The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  He was carrying her away. Where? She did not know—

  She did not care. She was responding to his madness. She ceased to think. Her exuberant temperament gave forth its full mature richness in response to the man’s mighty passion. Blind impulse made them its sport. Reason was dead for the time being in both. They were prey to elemental instincts, sharing with the habitant of the lair and the dweller in the temple the throb of creation’s invincible urge.

  CHAPTER XIII

  And afterwards? For the woman a few minutes of vacuity, and then hours of deep sleep from exhaustion, until Nature awakened her in the early morn to suckle the babe. Her bedchamber opened into the nursery. She jumped up quickly and ran in to the child which was whimpering. She laughed softly as she lifted it from its cradle and talked lovingly to it in baby language.

  She loved her babies most at that time of the morning before the bath had substituted the scent of fancy soap for the real “baby” smell.

  Last night’s occurrence came but dimly to her as yet. She was all mother. Each morning at that time she took the infant into her own bed to suckle it and allow it to lie on her arm till rising time.

  Gradual remembrance and realisation stole upon her. With what effect? This—

  As she lay the household began to stir. Rata and Maire arose and bustled past her door without disturbing her, but by and by a quick, heavy tread brought her to a sitting posture, then out of her bed with furious swiftness. She snatched up her dressing-gown, flung it round her shoulders and darted out of the door into the passage, catching Glengarry as he was about to descend the stairs.

  Not one regret, not one sign of constraint showed in her demeanour. She stood in her doorway enveloped in an atmosphere of soft, shy eagerness, one hand clutching at her gown to hold it together and the other slightly outstretched towards him.

  He looked haggard and old and unfriendly. “Don’t look at me!” he commanded her at once.

  Her arm dropped to her side. She was puzzled. “Why? I can’t help looking at you—now.” At the last word the intonation of her always deep voice fell into rich contralto.

  “Because I am ashamed,” he answered.

  “Ashamed!” She stared at him, startled. Then, assuming a proud erectness, she said: “I am not ashamed. I am proud.”

  He started back. “What!” He put his hand up to his eyes and pulled it away again with a jerk as though ripping the mask of unfriendly gloom off his face. His rugged, set features softened to mobility. “Oh, if that’s so, if that’s the way you look at it—”

  They stared at each other. Margaret caught her breath. A dull flush crept into the man’s face. He looked around furtively, then quickly approached her. “Is anyone likely to come?” he muttered thickly.

  “Not just yet,” she whispered back. “Oh, my dear, what has happened to us? What has life done to us?”

  “God knows!” He spoke feverishly, gazing at her pure loveliness, her liquid eyes shining as through a mist, her parted lips moist from her panting breath, her cheeks still warm from sleep showing clearly their covering of soft fine down. “I have lain awake all night. I have been crazy. It is madness. It is all my fault. I should have left you alone.” His tongue stumbled over his words. Her beauty was overwhelming him. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was, but only excuses for his outrage against her came from him. He had a sense of sacrilege in regard to her, her whose transcendent qualities of mind and soul he had recognised clearly.

  After a night of agonised remorse he had formed the intention of seeing her just once, to kneel at her feet, to kiss the hem of her robe (he had laughed bitterly when this romanticism had stolen upon him out of the quiet of the night, upon him so practical and un-Quixotic), and then to leave the station. He had expected to meet a wounded, distracted, defensive woman—any kind of woman but this girl here who looked on him with glowing eyes and obviously wildly beating pulse; this girl with open, delicious seduction in every line of her.

  “I was crazy,” he muttered again, clenching his hands to keep them from that gently moving bosom of which sweet memory came now tormenting him.

  “Don’t torment yourself so,” she said, quite loudly. “We were both crazy.” Her eyelids drooped in blushing confusion. Her tones fell to a murmur. “I did not know—believe me, I did not know what it was—to love.”

  He just caught the last words. He recoiled in a sort of fright from her. Her innocence was appalling to him. Her demeanour suggested a belief in their love as righteous. A doubt of her assailed him, a doubt of her virtue. After all, before yesterday he had not known her.

  Shame overcame him. He lied. He had known her always. Frantic remorse for his doubt plagued him. She was just a woman playing up to the force of natural demands within her. Her downcast eyelids ravished him with their humility; her submissiveness he was not proof against. “What shall I do? What shall I do?” he implored of her.

  She turned her head, with its dishevelled hair, a little to one side and shot an oblique, swift glance at him from beneath their lids.

  “God!” he breathed. “What do you mean?” His husky voice seemed to rasp his throat. He passed one hand over his head in an action acutely resembling Messenger’s same trick.

  Margaret saw it and exclaimed: “How like Barry!”

  He flung his head back as though she had struck him, then reached out a hand, grabbed her wrist and jerked her to him. “You cruel little devil! What do you mean by that?”

  Blank astonishment answered him. He flung her off and closed his eyes tightly. She crept up close and pressed herself against him. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I don’t understand. I can’t see why you should be hurt. You knew there was Barry.”

  His arms went round her in a mighty hug. Was that tearing pain mere jealousy? He wanted to curse “Barry” aloud, but sheer decency restrained him. “I must go away!” he cried in a loud voice. “I must go right away now—to-day.”

  “What?” She threw her arms around him and pressed her face into the hollow of his neck. “Go away! Oh, no, no, no! You can’t! Just think.” She made him the frankest of confessions: such a confession as only the great-souled among women can make, and made it in an attitude of closest intimacy, of proud surrender.

  No other seduction could have so completely captured him. With difficulty he dragged himself from her embrace, duty prompting him. “Let me go. You are too wonderful. You are fatal to a man.” His ardent, yet fearful glance still clung to her while he edged away. Then his manhood (to his conception of it) made a last despairing rally: “Why do you take it like that? I have outraged you. You are married—with children. Your husband is a good man. You should have had me kicked off the place.”

  Margaret frowned. “Why? I don’t feel that way. That would be an outrage if you like. I felt terrible about it before it happened. I would have sent you away this morning without seeing you. When you came to me in the hall I felt like dying, somehow. If I could have found strength enough to get up here and lock myself in it would not have happened— You would have gone away yourself, wouldn’t you?— But the thing is done. Seems to me silly to go on about it the way you do. Barry will not be home for a month. Let us be happy.” She finished impulsively.

  He almost groaned aloud. “Your reasoning is diabolical.” Again that trick of Barry’s, of sliding his hand over his hair, but this time Margaret let it pass unnoticed. “You distract me utterly. No other woman—no other good woman in the world would look at it like that.”

  She laughed softly. “Nonsense, you silly fellow. What do you know about women? How do you know what other women think, anyhow? I suppose you are not in the habit of getting up to these cave-man stunts, are you? Perhaps I am not experienced enough in these matters. It is my first—first ‘flutter,’ you know. I might know better the proper procedure for ‘good’ women to follow next time.”

  ‘Don’t! Don’t joke, for God’s sake! You’ll drive me completely mad! I’ll never forgive myself! How I’m to work?—” He flung
around to the stairs.

  Margaret leaned over the balustrade and watched him descend. “Well, I must say that you are hardly complimentary,” she called to him in a low voice.

  He stopped and looked up at her. There was just a glimpse of white breast gleaming between the parted folds of her pink gown. With a rush he was again beside her, crushing her to him, pouring out little ejaculations expressive of his love-madness. He looked towards her room door, then along to his own.

  She grew frightened. “No, no,” she whispered. “Go now. Quick!”

  He glared at her. “You can’t play with me,” he said savagely.

  She struggled, but vainly.

  Afterwards she wept. This man might look like Barry, but there the resemblance ended. He had not Barry’s fine chivalry and self-control, she thought. Barry would never have done that. But who could tell? Barry had never come up against the same set of circumstances. This man had hell in his soul. She had seen that, though she could not enter fully into the spirit that had evoked the hell. She knew little of men, less of their passions. She was acquainted with the stress of Barry’s reverential, leashed passions, but this man’s turbulent storms taught her something. She wept again to think that he had supposed her playing with him. He had not Barry’s understanding, either, that was certain. Barry would have recognised her “playfulness” for what it was—a defence, a veil, a slight hysteria arising from the extraordinary circumstance; any and all of these things. Glengarry had shown grossness. But how dreadfully fascinating his savagery! She shivered in fearful delight. She thought about his criticism of her attitude, but arrived at no conclusions regarding it, beyond seeing definitely her utter inability to feel outraged, “insulted”. This last word coming to her mind shocked her, roused her indignation. As though she were a common creature that a man would dare insult! Her transcendent qualities of mind and soul took the first step towards conscious existence. The supreme egotism of the natural woman, recognising the unquestionable character of instinctive morality, laid its first imprint upon her.

  A slight hardness set her features to unloveliness. She bathed her face, dressed her hair elaborately, an unusual thing, and put on an exquisitely simple morning frock she had brought from Wellington.

  Her one extravagance was clothes. She destroyed an enormous quantity of pretty clothes with her careless ways. She could not keep her dresses clean; the children messed them about; she still retained a boyish habit of wiping her hands on her skirt.

  It gave her immense satisfaction to see herself in her great mirrors, a truly resplendent figure. And this satisfaction was not the simple thing it had used to be, but a sensual gratification in her sexpotency. It allayed her irritated woman vanity. Nevertheless, a new air of pride, not befitting her so well as her usual graciousness, kept about her for a while. It was noticeable, especially to the boy Harry. He eyed her curiously during his lessons, which she conducted, and at last remarked: “You are different to-day, Mummy. Not so nice. But your dress is lovely, though.”

  She lost that air at once. She swooped upon him. “Darling, am I different? Yes, yes, I am, but not to you. Never different to my babies, my beauties. Love your mother!” She was back again to her old self. Her caresses, her laughter, her naïve tomfoolery, were showered upon the children as usual. And when lessons were finished she took up the baby, gathered the others together and prepared for the usual morning jaunt.

  Nothing but the yards would satisfy the children these days. The clamour of the operations there excited them wildly. Margaret had continually to restrain Harry’s mad impulses to leap, run, turn head over heels. She did not want to go to the yards particularly that morning: Glengarry would have to be there, and her presence might upset him. But the children were crazy for the sight of all that commotion. Harry must run around with the “sheepoes,” with due discretion; small Margaret, excluded from the boards, to her utter disgust, because of the uncertainty of the shearer’s temper and the irregularity of his language, must creep along the paling fences from yard to yard, all voice and bare legs and flowing dark curls; and Heather, just then in the most fascinating, most distracting stage of wee girliehood, must potter about here and there, rushing to her mother’s skirts when any extraordinary commotion took place, lisping delightfully over the young lambs, crowing rapturously at the futile rushes of terrified flocks to avoid the yelping dogs who dashed over high fences for all the world as though they had wings.

  Chief Tutaki’s young wife was standing outside the sheds with her husband and stepson. She was a stoutly built woman of thirty-three years. Her dress was a loose kimono, fashioned by herself from some cotton fabric of brilliant yellow dotted with red; her straight, black hair hung loose down her back, and round her head she wore a red handkerchief, tied under her chin. She was most agreeably good-looking, despite the blue tattoo-lines marring lips and chin. (Extraordinary in one so young.) There were the invariably fine eyes of the pure Maori, the broad but in this case not coarse nose, the seductive upper lip, and over all the continual soft, pleasing half-smile of her kind. Most agreeable. Her feet were bare.

  She had in leash a fine collie bitch when Margaret came through the big gates separating the sheds and pens from the stable and house yards. Three puppies frisked about the heels of the bitch, and these the Chief, his wife and Jimmy were critically examining. They were the result of an experiment Jimmy was making, the crossing of collie and airedale to see if he could improve on his dogs.

  Margaret caught sight of Glengarry in a distant pen, trying to catch an unbroken horse. She stood and talked with the Tutakis, feeling brilliantly amiable and excited at the mere sight of her lover. Jimmy pulled some sheep-skins off a fence and spread them on the ground in the shade of some firs for the baby to lie on, relieving her of the weight and bother of holding it. (She always elected to carry her babies, notwithstanding the presence of pushcart and perambulator in the house.)

  It had always seemed strange to Margaret that Jimmy’s stepmother should be younger than himself. To Jimmy, too, for that matter. He made a joke of it to the woman herself and to the Messengers, though never before his father. He called her by her name, Rona, as, indeed, did everybody else but Margaret, who was punctilious in the respect she paid the natives about her.

  By and by Rona decided to return home. She had merely brought the bitch and her puppies out for exercise. Margaret, knowing that she must pass the pen in which Glengarry was still patiently pursuing the horse, said that she would accompany her.

  She was like an unrestrained child in her eagerness to enjoy the man’s company. Calling on one of the “sheepoes” to watch that Margaret and Heather did not fall into the pens (the baby was asleep), she set off with Rona. Her heart beat suffocatingly as they approached Glengarry.

  He was clad most roughly in shabby riding-breeches tucked into leggings, with only a singlet covering his torso. The sleeves of the latter had been cut out; it was ripped down the front almost to the belt, so that he could scarcely be said to be clothed. He was all of six feet high. His great arms were knotted with bulging muscles. These, with his outstanding hairy chest, gave him an appearance of immense strength. It was there, too, that strength. Margaret knew. She had felt like a cockleshell in his arms. She asked Rona to stop some way off from him to watch his remarkable patience with that young horse.

  It was incessant motion. The pen was small, but the man could in no way reach the animal’s head. It pivoted to avoid his grasp. It rushed and jumped and circled madly, trembling, covered with foam and sweat, but intent only on avoiding the embrace of the rope which hung from Glengarry’s belt. And all the time he followed it tirelessly, unangered by its hour-long battle, speaking now and again a soothing word to it, trying to dissipate the fright which showed in every line of it.

  “Why!” exclaimed Margaret suddenly. “It is the bay foal! Oh, the poor thing! But he’ll break it! Look, my dear, look! He’ll do it! Ah!—” Glengarry’s hand had just tipped the horse’s mane, but with a furious sn
ort it reared and plunged away again.

  This bay foal was an enigma. It had been found by Jimmy Tutaki up near Devil’s Corner some two years previous to this time and had been then a yearling. Its presence there had never been accounted for. No inquiries had been made after it, notwithstanding its obvious good breeding and the fact that Messenger had advertised its presence on the station. Therefore a kind of superstition had grown up around it in the minds of the simple natives, chiefly because of its association with Devil’s Corner, but also because of its intractability. Jimmy, not being a horsey man, had not bothered much with it, but several of the station hands had attempted to break it, unsuccessfully. At three years it was considered best left alone. Margaret had taken a fancy to its beautiful bay coat and gentle appearance (an appearance strangely at variance with its wildness) on the many occasions on which she had seen it.

  “He’s been at that for the last three days,” said Rona in her soft guttural.

  “Has he? Is he good at breaking? What started him on it?”

  “Don’t know.” Rona answered the last question first. “Jimmy was telling the Chief that the new boss had driven the bay foal in and was going to break it. Jimmy laughed then, but he said last night that the man knew horses all right. He didn’t laugh.”

  Margaret breathed deeply. Glengarry had resumed his patient pursuit. She knew how different his method was from that of the other hands who had tried and failed. No whip here or raucous shouts and curses. Just gentle persistence.

  The two women walked over to the pen.

  Glengarry had known of Margaret’s presence in the yards as soon as she appeared. He had been acutely aware of her approach. He was tired. He thought himself surely proof against her influence in the present spent condition of his body and mind, but with amazement he felt her presence invigorate him. New life flowed into his veins at her mere proximity. Nervous emotion made him gulp. He wanted both to run away and to possess her. He asked himself were there no limits to the demands this woman could make on him? Yet habitual reserve enabled him to turn to her quietly and properly before the other woman.