“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.