There are, of course, many strange and weird methods used for the
initiation of novices into secret societies. As the years have rolled
on it has fallen to my lot to belong to a large number of these quaint
organisations; and I have been always impressed by one fact about them--
whether they were rowdy and very humanly convivial, or whether they were
wholly serious and oppressed by a lot of ill-digested moral
earnestness--they all aimed at one thing in their entrance ceremonies.
They strove to impress the new-comer by all the resources they had at
their command with the majestic wonder and glory and weight of the
brotherhood to which he had been privileged to enter on the payment of
the usual entrance fees.
Now sometimes, of course, these resources I have mentioned are purely
ridiculous, as witness that noble and ancient Order which directs its
initiates, when they are blindfold, to crawl step by step up a flight of
stairs, only to fall with a splash from the top into an
artfully-arranged tank of lukewarm water at the bottom. Also, there is
a body of apparently sane men in existence who have come together in the
sacred name of charity and who find the climax of artistic realism in
the disguise of themselves in long white beards and cloaks and in a
profound darkness, which leaves them free to play practical jokes of the
most stupid description on the strangers within their gates.
On the other hand, by the use of waxen effigies and coffins and other
symbols of the shortness of life, there are associations which try the
nerves of the candidate in the most severe fashion.
I am no enemy of secret societies and no friend. Possibly, with two or
three exceptions, they are none of them very much good either to the men
who belong to them or to the cause they espouse. All these early tests
are justified by one and the same plea--that they serve to reveal the
real character of the man who comes before them for reception. So they
do. But decent people find it hard to be heroic when they feel
themselves thrown suddenly on their backs, and have a revolver pressed
to their temples, and, in language of flowing periods that recall the
noblest efforts of Burke and John B. Gough, are told they are traitors
and spies and deserve to be blown into atoms!
One graceless scamp I knew subjected to this test jumped up unexpectedly
and yelled blue murder, then let out his fist with a haste that
surprised, and much pained, the apoplectic warden who was exhorting him
to confession and repentance, and whose mouth never resumed its natural
position after this truly lamentable occurrence. As a rule, though,
candidates suffer these things according to their temperaments and the
measure of their fortitude, and they receive the joy of their reward at
the sight of, and part in the initiation of, their dearest and their
best friends.
Personally, I was too old a hand at the entrance to a secret
organisation to feel much trepidation when Jose came to me in that tiny
waiting-room in the London quarters of the Order of St Bruno and told
me the decision of the brethren.
"After all," I reasoned within myself, "in a few moments I shall know
the best and worst about these quaintly-garbed people. It is useless to
anticipate. So far as I know there is only one rule to guide a man at a
moment like this, and that was given me by a man who had money and much
leisure coupled with the mania to belong to all the secret societies in
existence. He it was who said: `Whatever they ask you to do, do it;
whatever they ask you to say, say it; whatever they ask you to believe,
believe it.' In one word, reverence is the true keynote to all these
initiations, and possessed of this every man may go forward with
confidence and good will, certain that by its use he will flatter his
fellow-members and save himself a good deal of confusion and
shamefacedness."
Hence I arose immediately I was bidden and, signifying my willingness to
proceed, followed the Spaniard down the corridor, which all at once had
grown strangely silent and gloomy-looking, for the gas lights had now
been lowered to a tiny blue glimmer, and as I moved forward I caught the
sound of a low dirge-like chant that might well have passed for an
Office of the Dead.
Now music at such a moment is a very curious and powerful agent.
Indeed, I don't know what some secret societies would do without it.
Although I had quite made up my mind not to be impressed by this
initiation but to keep every nerve and sense on the alert to see if
treachery were afoot regarding that Lake of Sacred Treasure, I caught
myself again and again giving way to a shiver. Indeed, now and then the
sounds would break from a plain chant into a long, low mournful wail of
anguish inexpressibly pitiful and sad, summoning at a note, as it were,
all the grisly, ghostly spectres of the hearer's dead and gone memories
and making friends walk in imagination that had long since gathered
their tired muscles together and stretched their weary limbs out in a
last sleep from which no human hand should ever awaken them.
At length, with nerves strung up to a painful tension, I was led into a
tiny vault-like cell, and the door suddenly closed upon me. At first,
so abrupt was the change, that I could see nothing. But after a time my
eyes managed to pierce the gloom, and through the half lights I saw in
front of me an old monk seated at a table poring over a huge and musty
volume.
For two or three minutes he took no notice of me at all. Then suddenly,
when I least expected it, he looked up at me, and his expression was
calm, benign, yet dignified.
"I understand," he began in a rich, penetrating voice that had a
wonderful melody in it, "that you have, for some selfish reason of your
own, decided to seek election in our Order of St Bruno. You are no
stranger to secret societies or their methods, and you think it a cheap
and an easy way to get at certain facts which you are anxious to
possess."
He stopped and gazed searchingly at me, as though he would read the
deepest secret of my heart, and I flushed scarlet. I had not expected
this form of address, and his charge threw my mind off its usual
balance.
"Indeed, sir," I broke out hotly, "I have done--I have suggested nothing
of the sort."
"Are you quite sure of that?" he returned softly, bending down and
searching for something amongst his papers on the table. "Do you not
deceive yourself rather than me? Have you not made a bit of a mistake
in that contention? Just look at that a moment, and study what you see
there, and tell me whether my surmise is not really correct." He handed
me a small silver casket about ten inches square, and as I pulled open
the lid a light suddenly flashed in the depths of the box, and I caught
the reflection of my own features in the mirror that had been artfully
concealed at the bottom. For a second--but only for a second--I was
inclined to be very angry, very angry indeed. Then I checked myself.
Why, after all, should I fall into that very common error and get
enraged with the truth?
"You are quite right," I said, suddenly closing up the casket and
passing this portable mirror back to him. "I have decided to join you
for the cause you have told me. I am sorry if it is likely to give you
or the other members of the Order any annoyance, but remember, my face
has spoken where I have been silent and revealed the truth to you--"
"And as a matter of fact," he interposed gently, "you are no worse and
no better than nine-tenths of the men we have here through our hands,
and we reject them because they are not fit to be of us.
"Still," he went on with increasing earnestness, "we have no wish to
lose the value of your powerful personality and influence from the
Order. On the contrary, indeed, we welcome the prospect of your
adhesion, and we only hope that you will succeed in going through the
tests we shall be bound to set you before we can receive you with credit
to ourselves, and hope for your own peace of mind and happiness. As a
matter of fact, we have long had you in view as a possible candidate for
the Order of St Bruno--longer, much longer, than you can even imagine.
Perhaps you may think it was chance, a whim, a case of peculiar personal
artfulness, that led our young friend Casteno to seek your offices in
Stanton Street, to pay you a sum down, and to trust you so blindly with
the secret of those manuscripts, on the fate and translation of which
hangs the disposal of several millions of pounds. Indeed, indeed, it
was nothing of the sort. By that time the Order of St Bruno had got
its point of view about you, was anxious to have you in the midst of it,
and so it sent Casteno to you, and not a thing you have said to him, not
a deed you have done with him, has it failed to hear and to weigh.
"Why do I tell you these things? you may perhaps ask. Is it to frighten
you? Is it to make you wish to join a body that can, in a time when
nearly every man throws out his hands like a wild beast and grabs what
seems to him to be the largest, the finest thing and the best, lay its
plans with so much patience, far-sightedness, and care? Or do I explain
this to you as a wise friend will teach an ignorant, not in vain-glory
or boastfulness, but with an honest desire to reveal what is best and
highest in himself? Well, of all these things I leave you to judge.
Choose the answer that seems best to you, and let me fortify you with
this assurance--the Order of St Bruno requires no forced men. At any
point in the tests that will be put to you, you can retire from your
candidature and from the house. It will make no difference to us. It
will cause us no grief, no surprise, no annoyance. We shall be always
friendly disposed towards you--and any day you like you can visit us--
and we shall only ask you to give us one assurance."
"And what is that?" I questioned with great eagerness, for my curiosity
now was aroused to the highest pitch. Never, never had I known a secret
society conducted like this.
"That you will not reveal without our permission any of the things that
we communicate to you in the course of this initiation?"
"I will not." I answered, and I held up my hand.
"This is a serious matter. You must swear it," said my mentor.
"I swear it," I replied, and a sound like a mighty crash of thunder
followed, and for a moment great eccentric streaks of lightning seem to
flash on all sides of the cave.
"That is a token that your word has been accepted by the brethren, who,
quite unknown to you, are gathered around the cell listening very
carefully and observantly to your words, and particularly to the tones
in which they are uttered. Thus encouraged, I am at liberty to proceed;
and, first, I must tell you why the Order of St Bruno came into
existence. Not many years ago there was no such body of men in any
country in the world. Now we number over two thousand adherents, and
every day witnesses fresh accessions to our membership. The idea at the
root of our brotherhood is a very curious, but also a very powerful one.
It owes its origin to a man named Bruno Delganni, who was for many
years a translator in one of our Government offices--the Foreign
Office--and who suddenly inherited a large sum of money--nearly
half-a-million, I believe. As it happened, his years of servitude to
red tape had given him a very hearty disgust for, and contempt with, the
ordinary Government servants. His idea was that they are all
machine-made dummies, and he trembled to think what would happen to
England should she ever get involved in a really serious quarrel with
the European Powers. These men, he argued, are for the most part worse
than useless in their present positions. Picture an invasion of England
by a large armed force--where would they be? At their desks probably,
sorting their papers and indexing their previous performances. Not a
dozen of them have in them the making of a strong man in an emergency,
for the system on which we train our Government servants in every
department is to stamp out of them all the fine, heroic, unselfish
qualities and to leave them mere calculating or recording machines. As
a consequence, all the business of the country would be at a deadlock.
The chaos would be awful to contemplate.
"Spurred on by these reflections," proceeded the old monk, leaning back
in his chair and folding his hands on his knees, "Bruno Delganni
resolved to found with his fortune a secret society which would
silently, noiselessly, but none the less resistlessly, band together all
the real patriots in every corner of the British Empire. Their names,
he resolved should never be known unless England was actually invaded,
and then the St Bruno-ites should spring up like magic everywhere--in
the War Office, in Parliament, in every hole and corner of the Empire--
and should take the helm of affairs with one determination and one
determination alone--to make Britain the greatest, grandest, and noblest
Empire ever seen since the days of Imperial Rome. Nobody in his
organisation was to be afraid of place, of power, of enemies or of this
wonderful birthright. All diplomatists may be born cowards, this Bruno
Delganni argued, but all St Bruno-ites should be strong in the faith of
the possibilities of the Greater British Empire, and should march
towards the light of the world domination of the Anglo-Saxon race with
the belief that this was the only way to secure the `peace on earth and
goodwill towards men' which all sincere philanthropists and rulers, no
matter to what nationality they belong, really crave.
"Well," continued the speaker after a significant pause, "as, perhaps,
you will agree, this was really the dream of a most wonderful patriot
with a breadth of vision that puts each and all of our statesmen of
to-day to everlasting shame, for look in the House of Commons now and
tell me is there one--ay, only one--of its members--who would dare to
get up in his place in Parliament to-day and even declare as a matter of
righteous sentiment that England should rule the earth to safeguard the
world's destinies and peace?"
"There is not one," I answered, and half instinctively I bowed my head.
"No!" proceeded the old monk sadly, "they are all as flabby to-day, as
prone to compromise, as eager to renounce the destinies of the Empire as
they were that day when Bruno Delganni left the Foreign Office and
determined to strike a blow for an ideal he hoped might change the
entire face of the history of the world. Had Bruno, of course, not been
ground down by this Government system he might have been another
Napoleon. As it was, the man of action in him was sunk in the man of
thought, and so he set to work to build his dreams on paper, so that
when they stood fully erect they would be there all ready to become
material forces when the hour struck. I won't weary you now with all
the reverses he met, all the wild and disappointing experiences he went
through. It is, we know, an easy thing, to feel patriotic when one is
shouting the national anthem or reading the carefully-turned periods of
a party leader; and quite another, and a different thing, to be a real,
copper-bottomed, oak-through-and-through kind of patriot whom no storm
can disturb and no question of family, money, or self-interest can
alter, but with whom `God' and `Fatherland' are the only two watchwords
that matter, and all the other facts of life are mere subsidiary shadows
of the two same great all--dominant themes.
"Many and heartbreaking were the reverses dealt out to him before he got
hold of the right ideas to find out patriots and to weld them together
in a union that could never be broken; but, as these ideas will form
your tests as a candidate for admission to the Order, I must not now
reveal them to you. I have really only one more duty left to me to do
now I have sketched out to you the broad reason which governs our
existence. It is this: Do you, Hugh Glynn, feel that you are a good
enough Englishman to say `there is no country like mine, no Empire so
fine, no laws, no people so beneficent. I am determined that everywhere
she goes, in everything she does, my own Motherland should triumph, and
as long as I have breath, as long as I can stretch out my hands or use
my brains, I will never, if words or deeds of mine can avail her
anything, suffer her to fall behind her enemies, but everywhere, in
everything, I will cherish one ideal--"God prosper England."'"
"Indeed I am," I cried in eager enthusiasm.
"Then you may safely advance to the first stage of your initiation!"
said the old monk, but, to my surprise, his face was now very grave.
"Don't be alarmed at what is going to happen, but be warned in time, for
many men, I must tell you, have been just as keen and as loyal,
apparently, as yourself and have failed to be worthy of the name of
Englishmen--have miserably failed!" And he gave a great sigh.