A Midnight Fantasy | Page 6

fain see your face, sir; if it match your voice, it needs must be a kindly one."
"I would we could change faces."
"So we shall at supper!"
"And hearts, too?"
"Nay, I would not give a merry heart for a sorrowful one; but I will quit my mask, and you yours; yet," and she spoke under her breath, "if you are, as I think, a gentleman of Verona--a Montague--do not unmask."
"I am not of Verona, lady; no one knows me here;" and Hamlet threw back the hood of his domino. Juliet held her mask aside for a moment, and the two stood looking into each other's eyes.
"Lady, we have in faith changed faces, at least as I shall carry yours forever in my memory."
"And I yours, sir," said Juliet, softly, "wishing it looked not so pale and melancholy."
"Hamlet," whispered Mercutio, plucking at his friend's skirt, "the fellow there, talking with old Capulet--his wife's nephew, Tybalt, a quarrelsome dog--suspects we are Montagues. Let us get out of this peaceably, like soldiers who are too much gentlemen to cause a brawl under a host's roof."
With this Mercutio pushed Hamlet to the door, where they were joined by Benvolio.
Juliet, with her eyes fixed upon the retreating maskers, stretched out her hand and grasped the arm of an ancient serving-woman who happened to be passing.
"Quick, good Nurse! go ask his name of yonder gentleman. Nay, not the one in green, dear! but he that hath the black domino and purple mask. What, did I touch your poor rheumatic arm? Ah, go now, sweet Nurse!"
As the Nurse hobbled off querulously on her errand, Juliet murmured to herself an old rhyme she knew:--
"If he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed!"
When Hamlet got back to his own chambers he sat on the edge of his couch in a brown study. The silvery moonlight, struggling through the swaying branches of a tree outside the window, drifted doubtfully into the room, and made a parody of that fleecy veil which erewhile had floated about the lissome form of the lovely Capulet. That he loved her, and must tell her that he loved her, was a foregone conclusion; but how should he contrive to see Juliet again? No one knew him in Verona; he had carefully preserved his incognito; even Mercutio regarded him as simply a young gentleman from Denmark, taking his ease in a foreign city. Presented, by Mercutio, as a rich Danish tourist, the Capulets would receive him courteously, of course; as a visitor, but not as a suitor. It was in another character that he must be presented--his own.
He was pondering what steps he could take to establish his identity, when he remembered the two or three letters which he had stuffed into his wallet on quitting Elsi-nore. He lighted a taper, and began examining the papers. Among them were the half dozen billet-doux which Ophelia had returned to him the night before his departure. They were, neatly tied together by a length of black ribbon, to which was attached a sprig of rosemary.
"That was just like Ophelia!" muttered the young man, tossing the package into the wallet again; "she was always having cheerful ideas like that."
How long ago seemed the night she had handed him these love-letters, in her demure little way! How misty and remote seemed everything connected with the old life at Elsinore! His father's death, his mother's marriage, his anguish and isolation--they were like things that had befallen somebody else. There was something incredible, too, in his present situation. Was he dreaming? Was he really in Italy, and in love?
He hastily bent forward and picked up a square folded paper lying half concealed under the others.
"How could I have forgotten it!" he exclaimed.
It was a missive addressed, in Horatio's angular hand, to the Signior Capulet of Verona, containing a few lines of introduction from Horatio, whose father had dealings with some of the rich Lombardy merchants and knew many of the leading families in the city. With this and several epistles, preserved by chance, written to him by Queen Gertrude while he was at the university, Hamlet saw that he would have no difficulty in proving to the Capulets that he was the Prince of Denmark.
At an unseemly hour the next morning Mercutio was roused from his slumbers by Hamlet, who counted every minute a hundred years until he saw Juliet. Mercutio did not take this interruption too patiently, for the honest humorist was very serious as a sleeper; but his equilibrium was quickly restored by Hamlet's revelation.
The friends were long closeted together, and at the proper, ceremonious hour for visitors they repaired to the house of Capulet, who did not hide his sense of the honor done him by the prince. With scarcely any prelude Hamlet unfolded the motive of