The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  Barry joined his wife in the city as arranged, and then a day or two before she returned to the station he left Wellington for Dunedin in order to attend a conference of woolgrowers there. Afterwards he intended returning to Wellington, there to remain for the first month of the wool sales which commenced in October.

  Margaret arrived home amid the inevitable pandemonium of children shouting—mad with glee at being home again, and the greetings of everybody about the place. She loved everybody. All sorts of excuses to come to the house were thought out by the “hands” in order to see her. And those who could not come to the house she went down to the yards to see.

  Shearing was in process again and the usual bustle of that time was about. Margaret, after a long talk with the women of the house, and the disclosure of the presents she had bought them, also the presentation of the children’s gifts, the children’s own choice, weird and laughter-provoking in most cases, made Mrs. Curdy and Maire and Rata leave their work and accompany her and her young family to the yards. Besides the men, there were her pet horses, her dogs, “lady” dogs the three (for Margaret inclined always to the givers of life), for her to greet. She was pursuing her way across the front lawn, bulwarked by her happy household and preceded by the uproarious children, when she remembered the manager’s arrival. She stopped dead. “Oh, Mrs. Curdy! I clean forgot! The manager—and his mother! His mother! I haven’t met her. I haven’t met her. Oh, dreadful!”

  “Tut, tut, my dear. (Mrs. Curdy, growing old in this young woman’s service, had long usurped the rights of a mother.) They’re all right. The man is down at the yards, and the mother, a nice body enough, is visiting the old Chief’s wife. She said she would not return till teatime, knowing we’d have plenty to talk about.”

  “Oh, thank goodness! It was horrid of me to forget all the same. She is nice?”

  “Yes, nice enough. She is Scotch.”

  Margaret smiled. She knew what “nice enough” meant for Mrs. Curdy when tacked on to “Scotch.” “Yes, of course she is Scotch,” she said. “How else with a name like that? I suppose the two of you are bosom friends by this time?”

  “Friendly enough. Friendly enough. We’ll not fall out, anyhow.”

  Glengarry was drafting sheep in the centre of the pens, separating the rams from the ewes, when his employer’s wife and children arrived at the sheds. He heard a great clamour of men’s voices raised in greeting, but, handling the run gateway as he was, all his attention needed by the frightened, plunging sheep, he gave the disturbance no heed.

  Chief Tutaki gravely greeted the visitors, while Jimmy, his son, left his machine and whooped madly over the children. Mrs. Curdy after a while said to Margaret: “There is Mr. Glengarry, drafting.”

  However, since only a broad back and bent head could be seen of the man just then, Margaret just glanced at him. She went in to see the classers at work, as interested as ten years before in the sorting of the wonderful wool, and it was when she was emerging from the shed that she and Glengarry came face to face.

  She was looking particularly beautiful that day, flushed and happy with the joy of her home-coming. Only twenty-six, a mere girl yet in appearance, for all the gracious majesty of her deportment, she looked ridiculously young to be the mother of Harry, who sprang from the high step in front of her evoking a startled: “Be careful, Harry,” from her. She jumped down herself, lightly as thistle-down, and met Glengarry face to face. Margaret, one hand clutching her long skirt to keep it from the dust, stood looking at him with a surprised, half-quizzical, dawning smile.

  And for a second he regarded her with a sort of puzzled wonder. Then beneath his breath he muttered: “God! How lovely!”

  Mrs. Curdy, coming from behind Margaret, said: “This is Mr. Glengarry—Mrs. Messenger,” and the young woman held out her hand. “Yes, I am Mrs. Messenger and you are Mr. Glengarry. How do you like our station?”

  She spoke almost boyishly, and Glengarry, who was carried away with her queenliness, her gracious bearing, got somewhat of a shock. He would not have been surprised had jewels dropped from her mouth.

  A few conventional nothings were exchanged by way of greeting, and then Margaret left him, saying: “I am going to call on Chief Tutaki’s wife now. Mrs. Curdy tells me that your mother is over there. We shall see you again at tea, of course.” She went off with her troop across the field in the direction of the Chief’s house, threading in and out among the numberless sheep. Once she looked and saw Glengarry standing still where she had left him. She smiled and thought definitely: “He is nice. I like him.”

  His mother she found to be just what she had pictured from Mrs. Curdy’s description, “a nice body,” the regulation elderly Scotch better-class woman with the soft breadth of her native language still thick upon her tongue. Margaret liked her too. Margaret had a habit of liking people.

  At the tea-table in Margaret’s big dining-room they all met again, Mrs. Curdy at the bottom of the table, Margaret at the top, Glengarry on her right, on her left his mother, and Harry and little Margaret anywhere they cared to sit.

  Margaret was gay and altogether charming in her rôle of hostess and mother. Plainly she and her beautiful children were amazing to the new people. Glengarry’s eyes hardly ever left her face. Her beauty glamorously pervaded the room in the deepening twilight, casting a spell over the man, over them all. As the meal progressed a sensitive quality crept into the tones of her always melodious voice—a throbbing, emotional mysterious note that mystified the housekeeper, that pricked up little Harry’s ears, and entirely captivated Glengarry.

  It was the note of awakening love. Margaret was disturbed—pleasurably disturbed. A genial glow suffused her body, at once unctuous and exciting. She felt herself more and more drawn to address herself to the man. She absorbed his personality, noted his physique. He seemed so familiar. Surely she had seen him before. Not so. But there was an unmistakable likeness to someone she knew. That general air of quiet aloofness, of formidable bodily strength; that ruggedly handsome head set so squarely on the broad shoulders; the black hair brushed straight back from the high forehead like Barry’s— Ah! Like Barry’s! There it was, that likeness. To Barry! She broke off what she was saying, in her artless, natural way and exclaimed: “You are like Barry, my husband, Mr. Glengarry. I have been wondering about your resemblance to someone I knew. It is Barry. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Curdy?”

  “Bless my soul!” Mrs. Curdy stared at Glengarry, then said dryly: “Oh, I suppose so, if you think so.”

  Harry piped out seriously: “Yes, you are like my Dad. Mummy, Jimmy said ‘Bret’ foundered a week ago. He had to cut his throat and bleed him. He says that he ought to be ridden. Can I ride him a lot now?”

  Margaret reflected, then answered him gently. “Yes, dear. Jimmy or I shall take you riding every day now.” She turned to Glengarry. “Jim Tutaki is my husband’s best friend. Have you cultivated him at all?”

  “Not at all. I have thought him a superior sort of chap, though. He seems very gay, always singing and laughing.”

  “Yes, bless him, always light-hearted and gay, yet thoughtful, intelligent, and full of all sorts of odds and ends of information. He is a character like his father, the Chief. He is exceedingly well-read, a first-class dog trainer, and was at one time the local champion with the axe. But I suppose you know that?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard.” A shadowy smile moved Glengarry’s lips as he answered. “Mrs. Curdy has told me quite a lot about his prowess with the axe and his other accomplishments. She did not mention that he was well-read, though.”

  “I don’t have much truck with books myself, and I don’t value that sort of thing in others.” Mrs. Curdy spoke her ideas bluntly.

  Margaret laughed merrily. “Old duffer, aren’t you, Mrs. Curdy? A dear old duffer. Jimmy Tutaki takes his meals with us every Sunday, Mr. Glengarry. You must get well acquainted with him. There he is now. I might have known that he would rush his work to get up.” She rose and unlatched the big
windows so that Tutaki might enter from the lawn.

  The lights were switched on, the fire was built up, Tutaki and the children made merry, Margaret occasionally throwing herself into the medley. Maire and Rata cleared away the tea-things; Mrs. Curdy went out on house-keeping bent; Glengarry excused himself for a while on the plea of work at the yards. Mrs. Glengarry took some knitting out of a bag which hung from her waist and sat before the fire. Margaret brought the baby from the nursery and suckled it. Wonderful domestic scene.

  Jimmy compelled the children to subside on the hearth-rug shortly so that he might lie back in a big chair and talk to Margaret. Such friends they were! The brown man’s ugly face as he gazed on the woman was filled with dignified, deep affection. “Gee! It is good to have you all home!” he said softly. “Do you know, I was thirty-four years old to-day. Your home-coming was my birthday present.”

  “Dear old chap, not your only birthday present. Did you think I would forget, Jimmy? Or Barry? Harry, dear, you may bring Jimmy’s presents.”

  Harry was away like lightning. It had been a pact of honour with their mother that the children were not to disclose the fact of the presents until her given word to do so.

  Harry came back full of gleeful importance. Oh, the merriment as Jimmy received his liquorice pipes from Heather, a wee girl hardly able to talk yet! (A lisping little dunce was Heather.) The reception of little Margaret’s silver spurs, her own choice, and Harry’s case of Loewe pipes! And when full justice had been done to these, Margaret rose and gave the baby to Mrs. Curdy, who had returned and with Mrs. Glengarry was appreciatively watching the proceedings. “Now for my present, Jimmy,” she said; “and Barry’s.”

  She moved across the room to an escritoire, her dainty white lace skirt with its silver sheen gleaming iridescently, fixing the open front of her blouse as she went. Opening the cabinet she hauled out a great parcel. Jimmy jumped to help her. “To the table, Jimmy!” she cried, laughing, “and leave it to me.”

  Tutaki put the paper-covered parcel upon the table. Margaret began to unwrap it as Glengarry returned. “It is Jimmy’s birthday to-day, Mr. Glengarry. This is my present.” She disclosed a brown leathern case fitted with straps, which, on being unfastened, allowed the case to open out and show neatly reposing inside a set of books. “There Jimmy! All Conrad’s! Thank me!”

  Tutaki’s face glowed. He bent over the volumes and breathed each title lovingly, touching each beautiful binding with his flexible fingers. Then he turned to the woman, held out his hands to her and said simply: “You good and true friend, I do thank you.”

  Margaret gave him her hands, and he stooped and touched each one with his full red lips. “Silly Jimmy!” she said with tender softness. “Silly old Jimmy! Now for Barry’s present.” She drew her hands away and laughed to hide the moisture in her eyes. How easily was she moved to tears by the show of the gentler attributes! She went back to the escritoire, and this time brought forth an axe, with the head encased in leather. “With my boy’s compliments, Jimmy, and wishes for many happy returns of the day.”

  Glengarry had seated himself beside his mother. The old lady murmured to him: “Funny to make such a fuss of an ordinary shepherd, and a Maori at that.”

  Her son made no reply.

  He was thirty-five years old, this Glengarry, and as rugged and thorough a Scot as ever came out of the Highlands. Taciturn but not moody, highly practical but to a student of human nature interesting for the inscrutability of his features, his immobility which might be a mask for anything. Whatever lay behind that mask would be formidable.

  Since leaving his native Scottish hills at the age of fifteen he had sojourned with his parents, an only child, in the south of New Zealand, the adopted land of Scotland’s migrants.

  He sat in a straight-backed chair in the bright big room and watched the scene between his master’s wife and the Maori, her friend. Unlike his mother, he saw nothing peculiar in that friendship. He was “big” enough to have seen rarity in the woman; to have easily defined her sheer naturalness as a transcendent quality setting her apart and above the common woman for whom the conventions and formalities are necessary.

  He was shaken profoundly by the impact of her personality. He kept telling himself that his nerves were getting confoundedly shaky when the sight of a lovely woman could upset him. The intonations of her voice when she spoke to the children, lovingly, brought a thickening to his throat; when Tutaki kissed her hands a mighty surge of sheer animality caused a singing in his ears, a pounding in his temples. It subsided, leaving him amazed. “Extraordinary,” he muttered, “extraordinary.” He thought of his age, his experience, calling on them for aid in this extraordinary pass. But none came. He felt helpless. He wondered—strangely, for he had not thought of her for years—about his wife, a pretty girl who had lived with him in Dunedin for a year and then run off with a Chinaman. He dismissed thought of her with repugnance. He shifted uneasily in his chair, for the spell of Margaret’s presence began to steal upon him with vague foreboding. He was no youth to be caught in the toils of unholy, unreciprocated, impossible love. It was absurd, stupid; a volatile fancy that would pass off with the night. Love at first sight! At his age! Ridiculous! And for that mother there, gathering her chickens ready for bed. How glorious she was with the babe in her arms! And what glorious children! The boy was a living picture of delight to the eye. He stood looking up at his mother in adoration.

  And suddenly Glengarry knew that the tragedy of tragedies had befallen him. Immutable as change, ineluctable as death, stark, staring fact faced him: he loved that woman. He loved her now, had loved her always, and would love her till he died.

  How did he meet that stunning realisation? He did not meet it at all. He just huddled up in his chair, with head bowed instinctively to hide his white face, and let the truth have its way with him.

  When Margaret walked past him to the door following Jimmy with the other children and called out: “I won’t be long, people,” he did not look up. Her flimsy lace skirt brushed against his knee. A frenzy almost overpowered him—a frenzied desire to grab at that flimsy lace and press it to his lips. Margaret looked down at his bowed head. Strange emotions were gently piling up in her bosom. She had been acutely aware of the man all night. The past ten years vaguely fell away from her, and a momentary vision of her real marriage day, the mating beneath the trees, passed before her mind’s eye. She folded the babe to her and whispered soft nothings to it.

  CHAPTER XII

  Tutaki returned to the dining-room almost immediately, and went at once to the books still lying in the open leathern case upon the table. Glengarry roused himself. He saw the necessity of pulling himself together and swore fiercely beneath his breath. He was a master of profane language for all his taciturnity. “Fond of books?” he asked the Maori shortly.

  The latter looked up from the open book with a start. “Ay? Yes,” he said, and returned to the page.

  Glengarry felt a little astonished. “Surly beggar,” he muttered, then grinned, for he knew himself a liar. “Surly” was the last epithet in the world to apply to Jimmy. He took a very short-stemmed pipe from his pocket and proceeded to fill it with tobacco from a huge pouchful.

  As he was lighting up Margaret entered. She had been a trifle absent-minded with the children when putting them to bed; her thoughts had dwelt upon Glengarry’s likeness to Barry. Now her eyes just naturally went to his. He was looking down at the bowl of his pipe, match in hand. It was alight; he flung the match into the fire and, despite himself, looked up at her as she advanced across the room. There was a soft inquisitiveness in her glance which changed to astonishment when she met the undeniable hostility in his. Her brows went up blankly. He cursed himself again and tried to smile. She walked past him towards Jimmy, still looking down at him in that puzzled manner.

  Tutaki, sitting upon the table, looked up at her and exclaimed: “Wonderful! Oh, Woman! Wonderful! You haven’t read this ‘Victory,’ have you? It is the only on
e of the lot that I’ve read, and surely it is the best. Surely it is impossible to eclipse an achievement like this.” He shut the book and banged it on the mahogany.

  Margaret stopped close to the table and rested one hand flat upon it. She looked down at it, seemingly absorbed. Tutaki was surprised. “You are tired, Lady,” he said. “You have had a tiring day.” He jumped off the table. “I’ll get off. We’ll make an early start in the mornin’.” He finished the last three words to the tune of “Philadelphia.”

  “Yes, Jimmy, I’ll go to bed,” she said wearily. “I believe I am tired—now.” Involuntarily her glance came round again to Glengarry. His eyes met hers with what seemed a literal impact. It shocked her.

  The man was jealous already, jealous of Jimmy, and he glared at her brutally.

  Tutaki was at the windows. “Good night, Lady. Good night, all,” he called as he stepped outside.

  “Good night,” answered the two elderly people.

  Margaret had forgotten Jimmy. The two elderly people chattered on contentedly over their knitting. The man glared brutally, beside himself. The young woman, safe enough still if let alone, if he played his part, turned slowly around, afraid, or unable, to avoid his terrible eyes. She began to walk towards the door. She had to pass him. She trembled with fright as she neared him. Or was it fright? She passed him with a little rush. She had broken away from his glare. She was safe. She caught her breath sobbingly. She realised her danger.

  She was outside the door now. He must go away to-morrow—go right away and never return. She leaned against the wall to gather strength so that she could walk upstairs. What had happened? To her? To him?

  The dining-room door opened. She trembled so violently that she could not stand. For it was he—come after her. She knew. She sank down to the floor in a heap, muttering: “Oh, God, help me! Help me!”

  He came straight to her. His eyes were like coals of fire in his head. He bent over her and lifted her in his arms. Lifted her and crushed her to him. Was it a kiss, that scorching flame upon her mouth? Again and again it seared her.