The Slim Princess Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Up here!" came the voice again]

He was smoothly shaven, with blond hair almost ripe enough to be auburn; he wore a gray suit of rather loose and careless material, a belt, but no waistcoat; his trousers were reefed up from a pair of saddle-brown shoes, and the silk band around his small straw hat was tricolored. In his hand was a paper-covered book. Swung over his shoulder was a camera in a leather case. He sat there on top of the high wall and gazed at Kalora with a grinning interest, and she, forgetting that she was unveiled and clad only in the simple garments which had horrified the best people of Morovenia, gazed back at him, for he was the first of the kind she had seen.

"What are you doing here?" she asked wonderingly.

"I am looking for the show," he replied. "They told me down at the hotel that a very hot bunch of acrobats were doing a few stunts down here this afternoon, and I thought I'd break in if I could. Wanted to get some pictures of them."

"Were you invited?"

"No, but that doesn't make any difference. In Cairo I went to a native wedding every day. If I pa.s.sed a house where there was a wedding being pulled off, I simply went inside and mingled. They never put me out--seemed to enjoy having me there. I suppose they thought it was the American custom for outsiders to ring in at a wedding."

"You said American, didn't you? Are you from America?"

"Do I look like a Scandinavian? I am from the grand old commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Did you ever hear of the town of Bessemer?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Did you ever hear of the Pike family that robbed all the orphans, tore down the starry banner, walked on the humble working-girl and gave the double cross to the common people? Did you?"

"Dear me, no," she replied, following him vaguely.

"Well, I am Alexander H., of the tribe of Pike, and I have two reasons for being in your beautiful little city. One is Federal grand jury and the other is ten-cent magazine. You know, our folks are sinfully rich.

About four years ago I came in for most of the guvnor's coin, and in trying to keep up the traditions of the family, I have made myself unpopular, but I didn't know how unpopular I really was until I got this magazine from home this morning." And he held up the paper-covered book, which had a rainbow cover. "They have been writing up a few of us captains of industry, and they have said everything about me that they _could_ say without having the thing barred out of the mails. I notice that you speak our kind of talk fairly well, but I think I can take you by the hand and show you a lot of new and beautiful English language. I will read this to you."

Before she could warn him, or do anything except let out a horrified "Oh-h!" he had leaped lightly from his high perch and was standing in front of her.

"I'm afraid you don't understand," she said, rising and taking a frightened survey of the garden, to be sure that no one was watching.

"Strangers are not permitted in here. That is, men, and more especially--ah--Christians."

"I'm not a Christian, and I can prove it by this magazine. I am an octopus, and a viper, and a vampire, and a man-eating shark. I am what you might call a composite zoo. If you want to get a line on me just read this article on _The Shameless Brigand of Bessemer_, and you will certainly find out that I am a nice young fellow."

Kalora had studied English for years and thought she knew it, and yet she found it difficult fully, to comprehend all the figurative phrases of this pleasing young stranger.

"Do I understand that you are traveling abroad because of your unpopularity at home?" she asked.

"I am waiting for things to cool down. As soon as the muck-rakers wear out their rakes, and the great American public finds some other kind of hysterics to keep it worked up to a proper temperature, I shall mosey back and resume business at the old stand. But why tell you the story of my life? Play fair now, and tell me a lot about yourself. Where am I?"

"You are here in my father's private garden, where you hare no right to be."

"And father?"

"Is Count Selim Malagaski, Governor-General of Morovenia."

"Wow! And you?"

"I am his daughter."

"The daughter of all that must be something. Have you a t.i.tle?"

"I am called Princess."

"Can you beat that? Climb up a wall to see some A-rabs perform, and find a real, sure-enough princess, and likewise, if you don't mind my saying so, a pippin."

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

"A corker."

"Corker?"

"I mean that you're a good-looker--that it's no labor at all to gaze right at you. I didn't think they grew them so far from headquarters, but I see I'm wrong. You are certainly all right. Pardon me for saying this to you so soon after we meet, but I have learned that you will never break a woman's heart by telling her that she is a beaut."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Are you a real ingenue, or a kidder?"]

Kalora leaned back in her chair and laughed. She was beginning to comprehend the whimsical humor of the very unusual young man. His direct and playful manner of speech amused her, and also seemed to rea.s.sure her. And, when he seated himself within a few inches of her elbow, fanning himself with the little straw hat, and calmly inspecting the tiny landscape of the forbidden garden, she made no protest against his familiarity, although she knew that she was violating the most sacred rules laid down for her s.e.x.

She reasoned thus with herself:

"To-day I have disgraced myself to the utmost, and, since I am utterly shamed, why not revel in my lawlessness?"

Besides, she wished to question this young man. Mrs. Plumston had said to her: "You are beautiful." No one else had ever intimated such a thing. In fact, for five years she had been taunted almost daily because of her lack of all physical charms. Perhaps she could learn the truth about herself by some adroit questioning of the young man from Pennsylvania.

"You have traveled a great deal?" she asked.

"Me and Baedeker and Cook wrote it," he replied; and then, seeing that she was puzzled, he said: "I have been to all of the places they keep open."

"You have seen many women in many countries?"

"I have. I couldn't help it, and I'm glad of it."

"Then you know what const.i.tutes beauty?"

"Not always. What is sponge cake for me may be sawdust for somebody else. Say, I rode for an hour in a 'rickshaw at Nagoya to see the most beautiful girl in j.a.pan and when we got to the teahouse they trotted out a little shrimp that looked as if she'd been dried over a barrel--you know, stood _bent_ all the time, as if she was getting ready to jump.

Her neck was no bigger than a gripman's wrist and she had a nose that stood right out from her face almost an eighth of an inch. Her eyes were set on the bias and she was painted more colors than a bandwagon. I said, 'If this is the champion geisha, take me back to the land of the chorus girl.' And in China! Listen! I caught a Chinese belle coming down the Queen's Road in Hong-Kong one day, and I ran up an alley. I have seen Parisian beauties that had a coat of white veneering over them an inch thick, and out here in this country I have seen so-called cracker-jacks that ought to be doing the mountain-of-flesh act in the Ringling side-show. So there you are!"

"But in your own country, and in the larger cities of the world, there must be some sort of standard. What are the requirements? What must a woman be, that all men would call her beautiful?"

"Well, Princess, that's a pretty hard proposition to dope out. Good looks can not be a.n.a.lyzed in a lab or worked out by algebra, because, I'm telling you, the one that may look awful lucky to me may strike somebody else as being fairly punk. Providence framed it up that way so as to give more girls a chance to land somebody. Still, there is one kind that makes a hit wherever people are bright enough to sit up and take notice. Now I suppose that any male being in his right senses would find it easy to look at a woman who was young enough and had eyes and hair and teeth and the other items, all doing team-work together, and then if she was trim and slender--"

"Should she be slender?" interrupted Kalora, leaning toward him.

"Sure. I don't mean the same width all the way up and down, like an art student, but trim and--Here, I'll show you. You will find the pictures of the most beautiful women in the world right here in the ads of a ten-cent magazine. Look them over and you will understand what I mean."

He turned page after page and showed her the tapering G.o.ddesses of the straight front, the tooth-powder, the camera, the breakfast-food, the ma.s.sage-cream, and the hair-tonic.

"These are what you call beautiful women?" she asked.

"These are about the limit."

"Then in your country I would not be considered hideous, would I?"