“No.” Then he added, a trifle wearily, “It's taken me all this time to realize my position. I suppose I owe you some sort of an apology. You must have thought me fearfully thick-skinned.” He hoped she would say no, but he was disappointed. Her conscience had been troubling her, and she was perfectly willing to share her remorse with him, since he was so ready to assume a part of it. She was as conventional as extreme respectability could make her, but she had never liked Oakley half so well. She admired his courage. He didn't whine. His very stupidity was in its way admirable, but it was certainly too bad he could not see just how impossible he was under the circumstances.
Dan raised his eyes to hers. “Miss Emory, the only time I remember to have seen my father until he came here a few weeks ago was through the grating of his cell door. My mother took me there as a little boy. When she died I came West, where no one knew me. I had already learned that, because of him, I was somehow judged and condemned, too. It has always been hanging over me. I have always feared exposure. I suppose I can hush it up after a while, but there will always be some one to tell it to whoever will listen. It is no longer a secret.”
“Was it fair to your friends, Mr. Oakley, that it was a secret?”
“I can't see what business it was of theirs. It's nothing I have done, and, anyhow, I have never had any friends until now I cared especially about.”
“Oh!” and Miss Emory lowered her eyes. So long as he was merely determined and stupid he was safe, but should he become sentimental it might be embarrassing for them both.
“You have seen my father. Do you think from what you can judge from appearances that he would kill a man in cold blood? It was only after years of insult that it came to that, and then the other man was the aggressor. What my father did he did in self-defence, but I am pretty sure you were not told this.”
He was swayed by a sense of duty towards his father, and a desire to vindicate him—he was so passive and enduring. The intimacy of their relation had begotten warmth and sympathy. They had been drawn nearer and nearer each other. The clannishness of his blood and race asserted itself. It was a point of honor with him to stand up for his friends, and to stand up for his father most of all. Could he, he would have ground his heel into Ryder's face for his part in circulating the garbled version of the old convict's history. Some one should suffer as he had been made to suffer.
“Of course, Mr. Ryder did not know what you have told me,” Constance said, hastily. She could not have told why, but she had the uneasy feeling that Griff required a champion, that he was responsible. “Then you did hear it from Mr. Ryder?”
She did not answer, and Oakley, taking her silence for assent, continued: “I don't suppose it was told you either that he was pardoned because of an act of conspicuous heroism, that, at the risk of his own life, he saved the lives of several nurses and patients in the hospital ward of the prison where he was confined.” He looked inquiringly at Constance, but she was still silent. “Miss Emory, my father came to me to all intents an absolute stranger. Why, I even feared him, for I didn't know the kind of man he was, but I have come to have a great affection and regard for him. I respect him, too, most thoroughly. There is not an hour of the day when the remembrance of his crime is not with him. Don't you think it cowardly that it should have been ventilated simply to hurt me, when it must inevitably hurt him so much more? He has quit work in the shops, and he is determined to leave Antioch. I may find him gone when I return to the hotel.”
“And you blame Mr. Ryder for this?”