Magnus walked about the room, suddenly angry. “I thought you were imagining things yesterday. How do you mean that stone was ‘fixed’? I don’t believe it.”
“Would you rather believe it was Ariel?”
He came back to face me. “I do believe it was Ariel. She was furious with Floris. They had a blowup. If Floris had killed Ariel, I wouldn’t have been surprised. As it happens, it was the other way around. Floris could have been lured to the place in some way, and Ariel could have waited for her above.”
“No!” I was vehement. “How can you say that if you ever loved her?”
“I loved her as she really was.”
“I won’t listen to this. I thought you might help me. But the things you’ve said are unspeakable. I don’t believe them, and I won’t listen.”
“Because you have a guilty conscience, Jenny McClain? It’s not so much that you’d like to clear your sister as it is that you want to be able to live with yourself. Isn’t that it?”
I would listen to nothing more and I ran to the door and pulled it open. He was after me in a moment and his great hand on my arm made me helpless to move.
“Oh, no—you’re forgetting something. There was a bargain—remember? If I would talk about your sister, you would pose for me. So now you’re going to start posing. You’re going to stay and start posing for me right now.”
I had the feeling that he would keep me here if he chose, no matter what I might say or do, so I gave up and went limp in his hands.
8
I have found the burial ground. It is hidden away in the woods on a road with a chain across it, not open to visitors. I would never have discovered it if Magnus hadn’t sent me here.
The day has warmed and this is a quiet, enchanted place. I walk among the old stones and read the names aloud, liking the company of my voice. The first McClains who came to Laurel Mountain, who gave it its name, are buried here, but Geoffrey McClain, who came later, has the largest stone. His son Bruce must have seen to that, just as he saw to it that the tower on the mountain was a memorial to his father.
There are other names on the family tree that I have yet to learn. Or perhaps will never learn now, since this will be my home no longer. Brendon will someday sleep here, but I will not be by his side in death, any more than I can be in life. But I try not to think of Brendon as I walk on around the small enclosure.
It is a mountain cemetery and the fence around it is made of stones gathered from the hillside. Small animals can come and go here as they please, finding it a friendly place to sun themselves. There was a woodchuck here when I came through the gate, sitting up on fat haunches, his jaw munching rapidly on a handful of greens. He gave me a look of that curious disdain an interloper deserves, and waddled off when I appeared. There is still a chipmunk flirting with me from behind a granite headstone, not particularly afraid, but not completely trusting either.
Not all of the stones bear the name of McClain and I am sure that those long associated with Laurel Mountain may also have been brought here to rest, where the mountain slopes gently toward the east, and sunrise must touch the stones with gold every morning. Except for the exposed side, with its distant view, hemlocks grow all around, dripping green fronds in a solid enclosure beyond the stone fence. In one shady corner ferns grow undisturbed. My mind gives me the name automatically. Osmunda cinnamomea—cinnamon fern.
It is easy to identify the one grave that waits for its stone. That stone that Magnus Devin is preparing so painstakingly in his backyard studio. He showed me his further work today. He has been abrading and polishing its face, making it ready for the carving to be engraved on its surface. I asked him what words he would put there, and he told me curtly that he would carve her name and the dates of her birth and death. Nothing else. No “beloved wife of …” Of course not.
I sit beside the pile of earth that has not yet fully settled as the other graves have done. Grass is growing sparsely up its sides, but no one has brought flowers here lately, and it has a neglected air that makes me feel a strange pity for a woman so unloved.
The sun warms me and I sit here almost somnolent, thinking back over words that were spoken in Magnus’ cabin, and of that strange time when I had gone with him to the Glen of the Bull to keep my promise and pose.
When we reached the glen, the huge stone figure seemed to be waiting for us, pawing the earth in perpetual fury, and I was caught up once more in admiration.
“He’s tremendous,” I said. “Did you carve him from a rock you found here on the mountain?”
“Of course not.” Magnus dismissed my ignorance. “I had a fresh block of granite brought here from the quarry. Weathered stone develops a skin that’s hard to work. I liked the experience—getting into the stone to discover him.”
“Has he a name?”
“Only the obvious one Ariel gave him. Zeus. Inappropriate, of course.”
“Why inappropriate?”
“Because he’s a sacrificial bull. Whether by one of the old religions, or in the ring, he would be sacrificed. Last May Ariel wove a chain of daisies for his neck in the old way. But she was the one who died.”
His voice held no emotion, yet I knew how much he suppressed.
“Why do you stay here?” I asked. “Couldn’t you find a place with fewer unhappy memories?”
“I have such a place waiting for me,” he admitted, setting out his tools. “I’ve a few acres over in Pennsylvania. I’ll go there someday. It’s my own land—not leased like this.”
“Then what holds you here?”
“My father, mainly. He couldn’t live anywhere else, and I need to stay around and look out for him.”
I couldn’t imagine anyone who needed looking after less than Keir Devin.
“I’m all he has left,” Magnus went on, “however much he disapproves of me at times. But he can’t be uprooted. So I’ll wait awhile.”
I liked him for that, but I couldn’t put my warming toward him into words.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, approaching the bull.
“I’ll sketch you first on his back,” he told me. “I’ll make drawings from several angles, and then you can leave if you like. I’ll have to decide about what material I’ll use. Perhaps marble—if I can find the right piece. I do have some, and the block itself will determine the size.”
All I needed to do just then was to climb onto the bull’s back and let him pose me there. This time he made no rude gesture of picking me up, but stood back politely, albeit with a green gleam in his eyes that I didn’t altogether like, watching as I stepped from stone to head, between the horns, and stood again upon that broad back.
“Tell me about Ariel’s costume,” he said. “You’re all wrong, of course, in pants. What did she wear for Europa?”
“Not a tutu,” I told him. “Flowing layers that clung and parted when she moved. Shades of green, from dark to very light, and falling to her knees. Semi-Grecian, I suppose. The lady was daughter to the king of Phoenicia.”
“She should have worn purple,” Magnus said gruffly. “Royal purple to honor the bull. To honor royal Zeus.”
“Purple was for Romans. And I don’t think Europa cared much about honoring him when he was carrying her off by force. He swam across the sea to Crete, didn’t he, while she clung to his back?”
“All maidens should be carried off by force the first time,” Magnus said, walking around the bull while I stood awkwardly on the creature’s back.
I refused to be outraged by his words, since I was beginning to understand that outrage was Magnus’ stock in trade, and I meant to say nothing to encourage him.
“I think you’ll need to lie down up there,” he said after walking around us twice. “Let’s see how graceful you can be.”
I lowered myself to lie on one side, with my arm reaching toward the lowered head with its wicked horns.
“No,” Magnus said. “Don’t sprawl.”
His mind’s eye was giving him Ariel, I kne
w, and there was no way in which Ariel could make an awkward move. Vainly I tried to improve my position, feeling ridiculous and rebellious again, and wondering why I had ever let myself in for this. What I had wanted from him in return hadn’t been forthcoming, so perhaps we were neither of us getting the best of the bargain.
When he’d set his sketch block and pencil down on a rock, he came over and rearranged me on the bull’s back, his hands surprisingly light when he wasn’t manhandling me, his touch firm but not rough as he pushed one leg out along the back with the toe pointed, the other knee bent and drawn beneath me, my arms flung toward the horns in a gesture of entreaty.
“Forget about Jenny McClain,” he said. “Forget about Ariel. You are a woman being carried away against her will and full of fear and grief. You’re entreating him to let you go. You’re putting your whole soul into that entreaty.”
Fear and grief were something I knew about, and without bidding I thought of Brendon.
“That’s good,” Magnus cried. “Don’t move. Whatever you’re thinking—keep thinking it.”
He snatched up his block of paper and sketched rapidly, tore it off and sketched again. I remembered now that I’d left my own sketch box at Magnus’ cabin. I must pick it up later. The discomfort of hard stone grew into an agony, physical as well as mental. When I felt that I couldn’t bear it a moment longer, he dropped his sketch block and came over to the bull.
“Come down,” he said, and held out his arms.
When I dropped into them, he held me carefully, almost tenderly for a moment, and then set me gently on my feet, with none of the jar that I’d experienced yesterday.
“Would you like to see?” he asked, and picked up the sheets of drawing paper he had scattered about the grass.
How skillfully and swiftly he had worked. I gazed and was both disturbed and astonished. It was Ariel’s face that looked back at me from white paper—her eyes wide with fear, the agony of suffering stamped upon her mouth. I had seen Ariel look like that on a stage, where she was a superb actress, as all great prima ballerinas are. When it came to the rough drawings of the body lying upon the back of the bull, there was less grace, but here too a sense of suffering. The body was mine, and he had drawn me without concealing garments, as though he knew my very flesh and bone structure.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t ever be as graceful as Ariel was.”
He took the sheets from my hand and studied them again. “It’s doesn’t matter. Maybe Europa wasn’t all that graceful either. Perhaps it’s better this way. Classical ballet movements don’t always convey heights of emotion. Martha Graham could do it better. You’ve given me what I want. You were thinking of Brendon, weren’t you?”
“I was thinking of how hard and cold that stone felt under my body,” I told him sharply. “Am I free to go now?”
“For now, yes. But you’ll come back? You’ll promise me that?”
There was entreaty in the words, and I stared at him in surprise. My impression had been of a man who was likely to take without asking—not one who would ever beg. Yet for an instant there was unguarded sorrow in his face, and he was begging me.
“Of course I’ll come back,” I said. “Even though it’s not really me you want as a model.”
“Ah, but there you’re wrong!” he cried. “Yesterday I looked at you and saw only Ariel. Now Jenny is getting in the way. And perhaps this will be a better, more original work because of that. Run along now, and don’t get lost in the woods.”
But I didn’t run along. Instead, I stood staring at him in surprise, because I was grateful for his unexpected gift. The gift of myself. He had looked at me and seen me—not Ariel.
“Thank you,” I said.
He didn’t understand what I meant, but his smile was wide again in that great red beard, and something in his eyes seemed oddly triumphant. When I turned away and started across the clearing he came with me to where the path began.
“There’s something you ought to see down there on the hill,” he said, pointing. “When you reach the road keep going that way until you come to a path that’s blocked off with a chain. Go over the chain and follow that road through the woods. You’re a McClain and there’s something there you should see.”
I wasn’t sure how long I would be a McClain, but I nodded and started down the trail, feeling oddly confused and far from reassured. He was a strange man, and it was never possible to know what he was thinking, or to guess what intent he might be hiding. As I walked along, I had the uncomfortable conviction that he had conquered me in some way, and that he had fully intended that conquest. When I posed for him in the future, I would be a little more on guard.
How different it had been with Brendon. With my husband I had never been on guard at all. I had believed in something wholly false from the first moment that I’d seen him. How cleverly Brendon had made me believe that he didn’t know Ariel. How cunning he had been to dismiss ballet as something he didn’t care for.
No—I mustn’t think. I mustn’t remember. Numbly I walked on, following Magnus’ directions until I came to the handsome grillwork of an iron gate set between stone walls, and looked past it into the burying ground that had served the McClains and those close to them for so many years. Was this the place Magnus meant me to see?
I went through the gate, only then remembering once more the sketch box I’d left at the cabin. It didn’t seem to matter now. I could always pick it up later. I had no desire to sketch wild flowers and plants in my present state of mind. What had always been an escape for me seemed so no longer.
Sitting there on the rough grass beside Floris’ grave, I had my back to the gate, and I didn’t see or hear Irene when she entered. Nor did she see me, half hidden as I was by the monument that marked Geoffrey McClain’s grave. I wasn’t aware of her until I heard the sound of a sob nearby and turned, startled, to see who was there.
As always, her dress was neat. This morning she wore a brown wool skirt and ribbed sweater, with gold chains about her neck. Her brown hair was combed carefully into its puff over her forehead and her brown brogues were well polished. Her coloring matched the touches of autumn in the woods, but her face, in its faded beauty, was splotched with tears as she stood crying openly beside Bruce McClain’s grave.
This was something I shouldn’t witness, but I didn’t know what to do. If I kept still, she might see me later and be all the more embarrassed. There was nothing for it but to stand up and greet her.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I got to my feet to leave. “I don’t want to intrude.”
She was as startled as I, and as taken aback, but when I moved past her toward the gate, she touched my arm.
“No, don’t go, Jenny. Stay with me a little while. I haven’t seen as much of you as I’d like. My duties at the hotel—all of the menu planning, you know—have kept me busy. But I do want to know my son’s wife a great deal better.”
A hand worked swiftly to brush away tears, and she managed a tremulous smile.
“I’d have liked that too,” I said. “But it’s not going to be possible. You see, I know everything now. I know about Ariel and why Brendon married me. I know I must go away soon.”
Her eyes fell, not meeting mine, and the uncertain smile was wiped away. “Oh, no, Jenny! He meant to tell you, but I know he was afraid. He wanted you to be happy here first, so that you could forgive him.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. He loved my sister and he tried—understandably—to put me in her place. Someone who is suffering will do almost anything to make the pain stop. I know that. Only I can’t go on living with a man who is pretending I’m my sister.”
She offered no denials, made no defense of her son, but her hand tightened on my arm and she drew me toward a place where the stone wall warmed in bright sunshine.
“Let’s sit here and talk a little, my dear. You mustn’t run away because you’ve been hurt. Give him time, so he can learn to love you for yourself.”
“I
won’t do that. I can’t do it anyway. Now that it’s all out in the open, he’s furious with me for breaking the spell. We can never see each other as we did before, when it was all make-believe.”
“Oh, dear,” she said unhappily, and began to cry again.
I put my arm about her shoulders and felt their shaking. She was my only friend here, and we might have grown into an affection for each other, so I felt a sadness as I tried to comfort her.
Perhaps because dependency was part of her nature, she leaned against me, as though she could take some comfort from the touch of my arm.
“It’s so awful,” she murmured. “I don’t know what to do. I’m being torn in all directions. Oh, I wish Bruce were alive. He was always strong and wise, and he always told me the right things to do.”
“Perhaps it’s time to figure out for us what must be done. Perhaps that’s the only way we can be honest with ourselves.”
“But I can’t figure it out—I can’t! Help me, Jenny, help me!”
Her appeal was disturbing, and too demanding for what I was able to give. “I’d like to, but I don’t know what you want of me. I’m an outsider, and—”
Irene moved back so she could look into my face. “You’re not outside. You’ve seemed like a daughter to me from the first time I saw you. Yet I never felt like that about your sister. I thought she was a destructive force—dangerous in ways she couldn’t help. Perhaps really dedicated artists aren’t entirely human. I knew she was going to hurt Brendon. And she has—so badly that he may never get over it. Please offer him a little healing.”
“No,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I want too much for myself, and I’ve spent too much of my life trying to be satisfied with what Ariel didn’t want. There isn’t any way for Brendon and me to come together again. Last night we were furious with each other. He walked out on me and I haven’t seen him since. I wish I never had to see him again.”
The Stone Bull Page 15