The Stone Bull

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “But you loved her. You’ve never gotten over loving her! You came to me in the lobby that day because I looked like her and you’ve been trying ever since to put me in her place, to bring her back to life.”

  This time my words pierced whatever defense he had raised against me and he turned sharply. “Yes. You reminded me of her. She was dead and it’s true I came to you in pain.”

  “No wonder everything went so fast!” I cried. “From that first moment it was Ariel you loved. And you just went on loving her! You held me and you loved her. I can’t tell you how contemptible I think you are.”

  His eyes had turned dark blue with fury. “I’ll move into another room tonight. Tomorrow I’ll have the limousine take you back to New York, if you want to go.”

  “No! You needn’t bother. I’m staying.”

  He stared at me in angry silence.

  “I mean to stay until I find out the truth about who was to blame for Floris Devin’s death. I’m not going to leave my sister’s name with any stain of suspicion on it. I know what she was like, but she was never a murderer.”

  “Then you’re wasting your time.” He went into the bedroom and I followed as he began to pick up his clothes, his shaving things, his shoes.

  “You’re wasting your time,” he repeated, “if you think you’re going to exonerate her. She went to Magnus, didn’t she? And she wanted Floris’ death.”

  “Are you the one who has been saying these things about her? How could you when you loved her?” My fury was rising out of control. “How despicable! There aren’t any words—Please go as quickly as you can.”

  He went even more quickly than I asked, and when the door had closed firmly behind him, I turned as limp as an empty sack and dropped to the floor because there was no strength left in my legs. Perhaps deep inside me there had been a tiny, forlorn hope that he would deny his love for Ariel, that he would tell me that he’d loved me just for myself. I knew better now—and I hated him fiercely, hoping the fire of my hatred would burn out my love.

  For a long time I sat on the floor beside the bed with my head on my arm. My eyes were dry again, burned out with anger, and my throat was choked with tears that could not be released. I don’t know how much time passed, but after a while I got up and went through the doors onto the balcony. The wind was cold on my face and I drank in the chill to let it freeze away the heat of the anger that burned in me. Down on paths near the lake couples moved together—so close together—as I had once moved with my love. But now there was only emptiness and pain and loss. Something worse than loss through death. Because what I had lost I had never really had. It wasn’t me he had loved, but always Ariel.

  So why must I stay here and torture myself when she had destroyed my life, however unwittingly? Yet I knew it was because it had been unwitting on Ariel’s part. I’d never known Brendon until she was dead. Perhaps too I must punish myself for my sister’s death. If I had gone to her, she would have lived, and none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be standing now on this balcony. I wouldn’t have lain in Brendon’s arms for all these weeks. I would never have known what it felt like to be loved as he had loved me. In a sense, she had given me something I had never known before, and would never know again.

  What if I should do what she had done? What if I should just go down there to that cold, waiting water and give myself to it? If I did, I would make no phone calls hoping for rescue. I would seek oblivion gladly. Anything to turn off the pain.

  But there was another voice inside me that made me listen:

  Stop it! You’ve been a fool, but you needn’t go on being one. Ariel had all the courage in the world when it came to her work, her dancing. But she had none at all when it came to living. If she didn’t immediately get what she wanted, she went to pieces. You’re not like that. If adversity makes anyone strong, it has made you strong. You’re not Ariel, and you’ll live. You’re not the first woman who has been betrayed. Others have suffered before you, and most of them lived and found something happier, something better. There are other men. You’ll meet one in time. There are men who are good and honest. In the meantime, stay long enough to find out what you can about Floris’ death. Pay your debt to Ariel.

  The inner voice had its way. I turned out the sitting-room lights, since there was no longer anything to fear in the dark. Then I went into the bedroom, flung off my clothes, turned off more lights and got into bed as quickly as I could, shivering a little, until my body warmed the bed.

  There would always be cold beds from now on.

  That too I thrust away as I lay there thinking. Always the cure for anything is to plan. Plan some sort of action. Anything that will give the next day purpose. It doesn’t even need to be meaningful purpose, but just something that will keep the body moving, the mind more or less occupied. I knew now what I would do.

  I would climb the mountain again and visit Magnus. At least he hadn’t deceived me. He had been open and honest, even when it was unflattering. So I would say to him, “If you want me to sit on the back of your stone bull and pose for you, I will.” And perhaps he would talk to me—tell me things I could use to help me understand more about Ariel.

  With that settled, I fell eventually into troubled drowsing. Not until it was nearly morning did I fall deeply asleep, as though I’d been drugged, so that it was ten o’clock before I awakened. The dining room would long be closed, but I knew there was a small coffee shop as an annex to the lobby store. When I was ready in slacks and a sweater, my handbag slung over my shoulder, I went downstairs and sat at a tiny table where I drank my coffee and munched on a doughnut.

  I’d seen nothing of the family since I had come downstairs, and I avoided the corridor where the offices were, letting myself out on the lake side, hurrying toward the paths that led uphill, so that trees could quickly hide me from the hotel. I had no idea what Brendon would decide to do. Certainly our estrangement could not be hidden for long from his mother and Loring and Naomi.

  Every direction my thoughts took carried me into pain, but there was no help for that. Perhaps I would eventually break down and cry desperately for a while, but I was still staving that time off. My mother had always been annoyed when I cried. Only Ariel’s tears were justified. What could I have to cry about?

  This morning I chose the steeper, shorter way up the mountain. I needn’t go to the top, since there were side paths along the way that led to the cabin in the woods. Determinedly, my eyes registered and identified as I walked, so that my gaze wouldn’t turn inward. Once more I had brought my sketch kit along, though I didn’t stop now to use it.

  In the spring there would be lady’s slippers here, and arbutus blooming. Butterflies and bees would be busy. Now woodbine climbed over a broken stone wall, and with the chill nights the trees were turning yellow and red and rusty brown. From among the stones a chipmunk rose on his hind legs to study me with bright, beady eyes, before vanishing more quickly than my sight could follow.

  When I found a path leading upward at a right angle to my trail, I followed it until I came to a quiet glen, where maple trees hung their scarlet banners all around. I could still find solace in such a place. With its offering of peace and growing beauty, I could drug my mind with forgetfulness.

  Then I climbed again, through pitch pine and white pine, upward to the wider road that led to High Tower. Here I had to retrace my steps in order to find the cutoff to the Glen of the Bull, as I had begun to call it in my mind.

  Again I found satisfaction in what was happening in these forests. Though some of the chestnut oaks were dying, their places were being taken by white and gray birch, and soft and striped maple, plus hemlocks and other evergreens. I came upon a beautiful larch tree, with a few of its rosettes of needles left, the others already shed.

  Distraction, I thought. Anything for distraction. Because the one thing I must not do was to think about Brendon. It was my sister I must think about now, and only about her. I had an everlasting debt to Ariel, and I cou
ld at least pay it in some small part. My feelings toward Brendon—an unhappy mixture of love and anger and pain—must not be allowed to distract me from the one purpose that now kept me here.

  This time I seemed to come upon the bull even more suddenly than before. Perhaps because of my effort not to see the woods for the trees. He stood in the center of his grassy ring, seeming to paw the earth in all his impatient power—all his male aggressiveness—as though he might toss me onto his horns, toss me onto his back and go galloping away with me, as Ariel’s bull did in her ballet. How she must have delighted in this place, delighted in Magnus, who had created so primitive a creature. What had Keir said, sounding scornful?—“bull worship”? Well, why not in this primeval setting?

  This morning the woods did not ring with the sound of mallet on steel, and when I left the bull and found my way to the cabin, I saw blue smoke rising from the chimney, and caught the fragrant scent of burning wood. The door stood open and there was no knocker. I mounted the steps and called out.

  “Is anyone home?”

  Magnus came to greet me, wearing a green lumberjack shirt open at the throat to show a tuft of red hair, his corduroy pants worn and faded, wrinkled from recent washing. His smile showed all those dazzling white teeth again, making me a little uncomfortable with its welcome—as everything about him made me uncomfortable. That bull in the woods was, I suspected, a projection of himself, and I had never quite liked such overpowering evidence of male vitality. Brendon was male enough—but there was a tempering in him. Only I must not think of Brendon.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  As usual, he didn’t return my greeting. “So you’ve forgiven me?”

  I shook my head, staying where I was. “No. And I shan’t. I don’t like that sort of treatment. But I’ve decided to overlook it, providing it never happens again. I’d like to offer myself as a model.”

  His smile vanished, but he stepped back from the doorway. “Come in then and tell me why.”

  There was a certain hesitance in me about entering his house again, though I had no fear of him today. In his way, I sensed that he could be a kind man, though sometimes imperious, so I thrust back my own hesitation and walked past him through the doorway. A fire of great logs burned on the hearth, the flames crackling and leaping, sending showers of sparks up the stone chimney. The fire drew me and I set down my sketch box and went to it to warm my hands. Memory tricked me again, as it probably would for a long while, and I thought of Naomi’s little sitting room, and the red figured hearth rug before her fire. Had Ariel lain on this rug too, making love to this bull of a man? And how could she, after Brendon?

  “You’re worried,” he said. “Sit down and warm yourself. Some days I light a fire just for company. Do you want coffee?”

  I shook my head. Yes, he would need company in this empty cabin. He had lost two women, almost at the same time.

  “All right,” he said. “Sit and think awhile, and then tell me why you’ve come. I’ve left our dishes since last night, and I’m just washing up.”

  I made no female offer to help him, and I knew he didn’t expect it. It was likely that he was not a role-playing man, and I wondered unexpectedly if I might really be able to talk to him. Then I dismissed the thought. There was no one—no one anywhere to whom I could talk openly and honestly. Certainly not to anyone who had loved Ariel.

  Behind me I heard the splashing and rinsing and gurgling of water, and all the while I sat in a stupor watching the fire, grateful for its hypnotic spell. It was best to watch the flames and think about nothing. Empty myself.

  Eventually he finished, and when he’d left stacked dishes on the drainboard to dry themselves, he came to join me at the hearth before leaping flames. He didn’t bother with one of the crude wooden chairs, but sat on the Indian-patterned hearthrug and crossed his legs with their laced boots that came above the ankles.

  “Silences must always come to an end,” he said. “Have you decided what to tell me, and how much?”

  How green his eyes were, I thought, when I turned my head to meet his look. Green, with firelight in them, and how red his hair, with firelight striking into its natural blaze.

  “I’ve come to bribe you,” I said. “If you will tell me about my sister, I will pose for you.”

  He gave me a long look that seemed to see deeply into me. “I’ll tell you anything I can. Though shouldn’t you go to Brendon first? I can tell by your face that you know they were in love. You’ve changed since yesterday. Yesterday you were still happy, even though you’d discovered that she was here. Today you’ve met with despair.”

  “Not despair,” I denied. “Never despair as long as there is something I can do.”

  “About the rift between you and Brendon?”

  “No. That can’t be mended. It’s not your affair and I don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about Ariel. Naomi says she came to you.”

  He nodded, waiting, and his look seemed open, unguarded.

  “You were in love with her too. You knew her well.”

  I made statements and his silence denied nothing.

  “Would you have left your wife for her?”

  “What Floris and I had when we were young was over a long time ago. She knew that. She knew there had been other women.”

  “But not one who came and lived in your house. How could she endure that?”

  “She didn’t mean to. That was the whole problem. Floris couldn’t recognize that Ariel was quicksilver—that no man could ever grasp and hold her. Floris had only to wait her out. But she wouldn’t do that. She was going to blow everything sky-high.”

  “What do you mean? What was there to blow?”

  “I’m not sure.” He got up to poke a log in the fire and then sat down again. “She had some scheme in mind, but I don’t know what it was. It doesn’t matter. She had to be stopped—and she was.”

  I’d been staring at the fire, and now I turned my head quickly to see a calm assurance in his face—an acceptance of simple fact that shocked me a little. He was indeed a primitive—like that stone bull in the woods. Yet surely not evil? Quickly I put from my mind the memory of that redstone face with the glaring eyes and grimacing mouth.

  “Someone murdered your wife,” I said.

  His smile was grim and there was no flashing of teeth. “No one knows that for sure. It could have been an accident. A stroke of fate.”

  “From some punishing god?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “It could have been an accident,” I said. “And I’d gladly accept that if Loring hadn’t said that accusations were being whispered against Ariel.”

  Again, Magnus waited.

  “Don’t you know that her presence on that rock was concealed from the police? Don’t you know—”

  “Of course I know.” His tone was suddenly harsh. “I threw all my weight into persuading the family to leave Ariel out of it. For once, they listened to me. I didn’t want to see her dragged through an investigation. She wasn’t strong enough to stand up to anything like that.”

  “Ariel was the strongest human being I’ve ever known.”

  “In her work as a dancer, yes. Physically. And strong of will. But when it came to trouble—no.”

  So he understood this about her too.

  Pain rushed through me. Pain because of Brendon—which I must deny. Pain because of Ariel—which I could give voice to.

  “It was my fault she died,” I said dully. “I’ve told you that. She phoned me to come to her. But she’d done that so many times before. She had cost me jobs because I dropped everything and ran to her. So this time I wouldn’t. And she took those pills and died.”

  There was a long silence and I didn’t dare to meet his eyes. I didn’t want him to condemn me. When he spoke it was strangely, with words that chilled my blood.

  “So now you know what murder feels like, Jenny McClain.”

  I tried to swallow and choked. He went calmly to the sink and ran water into a
glass, brought it to me, stood above me while I drank.

  “That’s a horrible thing to say!” I cried, when I’d managed to empty the glass.

  “It’s no worse than what you’ve been saying to yourself, is it? And perhaps better to say it aloud.”

  “But it’s—brutal—when it comes from someone else.”

  “I meant it to be brutal,” he said.

  He continued to stand above me in all his massive size and strength, and for the first time a tiny quiver of fear went through me. I didn’t know enough about this man. I didn’t know what motivated him.

  “Why?” I said. “Why should you want to hurt me any more than I’m hurting myself?”

  “It might be necessary. But you haven’t come to the real point yet. The real point of this—bribe—you’re offering me. If you’re breaking off with Brendon, why are you staying on? Why all this trumped-up interest in Floris?”

  “I’m trying to tell you! If the police come into it again and Ariel’s name is smeared in the papers—oh, I won’t have it! I’ve got to spare my mother that, and spare the love that people everywhere feel for my sister.”

  “You want the legend kept unsullied? Is that it?”

  “Of course. I won’t stand by and let something ugly happen. I’m going to find out who was behind it. I’m going to expose whoever is really guilty.”

  He answered me quietly. “But it was Ariel who stood on that boulder. If there was any guilt, it was hers, and that’s what you may be exposing. That’s why I’ve said things you’ve termed brutal. Because I wanted you to feel some sympathy and understanding for your sister.”

  “But she wasn’t a murderer!”

  He looked at me with that green, calm gaze that accepted what I couldn’t possibly accept.

  “No!” I cried. “It’s not possible. She might do something like that in sudden anger, not meaning the outcome. But Loring says that the boulder was fixed so that it would roll easily. He says he has proof that it was made ready to roll. So that Ariel—or anyone else—coming unwittingly onto it would cause it to fall. Though how it was arranged that. Floris would be below, I don’t know.”