At the eleventh hour he came,
But his wages were the same
As ours who all day long had trod
The wine-press of the Wrath of God.
When he shouldered through the lines
Of our cropped and mangled vines,
His unjaded eye could scan
How each hour had marked its man.
(Children of the morning-tide
With the hosts of noon had died;
And our noon contingents lay
Dead with twilight’s spent array.)
Since his back had felt no load,
Virtue still in him abode;
So he swiftly made his own
Those last spoils we had not won.
We went home, delivered thence,
Grudging him no recompense
Till he portioned praise or blame
To our works before he came.
_Till he showed us for our good--
Deaf to mirth, and blind to scorn--
How we might have best withstood
Burdens that he had not borne!_
“IN THE INTERESTS OF THE BRETHREN”
“BANQUET NIGHT”
“Once in so often,” King Solomon said,
Watching his quarrymen drill the stone,
“We will club our garlic and wine and bread
And banquet together beneath my Throne.
And all the Brethren shall come to that mess
As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.
“Send a swift shallop to Hiram of Tyre,
Felling and floating our beautiful trees,
Say that the Brethren and I desire
Talk with our Brethren who use the seas.
And we shall be happy to meet them at mess
As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.
“Carry this message to Hiram Abif--
Excellent Master of forge and mine:--
I and the Brethren would like it if
He and the Brethren will come to dine
(Garments from Bozrah or morning-dress)
As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.
“God gave the Hyssop and Cedar their place--
Also the Bramble, the Fig and the Thorn--
But that is no reason to black a man’s face
Because he is not what he hasn’t been born.
And, as touching the Temple, I hold and profess
We are Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.”
So it was ordered and so it was done,
And the hewers of wood and the Masons of Mark,
With foc’sle hands of the Sidon run
And Navy Lords from the _Royal Ark_,
Came and sat down and were merry at mess
As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.
_The Quarries are hotter than Hiram’s forge,
No one is safe from the dog-whips’ reach.
It’s mostly snowing up Lebanon gorge,
And it’s always blowing off Joppa beach;
But once in so often, the messenger brings
Solomon’s mandate: “Forget these things!
Brother to Beggars and Fellow to Kings,
Companion of Princes--forget these things!
Fellow-Craftsman, forget these things!”_
“IN THE INTERESTS OF THE BRETHREN”
I was buying a canary in a birdshop when he first spoke to me and
suggested that I should take a less highly coloured bird. “The colour
is in the feeding,” said he. “Unless you know how to feed ’em, it goes.
Canaries are one of our hobbies.”
He passed out before I could thank him. He was a middle-aged man with
grey hair and a short, dark beard, rather like a Sealyham terrier in
silver spectacles. For some reason his face and his voice stayed in
my mind so distinctly that, months later, when I jostled against him
on a platform crowded with an Angling Club going to the Thames, I
recognised, turned, and nodded.
“I took your advice about the canary,” I said.
“Did you? Good!” he replied heartily over the rod-case on his shoulder,
and was parted from me by the crowd.
* * * * *
A few years ago I turned into a tobacconist’s to have a badly stopped
pipe cleaned out.
“Well! Well! And how did the canary do?” said the man behind the
counter. We shook hands, and “What’s your name?” we both asked together.
His name was Lewis Holroyd Burges, of “Burges and Son,” as I might have
seen above the door--but Son had been killed in Egypt. His hair was
whiter than it had been, and the eyes were sunk a little.
“Well! Well! To think,” said he, “of one man in all these millions
turning up in this curious way, when there’s so many who don’t turn
up at all--eh?” (It was then that he told me of Son Lewis’s death and
why the boy had been christened Lewis.) “Yes. There’s not much left for
middle-aged people just at present. Even one’s hobbies----We used to
fish together. And the same with canaries! We used to breed ’em for
colour--deep orange was our speciality. That’s why I spoke to you, if
you remember; but I’ve sold all my birds. Well! Well! And now we must
locate your trouble.”
He bent over my erring pipe and dealt with it skilfully as a surgeon. A
soldier came in, spoke in an undertone, received a reply, and went out.
“Many of my clients are soldiers nowadays, and a number of ’em belong
to the Craft,” said Mr. Burges. “It breaks my heart to give them the
tobaccos they ask for. On the other hand, not one man in five thousand
has a tobacco-palate. Preference, yes. Palate, no. Here’s your pipe,
again. It deserves better treatment than it’s had. There’s a procedure,
a ritual, in all things. Any time you’re passing by again, I assure
you, you will be welcome. I’ve one or two odds and ends that may
interest you.”
I left the shop with the rarest of all feelings on me--the sensation
which is only youth’s right--that I might have made a friend. A little
distance from the door I was accosted by a wounded man who asked for
“Burges’s.” The place seemed to be known in the neighbourhood.
I found my way to it again, and often after that, but it was not till
my third visit that I discovered Mr. Burges held a half interest in
Ackerman and Pernit’s, the great cigar-importers, which had come to him
through an uncle whose children now lived almost in the Cromwell Road,
and said that the uncle had been on the Stock Exchange.
“_I_’m a shopkeeper by instinct,” said Mr. Burges. “I like the ritual
of handling things. The shop has done me well. I like to do well by the
shop.”
It had been established by his grandfather in 1827, but the fittings
and appointments must have been at least half a century older. The
brown and red tobacco- and snuff-jars, with Crowns, Garters, and
names of forgotten mixtures in gold leaf; the polished “Oronoque”
tobacco-barrels on which favoured customers sat; the cherry-black
mahogany counter, the delicately moulded shelves, the reeded
cigar-cabinets, the German-silver-mounted scales, and the Dutch brass
roll and cake-cutter, were things to covet.
“They aren’t so bad,” he admitted. “That large Bristol jar hasn’t
any duplicate to my knowledge. Those eight snuff-jars on the
third shelf--they’re Dollin’s ware; he used to work for Wimble in
Seventeen-Forty--are absolutely unique. Is there any one in the trade
now could tell you what ‘Romano’s Hollande’ was? Or ‘Scholten’s’?
Here’s a snuff-mull of George the First’s time, and here’s a Louis
Quinze--what am I talking of? Treize, Treize, of course--grater
for making bran-snuff. They were regular tools of the shop in my
grandfather’s day. And who on earth to leave ’em to outside of the
British Museum now, _I_ can’t think!”
His pipes--I would this were a tale for virtuosi--his amazing
collection of pipes was kept in the parlour, and this gave me the
privilege of making his wife’s acquaintance. One morning, as I was
looking covetously at a jacaranda-wood “cigarro”--_not_ cigar--cabinet
with silver lock-plates and drawer-knobs of Spanish work, a wounded
Canadian came into the shop and disturbed our happy little committee.
“Say,” he began loudly, “are you the right place?”
“Who sent you?” Mr. Burges demanded.
“A man from Messines. But _that_ ain’t the point! I’ve got no
certificates, nor papers--nothin’, you understand. I left my Lodge
owin’ ’em seventeen dollars back-dues. But this man at Messines told me
it wouldn’t make any odds with _you_.”
“It doesn’t,” said Mr. Burges. “We meet to-night at 7 P. M.”
The man’s face fell a yard. “Hell!” said he. “But I’m in hospital--I
can’t get leaf.”
“_And_ Tuesdays and Fridays at 3 P. M.,” Mr. Burges added promptly.
“You’ll have to be proved, of course.”
“Guess I can get by _that_ all right,” was the cheery reply. “Toosday,
then.” He limped off, beaming.
“Who might that be?” I asked.
“I don’t know any more than you do--except he must be a Brother.
London’s full of Masons now. Well! Well! We must do what we can these
days. If you’ll come to tea this evening, I’ll take you on to Lodge
afterwards. It’s a Lodge of Instruction.”
“Delighted. Which is your Lodge?” I said, for up till then he had not
given me its name.
“‘Faith and Works 5837’--the third Saturday of every month. Our Lodge
of Instruction meets nominally every Thursday, but we sit oftener than
that now because there are so many Visiting Brothers in town.” Here
another customer entered, and I went away much interested in the range
of Brother Burges’s hobbies.
At tea-time he was dressed as for Church, and wore gold pince-nez in
lieu of the silver spectacles. I blessed my stars that I had thought to
change into decent clothes.
“Yes, we owe that much to the Craft,” he assented. “All Ritual is
fortifying. Ritual’s a natural necessity for mankind. The more things
are upset, the more they fly to it. I abhor slovenly Ritual anywhere.
By the way, would you mind assisting at the examinations, if there are
many Visiting Brothers to-night? You’ll find some of ’em very rusty
but--it’s the Spirit, not the Letter, that giveth life. The question
of Visiting Brethren is an important one. There are so many of them in
London now, you see; and so few places where they can meet.”
“You dear thing!” said Mrs. Burges, and handed him his locked and
initialed apron-case.
“Our Lodge is only just round the corner,” he went on. “You mustn’t be
too critical of our appurtenances. The place was a garage once.”
As far as I could make out in the humiliating darkness, we wandered up
a mews and into a courtyard. Mr. Burges piloted me, murmuring apologies
for everything in advance.
“You mustn’t expect----” he was still saying when we stumbled up a
porch and entered a carefully decorated ante-room hung round with
Masonic prints. I noticed Peter Gilkes and Barton Wilson, fathers of
“Emulation” working, in the place of honour; Kneller’s Christopher
Wren; Dunkerley, with his own Fitz-George book-plate below and the bend
sinister on the Royal Arms; Hogarth’s caricature of Wilkes, also his
disreputable “Night”; and a beautifully framed set of Grand Masters,
from Anthony Sayer down.
“Are these another hobby of yours?” I asked.
“Not this time,” Mr. Burges smiled. “We have to thank Brother Lemming
for them.” He introduced me to the senior partner of Lemming and Orton,
whose little shop is hard to find, but whose words and cheques in the
matter of prints are widely circulated.
“The frames are the best part of ’em,” said Brother Lemming after my
compliments. “There are some more in the Lodge Room. Come and look.
We’ve got the big Desaguliers there that nearly went to Iowa.”
I had never seen a Lodge Room better fitted. From mosaicked floor to
appropriate ceiling, from curtain to pillar, implements to seats, seats
to lights, and little carved music-loft at one end, every detail was
perfect in particular kind and general design. I said what I thought of
them all, many times over.
“I told you I was a Ritualist,” said Mr. Burges. “Look at those carved
corn-sheaves and grapes on the back of these Wardens’ chairs. That’s
the old tradition--before Masonic furnishers spoilt it. I picked up
that pair in Stepney ten years ago--the same time I got the gavel.”
It was of ancient, yellowed ivory, cut all in one piece out of some
tremendous tusk. “That came from the Gold Coast,” he said. “It belonged
to a Military Lodge there in 1794. You can see the inscription.”
“If it’s a fair question,” I began, “how much----”
“It stood us,” said Brother Lemming, his thumbs in his waistcoat
pockets, “an appreciable sum of money when we built it in 1906, even
with what Brother Anstruther--he was our contractor--cheated himself
out of. By the way, that ashlar there is pure Carrara, he tells me. I
don’t understand marbles myself. Since then I expect we’ve put in--oh,
quite another little sum. Now we’ll go to the examination-room and take
on the Brethren.”
He led me back, not to the ante-room, but a convenient chamber flanked
with what looked like confessional-boxes (I found out later that that
was what they had been, when first picked up for a song near Oswestry).
A few men in uniform were waiting at the far end. “That’s only the head
of the procession. The rest are in the ante-room,” said an officer of
the Lodge.
Brother Burges assigned me my discreet box, saying: “Don’t be
surprised. They come all shapes.”
“Shapes” was not a bad description, for my first penitent was all
head-bandages--escaped from an Officers’ Hospital, Pentonville way.
He asked me in profane Scots how I expected a man with only six teeth
and half a lower lip to speak to any purpose, so we compromised on the
signs. The next--a New Zealander from Taranaki--reversed the process,
for he was one-armed, and that in a sling. I mistrusted an enormous
Sergeant-Major of Heavy Artillery, who struck me as much too glib, so
I sent him on to Brother Lemming in the next box, who discovered he
was a Past District Grand Officer. My last man nearly broke me down
altogether. Everything seemed to have gone from him.
“I don’t blame yer,” he gulped at last. “I wouldn’t pass my own self
on my answers, but I give yer my word that so far as I’ve had any
religion, it’s been all the religion I’ve had. For God’s sake, let me
sit in Lodge again, Brother!”
When the examinations were ended, a Lodge Officer came round with
our aprons--no tinsel or silver-gilt confections, but heavily-corded
silk with tassels and--where a man could prove he was entitled to
them--levels, of decent plate. Some one in front of me tightened a
belt on a stiffly silent person in civil clothes with discharge-badge.
“’Strewth! This is comfort again,” I heard him say. The companion
nodded. The man went on suddenly: “Here! What’re you doing? Leave off!
You promised not to! Chuck it!” and dabbed at his companion’s streaming
eyes.
“Let him leak,” said an Australian signaller. “Can’t you see how happy
the beggar is?”
It appeared that the silent Brother was a “shell-shocker” whom Brother
Lemming had passed, on the guarantee of his friend and--what moved
Lemming more--the threat that, were he refused, he would have fits from
pure disappointment. So the “shocker” went happily and silently among
Brethren evidently accustomed to these displays.
We fell in, two by two, according to tradition, fifty of us at least,
and were played into Lodge by what I thought was an harmonium, but
which I discovered to be an organ of repute. It took time to settle us
down, for ten or twelve were cripples and had to be helped into long or
easy chairs. I sat between a one-footed R.A.M.C. Corporal and a Captain
of Territorials, who, he told me, had “had a brawl” with a bomb, which
had bent him in two directions. “But that’s first-class Bach the
organist is giving us now,” he said delightedly. “I’d like to know him.
_I_ used to be a piano-thumper of sorts.”
“I’ll introduce you after Lodge,” said one of the regular Brethren
behind us--a plump, torpedo-bearded man, who turned out to be a doctor.
“After all, there’s nobody to touch Bach, is there?” Those two plunged
at once into musical talk, which to outsiders is as fascinating as
trigonometry.
Now a Lodge of Instruction is mainly a parade-ground for Ritual. It
cannot initiate or confer degrees, but is limited to rehearsals and
lectures. Worshipful Brother Burges, resplendent in Solomon’s Chair (I
found out later where that, too, had been picked up), briefly told the
Visiting Brethren how welcome they were and always would be, and asked
them to vote what ceremony should be rendered for their instruction.
When the decision was announced he wanted to know whether any Visiting
Brothers would take the duties of Lodge Officers. They protested
bashfully that they were too rusty. “The very reason why,” said Brother
Burges, while the organ Bached softly. My musical Captain wriggled in
his chair.
“One moment, Worshipful Sir.” The plump Doctor rose. “We have here a
musician for whom place and opportunity are needed. Only,” he went on
colloquially, “those organ-loft steps are a bit steep.”
“How much,” said Brother Burges with the solemnity of an initiation,
“does our Brother weigh?”
“Very little over eight stone,” said the Brother. “Weighed this
morning, Worshipful Sir.”
The Past District Grand Officer, who was also a Battery-Sergeant-Major,
waddled across, lifted the slight weight in his arms and bore it to the
loft, where, the regular organist pumping, it played joyously as a soul
caught up to Heaven by surprise.
When the visitors had been coaxed to supply the necessary officers,
a ceremony was rehearsed. Brother Burges forbade the regular members
to prompt. The visitors had to work entirely by themselves, but, on
the Battery-Sergeant-Major taking a hand, he was ruled out as of too
exalted rank. They floundered badly after that support was withdrawn.
The one-footed R.A.M.C. on my right chuckled.
“D’you like it?” said the Doctor to him.
“_Do_ I? It’s Heaven to me, sittin’ in Lodge again, It’s all comin’
back now, watching their mistakes. I haven’t much religion, but all I
had I learnt in Lodge.” Recognising me, he flushed a little as one does
when one says a thing twice over in another’s hearing. “Yes, ’veiled in
all’gory and illustrated in symbols’--the Fatherhood of God, an’ the
Brotherhood of Man; an’ what more in Hell _do_ you want?... Look at
’em!” He broke off giggling. “See! See! They’ve tied the whole thing
into knots. _I_ could ha’ done it better myself--my one foot in France.
Yes, I should think they _ought_ to do it again!”
The new organist covered the little confusion that had arisen with what
sounded like the wings of angels.
When the amateurs, rather red and hot, had finished, they demanded an
exhibition-working of their bungled ceremony by Regular Brethren of the
Lodge. Then I realised for the first time what word-and-gesture-perfect
Ritual can be brought to mean. We all applauded, the one-footed
Corporal most of all.
“We _are_ rather proud of our working, and this is an audience worth
playing up to,” the Doctor said.
Next the Master delivered a little lecture on the meanings of some
pictured symbols and diagrams. His theme was a well-worn one, but his
deep holding voice made it fresh.
“Marvellous how these old copybook-headings persist,” the Doctor said.
“_That’s_ all right!” the one-footed man spoke cautiously out of
the side of his mouth like a boy in form. “But they’re the kind o’
copybook-headin’s we shall find burnin’ round our bunks in Hell.
Believe me-ee! I’ve broke enough of ’em to know. Now, h’sh!” He leaned
forward, drinking it all in.
Presently Brother Burges touched on a point which had given rise to
some diversity of Ritual. He asked for information. “Well, in Jamaica,
Worshipful Sir,” a Visiting Brother began, and explained how they
worked that detail in his parts. Another and another joined in from
different quarters of the Lodge (and the world), and when they were
well warmed the Doctor sidled softly round the walls and, over our
shoulders, passed us cigarettes.
“A shocking innovation,” he said, as he returned to the
Captain-musician’s vacant seat on my left. “But men can’t really talk
without tobacco, and we’re only a Lodge of Instruction.”
“An’ I’ve learned more in one evenin’ here than ten years.” The
one-footed man turned round for an instant from a dark, sour-looking
Yeoman in spurs who was laying down the law on Dutch Ritual. The blue
haze and the talk increased, while the organ from the loft blessed us
all.
“But this is delightful,” said I to the Doctor. “How did it all happen?”
“Brother Burges started it. He used to talk to the men who dropped
into his shop when the war began. He told us sleepy old chaps in Lodge
that what men wanted more than anything else was Lodges where they
could sit--just sit and be happy like we are now. He was right too.
We’re learning things in the war. A man’s Lodge means more to him than
people imagine. As our friend on your right said just now, very often
Masonry’s the only practical creed we’ve ever listened to since we were
children. Platitudes or no platitudes, it squares with what everybody
knows ought to be done.” He sighed. “And if this war hasn’t brought
home the Brotherhood of Man to us all, I’m--a Hun!”
“How did you get your visitors?” I went on.
“Oh, I told a few fellows in hospital near here, at Burges’s
suggestion, that we had a Lodge of Instruction and they’d be welcome.
And they came. And they told their friends. And _they_ came! That was
two years ago!--and now we’ve Lodge of Instruction two nights a week,
and a matinée nearly every Tuesday and Friday for the men who can’t get
evening leave. Yes, it’s all very curious. I’d no notion what the Craft
meant--and means--till this war.”
“Nor I, till this evening,” I replied.
“Yet it’s quite natural if you think. Here’s London--all
England--packed with the Craft from all over the world, and nowhere
for them to go. Why, our weekly visiting attendance for the last four
months averaged just under a hundred and forty. Divide by four--call
it thirty-five Visiting Brethren a time. Our record’s seventy-one, but
we have packed in as many as eighty-four at Banquets. You can see for
yourself what a potty little hole we are!”
“Banquets too!” I cried. “It must cost like anything. May the Visiting
Brethren----”
The Doctor--his name was Keede--laughed. “No, a Visiting Brother may
_not_.”
“But when a man has had an evening like this, he wants to----”
“That’s what they all say. That makes our difficulty. They do exactly
what you were going to suggest, and they’re offended if we don’t take
it.”
“Don’t you?” I asked.
“My dear man--what _does_ it come to? They can’t all stay to Banquet.
Say one hundred suppers a week--fifteen quid--sixty a month--seven
hundred and twenty a year. How much are Lemming and Orton worth? And
Ellis and McKnight--that long big man over yonder--the provision
dealers? How much d’you suppose could Burges write a cheque for and
not feel? ’Tisn’t as if he had to save for any one now. I assure you
we have no scruple in calling on the Visiting Brethren when we want
anything. We couldn’t do the work otherwise. Have you noticed how the
Lodge is kept--brass-work, jewels, furniture, and so on?”
“I have indeed,” I said. “It’s like a ship. You could eat your dinner
off the floor.”
“Well, come here on a bye-day and you’ll often find half-a-dozen
Brethren, with eight legs between ’em, polishing and ronuking and
sweeping everything they can get at. I cured a shell-shocker this
spring by giving him our jewels to look after. He pretty well polished
the numbers off ’em, but--it kept him from fighting Huns in his sleep.
And when we need Masters to take our duties--two matinées a week is
rather a tax--we’ve the choice of P.M.’s from all over the world. The
Dominions are much keener on Ritual than an average English Lodge.
Besides that----Oh, we’re going to adjourn. Listen to the greetings.
They’ll be interesting.”
The crack of the great gavel brought us to our feet, after some surging
and plunging among the cripples. Then the Battery-Sergeant-Major, in
a trained voice, delivered hearty and fraternal greetings to “Faith
and Works” from his tropical District and Lodge. The others followed,
without order, in every tone between a grunt and a squeak. I heard
“Hauraki,” “Inyanga-Umbezi,” “Aloha,” “Southern Lights” (from somewhere
Punta Arenas way), “Lodge of Rough Ashlars” (and that Newfoundland
Naval Brother looked it), two or three Stars of something or other,
half-a-dozen cardinal virtues, variously arranged, hailing from
Klondyke to Kalgoorlie, one Military Lodge on one of the fronts, thrown
in with a severe Scots burr by my friend of the head-bandages, and the
rest as mixed as the Empire itself. Just at the end there was a little
stir. The silent Brother had begun to make noises; his companion tried
to soothe him.
“Let him be! Let him be!” the Doctor called professionally. The man
jerked and mouthed, and at last mumbled something unintelligible even
to his friend, but a small dark P.M. pushed forward importantly.
“It iss all right,” he said. “He wants to say----” he spat out some
yard-long Welsh name, adding, “That means Pembroke Docks, Worshipful
Sir. We haf good Masons in Wales, too.” The silent man nodded approval.
“Yes,” said the Doctor, quite unmoved. “It happens that way sometimes.
_Hespere panta fereis_, isn’t it? The Star brings ’em all home. I must
get a note of that fellow’s case after Lodge. I saw you didn’t care for
music,” he went on, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with a little
more. It’s a paraphrase from Micah. Our organist arranged it. We sing
it antiphonally, as a sort of dismissal.”
Even I could appreciate what followed. The singing seemed confined to
half-a-dozen trained voices answering each other till the last line,
when the full Lodge came in. I give it as I heard it:
“We have showed thee, O Man,
What is good.
What doth the Lord require of us?
Or Conscience’ self desire of us?
But to do justly--
But to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with our God,
As every Mason should.”
Then we were played and sung out to the quaint tune of the “Entered
Apprentices’ Song.” I noticed that the regular Brethren of the Lodge
did not begin to take off their regalia till the lines:
“Great Kings, Dukes, and Lords
Have laid down their swords.”
They moved into the ante-room, now set for the Banquet, on the verse:
“Antiquity’s pride
We have on our side,
Which maketh men just in their station.”
The Brother (a big-boned clergyman) that I found myself next to at
table told me the custom was “a fond thing vainly invented” on the
strength of some old legend. He laid down that Masonry should be
regarded as an “intellectual abstraction.” An Officer of Engineers
disagreed with him, and told us how in Flanders, a year before, some
ten or twelve Brethren held Lodge in what was left of a Church. Save
for the Emblems of Mortality and plenty of rough ashlars, there was no
furniture.
“I warrant you weren’t a bit the worse for that,” said the Clergyman.
“The idea should be enough without trappings.”
“But it wasn’t,” said the other. “We took a lot of trouble to make our
regalia out of camouflage-stuff that we’d pinched, and we manufactured
our jewels from old metal. I’ve got the set now. It kept us happy for
weeks.”
“Ye were absolutely irregular an’ unauthorised. Whaur was your
Warrant?” said the Brother from the Military Lodge. “Grand Lodge ought
to take steps against----”
“If Grand Lodge had any sense,” a private three places up our table
broke in, “it ’ud warrant travelling Lodges at the front and attach
first-class lecturers to ’em.”
“Wad ye confer degrees promiscuously?” said the scandalised Scot.
“Every time a man asked, of course. You’d have half the Army in.”
The speaker played with the idea for a little while, and proved that,
on the lowest scale of fees, Grand Lodge would get huge revenues.
“I believe,” said the Engineer Officer thoughtfully, “I could design a
complete travelling Lodge outfit under forty pounds weight.”
“Ye’re wrong. I’ll prove it. We’ve tried ourselves,” said the Military
Lodge man; and they went at it together across the table, each with his
own note-book.
The “Banquet” was simplicity itself. Many of us ate in haste so as to
get back to barracks or hospitals, but now and again a Brother came in
from the outer darkness to fill a chair and empty a plate. These were
Brethren who had been there before and needed no examination.
One man lurched in--helmet, Flanders mud, accoutrements and all--fresh
from the leave-train.
“’Got two hours to wait for my train,” he explained. “I remembered your
night, though. My God, this is good!”
“What is your train and from what station?” said the Clergyman
precisely. “Very well. What will you have to eat?”
“Anything. Everything. I’ve thrown up a month’s rations in the Channel.”
He stoked himself for ten minutes without a word. Then, without a word,
his face fell forward. The Clergyman had him by one already limp arm
and steered him to a couch, where he dropped and snored. No one took
the trouble to turn around.
“Is that usual too?” I asked.
“Why not?” said the Clergyman. “I’m on duty to-night to wake them
for their trains. They do not respect the Cloth on those occasions.”
He turned his broad back on me and continued his discussion with a
Brother from Aberdeen by way of Mitylene where, in the intervals of
mine-sweeping, he had evolved a complete theory of the Revelations of
St. John the Divine in the Island of Patmos.
I fell into the hands of a Sergeant-Instructor of Machine Guns--by
profession a designer of ladies’ dresses. He told me that Englishwomen
as a class “lose on their corsets what they make on their clothes,”
and that “Satan himself can’t save a woman who wears thirty-shilling
corsets under a thirty-guinea costume.” Here, to my grief, he was
buttonholed by a zealous Lieutenant of his own branch, and became a
Sergeant again all in one click.
I drifted back and forth, studying the prints on the walls and the
Masonic collection in the cases, while I listened to the inconceivable
talk all round me. Little by little the company thinned, till at last
there were only a dozen or so of us left. We gathered at the end of a
table near the fire, the night-bird from Flanders trumpeting lustily
into the hollow of his helmet, which some one had tipped over his face.
“And how did it go with you?” said the Doctor.
“It was like a new world,” I answered.
“That’s what it _is_ really.” Brother Burges returned the gold
pince-nez to their case and reshipped his silver spectacles. “Or that’s
what it might be made with a little trouble. When I think of the
possibilities of the Craft at this juncture I wonder----” He stared
into the fire.
“I wonder, too,” said the Sergeant-Major slowly, “but--on the
whole--I’m inclined to agree with you. We could do much with Masonry.”
“As an aid--as an aid--not as a substitute for Religion,” the Clergyman
snapped.
“Oh, Lord! Can’t we give Religion a rest for a bit,” the Doctor
muttered. “It hasn’t done so--I beg your pardon all around.”
The Clergyman was bristling. “Kamerad!” the wise Sergeant-Major went
on, both hands up. “Certainly not as a substitute for a creed, but as
an average plan of life. What I’ve seen at the front makes me sure of
it.”
Brother Burges came out of his muse. “There ought to be a
dozen--twenty--other Lodges in London every night; conferring degrees
too, as well as instruction. Why shouldn’t the young men join? They
practise what we’re always preaching. Well! Well! We must all do what
we can. What’s the use of old Masons if they can’t give a little help
along their own lines?”
“Exactly,” said the Sergeant-Major, turning on the Doctor. “And what’s
the darn use of a Brother if he isn’t allowed to help?”
“Have it your own way then,” said the Doctor testily. He had evidently
been approached before. He took something the Sergeant-Major handed to
him and pocketed it with a nod. “I was wrong,” he said to me, “when I
boasted of our independence. They get round us sometimes. This,” he
slapped his pocket, “will give a banquet on Tuesday. We don’t usually
feed at matinées. It will be a surprise. By the way, try another
sandwich. The ham are best.” He pushed me a plate.
“They are,” I said. “I’ve only had five or six. I’ve been looking for
them.”
“’Glad you like them,” said Brother Lemming. “Fed him myself, cured
him myself--at my little place in Berkshire. His name was Charlemagne.
By the way, Doc, am I to keep another one for next month?”
“Of course,” said the Doctor with his mouth full. “A little fatter than
this chap, please. And don’t forget your promise about the pickled
nasturtiums. They’re appreciated.” Brother Lemming nodded above the
pipe he had lit as we began a second supper. Suddenly the Clergyman,
after a glance at the clock, scooped up half-a-dozen sandwiches
from under my nose, put them into an oiled paper bag, and advanced
cautiously towards the sleeper on the couch.
“They wake rough sometimes,” said the Doctor. “Nerves, y’know.” The
Clergyman tip-toed directly behind the man’s head, and at arm’s length
rapped on the dome of the helmet. The man woke in one vivid streak, as
the Clergyman stepped back, and grabbed for a rifle that was not there.
“You’ve barely half an hour to catch your train.” The Clergyman passed
him the sandwiches. “Come along.”
“You’re uncommonly kind and I’m very grateful,” said the man, wriggling
into his stiff straps. He followed his guide into the darkness after
saluting.
“Who’s that?” said Lemming.
“’Can’t say,” the Doctor returned indifferently. “He’s been here
before. He’s evidently a P.M. of sorts.”
“Well! Well!” said Brother Burges, whose eyelids were drooping. “We
must all do what we can. Isn’t it almost time to lock up?”
“I wonder,” said I, as we helped each other into our coats, “what would
happen if Grand Lodge knew about all this.”
“About what?” Lemming turned on me quickly.
“A Lodge of Instruction open three nights and two afternoons a
week--and running a lodging-house as well. It’s all very nice, but it
doesn’t strike me somehow as regulation.”
“The point hasn’t been raised yet,” said Lemming. “We’ll settle it
after the war. Meantime we shall go on.”
“There ought to be scores of them,” Brother Burges repeated as we went
out of the door. “All London’s full of the Craft, and no places for
them to meet in. Think of the possibilities of it! Think what could
have been done _by_ Masonry _through_ Masonry _for_ all the world. I
hope I’m not censorious, but it sometimes crosses my mind that Grand
Lodge may have thrown away its chance in the war almost as much as the
Church has.”
“’Lucky for you the Padre is taking that chap to King’s Cross,” said
Brother Lemming, “or he’d be down your throat. What really troubles him
is our legal position under Masonic Law. I think he’ll inform on us one
of these days. Well, good night, all.” The Doctor and Lemming turned
off together.
“Yes,” said Brother Burges, slipping his arm into mine. “Almost as much
as the Church has. But perhaps I’m too much of a Ritualist.”
I said nothing. I was speculating how soon I could steal a march on the
Clergyman and inform against “Faith and Works No. 5837 E. C.”