The Butcher Shop
Page 23
Margaret decided that she would take Glengarry’s advice. She would see Tutaki alone. She shrank in horror from such a course, but something had to be done, and that, horrible as it was, seemed less humiliating and less troublesome than anything else she could think of.
So, watching her chance, she asked Jimmy to go to her own little sitting-room that evening, just before teatime. He acquiesced with alacrity.
“What is the matter, Lady?” he asked immediately she had closed the door behind them both.
Margaret looked at him with tired and disappointed eyes. “The matter is that I know you are conducting a disgusting intrigue with Mrs. Longstair—in my house.”
A heavy flush suffused Jimmy’s dusky features. He almost stammered, then turned his back on her and leant against the table. He could not face her. Shame had him now in the face of the woman he adored. By and by he muttered: “What do you know? How do you know?”
“Oh, Miette told me last night. Not directly, of course, but she took care I understood.”
He turned to her again and hung his head. “Lady, I can’t ask you to understand. I have no excuse. I did not dream that she would tell, for her own sake—”
“Oh, is that all you can think of it?” Margaret interrupted passionately. “Didn’t the thing itself shame you? Pure and unadulterated lust—and in my house. Oh!” She covered her face with her hands.
Jimmy shuffled about in misery. “Oh, Lady, what do you know of men and of women such as she? Why, she is only a common —”
Instantly she was a transformed woman. Her hands were clenched and shaking in his face; her eyes blazed forth such a fire of wrath and hatred upon him that he recoiled and paled before her. It was her racial pride, the woman’s woman in her. Jimmy did not know. How could he? He thought that it was his use of the vile word before her and was bewildered. It was not like Margaret to—
“You—you nigger!” she cried.
He crumpled up. His face puckered up and gave up its life as though he were dying; his head fell forward, his legs bent beneath him and sagged until he was lying in a crumpled heap before her.
In her turn she was appalled. Her wrath fled as quickly as it had come. She knelt beside him quickly and whispered: “Jimmy! Jimmy! What is it, Jimmy? What have I done to you?”
He began to weep like a little child as he quavered out: “You have broken my heart.”
She was stricken with remorse. “Oh, Jimmy, my friend, you know I did not mean that! You know I couldn’t mean that, Jimmy! It was what you said, what you called a woman of my race. She is only what you are, Jimmy. You were partner to her sin.” She stroked his shoulder soothingly, until after a time he was able to rise and stumble to a couch.
“I apologise to you, Jimmy,” Margaret kept reiterating. “I apologise. I insulted you, but so did you insult me when you fed your lusts with my relative in my house. You must stop it, Jimmy. If she comes near you again you must turn her off unequivocally.”
“You’ve seen yourself, Lady, how I’ve repulsed her, and how she takes it.”
“Yes, I’ve seen, but the next time you must appeal to Barry before her. Ian should be ashamed. He ought to be flogged. Surely he must know the way she is talked about, Jimmy.”
“I don’t know. I can’t understand him. Turn her out, Lady. How can I be—be hard with her after what has happened? She told you. She might tell it openly before everyone. She wants to run away with me. And I hate her. But if she told everyone, Longstair included, I would have to take her.”
Margaret looked dubious. “I can’t turn her out, Jimmy. There’s Ian. He is getting worse, you know, and I like him so much for all his stupidity over his wife. Surely he should know what women hang around men for. Oh, I’ve no patience with him.”
At that moment the door opened and Ian looked in. Jimmy was lying on the couch and Margaret sat beside him. They both looked around quickly when the door opened. To Ian there seemed an atmosphere of conspiracy around them and of close intimacy. Besides, Margaret blushed; really because she thought that Ian might have heard her words, but of course Ian did not know that. He blushed too, and said hastily: “I’m looking for Barry. I’m sorry,” and, pulling the door to again, went away with a pain at his heart. Evidently Miette had spoken truth. Those two were over-friendly. Ian was distressed and pained and jealous.
Margaret said hastily: “Well, don’t worry, Jimmy. I’ll tell her myself, and the ‘lambing’ will keep you away from the house for some time. I thought Ian looked ill. Compose yourself.”
She smiled her most charming smile upon him as compensation for his hurt and clasped his hand. He bent his head and put his lips to her fingers.
Then she ran after Ian and found him on the front lawn, standing helplessly, meagre-looking and miserable. “Aren’t you well, Ian?” she asked gently.
“I find a difficulty in walking to-day, somehow. I wanted to ask Barry if he would massage my back for me a little. It tires Miette too much.”
“Why, Ian, Barry will be only too glad to do anything. But come inside. The air is chilly out here, and there is a heavy mist. Come in. Tea will be ready now.”
“I think, Margaret, that I had better run down to Wellington and go into hospital there. I am a useless wreck. It is not fair to you all.”
Margaret took his arm and pressed it. She wanted to cry. “Dear old boy, this is your home, and here you shall stay till you get quite well. Oh, there is Barry now. Barry!” she called.
CHAPTER XIX
At Maunganui, when that “lambing” season opened, Messenger pursued his calm and dignified way, totally unconscious of the fact that explosive elements were being gathered to a core within the heart of his home. Notwithstanding his sufficient hired help, his resolutions, he found it difficult to wean himself from the old habits of ceaseless toil. He craved for the spaces, the hill and dale beneath his horse’s feet, and the keen scent and cut of the fierce upland wind.
As was usually the case, winter extended its snowy embrace to cover the arduous and cruel period of “lambing,” and Messenger would out into the storm. The log fires blazed within; wife and children called from the hearth; but out in the snows the brute-mothers travailed to bring forth their young, and Messenger could not be deaf to their cries. There could not be too many men to bring succour; the snow and sleet made travelling dangerous and slow along the narrow ledges. Besides, except Tutaki and Glengarry, no man was so skilful on the job as the station-owner.
Margaret made no effort to discourage him. She loved and reverenced him for his sweet sympathies.
With Barry went Glengarry and Jim.
The Scotsman had grown extraordinarily attached to Messenger. The latter had ceased by now to allude to his manager as “a funny fellow,” and he returned the other’s affection almost in kind. The vein of explosive weakness in Glengarry which rendered him unbalanced when under stress of great emotion attached itself to the quiet emotional strength of the other man.
It was the first time Glengarry had made a friend. His life had been detached and much alone; his reserve and stiffness had in a way kept friendship away. Now that man’s friendship had come to him in the firmest years of his life, the years of early middle age, he held it as infinitely precious. Friendship was a treasure-house of peace, of calm and solid goodwill. His love had been to him a terrible thing of aches and soul-bruises and painful disclosures. He had winced at the thought of it because of the untoward nature of its coming; its active indulgence had thrown his mind into chaos. His love had filled his days with the misery of hopeless longing for that which his decency refused him acceptance of. And then Man’s friendship had stretched out a hand, for the first time in his life, and just when it was most needed. Jealousy had struck that hand aside at first, but once the woman’s good sense and delicacy had freed him from that scourge sufficiently to uncover his eyes and pluck the guilt from his heart, he had snatched at it, embedded the friendship firmly in his rugged self and put the value of his life upon it.
Devious and strange were the ways of Glengarry’s mind during that time in which he strove against fearful odds to remain just the plain “decent sort” that it was in him to be. There had first been the sheer animalism of his robust physical health and the accompanying distress of mind. Then the wonder and awe and amazement of realising the kind of woman Margaret was, of finding that such a type existed; the fearful jealousy, just an inkling of which had decided the woman on the course she had followed. Then the growth of friendship between him and Messenger, strong even on the latter’s part, who had already in Tutaki a life-long comrade, and wife and children beside, to drain his soul of its capacities; but with Glengarry to become a force immutable as the Scotsman in him, stronger than his love for woman, unbreakable as steel. He was prepared to die for Margaret any day; the kind of woman she was must hold him till his death; but for his friendship, if the thing should be demanded of him, he would offer her up as a sacrifice.
Glengarry had not coldbloodedly deliberated on these things. Lately he had seen his life pretty well four-square to fate again. He had felt free, in a way, for the last time his turbulent passions had sent him to Margaret she had withstood him and given him unmistakably to understand that their love episodes were things of the past. “For your sake, Glen,” she told him. “So far as I am concerned there is no reason why we should not love each other; there is every reason why we should. Your attitude is an insult to my womanhood, and I resent it as such. But I will accept it for the sake of peace. You come to me driven by passion, against your conscience and your will, therefore you can stop away. You shall sin with me no more. I have never sinned with you.”
Glengarry went out to that “lambing” season with Barry and Jimmy almost peacefully.
Meanwhile Jimmy, who was not one to labour grievances or troubles, was bothered by a soreness of heart at being kept away from his “Lady’s” side, that was all. Margaret had thought it better that he did not come to the house even for the hour after work each evening. Such a comfortable hour, the glow and quiet cheer of which had always in previous seasons compensated for the torturesome days.
As for Margaret, after a few coldly spoken words to Miette on the subject of the latter’s amour with Tutaki, her spirit of decency and cleanliness had refused to meddle further with the matter; believing it finished, she relinquished all thought of it with vast relief, and bent herself towards obliterating any dinginess of atmosphere it might have left behind.
She succeeded wonderfully. The season was conducive to good thoughts and good works on her part. The “lambing,” round which her imagination played willingly, called forth her sympathies both for man and beast. In the evenings, when Barry and Glengarry came in from their late meal in the men’s quarters to the blazing log fire, she found herself developing a frame of mind singularly peaceful and lovely. She wondered, in a beatific way, at the quiet, joyous condition which herself had unexpectedly developed. Often the two men would come in so late that only she would be waiting for them, and on these evenings Margaret’s soul hovered close to the gates of Paradise. She knew that the two were also happy.
They grew rare comrades, those two, during those few weeks. The Scotsman let the genial glow of the fire and of the friendship and love around him uncover a pleasantry and humour in his character that even himself had not known existed. Barry warmed to him in his quiet way; the glances of sheer liking and exuberant good-fellowship which Margaret sometimes saw pass between them made her eyes misty with love and sympathy. More and more she allowed Barry to see her interest in Glengarry. When the three were alone together on those evenings she often called him “dear Glen.”
During that period she gave herself more to Barry than she had ever done; she made him supremely happy. Her ardent sex-nature, which had slept until Glengarry had awakened it, did not sleep again, and she put her mind to the task of directing it towards the only channel in which relief offered. Time would probably have brought about an almost perfect union between her and Barry. Often she cried for the other man. The tears which her husband’s embrace often brought from her, and which he kissed away, he never knew were forced from her by her tumultuous longing for the other to be in his place. But nevertheless her natural desires gained relief.
This was essential to Margaret, the Woman, once her sex-nature had been aroused.
The being of Woman is strung on the Will to Propagate; she is a fabric woven from the raw material called sex-delight; a builder of bodies, she is fashioned for that purpose only, for that purpose is too great, too all-encompassing, to permit of diffusion of energies.
She brings forth the Man-child, shows him the hills, the rivers, all the face of the earth, the struggle between Humans and the natural world around and says: “Function here.”
She brings forth the Woman-child, shows her the mating couch, and says: “The race must go on.”
Man needs not the mate. He is always there and waiting, but his being is not strung on the Will to Propagate; his joys and sorrows, his dreams and his aspirations, the smoothness of his body and the Youth of him, have not, as a basis, sexual satisfactions.
Sex is but the Source of his life, the tiny stream upon the mountain-top which widens out and deepens into a river of manifold interests.
Woman needs the mate. Her joys and sorrows, her dreams and aspirations, the smoothness of her body and the Youth of her, are based on sexual satisfactions. Give her that, and she has the whole of life.
She does not know this. She looks in the skies for the god-head, whose substance is the sex of herself that begets life. She sees not the sacredness of the flame that burns within her because a debased mankind has fed that flame with noxious fumes, and her conception of it with the foul conventions of civilisation.
She sees the withered cheek, the pallid skin, attack the years which should yet be young; she finds the joy of life fade away in crushed anticipations; imperceptibly the natural hopes and desires drop one by one behind, and Woman does not dream that it is so because her divinity, the god-head within her being, which is her sex-desire, has been denied its natural growth.
Margaret found that “lambing” season a period of singular quiet, of peace and brooding happiness.
Miette? What was that same season for poor Miette? The dreadful fascination of the coloured man held her fast. Her desire for Tutaki was an obsession. All the force of her bestial nature, untutored by even her modicum of intelligence, clamoured for the Maori. She could not rid herself for an instant of her desires. She did not wish to do so. She nursed her obsession. She made no attempt to reason about the subject at all; her mind was too small to ease her in any way. She never read. Her vision was warped and distorted by her stupidity and mental grossness. Her man had been denied her, and by Margaret. Jimmy liked her, he wanted her; but Margaret’s jealousy had forced him from her. She would sit for hours with idle hands and dwell upon this aspect of her case. She had really persuaded herself that this was so. She never saw Jimmy. When she gathered that he was not coming to the dining-room at night she stopped away herself, because she could not hide her hatred of Margaret. The venom that escaped her occasionally, despite herself, when alone with Ian startled him into using some really hard words to her. But she always had an excuse.
Ian did not know
what she knew, she would say. She fabricated the vilest yarns; most subtle in their malice, using little, unconscious, meaningless actions of Margaret’s and Tutaki’s to point their “truth.” She worked on Ian’s mild jealousy, on his affection for her and trust in her, but most of all on his simplicity and utter ignorance of women.
Ian’s injury slowly but steadily got worse. As a husband for Miette he was fast becoming useless. All the good that was in her strove to hide this fact from him, but his intelligence and experience of her allowed her efforts to be only partially successful.
A large part of each day Longstair spent with Margaret, eternally “discussing.” He was unfair to Miette, though he did not mean to be. Margaret thought so and on all occasions tried to draw Miette into the conversations and arguments; she was most scrupulous in avoiding even the smallest slight to Miette, but so steeped was the latter in her slave psychology and the chattel instinct that she would acquiesce without a murmur when Ian impatiently disregarded her. To his mind the only people worth a thought or any consideration at all were the “intelligentsia.” Margaret could not help feeling sorry on these occasions, though she despised her supine attitude; but so interested and absorbed had she become in Longstair’s philosophy and sapience that it was difficult for her to give Miette a thought.
He was so extraordinary a man. Margaret excused all his petty faults and sillinesses when he began to talk. To her he was wonderful; his mental acumen was so keen, his brain so fertile and facile. She realised that he possessed no profound knowledge; that he would really be well described by the phrase: “intellectual dilettante,” but—she revelled in his talk. So indeed did Barry and Tutaki when they had the opportunity of listening to him. Glengarry alone gave him little attention.
The “lambing” season carried on through villainous weather. Snow fell plentifully through the first two weeks of August, to be followed by rain, hail and sleet. The melting snow cascaded down the hillsides, rendering the narrow ledges nothing but death-traps for the shepherds in the darkness. During the last week in August Messenger forbade work on the hills in the dark.