RYDER'S murder furnished Antioch with a sensation the like of which
it had not known in many a day. It was one long, breathless shudder,
ramified with contingent horrors.
Dippy Ellsworth remembered that when he drove up in his cart on the
night of the tragedy to light the street lamp which stood on the corner
by the _Herald_ office his horse had balked and refused to go near the
curb. It was generally conceded that the sagacious brute smelled blood.
Dippy himself said he would not sell that horse for a thousand dollars,
and it was admitted on all sides that such an animal possessed a value
hard to reckon in mere dollars and cents.
Three men recalled that they had passed the _Herald_ office and noticed
that the door stood open. Within twenty-four hours they were hearing
groans, and within a week, cries for help, but they were not encouraged.
Of course the real hero was Bob Bennett, Ryder's assistant, who had
discovered the body when he went back to the office at half-past eight
to close the forms. His account of the finding of Ryder dead on the
floor was an exceedingly grizzly narrative, delightfully conducive of
the shivers. He had been the quietest of youths, but two weeks after the
murder he left for Chicago. He said there might be those who could stand
it, but Antioch was too slow for him.
Not less remarkable was Ryder's posthumous fame. Men who had never known
him in life now spoke of him with trembling voices and every outward
evidence of the sincerest sorrow. It was as if they had sustained a
personal loss, for his championship of the strike had given him a great
popularity, and his murder, growing out of this championship, as all
preferred to believe, made his death seem a species of martyrdom.
Indeed, the mere fact that he had been murdered would have been
sufficient to make him popular at any time. He had supplied Antioch
with a glorious sensation. It was something to talk over and discuss and
shudder at, and the town was grateful and happy, with the deep, calm joy
of a perfect emotion.
It determined to give him a funeral which should be creditable alike
to the cause for which he had died and to the manner of his death. So
widespread was the feeling that none should be denied a share in this
universal expression of respect and grief that Jeffy found it easy to
borrow five pairs of trousers, four coats, and a white vest to wear to
the funeral; but, in spite of these unusual preparations, he was unable
to be present.
Meanwhile Dan had been arrested, examined, and set at liberty again,
in the face of the prevailing sentiment that he should be held. No one
doubted--he himself least of all--that Roger Oakley had killed Ryder.
Bob Bennett recalled their meeting as he left the office to go home
for supper on the night of the murder, and a red-and-yellow bandanna
handkerchief was found under the table which Dan identified as having
belonged to his father.
Kenyon came to Antioch and made his re-election almost certain by the
offer of a reward of five hundred dollars for the arrest and conviction
of the murderer. This stimulated a wonderful measure of activity.
Parties of men and boys were soon scouring the woods and fields in quest
of the old convict.
The day preceding that of the funeral a dusty countryman, on a
hard-ridden plough-horse, dashed into town with the news that a man who
answered perfectly to the description of Roger Oakley had been seen
the night before twenty-six miles north of Antioch, at a place called
Barrow's Saw Mills, where he had stopped at a store and made a number of
purchases. Then he had struck off through the woods. It was also learned
that he had eaten his breakfast the morning after the murder at a
farmhouse midway between Antioch and Barrow's Saw Mills. The farmer's
wife had, at his request, put up a lunch for him. Later in the day a man
at work in a field had seen and spoken with him.
There was neither railroad, telegraph, nor telephone at Barrow's Saw
Mills, and the fugitive had evidently considered it safe to venture into
the place, trusting that he was ahead of the news of his crime. It was
on the edge of a sparsely settled district, and to the north of it was
the unbroken wilderness stretching away to the lakes and the Wisconsin
line.
The morning of the funeral an extra edition of the _Herald_ was issued,
which contained a glowing account of Ryder's life and achievements.
It was an open secret that it was from the gifted pen of Kenyon. This
notable enterprise was one of the wonders of the day. Everybody wanted
a _Herald_ as a souvenir of the occasion, and nearly five hundred copies
were sold.
All that morning the country people, in unheard-of numbers, flocked into
town. As Clarence remarked to Spide, it was just like a circus day. The
noon train from Buckhom Junction arrived crowded to the doors, as did
the one-o'clock train from Harrison. Antioch had never known anything
like it.
The funeral was at two o'clock from the little white frame Methodist
church, but long before the appointed hour it was crowded to the verge
of suffocation, and the anxious, waiting throng overflowed into the yard
and street, with never a hope of wedging into the building, much less
securing seats.
A delegation of the strikers, the Young Men's Kenyon Club, of which
Ryder was a member, and a representative body of citizens escorted the
remains to the church. These were the people he had jeered at, whose
simple joys he had ridiculed, and whose griefs he had made light of, but
they would gladly have forgiven him his sarcasms even had they known of
them. He had become a hero and a martyr.
Chris Berry and Cap Roberts were in charge of the arrangements. On the
night of the murder the former had beaten his rival to the _Herald_
office by exactly three minutes, and had never left Ryder until he lay
in the most costly casket in his shop.
It was admitted afterwards by thoughtful men, who were accustomed to
weigh their opinions carefully, that Mr. Williamson, the minister, had
never delivered so moving an address, nor one that contained so obvious
a moral. The drift of his remarks was that the death of their brilliant
and distinguished fellow-townsman should serve as a warning to all that
there was no time like the present in which to prepare for the life
everlasting. He assured his audience that each hour of existence should
be devoted to consecration and silent testimony; otherwise, what did
it avail? It was not enough that Ryder had thrown the weight of his
personal influence and exceptional talents on the side of sound morality
and civic usefulness. And as he soared on from point to point, his
hearers soared with him, and when he rounded in on each well-tried
climax, they rounded in with him. He never failed them once. They always
knew what he was going to say before it was said, and were ready for the
thrill when the thrill was due. It might have seemed that Mr. Williamson
was paid a salary merely to make an uncertain hereafter yet more
uncomfortable and uncertain, but Antioch took its religion hot, with a
shiver and a threat of blue flame.
When Mr. Williamson sat down Mr. Kenyon rose. As a layman he could be
entirely eulogistic. He was sure of the faith which through life had
been the guiding star of the departed. He had seen it instanced by
numerous acts of eminently Christian benevolence, and on those rare
occasions when he had spoken of his hopes and fears he had, in spite of
his shrinking modesty, shown that his standards of Christian duty were
both lofty and consistent.
Here the Hon. Jeb Barrows, who had been dozing peacefully, awoke with a
start, and gazed with wide, bulging eyes at the speaker. He followed Mr.
Kenyon, and, though he tried hard, he couldn't recall any expression of
Ryder's, at the Red Star bar or elsewhere, which indicated that there
was any spiritual uplift to his nature which he fed at secret altars;
so he pictured the friend and citizen, and the dead fared well at his
hands, perhaps better than he was conscious of, for he said no more than
he believed.
Then came the prayer and hymn, to be succeeded by a heavy, solemn pause,
and Mr. Williamson stepped to the front of the platform-.
“All those who care to view the remains--and I presume there are many
here who will wish to look upon the face of our dead friend before it
is conveyed to its final resting-place--will please form in line at
the rear of the edifice and advance quietly up the right aisle, passing
across the church as quickly as possible and thence down the left aisle
and on out through the door. This will prevent confusion and make it
much pleasanter for all.”
There was a rustle of skirts and the awkward shuffling of many feet as
the congregation formed in line; then it filed slowly up the aisle to
where Chris Berry stood, weazened and dry, with a vulture look on his
face and a vulture touch to his hands that now and again picked at the
flowers which were banked about the coffin.
The Emorys, partly out of regard for public sentiment, had attended the
funeral, for, as the doctor said, they were the only real friends Griff
had in the town. They had known and liked him when the rest of Antioch
was dubiously critical of the new-comer, whose ways were not its ways.
When the congregation thronged up the aisle, Constance, who had endured
the long service, which to her was unspeakably grotesque and horrible,
in shocked if silent rebellion slipped her hand into her mother's. “Take
me away,” she whispered, brokenly, “or I shall cry out! Take me away!”
Mrs. Emory hesitated. It seemed a desertion of a trust to go and
leave Griff to these strangers, who had been brought there by morbid
curiosity. Constance guessed what was passing in her mind.
“Papa will remain if it is necessary.”
Mrs. Emory touched the doctor on the shoulder. “We're going home, John;
Constance doesn't feel well; but you stay.”
When they reached the street the last vestige of Constance's
self-control vanished utterly. “Wasn't it awful!” she sobbed, “and his
life had only just begun! And to be snuffed out like this, when there
was everything to live for!”
Mrs. Emory, surprised at the sudden show of feeling, looked into her
daughter's face. Constance understood the look.
“No, no! He was only a friend! He could never have been more than that.
Poor, poor Griff!”
“I am glad for your sake, dearie,” said Mrs. Emory, gently.
“I wasn't very kind to him at the last, but I couldn't know--I couldn't
know,” she moaned.
She was not much given to these confidences, even with her mother.
Usually she never questioned the wisdom or righteousness of her own
acts, and it was not her habit to put them to the test of a less
generous judgment. But she was remembering her last meeting with Ryder.
It had been the day before his death; he had told her that he loved her,
and she had flared up, furious and resentful, with the dull, accusing
ache of many days in her heart, and a cruel readiness to make him
suffer. She had tried to convince herself afterwards that it was only
his vanity that was hurt.
Then she thought of Oakley. She had been thinking of him all day,
wondering where he was, if he had left Antioch, and not daring to ask.
They were going up the path now towards the house, and she turned to her
mother again.
“What do they say of Mr. Oakley--I mean Mr. Dan Oakley? I don't know
why, but I'm more sorry for him than I am for Griff; he has so much to
bear!”
“I heard your father say he was still here. I suppose he has to remain.
He can't choose.”
“What will be done with his father if he is captured? Will they--” She
could not bring herself to finish the sentence.
“Goodness knows! I wouldn't worry about him,” said Mrs. Emory, in a tone
of considerable asperity. “He's made all the trouble, and I haven't a
particle of patience with him!”