MR. BOMBS TELLS ALL HE KNOWS ABOUT LAURENS CORNWALLIS’ MYSTERIOUS DEATH.

Bombs began to explain and Adelaide listened with silent attention until he came to the point where he sent the four boys to the river bank to make Laurens divide the fireworks with them.

“How could you think of doing such a thing?” she asked.

“I didn’t stop to think, Miss Adelaide. I knew they were little rascals; but I had a feeling that Laurens was too goody-goody, and that somehow or other the two extremes would be equalized by setting them onto each other.”

“How dreadful! Mr. Bombs! And so you set your four little devils on to one little angel, to overpower him? You must have known they would destroy him!”

“No! No! Miss Adelaide. I did not know that. I had the unwisdom and rashness of youth. I was only fifteen years old. I had a perfect passion for pyro-spectacles. I had been brought up on them you know; and I had faith in my inventions. They were intended to amuse, scare and mystify. I had been taught early and late that danger gives zest to enjoyment. Besides I had never known of anybody of consequence within my circle of acquaintance, being killed by fireworks; and I was of the opinion that they never would injure anybody except idiots, who deserved to be injured.”

“But you knew that Laurens Cornwallis was not an idiot, and that the boys were reckless and the fireworks dangerous.”

“Yes, but Laurens had charge of them and he could have held up a score of boys if he had known how to handle them.”

“But you knew he did not know and the other boys did.”

“Yes, but I thought he ought to have known.”

He saw the rising of an indignant flush in Adelaide’s face and added quickly, “besides I intended to go back and see that no harm was done, Miss Adelaide.”

“Why did you not go?” inquired Adelaide shortly.

“Your father claimed my services. First to help store away the surplus stock I had brought with me. That done, we gave chase to some boys that were making up the river with his boat. We headed them off. They got into a panic, lost one oar and broke another, then went down over the falls and were drowned. You heard about it did you not?”

“Yes, but not much.”

“Well, there wasn’t much said about it. They were of no account anyway. They were a squad of tough boys that came up from the prolific French settlement, to work their little game and see how much they could get out of ‘old Schwarmer,’ as they called him. Of course the parents wouldn’t say anything on account of the stealing of the boat, and probably they had about fifteen other children and were glad to be rid of them. I shouldn’t have remembered it had it not been for one little circumstance.”

“What was that?” asked Adelaide breathlessly.

“They were the boys I sent to Laurens Cornwallis for a division of fireworks.”

“And they killed him with the terrible things and were trying to make their escape,” exclaimed Adelaide in dismay.

“That’s the mystery, Miss Adelaide. They quarrelled with him, without a doubt. The killing was most likely accidental. They had a hand in the accident, probably, were frightened, ran to the river and took the boat to make good their escape. Only God knows!”

“And the parents thought father must have given him the fireworks. How strange!”

“Yes, it was strange. Strange that all who knew anything about it should have met a violent death. It looks as though Providence or whatever you choose to call him, was on my side, doesn’t it, Miss Adelaide? But I did not know your father was suspected. I regret that.”

She did not reply. She was trying to analyze her feeling.

“Non-plussed I see,” said Bombs. “Well I don’t wonder. I had something of that feeling at first. Nobody could blame me but myself, because no living person knew about it but myself. Now no one knows it but you and I; and I am used to your blame; I rather enjoy it. In fact I like it so well that I have come to ask you to marry me.”

“But you would not marry me knowing that I would continue to blame you—knowing that I would work against your business interests, Mr. Bombs.”

“I would marry you, knowing that you could not harm my adamantine interests,” laughed Bombs. “It would take a hundred years of such gentle leaven to affect them materially or immaterially and we shall both be in heaven before that time, where everything is changed in the twinkling of an eye and reforms if needed would not have to be worked out by the tedious, sinuous and rather sour or unsavory processes of fermentation.”

“But you would not marry me knowing that our thoughts, feelings and tastes were entirely antagonistic—that I should strive with my whole might to pull down the things you would build up? Impossible!”

“I would marry you and love and admire you all the same, Adelaide. And I would give you carte blanche out of the proceeds of my ‘horrid’ inventions to use in your work of demolishing, reconstructing and Christianizing.”

“You are jesting, Mr. Bombs.”

She broke off and rested her head on both hands. The old weariness had come again, and more! Even the multiplicity of his adjectives affected her. They tired her to death just as his Pyro-shows used to do—with their flash after flash.

“You are the same and yet you are not the same,” she added, arousing herself and turning away from his glittering gaze with a gesture of despair. “O why did you come back to torment my life?”

He came swiftly to her side and whispered in her ear—whispered, although he might have spoken aloud; for there was no one in the room and no sleeping Adam anywhere among the shrubberies “I came to fulfill my promise to your father and claim you for my wife.”

She started from him as though bitten by a serpent, or rather as though she had been mistaken for the original Eve and a real serpent had been whispering in her ear.

“Your wife!” Her face turned surface-red as though scorched with outside flame. “Your wife,” she repeated, “and the elected burden-bearer of your secret, sinful knowledge! I have never thought of being your wife and never could be or should be, and father would not have insisted.”

“Adelaide! Adelaide! You don’t know what you are saying. You will feel differently after everything is proven and you have time to think it over.”

“Never! Mr. Bombs, never! I shall never think differently. Leave me! Go out of my sight forever!”

“Adelaide! Is it possible! Whatever I have been to others I have always been honest with you.”

“Honest? Yes! You tell me of your black and sinful deeds, then try to make them look sinless and white. Leave me at once. Your presence is more than I can endure.”

She turned to an alcove in the far end of the room and stretching her arms high above her head in agonized supplication, she added:

“And thou Angelo Cornwallis! Beautiful spirit! be with me! Help me undo the dreadful deeds that have been done in our midst; and when I have done all I can at home, lead me on and on; for as it is here so it is elsewhere all over God’s great world. The good and beautiful are being battered and slain, that the coffers of the bad and beastly may be filled to overflowing with gold!”

The picture before which she stood was an artist’s realization of what Laurens Angelo Cornwallis would have looked like, if he had lived to reach man’s estate. It was a life-sized portrait of rare beauty and nobility thrown out in strong relief from a bluish-black background of peculiar make-up. Was it the work of Vassili Verestchagin and had her wish to see him been granted, or failing to be granted had she taken him for her spiritual teacher and inspirator and painted it herself?

Alfonso Bombs looked in her direction and recognized both the portrait and the significance of its setting—the marvelous whiteness, brightness and angelic beauty of the one, and the mysterious darkness, luridity and startling suggestiveness of the other—as though the artist had at the last moment dipped his brushes in the paint pots of the Inferno for characteristic colors with which to portray the dread and nameless shapes that had threatened to destroy his fair creation.

Feelings of jealousy, rage and resentment overwhelmed the spirit of Alfonso Bombs as he looked at his unconscious paint and canvas rival and detected in that hellish background unmistakable shadowings of himself; but for the first time in his life he had no specious plea to make. He had received his answer and the proof of its finality. He turned away with the swift and subtle movement habitual to him and left the house and the town.

The End.