Burt strode around the corner and threw the door back wide.
"Bruce! Bruce! You mustn't feel so bad!" Excitement made his voice sound harsh, but there was no mistaking the sympathy intended or the yearning in his face.
Bruce jumped, startled, to his feet and stared, his vision dimmed by the smarting tears. Was it a ghost--was he, too, getting "queer?"
"Haven't you anything to say to me, Bruce?"
There was an odd timidity in his father's voice but it was real enough--it was no hallucination. Simultaneous with the relief the thought flashed through Bruce's mind that his father had seen him through the window in his moment of weakness and despair. His features stiffened and with a quick, shamed movement he brushed his eyes with the back of his hand while his eyes flashed pride and resentment.
"I said all I had to say fifteen years ago when you refused me the chance to make something of myself. If I'd had an education nobody could have made a fool of me like this." His voice vibrated with mingled bitterness and mortification.
"I suppose you've heard all about it and come to say--'I told you so.'"
"I've come to see you through."
"You're too late; I'm down and out." In Bruce's voice Burt recognized his own harsh tones. "You've got nothing that I want now; you might as well go back." His black eyes were relentless--hard.
"Won't you shake hands with me, Bruce?" There was pleading in his voice as he took a step toward his son. Bruce did not stir, and Burt added with an effort: "It ain't so easy as you might think for me to beg like this."
"I begged, too, but it didn't do any good."
"I've come twenty miles--on foot--to tell you that I'm sorry. I'm not young any more, Bruce. I'm an old man--and you're all I've got in the world."
An old man! The words startled Bruce--shocked him. He never had thought of his father as old, or lonely, but always as tireless, self-centred, self-sufficient, absorbed heart and soul in getting rich. He seemed suddenly to see the bent shoulders, the graying hair and eyebrows, the furrows and deep, drooping lines about the mouth that had not been engraved by happiness. There was something forlorn, pathetic about him as he stood there with his hand out asking for forgiveness. And he had plodded through the snow--twenty miles--on foot to see him!
The blood that is thicker than water stirred, and the tugging at his heart strings grew too hard to withstand. He unfolded his arms and stretched out a hand impulsively--"Father!" Then both--"Dad!" he cried.