There had been rather a long sitting at Lodge “Faith and Works,” 5837 E. C., that warm April night. Three initiations and two raisings, each conducted with the spaciousness and particularity that our Lodge prides itself upon, made the Brethren a little silent and the strains of certain music had not yet lifted from them.
“There are two pieces that ought to be barred for ever,” said a Brother as we were sitting down to the “banquet.” “‘Last Post’ is the other.”
“I can just stand ‘Last Post.’ It’s ‘Tipperary’ breaks me,” another replied. “But I expect every one carries his own firing-irons inside him.”
I turned to look. It was a sponsor for one of our newly raised Brethren—a fat man with a fish-like and vacant face, but evidently prosperous. We introduced ourselves as we took our places. His name was Bevin, and he had a chicken farm near Chalfont-St.-Giles, whence he supplied, on yearly contract, two or three high-class London hotels. He was also, he said, on the edge of launching out into herb-growing.
“There’s a demand for herbs,” said he; “but it all depends upon your connections with the wholesale dealers. We ain’t systematic enough. The French do it much better, especially in those mountains on the Swiss an’ Italian sides. They use more herbal remedies than we do. Our patent-medicine business has killed that with us. But there’s a demand still, if your connections are sound. I’m going in for it.”
A large, well-groomed Brother across the table (his name was Pole, and he seemed some sort of professional man) struck in with a detailed account of a hollow behind a destroyed village near Thiepval, where, for no ascertainable reason, a certain rather scarce herb had sprung up by the acre, he said, out of the overturned earth.
“Only you’ve got to poke among the weeds to find it, and there’s any quantity of bombs an’ stuff knockin’ about there still. They haven’t cleaned it up yet.”
“Last time I saw the place,” said Bevin, “I thought it ’ud be that way till Judgment Day. You know how it lay in that dip under that beet-factory. I saw it bombed up level in two days—into brick-dust mainly. They were huntin’ for St. Firmin Dump.” He took a sandwich and munched slowly, wiping his face, for the night was close.
“Ye-es,” said Pole. “The trouble is there hasn’t been any judgment taken or executed. That’s why the world is where it is now. We didn’t need anything but justice—afterwards. Not gettin’ that, the bottom fell out of things, naturally.”
“That’s how I look at it too,” Bevin replied. “We didn’t want all that talk afterwards—we only wanted justice. What I say is, there must be a right and a wrong to things. It can’t all be kiss-an’-make-friends, no matter what you do.”