Love in Our Time by Norman Collins Read Free Book Online

to the Lord Macclesfield where the gathering was to be held. He carried his cap and gloves in a small leather attaché case. It was a mark of importance that he had his gloves with him at all; they were worn only at the two big half-yearly meetings, the Neap and the Ebb, when the election of officers was held.
    As he got nearer the Lord Macclesfield, other men carrying small attaché cases came into sight. They were nearly all substantial looking men like Mr. Biddle; it seemed that God in selecting Mariners had gone out of His way to choose well set-up ones.
    The Mariners’ Hall was a high raftered room with an oil painting of a previous Mayor and a grand piano. Apart from that it had no fixtures. The whole place had the melancholy, abandoned look of a Temple erected in anticipation of some Messiah who had failed to be born. But, to Mariners, it had the undisguisable look of home.
    Despite its name, however, it was really only a Mariners’ Hall on Tuesdays. On Monday, the socially inferior and considerably less prosperous Ancient Order of Eagles met there; on Wednesday, the East Finchley Parliament assembled; on Thursdays, it was the Drill Hall for the local Fitness League; and, on Fridays and Saturdays, it was let for dances. But Tuesday night was the only one in the week when there was an extra strip of carpet right down to the bottom of the stairs; it was on little things like that, the significance of which was unknowable tonon-Mariners, that Mariners prided themselves. They knew that honest ritual regularly and reverently observed, was the best, indeed the only, antidote to mental slackness.
    A ship’s bell rang eight times in the Hall and the assembled Mariners filed through in strict order of Seniority. The East Finchley Commodore and a Sea Lord from the Mariners’ Hall in Gresham Street, the headquarters of the Order, were there to admit them. Each one gave and received the salute in turn. Then, Mr. Bowler, the Commodore, opened proceedings from the Bridge. He was a tea merchant with an immaculate record both in Mincing Lane and in the Order. He spoke in the thick, stifled voice of a man who is victim of his own emotion.
    â€œBrother Mariners,” he began, “we gather together to-night to remind ourselves of those solemn and binding vows which we took when we entered this most Venerable and Exalted Order. First, Brother Mariners, we will remember the Prime Mariner who first ordained that the seas should divide the land and be crossed only by His guidance.”
    Every cap came off and all forty-two of them stood for thirty seconds bare-headed in the Presence.
    Then the Commodore really began to put them through it.
    â€œWe will now,” he said, “solemnly and devoutly repeat our Creed which rules us both in our lives and in our thoughts.”
    Everyone took a deep breath and steadied himself. The Creed took four and a half minutes to complete. One of the older members, excused by a doctor’s certificatefrom penalty to rebuke, remained seated throughout; his head buried in his hands. All the rest held themselves bolt upright. Mr. Biddle stood in the third row between a schoolmaster and a local estate agent. They all three knew this part so thoroughly that they scarcely gave the words a thought as they repeated them.
    Little isolated snatches, however, penetrated Mr. Biddle’s brain and registered themselves there as they always did … “that the fatherless in the Order shall be cared for and fed and directed upon the ocean of Life;” “that those of our sisters whose husbands have been drowned upon life’s sea shall be sheltered and protected;” “that against the decision of the Commander of the Fleet of all Mariners at home and abroad there shall be no appeal;” “that at no time and in no weather will I fail to answer, to the best of my power and at risk of my own life, the Supreme Distress Signal of a Brother Mariner;” “that