The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  By and by, when the doctor had pronounced all right, the three went along to the cabin which the Longstairs had occupied on the voyage. When the door was opened a bundle of hair flew forward and launched itself at Miette with shrill whinings. She picked it up and pressed her face into it. “Did it miss its mother, then, the sweet pet? This is Bonny, my baby, Mr.—Mr.—”

  “Tutaki.”

  “Mr. Tutaki. Isn’t she lovely?” Miette held the Pomeranian towards the Maori. It snarled and showed its teeth viciously.

  “Don’t touch the little beast,” warned Longstair.

  Miette laughed and cuddled it to her. “It only likes its mother,” she crooned.

  “It’s pretty,” said Jimmy. He was not interested in pet dogs. Useless creatures made little appeal to him.

  He shepherded them until the train left for Taihape the following day. Miette never moved without the little brown dog. She took it to the hotel dining-room (to Jimmy’s hardly concealed annoyance) and was asked to remove it by a waitress. This she foolishly declined to do until her husband whispered that he would leave the table if she did not. She began to whimper like a child, and said aloud: “The nasty brutes, darling! Mother will stay with it,” and went off.

  “I’m afraid I spoil her,” Longstair said apologetically to Jimmy. The latter did not answer. He could not trust himself. The husband afterwards took some food upstairs to his wife.

  That was teatime. In the early evening she came and sat beside Jimmy in the lounge. She sat close up to him and rested her hand on his arm. “I suppose you think I am a silly girl to love my baby so?”

  “I think you are a silly woman to make a show of us all over a dirty pup,” said Jimmy rudely, giving his arm a little shake.

  She pressed her fingers tighter and almost leant upon him. But an angry flush swept over her face.

  She despised the man. She had been brought up in England, and held English ideas about “coloured” people. Not that she would have said so. She was supposed to be a “socialist,” believing in fraternity. She would have declared that the colour of a man’s skin mattered nothing “so long as he was intelligent and understood his class position in society”—a stock phrase of hers. But really, though she used an exaggerated manner towards the Maori, insulting him by the very showing of her notion of equality, she despised him. She thought that she honoured him by her graciousness, by her little intimacies, that she must appear in his eyes as a very fine white woman indeed to give such attention to, and to treat as though he were an equal, a common “coloured” man. Poor silly Miette had a lot to learn about New Zealanders and Maoris. She had to learn that the Maori, grand in the traditions of his race, stood equal with the average white man, and that in New Zealand racial distinction between Hawaiki’s sons and the whites was non-existent. She did not dream of the intellect behind that ugly brown face because she was stupid and unintelligent. (Longstair had found it out easily, and marvelled.)

  Tutaki had said that he was an employee of her cousin’s. She knew her cousin was wealthy, a “big” man, according to Tutaki himself, and, for all her socialism, she “put on airs” about it. At the station, then, she would be in almost the position of Tutaki’s employer. It would be condescending of her to speak to him. He would think it splendid of her to treat him as though he were white. Her anger flared up at his answer. How dared he? But immediately she felt more interest in him.

  If Jimmy had not been attractive, Miette would not have noticed him at all. She would have told herself pettishly that he was not “intelligent” enough for her to notice, and ignored him. All Miette’s male friends in the “movement” in London (she had no female ones) had been attractive. She called them “intelligent.”

  When she found a man attractive she could never feel herself insulted by him. She made no pretence in this matter. It was the way she was made. An unattractive man could very easily insult her, very easily be deemed “unintelligent,” but a fascinating one—never.

  So she told herself that Jimmy had not been rude at all; it was only his way of saying things. “I can’t bear to leave the pet alone,” she said softly. “He always sleeps with me. Sometimes he crawls up under the blankets—”

  Jimmy rose abruptly, pulling his arm away from her. “Where is your husband?”

  She looked up plaintively. “Oh, you rude man! He is lying down. I made him lie down to rest his back. We could go for a walk if you like. Ian wouldn’t mind. He trusts me perfectly.”

  Jimmy grinned sarcastically down at her. “Then it is more than I would do, my lady. Thanks for the invitation, but I have already an appointment with a young lady (he stressed the “young”) and must ask you to excuse me. Good evening.”

  She gazed after him sensually. What a lovely smile he had! What white teeth and liquid eyes! Of course he never meant to be rude. If he had an appointment he had to keep it. She went upstairs and used her tired husband as a substitute for Jimmy, while that gentleman went away to a billiard-room thinking her detestable. “I don’t think she loves the pup at all. She is shamming for some reason or other.”

  When he saw them off at the station the next day (Miette had squeezed his hand and given him a glowing smile at parting) he remained still for some time looking thoughtfully after the train. “Well, the Lady said that she was a cook. Her place is certainly in the kitchen. She would be very kind to the butcher and the baker. How the Lady will take it—” He lifted his cap and scratched his head. “It’s a pity she didn’t leave her in London. But he’s all right. Pretty decent. I’ll look into that stuff he talks about. He will suit the Lady, at all events.”

  He turned and slowly walked off the decrepit old wooden structure that shames New Zealand’s capital city by doing duty as a chief station. The air felt sultry. Rain was not far off. Tutaki wondered how he would put in the afternoon. He had only been four days in town, but already he was tired of the hot, dusty pavements. The amusements wearied him. Would he go to the pictures? Oh, Lord, no! The heat was stifling. To one of the bays, then? To Day’s Bay, across the harbour? Thought of the cool waters decided him. Yes, he would go. He would walk along to the ferry wharf and see when the next boat left for Muritai. Plenty of time to step into a restaurant and get a bit of dinner first.

  This he did, and then sauntered along the water front towards the ferry. A huge ocean-going liner was loading at Pipitea wharf; the rattle and whirr of slackened chains arrested his attention. He might as well go over and see what she was loading.

  It was mutton. Carcases by the thousand, by the ton, neverending stream of them sliding from the trucks to the ship’s freezer.

  Jimmy stood and watched them, fascinated. The perpetual motion of red and white, pink and cream, in time resolved into a blurred streak of gaudy paints. Mutton for the overseas maw. Mutton made Jimmy think of sheep, of the yellow pastures. He knew the sheep at home had not drunk for a month because of the long drought, the worst for years. The creeks and rivers were dry. He sniffed at the smell of rain in the atmosphere. It was close, thank heaven! Too close to go to Day’s Bay, perhaps. No sense in getting a wetting unnecessarily. He would stay and watch the mutton, watch the never-ending rush of pretty carcases into that giant maw and the never-ceasing circling flight of the seagulls, gannet, and sea-pigeon screaming aloft.

  He sat down upon a stringer. How pale and glassy the harbour waters were! He looked up at the towering side of the leviathan of the deep that was so greedily gobbling up the mutton, and felt very humble, somehow. Racial emotions stirred within him. He knew the history of the white migration and settlement; in his breast, as in every true Maori’s, there burned the never-dying resentment for unavenged wrongs done to his race in those early days. The stolen lands, upon which greedy whites, descendants of the thieves, now lived in splendid opulence, ordering chieftains and chieftains’ sons to do their bidding.

  It was the march of Progress, Jimmy knew. Progress, which was carried in the hands of the “pakeha.” Progress made sport of racial extinction
. The fittest to survive!

  Jimmy, true son of his race, sitting on the stringer of the white man’s wharf, sitting under the shadow of the product of the pakeha’s brain and hand, the leviathan of the deep, knew that the law of club and fang was the law of Progress, and yet that Progress was good.

  And his heart turned to water, and his eyes spilled over their tears with anguish for the death of his race, for the death of his race which was slowly sinking, sinking, with thinned blood and loosened muscle and sagging belly back into the earth which was the dust from which it had sprung.

  CHAPTER XVII

  How “the Lady took it” was with the best grace possible. As the time for her relatives’ arrival drew near Margaret developed a lively interest in them, and talked a lot to the children about them. She was not very sophisticated, having necessarily had little worldly experience. The life-practices of average folk were little noticed by her. She often had her house full of guests for weeks at a time, yet she would know astonishingly little about them. She liked them (very rarely she disliked, by instinct), took them at their face value, and thought no more of them. Her life was hinged inwardly; her personal interests were too engrossing and vast for the doings of people outside her circle to make any but a fleeting impression on her. She had lived in the sunshine, the rain, the growing things, in the animals, her books, her husband, her children, and her friends, of whom Jimmy was chief. Ordinary people were mere accessories to life. She was still child enough to anticipate keenly, to build up expectations, to form preconceived notions.

  She pictured Miette as being like her name, dainty, petite, pretty; in short, she pictured her as typically French; she would be bright and vivacious, would gesture violently and cry “Oui, oui!”

  The man, of course, would be the ordinary Englishman. They were all the same. He must be nice, though, for Miette to have married him.

  Margaret therefore felt a little chill at first sight of Miette; it was as though a cloak had been removed from her; illusions and pretty anticipations are warm things.

  She and Barry met the train. She stood back while Barry hurried along the carriages trying to pick up his cousins. He saw a woman helping a man to alight. Then they stood looking about uncertainly. That must be them.

  It was, and in a minute the greetings were all over. Margaret had laughed aside her chill of disappointment and readjusted her perspective. As Miette waddled along the platform beside her she looked down at her and thought: “Certainly a cook. But never mind. She looks nice.”

  But oh, that first impression! Margaret did not like being honest with herself this time. After all, though her first impressions were usually right, they need not be infallible. She had not disliked Miette at first meeting. Almost the contrary. Miette was rarely disliked; women would laugh knowingly at her and pass on; men—of a certain type—found her most attractive, at times. They would laugh and play and return. She “put it over them” so naively; with her tears, real enough; with her air of giving in for the first time on each occasion. It was nice to be unvirtuous in a virtuous manner. The tears would be there, the virtuous air; the “Oh, it is dreadful, but I can’t resist you” sort of thing, the end of her own open, innocent seduction, was there with the hundredth as with the first. Other men that she could not “put it over” would grin at her as Jimmy had done, joke about her obscenely with other men, would avoid her perhaps, and think her detestable, but even they seldom disliked her.

  Margaret’s feeling had been an instinctive revulsion against coarseness. She seldom kissed other women; when she did it was out of sheer warm affection; she was too boyish for mere conventional salutations of the kind. She shook Miette’s hand warmly, but would have ventured no further. The other, however, embraced her effusively, making Margaret blush with discomfort. But that was nothing. Margaret knew it was to be expected, and was ashamed for not feeling reciprocal warmth. Her first impression was both instinctive and gathered. Miette could not hide the type of woman she was. She was born it. She had not become it through circumstances or reason or will. She was it, and the type was stamped all over her.

  Margaret did not know that such a type existed. She only felt repulsion at the embrace. Had she honestly analysed her first impression, she would have said: “She’s coarse and common, just unfortunate. I don’t know. I like her well enough. She is not in Barry’s class.” Perhaps she summed her up in the thought: “A cook, certainly.”

  Miette liked the tall, beautiful woman who was her cousin by marriage. It must not be thought for an instant that Miette had not her virtues. Low types often display big virtues, though they display them crudely. Miette’s way of life had not developed her good points, that was all. She liked Margaret at once.

  She was not at all grateful for what her cousins had done for her and her husband. Neither was Longstair. Rightly they considered that Messenger did not miss what he was giving, and their need was sufficient reason for the giving. They felt no gratitude, and did not intend to display any. Here was a virtue if one likes.

  They were of the most advanced school of socialists, and were both courageous in the expression of their opinions. Not knowing in the least how their mode of thought would be received by their hosts, believing that it was quite possible that they would be turned from the door of their wealthy relatives, who would naturally wish to conserve the interests of their class, they had not been two days installed in the big house before they began their propaganda.

  Immediately they were disliked by everyone but their hosts and Glengarry. The employees in the house would not listen respectfully. They would sniff at them behind their backs, and wish openly that they had not come. They could not understand them. They did not know, of course, the real reason for their presence there—Tutaki and Glengarry only had been told the truth. All others had been subtly led to believe by Margaret that they were living on their income, and were there solely because of Longstair’s health. The servants, then, ignorant as only country servants can be, saw them as guests working against their hosts. They would have thought them worse if they had known the truth. The employees were contented at Maunganui. They were treated as equals by the Messengers, and they received better wages than elsewhere. They did not want to hear anything about revolutions and socialism. Their way of life was good enough for them. If they stuck to Messenger, he would stick to them. They avoided the Longstairs. After the manner of the stupid and lowly, they saw in their would-be saviours an enemy and in their enemy a friend.

  Miette and Ian were also by way of being curiosities on the station. The science of socialism, of course, was the big topic the world over at this time. Central Europe had followed Russia’s example and turned Bolshevik the year previous, with much upset and bloodshed, and England was on the verge of taking her turn at the game. The industrial population of the whole world was in ceaseless ferment; in America capitalism was holding its own by force of arms only. The Messengers, in company with all intelligent people, though not understanding the world politics that were being worked out, were yet utterly aware of the conditions obtaining, and welcomed any light that could be thrown on the matter. They knew well enough that the old order of society had virtually passed out of existence, and that money as the universal equivalent would shortly be obsolete. But with real live exponents of the philosophy upon which the world was pivoting the station had not previously been acquainted.

  New Zealand was extraordinarily backward in its politics. The Labour Party had not yet reached the Treasury Benches, a contingency which might reasonably have been expected years before. It was not even a very formidable opposition. The small communist group, led by that old tiger of the sea, Fintan Flynn, cut far more ice in the House upon the hill than did the Labour Party, which had made the mistake of its life in shedding its original socialist programme in favour of a reactionary, opportunist policy.

  The Longstairs’ philosophy then was heartily welcomed by their hosts and one or two others of intelligence and discernment. But to the stat
ion employees in general they were disagreeable curiosities with their eternal “class struggle.” Especially Miette, who, being stupid, bungled the manner of her propaganda work. Her “scabs,” “slaves,” and other epithets flung around promiscuously, did not help her any, whether deserved or not. She had quite a knowledge of her science, gleaned through years of class work and association with men like her husband, and it was rather a pity she had not sense enough to handle it. The working women already hated her like poison before the first week of her sojourn at the station was up, and Margaret, listening to the way she talked to them, or rather at them, could not imagine them doing otherwise.

  She remonstrated mildly once, pointing out sensibly that if there was a lesson to be taught it could be learned much easier, if at all, by reasonable argument than by bullying.

  Miette replied that “slaves always responded better to the whip,” nettling Margaret, who respected and liked her servants very much. She said sharply that “there were several different kinds of slaves.”

  Miette laughed good-humouredly. “If you mean that for me, old dear, you’ve missed your mark. I’m a slave the same as they are so long as I am dependent on another for my living, so long as I live by selling my labour-power. I am the slave of a slave, as a matter of fact. Ian is a wage slave now that he is working for wages for Barry, and I am his slave.”

  Margaret laughed at the idea. “But that is funny, Miette. You do let Ian ‘boss’ you and order you about, but that is your own fault.”

  “That is not what I mean. I would be Ian’s slave if I bossed him and ordered him about. I’m Ian’s slave because I am economically dependent on him.”

  “You need not be. You can earn a good living for yourself.”