Frances was a prey to remorse that night. She took into consideration Lionel’s upbringing, Horace’s indulgence to him, his own generous and careless nature, and she felt that she had hurt him cruelly and unjustly. The thought of his flouted ring brought her almost to tears.
He was very proud, very sensitive in his own queer way. She was even a little afraid that he wouldn’t come back, or that, if he did, he would be changed.
It was a great relief to hear him through the telephone, in quite his usual voice, at his usual hour of five o’clock.
“What about a walk this evening?” he suggested. “I’ll be waiting at the door for you at eight.”
He was remarkably solemn and correct; he took Frankie’s arm without a word and set off toward Madison Avenue. It was a warm, misty evening in late September, enervating weather. Frankie was tired and nervous and filled with apprehension. Was he going to reproach her?
He pulled out of his pocket a little bundle of papers fastened by a rubber band, and gave it to her.
“My bank book,” he said, “and all the other stuff. You’d better take charge of it, old girl.... I’ll tell you just how I stand, and you can tell me what I’d better do.”
“Oh, Lionel!” she cried, “You dear old thing! And I was so afraid you’d be hurt or offended!”
“I think you’re right—all that you said,” he answered seriously. “I want to make a new start—begin over again. Only it’s rather hopeless. I’ve a hundred and five pounds a year income from my mother, and that’s all. No prospects. Not a relative who could leave me a sou. And eighty dollars in the bank. Rather dismal, isn’t it?”
“Not a bit! Fancy having an income, and calling the outlook dismal! And you’re young, you’ve got everything before you. You’re sure to find a good job before very long”
“Yes, but my dear girl, that eighty dollars is all I’ve got to live on for three months and a half, until my next remittance comes. Unless I stop on in Horace’s office”
“No, no! You mustn’t stay there! Please, please break off all that, won’t you?”
“Whatever you say, old girl. But where am I to live if I leave Horace’s?”
“I’ll find you a place,” she said, rashly.
“I’ll have to explain to him, though.... What shall I say?”
He really did not understand quite what was expected of him, or what he was doing. It was somehow a fine thing to renounce his comfort and security, and declare himself independent, and as long as Frances wished it, he was willing to do it. But it was a bit—theatrical. After all these years to refuse old Horace’s money.
“I’ll pop in and take lunch with him to-morrow,” he said.
“And tell him that you’re going to stand on your own feet,” urged Frances. “He’ll understand. And think all the more of you. Tell him—be sure—that you appreciate all he’s done for you, but that now you’re going to take care of yourself.”
He agreed.
“I’ll come and tell you about it as soon as it’s over,” he said. “You can expect me about three.”
She didn’t know with what a heavy heart he went upon this errand, or how well it proved his love and admiration for her. She didn’t know, or suspect, what he felt for Horace, and how he dreaded hurting him. Otherwise, she might have understood that he would necessarily be stupid and clumsy and muddle the whole thing, as he did....
Miss Eppendorfer was lying down in her bedroom, not to be disturbed. Kurt was not coming that evening, and the poor woman had seized the chance of gratifying her long-starved vice. So that Frances was as good as alone. She waited half an hour for Lionel without thinking much about it; they wouldn’t be able to talk anyway. She couldn’t go out and leave the authoress in her present condition, and she never entertained Lionel in the flat. They both considered it incorrect. Still, he could tell her what Horace had said. She was anxious about that interview. She was afraid that Horace might have begged him to go on living with him; that he might have weakened Lionel’s very new independence.
An hour passed, and she grew a little restless. It wasn’t like Lionel to keep her waiting. Why didn’t he telephone? She picked up a book and began to read. Another hour. She made herself a cup of tea and tried to be angry, with all the time a dull alarm in her heart. Six o’clock! Her anxiety grew unbearable, in that silent flat, worse than alone. She was not much given to tears, but she shed some now. It grew dark; she lighted a lamp and pulled down the shades and flung herself on the sofa.
She thought the same things any woman would have thought; that he had met with an accident, been run over, that he was injured, dying, perhaps dead. Then that he had deserted her, because he no longer loved her. Then that there was some mistake, that he had meant Sunday....
At last there was a ring at the bell, and she flew to open the door. Lionel stood outside.
“Lionel!” she cried. “I’ve been so worried! What has been the matter?”
He said nothing, made no move to enter.
“Come in,” she said impatiently, “and tell me what’s kept you.”
Her alarm increased every minute; there was something queer about him....
She took his arm and pulled him gently into the sitting room; then when she was able to look at him in the lamp-light, she knew. She had seen that silly smile, that flush before, had heard that thick and faltering voice.
Her heart seemed to stop beating; her blazing eyes were fixed on his face.
“You’re drunk,” she said, with what contempt, disgust, and bitterness! “You’d better go.”
But he sat down on the sofa and began to cry forlornly, like a child.
“Stop!” she said. “Stop! Miss Eppendorfer’ll hear you.”
“I can’t!” he sobbed.
She closed the door into the hall, and went back to the sofa to find him incredibly and suddenly asleep. She couldn’t at first believe in a slumber so very sudden. She shook him.
“Get up and go away!” she said, but it had no effect. There he lay, breathing heavily through his mouth, flushed, oddly serious in his expression, like a weary victor in some mighty struggle.
Frances gave way to a sort of frenzy.
“I can’t have two of you!” she cried.
Recklessly she opened the door of Miss Eppendorfer’s room, found her also sound asleep, not to be wakened. She revolted utterly then, locked herself into her own little room, careless of what might happen to those others.
For the first time in her life she remained awake all night. Early in the morning, before it was quite light, she slipped into the kitchen to make tea, and then went again to wake Lionel. This time it was not so hard. She gave him a cup of tea, stood in stony silence while he gulped it down, handed him his hat and overcoat, and firmly pushed him, dazed and passive, out of the door.
Miss Eppendorfer remained in bed until noon; she was “better” she said, but exhausted and listless. Frances was inordinately busy. She typed page after page of the authoress’s manuscript, and when there was absolutely no more to copy, set to work cleaning the table silver. She did not wish to think. It was the end of the world. Nothing ahead, nothing she could endure to contemplate.
She hated Miss Eppendorfer because Lionel had been drunk. It was an illogical and unjust feeling, but she couldn’t repress it. She kept away from her as much as possible. She was very thankful to see her go out, arm in arm, with her cousin Kurt, to a concert for which she had bought tickets for a fabulous price. She thought she would go out herself, perhaps to church; she had begun to get ready, in fact, when Lionel arrived. Lionel exactly the same, nonchalant, superior, not a trace even of fatigue
“The hall-boy told me Miss E. and the German chap had gone out, so I thought I’d come up,” he said.
Frances was frigidly silent.
“I owe you an explanation,” he went on, “only—I haven’t any. I ... had an awful row with Horace, and it knocked me up, and I ... tried to—more or less—forget it.”
“No doubt you succeeded.”
She spoke with cold precision, like a school teacher to a prejudged culprit; and he, acknowledging her claims as he always did, forced himself to explain. It was wretched for him, an almost intolerable humiliation to be called to account in this way; he was ashamed of himself, and he longed passionately to drop the subject forever. But Frances was the woman who had promised to marry him, and he felt he owed it to her.
“You see, he was offended.... He thought—wanted me to be more—gradual. Stop on in his office, at least. And in the end, we quarrelled. I told him I wouldn’t take anything more from him—all that you advised, and so forth. And he—but what’s the use in repeating all that? It’s the first row we’ve ever had.”
He could not tell her how he regretted old Horace, with what affection and pain he remembered his benefits; couldn’t explain how much this “row” had hurt him. He had been horribly tactless and had wounded and infuriated Horace, without making it clear to him—or to himself—what it was about.
If he expected sympathy he was disappointed. If he had only apologised, said he was ashamed and sorry, she would have melted completely; it was this insistence upon the misfortune of having quarrelled with Horace, this cool passing over of his own beastliness, that she couldn’t stand. She didn’t even ask him to sit down, but remained standing herself, looking straight at him.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said, “that I came here like that. Awfully sorry. It wasn’t fair to you. But I didn’t realize what I was doing.”
Frances laughed shortly.
“Don’t bother to apologise. Why should I object to being alone all night with two drunken beasts”
“I say!” he protested.
“It’s evident,” she went on, “that you don’t know at all how I look at that. How I loathe it. I’d rather not talk about it at all. I’d rather you’d go.”
“You don’t mean that, Frankie, old girl!”
“I do!”
He searched her face.
“Frankie, you don’t mean ... I see you do, though. Very well, I’ll go.... But, Frankie!... Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” said Frankie.
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.
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.”
Inspiration came from a wholly unexpected source. Frankie was sitting in her room in the dark one evening, after a walk with Lionel, exhausted from her effort to encourage him in a mood of black despair. She had drawn her chair up to the window and sat looking out over the roof of the next house at the cloudy sky. There was the usual noise from the court, the shrill children who never went to bed, the phonographs, a woman singing in a piercing, artificial voice. She was used to it now, scarcely heard it, but it filled her ears, and she was unaware of Miss Eppendorfer’s entrance until she touched her on the shoulder.
“I knocked and knocked!” said she. “I wanted to ask you to make me a cup of coffee; I’m so nervous.”
Frankie said ‘Of course’ but her voice was weary, and Miss Eppendorfer noticed it.
“What’s the trouble, my dear?” she asked, kindly. “Let’s sit here and talk a while.”
She sat down on the bed where she could reach out and lay a friendly hand on Frankie’s arm.
“I’ve noticed—it’s not curiosity.... It’s only that I’m very fond of you—you can’t imagine how fond of you, my dear.... I don’t expect you to return it. I know I’m not lovable. And probably you despise me for—lots of things. But, my dear! My dear! I do wish you so well! I’d do anything! If you’d like to tell me, perhaps I could help.... I’ve had experience enough. I could understand.”
Frances was silent. She couldn’t bring herself to confide in Miss Eppendorfer.
“I think I know,” the other went on. “It’s money, isn’t it? You want to marry, but you’re afraid.”
“Not afraid,” said Frances, nettled. “It’s only that I don’t want to be stupid—rash I don’t think it’s right to marry on nothing. I’d rather wait ten years.”
“You’re making a mistake,” said the authoress. “But tell me about it.”
Frances hesitated a moment.
“You see,” she began. “I’m afraid that perhaps I made a mistake—advised him wrongly. You see, he was depending entirely on his brother—living with him. He’d never really thought how—that it wasn’t quite—very self-respecting. And I asked him to stop, to try to stand on his own feet. And I’m not sure if he’s able to do that. He has nothing now, except a little more than a hundred pounds a year or so.”
“Except!” said Miss Eppendorfer.
“Oh, of course, it helps. But the trouble is, he’s perfectly inexperienced. He can’t seem to find a job. We’ve—he has answered advertisements and registered at agencies, and nothing’s any good. I’m so afraid of his getting completely discouraged and going back to his brother again. It’s so wretched for him. There’s no chance of our being married for years”
“Why?”
“We couldn’t both live on a hundred pounds a year—about five hundred dollars!”
“Why should you try? You’re earning something, and under no expense. Why don’t you get married anyway, and go on as you are?”
Frankie was amazed.
“I never thought of such a thing. It ... we couldn’t have any home....”
“Does that matter? You’d have each other. Oh, if I were you, if I were you ...! I shouldn’t think of anything but—just having each other, just your love. I’d never think of a home or money. Only of the man I loved.”
Her voice broke, and her hand on Frankie’s arm trembled.
“My dear, I’m speaking against my own interests, for of course I don’t want to lose you.... But you don’t understand, you don’t appreciate love. It isn’t a home that you want. My dear! My dear! And would you let him wait and eat out his heart, for years, for your vanity, until he could give you all the silly little things you think you want? You don’t know men, you don’t know life; you don’t know how very short a time we have for love. You don’t know him. You don’t know anything. If you did, you wouldn’t let this go! You’d be happy while you could, you’d make him happy.”
Frances didn’t stir; there was absolute silence for a long time. Then she got up.
“I’ll make the coffee now,” she said, and, in spite of herself, couldn’t keep a trace of gentleness out of her tone, something that approached tenderness. She hated sentimentality, but—no use denying that she was deeply moved by the poor woman’s vehemence, by the thought she had conveyed. Of course, the advice of Miss Eppendorfer was not to be taken too seriously, and yet, couldn’t she be right on some points? She attended to the coffee with earnestness, thinking all the while. What if she had been cold and selfish, and made her own dear boy unhappy? A coward?... And a faint realisation of the truth not fully seen or known till much later came upon her, of the pitiful folly of waiting, of patience and of prudence in this poor life so short and so hazardous.
“I will! I will!” she said to herself. “He shan’t struggle on alone. I won’t lose my happiness—our happiness. I’m not afraid!”