by Jean Devanny
In the big house great fires roared day and night to counteract the dampness. The ground all around the station literally oozed water. Mrs. Glengarry’s rheumatism returned upon her badly, and Margaret made her stay abed and rubbed her creaking joints with liniment to ease them.
The old lady adored her. She never tired of sounding her praises to all and sundry, but especially to her son, who never tired of listening to them.
Margaret and Longstair spent hours each day in the big dining-room, talking while the children played about. And Miette would wander irritably from room to room nursing her lusts and hatreds.
CHAPTER XX
Then came docking-time in Maunganui. By the time the last lamb was born the first ones were ready for docking.
Spring, the laggard, came running to take its place with sweet apologies for malingering. Soft breezes blew continuously to dry the sodden earth, and the scents and cries of the young life hung everywhere upon the air. The season of birth was past, and now was “the time of year when lambs leap off the ground with all four legs at a time.”
Margaret loved that time of year, though she hated the docking. She kept her thoughts as much as possible from it. The blood ran free and warm in the veins of men as well as in new animal bodies, and each year with the re-birth of the season Margaret was conscious of a definite uplift of health both in body and mind.
She took advantage always of the spring to press home to her children’s small understandings the lessons of life it taught: the mating of plant life, the birth of the animal life, the hideousness and torture of the docking, necessitated that man’s will might be served. Margaret was brave. Her instinct, her desire, was all for the shielding of her young ones from the dark side of life. She had the wherewithal to shield them; money was there to stand between them and the seamy side of life; no suffering need touch them, no knowledge of vice or the ruthlessness of the struggle for existence need mar the level surface of their young lives. But Margaret was brave. Her children must live in the world as it was; they must be fitted for emergencies; they must be taught the travail of industry so that their minds would be ready to meet the demands of the future. She knew that great changes lay on the horizon of society, and she and Messenger saw the necessity of fitting their children for adaption to those changes.
Therefore she spared herself not at all. She never ceased to point out to her children the contrast between their own circumstances and the way of life of the average millions. On her visits to Wellington she never neglected to take her children, young as they were, into the fearsome slums of New Zealand’s capital to show them the squalor and misery of those places. She was the perfect mother.
Messenger never took part in the docking. This was the sole item of the station routine which his father had kept him from. The English country gentleman could not stomach it. Neither did it come within the scope of Glengarry’s work. He supervised it. On Jimmy Tutaki, as head shepherd, the business chiefly lay. He docked, and got a sufficient number of men to help him. His work went on from daylight till dark.
Miette wished to go out and see the docking. She was really interested (as who would not be?) in the work of the station, and also she knew that Tutaki was in charge. She had not known that there was such a thing as docking until the last day of the “lambing.” Messenger and Glengarry had ceased work that day, which chanced to be fine, and were seated on the verandah replete with content and satisfaction, discussing the season as a whole. Glengarry had remarked that he would start the round-up for the docking on the morrow.
Miette looked up from the depths of her easy-chair and asked: “Docking! What’s that?”
“The lambs have their tails cut off,” answered Barry, turning to her pleasantly. “Tutaki’s special job, the docking.”
“Oh! Can I go out and see it?” eagerly.
Margaret looked up from her knitting, surprised. “Why, Miette, do you want to see the lambs have their poor little tails cut off?”
“Well, yes, I should like to see it done. It is hateful, of course, but just for once— To be able to say I’ve seen it.”
“Well, I have never seen it,” answered Margaret, “and never will. But you can’t go out there, Miette (she said this more gently); there are other things besides the docking to be done.”
Miette looked from her to the two men, who were staring unconcernedly at nothing. She opened her mouth to speak and then decided not. The men resumed their talk. Miette’s curiosity was aroused, though. When she got Margaret alone she plied her with questions which were answered simply and briefly.
“The ear-marking, castration and docking are all done at once, Miette. You see it is quite impossible for a woman to be present; but we can go out into the paddock with Barry and Mr. Glengarry tomorrow for the round-up, if you like. Do you think you could ride over the hills?”
“Yes. I would love to go.”
“Very well. You will need to be up at four o’clock. I shall give the children a holiday from their lessons, and we can have tea out there. Mr. Glengarry said that they would do the rabbitters’ paddock first.”
“Yes, Glen did say so,” said Miette insolently. She much resented the “Mr.” Glengarry and the “Mr.” Tutaki which Margaret had employed in their conversations since the night she, Miette, had given herself away. Before it had been “Glen” and “Jimmy.”
Margaret flushed, but made no reply. Her dignity offended Miette also. The latter did not know whether Margaret had told Jimmy to keep away from the house or not. She badly wanted to know, but even her impudence and vulgarity would not carry her so far as to allow her to ask outright. Spring had no uplifting effect on her. It merely quickened the fever of her blood.
Next morning at half-past four, just after daybreak, they set out. “Just say if you get tired, Miette,” Margaret said as they left the yard, “and we shall return. The men will not be able to give us any attention. I know by experience. We shall have to look after ourselves. It is a good job you have learned to trot, as the horses like to trot up the hills.”
The men certainly did not give them any attention. They were at work, and women-folk must look out for themselves. They were to round up a thousand acre paddock that day, and arduous labour it was. Some of the lambs were tiny, almost newborn. Sentiment could play no part, though Messenger took pains to take the oldest first.
The method was to round-up all the ewes with lambs in a given area of the paddock; then the lambs would be separated from their mothers and enclosed within a small yard, built for the purpose, and without more ado the shepherds who performed the operations got to work.
One corner of the paddock, which stretched over several hills and dales, was rounded up by ten o’clock in the morning. By this time Miette’s soft body was one big ache. She had learnt to “post,” but she found that trotting on level ground was a different thing to trotting up and down rough hills. The women had kept close to Barry all the time; he could move but slowly when driving sheep. Glengarry, Tutaki and some other men, all converged with him on the spot selected for the docking, which was about half a mile from the rabbitters’ hut.
With the lambs safely enclosed, it was decided to make tea and have a “snack” before beginning work. The fire was built with some wood gathered from a copse close by and a huge billy swung to boil. Food and mugs for the men had been sent out from the home kitchen. The “snack” eaten (no time was wasted over it), Messenger and Glengarry prepared to go off to another part of the paddock to round-up, leaving Jimmy in charge.
Miette had forgotten her aches and soreness on seeing Jimmy. She was concerned about her appearance. Her face, always highly coloured, she could feel was burning vividly, and she knew that she did not look well in the borrowed breeches and leggings.
Yet she could not get to him quickly enough. No thought of his rebuffs lingered within her. Lust and the egotism of the stupid had convinced her that Margaret’s jealousy alone divided them. She urged her horse on past Margaret, who at that moment was
thinking of anything but an amour she had long considered relegated to limbo.
Tutaki had arrived at the enclosure some time before their party, and when they came along he went forward to help separate the mothers and the lambs. So eager was Miette to see him that she rode right in among the sheep and called: “Hallo, Jimmy!”
And Jimmy, already burnt almost black by the spring sun, swore to himself and shouted: “Go back! Get out! What are you riding down the sheep for? Get back to Mrs. Messenger.”
Miette burnt with mortification. She looked round and found that Margaret had halted some distance back, but not so far that she would not have heard. Miette tugged at her horse and guided him out of the sheep, but to one side. How she hated Margaret! who, she could see, was pretending she had not heard. She was the cause of this. Miette sat her horse and waited as Margaret did until all the lambs were enclosed. And then Jimmy went over to Margaret, who met him gladly with a handshake. Miette felt that she could not bear her jealousy and hatred.
Margaret dismounted and called gaily to her to do likewise, as tea was the next item. She did so, and found walking difficult through the stiffness of her legs. She walked over to the others, now all gathered round the pen, hoping that Jimmy might even yet come to her. But no. He hung around Margaret with not a look for her, and Miette could not conceal her vexation of spirit.
Margaret was amazed and upset and angry. The silly creature, to behave so! Had she no dignity? Or sense of shame? To chase thus after a man who obviously despised and detested her. Yet she was sorry, too. So sorry that she whispered to Glengarry to pay a little attention to Miette. He understood at a glance and promptly obeyed her.
Miette saw her whisper; her jealousy sharpened her wits so that she suspicioned what was said, and when Glengarry came to her, her suspicion was confirmed. She almost ground her teeth.
Miette had paid little attention to the Scotsman, having been entirely preoccupied with the strange fascination the coloured man had exercised over her. She was beside herself. As Glengarry came up to her she said malevolently: “So Margaret sent you to keep me company while she flirts with Jimmy.”
The man stopped dead and wrath shot from under his heavy brows. Then he noted her twisted features and sympathy moved him. “Mrs. Messenger never flirts,” he said gently. “Jimmy and her husband grew up together, and Mrs. Messenger told me herself that Jimmy helped to bring up her children.”
“I don’t doubt it,” interrupted Miette evilly; but he ignored the obvious implication and went on.
“They have been companions for ten years. Of course Jimmy thinks the world of Mrs. Messenger. Every man on the station does. She is a beautiful and a wonderful woman. She is almost too good to be true.”
“You’ve said it,” said Miette, with an attempt at a laugh. “She is too good to be true. So every man on the station thinks the world of her, does he? Well, she told me that Jimmy was in love with her.”
Glengarry’s eyes narrowed into mere slits. He lost the sympathy. “You lie!” he snapped out. “You lie! She did not tell you that.”
“Lie, do I! So you’re in love with her too. But of course. You’re one of the men on the station. I see. No wonder Barry keeps his men.”
What moved the dour, reserved Scot to speak the words he did then? He experienced profound wonder at himself even while he spoke. Was it that vein of weakness in him that manifested itself only under emotional stress? the unbalanced note in him? Was it an attempt at punishment of the vile creature defaming his love? Or was it just plain loyalty? And the desire which lies in every good man to humble himself for the woman he worships? Glengarry was not the man he had been. The fiery ordeal his love had subjugated him to had loosened many strings in his being; had softened him in many ways, fortified him in others. Perhaps the very grossness of the poor woman before him inspired him for an instant to full realisation of the exalted nature of the other woman and filled his soul with exaltation in their mutual love. Certainly he did not know that Margaret had come towards them, that she was standing very close to him when he spoke those words so simply: “Yes, I am in love with Mrs. Messenger, and I’m proud of it.”
Miette saw Margaret as he spoke, and a chagrined uncertainty of mind and action first claimed her. She stood looking foolishly at her cousin with her mouth open, and Glengarry turned to follow her eyes.
Margaret’s face was a study in amazed, shocked incredulity and dismay. But what she saw in the man’s face gradually eased it away. He had never before looked on her with just that significance. It was the look she had waited for and longed for from him, the look of a pure love realising and exulting in its righteousness and purity. It cleansed Glengarry of the sinfulness and shame which had in his mind been associated with his love.
It was strange that that supreme moment should have come to them there, and that it should have been created by the excrescences of Miette’s tawdry mind. But perhaps it was fitting. There in that green paddock, among the blatting sheep and crying lambs and the horny-handed sons of toil was the turmoil and travail of industry; there were the varied mentalities and emotions of humanity running the whole gamut of the scale from highest to lowest; from Margaret and Messenger the scale ran down through Glengarry and Tutaki, the better class workers there, down through Miette, the unfortunate embodiment of human animalism, to the half-crazed little hunchback “sheepo” that Messenger kept out of goodness of heart. There was the daily round of industry, and after all it is but fitting that supreme moments of life should effloresce from the flat surfaces, and that they should shoot up out of human slime as the sweet-scented flowers rise out of the dung of the fields.
They forgot Miette, those two. Or if they remembered, she dropped naturally to her proper place in their scheme of things. A long minute they stood looking at each other, and then simultaneously they turned and walked over to the other men.
They held no speech together. Why should they? Glengarry thought, as men are apt to think in sacred moments, that he would go on and on through life to death tranquilly and restfully, that never more would sorrow come his way. And strange to say, there in the hot sunlight the man had a vision of himself and his friend and the woman sitting in the firelight of old age, while Margaret’s children’s children played around his knee.
Neither gave a thought to Miette, who had seen. Yes, Miette had seen, and while they walked away she stood gazing after them with slack mouth and triumphant eyes. Here was something! Here was a find! Those two were “carrying on” too. This was rich! Poor Barry! She really ought to go straight to him and tell him. Too good to be true! Glen had said it, certainly. While she ate a sandwich and drank a mug of tea she tried to size up this new discovery. A nice one to put on airs! When she was carrying on with two men at once, the cat!
Still, Miette was amazed. It had been easy enough for her to see Margaret infatuated with Tutaki because of the passions for him which gnawed at her own vitals (she did not know that the coloured man made appeal only to her type of white woman), but Glengarry— So quiet, so reserved, so “ungallant,” so sullen, as she thought, Glengarry and Margaret!—she was positively amazed.
She watched the two, who had remained together while taking their tea. Margaret’s slim, supple body, stayless, as Miette knew, seemed made for the well-made breeches she wore. A multicoloured broad scarf was swathed round her waist, where a plain white blouse was tucked into the breeches. A broad felt hat shaded her face from the sun.
Miette looked on the man with a new interest now. A woman, a beautiful woman, was interested in him. What did she see in him? Certainly he was big, but rough and uncouth. Miette had always pretended she abhorred roughness. Ian was so smooth of body and hairless. Glengarry’s massive chest was padded with thick black hair; it lay on his great arms like a blanket, too. Miette had a great respect for Margaret. She had lived in the socialist world, wherein intellect, intelligence and knowledge were the only things bowed down to. She knew that Ian, quite a figure in that world of brains and re
ason, accepted Margaret as his equal, therefore she could not withhold her respect. That Glengarry attracted Margaret, then, elevated him enormously in Miette’s estimation. She continued to study him after her own constitution. That was, obscenely. When the time came for her to remount her horse she had discovered possibilities in Glengarry. Perhaps he was not so quiet after all. Perhaps he only needed stirring up. And Margaret would not dare interfere a second time. Miette grinned to herself. She would not show her hand too much this time. Except to Margaret. Oh, if she could only get her own back on the cat who had refused to share! She would have shared Jimmy with the other.
In this matter Miette was sincere. She would have shared Jimmy if necessary. Anything to have him, anything to hold him. She accepted men as they were. One, or one of a dozen, what mattered but relief for her gnawing passions—passions which never ceased. It is truth that Miette would have shared Jimmy. To herself she was justified in “getting her own back” on Margaret, who refused even a crumb from her bountiful store. Margaret had Barry, himself highly desirable in any woman’s eyes; she had Tutaki and Glengarry too, and yet she had refused her, Miette, so much as a word with the Maori.
The word Life to Miette was spelt m-e-n. In judging others according to her own constitution she was not unique. No, in this she was at one with the great average of humanity. She could only see through her own eyes, only judge others by her own code, for she had no transcendent or extraordinary qualities of mind or soul to enable her to recognise those qualities in others. She had little or no imagination.
The strength of the reproductive instinct in Margaret was her divinity, the god-head in her, because the glory of her mind and the beauty of her soul held it under proper control; but in poor Miette that instinct had run amok, unleashed by mind, debased by soullessness.
