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.”