Frankie resolved to forget Lionel. She tried her best.
“I made a mistake,” she said to herself. “Very well! It’s over and done
with now. I’m not going to be a sentimental idiot. It’s _over_!”
It wasn’t, though. Her loneliness was bitter, her wound profound; she
had nothing to sustain her but her own self-righteousness--cold comfort
in that. It was all very well to tell herself Lionel was no good;
whether he was or not, she wanted him back. Worst of all was her worry
about him. She was convinced that without her he was lost, was
helpless--what all women think about their men. She had the loftiest
views about women anyway, and their influence. They were ordained the
spiritual monitors of men, as well as the natural guardians of their
healths and pocketbooks. Woman was the practical one, the conserver, the
frequenter of savings banks; she was also the beauty and the charm of
life. What remained was Man.
Frances had planned a future for them with care; and little by little
she fancied she was improving the man himself, making him more
responsible, more sedate, more what a woman demands of a husband. She
was too intelligent to understand him. She couldn’t manage him and
comprehend him as an ignorant, emotional woman would have done. With
every new idea, every book read, she had retreated from the position
that was her birthright.
She thought over Lionel with a passionate desire to do right; tried to
obtain guidance from her brain while her heart was dumb. She wondered
whether it did him more good to see how seriously she regarded his
offence, or whether it would have helped him more to forgive him. Never
considered it simply as a matter of cruelty or kindness. She was so
concerned with thinking of what was morally best for Lionel that she
neglected her own soul’s good.
And without doubt her soul suffered. She was becoming irritable,
intolerant, over-haughty, wrapped up in her own affairs. She needed
Lionel badly, needed his carelessness, his sweet temper. In spite of
that, she thought she was “getting over” it splendidly; being sensible,
and so on. She was able to eat and to sleep and to live as usual; even
looked the same. And then, suddenly, one night, woke up with a piercing
pain, a most irresistible tenderness and longing for him.
“How could I have been so heartless!” she asked herself, sitting up in
bed, and clasping her hands hysterically. “What did it matter, what he
did? What do I care about that? Lionel! Darling! I want you back so!”
She got up then and there and wrote to him, addressing it in care of
Horace.
V
He came the next evening. Quite in accordance with his extreme character
he had in ten days’ time become unnecessarily wretched and shabby in
looks and manners. He was even thinner.
He had looked and looked for a job, he said, but no one would have an
inexperienced man of his age. He was in despair. So that Frances could
not for an instant maintain her injured majesty, but had to comfort and
fortify him, even to cry over him a little.
“Don’t be discouraged!” she entreated, stroking his hair. “Poor old
boy!”
“But I haven’t a penny! I used that money in the bank. I’ve moved into a
cheap boarding-house. But still I can’t manage. And my remittance
doesn’t come until January.”
Followed an extraordinary period for the lovers. Lionel pawned his
watch, his travelling-bag, his cuff-buttons, one thing after another. He
would get down to his last dollar and come to Frankie, white with
despair, and she would think of something else to do. He would come back
from each of these visits to the pawn-shop jubilant and pleading for a
“celebration,” but Frankie never permitted it. He put everything into
her hands without reserve, and received back what she allowed him,
unquestioningly. They frequented cinemas instead of theatres; he found a
cheaper brand of cigarettes. He did it all, too, with such generosity
and simplicity that Frankie was utterly enslaved. He was her child, her
ewe lamb, she watched over him, planned for him, guided him, with
passionate devotion.
He alternated between ghastly worry that made him talk about suicide,
and the wildest hopefulness. It was Frances who bore the brunt of the
misery. She fretted continually, couldn’t sleep at night. She thought
and schemed and planned for means of sustaining this beloved creature,
above all trying to secure him proper food three times a day without his
suspecting that some of its cost came from her own pocket. Luckily he
almost always forgot how much he had given her to keep for him, and how
much he had spent out of it. He didn’t imagine the suffering he caused
her. On the contrary, he believed that his fits of extravagant gaiety,
in reality quite beyond his control, were contrived especially to cheer
up Frances.
He was sometimes ready to admit to himself that Frankie’s disposition
was not quite what he had once thought it. She was absolutely cross.
Time after time she refused to go out with him, even to the “movies”;
she said they couldn’t afford it.
“But you don’t realise,” he protested, “how much I need a bit of
recreation.”
“I realise how much you’re going to need a bit of money,” she replied
grimly. “You can’t be childish. You’ll have to do without _everything_
but necessities for a while.”