“Not this time,” Mr. Burges smiled. “We have to thank Brother Lemming for them.” He introduced me to the senior partner of Lemming and Orton, whose little shop is hard to find, but whose words and cheques in the matter of prints are widely circulated.
“The frames are the best part of ’em,” said Brother Lemming after my compliments. “There are some more in the Lodge Room. Come and look. We’ve got the big Desaguliers there that nearly went to Iowa.”
I had never seen a Lodge Room better fitted. From mosaicked floor to appropriate ceiling, from curtain to pillar, implements to seats, seats to lights, and little carved music-loft at one end, every detail was perfect in particular kind and general design. I said what I thought of them all, many times over.
“I told you I was a Ritualist,” said Mr. Burges. “Look at those carved corn-sheaves and grapes on the back of these Wardens’ chairs. That’s the old tradition—before Masonic furnishers spoilt it. I picked up that pair in Stepney ten years ago—the same time I got the gavel.” It was of ancient, yellowed ivory, cut all in one piece out of some tremendous tusk. “That came from the Gold Coast,” he said. “It belonged to a Military Lodge there in 1794. You can see the inscription.”
“If it’s a fair question,” I began, “how much——”
“It stood us,” said Brother Lemming, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, “an appreciable sum of money when we built it in 1906, even with what Brother Anstruther—he was our contractor—cheated himself out of. By the way, that ashlar there is pure Carrara, he tells me. I don’t understand marbles myself. Since then I expect we’ve put in—oh, quite another little sum. Now we’ll go to the examination-room and take on the Brethren.”
He led me back, not to the ante-room, but a convenient chamber flanked with what looked like confessional-boxes (I found out later that that was what they had been, when first picked up for a song near Oswestry). A few men in uniform were waiting at the far end. “That’s only the head of the procession. The rest are in the ante-room,” said an officer of the Lodge.
Brother Burges assigned me my discreet box, saying: “Don’t be surprised. They come all shapes.”
“Shapes” was not a bad description, for my first penitent was all head-bandages—escaped from an Officers’ Hospital, Pentonville way. He asked me in profane Scots how I expected a man with only six teeth and half a lower lip to speak to any purpose, so we compromised on the signs. The next—a New Zealander from Taranaki—reversed the process, for he was one-armed, and that in a sling. I mistrusted an enormous Sergeant-Major of Heavy Artillery, who struck me as much too glib, so I sent him on to Brother Lemming in the next box, who discovered he was a Past District Grand Officer. My last man nearly broke me down altogether. Everything seemed to have gone from him.
“I don’t blame yer,” he gulped at last. “I wouldn’t pass my own self on my answers, but I give yer my word that so far as I’ve had any religion, it’s been all the religion I’ve had. For God’s sake, let me sit in Lodge again, Brother!”