“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.