Winter again, this night. They were in the big dining-room before the blazing fire as usual. Mrs. Curdy, Maire, and another brown girl called Rata, were also there. Messenger sprawled on a lounge opposite his wife, who had little Harry lying on her knee revelling in the comfort of undress in the warmth. Fat little legs pawed the air continually; little hands wavered uncertainly about, and Messenger’s eyes never left the child except to rest on its mother. He smoked his pipe, replete with content. There at any rate was domesticity personified. He smiled tolerantly as his wife propounded her future motto.

  After Tutaki’s Sunday companionship she invariably counted her new impressions over to her husband. He liked it. This girl never wearied him. Always a newness, a freshness, about her. He understood exactly what was going on. He understood that a wealth of beauty lay in the virgin soul of her, waiting to be revealed by experience, and that Tutaki was supplying an actual need. He realised that his quiet self alone could not meet the whole of her demands on life. It was really extraordinary that he had formed so correct an estimate of her nature, and perhaps more extraordinary still that he easily disciplined himself to a proper regard for it. The two had not been married long enough nor were they old enough nor experienced enough to have reached that stage of perfect intimacy which comes only through profoundest understanding and the sharing of great sorrows and joys; but still the privacies of married life together were theirs, and Barry might cheerfully sit by and see his wife’s attention focussed on his friend all day in diverse argument and talk, for he knew of the secret hours when she lay close to his heart and whispered, and of the family life when, as to-night, her impressions and gleanings from without would be paraded before him for his inspection and criticism. And paraded in the loving, haphazard way of privilege. She had such a delightful way of expressing herself when she was really in earnest. Her face, which, though thinner since the babe came, had gained in loveliness, always took on a rosy flush when she talked earnestly in her animated, gesticulating way. And her great eyes would light up brilliantly.

  She had been sitting silent, except for random endearments addressed to the babe, for some time this night before she formulated her motto and discovered it to Barry. He smiled tolerantly, and after a while remarked encouragingly, “Yes?”

  “Yes. There is no doubt that I have been in the habit of talking altogether too much and of thinking too little. I suppose you arrived at that conclusion long ago?” She glanced at him shrewdly. She had few illusions about him either. His quietness in no way hid from her the pure gold of his opinions nor the weight of his common sense. Indeed they seemed perfectly mated. Fate is a scurvy trickster.

  “Well, I don’t know. You talk a lot. You’re only a kid. Won’t do you any harm to think more, of course. Me, either.”

  “You! Silly! You’re my antithesis. You talk too little and think too much. That is, if you are thinking when you are silent.” She bent her head and rubbed her cheek on the child’s pink legs. “Is your Dad a really and truly wise man or only a conundrum, darlin’?” she purred, then asked Barry seriously: “Is our friend really wise, Barry, or just full of knowledge? I can’t make him out. He’s so airy, so light and inconsequential, and yet so truly extraordinary.”

  “I’ve always taken him pretty much for granted, as a matter of fact. It is his memory, I suppose. He may not have read so much more than you have (in fact, I don’t think he has read as much), but he has remembered what he has read; his impressions are lasting. You don’t even retain your impressions. Jimmy only seems inconsequential. Really he is as steadfast as a rock.”

  “Yes?” She began to robe the child in his night clothes. “You ought to know him. He is the most interesting man I’ve ever met. Darlin’, does it love its mother then? Look, Barry, isn’t he beautiful? I’m sure he will grow strong as a horse.”

  And Barry, quite undismayed by her opinion of his friend, lazily slipped off the lounge and took his stand beside her to admire the babe.

  CHAPTER X

  T
he passing of another two years. The station in full prosperity and the personnel of the household unchanged except for the advent of another little stranger, a girl this time.

  Little Harry had not grown strong, to his parents’ sorrow. He was a strange little soul, full of fanciful notions unbefitting his tender age of three years. His heart proved to be affected with valvular trouble. He was most passionately devoted to his mother, who fully reciprocated his affection.

  At this time another extraordinary thing occurred at the station which left a really deep impression on Margaret’s mind. She had, during the intervening period, been throwing off her youth, and with it, inevitably, her mental flirtatiousness. During the first months of her married life she had made another, rather peculiar, friendship with the two rabbit-catchers, Old Bill and George. While Barry worked she had had much time at her disposal, and had spent a great deal of it on fine days in riding wherever her fancy took her. The happiness of her real marriage day had flung quite a lot of its glamour round the two old fellows with whom they had had tea, and Romance had often turned the reins of Margaret’s horse towards the rabbitters’ hut, the inmates of which hailed her rapturously.

  Nor had she neglected them when motherhood’s rites claimed her. She would make Barry help her carry the baby and they would walk to the hut often on a summer’s eve. And in winter she would have them bring the white or other uncommon skins they got up to the big house so that she could entertain them and laugh at Bill’s yarns.