The Slim Princess

VIII

BY MES­SEN­GER

On the morn­ing af­ter the strange hap­pen­ings in the gar­den, Kalo­ra sat by one of the cross-​barred win­dows over­look­ing a side street, and en­vied the hum­ble cit­izens and unim­por­tant wom­an drift­ing hap­pi­ly across her field of vi­sion.

Nev­er in all her life had she walked out alone. The sweet priv­ilege of court­ing ad­ven­ture had been de­nied her. And yet she felt, on this morn­ing, an al­most in­ti­mate ac­quain­tance with the out­side world, for had she not talked with a val­or­ous young man who could leap over high walls and sub­due gi­ants and pay com­pli­ments? He had thrown a sud­den glare of ro­mance across her lone­some path­way. The few min­utes with him seemed to en­com­pass ev­ery­thing in life that was worth re­mem­ber­ing. She told her­self that al­ready she liked him bet­ter than any oth­er young man she had met, which was not sur­pris­ing, for he had been the first to sit be­side her and look in­to her eyes and tell her that she was beau­ti­ful. She knew that what­ev­er of wretched­ness the years might hold in store for her, no lo­cal edict could rob her of one pre­cious mem­ory. She had locked it up and put it away, be­yond the reach of courts and rel­atives.

Dur­ing many wake­ful hours she had re­called each minute de­tail of that amaz­ing in­ter­view in the gar­den, and had tried to es­ti­mate and fore­shad­ow the young man's plan of es­cape from the se­cret po­lice.

Per­haps he had been tak­en dur­ing the night. The great­est good for­tune that she could pic­ture for him was a quick flight across the fron­tier, which meant that he would nev­er re­turn--that she had seen him once and could not hope to see him again.

In her con­tem­pla­tion of the lu­mi­nous fig­ure of the On­ly Young Man, she had ceased to spec­ulate con­cern­ing her own mis­for­tunes. The fact of her dis­grace re­mained in the back­ground, eclipsed--not in ev­idence ex­cept as a dim shad­ow over the day.

While she sat im­mov­able, gaz­ing in­to the street, feel­ing with­in her­self a tu­mult which was not of pain, nor yet of plea­sure, but a sat­is­fac­to­ry com­min­gling of both, she heard her name spo­ken. Popo­va was stand­ing in the door­way. He greet­ed her with a smile and bow, both of which struck her as be­ing sin­gu­lar­ly af­fect­ed, for he was not giv­en to po­lite ob­ser­vances. As he squat­ted near her, she no­ticed that he was tremu­lous and seemed al­most fright­ened about some­thing.

“I have come to tell you that I re­gret ex­ceed­ing­ly the--the dis­tress­ing in­ci­dent of yes­ter­day, and that I sym­pa­thize with you deeply--deeply,” he be­gan.

“It is your fault,” she said, turn­ing from him and again gaz­ing in­to the street. “You taught me ev­ery­thing I do not need in Mo­rove­nia. You ne­glect­ed the one es­sen­tial. I am not blind. It was nev­er your de­sire that I should be like my sis­ter.”

She spoke in a low mono­tone and with no tinge of re­sent­ment, but her words had an im­me­di­ate and per­turb­ing ef­fect on Popo­va, who stared at her wide-​eyed and seemed un­able to find his voice.

“You must know that I have been gov­erned by your fa­ther's wish­es,” he said awk­ward­ly. “Why do you--”

“Do not mis­un­der­stand me. I thank you for what you have done. I would not be oth­er than what I am. Tell me--the stranger--you know, the one in the gar­den--has he been tak­en?” in­quired the Princess.

“Tak­en! Tak­en! Not even a clue--not a trace! Ei­ther the earth opened to swal­low him or else Kol­do is a dunce. The de­scrip­tion was most ac­cu­rate. By the way, I--I had a most in­ter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion re­gard­ing the case, with a young man at the Ho­tel de l'Eu­rope last evening. He is a per­son of great im­por­tance in his own coun­try, al­so a stu­dent of world-​pol­itics--I--he--nev­er have I en­coun­tered such dis­crim­ina­tion in one so young. It was be­cause of my ad­mi­ra­tion for his tal­ents and my con­fi­dence in his in­tegri­ty that I con­sent­ed to de­liv­er a mes­sage for him.”

Kalo­ra squirmed in her pil­lows, and turned ea­ger­ly to face Popo­va.

“A mes­sage? For me?” she cried, ea­ger­ly.

“I will ad­mit that the whole pro­ceed­ing is most ir­reg­ular, to put it mild­ly. The young man was so deeply in­ter­est­ed in your per­ilous ad­ven­ture of yes­ter­day, and so de­sirous of fe­lic­itat­ing you up­on your es­cape, that I yield­ed to his im­por­tu­ni­ties and promised to de­liv­er to you this let­ter.”

He brought it out cau­tious­ly, as if it were load­ed with an ex­plo­sive, and Kalo­ra pounced up­on it.

“I re­ly up­on you to main­tain ab­so­lute se­cre­cy in re­gard to my part in this un­usu­al--”

But Kalo­ra, un­heed­ing him, had torn open the let­ter and was read­ing, as fol­lows:

MY DEAR PRINCESS:

I hope that's the way to be­gin. Some­thing tells me that you would not stand for “Your Majesty” or any of these “Roy­al High­ness” trim­mings.

Be­lieve me, you are the best ev­er. I have just had a talk with the em­inent plain-​clothes man who is look­ing for the bur­glar that broke in­to the gar­den this af­ter­noon and tried to steal you. He read to me the de­scrip­tion. Say, if I tried to write at this minute all of my present emo­tions con­cern­ing you, I would burn holes in the pa­per. When it comes to turn­ing out fic­tion, Marie Corel­li is not in the run­ning. Hon­est­ly, when Mr. De­tec­tive walked in­to the ho­tel this evening, I fig­ured it a toss-​up whether I should ev­er see home and moth­er again.

I am on­ly an hum­ble steel-​mak­er, but I am for you and I want to see you again and tell you right to your face what I think of you. If you will sort of hap­pen to be in the gar­den at 4 p.m. to-​mor­row (Thurs­day), I will come over the wall at the very spot I picked out to-​day. I know that this method of be­com­ing ac­quaint­ed with young wom­en is not in­dorsed by the _Ladies_' _Home Jour­nal_ or Beat­rice Fair­fax, but, as near­ly as I can find out, there is no oth­er way in which I can get in­to so­ci­ety over here.

So far as the blood­hounds of the law are con­cerned, don't give them a thought. I have met, the great Kol­do, and he won't know un­til about next Sun­day that yes­ter­day was Tues­day. The pro­fes­sor has promised to bring a re­ply to the ho­tel. He is not on.

Sin­cere­ly, YOUR GER­MAN FRIEND.

She read it all and found her­self gasp­ing--sur­prised, fright­ened, and moved to a flut­ter­ing de­light. She had thought of him as skulk­ing in by­ways, of con­ceal­ing his name and at­tempt­ing to dis­guise him­self so that he might dodge through the mesh­es wo­ven by the in­vin­ci­ble Kol­do, and here he was, still flaunt­ing him­self at the ho­tel and calm­ly prepar­ing to re­peat his haz­ardous ex­per­iment.

“He is a fool!” she ex­claimed, for­get­ting that Popo­va was present.

“I trust the mes­sage has not of­fend­ed you,” said the tu­tor, de­cid­ed­ly alarmed at her ag­ita­tion and not un­der­stand­ing what it meant.

“I tell you he is a fool--a fool!” she re­peat­ed. And while Popo­va won­dered, she sprang to her feet and ran to him and gave him a mus­cu­lar em­brace around the ten­der por­tion of his neck, for he still squat­ted af­ter the ori­en­tal man­ner, even though he wore a long black coat of Ger­man make.

“I con­sent­ed to bring it be­cause he was most ur­gent, and seemed a prop­er sort of per­son,” be­gan Popo­va, “and not know­ing the con­tents--”

“Bless you, I am not of­fend­ed,” in­ter­rupt­ed Kalo­ra, and then, look­ing at the let­ter again, she burst in­to hap­py laugh­ter.

The young stranger was un­ques­tion­ably a fool. She had not dreamed that any one could be so reck­less and heed­less, so con­temp­tu­ous of the dread ma­chin­ery of the law, so will­ing to risk his very life for the sake of--of see­ing her again!

“If he has been im­per­ti­nent, pos­si­bly you will take no no­tice of his com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” sug­gest­ed Popo­va.

“Oh, I _must_--I must at least ac­knowl­edge the re­ceipt of it. Com­mon cour­tesy de­mands that. I shall write just a few lines and you must take them to him at once. He seems to be a very for­ward per­son un­ac­quaint­ed with our lo­cal cus­toms, and so I shall for­mal­ly thank him and sug­gest to him that any fur­ther cor­re­spon­dence would be in­ad­vis­able. That's the re­al­ly prop­er thing to do, don't you think?”

“Pos­si­bly.”

“Then wait here un­til I have writ­ten it, and un­less you wish me to go to my fa­ther and tell him some­thing that would put an end to your il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer, de­liv­er this mes­sage with­in a hour--de­liv­er it your­self. Give it to him and to no one else.”

Nev­er was a go-​be­tween more non­plussed, but he promised with a readi­ness and a sin­cer­ity which in­di­cat­ed that he was keen­ly aware of the fact that Kalo­ra held him in her pow­er. The minx had read his se­cret with­out an ef­fort!

Mr. Pike was wait­ing in the av­enue of pot­ted palms when the great­est schol­ar of south­east­ern Eu­rope, now re­duced to the hum­ble role of mes­sen­ger boy, came to him, some­what flur­ried and breath­less, and slipped a small en­ve­lope in­to his hand.

Popo­va rather curt­ly re­fused to re­new his ac­quain­tance with oc­ci­den­tal fizzes, and wait­ed on­ly un­til he had an­nounced to Mr. Pike that the Princess wished to em­pha­size the ad­vice con­tained in the let­ter and to as­sure the pre­sump­tu­ous stranger that it was meant for his wel­fare.

This is what Mr. Pike read:

My very good friend:

I have pro­tect­ed you, not be­cause you de­serve pro­tec­tion, but be­cause I like you very much. You must not come to the palace grounds again. They are now un­der dou­ble guard and, if I at­tempt­ed to meet you, no doubt a whole com­pa­ny of our big sol­diers would sur­round you and sure­ly you could not over­come so many pow­er­ful men. I am think­ing on­ly of your safe­ty. I beg you to leave Mo­rove­nia at once. Your dan­ger is greater than you can imag­ine. What more can I say, ex­cept that I shall al­ways re­mem­ber you? Sin­cere­ly,

K.

Mr. Pike read it care­ful­ly three times and then told him­self aloud that it was not what he would pre­cise­ly term a love-​let­ter.

“I may have made an im­pres­sion, but cer­tain­ly not a ten-​strike,” he thought to him­self, as he fold­ed up the mis­sive and put it in­to the most sa­cred com­part­ment of his Rus­sia-​leather pock­et­book, along with the let­ter of cred­it.

“I fear me that the in­ci­dent is closed,” he said. “I would stay here one year if I thought there was a chance of see­ing her again, but if she wants me to fly I guess I had bet­ter fly.”

That evening, af­ter an earnest con­tro­ver­sy with the man­ag­er over a very com­pli­cat­ed bill, stud­ded with “ex­tras,” Mr. Alexan­der H. Pike, ac­com­pa­nied by drago­man, leather trunks, hat-​box­es and hold-​alls, drove away to the transcon­ti­nen­ta ex­press, and slept sound­ly while cross­ing the dan­ger­ous fron­tier.

Pos­si­bly he would not have slept so sound­ly if he had known that at four o'clock that af­ter­noon the Princess Kalo­ra had been idling her time in the palace gar­den, walk­ing back and forth near the high wall.

She had told him not to come, and of course he would not come. No one could be so au­da­cious and fool­hardy as to in­vite de­struc­tion af­ter be­ing solemn­ly warned--and yet, if he _did_ come, she want­ed to be there to speak to him again and re­buke him and tell him not to come a third time.

She went back to her apart­ment much re­lieved and in­tense­ly dis­ap­point­ed.

Such is the per­verse­ness of the fem­inine na­ture, even in Mo­rove­nia.