The Road to Understanding

by Eleanor H. Porter

"You will find Brett in his office. You have come to work, I dare say," he observed, as he turned to the letters on his desk.

"Er—yes," stammered the young man. The next moment he found himself alone, white and shaken, the other side of his father's door.

To work? Oh, yes, he had come to work; but he had come first to talk. There were a whole lot of things he had meant to say to his father. First, of course, there would have had to be something in the nature of an apology or the like to patch up the quarrel. Then he would tell him how he was really going to make good—he and Helen. After that they could get down to one of their old-time chats. They always had been chums—he and dad; and they hadn't had a talk for four weeks. Why, for three weeks he had been saving up a story, a dandy story that dad would appreciate! And there were other things, serious things, that—

And here already he had seen his father, and it was over. And he had not said a word—nothing of what he had meant to say. He believed he would go back—

With an angry gesture Burke Denby turned and extended his hand halfway toward the closed door. Then, with an impatient shrug, he whirled about and strode toward the door marked "J. A. Brett, General Manager."

If young Denby had obeyed his first impulse and reëntered his father's office he would have found the man with his head bowed on the desk, his arms outflung.

John Denby, too, was white and shaken. He, too, had been dreading this meeting, and longing for it—that it might be over. There was now, however, on his part, no feeling of chagrin and impotence because of things that had not been said. There was only a shuddering relief that things had not been said; that he had been able to carry it straight through as he had planned; that he had not shown his boy how much he—cared. He was glad that his pride had been equal to the strain; that he had not weakly succumbed at the first glimpse of his son's face, the first touch of his son's hand, as he had so feared that he would do.

And he had not succumbed—though he had almost gone down before the quick terror and affectionate dismay that had leaped into his son's voice and eyes at sight of his own changed appearance. (Why could not he keep those abominable portions of his anatomy from being so wretchedly telltale?) But he had remembered in time. Did the boy think, then, that a mere word of sympathy now could balance the scale against so base a disregard of everything loyal and filial a month ago? Then he would show that it could not.

And he had shown it.

What if he did know now, even better than he had known it all these last miserable four weeks, that his whole world had lain in his boy's hand, that his whole life had been bounded by his boy's smile, his whole soul immersed in his boy's future? What if he did know that all the power and wealth and fame of name that he had won were as the dust in his fingers—if he might not pass them on to his son? He was not going to let Burke know this. Indeed, no!