The Countess of Albany. Vernon LeeЧитать онлайн книгу.
appearance."
This person was dressed in a manner which was "a little equivocal," wore a broad hat and a thick moustache, which, joined with the sternness of his pale cheek and the piercingness of his eye, must indeed have suggested something extremely eerie to a well-shaven, three-corner hat, respectable man of the eighteenth century; so that we are not at all surprised to hear that the doctor's imagination was crossed by "a sudden idea of the celebrated Torrifino," who, although his name sounds like a sweetmeat, was probably one of the many mysterious Italians, brothers of the Count of Udolpho and Spalatro and Zeluco, who haunted the readers of the romances of the latter eighteenth century. This personage enquired whether he was addressing "il Dottor Betoni Scozzere."
The physician having answered this question, asked, for no conceivable reason, in bad Italian of a Scotchman by a Scotchman (for we learn that the unknown was a Chevalier Graham), the mysterious moustached man requested him to attend at once upon "one who stood in immediate need." Dr. Beaton's enquiries as to the nature of the assistance and the person who required it, having been answered with the solemn remark that "the relief of the malady, and not the circumstances of the patient, is the province of a physician," and the proposal being made that he should go to the sick person blindfolded and in a shuttered carriage, the doctor's prudence and the thought of the famous Torrifino dictated a flat refusal; but the mysterious stranger would not let him off. "Signor," he exclaimed (persistently talking bad Italian), "I respect your doubts; by one word I could dispel them; but it is a secret which would be embarrassing to the possessor. It concerns the interest and safety of one—the most illustrious and unfortunate of the Scottish Jacobites." "What! Whom?" exclaimed Dr. Beaton. "I can say no more," replied the stranger; "but if you would venture any service for one who was once the dearest to your country and your cause, follow me." "Let us go," cried Dr. Beaton, the enthusiasm for Prince Charlie entirely getting the better of the thought of the famous Torrifino; and so, blindfolded, he was conveyed, partly by land and partly by water (what water, in those Apennine valleys where there are no streams save torrents in which even a punt would be impossible, it is difficult to understand), to a house standing in a garden. That it did stand in a garden appears to have been a piece of information volunteered by the mysterious Chevalier Graham, for Dr. Beaton expressly states that it was not till the two had passed through a "long range of apartments" that the bandage was removed from his eyes.
The doctor found himself in a "splendid saloon, hung with crimson velvet, and blazing with mirrors which reached from the ceiling to the floor. At the farther end a pair of folding doors stood open, and showed the dim perspective of a long conservatory." The mysterious Chevalier Graham rang a silver bell, which summoned a little page dressed in scarlet, with whom he exchanged a few rapid words in German. The communication appeared to agitate the Chevalier; and after dismissing the page, he turned to the doctor. "Signor Dottore," he said, "the most important part of your occasion is past. The lady whom you have been unhappily called to attend, met with an alarming accident in her carriage, not half an hour before I found you in the church, and the unlucky absence of her physician leaves her entirely under your charge. Her accouchement is over, apparently without any result more than exhaustion; but of that you will be the judge."
It was only at the mention of the carriage and the accident that Dr. Beaton, whose wits appear to have been wool-gathering, suddenly guessed at a possible connection between these "most illustrious and unfortunate of Scottish Jacobites," to whose house he had been thus mysteriously introduced, and the lady and gentleman in whom he had that same afternoon recognised Charles Edward and his wife. The page reappeared, and conducted Dr. Beaton through another suite of splendid apartments, till they came to an ante-room decorated with the portraits of no less remarkable persons than the rebel Duke of Perth and King James VIII., a fact which shows that the Stuarts must have carried their furniture with them, from Rome to a Lucchese villa hired for a few months, with more recklessness than one might have imagined likely in those days of post-chaises. Out of this ante-room the physician was ushered into a large and magnificent bed-room, lit with a single taper. From the side of a crimson-draped bed stepped a lady, who saluted Dr. Beaton in English, and led him up to the patient, while a female attendant nursed an infant enveloped in a mantle. The lady drew aside the curtain, and by the faint light the doctor was able to distinguish a pale, delicate face, and a slender white arm and hand lying upon the blue velvet counterpane. The lady in waiting said some words in German, in answer to which the sick woman feebly attempted to stretch out her hand to the physician. Having ascertained that the patient was in a dangerous condition, Dr. Beaton asked for pen and paper to write out a prescription, which, in that Apennine wilderness, would doubtless be made up with the greatest exactness and rapidity. By the side of the writing-desk was a dressing-table; and on what should the doctor's casual glance not rest but a miniature, thrown carelessly among the scent bottles and jewels, and in which he instantly recognised a portrait of Charles Edward such as he had seen him riding on the field of Culloden! But in a moment, when he glanced again from his writing to the toilet-table, the miniature was no longer visible.
The lady having apparently recovered, Dr. Beaton was dismissed, blindfolded as he had come, but only after having taken an oath upon the crucifix "never to speak of what he had heard, or seen, or thought, that night, except it should be in the service of King Charles," and also to quit Tuscany immediately. He repaired, therefore, to the nearest seaport, but was detained there three days before the departure of his ship. One moonlight evening, as he was walking on the sands, he was surprised by seeing an English man-of-war at anchor. In answer to his enquiries, she proved to be the Albina, Commodore O'Haloran. While he was lying in a sequestered corner, watching the frigate, he was startled by the sudden appearance of a small closed carriage and of a horseman, in whom, by the moonlight, he immediately recognised the moustached stranger of St. Rosalie. The cavalcade stopped at the water's brink, and the horseman blew a shrill whistle. Immediately a man-of-war's boat shot from behind some rocks and pulled straight towards them. A man with glimmering epaulettes sprang from the boat on to the beach, and helped into it a lady, who had alighted from the carriage, and carried something wrapped in a shawl. Dr. Beaton heard the cry of an infant, the soothing voice of the lady; and, a moment later, after a word and shake of the hand with the moustached man, the boat pulled off from shore. "For more than a quarter of an hour the tall black figure of the cavalier continued fixed upon the same spot, and in the same attitude; but suddenly the broad gigantic shadow of the frigate swung round in the moonshine, her sails filled to the breeze, and dimly brightening in the light, she bore off slow and still and stately towards the west."
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