George grew fond of him and liked to talk with him, and the old man would invite him eagerly into his part of the basement and proudly display his room, which he kept with a soldierlike neatness. He was a veteran of the Union Army in the Civil War, and his room was filled with books, records, papers, and old clippings bearing on the war and on the part his regiment had played in it. Although he was alert and eager towards the life round him, and much too brave and hopeful a spirit to live mournfully in the past, the Civil War had been the great and central event in old man Wakefield’s life. Like many of the men of his generation, both North and South, it had never occurred to him that the war was not the central event in everyone’s life. Because it was so with him, he believed that people everywhere still lived and thought and talked about the war all the time.
He was a leading figure in the activities of his Grand Army Post, and was always bustling about with plans and projects for the coming year. It seemed to him that the Grand Army organisation, whose thinning ranks of old and feeble men he still saw with the proud eyes of forty or fifty years before, was the most powerful society in the nation, and that its word of warning or stern reproof was enough to make all the kings of the earth quake and tremble in their boots. He was bitterly scornful and would bristle up immediately at mention of the American Legion: he fancied slights and cunning trickery on the part of this body all the time, and he would ruffle up like a rooster when he spoke of the Legionnaires, and say in an angry, chirping voice:
“It’s jealousy! Nothing in the world but sheer tar-nation jealousy—that’s what it is!”
“But why, Mr. Wakefield? Why should they be jealous of you?”
“Because we reely did some soldierin’—that’s why!” he chirped angrily. “Because they know we fit the Rebels—yes! and fit ‘em good—and licked ‘em, too!” he cackled triumphantly—“in a war that was a war!...Pshaw!” he said scornfully, in a lowered voice, looking out the window with a bitter smile and with eyes that had suddenly grown misty. “What do these fellows know about a war?—Some bob-tail—raggedy—two-by-two—little jackleg feller—of a Legionnary!” He spat the words out with a malignant satisfaction, breaking at the end into a vindictive cackle. “Standin’ to their necks all day in some old trench and never gettin’ within ten miles of the enemy!” he sneered. “If they ever saw a troop of cavalry, I don’t know what they’d make of it! I reckon they’d think it was the circus come to town!” he cackled. “A war! A war! Hell-fire, that warn’t no war!” he cried derisively. “If they wanted to see a war, they should’ve been with us at the Bloody Angle! But, pshaw!” he said. “They’d a-run like rabbits if they’d been there! The only way you could a-kept ‘em would’ve been to tie ‘em to a tree!”
“Don’t you think they could have beaten the Rebels, Mr. Wakefield?”
“Beat ‘em?” he shrilled. “Beat ‘em! Why, boy, what are you talkin’ about?...Hell! If Stonewall Jackson ever started for that gang, he’d run ‘em ragged! Yes, sir! They’d light out so fast they’d straighten out all the bends of the road as they went by!” cried old man Wakefield, cackling. “Pshaw!” he said quietly and scornfully again. “They couldn’t do it! It ain’t in ‘em!...But I’ll tell you this much!” he cried suddenly in an excited voice. “We’re not goin’ to put up with it much longer! The boys have had just about as much of it as they can stand! If they try to do us like they done last year—pshaw!” he broke off again, and looked out the window shaking his head—“Why it’s all as plain as the nose on your face! It’s jealousy—just plain, confounded jealousy—that’s all in the world it is!”
“What is, Mr. Wakefield?”
“Why, the way they done us last year!” he cried. “Puttin’ us way back there at the tail-end of the pee-rade, when by all the rights—as everybody knows—we should’ve come first! But we’ll fix ‘em!” he cried warningly. “We’ve got a way to fix ‘em!” he said with a triumphant shake of the head. “I know the thing we’re goin’ to do this year,” he cried, “if they try another trick like that on us!”
“What are you going to do, Mr. Wakefield?”
“Why,” he cackled, “we won’t pee-rade! We simply won’t pee-rade! We’ll tell ‘em they can hold their derned pee-rade without us!” he chirped exultantly. “And I reckon that’ll fix ‘em! Oh yes! That’ll bring ‘em round, or I miss my guess!” he crowed.
“It ought to, Mr. Wakefield.”
“Why, boy,” he said solemnly, “if we ever did a thing like that, there would be a wave of protest—a wave of protest”—he cried with a sweeping gesture of the arm, as his voice rose strongly—“from here to Californy!...The people wouldn’t stand for it!” he cried. “They’d make those fellers back down in a hurry!”
And as George left him, the old man would come with him to the door, shake his hand warmly and, with an eager and lonely look in his old eyes, say: