The Stone Bull

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  We were in town now, though I hadn’t been paying much attention, and Keir braked again and drew over to the side of the road.

  “I’ll leave you here,” he said. “This is the old part of town. Plenty to see. Suppose I pick you up right here in about an hour?”

  Disconcerted, I found that I had been dumped unceremoniously by the side of the road, and I watched the truck rumble off. Keir hadn’t liked that straight-out question I had asked, and while he hadn’t admitted it, I suspected that he had no doubts about Floris’ death. But why had he asked me into the truck? What had he wanted of me?

  Since there was nothing else to do, I began to walk about, discovering that I was on Huguenot Street in the original town, and that all about me were houses that had been built nearly three hundred years ago. There was every type of architecture, from early Flemish stone to a handsome brick that belonged to a later, Federal period. One of the houses was open as a museum and I wandered past roped-off rooms, mingled with a small party that had come by bus, invisible in my anonymity. Here no one would suddenly cry out that I looked like Ariel Vaughn.

  Yet even while my eyes studied and admired, my mind struggled to plan. Keir was a puzzle to which I had never found the key. I wasn’t even sure how he felt about his son, though he had been quick enough to warn me away from him. That he was devoted to Brendon, I didn’t doubt, and now that I had fallen out with Brendon, the friendship that had seemed to be beginning between Keir and me had been lost. He trusted me now no more than he had my sister.

  I was beginning to think they were all banded together to protect one of their own number, and I wasn’t likely to stir any one of them into a betrayal of who that was.

  When I returned to the place where Keir had left me, I sat on a stone step until the truck came into sight. When I was in the front seat again and we were heading across the Wallkill River toward Laurel Mountain, I tried once more to engage Keir in conversation.

  “I suppose you know your son tried to give Loring Grant a beating this afternoon?”

  Oddly enough, he hadn’t heard, and he gave me a quick, startled look. “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “Magnus was angry because Loring sent surveyors up to Rainbow Point near your place. I suppose he came down to the hotel to settle things with Loring in his own bullish way. It took Brendon to break them up. Nobody got hurt, but I’d say there’s a lot of bad blood being stirred up.”

  “There are better ways to handle this,” Keir said. “Magnus has always let his temper fly too fast. I’ll talk to him. Brendon won’t allow Loring to put his schemes through.”

  “Isn’t the hotel run by a board?” I asked. “Brendon and Naomi and Irene have to vote, don’t they? And isn’t there a danger that Irene will listen to her husband’s advice, and Naomi may go along with her?”

  “There could be.” His face darkened. “Irene could be too scared to do anything else.”

  “Of Loring?”

  “Relax. Nothing’s been spoiled yet. If you were going to stick around, Brendon might have trained you to serve on the board.”

  “But I’m not going to,” I said quickly. “I’ll only be here a little while longer. Only until I find out what happened to Floris.”

  He gave me another sidelong look. “What if I try to help you on that?”

  “Would you?” I said eagerly. “Would you really?”

  “Maybe. I’ll think about it.” His tone had softened toward me just a little.

  The curving, climbing road wound up to the entrance to Laurel Mountain House, and Keir slowed to speak to the guard before he drove on through to drop me at the hotel.

  I sit here now with my doors bolted and remember all the unpleasantness of the day, glad to have it passed, so that it is one day I need never live through again.

  I sit here and once more I am afraid. These rooms are too lonely, the corridors too deserted in this old wing. I know I have only to ring Irene and ask that my room be changed and she will put me in a more populated section where there will be guests coming and going, and I needn’t fear the emptiness. Yet I make no move. I sit here, waiting.

  Perhaps because it was here that Brendon and I were happy together, and I somehow fool myself that he will come back to me here. That he will tell me that it is me he loves, and all will be as it was before. I know this is nonsense and that the shadow of Ariel that has fallen between us can never be erased. Yet I sit here and wait. For what? A knock on the door? For the telephone to ring?

  When it rings just as I think of it, I am startled out of my chair and sent running to answer. I pick up the receiver and speak into it in a voice that has gone more tremulous than I like. But it is only Magnus on the wire, and hope expires in me like the emptying of air from a balloon.

  “I’ll be ready for you tomorrow,” he says. “I’m going to do this in marble and I’ve spent the day on opening up the stone, with my sketches to guide me. So will you come?”

  “I’ll be there,” I tell him, and my voice sounds firmer as I speak.

  “What’s the matter?” Magnus asks.

  He is too perceptive, too alert.

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “You thought it was Brendon, didn’t you? But you’ll have to get over that. And don’t come in pants—wear a dress.”

  “What time do you want me tomorrow?” I ask coolly, hoping that my tone will reprove him.

  “You can come around ten o’clock, if you like. Dream well. And think about Zeus tonight—waiting for you on the mountain.”

  He is gone, the phone is dead, and I sit for a time with the receiver in my hands until it begins to make reproachful clicks, asking me to hang it up.

  Before I get into bed, I go out on the balcony and stare up at High Tower with its beacon light. Somewhere on the mountain, hidden in the forest, the stone bull stands. The half moon that shines on my balcony and makes a shimmering path across the lake shines as well upon his grassy circle with the dark hemlocks crowding around. I think of Magnus’ words—that Zeus waits for me. But it is Magnus who waits. I know that, and somehow I am more fearful than ever.

  What is it Magnus wants of me? Why must I go to him? What do I want of Magnus?

  For some reason the thought of that ugly stone head I had seen in Magnus’ workshed returns to me. What sort of man could imagine so horrid a creation? I hope I will not see that face in my dreams tonight.

  10

  When I reached the cabin the next morning, I found it empty, with a note tacked on the door: Zeus awaits you. I couldn’t feel all that whimsical this morning, and the words didn’t please me. My temper had frayed badly overnight, so that I seemed to be angry with everyone. Especially with Brendon, who had taken my life and then thrown it away. As quickly as possible I wanted to escape from Laurel Mountain and never see its forests, or lake, or any of its people again.

  So I bristled a little as I marched through the woods to the clearing, where both Magnus and his great stone beast waited for me. The bull looked as furiously ready for attack as ever, but Magnus’ mood was the opposite of mine, and he greeted me with that flashing smile that could overpower me—if I allowed it to, and I braced myself against it. This morning he wore goggles again, to protect against flying chips, but he took them off when I appeared.

  “Right on time,” he said. “Unlike your sister.”

  My bristling showed. “Ariel was never late for a performance or a rehearsal in her life.”

  “I only knew her here on the mountain,” he said mildly.

  Those had been Brendon’s words too, and for the first time I wondered if there had been another Ariel—one I had never known.

  Indian summer had descended gently upon the mountains and in the warm morning I could shed my jacket. I had put on my dress of celery green, with the drifting skirt, since it was the closest I could come to something Grecian, and Magnus approved me with a nod as I stood before him.

  “Good. That will do nicely. Though I’ll make a few changes. Such a
s a bare shoulder. And we’ll have to find you a crown of flowers eventually.”

  He had brought a sturdy wooden stand out to the woods, and the block of marble stood upon it. Some of the extraneous stone had already been drilled away, so that a rough form was emerging.

  “If you’d like to climb up there, we can get started,” he said, being polite with me this morning, and rather formal, as though he sensed my nervous, angry mood, and wanted to do nothing to aggravate it further.

  As I approached the bull I saw that an incongruous red plaid blanket had been spread across its back—so I wouldn’t have to suffer cold stone today. I ignored the hand he offered and climbed up between the horns to seat myself on the blanket.

  “Do you want me the way I was yesterday?” I asked, equally formal. There was no reason to take out my seething anger on Magnus.

  He held up one of yesterday’s sketches. “This is the pose I like best—if you can copy it.”

  I arranged myself as well as I could and he moved a foot this way, a hand that. When I had stretched out, he made chalk marks on the stone beyond the blanket, so that I could come back to the exact place after a rest. From where I lay in what I hoped was a maiden’s graceful desperation, I could watch as he worked with his tools. His eyes were hidden by the protective goggles and I found that I missed seeing their green brilliance. With his eyes concealed, I could tell less than ever what he was thinking.

  “We don’t have to be quiet,” he said after a silence broken only by mallet on steel point. “I can concentrate and talk at the same time. I can even listen.”

  “There’s nothing I want to talk about,” I said.

  “Oh? Dad tells me you’re continuing your wild-goose chase to exonerate your sister.”

  “Your father didn’t call it that. He said he’d try to help me.”

  “He has a tender heart under that gruff façade, and he’s begun to feel sorry for you. But we both think that the sooner you face up to what passion Ariel was capable of, the better it will be.”

  “I thought you loved her?”

  “When I’m attracted, it’s with my eyes open. Unlike Brendon. I knew very well what I was doing when it came to Ariel, and I knew it couldn’t last.”

  There was no kindness in me this morning. “That must have been pretty hard on Floris.”

  “Floris and I understood each other, as I’ve said before.”

  “Until Ariel spoiled that understanding?”

  “You’re feeling vitriolic, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t find the world especially pleasant this morning. And I shouldn’t think you would either.”

  “On a day like this?” he marveled, waving his mallet at the great arch of blue overhead, at the hemlocks, less grimly dark in bright sunlight.

  “It must have been even more beautiful at the time when Floris died,” I said. “And Ariel. May—spring. Tragically beautiful. Floris because someone took her life, Ariel because she took her own.”

  “And you don’t see the connection? You don’t see cause and effect?”

  I pushed myself up on the blanket to answer sharply, but his voice cut like a whiplash. “Don’t go squirming around! If all your thoughts make you angry today, you’d better keep them to yourself.”

  For a while I was still, struggling with emotions I couldn’t manage. Perhaps didn’t want to manage. No longer was I willing to be weak and hurt and tearful.

  “It’s a good thing I’m not ready to work on your face today,” Magnus said after a quarter of an hour had passed. “Yesterday you caught the right feeling. I was going to take a few snapshots today, but obviously I’d better stick to general outlines.”

  I bit my lips and was silent. I ached all over. Even with the blanket under me, the stone was hard and I felt the strain of trying to hold a pose. Inside, I was desperately wounded, yet resenting my own grief, angry with myself as well as with everyone else. Because of Brendon.

  “Take a rest,” Magnus said. “Before you go numb and fall off.”

  I sat up, stretching my arms overhead, wriggling my shoulders, drawing deep breaths of pine-scented air, because I realized I’d been breathing shallowly for too long.

  “Get down and walk about,” Magnus directed.

  I slid from the bull’s back, pulling the blanket with me. I felt colder now, and I wrapped it close as I walked around the ring of grass. When I came opposite Magnus I paused to look at the block of veined marble on the stand before him. The rough shape of the bull was becoming evident in the stone, with what might be the form of a maiden stretched along its back.

  “Do you ever model in clay?” I asked.

  “Only when I mean to cast in bronze. Clay isn’t my favorite medium. You have to build it up and it lacks resistance. Perhaps I like to fight the stone. With marble or granite, you know everything is right there inside, and you have only to set it free. For me there’s more excitement in that. I don’t even like to use a maquette—a scaled model—to work from. For me it’s difficult to hold the creative feeling when I must copy from a model. An idea can get tired when I struggle with it too long.”

  His talk about his own work relaxed me a little and I picked up yesterday’s sketches to study them.

  “You draw so well—have you never wanted to paint?”

  “Not really. Painting at its best is an interpretation, an extension. But when you sculpt, you deal with something closer to reality—your own reality in stone. To the sculptor dimension is everything. What you create is there in the round—with its own lights and shadows that change as the world changes. You can walk around what you’ve done and see every angle. It has a life of its own.”

  As he spoke he illustrated, moving around the block, touching the point to it here and there.

  “Marble is a satisfying stone to use. It’s softer than granite, and the work goes faster. I’ve done almost all I need to do with drill and point, since I worked for hours yesterday. I’ll use a claw tool to draw the figure in the stone, and then I can make my final statement with various chisels. That’s the most meticulous part.”

  “And if you cut away too much stone?”

  “That’s the challenge. And the skill. With clay you can build up or tear down. What I do in marble is pretty final. But tell me about you, Jenny. Those sketches and paintings you showed me—what do you mean to do with them? What are you working toward?”

  I hesitated to tell him because I knew he hadn’t approved of what he’d seen in my sketchbook.

  “I don’t think you’re just a dilettante,” he said.

  That forced an answer from me. “No—I don’t want to be. I’ve thought in terms of a book eventually—when I’ve collected enough paintings. Perhaps something that could be used in a classroom to give the details of plants and wild flowers—exactly as I find them. This is my subject, you know—botany, nature. It’s what I’ve been teaching in school.”

  He seemed to think about that for a moment, while more chips flew. “I remember now. Ariel told me she had a sister who was a teacher. Yes—I suppose that sort of book would be suitable.”

  I felt unaccountably put down, damned once more by faint praise.

  “I forgot my sketching things and left them at your cabin,” I said stiffly. “I’ll pick them up today.”

  “Must you? I’d like to keep them a little longer, so I can have another look.”

  I didn’t want him to have another look, and I said nothing for a moment, staring at the shimmering block of marble, feeling thoroughly angry with him again.

  “Will it be Ariel, or will it be me?” I asked abruptly.

  He took off his goggles and regarded me with his disconcerting green gaze. “It won’t be either,” he said and picked up his gritstone to sharpen a tool. “It will be Europa. Whatever you are would get in my way, just as Ariel’s confusion got in the way when she posed for me.”

  “Confusion?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you sense that? Your sister was a woman torn in two. She wanted to love, an
d she was afraid of love. She had to dance, but she feared the future when the dancing came to an end.”

  “I know.”

  He went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “She wanted marriage, a home, children—ordinary things.”

  My laughter sounded harsh. “Ariel? Never!”

  “Then you know very little about her, it seems.”

  “I grew up with her!” I cried. “I knew everything about her!”

  “Did you indeed? When you knew nothing about her coming here—knew nothing about her relationship with Brendon, and with me?”

  “I don’t need to know details. She always had light affairs. She needed something new and exciting—to feed her art. I need to restore my toes, Jenny,’ she used to say. But the new always became old and she got bored and dropped it the moment her dancing called her back.”

  He put on his goggles, picked up his mallet and made a ringing period to our talk. “If you’re limber enough now, can we get to work?”

  Feeling more disturbed than ever, I spread the blanket over the bull’s back, stepped up between the horns and arranged myself according to the chalk marks on the stone.

  He worked in concentration, the blow of steel against stone carrying a rhythm in the striking that I knew would save his energy.

  I let my head rest on an outstretched arm and found myself dozing a little in warm sunshine.

  But he couldn’t stay silent forever. Like many a man who keeps to himself, Magnus liked to talk on those occasions when he left his solitude.

  “I only saw her dance once,” he mused. “Not in New York. Not on a stage. She danced for me here in this ring. No costume—just a leotard she wore for practice. And she improvised, made up her steps on half toe as she went along. I can still remember her leaps—though what she was doing wasn’t ballet. She said she had to have a smooth floor for intricate ballet steps. But she danced Europa—flirting with the bull, being enticed at last onto his back, so he could carry her away. It was marvelous acting.”

  I could see her here in this glade. Europa had been more like modern dance in the Graham style than a classic ballet, yet Ariel had done it beautifully to Maurice Kiov’s bull. And with very few props to help her. She had always liked an empty stage and hated clutter. Kiov wore only a cap of horns and black tights, his muscular torso bare. At the very end, they had stood like figures on an amphora while the curtain came down to wild applause.