“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!”