“Delighted, are we?” my victim snarled; then his voice changed to honeyed sweetness—the sweetness underlying all Southern courtesy and hospitality, which is the sweetest in the world. “Aah, goeden dag, myneheeren, quel plaisir de vous revoir! Mynheer van der Aa, Mynheer de Vos, Mynheer Dekkers, Mynheer van Oolen, Mynheer Anderson.” He introduced them with a flourish—a little file of old men, dressed in dingy Sunday best, with heavy leather shoes in place of the customary slippers or wooden blokken, each holding his cap in his hand, each bearded and bewhiskered, each with thick weather-worn skin and little eyes folded deep in wrinkled cheeks. These were the pensioners.
The first of them was scarcely five feet high. Little black eyes snapped out from beneath his bushy brows, and he wore a sweeping white moustache and an imperial. The second was tall and had once been blond; now he was bald as a prophet, and his great white beard swung from his heavy head like a broad pendulum ticking off the minutes. The third was blind; his graceful, narrow head tilted forward, a flickering smile played about his mouth, and I noticed that when his attention was strongly attracted his eyes occasionally turned up with a strange abortive movement, as if he might take the darkness by surprise and change it into light. The fourth man stood straight and soldierly, his knees tight together, his great feet splayed out from his ankles, and his arms hanging perpendicularly. He had an ox-like head, and his wide shoulders were heavy and stooped with age. The fifth man was an aged negro, and feeble-minded.
Peeters handed me a little paper which I read aloud: “Jan van der Aa, Pieter de Vos, Georges Dekkers, Willem van Oolen, David Anderson. Is that right?”
“Ja, ja, mynheer”—“Parfaitement, monsieur”—“Yes, sair,” the voices quavered.
“Don’t you all speak English?” I demanded. “You’re entitled to American pension money, yet you don’t speak our language? Vous ne parlez pas——”
The little man with the imperial burst into volcanic speech. “Sir,” he ejaculated, “they have forgotten the Eengleesh, but I—I speak it pairfectly.”
Wilson sighed. “Yes, hang it, he does!” he whispered to me. “He’s the damnedest, convincingest, Fourth-of-July orator you ever listened to. Now he’s off! You can’t stop him!”
“You are Jan van der Aa?” I interrupted, after the first sentence.
“Jan van der Aa, sir,” he acknowledged, bowing, and continued impressively: “Sirs, you see beforre you five men who fought in the Grrand Arrmy of the Rrepublic, in the grrandest arrmy of the grreatest rrepublic of the earth.” He rolled the rr’s like thunder down the valleys of his speech. “It was not for nothing that we fought. Liberrty and Union are not little things. They are eterrnal. They are the same in everry country and in everry time. We five were at Gettysburrg and Cold Harrbourr, de Vos was at Antietam, Dekkars was wounded at Atlanta, I was at Chickamauga underr Thomas, Anderson was at Peterrsburrg”—the strange, foreign accent turned the familiar battle names into mighty voices, voices to conjure dead men from the grave and dead deeds from the old books where they lie buried; the man before us was a born orator, he was winsome, sweet, powerful, pathetic, by turns—“Forrt Fisherr, Culpeperr Courrt-House, Vicksburrg, Shiloh, Champion’s Hill, Cairro, Chattanooga.” The tremendous words rolled forth; the file of old men stirred; they awoke and threw up their heads as he trumpeted forth these names, and I seemed to see them young again and soldiers of the Republic.