Aldrich Thomas Bailey
A Midnight Fantasy
“What! Horatio?”
“The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.”
“Sir, my good friend: I ‘ll change that name with you. What brings you to Verona?”
“I fetch you news, my lord.”
“Good news? Then the king is dead.”
“The king lives, but Ophelia is no more.”
“Ophelia dead!”
“Not so, my lord; she ‘s married.”
“I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student.”
“As I do live, my honored lord, ‘t is true.”
“Married, say you?”
“Married to him that sent me hither—a gentleman of winning ways and a most choice conceit, the scion of a noble house here in Verona—one Romeo.”
The oddest little expression flitted over Juliet’s face. There was never woman yet, even on her bridal day, could forgive a jilted lover marrying.
“Ophelia wed!” murmured the bridegroom.
“Do you know the lady, dear?”
“Excellent well,” replied Hamlet, turning to Juliet; “a most estimable young person, the daughter of my father’s chamberlain. She is rather given to singing ballads of an elegiac nature,” added the prince, reflectingly, “but our madcap Romeo will cure her of that. Methinks I see them now”—
“Oh, where, my lord?”
“In my mind’s eye, Horatio, surrounded by their little ones—noble youths and graceful maidens, in whom the impetuosity of the fiery Romeo is tempered by the pensiveness of the fair Ophelia. I shall take it most unkindly of them, love,” toying with Juliet’s fingers, “if they do not name their first boy Hamlet.”
It was just as my lord Hamlet finished speaking that the last horse-car for Boston—providentially belated between Water-town and Mount Auburn—swept round the curve of the track on which I was walking. The amber glow of the car-lantern lighted up my figure in the gloom, the driver gave a quick turn on the brake, and the conductor, making a sudden dexterous clutch at the strap over his head, sounded the death-knell of my fantasy as I stepped upon the rear platform.
