They had lunched well at an old farmhouse on his host’s estate, a table being well spread in the great oak-beamed living-room, with its tiny windows and a fire on the wide hearth, and, in the enjoyment of an unusually good cigar, the Doctor felt disinclined to continue his feats of marksmanship. Indeed, he would have much preferred the single hour’s rest in an easy chair, to which he had always been accustomed in Italy, than to be compelled to tramp along those high hedgerows. Yet he was a guest, and could make no complaint.
Malvano possessed a very curious personality. Keen-eyed and far-sighted, nothing escaped him. He had a deep, profound knowledge of human nature, and could gauge a man accurately at a glance. His merry, careless manner, thoughtless, humorous, and given to laughing immoderately, caused those about him to consider him rather too frivolous for one of his profession, and too much given to pleasure and enjoyment. The popular mind demands the doctor to be a person who, grave-faced and care-lined, should study the Lancet weekly, and carefully note every new-fangled idea therein propounded; should be able to diagnose any disease by looking into a patient’s mouth; and who should take no pleasure outside that morbid one derived from watching the growth or decline of the maladies in persons he attended. Malvano, however, was not of that type. Without doubt he was an exceedingly clever doctor, well acquainted with all the most recent Continental treatments, and whose experience had been a long and varied one. He could chatter upon abstruse pathological subjects as easily as he could relate a story in the smoking-room, and could dance attendance upon the ladies, and amuse them by his light brilliant chatter with that graceful manner which is born in every Italian, be he peasant or prince. Within twenty miles or so of Lyddington, no house-party was complete without the jovial doctor, who delighted the younger men with his marvellous collection of humorous tales, and whom even the elder and grumpy admired on account of his perfect play at Bridge.
But Filippo Malvano was not in the best spirits this autumn afternoon, tramping across the meadows from Manstone Farm, at the Pangbourne and Hampstead Norris cross-roads, towards Clack’s Copse, where good sport had been promised by the keeper. He was careful enough not to betray to his host the fact that he was bored, but as he strode along, his heavy boots clogged with mud, he was thinking deeply of a curious incident that had occurred half an hour before, while they had been lunching up at the farm.
The remainder of the party, half a dozen guns, were on ahead, piloted by the keeper, the beaters were before them on either side of the tall hazel hedge, but beyond one or two rabbits, the spot seemed utterly destitute of game.
“What kind of sport have you this season up in Rutland?” the City merchant was asking with the air of wide experience which the Cockney sportsman is so fond of assuming.
“Fair—very fair,” Malvano replied mechanically. “Just now I’m shooting somewhere or other two or three days each week, and everywhere pheasants seem plentiful.”
His dark eyes were fixed upon the moving figures before him, and especially upon one—that of a lithe athletic man in a suit of grey homespun, who walked upright notwithstanding the uneven nature of the ground, and who carried his gun with that apparent carelessness which showed him to be a practised sportsman.
It was this man who was occupying all the Doctor’s attention. To his host he chatted on merrily, joking and laughing from time to time, but, truth to tell, he was sorely puzzled. While sitting around the farmer’s table, Mabie, turning to him, had made some observation regarding the autumn climate in Tuscany, whereupon, the young man now striding on before him, had looked up quickly, asking—
“Do you know Tuscany?”
“Quite well,” the Doctor had answered, explaining how for some years he had practised in Florence.