Will Mallet had an unhappy, furtive conscience trapped inside him. The
words of other people, even things that he read, would stir up the poor
creature and send it rushing about in its cage, terribly alarmed. It
made Will so uncomfortable that he would do anything to quiet it.
Sometimes he fed it with lies, sometimes he reasoned with it, and
sometimes he plunged into rash action.
He had told his conscience that it was for Mildred’s sake alone that he
left her. When he had “got on his feet,” he would come back and claim
her, and she would praise his nobility and self-sacrifice. In the
meantime he wouldn’t be obliged to work so very hard and be so very
earnest--two things which disagreed with him.
Unfortunately, however, he could not “get on his feet.” On the contrary,
it might be said that he fell down pretty heavily. Of course, he was
proud of the fact that his poems were not “popular,” but he would not
have objected to their being a little more profitable. Bitterly he said
that a man must live, and he got a job as proof reader in a publishing
house. No use! When certain phrases of an author distressed him, he
would make changes. When he had been forbidden to do that, he wanted to
point out such passages and argue about them.
After this, a cousin got him an amorphous job in an office, but the
light hurt his eyes. Then, on the strength of his good appearance and
his learning, he secured a position as rewrite man on a newspaper. Well,
newspaper offices are easy to get into and still easier to get out of.
Again a cousin helped him, and again he failed. It was summer now, and
he began to think with longing of the country.
“The only thing left,” he reflected, “is to go back and try that florist
business seriously. I’ll write to Mildred first, of course. She’ll
understand. She’s very loyal. Moreover, she’s not the sort of girl most
men take to. She’s--well, she’s too fine. She’ll help me to get the
thing started, and then we’ll be married.”
So he had written, and very promptly he received an answer. He sat on
the edge of the bed in his furnished room and read it again, while his
conscience flew wildly about inside him.