第8章

It was just before noon next day that the travellers arrived.Iwas sitting in the shady loggia of the inn, reading a volume of De Thou, when there drove up to the door two coaches.Out of the first descended very slowly and stiffly four gentlemen; out of the second four servants and a quantity of baggage.As it chanced there was no one about, the courtyard slept its sunny noontide sleep, and the only movement was a lizard on the wall and a buzz of flies by the fountain.Seeing no sign of the landlord, one of the travellers approached me with a grave inclination.

"This is the inn called the Tre Croci, sir?" he asked.

I said it was, and shouted on my own account for the host.

Presently that personage arrived with a red face and a short wind, having ascended rapidly from his own cellar.He was awed by the dignity of the travellers, and made none of his usual protests of incapacity.The servants filed off solemnly with the baggage, and the four gentlemen set themselves down beside me in the loggia and ordered each a modest flask of wine.

At first I took them for our countrymen, but as I watched them the conviction vanished.All four were tall and lean beyond the average of mankind.They wore suits of black, with antique starched frills to their shirts; their hair was their own and unpowdered.Massive buckles of an ancient pattern adorned their square-toed shoes, and the canes they carried were like the yards of a small vessel.They were four merchants, I had guessed, of Scotland, maybe, or of Newcastle, but their voices were not Scotch, and their air had no touch of commerce.Take the heavy-browed preoccupation of a Secretary of State, add the dignity of a bishop, the sunburn of a fox-hunter, and something of the disciplined erectness of a soldier, and you may perceive the manner of these four gentlemen.By the side of them my assurance vanished.Compared with their Olympian serenity my Person seemed fussy and servile.Even so, I mused, must Mr.

Franklin have looked when baited in Parliament by the Tory pack.

The reflection gave me the cue.Presently I caught from their conversation the word "Washington," and the truth flashed upon me.I was in the presence of four of Mr.Franklin's countrymen.

Having never seen an American in the flesh, I rejoiced at the chance of enlarging my acquaintance.

They brought me into the circle by a polite question as to the length of road to Verona.Soon introductions followed.My name intrigued them, and they were eager to learn of my kinship to Uncle Charles.The eldest of the four, it appeared, was Mr.

Galloway out of Maryland.Then came two brothers, Sylvester by name, of Pennsylvania, and last Mr.Fish, a lawyer of New York.

All four had campaigned in the late war, and all four were members of the Convention, or whatever they call their rough-and-ready parliament.They were modest in their behaviour, much disinclined to speak of their past, as great men might be whose reputation was world-wide.Somehow the names stuck in my memory.I was certain that I had heard them linked with some stalwart fight or some moving civil deed or some defiant manifesto.The making of history was in their steadfast eye and the grave lines of the mouth.Our friendship flourished mightily in a brief hour, and brought me the invitation, willingly accepted, to sit with them at dinner.

There was no sign of the Duchess or Cristine or Oliphant.

Whatever had happened, that household to-day required all hands on deck, and I was left alone with the Americans.In my day Ihave supped with the Macaronies, I have held up my head at the Cocoa Tree, I have avoided the floor at hunt dinners, I have drunk glass to glass with Tom Carteron.But never before have Iseen such noble consumers of good liquor as those four gentlemen from beyond the Atlantic.They drank the strong red Cyprus as if it had been spring-water."The dust of your Italian roads takes some cleansing, Mr.Townshend," was their only excuse, but in truth none was needed.The wine seemed only to thaw their iron decorum.Without any surcease of dignity they grew communicative, and passed from lands to peoples and from peoples to constitutions.Before we knew it we were embarked upon high politics.

Naturally we did not differ on the war.Like me, they held it to have been a grievous necessity.They had no bitterness against England, only regrets for her blunders.Of his Majesty they spoke with respect, of his Majesty's advisers with dignified condemnation.They thought highly of our troops in America;less highly of our generals.

"Look you, sir," said Mr.Galloway, "in a war such as we have witnessed the Almighty is the only strategist.You fight against the forces of Nature, and a newcomer little knows that the success or failure of every operation he can conceive depends not upon generalship, but upon the confirmation of a vast country.

Our generals, with this in mind and with fewer men, could make all your schemes miscarry.Had the English soldiers not been of such stubborn stuff, we should have been victors from the first.

Our leader was not General Washington but General America, and his brigadiers were forests, swamps, lakes, rivers, and high mountains.""And now," I said, "having won, you have the greatest of human experiments before you.Your business is to show that the Saxon stock is adaptable to a republic."It seemed to me that they exchanged glances.

"We are not pedants," said Mr.Fish, "and have no desire to dispute about the form of a constitution.A people may be as free under a king as under a senate.Liberty is not the lackey of any type of government.

These were strange words from a member of a race whom I had thought wedded to the republicanism of Helvidius Priscus.

"As a loyal subject of a monarchy," I said, "I must agree with you.But your hands are tied, for I cannot picture the establishment of a House of Washington and--if not, where are you to turn for your sovereign?"Again a smile seemed to pass among the four.