The Stone Bull

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  For me, the torment of self-blame went on. If only I had come when Ariel had called me. If only I’d paid heed, perhaps help might have been summoned for her in time. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been that fatal combination. So I must live with this blame always. Yet, somehow, I must not let it spoil my marriage.

  During that summer in New York, Brendon had time to tell me about Laurel Mountain and the Mountain House. He promised me flowers of every variety, forests of trees—some seven thousand acres of wooded land, untouched, unspoiled, where no cars were allowed, except on the access roads that brought guests to the Mountain House. All this high in the Catskills above the Hudson, up from the town of Kings Landing on the water. The structure of the hotel could well be something out of a European spa of the 1800s, he told me—a fabulous anachronism in all its outrageous grandeur. I was longing to see it.

  We stayed in New York for the summer until we were certain my mother was settled. Brendon headed the management of Laurel Mountain House, which his family had owned for generations. His mother and her second husband, Loring Grant, to whom she’d been married for six years, were in charge, so Brendon could remain away and we could be together in our getting-acquainted period.

  Now the lovely summer is done and we arrived here in the mountains, so that a new, wonderful life is beginning for me. Or that is what I hope for. Of course there must be a little strangeness at first, but I know that is to be expected. Not everyone is going to like me as quickly as Brendon did. So tonight I sit here alone in our rooms with all the lights burning and a strange chill in my bones. There is nothing to be done until Brendon comes upstairs, and I can only try to still this rising uneasiness by remembering all that has happened today.

  We drove up from Kings Landing early this afternoon and I had my first glimpse of High Tower—that massive stone structure that dominates Hudson country for miles around and was built many years ago as a memorial to Brendon’s grandfather, Geoffrey McClain, long since dead. It was Geoffrey’s father before him who bought the lake and some of the acreage around it early in the last century, who built a small stone inn in that lovely spot. With the passing years and increasing wealth of the family, the holding has grown to its present seven thousand acres gathered in an area of mountains and gorges and precipitous cliffs. The original inn has developed addition by addition into an enormous hotel and Brendon has told me there are guests who have been coming here all their lives and count a year lost without a visit to Laurel Mountain House.

  Every visitor had to be checked in at the entry to Laurel property, and Brendon braked his Saab before the little gatehouse with its peaked roof and sign picturing a handsome crouched panther. This, as I knew, was the logo of the Mountain House, and I saw it again in the insignia sewed to the guard’s lapel as he came toward us to give Brendon a respectful salute. I was introduced as Brendon’s wife and we were waved through.

  “I’m not going to take you straight in,” he said, as we followed the winding road with forest on either hand. “Do you feel like walking?”

  I always feel like walking, as I always feel like climbing, surefooted enough outdoors, and I was in a mood to be amazed and delighted by whatever he wanted to show me. As I was so continually amazed and delighted with this man who was my husband.

  When we’d driven a mile or two, with the hotel still not in sight, he pulled off the road in a suitable spot and we got out of the car, striking off along a path that climbed through the woods. I was already glorying in the clear mountain air and the sight of sunlight striking its beams through the heavy stands of trees. I counted beech and maple and oak all about us, as well as scattered stands of pine trees—the latter planted there long ago by early McClains and their descendants. Some of the maples burned at the top with fiery red because there had been a recent frost, and the air was bracing and cold for mid-September. We walked hand-in-hand and there was so much love between us that my heart brimmed and no words were needed. I mustn’t question my luck, I mustn’t ask why. I needed only to believe—and that I could do with my whole being. Brendon had already taught me how much he loved me.

  “I grew up here,” he said, as the narrow trail twisted and the way steepened. “I know and love every inch of the place. My father and old Keir Devin taught me. My father died eight years ago, and two years later Mother married Loring Grant. Keir is still boss of the whole outdoors and you’ll meet him. His son—” He broke off and something hesitant came into his voice. “Never mind—you don’t need to meet Magnus for a while.”

  We rounded a turn in the path and I forgot his words. We were out in the open beneath an arched blue sky, with the forest above and behind us. Immediately below, shining like a deep blue sapphire in its setting of surrounding green, lay the lake, an irregular oval, curving gently into the steep folds of the shore around it. Opposite us at one end spread the fairy-tale creation that was the Mountain House.

  Its red roofs were towered and steepled and there were stone battlements as well. On one steeple a cock weather vane turned in the wind, and from another flew the flag of stars and stripes. The whole was a conglomeration of architecture that matched the whim of builders over the past hundred years and more, and it reminded me of some fanciful painting of Camelot. Hundreds of windows and balconies overlooked the lake, and little summerhouses blossomed here and there along shore and trails, their thatched or shingled roofs offering shelter, their wooden benches rest for weary walkers. A few small boats dotted the water at this afternoon hour and on the far side, where the hotel ended, there was a massive outcropping of rock.

  Brendon, having satisfied himself with a quick glance at the view, was watching me, waiting. I looked up at him and saw the tenderness in his eyes and on that mouth that could be hard and arrogant. I saw as well the question.

  “Yes!” I cried. “Oh, yes!”

  He put an arm around me and held me close. “You’ve passed the test, darling. If you’d made one crack about its being monstrous and ugly, I’d have taken you straight back to New York and divorced you!”

  He was laughing, but I knew he half meant it. He had grown up loving this place as a boy and a young man, and it was part of him. That it might be an architectural anachronism didn’t matter. It was also splendid and beautiful as it floated there on the lake like something out of a dream.

  Far below us, a few small figures moved about on the lawns before the hotel, and a few others could be seen on the mooring platform for the boats.

  “I love to row,” I said. “Do you think I can take a boat out on the lake?”

  “Of course. I keep a boat of my own down on the lake and you can have it whenever you wish.”

  I nodded my thanks. The scene was utterly quiet. We had met no one on the trails, and the woods seemed empty.

  “It’s so peaceful,” I said. “So quiet and—and safe.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Brendon’s arm tightened around me.

  I wasn’t quite sure. I didn’t know why the thought of danger should occur to me in the midst of these quiet woods.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “Perhaps there are fewer things to hurt one here.”

  “I’m not sure that’s altogether true. Nature has its own threats.”

  “In a place like this?”

  “Of course. We have our share of mishaps. Ask Keir.”

  “But hardly fatal ones, I should think.”

  His arm pressed me forward and I suddenly realized that just beyond the shielding shadbushes at our feet a rocky precipice dropped away.

  “Don’t be so trustful,” he said, and drew me back. “If you tumbled off that, it would very likely be fatal. And out in the middle, the lake is practically bottomless.”

  The words sounded so ominous that I looked up at him quickly and caught the grim set of his mouth. When I shivered he turned me back toward the trail.

  “Let’s go down and drive in properly. My mother will be waiting for us. They’ve already called her from the gate and she’ll be wonder
ing where we are.”

  Because of that grim look I’d glimpsed in his face, I had to know more. “Have you had any deaths by accident on the place?”

  “Only one that I recall, and we want people to forget about it, so don’t go around asking questions.”

  Rebuffed, I walked beside him in silence. On the way down I stopped now and then to admire the various varieties of ferns that grew in the woods. I’d always loved to draw the detail of a fern frond, and I couldn’t wait to come out with my sketching things.

  As we neared the car, I began to think with interest of Brendon’s family. At that moment I had no great concern about meeting Irene McClain Grant, his mother, or his stepfather, Loring Grant. Anyone related to Brendon I was prepared to like on sight, and I was eager to make their acquaintance and be liked in return.

  Now that it is later, now that night has fallen and I sit here waiting, I am not so sure I shall be comfortable with his family. I have a strange sense that something more is wrong than I’ve glimpsed on the surface. As though something were stirring beneath the peace and serenity—something faintly sinister.

  But I had none of that feeling as we drove on toward the hotel. At a place where wide lawns tumbled down the rolling hillside, and the shrubbery grew more domesticated, we met a truck coming toward us, marked with the insignia of the Mountain House—a panther crouched on a rock—that logo I’d already seen on the way in, and on notepaper and brochures. I had thought the drawing a good one, though I was puzzled as to why a panther had been chosen.

  “There’s Keir’s truck,” Brendon said, slowing the car, “and that’s Keir Devin driving. I want you to meet him. He’s been like a second father to me.”

  The truck stopped beside us, and we all got out onto the roadway. I liked Keir at once. I liked the strong clasp of his hand, the keen, studying look of gray eyes that told me of his fondness for Brendon and his interest in seeing him happy. I sensed that this man would not accept me with easy approval before he knew me. He would take my measure, and if it didn’t add up to what he wanted for Brendon, I knew he would reject me. But not without fair trial, and I thought I could meet his testing.

  “I know about you,” I said. “Brendon says you’ll help me to know the woods and the trees and plants. Will you, please?”

  He was in his mid-sixties, Brendon had said, and his hair was white, the skin of his face tanned and leathery from long outdoor exposure. Yet he seemed younger, with his vigor and youthful carriage. A plaid shirt with khaki pants made up his work clothes, and as he came toward us he’d removed his wide-brimmed felt hat. While he was as tall as Brendon, his shoulders were even wider, and I had an impression of wiry strength that could cope with the outdoors.

  He held my hand for a moment, still studying me. “Of course,” he said in answer to my request. “But there’s a lot to learn.”

  Brendon smiled his affection for the older man. “Jenny knows a bit more than how to tell a dandelion from a daisy, Keir. You’ll approve of her. She’s been teaching ecology out in New Jersey, you know.”

  “Fine. I’ll put you to work,” Keir told me, and then looked at Brendon. “It’s good you’re back. You’re badly needed.”

  “Something wrong?” Brendon picked up his words.

  “Everything.”

  “Loring?”

  “Right. You’ve been away too long and he’s got the bit between his teeth. He’s talking about clearing the woods for cottages up near Rainbow Point. He wants to cut down an entire stand of Norway pine.”

  “We’ll stop that, don’t worry,” Brendon said. “We have all the cottages we want in the area near the hotel.”

  “Loring thinks ten aren’t enough, and he’s talking expansion. Magnus is pretty mad, since it would be treading on his territory. He’s likely to brain the driver of the first bulldozer that comes in, and I’m not sure I won’t help him.”

  “There won’t be any bulldozers,” Brendon said shortly and turned back to the car, guiding me by the elbow.

  Keir Devin stood in the road looking after us—a bit quizzically, I thought, as though not altogether reassured.

  “I like him,” I said as we drove on. “I hope he’ll like me.”

  “He will. But Laurel Mountain comes first with him, and you’ll have to earn your spurs. I know you’ll do that.”

  “Who is Magnus?” I asked.

  “His son.” Again his answer was short, almost curt. “Look—now you can see the Mountain House.”

  Around the next curve it appeared in all its impressive grandeur as we moved toward it. The full spread was still hidden by trees, but its towers pierced the blue sky proudly and I could see its iron balconies more clearly now. On our left the gardens had begun, and for the moment they took precedence for me over the hotel. Even in September the formal plantings were colorful with marigolds, cosmos, scarlet salvia, chrysanthemums of various varieties, while up against the rocky hillside grew great masses of climbing hydrangeas. Below, near one of the beds, a woman in jeans and an earth-stained shirt was on her knees working.

  Brendon touched his hand to the horn and she looked up, then jumped to her feet and came running toward the car.

  “Aunt Naomi,” Brendon told me. “My father’s younger sister. She’s a dear, but a bit of an individualist.”

  We left the car again, so that he could sweep her small, sturdy person up in a great hug. As he set her down she turned toward me and I held out my hand.

  She was a small woman, weathered like a little nut, her tanned skin obviously never protected from the sun. Escaping under the red bandanna she had tied over it, her gray hair was short and a bit shaggy, as though she might have chopped it off impatiently with her own scissors when it grew long enough to annoy her. She held a garden trowel in her right hand and she shifted it so that she could take mine, but her hand lay surprisingly limp in my clasp, and there was no welcome in the face she turned toward me.

  “As you know, Naomi, this is Jenny,” Brendon said. “I hope you’ll love her as I do.”

  I thought it a strange thing for him to say and wondered if he used those words because he strongly suspected that Naomi McClain was not going to love me at all, and that in her case I would receive no welcome. Rather quickly I let her small limp hand go. She hadn’t said a word, but simply stared at me with eyes like hard brown pebbles.

  “Naomi,” Brendon said with quiet emphasis, and I heard the faint edge to his voice.

  She seemed to start, and her eyes moved away from my face. “Hello, Jenny,” she said, as if by rote. “Welcome to Laurel Mountain.”

  I looked down at her small face, with its pointed fox’s chin, and murmured something agreeable.

  Brendon waved a hand. “Naomi is responsible for all the beautiful plantings in this garden area. You two will have your fondness for flowers in common.”

  “They are beautiful,” I said, but she only shrugged and walked away, her shoulders drooping as if in dejection. My presence seemed to have depressed her in some way I couldn’t understand.

  I followed Brendon back to the car. “She’s not going to accept me,” I said as we drove on.

  “Of course she will.” He sounded assured. “She’s like a squirrel or a chipmunk. It may take a little time until she trusts you.”

  But what I had read in Naomi McClain’s eyes had not been the caution of some wild thing—it had been open antipathy.

  I so wanted nothing to quench my enjoyment in this arrival at Laurel Mountain House, and once more I gave my attention to the great structure that rose ahead of us—four stories high, with a width equal to the length of more than a city block. The arrival door was not on the lake side, and as we took the half-moon curve to the steps, two or three young men in the gray-green uniform of the Mountain House, again with panther on lapel, came down to greet us and opened the trunk to take out our bags. At the top of the steps a woman waited in the deeply arched stone alcove of the entry, and I knew she was Brendon’s mother. Whatever his Aunt Naomi mig
ht have thought of me, it was his mother who mattered, and I braced myself for this next encounter, trying not to feel shaken by the rejection of one member of my husband’s family.

  2

  As I sit here tonight in this big bedroom at the top of the hotel, with five lamps and the overhead light banishing all shadow, I feel terribly alone. I know that soon Brendon will come upstairs and then all will be well. He will understand about that sheet of hotel stationery that I’ve placed on the desk, and there will be no more need for uneasiness, or fear of unknown malice.

  At the time of our arrival, in spite of the encounter with Naomi, I felt none of this, had no premonition of uneasiness to come when Irene Grant smiled her warm greeting as we came up the hotel steps. Her smile included me as well as Brendon, and allayed any uncertainty I might have felt about meeting her.

  Brendon didn’t sweep his mother up in a hug as he had Naomi. She was a woman to be treated with greater dignity, and he put an arm about her and bent to kiss her cheek. Then he turned to draw me to the top step beside them, and when she’d kissed him back she held out both hands to me.

  “My dear! I’m glad you’ve come. I’ve been waiting for you for years.”

  It was a lovely greeting and I felt tears reach my eyes as I gave her my hands. Once she must have been a beautiful woman, and she was still pretty in a somewhat faded way. Obviously she cared about her appearance, as Naomi did not. Her light beige skirt and cardigan were neat and the brass buckle of her leather belt shone polished at her waist. She was fairly tall, with soft brown hair puffed into a rounded coiffure, and gentle brown eyes that looked lovingly at the world. As she took my hands she pulled me to her and kissed my cheek lightly so that I caught the scent of her light, flowery fragrance.

  “We’re giving you the suite on the top floor of the stone wing,” she told her son.

  He nodded approval. “Jenny will like that tower room. Where is Loring?”