Mistral's Daughter (14 page)

"What's this nonsense,
Maggy?
 
You sound as crazy as everyone
else in this lousy menagerie."

"Julien, listen.
 
It's about my picture, the first one you
painted of me on the green cushions. Avigdor told this man that Mademoiselle
Browning owns it."

"That's perfectly
true."
 
Kate spoke calmly.
 
She had appeared at Mistral's side just as
Maggy reached him.

Mistral shook his head
angrily.
 
"What the hell is going
on!"

"It's quite simple,
Julien," Kate proclaimed in her unimpassioned voice. "I reserved all
the nudes for myself before the exhibition opened.
 
Obviously they are far too important to be
sold separately.
 
I wanted to make sure
they'd be preserved as a series
—
it was
the only way to insure
it.
 
Otherwise, they'd be dispersed in
the hands of seven different people by now."

Maggy let go of Mistral's
arm.
 
"You
couldn't
have
bought it for yourself, Mademoiselle Browning.
 
It was
never
for sale.
 
It's mine.
 
Ask Julien!
 
Julien,
tell
her!
 
You remember, you must remember
–
"

Mistral closed his eyes as if
to blot out her words and Maggy saw,
in a flash, that moment when he had
fallen on her with that pounce of absolute possession, his great hands, still
sticky with paint, rubbing with rough victory on her pubic
hair.

"He'll paint you
another," Kate said without raising her voice.
 
"Won't you, Julien?
 
Be reasonable, Mademoiselle, calm
yourself.
 
You simply can't expect him to
keep any hasty promise he may have made about that first canvas
—
it's
too significant to the body of his work. I'm sure we all agree."

"Julien! Why don't you
say something? You know you gave me that picture." Maggy's voice rose
furiously, suddenly out of control.

Mistral looked from one woman
to the other.
 
Maggy's face had flushed
with anguish and disbelief, she was immobilized, ineffective in the tightly
packed crowd and her prominent mouth was thrust forward in a grimace of
emotion.
 
Kate stood quietly, fastidious
and graceful, the pure oval of her head poised on her neck in a way that
indicated,
as no word could have, that the rightness of her position was beyond dispute.

"Stop carrying on like a
child, Maggy!" Mistral commanded roughly. "Kate's absolutely right,
the seven pictures belong together.
 
I'll make it up to you, damn it!
 
It's not going to kill you to give up one picture, for Christ's
sake!"

For the space of a long
moment Maggy looked straight at' his face.
 
She had grown absolutely still and severe composure fell like a mask
over her vivid outrage as she listened to his words.
 
The clatter of voices dimmed around her as
she absorbed the stance of Kate and the meaning of what Mistral had said.
 
She knew more about them in that instant than
they knew about themselves
—
perhaps more than they would ever know.

Maggy had always recognized
that Kate was an antagonist
—
now she saw that the American had the eyes
of a wolverine.
 
She had not bought the
paintings because she loved them but because she hated them, because she wanted
to make them disappear.
 
Mistral, whom
she had willed herself to trust, because to do otherwise would have been
against all her loving nature, had turned on her in a spurious irritation that
amounted to a shameful lie.

Here, in what should have
been his moment of triumph, it seemed to her that he reeked of the furtive and
the diminished
—
a wild animal trapped, tamed and caged.
 
In Kate, Maggy smelled a ruthlessness the
size of which she could only begin to understand.
 
She stood powerless, friendless, in an arena
in which there could be no victory, from which there was no escape except an
honorable retreat.
 
She felt as if some
essential plug in her body had been pulled.
 
If she stayed facing them any longer she would begin to howl in
outrageous, indecent pain...
 
and to no
purpose.

Slowly, quietly now, she
spoke to Kate.

"Since you want my
portrait so badly, Mademoiselle, that you are ready to steal it, I give it to
you.
 
There is no price.
 
Keep it where you can always see it but
remember
—
it will never really belong to you."
 
She turned to Mistral.
 
"You can't 'make up' anything to me,
Julien.
 
You gave me a gift, you've
changed your mind, now you've taken it back...
 
it's so simple that even I, child though I am, can understand such an
action."

"Shit!
 
Maggy, stop exaggerating..."

"Farewell,
Julien."
 
She nodded formally at
Avigdor and Kate, turned and walked out of the gallery, as stiffly as if her
legs had turned to ice, but with her head high on the long stem of her neck.
 
As Maggy moved, in cold dignity, people found
themselves moving aside to let her pass and looking after her.
 
Surely, more than one of them thought, she
isn't, after all, the same girl who modeled for those nude paintings.
 
That model had been a laughing, erotic creature,
and so young, so succulent.
 
But this was
a woman, austerely beautiful, untouchable, regal, above all, adult.

7

When Perry Mackay Kilkullen
finally tore himself away from Mistral's
vernissage
he knew that he
should find a taxi since he was running behind schedule.
 
It is equally far to travel, either as the
crow flies, or on foot, from Avigdor's gallery to the Hotel Ritz, where
Kilkullen lived, or in the other direction, to the Carrefour Vavin.
 
The heart of the art world and the center of
the grandeur of the Right Bank are both a comfortable walk from the rue de
Seine.
 
They are an even shorter taxi
ride but Perry Kilkullen found himself unable to make the physical leap out of
the Paris evening into the enclosed interior of one of the square, dark red
Renault taxis.
 
The early October dusk
had a dreaminess, a warmth still lulled by summer's scents, fruity with
promise, that it would be criminal to miss.

As he walked back to the Ritz
to change for a business dinner he
stopped for a minute on the Pont du
Carrousel and looked toward the great ship of the Ile de la Cité, that noble
island in the Seine
that bore aloft the crouching silhouette of the
façade of Notre Dame.
 
He turned his back
on that immemorial reminder of his faith and looked west, into the lemon
distance, along the winding river bordered by tall, narrow, gray buildings on
the left and the alluring shadows of the blue Tuileries garden on the right, a
sight that usually made him concentrate with all his senses in order to engrave
once more on his memory the view he considered civilized man's crowning
achievement.

Tonight he saw nothing except
a girl, a tall girl like a young queen with red hair, with a mouth that looked
as if it had been formed for him
alone, and a body he felt he would die
if he never touched.
 
He was all longing
and torment, and even in his flood of emotion he remembered Shelley's phrase,
"the desire of the moth for the star," and laughed for happiness at
feeling an emotion he had never known before, an emotion he had thought poets
described with deliberate malice in order to make nonpoets envious.

Perry Kilkullen, at
forty-two, was an example of the flower of American Irish Catholic
aristocracy.
 
Related to the Mackay
family of the vast Comstock Lode riches, he had been married young to one of
the vast and distinguished McDonnell clan, a graceful and intensely pious young
lady who could prove that her particular branch of the big, important family
was directly descended from the Lord of the Isles himself, and spoke of the
thirteenth-century McDonnells as if they were first cousins.

As the years went by, Mary
Jane Kilkullen's love of genealogy had to substitute for a love of progeny as
she and Perry found themselves almost alone among their contemporaries in
having no children.
 
Like their many friends,
they sailed at Southampton in the summer and skied at the Lake Placid Club and
went to Pinehurst for golf in the spring, but the absence of those sons and
daughters who would have united them as staunch Catholic parents did not make
them turn to each other for solace, as so often happens in childless
marriages.

At first their barrenness was
a frustrating, inexplicable absence and then, as it was prolonged into an acid
acceptance, they turned away from their personal relationship, which had been
founded on a mere fleeting, youthful attraction, and plunged, separately, into
matters that guaranteed them some fulfillment.

Mary Jane Kilkullen became
indispensable to the Guild of the Infant Saviour, the Catholic Big Sisters, the
Catholic Center for the Blind, and the Foundling Hospital.
 
Perry Kilkullen immersed himself in his firm
of international bankers, and by 1926 he spent more of
the year in Paris
than he did in their large apartment at 1008 Park Avenue.

Paris had become his true
love, his consolation for the aridity of his personal life and Paris had kept
him young, as she does all who truly love her.
 
As love of London will give a man mellowness, as love of Rome will
impart to a man a patina of history, love of Paris will guarantee an available
heart.

Perry Kilkullen kept a
three-room suite facing an inner garden of the Ritz and although his Parisian
life was filled with cables and conferences and business lunches and formal
dinners with other members of the international banking community, he often dismissed
his chauffeur and set out on foot, at random, to walk the endlessly alluring
streets of his city.

Now women, many women,
glanced at him as he hurried, already late, toward the Place Vendôme.
 
While Paula had scrutinized his voice and
clothes and his manner, the women who noticed him, although deprived of such
clues, all knew he was not French as they were caught by the sight of his tall
outline, by an impression of casualness and litheness and vitality.
 
There was something about his step, quick,
martial, confident, that looked as if he were walking to the beat of drums.

Perry Kilkullen saw none of
them as he approached the Ritz and dashed up the steps, already crowded by men
in tailcoats and women in brocade evening capes, their many bracelets clinking and
clashing together.
 
He rushed through the
buzzing, perfumed, gray and gold lobby, forgot to nod to the stately concierge,
neglected his usual greeting to the white-gloved lift boy, brushed wordlessly
past his valet, ignored the handful of letters waiting for him and flung
himself into his dinner clothes with only two words beating in his head.
 
Maggy Lunel.
 
Maggy Lunel!

It took only a half-hour of
inquiry the next morning to find out that Madame Paula Deslandes was the owner
of La Pomme d'Or.
 
She had said that
Maggy Lunel was her protégée, Perry Kilkullen thought.
 
Just what would that mean?

He had his secretary book a
table for him for that night, and he dined alone, not noticing the excellence
of the rare gigot or the ripeness of the Brie, waiting for the moment when
Madame Deslandes would condescend to stop by his table.
 
She had greeted him pleasantly as he arrived
but as she made her way from one table to another in her crowded restaurant,
each party seemed to demand an endless amount of her attention.
 
She watched him sit impatiently, scarcely
eating, out of the corner of her eye as she chatted with her regulars at
greater length than usual.
 
Let him wait,
she thought, not without a small but undeniable residue of offended pride.
 
As he drank his second cup of coffee Paula
approached his table and nodded.
 
Perry
sprang to his feet.

"Will you take a brandy
with me, Madame?"

"Willingly."
 
Paula sat down opposite him, put her plump
elbows
on the table and thoughtfully rested her saucy chin on her folded
hands.
 
How, she wondered, was he going
to get around to the matter that brought him here without being obvious?

"Madame, I must meet
her."

Paula raised one eyebrow in
admiration.
 
The attack direct.
 
Not bad for an American.

"Can you help me,
Madame?"

She raised her other eyebrow,
her cosily distributed features arranged midway between receptivity and
hesitation.

"Madame, I'm in
love."

She snapped her fingers
dismissively. "Like that? It's not possible."

"Madame, I am a serious
man, I'm not whimsical, you understand, not given to flights of fancy.
 
Things like this have never happened to
me...
 
but now it has.
 
I'm a banker..."

"A banker?
Tiens
—
more and more impossible."

"1 assure you
—
please don't laugh
—
look, I'm a partner with the Kilkullen International
Trust
—
here's my card
—
all I ask is an opportunity to meet
her."

Paula looked at the card as
long and as seriously as if she were trying to read the future in it. Maggy had
spent the night in Paula's apartment and they had talked long past midnight.
 
Maggy was through with Mistral.
 
It didn't matter if he had made love to Kate
or not, she had said, and Paula had recognized unmistakable truth in her voice.
 
It was a matter of Maggy's own pride.
 
She had been treated as if she were of no
worth.
 
She had been rejected slowly for
weeks and she had refused to acknowledge what was happening.
 
Now that she knew that Mistral held her in
less esteem than the American woman, now that she finally understood, she would
never again seek the slightest gesture from him.
 
Nothing.
 
Ever.
 
It was one thing to be made
a fool of by love
—
that could happen to anybody
—
and there was
no dishonor in it, but it was totally different to make a fool of oneself.

Paula had listened, careful
not to encourage her at first, since she knew that a wise woman takes no sides
in lovers' quarrels.
 
If Maggy went back
to Mistral after all these brave words, Paula's agreement would ultimately be
held against her.

But as the hours passed she
saw that Maggy had truly gone too far to turn back, that events had tutored her
slowly, unconsciously, over the past weeks, in an unwilling comprehension of
Mistral's character; that she had no reservoir of illusion to drain, no stored
up years of shared emotions to comfort her with false hope.

Paula didn't doubt that Maggy
still loved Mistral. A passion, a first passion, like the one she had lived
with him, marks a woman' for life.
 
No
woman truly recovers from such a love.
 
But the loss of the painting had, as no other event could ever have
done, shown her his true nature.
 
It was
a conclusive proof that Julien Mistral had never had the commitment to her that
Maggy had made to him.
 
She could never
love him blindly again.
 
The generosity
that she had bestowed so purely on Mistral depended on her belief
—
no
matter if it had been hasty or foolish or even utterly false
—
that he
had loved her as she loved him.
 
With
that belief destroyed there was nothing left for her to hold on to.

Maggy was beyond anger
now.
 
Mistral had, in all fairness, never
said that he felt as she did. She had taken it for granted with a credulity
that now seemed to belong to a childish innocent she hardly knew.
 
She was dry-eyed, firm and decisive.
 
It was the only way she could deal with the
situation.
 
To wail would have been to
injure herself even further, and that would have been unendurable.
 
She had sent a boy to pick up the belongings
she had left at Mistral's studio, and, even now, she was resettling herself in
her own little place.

"Madame..." Perry
Kilkullen thought that if she looked at his card any longer it would turn
yellow at the edges and wither with age.

Paula looked up.
 
He was a good man.
 
She could hardly be mistaken about something
so basic.
 
He was rich
—
that
jumped out from every thread on his vest.
 
He was sincere.
 
Whether he could
really be in love with Maggy without having spoken one word to her was a matter
for debate, but he certainly thought he was.
 
Lust
—
of course
—
but love was another matter.
 
He was probably married but that was not an
issue.
 
The rawness of Maggy's wounds
shouldn't be allowed to go without some salve, and the sooner the better.
 
God knows this Kilkullen was marvelous to
look at.
 
What better tonic to help Maggy
begin her recovery from a stupid misadventure with Julien Mistral than a good,
rich, handsome American?
 
Even if he was
a little crazy?
 
Every Frenchwoman should
have at least one American
—
at least once.

"Tomorrow night,
Monsieur Kilkullen, you may invite us to dine with you," she said gravely,
feeling a bit like Juliet's nurse.

"Ah..." he sighed
with huge relief.
 
He had been prepared
to go to Avigdor next if Madame Deslandes refused him but he felt less
ridiculous talking to a woman.

"At Marius and
Janette," Paula continued, "since oysters are in season."
 
And, she thought, since Maggy doesn't have
the clothes for Maxim's.
 
Madame
Poulard's creations could only carry her so far
—
certainly not into
Maxim's.

"How can I thank
you?" he implored.

"By not noticing when I
order a second dozen Belons
—
by begging me to have a third dozen
—
but not permitting me dessert.
 
I'm not a
difficult woman.
 
I prefer the simple
pleasures."