The Stone Bull

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  The tiniest shadow seemed to touch soft brown eyes. “He got caught on the telephone. Will you stop in the office before you go up?”

  “Yes, of course, Mother. I want him to meet my wife.” Brendon said nothing of Keir Devin’s concern, but led the way past the check-in desk and into a rambling lobby.

  The Mountain House, as Brendon had told me, stayed open the year-round, and besides the regular guests there were always special groups coming in to spend a few days or a week. This, however, was a slack week and he had chosen it on purpose for our arrival. There were only a few guests in evidence and those we passed seemed to look at us with friendly eyes, unlike the guarded visitors to New York hotels. I glimpsed one or two lounges and a sunny library on the lake side, but Brendon didn’t pause to show me around. We followed the jog of the corridor past the doors of various offices, and at one of them Irene paused and beckoned us into a small anteroom.

  In the larger room beyond, a man was putting down a phone. Rising from his desk, he came quickly to meet us, his hand outstretched to Brendon. He was attractive, handsome in his late fifties, with hair that grayed only a little at the temples. His eyes were shrewd, his chin forceful. I quickly realized that one couldn’t be in the same room with Loring Grant without sensing the dynamic force that drove him. He shook hands with Brendon and then turned to me with a warmth that I somehow distrusted. There was a flicker of something cool in his expression at the first glimpse of me, to be shut off quickly as he took both my hands and welcomed me with a kiss on the cheek.

  “You certainly surprised us this time,” he said to Brendon. “Not even giving us time to get to the wedding. But I must say I approve. An interesting development—yes? I mean all this sudden falling in love for an old bachelor like you!”

  I glanced uncertainly at Brendon and saw a hint of anger in his eyes. Not for me, but for Loring, who ceased his outburst as though a faucet had been cut off.

  “Do you know who that phone call was from?” he asked Brendon. “It was the police chief down at Kings Landing. He’s still ready to stir things up, though I thought the matter had been closed months ago. Maybe you can talk to him. In case you feel it’s not good for the hotel.”

  “I’ll try,” Brendon said to his stepfather. “But not now. We’ve had a long drive and I think Jenny would like to see our rooms and get unpacked.”

  I had the feeling that my husband was again cutting Loring off, his manner a warning not to talk in front of me, and I felt slightly piqued. If I was going to live at Laurel Mountain, I wanted to know all about the place. Especially if there had been a police matter so recently.

  Loring said nothing more, but the look he turned on Brendon was bright with something that might have been spite.

  Irene came with us in the elevator, to make sure, she said, that all was right in our rooms. Though Mrs. Hendrickson was an excellent housekeeper and kept an eye on everything.

  The elevator was roomy and modern, its shaft rising beside a broad, old-fashioned staircase. At the fourth floor we left the car to walk down a wide corridor that zigzagged from addition to addition of the hotel. The carpets were a bright and cheerful turkey red; there were numerous photographs and old lithographs, and maps hung along the walls. I had noticed this downstairs as well, glimpsing dress and hair styles from the past as we moved along.

  “They’re a record of our history,” Brendon said, noting my glance. “Each new generation adds to them. Get Mother to tell you about them sometime.”

  Here and there, when we came upon a cul-de-sac in the elbow of a jog, comfortable chairs were drawn near a window, where one might rest and admire the view. There was no time for views now, however, and Brendon went ahead, key in hand.

  “This stone section was an addition built nearly eighty years ago,” Irene said as we went down two steps into a narrowing corridor. “Its granite came from our own quarry.”

  “The place is like a self-contained kingdom,” I marveled. “It’s as though I were coming to live in a castle.”

  Brendon’s mother smiled at me as we walked together, dropping behind. “I used to pretend that it was a castle when my parents brought me here to visit as a child. Marrying Bruce McClain was like marrying the prince. Geoffrey McClain was the king and ruler, of course. And he really ruled. We still feel we must follow some of his edicts.”

  “So I have married the king’s grandson,” I said. “The heir apparent.”

  She slipped her arm through mine and her hand pressed gently. “I want you to be happy here. I want you to make Brendon happy.” There seemed a sudden, odd intensity in her words.

  As I sit here now in my room some hours later, I can remember the very tone of her voice and in my lonely disquietude I wonder. But I gave her intensity only passing attention at the time.

  “There’s nothing I want more than to make my husband happy,” I assured her.

  “I know, Jenny. I can see it in your face. You must be happy here. Oh, please be happy. He loves you very much. You should see the letters he’s written about you.”

  There was no need to assure me of his love—who knew it best of all—and again there was passing wonder at her emphasis.

  Ahead, Brendon had paused, turning his key in the lock, and his eyes were bright with affection for us both. He put out his hand to stop me, however, before I went through the door.

  “Wait,” he said. “Let Mother look around first.”

  It was like the moment up on the hillside when he had wanted me to have my first marvelous view. Irene seemed to understand. She walked into the room and I heard the sound of doors opening. Then she came back to us.

  “Everything is fine. Your suitcases have been brought up, and tomorrow, Brendon, you can move in more of your own things from the house, if you like. I’ll leave you now, my darlings.” She kissed us each on the cheek and hurried back along the corridor.

  “I already love her,” I told Brendon over the lump in my throat. Perhaps I would find more of a real mother in my husband’s than I had ever had when Ariel was alive—or now that she was dead.

  “Come,” Brendon said and held out his hand.

  We walked together across the room and I hardly looked at it, because the double doors to the balcony were open, inviting us. Outside we stood at the iron rail, with Brendon’s arm about me, and all the breath-catching beauty of the scene spread before us. Our rooms overlooked one end of the sapphire lake, and immediately below were wide lawns and a road, and trails leading off up the mountain. But it was the mountain itself that held me. Laurel Mountain, which gave its name to the area. At its rocky summit High Tower crowned the top of the cliff, from which stone dropped away in a sheer precipice to the forest below. Around the rest of the lake trees grew down the steep hillside to the water’s edge—except where there was rock—folding sapphire into deep green jade. Many of them were evergreens, I noted. The air sparkled clear and pine-scented, and there was hardly a sound anywhere.

  “It’s so peaceful,” I said, as I’d said before up on the mountain.

  “Yes. And we want to keep it that way. My grandfather wanted it to remain untouched always, no matter what happened to the rest of the world. He used to say we had the gift of peace to give those who grew weary of fighting and came here to renew themselves.”

  “I like that,” I said.

  How safe and sure I could feel just then, with Brendon’s arm around me, knowing myself his wife. Somewhere on the grounds below there was laughter and a boy and girl came swinging down one of the trails hand-in-hand, the silence pleasantly broken.

  Now we could turn back to our rooms and I had time to explore. We had entered through a charming sitting room, more personally furnished than any hotel room. Of course this suite was special, as Brendon pointed out, and had always been used for guests of the family. It delighted me to find that a section of the room opened into the circle of a tower that protruded from the face of the hotel, with windows all around. Here a low walnut table was set with a bowl of ye
llow chrysanthemums, a dish of fruit and a silver knife. The small touch welcomed me—my comfort and pleasure had been considered.

  The rest of the room was equally attractive. A charming Queen Anne kneehole desk, with brass drawer pulls, stood beside gold draperies, a rose-patterned Chinese lamp lighting the polished surface with a rosy glow. The rug had a floral design, pleasantly faded with the dignity of age. A water-color painting of Naomi’s gardens hung over the rose damask sofa, and I went to look at it more closely. I’d always envied the artist who could paint landscapes. All I could do was re-create flowers and plants exactly from nature.

  “It’s a beautiful room,” I said, turning back.

  Again Brendon was pleased. “My grandmother furnished it originally, but my mother has added touches of her own.”

  A large bedroom opened off the sitting room, and it too had its balcony overlooking the lake, though the built-in tower did not reach into this room. Even the small, shining-clean bathroom had a view. Closets with sliding doors had never come with the room in the beginning, I knew, but added now to its comfort.

  “I’m happy, happy, happy!” I cried and did a not-too-clumsy pirouette across the room. I could even feel graceful now.

  Brendon pulled me into his arms and kissed me for quite a long and satisfactory time. But we needed to unpack and hang up our clothes, make sure I had something unwrinkled to wear tonight, so the love we longed to show each other had to be postponed.

  “Do you dress for dinner?” I asked Brendon as I opened my suitcase.

  “You’ll see long skirts and some pants suits in the dining room. No real evening clothes. We’re fairly informal and our guests do as they please, though we frown on jeans in the dining room at night. Dinner is early—six-thirty—and we’ll eat at our own table. However, there’s a house ritual that we enjoy before dinner. Naomi takes charge of that. We’d better go down around six o’clock and mingle.”

  “Why is Naomi so ready to dislike me?” I asked, shaking out a long black and turquoise skirt that would do for dinner.

  “She doesn’t know you yet. And she’s very protective of Laurel Mountain House. And of me. Give her time.”

  He had said that before, but I wasn’t completely convinced. Never mind—I would make a special effort to win Naomi over and reassure her that I meant no harm to either Brendon or this beautiful place. But there were still other things I wanted to know.

  “What was that all about in Loring’s office when he spoke of a police matter?”

  Brendon was hanging a plaid sports jacket at his end of the big closet and he didn’t turn around. “It’s a bit unpleasant. Do we have to talk about it tonight?”

  “Hadn’t I better know? Before I blunder and say the wrong things because there’s something I don’t understand?”

  He turned back to me almost fiercely. “There are a lot of things you aren’t going to understand immediately, Jenny. And no one will expect you to. But if you must know about this, come here.”

  His hand on my arm was not altogether gentle and I looked at him in surprise as he led me back to the balcony and pointed across the lake.

  “Look! Do you see that mass of tumbled boulders just across the water at this end? It’s something we call the Wolf’s Lair. You’ll have to get used to our whimsical names for trails and special spots of interest. It’s convenient to have everything named so that guests can wander about following their maps and keeping track of where they are. That’s real forest out there, you know, and you can get lost. People do.”

  “What happened at the Lair?”

  His tone hardened. “A woman died there last May. It’s a rocky labyrinth of a place that hikers like to climb through, with a good-sized cave at the end. She was crushed by a falling boulder and we haven’t let anyone in there since.”

  I shivered. “But why the police?”

  “There had to be an inquest, though no one was at fault, and that’s all there is to it. It was a tragic accident, but it’s the only serious one I can remember, so our record is good.”

  “Loring sounded as though the police were still interested.”

  Brendon sighed and turned back to the room and his unpacking. “I don’t know what that’s all about. I’ll talk to him later.”

  “Was she a guest—the woman who died?”

  He paused before his open case, a sweater in his hands. “No—she lived here.” He hesitated and then went on. “She was Floris Devin. Keir’s daughter-in-law. Magnus’ wife.”

  I’d never heard his voice sound so hard, so cold, and the tone frightened me more than a little.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re angry with me. But I don’t know what I’ve done.”

  He dropped the sweater and came to me at once, held me to him, so that my face was pressed into his neck and I couldn’t see his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, too, darling. I suppose we all blame ourselves for what happened that day. Someone should have known that boulder was ready to roll. Bringing all this up again is disturbing. It’s going to upset Mother terribly. Sometime I’ll tell you about it. But Jenny, let’s postpone all that for a while. Just let it alone. I want you to learn to love this place. I want to—to be sure that you’ll want to stay before we get into things that happened in the past and that mustn’t be allowed to affect us now.”

  “But of course I’ll want to stay!” I cried. “Why ever would I not?” What a strange thing for him to say.

  He held me from him at arm’s length, and looking into his eyes I seemed to find, for the first time, some uncertainty there, and that in itself was disturbing. Uncertainty about what? About me? Brendon had always seemed the most confident person I had ever known. Almost arrogantly confident, so I felt that he knew who he was with the utmost assurance and could deal with the world on his own terms. Now there seemed a wavering that troubled me.

  “All right,” I said. “Let it go for now. But not for too long, darling. If I’m to be a part of your life, I need to know everything—the bad as well as the good.”

  He smiled at me then and shook his head. “Not everything. No human being should ever tell another everything.” But he seemed suddenly cheerful again as we finished our unpacking, and I sensed a relief in him because talk had been put off for now.

  It was hard for me to recover my sense of joy. Through my bath and dressing, even while I sat before the flounced dressing table near a window brushing my hair, my thoughts were troubled. I had too great a sense of something unknown and threatening hanging over my happiness—something that Brendon had been able to put away from him for the moment, but that I could not. He at least knew what he was putting away. The unknown can be much more frightening. I told myself that I must hold firmly to the knowledge that we truly loved each other and that we would never let anything come between us and harm that love. As I watched him across the room, I knew it was foolish to think of anything coming between us.

  Yet the thought of that unknown woman—Floris Devin, Magnus Devin’s wife—who had died so tragically cast a shadow, lessening the pure joy that I wanted to feel.

  In passing, I repeated the name of Magnus Devin to myself and wondered why it seemed vaguely familiar. But I couldn’t remember where I might have heard it, and as I busied myself dressing I put the question from my mind.

  For the evening I put on my long skirt with the drifting turquoise and black panels, and a draped blouse of matching blue crepe, its cowl neckline becoming. I hadn’t bought clothes like this in years—not since I learned never to compete with Ariel. But Brendon had wanted me to have a “trousseau” and I had tried to oblige, though I still had a feeling that I played at dress-up when I put these things on. It was some assurance that my mirror told me I needn’t worry. I could think of myself now and not of Ariel.

  Brendon fastened the sapphires he had given me around my neck, and I wore the little sapphire earrings that had been a Christmas gift from Ariel several years ago. Not think about Ariel? That wasn’t easy, when so often the tho
ught of my sister was there to stab me, never quite releasing me from pain. That all her beauty and vitality and genius should end so soon … It was hard to think only of me.

  As I tucked a strand of hair into the coil I had managed with the help of tortoise-shell combs, Brendon watched, and I met his eyes in the mirror, saw the warming of approval that nurtured me and gave me a confidence I had never had in my life before. I must let Ariel go.

  “The nicest thing about you,” he told me, “is that you really don’t know how beautiful you are.” He bent to kiss me behind the ear and I leaned against him, able for the moment to banish all haunting doubts.

  In the corridor he pulled the door shut so that it locked automatically. “Here’s an extra key for you,” he said, and I tucked the bit of metal away in my black velvet bag.

  “Are there guests in the rooms up here?” I asked.

  “No. We don’t use this section unless we’re exceptionally crowded, so we have the place to ourselves. Through that archway down there is an alcove with stairs to the roof. I’ll take you up there sometime. Once or twice a night someone patrols these empty sections, but in the main we’ll be alone.”

  I liked that. It was almost as though we had our own house, instead of a suite in the castle. We followed the red carpet to where the hall widened, passing an occasional guest as we moved toward stairs and elevators. This time we went down to the second floor—the dining-room floor, Brendon had told me.

  When we left the elevator the sound of a Gershwin tune played softly on a piano drifted toward us—“Love Is Here to Stay”—and now there was a murmur of voices, muted and never shrill, but present to remind me where we were. Small rooms opened off the corridor we followed, and I glimpsed Victorian furnishings—plush sofas with carved rosewood frames, whatnot shelves crowded with bibelots, round pedestal tables covered by velvet that dripped fringe. I paused in delight in one doorway where there were touches of chinoiserie in twin cabinets, but it was the row of windows along the west wall, looking out toward a dipping sun, that caught my eye. The lake side faced east, but here the great western spread of valley lay below us, running clear to scalloped mountaintops on the horizon. Mountains that stood gray-blue against a sky that had begun to gild.