And after he had reached middle age, and after his first wife had died, he had married again. He had a little property then and, in a foolish moment, went and made it all over to his second wife, who was fifteen years younger than himself. She took the money and bought a large house in the factory district of Erie, and then began taking in boarders.
There was the old man, feeling lost, of no account in his own house. It just came about. One had to think of the boarders—their wants had to be satisfied. His wife had two sons, almost fully grown now, both of whom worked in a factory.
Well, it was all right—everything on the square—the sons paid board all right. Their wants had to be thought of, too. He liked blowing his cornet a while in the evenings, before he went to bed, but it might disturb the others in the house. One got rather desperate going about saying nothing, keeping out of the way and he had tried getting work in a factory himself, but they wouldn’t have him. His grey hairs stood in his way, and so one night he had just got out, had gone to Cleveland, where he had hoped to get a job in a band, in a movie theatre perhaps. Anyway it hadn’t turned out and now he was going back to Erie and to his wife. He had written and she had told him to come on home.
“They didn’t turn me down back there in Cleveland because I’m old. It’s because my lip is no good any more,” he explained. His shrunken old lip trembled a little.
Will kept thinking of the old woman’s dog. In spite of himself, and when the old man’s lip trembled, his lip also trembled.
What was the matter with him?
He stood in the hallway of a house hearing two voices. Was he trying to close his ears to one of them? Did the second voice, the one he had been trying all day, and all the night before, not to hear, did that have something to do with the end of his life in the Appleton house at Bidwell? Was the voice trying to taunt him, trying to tell him that now he was a thing swinging in air, that there was no place to put down his feet? Was he afraid? Of what was he afraid? He had wanted so much to be a man, to stand on his own feet and now what was the matter with him? Was he afraid of manhood?
He was fighting desperately now. There were tears in the old man’s eyes, and Will also began crying silently and that was the one thing he felt he must not do.
The old man talked on and on, telling the tale of his troubles, but Will could not hear his words. The struggle within was becoming more and more definite. His mind clung to the life of his boyhood, to the life in the Appleton house in Bidwell.
There was Fred, standing in the field of his fancy now, with just the triumphant look in his eyes that came when other boys saw him doing a man’s work. A whole series of pictures floated up before Will’s mind. He and his father and Fred were painting a barn and two farmer boys had come along a road and stood looking at Fred, who was on a ladder, putting on paint. They shouted, but Fred wouldn’t answer. There was a certain air Fred had—he slapped on the paint, and then turning his head, spat on the ground. Tom Appleton’s eyes looked into Will’s and there was a smile playing about the corners of the father’s eyes and the son’s eyes too. The father and his oldest son were like two men, two workmen, having a delicious little secret between them. They were both looking lovingly at Fred. “Bless him! He thinks he’s a man already.”