The Butcher Shop

by Jean Devanny

  Miette had learned her lesson anent New Zealanders and Maoris by this time. And she found her sensuality stirred more by Tutaki than by any man she had previously met. Secretly she had been crazy about him. Whenever she got close enough to him she “pawed” him—to use Jimmy’s own expression. But he—out of respect for “the Lady,” whose relative she was and in whose house she lived, and because his mind had up to now been free from the clogging of the flesh—he had repulsed her in no uncertain manner. But now, his turgid blood responding to her extraordinary sex-potency, under the spell of that fevered little singing in his ears, he obtruded himself upon her.

  Miette had scarcely seated herself upon the couch beside Mrs. Glengarry when she noticed his altered demeanour. Her heart leapt; a sensuous glow crept into her puffy little eyes; a soft voluptuousness emanated from her. She answered his bold stare with little tentative, seductive glances of assumed shyness. When Mrs. Glengarry said testily: “Don’t sit near me with that wee cur,” she merely laughed a little, tremblingly, and shifted over beside Margaret.

  Then one of the maids opened the door for wee Heather to come in. The tot was carrying a tiny kitten in her frock, and at once exclaimed gleefully to all and sundry that “the kitty’s eyes were open.” She ran across the room to her Daddy, but just before she reached him tripped on a rug, and in saving herself from falling dropped the kitten. There was a snarl, a leap, and in an instant the Pomeranian was worrying the kitten. Heather emitted a terrified screech; Margaret dropped her knitting and sprang to the child, but Barry had already picked her up and kicked the dog away from the kitten. Miette cried: “Oh, you brute, Barry!” and rushed to pick up her pet. She cuddled the yelping cur up to her, and turned on Barry like a virago. “You brute! To kick her like that! And all over a wretched little kitten! I believe you have broken her leg.”

  Messenger ignored her. He was engaged in soothing Heather.

  Margaret stood by quite pale. She hated Miette at that moment, but even so she was a woman’s woman, and unconsciously blamed the man. She turned scornful eyes on Longstair, and under the impetus of her scorn he acted. He walked over to Miette, plucked the dog from her arms and went to the door with it. “If he hasn’t broken its leg, I will,” he said, and opening the door threw it into the passage.

  Miette burst into tears and rushed out. Margaret cried: “You must not hurt the dog. It is not the dog’s fault,” and started out too.

  Jimmy saw his chance. “Never mind, Lady,” he said hurriedly. “I’ll see to it if it is hurt,” and hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Everyone breathed relievedly.

  Outside the door, Miette, crying loudly like a little child, picked up her dog, which was really badly bruised, but when Jimmy joined her she stopped crying suddenly.

  “Give me the dog. I’ll see if it’s hurt.”

  She gave it with a cute glance up at him. Instantly she forgot the dog. While he examined it she crept close as possible to him—

  They went out into the dark, and the beast screamed.

  Afterwards the brown man, full of contempt for her and his own weakness, said roughly: “I’ll take the dog home and see to it. You had better go in.”

  “All right,” Miette said meekly. Having got what she wanted, she walked back into the dining-room apologetically. “It is all right, Hub. Jimmy has taken it home. There’s nothing much the matter. I am awfully sorry, Margaret.” She sat down by Margaret and put on her sweetest and simplest manner.

  Longstair, now engaged with Harry in the construction of an aeroplane, said: “The dog is not coming back into the house. You get that?”

  And Miette, not caring a brass farthing about the dog really, thought of the Maori and replied, “Yes, Hub.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Margaret’s spiritual delicacy would not allow her to discuss Barry’s cousin with him. Neither would her sex-loyalty. Mrs. Curdy, whom she regarded almost as a second mother, alone heard her few depreciatory remarks about Miette, and Mrs. Curdy never failed to amplify them. Barry, the least critical of men, himself dropped a pertinent remark or two derogatory to his cousin, but on those occasions, up till that evening, Margaret had hurriedly thrown the blame on to Longstair with: “Yes, but Ian is so selfish,” or, “Yes, but Ian should point out her foolishness and try to educate her,” and so on. She never spoke so after the episode of that night, though.

  She and Barry took the children up to bed at an early hour, but instead of following her usual custom and returning to the dining-room she said she would go to bed herself.

  “Oh, all right. I’ll go too, if you do,” said Barry. He was rather glum-looking. They disrobed in silence, and then Margaret began to brush her hair before her mirror. Barry got into bed and watched her with the light of love and admiration shining from his eyes. He loved to watch the undulations of her slim lithe body as she flung her thick dark mane about in her efforts to brush it thoroughly.

  Then suddenly she said: “It is no use, Barry. The woman is detestable. There is no drop of your blood in her!”

  He was silent for a moment, and then said uncertainly: “I’ll tell them to get out if you like.”

  “Oh, no. We couldn’t do that. It is not so bad as that. She is your cousin, and besides— There’s Ian.”

  Another long silence. Margaret finished brushing, and then knotted her hair on the top of her head so that she might sleep comfortably.

  “Well, I am not going to have you or the children worried. You have only to say the word. I’ll run Ian in to Taihape to-morrow to see the doctor.”

  “I like him so much, Barry. Very, very much indeed.”

  Messenger smiled. “Oh, of course. Very, very much. He is all right, but I won’t have my girl worried for him or anybody else.”

  “Detestable and silly” was Margaret’s summing up of Miette after that night, then. She was too innocent and inexperienced to recognise the other woman’s type, or even to know that it existed. “Detestable and silly” covered the whole field of her criticism. She was amazingly broadminded for a woman whose experience had been so restricted. But her breadth of mind was due to her very innocence and goodness. She had no proper idea of easy human nature, of vice or sin.

  But she was not broadminded enough to have tolerated Miette’s promiscuity in the matter of sex. She had so far never guessed that such an aspect to Miette’s self-admitted sensuality existed. She had closed the door of her mind against the other’s confidences in regard to her husband, for she had felt instinctively that Miette was earth-bound, that she lusted only. She could not bear to think of such grossness.

  Her own love flew so high; consummation of it was to her like a glimpse of the face of God, an immersion in the sacred stream of Creation, pure and exquisite. The broad face of Nature was her pleasure-ground. The arid breath of lust had not so much as touched the fibre of her love, and to this the chaos of Glengarry’s soul bore witness. There had been no trace of sensuality in her clinging lips and loving eyes; her extremist emotions had shown him that the quality of her love was divine.

  No man who was a man could escape a seduction like that. It had got into the breath of Glengarry, into his inmost thoughts and feelings, urging him towards high habits of life, causing him to regret the shadow places of his past.

  Margaret could not have understood the nature of poor Miette’s derelictions. How could she? She could have seen the fact of them, but their essence the fabric of her own being would not have allowed her to understand. She could not have entered into the sex-life of low types so suddenly. She would not have recognised that Miette was only being true to herself, that she was but responding to the requirements of her being, and that enforced continence would have soured her spirit and destroyed her health.

  But one cannot touch dirt without soiling the fingers. Already Miette’s presence had caused a little ruffling of Margaret’s benevolent spirit. Up till then this woman had known only untainted aspects of life in her personal contacts; since the episode of th
e maltreated dog which had occurred in her early marriage days the ugliness of humanity had scarcely touched her. Her sorrows and troubles had been the winds and the rains which leave nothing unsavoury; her quarrels with Messenger had been but the thunderstorms which cleanse the air.

  After a while Miette’s presence around her had an effect upon her as of the faint sprinkling of ordure over fine raiment. Margaret did not feel clean, and her spirit chafed. For the first time in her life she could not look another person in the eye. After that evening she had a feeling of actual dislike for Miette, who liked her, and would persist in detailing all the miserable little happenings of her daily life to her. Margaret’s life was very full, what with her children’s lessons and the hundred and one interests, and her visitors and friends and calls, and it became really annoying to have her routine disturbed by Miette’s silly chatter about puddings and stews and socks and things. Margaret had always left the household entirely to Mrs. Curdy, at first out of shyness and then out of good sense. But these topics were at least domestic and womanly. It was the sex-talk Margaret could not suffer, and yet was too gentle-minded to rebut.

  Miette just had to talk sex. What libertine, male or female, does not? She burned to disclose her conquests, to parade her lovers. The psychology of her type pandered wholly to the fleshly lusts. She was no more capable of entering Margaret’s world than the latter was of realising hers. At first she had repressed her desire to talk sensually, having a little sense, but when she saw Margaret’s boyish good fellowship with Tutaki, Glengarry, and some others of her especial male friends who came to the house, she thought she sensed a kindred spirit, and gradually began to loosen her tongue. A very dirty tongue it was, too. She would tell Margaret all sorts of things relating to the highways and byways of life, never, however, quite confessing personal implication. And Margaret’s ears would tingle, her cheeks burn, and her heart grow hot with resentment and shame for this woman who could so lusciously revel in filth.

  It took time to frustrate the habits of years; it took strength to make resolves in delicate situations; and before Margaret could bring herself to be what she called “nasty” to her relative and guest her anger needed to be aroused. Miette’s confidences were not delivered in a manner calculated to arouse Margaret’s anger. She would tell the nastiest things in a soft, babyish, ingratiating way, with helplessness written all over her. No matter how shocked Margaret was, her harshness never got her any further than: “Don’t speak of such things, Miette.” “Oh, Miette, how can you think of such things?” etc. Mere coquetry with Miette’s pachydermatous skin.

  Only to Margaret did Miette unburden herself in this manner. She had early learned the value of bridling her tongue before men. Men liked the pretence of innocence, even though they knew it was but pretence, so before men she had used herself to an aspect of sensuous simplicity. And of all men her husband was the one she found it easiest to deceive.

  Miette, again the typical libertine, was only attracted by men of a certain decency. Her type must not for a moment be confounded with the woman of the street. She was saved from that lower level by a certain strain of respectability, by which she set much store. Miette’s judgments on “low” women were very harsh. The reason and necessity for this was that she had never consorted with men of her own type; she selected respectable, fairly clean men. Instinct, probably, guided her in this also. She was pretty safe with respectable, fairly clean men.

  Once she had seduced Tutaki, she could not keep her thoughts off him, and consequently her tongue also. She sought him about at his work; she spent hours at his home on the chance of seeing him, and at nights in the dining-room she disgraced herself in the eyes of the household. She could not keep away from him nor her hands off him. She became the talk of the house, and of course of the station. Margaret was filled with pity and with shame for her. Barry ignored the matter in a gentlemanly way.

  Never before had Miette’s passions been aroused so. She became Tutaki’s slave, wanting to fetch and carry for him, place his chair and so on.

  Longstair could not help but see, and yet he said nothing and made no move. And the reason was that he also was beginning to dislike Miette. His moderate effeminate love had transferred itself to Margaret.

  No blame attached to him. The contrast between the two women was too great. A close companionship had developed between him and Margaret, a real friendship. He had her interested greatly in his social sciences, and long, sustained conversations were becoming daily occurrences between them. He admired her for her beauty of form and of character; he respected her aloofness and dignity, despite her charming sociability; and then he learned to love her because she was his equal in intellect and interested in everything. Poor tawdry Miette became in reality his servant. He kept her in servitude because it suited her and him and paid homage to Margaret.

  The latter fought him over his attitude towards his wife, and in a great many ways altered her position for the better; but Miette did not thank her for her interference. She rather held a grudge against her for it.

  Longstair showed his partiality for Margaret to no one. One and all thought him merely a simpleton who did not see, and therefore did not check his wife’s one-sided love-making with Tutaki.

  Of course Ian had no notion of the real state of affairs. He saw his wife’s infatuation and ignored it because it suited him to do so; but had he suspected that an illicit relationship existed between them there would have been trouble at once. He had definite ideas on that matter.

  Miette easily managed him. She told him how she liked Tutaki. She cuddled up to him in bed at nights and told him of the maternal love she felt for Jimmy; told him how dreadful these mixed marriages were. (There were several on the station and around it.) “Fancy a white girl marrying a Maori, Ian. Don’t you think it dreadful? Now, I love Jimmy, but I can’t imagine myself living with him.” And then she would make furious love to Ian.

  So the innocent man of books, beginning to dislike his wife a little, and not in the least thinking that she was being talked about, made no move.

  He had lived his days from childhood among his own class of person. Free association of the sexes was a fetish of his young movement and made rather a matter of duty. Casual kisses, meaning nothing, promiscuous fondnesses, intelligent attachments, all perfectly honourable and above board, he had seen as the order of the day. The attitude of average conventional people towards such procedure had never received a thought from him. Except professionally, he had never come into contact with ordinary people. The most Miette’s mute caresses bestowed upon Jimmy meant to him was the fact that they freed him from her attention so that he could indulge the one passion of his nature, discussion with Margaret.

  How that man loved to talk! How he loved to sit for hours and discuss, discuss, discuss, with people of his own kind! He would gladly sit up all night and night after night to talk. Every Saturday night in London before his accident would see him and two or three of his particular cronies walking the streets of that great city till dawn discussing every subject under the sun that came within the range of the social sciences. He gave no thought to sex. Let poor Miette follow her harmless little bent for Tutaki. It hurt no one and pleased her. Such things were beneath the notice of the red-headed philosopher.

  As for Tutaki’s position in the matter— Well, Longstair was in the habit of saying what he thought, and he supposed other people were, too. If Tutaki did not like it, he would say so. He did say particular things to Miette (he, Ian, was rather surprised at times that his wife did not feel insulted by the things the Maori said to her), but then, he was a Maori, and doubtless did not know any better.

  Jimmy had delivered himself into Miette’s hands that his blood might be freed from its turbid flow. She had been the vessel to receive his iniquities. Jimmy was as single-minded about women, apart from Margaret, as Longstair was about his wife. After using Miette, he was not prepared to give her so much thought as even to despise her. She simply did not exist f
or him. He felt no shame, not even a regret, until Miette began to make things uncomfortable for him.

  Now Miette had met men of his sex-nature many times—men to whom the sex-act carried no spiritual significance. They had been men of her own race who had left her no room for doubt regarding their attitude towards her. Unequivocally and articulately they had put her in her place, and she had supinely awaited their pleasure.

  But here was a man not of her race, a man whose sex traditions differed essentially from the pakeha’s. Civilisation demanded from the white man of Jimmy’s type at least a semblance of respect and consideration for the Miettes; but two generations had not taught Jimmy the finer points, the niceties of civilisation. His essential savage honesty had not become obscured. How could Miette expect anything from him? Miette, too stupid even to handle the little knowledge that had been hammered into her. To the Maori she was but a human cesspit. After that night he had no wish to vouchsafe her as much as a glance or a word—until he should need her again.

  He had no thought for Longstair. There had to be men, so why not him? He liked Ian awfully, but if a man was fool enough to marry a Miette—well, Jimmy, when considering the matter, at this point spat and shrugged.

  But his essential difference from white men of his kind left Miette at sea, and besides intrigued her mercilessly. The dreadful fascination which the coloured man exercises over the white woman of her certain type took hold of her to inflict its strange torment upon her. Within a week of two after that first illicit act she panted to live entirely with the brown man. His manner to her, completely detached and impersonal, nonchalant and negligent of the fact that they were not strangers, spurred her to forgetfulness of even the commonest decency. She pursued him recklessly.