The Stone Bull

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  My feet felt cold and wet in the rain and I looked down to see water lapping over my shoes—much deeper than before. Once more I began to bail, only to realize that the level was rising so fast that bailing would do no good.

  Even as I stared in dismay, water gushed in, not from the rain, but through old seams that had opened in the bottom of the boat. Where Brendon’s boat was completely seaworthy, this one was not. In moments I would be foundering. Yet there was no way to stop the water that rose icy cold over my feet, creeping up to soak my legs.

  Desperately, I tried to row toward shore, but the waterlogged boat scarcely moved as I drew on the oars. I was sitting in water now, and the wet cold numbed and shocked me. How soon would I be immersed in the water, forced to swim? I had never been a good swimmer, and I wouldn’t last long in this icy, spring-fed lake. I tried to shout for help, but rain was coming down harder, and the trees all around rushed with sound. These shores were deserted in the storm, and no one could see me here, around the bend of the lake. No one could hear my feeble cries above the noise of rain and wind that overrode everything else.

  Inexorably, the water rose to the gunwales and I sat in its wet cold, shivering, my teeth chattering, knowing that if I was not to succumb to the numbing chill, I must go overboard and swim for shore. Yet I had no confidence in my ability to cover what seemed a hopeless distance. At least the wooden boat wouldn’t sink altogether, and if I clung to it in the water and continued to call for help, perhaps someone would hear.

  Cold was an intense pain all through my body, and the rain was wind-driven with a greater force than ever, so that my shoulders and body were as wet as my thighs and legs.

  How long I sat there with water washing over me, the gunwales level with the lake, soaked and freezing, my hair running cold rivulets down my face and neck, I don’t know. It seemed forever, and my calls for help grew hoarse and always weaker.

  When a voice reached me, shouting across the lake above the storm sounds, I looked in its direction, scarcely believing that rescue could be at hand. The sight of Magnus standing on the shore bellowing like a bull was the most wonderful thing that could happen.

  “Hold on, Jenny!” he roared. “I’ve got a boat. Just hang on!”

  I let go the oars and clung to my foundering shell, conscious of nothing except Magnus rowing strongly toward me across the water. Even the pain was lessening as I grew too numb to feel.

  As he came alongside, he reached out to grasp my coat collar with one big hand, and hauled me without ceremony onto the boards of his own boat. Quickly he wrapped me in his jacket and began to row for shore. I lay there like a gasping fish, aware that he was scolding me about something, but unable to focus my wits on anything except the fact that I was alive. Perhaps sometime I would even be warm again, though I could hardly believe just then in so happy a state.

  Yet I am warm. So beautifully, drowsily warm that not even my thoughts can frighten me. Not for a little while.

  Magnus brought me back in his father’s truck, since it was quicker than trying to row. At the hotel Brendon came out to take me from Magnus’ arms. I was aware of his face, bleak and white as he drove me in his car to the house and carried me up the stairs. I was aware of unjustified and languorous contentment as long as he held me.

  After that, it all grows hazy. I think he helped Irene to undress me, get me into a warm robe, and helped to heap blankets over me. I was packed with hot-water bottles, fed a hot toddy and scalding soup and given aspirin. And after a time my shivering stopped.

  I remember Brendon bending over me when I was quiet and warm again. “How did it happen, Jenny?”

  It was an effort to talk. “The boat. I went on the lake. It wasn’t storming then. But it was a different boat and it began to leak. It sank under me when I was out in the middle. I might have drowned if it hadn’t been for Magnus.”

  It was such luck that Magnus had been there, I thought. Such luck. I must thank him. His hadn’t been one of the faces that had come to look down at me in this bed. Loring had come and I had closed my eyes at the sight of him. Naomi had come, curious, and perhaps pleased over my disaster. Irene had wept and fluttered until Brendon spoke to her more sharply than I’d ever heard him. After that she controlled her emotions and grew quiet. Even Keir came, somewhat later, to inform Brendon. He had towed the foundered boat back to land and reported that it should never have been left where anyone would use it. The boards were rotted, and it hadn’t taken much pressure of water to cause disintegration. But who had moved Brendon’s boat to a nearby spot behind a clump of bushes where I hadn’t seen it, and put the old boat into its place, no one knew or admitted.

  Keir left a few bright maple leaves on the table by my bed, and I remember looking up into his grave, penetrating eyes and asking where Magnus was.

  “He’s back at the cabin, Jenny,” he told me. “Brendon doesn’t want him here.”

  Brendon, standing on the other side of my bed, said nothing.

  After that I drowsed off, while Irene sat with her needlepoint, and the fire hissed over sap in the logs and crackled soothingly. I felt safe and utterly protected.

  The feeling hasn’t lasted, of course. For the moment I am protected from everything except my own thoughts. These I’ve had to face. The old boat must have been deliberately substituted by someone who knew its condition, knew the chilling cold of the lake at this time of year. Someone who wants to injure me—or worse. Someone is terribly afraid. Afraid enough to kill? I must know who it is so I can expose a murderer. So I can live.

  There is so much I must do, though everything is still a little foggy. Also there is something I ought to question, some oddity in all this that should be recognized and thought about. I fall asleep trying to remember what it is.

  12

  I stayed in bed for all the next day, lazily enjoying my invalidism and postponing the things I knew I must do, and couldn’t think about. A girl came over from the hotel to help Irene and they spelled each other in my room, so that I was never left alone. The following morning Naomi came to sit with me, her hands with their slightly grubby gardener’s nails for once idle, except for the book she held. From where I lay I could see by the jacket that it was a volume on ballet. I didn’t try to talk to her for a time, or she to me. I didn’t like having her there and I had no confidence that she meant me well.

  Our silence must have lasted for nearly an hour, and then Naomi broke it and started to talk softly, half to herself.

  “Ariel always hated to talk about death. Do you remember that? She said there was a superstition about it in the theater, and she wouldn’t talk about Floris’ dying. I went to see Ariel in New York after she left here that last time. Not to see her dance. She wasn’t dancing that night, and she took me out to a lovely restaurant for lunch. I wanted to ask her about Floris, but she wouldn’t discuss what had happened at all.”

  “Of course she wouldn’t,” I said. “She must have felt horribly guilty.”

  “Yes. That is why I tried to get her to talk. I wanted to make her realize that she ought never to feel any guilt at all. Floris shouldn’t have stood in her way if Ariel wanted Magnus.”

  “Magnus happened to be Floris’ husband,” I said dryly.

  “As if that mattered! Silly rules weren’t made for someone like Ariel.”

  “I’m sure she would have agreed with you.”

  Naomi ran on, not hearing the derision in my words. “She was capable of passion and deep emotion. She couldn’t have been a great ballerina if she hadn’t been capable of large emotions.”

  It was no use talking to Naomi. I had sometimes thought my sister’s emotions paltry indeed. But then, it could be that I had never understood her. I only wished Naomi would stop talking, but she went on again.

  “Once she quoted Danilova to me, Jenny. Danilova said, ‘Love is never permanent, but art is permanent.’ Ariel was always true to her art. But she had to have those grand passions in order to put them into her dancing. She used t
o say that in dancing you had to go beyond technique to other, undefinable qualities. All the great dancers do. Fonteyn and all the rest. She could always manage that. There are plenty of dancers who can do the steps perfectly but never touch the peaks. They’re good mechanically. But unless you have the spirit—”

  Her fingers drummed on the spine of her book, and I felt a certain pity for her. She was sharp, abrasive, and she detested me—yet once more I was sorry for her. It was tragic that she had never had the chance to live her own life in a larger world outside of Laurel Mountain. Vicariously, she had made the ballet world hers—but only in make-believe through Ariel. Since she wanted reminiscence, I tried to give her my own.

  “I remember that Ariel never liked to rehearse,” I said. “She used to drive her partners crazy sometimes because rehearsing a role seemed drudgery to her. She could practice endlessly alone, or in class, but she always wanted to come to a role fresh, as though it were for the first time, so that she could discover nuances she’d never sensed before. When she did rehearse—as of course she was forced to—she often danced badly. She didn’t come to life until there was an audience out there waiting breathlessly—and she never disappointed them. Even when she wasn’t pleased with her performance, she gave the audience what it wanted. She made them feel.”

  “Was she really dancing badly at the end?” Naomi asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see her then. Mother said she thought she was.”

  “Did you phone your mother? About the baby?”

  “Yes. There was an abortion.”

  “I thought as much.” Naomi nodded vigorously. “Though she wouldn’t talk about it when I saw her. It would have been necessary, of course.”

  I found that I was still-weak. Weak enough for tears to reach my cheeks. Brendon’s child—who would never have a chance at life.

  “She might have danced better for being a mother,” I said. “Even emotion on a stage has to come from something real inside.”

  Naomi’s head flew up, and she looked at me with spite in her eyes. “How could you know? A younger sister who grew up in the shadow of so much greatness!”

  Her words lacerated. I’d believed for a little while that I had come a long way from letting Ariel’s shadow affect me. But I knew now how little had changed. Brendon had taught me that.

  “Just go away,” I told Naomi. “I’ve had enough of lying in bed. I’m going to get up and start my life again.”

  Such as it was, I thought. But anything would be better than lying here listening to Naomi’s spite. I could pity her, but I could never like her.

  “All right.” She stood up and came close to my bed. “I’m sure you don’t need nursing anymore.” Her smile was bright with familiar malice. “I’m glad you’ve moved here to the house, Jenny. It will be much better for you here. And of course you are always welcome to visit my sitting room—where Ariel used to come.”

  She went off, leaving the door ajar behind her, and I was glad to see her go. A welcome from Naomi didn’t please me. It was likely to mean that she had something else in mind that would torment me.

  Now, however, I must decide what to do next. For that brief, lovely time with Brendon I had escaped Ariel, and I must escape her again. All last traces of anger with him seemed to have died out with my icy baptism in the lake. It was as though facing my own death had washed away petty and superficial emotions. Now I could put away my jealous hurt and face my own truth. I still wanted to be Brendon’s wife. I wanted to win him away from Ariel and back to me. The real me—not someone he could pretend was Ariel. Now that anger and bitterness were gone, I was ready at last to fight for my life and my love.

  The covers flung back, I stood up, my bare feet finding warmth and comfort in the thick carpet of goldenrod yellow. But even as my feet sought my own slippers, they touched something that made me draw back in shocked repugnance. There on the floor, placed neatly beside my woolly blue slippers, rested a pair of pink toe shoes, their satin ribbons tucked into the blocked toes.

  Naomi, of course. Naomi, who was determined that I should never forget Ariel, never forget that Ariel, not I, belonged here. But after my momentary shock, I found I could pick the slippers up without being torn by emotion and set them on a table. My feelings toward my sister were as ambivalent as ever, but I would not let Naomi try to build a shrine to her—not with any help from me.

  My long rest had done me good and I felt vigorous and alive, with weakness past, so that I was ready for some sort of purposeful action. I could not let them send me back to New York, as they all wanted to do. If I took that course, Brendon would be lost to me forever. I would try to be careful, I would take no foolish chances, and for the moment I felt fairly safe. Someone had substituted an old leaky boat for a sound one, but whoever had done so vicious a thing would need to move carefully now. Any attempt made upon my life must be managed with an effort to conceal the murderous cause. Now I must beware mainly of accidents. I didn’t think anyone was going to leap at me from behind a tree and leave me bleeding on one of Laurel’s trails. If Magnus hadn’t rescued me, if I had drowned in the lake, the reason might never have been discovered, so whoever stalked me was also being careful.

  In any case, attack on me was pointless. No matter how much I would like to expose whoever had killed Floris and tried to arrange my death, I hadn’t a clue to work on. Not unless I knew something I didn’t realize I knew. There had been flickers of some illusive thought ever since Magnus had fished me out of the lake and brought me home, but nothing I could grasp and recognize. Just some curious thing that I felt ought to be questioned.

  No matter. If it was important it would eventually emerge.

  When I had dressed I went downstairs and out into a gray morning. The rain had stopped and hotel guests were on the trails again, but it wasn’t as warm and pleasant as it had been. I wore a coat, since my jacket was being cleaned, so I was comfortable as I set out a bit aimlessly toward the hotel. I wanted to find a purpose, a direction, but nothing specific presented itself.

  At least my feet seemed to know where I was going better than my mind, and I followed them into the hotel and along first-floor corridors to Brendon’s office. The door was open and he was there at his desk working on papers spread before him. In that moment I would have given anything to go to him in the old, loving way.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  He looked up and for an instant his eyes lighted—before the spark went out of them and he regarded me coolly. I knew with a pang what had happened—knew that reaction all too well. For an instant Ariel had stood there in his doorway, unexpectedly, and he had responded to her.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Fine. The rest has helped. No aftereffects.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “How soon can you be ready to leave for New York?”

  I braced myself. “I’m not going to New York. Not for a while, anyway. I’d rather stay here. I like Laurel Mountain.”

  “Sit down,” he said, and drew another chair toward his desk. “Will you please listen to me with that very good mind of yours, Jenny? Someone substituted that old boat so it would get you into the middle of the lake and then sink. You, not me. Because I haven’t been using a boat lately, and you have. Besides, if it had happened to me, I’d have been able to swim for shore. What occurred was intended for you. So you can’t stay here.”

  “But why—why was it intended for me?”

  “Because you’ve been talking wildly about exposing whoever was behind Floris’ death.”

  “So you accept that now?” I challenged. “So you’re willing to concede that it wasn’t Ariel who set the whole thing up? But are you willing to go to the police?”

  He ignored my last question. “Loring has just shown me those pictures he took. Ariel would never have set up such a trap.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’ll handle it in my own way. Quietly. We aren’t ready for the police
yet.”

  Impatience with him surged up in me again. “All because you want to avoid scandal! Because that’s all any of you ever cares about!”

  Even as I spoke, I regretted my words, but I couldn’t apologize and retract them because he gave me no chance.

  “I’m quite aware of your low regard for me,” he said, “but nevertheless, I’d like to see you stay alive.”

  He had flushed and I suspected that he would have liked to shake me. We were fighting again—my love and I, and everything was going wrong. I kept still for a moment and breathed deeply, so that when I spoke my voice was under control and I could make a quieter effort.

  “Brendon,” I said, “I’m still your wife. I don’t want to go away. I’ve been hurt and angry, and I’ve said words I didn’t mean. Because of all sorts of things in the past that you don’t even know about. But can’t we back up a little and start over—give each other a new chance?”

  He looked wary, watchful—anything but loving. “How do you propose we manage that?”

  “With a little understanding and generosity it might work. You might try to understand how I felt when I found out the truth. And I want very much to understand how it was with you when you walked into that lobby, mourning Ariel—and saw me. I can accept that a little better now. But just the same, I find it hard to believe that you hadn’t begun to love me a little—just me. Perhaps I’m only presuming. Perhaps I’ve destroyed an illusion that you wanted to hold on to. But shouldn’t I at least stay and try to find out?”

  He pushed back his chair with a gesture of impatience. “I don’t think you understand as much as you believe you do, and I’m not ready for all this magnanimity. If you want to stay here for a while, I can’t send you away. But I suggest that you don’t go wandering around alone. Get someone to go with you. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment.”

  Without another look in my direction he went out of the room and left me sitting there, every bit as flushed and angry as he. So much for my effort to mend our marriage! Yet I felt sick as well as angry, and as always with him—defenseless. There was nothing further to be done now about Brendon McClain. So where was I to turn?