CHAPTER XXXIV
MOONA
LIKE all cultivated people, particularly those who attach much importance to pleasure and amusement, variety, art, and the play, Nigel was very fond of Paris; it always pleased him to go there; and yet he doubted if he were quite as fond of it in reality as he was in theory. The best acting, the best cooking, the best millinery in the world was to be found in Paris; and yet Nigel wasn’t sure that he didn’t enjoy those things more when he got them in London—that he enjoyed French cooking best in an English restaurant, and even a French play at an English theatre. Certainly Paris was the centre of art. Nigel was fond of pictures, and he amused himself more with a few young French artists whom he happened to know living here than with anybody else in the city; and yet when he went back to London he sometimes felt that the recollection of it, the chatter of studios, the slang of the critics, even the whole sense and sound of Paris gave him a little the recollection as of a huge cage of monkeys. Like most modern Englishmen, he talked disparagingly about British hypocrisy, Anglo-Saxon humbug, English stiffness and London fog; and yet, after all, he missed and valued these very things. Wasn’t the fog and the hypocrisy—one was the symbol of the other—weren’t all these things the very charm of London? Fog and hypocrisy—that is to say, shadow, convention, decency—these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.
Everything in Paris, it was true, was picturesque, everything had colour and form, everything made a picture. But it was all too obvious; everything was all there ready for one’s amusement, ready for one’s pleasure. People were too obliging, too willing. And the men! Well, Nigel was far more of a viveur, of a lover of pleasure than ninety-nine Englishmen out of a hundred, yet he found too much of that point of view among the men he came across in Paris. From boys to old gentlemen, from the artists to a certain set among the haute finance—of whom he had some acquaintances—from the sporting young sprig of the Faubourg to the son of the sham jeweller in the Rue de Rivoli—all, without a single exception, seemed to think of nothing else but pleasure, in other words, of les petites femmes. For that—paying attention more or less serious to les petites femmes—seemed the one real idea of pleasure. Of this point of view Nigel certainly grew very tired, and he marvelled at the wonderful energy, the unflagging interest in the same eternal subject.
They said, and of course thought, that there was nothing so charming as a French woman, particularly the Parisienne; but, except on one point, he was not entirely inclined to agree. This point was their dress. Their dress was delightful, their fashion was an art, and it had great, real charm. In whatever walk of life they were placed they were always exquisitely dressed. Nigel appreciated this sartorial gift, it was an art he understood and that amused, but weren’t they on the whole—also in every walk of life—a little too much arranged, overdone, too much maquillées; weren’t their faces too white, their lips too red, their hats too new? They knew how to put on their clothes to perfection, but he was not sure that he didn’t prefer these beautiful clothes not quite so well put on; he thought he liked to see the pretty French dress put on a little wrong on a pretty Englishwoman; and then he thought of Bertha, of course. Nowhere in Paris was there anything quite like Bertha, that pink and white English complexion, that abundant fair hair, the natural flower-like look.
Of course Bertha was unusually clever, lively and charming; she was not stiff or prim, she was very exceptional, but distinctly English, and he admired her more than all the Parisiennes in the world. Besides, he thought, one got very tired of them. When they were bourgeoises they were so extremely bourgeoises; when they were smart they were so excessively snob. Perhaps it was through having seen a good deal of them for a little while that he met a compatriot of his with unexpected gratification.
He was walking with one of his artist friends on the boulevard when, to his great surprise, the artist was stopped by a young lady walking alone who evidently knew him. She was dressed in a very tight blue serge coat and skirt, she had black bandeaux of hair over her ears, from which depended imitation coral ear-rings. She had shoes with white spats, and a very small hat squashed over her eyes. She did not look in the least French. He knew her at once. It was the girl whose artistic education Rupert had at one time undertaken. It was Moona Chivvey.
“Ah! Miss Chivvey! What a pleasure! And what are you doing here?”
She replied that she and her friend, Mimsie Sutton, had taken a little studio and were studying art together with a number of other English and American girls with a great artist.