We consulted guide-books until we were bewildered, but in the midst of confusion I held fast to two things. We had seen Romeo's house, towering picturesquely behind the Scaligers' tombs; but I wanted to see where Juliet had lived, and where she had been buried.
"The Prince says it's all nonsense," exclaimed Aunt Kathryn. "If there was a slight foundation for the story in a great family scandal here about Shakspere's time, anyhow there's none for the houses or the tomb—"
Beechy stopped her ears. "You're real mean," she said, "you and the Prince both. It's just as bad as when you thought it your duty to tell me there was no Santa Claus. But I don't care; there is. I shall believe it when I'm seventeen; and I believe in the Romeo and Juliet houses too."
But when we were in the street of Juliet's house—she and Sir Ralph and I—Beechy pouted. Standing with her hands behind her, her long braids of hair dangling half-way down her short skirt as she threw back her head to gaze up, she looked incredibly modern and American. "There were no tourists' agencies in those days," she remarked, regretfully, "so I suppose Shakspere had to trust to hearsay, and somebody must have told him a big tarradiddle. I guess Juliet was really on a visit to an aunt in the country when she first met Romeo, for fancy a girl in her senses yelling down from that balcony up at the top of a tall house to any lover, let alone a secret one? Besides, there wouldn't have been enough rope in Verona to make the ladder for Romeo to climb up."
After this speech, I decided that, fond as I really am of her, I could not visit Juliet's tomb in Beechy's society. I gave no hint of my intentions, but after an exquisite hour (which nobody could spoil) in that most adorable of churches, San Zenone, and another in Sant' Anastasia, I slipped away while Beechy and Sir Ralph were picking out the details of St. Peter's life on the panels of a marvellous pilaster.
We had had a cab by the hour; and when they should discover my absence, they would take it for granted that I had got tired and gone home. They would then proceed to carry out their programme of sight-seeing very happily without me, for Beechy amuses Sir Ralph immensely, child as she is, and she makes no secret of taking pleasure in his society. She teases him, and he likes it; he draws her out, and her wit brightens in the process.
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.