Miss Pat at School Part 16

Elinor, helped by Miss Jinny, shed her wrappings and stood revealed as a lovely Princess of China, with billowing draperies and flashing gla.s.s jewels and a tiny filet sparking on her dark hair. Some of the swarm about the mirrors turned at Patricia's exclamation, and with generous admiration pressed back upon themselves so that for a moment the dark, serious beauty of the Princess of China flashed out at Elinor from the long oblong of the gla.s.s, filling her lovely eyes with a gratified light and flushing her tinted cheeks a deeper pink.

"How sweet of you to let me see!" she cried impulsively to the houris and queens and beggar-maids that had given her the brief tribute. "I don't believe I know any of you, but I'm just as much obliged as----"

She broke off in amazement at the familiar grin of one of the most glittering queens. "Griffin, of all people!" she cried, delightedly, and held out an eager hand.

The sultana, speaking with decidedly un-oriental diction, came shimmering over to them, and shook hands with occidental heartiness.

"This is what I call luck," she said, genially. "I'm going to steer you two peaches right into the thick of the tumult, and if you don't have the time of your sad young lives, my name's not--well, here, you'd better p.r.o.nounce it for me," and she handed out a card on which was printed in clear black letters,

THE SULTANA KEHERRYSEENOGa.s.sOLEHENNELECTRIZADE (OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE LIGHT OF THE HARUMSCARUM)

Patricia and Elinor puckered their brows over it, but Miss Jinny, craning her head over their shoulders, gave a snort.

"Pooh, that's as easy as rolling off a log," she said, with a toss of her turban. "If you'd added acetylene and alcohol you'd made it a bit longer."

Griffin grinned amiably at the whiskered countenance. "Good for you, old top," she responded, cheerfully. "You ought to go into the Sunday puzzle department. You'd be hung all over with gold-filled watches.

Where did you blow in from?"

Miss Jinny had been quietly removing her outer coverings and as Griffin spoke she dropped her last concealing wrap, and stepped out in turban and embroidered jacket, vermillion girdle and wide, baggy blue trousers whose voluminous folds almost hid the vermillion and gold tips of her curling slippers. A simitar was thrust fiercely through the flaming girdle, and a gaudy hookah cuddled in the crook of her arm, while the bristling whiskers and encarmined cheeks and nose of the weather-beaten seafarer proclaimed a strong masculine personality in striking contrast to the pretty young men Turks and Persians that t.i.ttered in feminine fashion all about her.

"Upon my soul!" cried the sultana of the inflammable name. "You're a corker! Do you mean to say, Miss Pat, that this buccaneer is the lady from the rural districts you were spouting about?"

Miss Jinny gave her husky chuckle.

"I'm the only original Sinbad," she declared with a very un-Persian hitch to her flowing trousers. "I've got tales that'll make you creep, and as for hairbreadth escapes--why, I'm so full of 'em that I can't see a tumbler of water but that I make a noise like a shipwreck."

"Come along upstairs with me!" cried the sultana, excitedly, hooking her arm in that of the embroidered jacket. "You're too good to waste!

I need you in my business."

Patricia and Elinor followed, rejoicing in Miss Jinny's instant success, for, as Elinor whispered to Patricia, if Griffin took Miss Jinny about, she would be one of the features of the evening.

They went slowly up the palm-banked, stately stairway, through a dim ante-chamber where a line of twinkling barbaric lamps led to the great curtained arch of the entrance to the main a.s.sembly room.

"Isn't it lovely and mysterious?" murmured Elinor, pausing to enjoy the sense of isolation that the obscurity of the blurred lamps emphasized.

"I almost hate to lift the curtain. It may be so disappointing."

Patricia set her spangled roses twinkling with a nod of comprehension, but she did not pause.

"This is nice enough," she said incisively. "It takes away the taste of the jumbled dressing room, but it makes me all the readier for the real thing--the people and the lights and the dancing. I simply can't waste another instant," and she parted the heavy fold and they slipped into the radiant Arabian land of fairy.

Lights were flashing everywhere, and everywhere silks and jewels shimmered in oriental profusion, striking the eye with a bewildering medley of color.

Patricia drew in her breath with a sharp little sigh of satisfied antic.i.p.ation, but had no more than a murmur for Elinor's rapturous exclamations, so busy was she with the brilliant scene before her.

Among the palms and costly rugs that backgrounded a marvelous regal dais occupying one long end of the great room, sat the glittering figure of the portly Haroun-al-Raschid, Sultan of Bagdad and husband of many lovely wives, whose multi-colored costumes made a glowing garden on the rugs at the foot of the dais, while on the embroidered cushions at the side of the monarch a lovely Scheherazade in shimmering white satin with strings of glistening gems in her hair, on her breast, on her arms and ankles, made an alluring picture of the new-made bride.

Tall palms reared their stately fronds above the group and slave girls, with fierce Nubians in attendance, waited in mute homage at either side of the throne. Lamps of bra.s.s glittered in the alcoves back of the great dais, and above it all the roofs and minarets of the ancient city gloomed in the moonlight of the thousand and second night.

All about the s.p.a.cious hall were groups of Arabians, of fair Circa.s.sians, of dusky Nubians and turbaned Turks, while the rustle of costly fabrics and the odor of heavy Eastern perfumes floated in the air; the modern city outside in the wintry electric lights was well forgot in the enchantment of the moment, and Patricia lost count of time and sense of self in the pageant that swept across the lofty chamber to make its obeisance at the imperial divan.

"Look, Norn, look," she whispered, as Aladdin and his mother, in rustling native embroidered silks, led another Princess of China in bridal procession across the center of the scene, their rich dresses making a bright spot in the shifting medley of color. "She's not half so lovely as you, for all her things are so fine. I wonder who--why, it's _Doris Leighton_! She never told us what she was going to be; and she knew you were to be the Princess. Isn't it queer?"

"We didn't many of us tell, you know," returned Elinor absently, with her eyes on Morgiana meekly following her master with the basket of fruit which was to be such a feature in her triumphant dance after the robbers had been boiled alive in their own panniers. "There's Margaret Howes. Isn't she lovely in that pomegranate and gold? What queer slippers she has--just like the ballet dancers. And there's Ali Baba with the forty thieves, all the portrait cla.s.s men in a bunch."

"And the young king of the Black Isles and his wife!" cried Patricia, giggling. "That's Jeffries, the modeling-room pet, and Miss Green.

She'll exercise the black art in earnest. Did you ever see such paralyzing expressions as she can call up! That pastry cook is Peac.o.c.k, the a.s.sistant in the antique. I know him by his red hair."

As the procession wound to its finish the Sultan arose and with many courteous speeches in the eastern phraseology welcomed the company to the night's entertainment, explaining that the first half would be employed in various acts by those who had appeared in the procession, with an intermission when refreshments would be served by slaves, after which there would be a general dance followed by supper in the antechamber.

A s.p.a.ce was cleared in the center of the room, and there was a general rush to secure good positions. Patricia found herself separated from Elinor by a broad-shouldered Moslem whose slow speech revealed him as the good-natured Naskowski.

"I did work in the clay room till the hour for this ball," he said, replying to her surprise. "And after I speak to you on the hall I become a good Mohammedan very rapid--so rapid I see you and your most beautiful sister come in by the great door. Many others see _also_.

We say she make a more fine Princess than the one----"

"Oh, hush!" cautioned Patricia, grasping his arm in her agitation.

"She'll hear you! She's just back of us this minute."

Doris Leighton, with a rather flushed face, leaned forward as Patricia spoke and touched her on the shoulder.

"I must congratulate you, Peri Banou," she said with sharp gayety.

"Everyone is saying that the Princess--your sister--is the _clou_ of the ball.",

Patricia had an uneasy sense of insincerity in the light tone, but a swift glance into the wide eyes of the smiling Doris rea.s.sured her.

"She _is_ lovely, isn't she?" she replied ardently. "But her dress isn't half so gorgeous as yours," she added heartily.

Doris Leighton's lashes drooped till her eyes were a narrow line of inscrutable blue.

"Thank you so much," she said in a tone of such even sweetness that Patricia felt uncomfortable, though she did not know why.

Doris sank back to her place and Patricia turned her attention to the laughable parodies and excellent dances and necromancy that filled the first half of the program. It was all hugely diverting, and she laughed and applauded with the rest, but all the while at the back of her mind there was a little uneasiness, a sense of insecurity and disillusionment that flavored all the gayety with its fleeting bitterness. She was uneasy till she had found Elinor and in the telling of the insignificant incident had regained enough confidence to laugh at her foolish disquiet.

"I'm always making mountains out of mole-hills, and having you level them for me, Norn," she said, taking a gla.s.s of sherbet from the flower-wreathed tray of the charming slave. "I wish I wasn't such an alarmist. I felt as frantic as though Doris Leighton had drawn a dagger, and now I can see what a goose I am."

"That's because you expect people to be perfect and then, when they show the tiniest human weakness, you declare them demons at once," said Elinor, gayly. "You couldn't expect her to _like_ overhearing them praise me, could you? I think she tried to be very kind, and I admire her tremendously for it."

Patricia puckered her brows judicially.

"I do, too, _now_," she declared. "But I've been paid up for my evilmindedness by losing half my good time. I think I'll try to find her and be awfully agreeable to her. I'll feel better for it, I'm sure."

The dancing was beginning as Patricia made her way slowly across the great room to the laughing group where she had seen Doris Leighton but a moment ago, and before she was halfway across Doris and a tall Turk swung past her in the whirl of the newest dance, followed by Elinor and Aladdin, and then by Griffin and the young king of the Black Isles.

Patricia stood still in sudden swift contrition.

"If I haven't forgotten all about Miss Jinny!" she thought remorsefully. "How fearfully self-absorbed I'm getting to be. I'm a perfect _pig_!"

She had a long search before she discovered the valiant Sinbad in a far corner of the now deserted divan surrounded by a circle of kindred spirits to whom Griffin had delivered her, holding her own with great spirit and enjoyment among the dashing wit and pungent repartee.

Miss Jinny, at the sight of Patricia fluttering in among them in her white gauzy draperies like some dainty moth, held out a reproving finger.