The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl Read Online Free

the night had not been so long. It seemed to him that first the threatening darkness left him and then the pain. Death had vanished, and the next day he would welcome the sun again. Then the pain shifted, and there was instant relief. It was driven higher up towards the throat, where it disappeared. He covered himself up with the blankets. His teeth chattered with cold, and a convulsive shivering prevented him from resting. But the return to life was complete. He did not call out again, and he was glad that his cry had not been heard. His housekeeper, nasty creature, would have thought that his illness was due to the visit of the girl on the previous evening. This is how he came to remember her, and suddenly he thought: “No more love-making for me!”

VI
    The doctor, who was called in in the morning, examined him, and thought the matter over, but did not at first attach much importance to the attack. The old man described the adventure of the previous evening, including the food and the champagne, and the doctor thought that the trouble was due to these excesses. He said he was sure the trouble would not return, provided the old man lived quietly, taking regularly every two hours a certain powder, and refrained from seeing the object of his passion or even from thinking of her.
    The doctor, who was a contemporary and an old friend, treated him without any ceremony: “My dear fellow, you must not go to your lover until I allow you.”
    The old man, however, who attached more importance to his health than the doctor, thought: “Even if you gave me permission, I would not go to her. I was so much better before I knew her.”
    As soon as he was alone, he began to think of the girl, with the idea of freeing himself from her altogether. But he remembered that the girl loved him, and he therefore thought her capable of coming to see him after a time, even without being invited. The strength of love is well known. Then what sort of a figure would he cut, he who had determined not to see her even with the doctor’s permission? He wrote to her that he should have to leave town unexpectedly for a long time. He would let her know when he returned. He enclosed a sum of money which was meant to settle accounts with his own conscience. The letter also ended with a kiss, written after a moment’s hesitation. No. The kiss had not set his pulse beating.
    The next day he felt reassured by a quiet, though almost sleepless night. The terrible pain had not returned, whereas, in spite of the doctor’s assurances, he had dreaded being attacked by it every night in the dark. Next time he went to bed more calmly and recovered confidence, but not sleep. The rumbling of the guns reached him and the nice old man asked: “Why have they not managed to discover a way of killing each other without making so much noiseabout it?” It was not very long since the day when the sound of the fighting had awakened generous impulses in him. But illness had taken from him the remnants of a feeling for his fellows which old age had failed to destroy in him.
    During the next few days the doctor added some drops in the intervals between the powders. Then, to insure his sleeping at night, he came in the evening to give him injections. There was also special medicine for the appetite which he had to take at stated hours. There was plenty to do in the old man’s day. And the housekeeper, unnoticed in happier days, became very important. The old man, who could be grateful, might perhaps have grown fond of her, for sometimes she had even to get up in the night to give him his medicines. But she had a bad fault. She did not forgive him his transgressions and made frequent references to them. The first time she had to give him a small dose of champagne by way of medicine, she accompanied it with the remark: “It is some of that which was bought for a very different purpose.”
    For a time the old man protested, trying to make her think that between him and the girl