The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  Tutaki stood it for a time: his innate courtesy, his generosity, filling the gap left by his feelings. But soon he tired of being the butt of the station’s obscene jokes, soon he tired of being “shown up,” as he expressed it to himself, before “the Lady” and the others, and when he tired he got nasty. When Miette came and sat close to him on the couch he would rise markedly and take a seat at a distance. When she followed him, as she did follow, just to stand beside his chair and talk to him in her babyish soft way about stupid nothings, he would get up and leave the room. Several times he openly told her to take her hands off him, without avail. Miette was physically unable to believe that the man she wanted could dislike her. She would take her hands off and stand staring stupidly at him.

  Then one day Harry cut his leg rather badly. Jimmy had for years constituted himself the family doctor. That evening (it was just before the “lambing” season began) he was washing and binding up the boy’s wound before the kitchen fire, with Margaret, Mrs. Curdy, and Ian looking on, when Miette came into the room. She walked over and stood behind Jimmy for an instant, then bent down, presumably to get a closer view of the wound. In doing so she put her arm round the Maori’s neck and touched his head with her face. Jimmy flushed all over his dusky body. He felt in his bones the shame of those other two women, and fury against Ian for allowing such an exhibition seized him. He jerked his head away from her and cried violently: “Don’t come smoozing to me! Keep your wife off me, Longstair!”

  Margaret could have cried with shame and vexation. Mrs. Curdy glared at Miette and muttered: “Shameful! shameful!” Miette stood erect and began to cry. Longstair left the room abruptly.

  “Come with me, Miette,” said Margaret hastily. “You take Harry into the dining-room afterwards, Jimmy, please.”

  Miette followed her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the nursery, which was always empty except for the baby at that time. Margaret switched on the light and turned to the other, who had seated herself on a small bed, still blubbering. “The Lady” was dreadfully embarrassed. She had acted on necessity, and did not now know what to say. However, something had to be said, so by and by she found these words: “You know, Miette, one must hold oneself very much aloof from these brown men if one wants to be respected by them.”

  Miette looked up at her blankly. Margaret knew she had spoken nonsense. She knew by instinct that that blank creature, blubbering there because she could not get her man, did not know what she meant by respect, that she did not want respect, but only Jimmy the man. A physical revulsion against the baseness of it seized her. She closed her eyes and clenched her hands to keep from rushing from the room. What horrid thing was this that she had brought to her home? A personification of the vice that she most despised, a personification of the Thing that sprawled its leprous limbs upon Society to whiten mankind and loose its virtues until they dropped from it one by one. The good woman shuddered and opened her eyes. Perhaps Miette loved Jimmy. She knew she deceived herself; she knew that love lends dignity to the simplest, modesty to the shameless, and sweeps even from the harlot’s house the wanton spirit. But still—

  Miette was looking sullenly down at the floor. She did not reply.

  “Do you love Jimmy, Miette?”

  The woman on the bed looked up. A cunning little glint came into her puffy eyes. She tried to think, to get the pros and cons of this question. Margaret waited a long time, sickened.

  “Yes, I love him, like you love the children,” Miette said at last.

  Margaret recoiled from her. The very walls seemed to shout “Lie! lie! lie!” Like she did the children! Oh, vile! Those pawing hands, those sensual grins and leering eyes! Those prowlings round a man who openly spoke to her as though she were a dog! In Margaret’s heart there lit a tiny flare of wrath which leapt and crackled and gathered strength until the tawdry piece upon the bed shrank before the majestic anger which blazed from the other’s great eyes.

  Margaret did not speak another word. There was no need for speech from either. Each read the other. Miette realised that she could not again “put it over” that regal woman. She cowered before the scorn of the righteous, and at the same time her puny spirit flared into hatred for the one who had found her out.

  She had made an error of judgment. She had committed sacrilege by touching on the children. Had she confessed the reality, the other’s great magnanimity would have dealt with her gently; she would have been merely a low type in distress, and succour of some sort would have been forthcoming. But the sacrilegious lie had undone her.

  Up till now Miette had liked Margaret, liked her greatly, and admired her beauty and cleverness too; but now that she threatened to come between Miette and the possible fulfilment of her desires, venom supplanted liking, and hatred leaped quick to a seat in her brain.

  Miette was by nature vindictive. She had often boasted that she never forgave a slight or a wrong done to her. She held no animus against Jimmy for repulsing her. Her inherited chattel instinct, in no way affected or eradicated by her smattering of philosophy, accorded to the man the right to misuse her; she received certain blissful satisfactions even from his brutalities. She knew that he would return to her. That was merely a question of a shorter or longer time of waiting, and in the meantime she fed her passions as best she might. His insults in some psychic way aided this process. Oh, no, she felt no animus against Jimmy. Was he not her lord and master?

  And in the few instants of time in which she gleaned obscurely the true inwardness of Margaret’s bearing towards men she also gathered obscurely an idea of which step on the ladder of life she herself stood upon. That woman there was shaming her by her bearing, thrusting her—Miette’s—own tawdriness down her own throat, quickening in her a consciousness of her own moral obliquity.

  If a personable man had stood in Margaret’s place, Miette would simply have bowed her head contritely; no virus of hate or vindictiveness would have been born within her. But to be arraigned before the bar of her own conscience and judged by a woman!—Little stabs of hatred leapt into her eyes. She sat huddled upon the bed looking as soft and pulpy as a slug, and gathered the conviction that her paramour was to be snatched from her by that woman’s virtue. Virtue? No, vice, Miette preferred to call it. Deliberately she lied to herself. The other was jealous of her. Probably she wanted Jimmy for herself. Why, it was as plain as day. Jimmy had never repulsed her when they two were alone or when Ian only was present. He would even smile on those occasions, and sometimes seem to linger under her caresses. It was only in the other woman’s presence that he gave her the cold shoulder. She could see it all now, right enough. She achieved an inspiration—a vile one. “You know, Margaret,” she said in a fat, oily voice, “it is hardly fair for us two married women to keep Jimmy here just for us.”

  Margaret’s brow wrinkled uncertainly. “What do you mean?” she asked doubtfully.

  Miette turned her foolish hands up and shrugged, a leer twisting her ill-formed mouth.

  Margaret had to understand. A sweat broke out upon her, and seemed to drain away her strength with its heat; the nausea clutched at her throat again; she could scarcely see for the red rage that seethed in her brain. It was a rage of the pure and high-minded, of the intellectual, compelled, despite herself, to drag her spiritual wings in the filth and coarseness of the debased. It was a dangerous rage.

  She could not think of anything bad enough to compare this woman with; even the snake crawled with its belly to the ground that all might know its venomous nature. Only the simplest words came to her tongue, but after all the most effective. “You are a bad woman, Miette—a bad, wicked woman.” And then she stumbled from the room. How compose herself enough to go downstairs? How get strength enough to reach her own room?

  Glengarry succoured her. He came out of his room and found her clinging to the balustrade. “What is the matter? Are you ill?” he asked, startled by her attitude.

  “Yes, help me to my room, Glen. I am ill.”

  He p
icked her up as he had done many times before and, carrying her to her room, put her gently down upon the bed. “What is it? Shall I call Messenger?”

  “No, no. I’ll be all right in a minute. It—it is Miette. She—she is carrying on with Jimmy.” She started to cry. Never could she repeat that gross insult herself had received.

  Glengarry laughed shortly. “Is that all? You need not upset yourself over that. I know her sort. They live on that kind of stuff.” He laughed again, grimly this time, and started for the door. That was no place for him, beside his weeping love. He was no man of iron. At the door he turned to her and said: “But what beats me is the way these low-class white women take to the niggers.”

  About to descend the stairs he saw Miette come slowly out of the nursery. She was looking as thoughtful as was possible for her to do, but instantly brightened on seeing him. “Hallo!” she said softly.

  Glengarry looked splendid in his well-fitting lounge suit. He looked her over speculatively as she approached him, and at last said briefly: “Hallo!”

  “Are you going downstairs?” she asked unnecessarily.

  “I am.” Still briefly.

  “Can I come too?” she asked engagingly, creeping close to him and smiling into his face with shy audacity.

  Before he could answer, however, Miette nearly jumped out of her skin with fright at a bawled “Missis!” which came most surprisingly from Longstair, who appeared at that moment looking up at them from the downstairs corridor.

  “All right, Hub, I’m coming,” she quavered, and stepped briskly down the stairs. A derisive laugh from Glengarry followed her.

  Ian did not wait for his wife. He went back to their own sitting-room, shutting the door behind him.

  This act greatly perturbed Miette. For the first time she was frightened of Ian. Had he seen the little passage with Glengarry? What should she say and do? She opened the door slowly, putting on her most babyish manner.

  Ian was seated by a window which looked out upon a near paddock creeping up to a clump of maire, warming the feet of old “Baldy.” He was childishly pretending to read. Miette laughed within herself at his foolish appearance. Her fear vanished in good-natured contempt. She was fond of Ian even now that she panted to live with the brown man.

  He did not look up. “What is it, Hub?” she queried softly.

  He grunted, turned his book upside down and blushed vividly. He was not at all the man to deal with “situations.” He wanted things to go along smoothly. He felt like swearing at Miette for disturbing him. (For even then no thought of her actual infidelity came to him.) He grunted again and tried to glare at her over his glasses. Then in sheer desperation he exploded profanely, telling her in effect that she was making a fool of herself, and it was time she stopped making pets of men. Anyhow, what was she doing upstairs?

  Miette crept over to him, knelt down at his feet and sobbed distressingly. Margaret had been so cruel to her; she had taken her upstairs and growled and carried on like a mad woman because she, Miette, had petted Jimmy. As if she had meant anything. Did not Ian know how she felt about these Maoris? They were like children that all good women loved as they loved children. She knew Jimmy did not mind her petting him. He showed that he liked it when Margaret was not there. Had not Ian himself seen that he only objected when Margaret was present. Oh, it was dreadful, the way Margaret had carried on and the things she had called her just now. Did Hub know what? (Here she wiped her puffy little eyes and looked confidingly up at Ian.) Margaret was in love with Jimmy herself. She had broken down after a while; had flung herself on the bed and cried and begged Miette to stop playing with Jimmy because it made her, Margaret, jealous. And oh, Hub, she was so sorry for the poor thing that she had promised she would keep away from Jimmy in future. Here she pressed his hand against her cheek and smiled so plaintively and sweetly that Ian felt a brute.

  “Poor old Kiddy!” he said, stroking her hair. Though the news about Margaret had staggered him. “Never mind. You just keep away from him. I know how you feel about it, but it is not worth any bother. We’ll stay here to-night. It will have blown over by morning.”

  She cuddled up to him and told him what a good old Hub he was; how understanding he was of woman’s real nature. She did miss her little doggie so. “That is how I feel towards Jimmy—just like I felt towards my doggie!”

  Oh, she “put it all over” Ian all right.

  Margaret did not go downstairs that night. When Barry came looking for her she pleaded a headache. She could not tell her husband what had happened. It was too gross for discussion with him. Shame for her sex, humiliation, anger and disgust with Jimmy, each plagued her in turn as she lay sleepless through the night. What should she do? It never entered her head that she might do nothing. The thing loomed colossal before her distorted mental vision in the small hours of the night when her vitality hung lowest. A living shame in her house; vice stalking in her children’s midst. The woman’s woman in her flamed to white-hot at the Maori’s insult to her sex, and more directly to herself and to Barry, whose relative and guest the woman was. Tutaki had rubbed the woman’s face in the dirt; he had used her—a white woman—and then wished to throw her aside. Oh!—

  Margaret had never used unclean words; she abhorred profanity; but as her racial pride played havoc with her common sense, her mind yielded up disjointed acrimonies to the darkness. “Black swine! Black swine!” He would get off the station at once; that she would see to. She would have to tell Barry, much as she hated it, and he would kick the “black swine” off the station. The hitherto gentle-minded creature of beauty and sunshine became vulgar with fury at the desecration of her home.

  But her womanly sympathies, her sex-partisanship, betrayed her. When her ravelled spirit had cooled with the gentle upflow of dawn upon the earth she knew that the Maori had done only what most white men would have done. She knew that in the minds of men the Miettes are born to be used and thrown aside; that they are but humanity’s swill. That gross insult to herself had laid bare even to her innocence the spurious soul of “that woman” as she now designated Miette in her thoughts. That vicious lie had fully established the corruption of mind and body behind it.

  Jimmy must, like herself and everyone else, be allowed his quota of weaknesses, she had to believe. His manner to Miette left no doubt in Margaret’s mind, now that she understood the adultery, of his attitude towards his weakness. In his mind it was a weakness, and therefore for him there was grace. And she had to concede, in the light of day and re-enthroned common sense, that fairness to Jimmy excluded consideration of race.

  She realised Miette’s promiscuity, and, the ingrained jealous property instinct of the wife leaping up in her to combat with this menace to safe domesticity, she was minded to go at once to Miette and tell her to leave the station. Instinct told her that the married woman must beckon, and in no uncertain manner, before man will dare. Common sense told her that with a man of Tutaki’s type the married woman must make her play very boldly and decidedly indeed. The woman then should be called upon to pay the penalty of her seduction.

  But Margaret, being a woman’s woman, resigned both instinct and common sense at the behest of prejudice and a too exacting code of honour. Prejudice reminded her of the sex-war, of her sex’s slavery, concealed to a large extent, but nevertheless virulent and festering beneath the gloss of culture. Her exacting code of honour demanded that she eliminate all personal feeling from the case. This she knew it impossible to do. She loathed Miette; while her affection for the Maori was deep and true. The man had helped to rear her children; he was companion, counsellor, and bosom friend of Barry, and she knew that he adored herself. She could not think impartially of the case. She could never forgive Miette, she knew.

  She was haggard and drawn of face when she descended the stairs next morning. What she would do she did not know, but stop the vile business she would, somehow. Barry besought her to remain in bed, but she felt that bodily action would benefit her. Time and time ag
ain it was on the tip of her tongue to tell her husband and throw the onus of action on to him, but delicacy each time withheld her. Also justice to Jimmy.

  Miette was Barry’s cousin. He would be bound to champion her. And Jimmy was his best-loved friend. She knew infallibly that though he would despise Miette beyond words, he would at the same time turn Jimmy away. He would not realise Miette’s duplicity as she, a woman herself, did. She could not, in common decency, tell him of that gross insult to herself. And Margaret knew that Barry was not awake, as she was, to the vein of imperishable savage simplicity, of child-like acceptance of people and things, in Jimmy’s make-up.

  Miette did not appear that morning, wisely. Mrs. Curdy informed Margaret that Ian had told her that his wife was keeping her bed through illness. She added dryly: “I hope she reflects upon her sins.”

  Margaret was relieved. It was Saturday, the children’s holiday from lessons, and she decided that she would take them all out in the car and see if she could run down peace of mind.

  Passing out of the great gates on to the public highway they passed Glengarry coming in on horseback. He raised his cap and smiled a greeting at her. Margaret was driving very slowly to take the turn at right angles, so he turned back and leant over towards her. “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t know what to do.” She spoke with her eyes on the road and her care given to the wheel.

  “Do nothing.”

  “I must. They are desecrating my home. It’s—it’s vile!” she burst out angrily.

  “Well, then, take my advice and ask Jimmy to cut it. He’ll do it for you.”

  The car shot onwards, and Glengarry pulled up his horse and looked thoughtfully after it. “Desecrating her home, ay,” he muttered, thinking of her freely given love to him.

  Once upon a time the man would have laughed coarsely at her distinctions; he would have thought them mere egotistical affectation, distinctions without differences, but now— Well, her love had shown him the difference. He wheeled his horse swiftly and galloped up the drive, the rush of air past his burnt face carrying back to her his reverent words: “She’s a great little lady!”