The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl Read Free Page A

that there are artists and thinkers, people more serious than my old business man, who, when young, endure with pleasure the chatter of a pretty mouth. But clearly old men are in certain respects more serious than the most serious young men.
    The nice old man went to bed still a little troubled. When he was in bed he said: “We must think no more about her. Perhaps I shall never see her again.”So doubtful was he of his own love that he had arranged with her that he would send her a note of invitation for their next meeting.
    Before going to sleep he was tortured with thirst. He had drunk too much and eaten things too highly spiced. He called his housekeeper, who brought him a glass of water and a reproachful glance. She was no longer very young, and it had always been her ambition to end up as mistress of the house. Then she had thought that the restraint of the old man arose from class feeling and had accepted the fact because one is born in one class or another without any fault of one’s own. Now she had been able to see the girl for a moment when she left. This taught her that class feeling did not prevent the old man from doing anything. That was as good as a genuine slap in the face for her. Obviously the qualities that make a person more or less desirable do not depend on their merits or demerits. But she held that she possessed those qualities, and therefore it was the old man’s fault if he did not recognise them.

IV
    The note with which the old man invited the girl to another meeting was written a few days later, much sooner than he had imagined when he went to bed that night. He wrote to her with a smile on his face, satisfied with himself. He flattered himself that the second meeting would be even more fruitful in pleasure. Instead it was exactly like the first. When he dismissed the girl he was as cautious as before and arranged once more that she should come to him next when he sent for her. He invited her to the third meeting even more quickly, but the parting was the same. He never brought himself to arrange the next meeting at once. For the old man was always happy, both when he sent for the girl and when he dismissed her, that is, when he meant to return to the path ofvirtue. If, when he dismissed the girl, he had arranged the next meeting at once, this return to virtue would have been less genuine. In this way there was no idea of compromise, and his life remained orderly and virtuous with the exception of a very brief interval.
    There would be little more for us to say about the interviews, if, after a time, the old man had not been seized with an insane jealousy—insane not for its violence, but for its strangeness. This is how it was. It did not appear when he wrote to the girl, because that was the moment when he was taking her away from the others; nor when he said good-bye to her, because that was the moment when he gave her over, willing and whole, to the others. In his case jealousy was inseparable from love, in space and time. Love was revived by it, and the adventure became more “real” than ever. A bliss and a pain indescribable. At a certain moment he became obsessed with the idea that the girl certainly had other lovers, all as young as he was old. He grieved over it for his own sake (oh, so much!), but also for hers, since she could thus throw away all hope of a decent life. It would be disastrous if she trusted others as she had trusted him. His own sin played its part in his jealousy. That is why, in order to make up for his own bad example, the old man habitually preached morality at the very moment when he was making love. He explained to her all the dangers of promiscuous love.
    The girl protested that she had but one love, for himself. “Well,” cried the old man, ennobled at one and the same time by love and morality, “if, in your desire to return to virtue, you had to decide not to see me again, I should be delighted.” Here the girl made no answer, and for good reasons.