Was he older than I am? I remarked before I realized what I was saying.
Certainly he was. He had told the other woman exactly what he had told me. She knew about the wife in Toulouse, but she had no idea at all that there was another woman more or less in the same hotel. He was a man of great fantasy and he liked women of a certain age. It was a very happy time, and sometimes he reminded me a little of your father there were periods of lethargy punctuated by bursts of energy. He told me later, when everything was known, that he thought of me always as his lady of the night. I looked so well, he said, by full electric light. The other woman he knew as the afternoon girl although she was only a year or two younger than me. He was a very lecherous man, quite out of place, I would have thought, in a metallurgical company.
How did you discover?
He traded too much on his luck[103]. Everything had gone so easily for six months. When I went shopping I always went out by the Rue de Rivoli. When I had shopped enough I would take tea at W.H. Smiths bookshop. And Louise was, of course, usually occupied in the afternoons. She shopped in the morning when I was engaged, for Monsieur Dambreuse never rose before eleven, and she always left the hotel by the Rue Saint-Honore. Then one day the spirit of devilry took him. It was a week-end and he had led his wife and two younger children to the Louvre to look at the Poussins[104]. Afterwards his family wanted tea and his wife suggested the Ritz. Its too noisy, he told her, its like a parrot cage of dowagers. Now I know a quiet little garden where nobody ever comes The trouble that afternoon was that both of us came I and Louise.
I had never had tea in the garden between the Saint James and Albany before, nor had Louise, but some impulse I sometimes believe in a Higher Power, even though I am a Catholic led the two of us that afternoon into the garden. We were the only people there, and you know how sociable French women are. A polite bow and Bonjour, madame[105], an exchange of words between our tables about the balmy weather, and within a few minutes we were seated together, offering each other the sugar and the sandwiches, and only too glad perhaps of a little female conversation after six months in a hotel room with one man.
We introduced ourselves, and both of us spoke of our so-called husbands. It seemed no more than a curious coincidence when we found that the two of them worked for the same metallurgical firm. One of the things about Monsieur Dambreuse that I particularly like in memory is the fact that he always preferred to tell the truth when it was practicable indeed he was more trustworthy than most men, who often lie uselessly from vanity. I wonder whether they know each other, Louise was saying when into the garden walked Monsieur Dambreuse, followed by his rather stout wife and two overgrown children, the female one squinting a little and suffering from hay fever. Louise cried, Achille, and when I think of his expression as he turned and saw the two of us sitting at tea together, I cannot help smiling even today. My aunt dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. And crying a little too, she added, for it was the end of an idyll. A man cannot forgive being made to look foolish.
I said with some indignation, Surely it was for you to forgive?
Oh no, dear, I was quite ready to continue as we were. Louise too would have agreed to share him, and I dont think Madame Dambreuse ever quite realized the situation. His name really was Achille and he introduced us to her as the wives of two fellow directors of the metallurgical firm. But Monsieur Dambreuse never quite recovered his self-esteem. Now when he was rather tranquil in midweek he knew I realized the cause and it embarrassed him. He was not a promiscuous man. He had loved his little secret. He felt naked, poor man, and exposed to ridicule.
But surely, Aunt Augusta, I exclaimed, you couldnt bear the man after you had discovered how he had deceived you all those months?
She got up and strode towards me with her small hands clenched. I thought she was going to hit me. You young fool, she said as if I were no more than a schoolboy. Monsieur Dambreuse was a man, and I only wish you had been given a chance of growing up like him.
Suddenly she smiled and put her hand comfortingly against my cheek. I am sorry, Henry, it is not your fault. You were brought up by Angelica. Sometimes I have an awful feeling that I am the only one left anywhere who finds any fun in life. That was why I was crying a little when you came in. I said to Monsieur Dambreuse, Achille, I love the things we do just as much as before. I dont mind knowing where you go in the afternoons. It doesnt make any difference. But of course it did to him, because he had no secret any more. His fun had been in the secret, and he left us both only so that somewhere he could find a new secret. Not love. Just a secret. The saddest thing he ever said to me was, Theres no other Saint James and Albany in all Paris. I said, Couldnt you take two rooms at the Ritz on different floors? He said, The lift man would know. It wouldnt be really secret.