My Friend the ChauffeurWilliamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
General
My Friend the Chauffeur
Williamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
Automobiles -- Fiction; Europe -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
I hurried off when their backs were turned. Not far away I found a
prowling cab, and told the man to drive me to Juliet's tomb. He stared,
as if in surprise, for I suppose girls of our class don't go about much
alone in Italian towns; but he condescended to accept me as a fare.
However, to show his disapproval maybe, he rattled me through streets
old and beautiful, ugly and modern (why should most modern things be
ugly, even in Italy?) at a tremendous pace. At last he stopped before a
high, blank wall, in a most dismal region, apparently the outskirts of
the town. I would hardly believe that he had brought me to the right
place, but he reassured me. In the distance another cab was approaching,
probably on the same errand. I rang a bell, and a gate was opened by a
nice-looking woman, who knew well what I wanted without my telling, and
she spoke so clearly that I was able to understand much of what she
said. Instead of feeling that the romance of visiting Juliet's
burial-place was destroyed by traversing the great open square of the
communal stables, where an annual horse show is held, I was conscious of
a strange charm in the unsuitable surroundings. It was like coming upon
a beautiful white pearl in a battered old oyster-shell, to pass through
this narrow gateway at the far end of a dusty square, and find myself
face to face with a glimmering tomb in a quiet cloister.
The strong contrast between the sordid exterior and this dainty, hidden
interior was nothing less than dramatic. The lights and shadows played
softly at hide-and-seek, like dumb children, over the grass, among the
pillars of the little cloister, over the tomb itself. I was thankful to
be alone, troubled by no fellow-tourists, safe from little Beechy's too
comical fancies, free to be as sentimental as I liked. And I liked to be
very sentimental indeed.
I stood by the tomb, feeling almost like a mourner, when a voice made me
start. "Is it Juliet's spirit?" asked Prince Dalmar-Kalm.
I would rather it had been any one else. "How odd that you should come
here!" I exclaimed, while my face must have shown that the surprise was
not too pleasant.
"It is not at all odd. You are here," answered the Prince. "You said at
_dejeuner_ that you were coming, if you had to come alone. _Eh bien?_ I
saw Miss Beechy and Sir Ralph Moray driving together, deep in Baedeker.
My heart told me where you were; and I arrive to find you looking like
Juliet come to life again. Perhaps it is so indeed. Perhaps you were
Juliet in another incarnation. Yes, I feel sure you were. And I was
Romeo."
"I'm sure you were not," I replied; but I could not help laughing at his
stagey manner, though I was more annoyed than ever now, and annoyed with
myself too. "I particularly wished to be alone here, or I wouldn't have
slipped away from Beechy and Sir Ralph, so--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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