VI
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.
Dear Will:
You need not have doubted that I should wait for you. You told me you would come back, and I believed you, of course. To me, loyalty is the most beautiful thing in the world.
I have been able to save a little money in the past year, by giving music lessons, and I have rented a dear little cottage here and filled it with what was left of mother’s furniture. I am really doing very well, so that even if the florist shop isn’t enormously profitable at the start, we shall be able to manage nicely.
So far the letter was delightful and comforting; but it went on:
But, Will, you know how thirsty a small town is for gossip, and it has really been more unpleasant than I care to tell you. We had better be married quietly as soon as you come. I’ll arrange everything, if you will let me know when to expect you.
This terrified him. Of course, he loved Mildred, and admired her.
“But I’m not worthy of her!” he cried. “I never can be!” And he might truthfully have added: “I never want to be!”
Impossible to say what his conscience would have driven him to, if the landlady had not come up just then and spoken very disagreeably about his rent; so he saw that it was right for him to be a florist. He sent a telegram to announce his arrival three days later.