The Independence Day Horror at Killsbury Part 8

"A Coat of Arms! What has he done to deserve a Coat of Arms?" asked Ruth.

"O! horrible things!--or his grandfathers have. One of them invented a war explosive for the British navy and another gave them a lot of powder to carry on the awful Crimean war! The Government made a Knight of him to pay him for his powder; and they are dreadfully proud of it. They've got it all written down on their Coat," laughed Adelaide.

"They had better write down the number of human beings their fiendish inventions and gifts have killed," said Ruth indignantly.

"O how glad I am to hear you say that. I told Mr. Bombs so in those very words," exclaimed Adelaide with her eyes brim full of honest glow. "And mamma said I was too young to have an opinion about such matters," she added in a grieved tone.

"I am only nineteen," remarked Ruth, "but I have had an experience, and that amounts to more than years, sometimes."

"Do you know Mr. Bombs is only twenty-one. It seems so strange that he should take it into his head to be a Pyrotechnist. But his mother died when he was young and I suspect his father was too busy making his millions to think about his training. He told me once that his nurse used to take him to the beach every evening almost, to see the fireworks. So you see he had them burned into him almost."

"Probably the nurse had a fondness for that sort of barbarism," replied Ruth. "O how wrong it is for parents to be so careless of their children! To trust them as they do, to the ignorant, the foolish and the wicked--they know not whom--often to anybody who is willing to wear a nurse's cap and ap.r.o.n."

"I'm sure that's the way it was with Mr. Bombs. His head is full of fireworks. He went over to London on purpose to see King Pang and get hold of the secrets of the trade; but I think he found him rather foxy," laughed Adelaide.

"Of course," said Ruth. "The English Pyro-king does not relish having a rival in the American market."

CHAPTER XVIII.

MR. BOMBS' DISGUST WITH CHICAGO AND THE PYRO-KING'S PLANS.

Mr. Bombs came on from Chicago the evening after the first meeting of Ruth and Adelaide in the Library, greatly to the surprise of the Schwarmers, especially to Adelaide; but when she questioned him about it, he turned away without giving a reasonable excuse and went in search of her father.

"What! torn yourself away from Chicago so soon," exclaimed Schwarmer--"the mighty central city--the huge centre of finance, rush and pluck!"

"Faugh!" replied Bombs, turning green. "The huge centre of soot, dirt and smoke! The mighty central inferno, with the Pang emissaries plotting to reburn it, and measuring it to see how much more smoke and flame it will contain."

"Hold on, Fons," laughed Schwarmer, "you are young yet and you are not in it. With the American millionaire in it and the foreign millionaire out of it, Chicago might have its attractions, even for you--that is, in a business way, most a.s.suredly it might. You might have to wade through mud or dust ankle deep to get at the heart of Finance--that mighty man-made canon in La Salle St.; but hark, Fons, let me tell you that when you are really and truly up and dressed for business, that canon will seem almost as glorious to you as the very finest of the G.o.d-made ones. Most a.s.suredly it will. It's the brainy business man's paradise. Enough of the 'filthy lucre' is handled there every day to run a kingdom."

"More's the pity," retorted Bombs. "Why can't they use a little of the stuff to abate the smoke and mud nuisance and fill up the 'bad lands' that girdle it like a slimy serpent?"

"Because the very size of the business stands in the way, Fons. From every street corner you noticed about a dozen chimneys spouting clouds of black smoke. At least I did when I was there; but I knew it meant business and a great deal of it, and that it would not be interfered with. Rest a.s.sured it wouldn't. Then there are the Stock Yards. They are not beautiful but they are mighty. A thousand acres of slaughter-pens mean meat for the hungry millions. They are mighty interesting looked at in that way, most a.s.suredly they are."

"I didn't give the whole thing but one look," sniffed Bombs.

"No, of course you didn't," laughed Schwarmer. "You were on the wrong scent, no doubt. After the beautiful, so to speak. Well, I reckon n.o.body ever accused Chicago of being beautiful, really and truly beautiful; but even the leopard has its spots, and there are some spots around and about the sides and tail end of the city that are just beautiful enough."

"Yes, it is beautiful along the margin of the lake, where the city is not--or the great bulk of it--but they are making huge preparations to spoil that. When its Centennial comes they will turn its liquid beauty into a bed of hissing, fiery serpents a mile long!"

"Yes, and Pang's bill is to be a mile long, rest a.s.sured it is," laughed Schwarmer. "He's sharp enough for them. He isn't there for fun or in search of the beautiful. He's there for business and he's got it, Johnny Bull fashion, by the horns--on the lake front and on the house-tops, most a.s.suredly he has. No, Fons, business isn't a beauty of itself, you know, or will know when you get into the whirl of it; and Chicago is the wildest kind of a whirlpool for business."

"But I'm not there by a long shot," said Bombs, with a sigh of relief, "and Pang is not there, at least I couldn't find him."

"But you've found us and we are glad to see you, most a.s.suredly we are; and really there isn't much time to spare if you are going to get your new piece in tip-top order. It won't do to have any failure this time, most a.s.suredly it won't."

"I can't do much until the Pyro-men come; but I'm glad to be here again and out of that infernal business hole," said Bombs, frankly. "I found Pang's pyro-men so immersed, so perfectly pickled in the big scheme of bombarding Fort Dearborn, reburning the city and burning Mr. Flamingdon (or whatever his name is) that I couldn't find out about the new colors--the scientific things of the trade. It's all trade and no science with them now. They intend to cover everything in their line. They are scheming to get hold of 'The Chicago Amus.e.m.e.nt a.s.sociation,' I suspect."

"What's that, Fons?"

"Can't describe it full length," laughed Bombs, "but one section of it is directing attention to the small boys' amus.e.m.e.nt on the Fourth of July. Conducted by himself they have discovered that it is not only dangerous but altogether insane, so they are seriously at work trying to construct a sane Fourth, which is to wind up with fireworks of such a splendid order as to indemnify the small boy for not being allowed to have a hand in letting them off. Of course this is where Pang will plot to come in with a ten or twenty thousand dollar piece."

"Truly, this Fourth of July reform business is growing to be pretty wide, to reach as far as Chicago. They've got a new name tacked onto it though. 'Sane Fourth!' Pretty good. You know I told you the other day you hadn't better go into Fourth of July tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs too deep--most a.s.suredly I did, Fons."

"I don't intend to, Mr. Schwarmer. Historical pieces are my ambition; but that reminds me, I want to ask you something."

"Out with it, my lad, you can't ask me anything I wouldn't be happy to answer, most a.s.suredly you can't."

"It's about Adelaide," said Bombs, in an a.s.sured tone. "I know you and father have talked of uniting your families. Of course she is young yet and I am not very aged; but I am old enough to entertain the idea; and what I want to ask of you is permission to talk to her about it. My father has written me that I am to go abroad for an extended trip--that is, after I have got through here and witnessed the reburning of Chicago. When I return I shall be quite a mature man and she will be a charming young lady, no doubt. You see what would be likely to happen; but I do not feel like going away without sounding the depths--getting a sort of a free-holder's lease--lest another fellow should come along and secure the prize. I think it well to look out for such matters ahead of time."

"All right, Fons. I would like nothing better than to unite our families--consolidate them, so to speak. I believe in consolidations of that kind, I a.s.sure you I do, with my whole heart; but you'll have to do your own proposing. I'm a true Yankee on that head. I should never get Anglicised on that point if I should sail over to England every month. I a.s.sure you I shouldn't. You will have to do the straight thing. You needn't try to win her in a round-about way through me or her mamma. She's always had her head pretty much, and perhaps that's what makes her rather heady. She is honest, though, and has very strong notions of the right and the wrong of things. She often takes me to task for not squaring my business concerns by the 'Golden Rule.' Probably she would do the same with her husband. Eh! Fons?"

"I understand," replied Fons. "She's at the formative period now. She will have left off a great many of her notions in two or four years' time. Besides, I am not afraid of them even as they are."

"Proceed then, young man. Push ahead with the sounding. You have my hearty permission, most a.s.suredly you have. You seem like an only son already; and you have my best wishes for your success with the plummet-line, so to speak. No use of wasting any great amount of lead on it, though, most a.s.suredly not. You will be able to ascertain the exact degree of perpendicularity in Addie's case without an enormous waste of time or money. She is straight up and down as a rule, most decidedly so. There's nothing crooked about her or slantendicular, as there often is about the opposite s.e.x--rest a.s.sured there is not. Unlike the vast majority of fathers I have kept up an intimate acquaintance with my daughter ever since she was born, and I can give you my hand or oath on that point, most a.s.suredly I can. I've nothing more to say except that I shall keep an eye on the other fellows while you are away, and that she's heart free to date. She's only a grown up child, so to speak--all ready to bloom but not fully bloomed out, rest a.s.sured she is not."

With such characteristic a.s.surance, Mr. Bombs left his prospective father-in-law to seek Adelaide. He was anxious to make his first experiment with the plummet-line as Mr. Schwarmer had not altogether inaptly called it. It pleased him to fancy that he had already scored a success in the matrimonial line, but whether it was Mr. Schwarmer's hearty permission to talk freely to his daughter, or the plummet-line ill.u.s.tration that tickled his fancy the most, he could hardly have told. He may have been pleased to think that his own expression as to "sounding the depths," had been its inspiration, for he was at the age when he was beginning to use idiomatic language and large-sized words and would be apt to note their effectiveness. As to Schwarmer, he may have had a youthful experience with plummet-lines even though it may have gone no farther than the sounding of a goose-pond.

When he found her she was coming up the hill from Mrs. Langley's. She appeared on its summit at the moment when the sun was plunging down behind it like a ball of fire. It was rather a remarkable coincidence and it struck him as such, that when she got to the place where Mrs. Langley had first appeared on the night of her accident, she stopped, threw her head upward and clasped her hands around her body just as the poor scared woman had done. He understood the pantomime perfectly and it pleased him, although it recalled one of his most signal failures--that is from a professional point of view. From the artistic point it had been considered quite a success--"quite madonna like," Miss Drawling had said, and although he would not have given a "fip" for her opinion on any other subject, he thought she had said one very good thing. His regret for the accident had never been heart deep. He inclined to the brute belief that accidents as a rule added to the human interest in life--at least the kind of accidents that call forth the tenderest kind of sympathy.

"You, have been posing," he said as he went forward to meet her. "Really you did it well. You see I was watching for you--to tell you something."

"I have been down to see poor Mary. She hasn't got well of her fright yet. What a dreadful thing it was!"

"Yes, but you blamed me for it at the time, roundly. I hope you are not going to blame me over again," said Bombs lightly.

"There's no use. The blame will last."

"You will forgive me before I go away."

"How do you know, Mr. Bombs?"

"O Pythagoras in Petticoats! You are here again! I am undone!" laughed Bombs.

"Don't call me that or I shall run away before you tell me your something."

"That would be a dense calamity."

"Why dense, Mr. Bombs?"

"Because I could never get through the tangle if you were not here to ask leading questions, Miss Adelaide."

"I am here and I am listening. But if you don't begin to tell me at once I am going."

"Here it is, then, without exasperating prelude. I am going away immediately after the Fourth to be gone from one to four years--four probably. Only think of that immense stretch of time! Are you glad or sad to hear the astounding revelation?"

"Before I answer I want to ask where you are going and exactly why?"

"To Germany, Austria and China. To schools of Pyrotechny everywhere--to study up the art and find out the secrets of the craft."

"In order to beat King Pang at his trade and become an American Pyrotechnic King?"

"Undoubtedly! my father is worth his million, he would not let me take a back seat in any profession."

"I am sorry then, Mr. Bombs."

"For whom or what, Miss Adelaide."

"For you, and that you are going on such a quest."

"Are you not the least bit sorry on your own account. Will you not be a trifle lonesome without me to blame, Miss Adelaide?"

"Perhaps, Mr. Bombs, in a way."

"In what way, Miss Adelaide?"

"Just as your sister or mother would be, I fancy."

"Sisterly! Motherly!" laughed Bombs. "That's infinitely correct, just now, but in two or four years from now wifely will be the proper word, and you will feel very different."

"I'm sure four years or a thousand will not make any difference in my feelings about--"

"About what or who?" insisted Bombs.

"About you," she added promptly.

He was looking at her with a brazen sort of fixedness that would have made almost any mature woman blush. He wanted to make her blush and he expected she would, but he was disappointed. She looked straight at him and was as placid as the traditional moonbeam.

CHAPTER XIX.

SCHWARMER DOES A LITTLE HUSTLING ON ADELAIDE'S ACCOUNT--A FOURTH OF JULY BUGLE.

Three skilled Pyrotechnics came down from the city a week before the Fourth to set up Mr. Bombs' Pyro-spectacle, The Siege of Yorktown. Mr. Bombs himself was very busy superintending the work, which was conducted with all possible secrecy. He did not absolutely refuse to answer Adelaide's questions; but he called her Pythagoras in Petticoats quite frequently and she knew that whenever the epithet came in, it was to stand in the place of an explanation; but she soon found out enough about it to know she wasn't going to like it and she told him so frankly. She could not do otherwise. The frankness that her father claimed to have she possessed in a full degree. Moreover, she had a desire for correct knowledge which he did not possess.

She re-read the Siege of Yorktown and the life of Washington during those days and she could talk intelligently about both.

"It's sad enough to think, Mr. Bombs, that Yorktown was besieged and so many lives lost and so much property destroyed, without having it done over and over and over again."

"I'm afraid you don't love your country and the Father of it as well as you should, Miss Adelaide."

"Yes, I do, Mr. Bombs. I love my country and I love Washington and I wonder what he would say, were he to come back after all these years, and see us besieging an imaginary Yorktown, and burning up money which he and his men had almost perished for the want of. You haven't represented the misery and poverty of it, Mr. Bombs."

"No, Miss Adelaide, nor the money chests of Rochambeau and Laurens," laughed Bombs.

"You represent only what you consider the glory of it, Mr. Bombs. Washington would never admit that there was any glory in war. He said it was 'a plague that should be banished from the earth.' What would he say if he should take a look at the earth as it is now and see the millions and millions spent to glorify war, be-star it and write it on G.o.d's sky in lines of fire! And, worse still, see thousands of innocent youths sacrificed yearly, not to the patriotic sentiment, but to the patriotic fury. There was little Laurens Cornwallis' terrible accident! Have you any idea how it could have happened, Mr. Bombs?"

"Yes, I have an idea, Miss Adelaide--at least an idea of how it might have occurred, but ideas are not worth much without proofs. They are apt to be rather prejudicial, especially with young ladies of your age. Perhaps I will tell you my idea sometime."

"Before you go away, Mr. Bombs?"

"No, surely not. You will not be much older then," laughed Bombs. "When I come back from Europe you will be quite a young lady. The explosion of an idea or of fireworks will not be apt to shock you then."

"I shall always be shocked when I think of that beautiful boy's death, Mr. Bombs. It's a dreadful mystery!"

"Was his name Laurens or Lawrence." asked Bombs, laconically.

"Laurens. It was his mother's maiden name. Her ancestors were French."

"Laurens Cornwallis! Indeed! Two celebrated names. English and French conjoined. Do they claim to be descendants of the French financier and of the English fighter?" asked Bombs.

"I have never heard so. Wouldn't it be lovely though? Foe meeting foe in true love and friendliness through their children. Mr. and Mrs. Cornwallis are a very devoted couple."

"My point of view was simply consolatory. Providence permitting, it might not be well to have too many Cornwallis's on American soil," said Bombs.

"We have room enough and to spare. I read a letter yesterday from Washington to Lafayette. He said it's a strange thing that there should not be room enough in the world for men to live without cutting each other's throats."

"But he laid siege to Yorktown all the same, Miss Adelaide."

"Yes, but after it was all over and he had grown older and wiser, he saw how horrible it was. I almost know he did."

"I am only twenty-one and the siege is booked," laughed Bombs. "I wonder if Mrs. Ruth Cornwallis will come to witness it? I should think she would be interested, especially if one of her grandfathers paid French money for it and the other had to surrender."

"I think she will not, but I'm going to ask her today," replied Adelaide, as she started off for the Library.

When she returned she told Bombs that Ruth was supposedly allied to the Laurens and Cornwallis of Revolutionary fame and that her husband, Ralph Oswald Norwood, could trace his ancestry back to the British merchant who told King George that "nothing would satisfy the Americans short of permission to fish to an unlimited extent on the banks of New Foundland."

"Then I shall have to give them seats in the front row, I suppose," laughed Bombs.

"No, they are not coming, Mr. Bombs. Ruth attended the Queen's birthday celebration once when she was in Canada. It wound up with one of the great London Pyro-king's shows. She did not like it at all and was afterwards shocked to learn that America had paid millions of dollars for such shows during the twenty-five years of his occupancy of her market and that they were advertis.e.m.e.nts for his Fourth of July Fireworks, which are a curse to the land."

Mr. Bombs received the information with an air of unconcern and Adelaide went to her father's office. She had a piece of information for him also, and something more.

"O father, Ruth can't come to our dedication if you are going to have a military company with guns and swords and a Fourth of July racket band in the procession. Such things make her sick."