CHAPTER IV

CIRCEAN

And then, in glowing crowded processional, there came for Gaveston a marvellous cavalcade of days and nights in the great metropolis of Empire.

Through the cheerful, childlike bustle of Yuletide, through the chilled, sober, resolute days of New Year, and on to the gay bachelor party which Uncle Wilkinson gave (at Verrey’s, of course) to some of his old colleagues on Twelfth Night, the great book of London opened before him, ateem with strange riddles and alembications.

And what a book! The restless cross-currents of its fantastic _figurantes_ flickered against the dim background of streets with cinematographic speed; and the darting limelight of his imagination would pick out by hazard, here some dark Rembrandtesque intaglio, there some half-perceived and evanescent torso, pearls from this hitherto uncharted sea which now he had to plumb with the magic theodolite of Youth, until at last all the mystery of London should stand revealed to his ardent gaze, as clear as was the mystery of that other City of his life, where, dulcet among the listening spires, hovered the plangent, reverberant bells.…

And so, armed only with a copy, bound in soft dove-grey leather, of _A Wanderer in London_, Gav would sally forth from the Albany of a morning on magnificent explorations of this astounding new world that awaited his conquest, now threading its equatorial jungles, now penetrating to its uttermost poles, now standing Cortes-like on the very summit of Constitution Hill. Until now he had moved only in the circumscribed orbit of his mother’s Mayfair “set.” But now he could freely climb into the handy taxicab, or on to the humble, but oh! how instructive ’bus, and boldly drive whithersoever his daring imagination might suggest.

“All the way, please, my man,” he would say to the conductors, as to the manner born, handing always a new florin. “No, keep the change.” He seldom passed unnoticed.

Wood Green and Newington Butts were startled on one day by the vision of this Apollonian creature striding in his proud beauty adown their dim byways; next day it was the turn of Tulse Hill and Hornsey Rise to know a second dawn, and then perhaps a sudden light brightened the lives of the obscure denizens of Poultry.

His keen eye soon noticed that ’busses had numbers.

“Really? Really? Is that so?” Uncle Wilkie had asked incredulously as they sat together in the Albany waiting to see in the New, and, as it turned out, so eventful, Year.[7]

[7] This would make the exact date of this interesting incident December 31st. (LIT. EXEC.)

“Yes, isn’t it quaint?” nodded Gaveston. “And to-morrow I’m going to take a Number 1, and the day after that a Number 2, and so on till I really know my London.”

And the old rake roared at the lad’s witty caracoling.

One evening, too, when Gaveston, a trifle tired but still alert in every faculty, came back from one of these marvellous expeditions, his uncle greeted him in the Albany colonnade.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t. It’s beyond belief, m’ boy!”

“What can _that_ be, uncle?” asked Gaveston with smiling calm.

“Is it true what they’re saying in the clubs to-day, that you’ve been across every single bridge in London?”

“Quite true,” he replied, with deprecating modesty. “And through the Rotherhithe Tunnel, too,” he added quietly.

And the old adventurer, whose eyes had gazed upon so many and so foreign cities, was silent, seeing of a sudden that youth must have its day nor will be gainsaid.

* * * * *

But despite his triumphs, Gaveston was not completely satisfied. What did it all mean to _him_, this blazing, roaring Babylon? How was it all to fit into the intricate mosaic of _élan_ and _flair_ and _verve_ that made up the essential ffoulis. London and Oxford.… Oxford and London.…

“They seem irreconcilable,” he whispered to himself one evening as he stood adream by the fountain in Piccadilly Circus, the high tide of humanity plashing in dusky waves about him.

But were they?

And with a touch of elfin phantasy all his own, he interchanged in his robust imagination the two sculptured monuments of these two irreconcilable cities, and hey presto!--below the monacal mullions of Wallace he perceived the ever-tiptoe Eros, aiming his darts with fatal strategy at the haunters of those mediæval shadows and destroying in a night an austerity that was the handiwork of unnumbered centuries--while here, round the transplanted Martyrs’ Memorial the flower-sellers would cease their raucousness, and the struggling painted crowd their Neronian debauchery, awed into silence before the steepling and pinnacled emblem of Oxford’s and England’s rejection of the Scarlet Woman of the Seven Hills.…

“Vi’lets, sweet vi’lets … all fresh.… Buy a bunch, kind sir!” the shrill cockney voice had floated to his ears from the pedestal behind him.

He threw the poor wretch a sovereign, and hurried over to Regent Street, fearing the embarrassing cordiality of her humble gratitude.[8]

[8] Mr. Budd, when asked to record in his friends’ albums his favourite proverb, would always inscribe _Noblesse Oblige_. (LIT. EXEC.)

But how was this evening, almost his last before term began, to be spent? He pondered a moment as he stood in the flare of the shouting sky-signs. What a day of rich and original imaginings it had been! Heedless of time, he had wandered round and round the Surrey Docks, watching the ships and the men of the ships. All afternoon his thoughts had set sail with those Levantine brigantines as they fared forth in silence down to the open sea, and had followed them to strange and hidden ports of Cathay and Samarkand; and in imagination he had charged their cavernous holds with who knows what marvellous cargoes of spikenard and julep, attar and bergamot, and with what heavy carven chests of teak and sandalwood, stuffed with the blinding glory of onyx and sard, of beryl and jacinth and peridot, of the girasole shining green in the sun and red in the moon, and the zircon which drives mad the Lybian antelopes that look upon it in the spring, of the wan crapawd, the cabochon and the obsidian, and with carcanets of sapphire and torques of purest spinel.…

But was it safe thus to give free rein to his luxuriant imaginings? Might he not be too utterly original, too bizarre, thus wandering down paths of uncharted beauty until perhaps he find himself bemused and bemazed, lost to the kindly familiar realms of real life?

He might, he reflected, he might. And he remembered how his mother had only taught him the simpler fairy tales, lest the magic lore should pervade his amazing imagination _too_ fully, and make of his very precocity a snare and a gin.

And as he paced the crescent curve of Regent Street in these musings, he reached the Café Régale.

* * * * *

The Café Régale!

To this door, of all doors, had Providence guided him that evening. Here surely was the answer that he sought from the mighty Sphinx! Here, if anywhere, might he find that perfect and subtle synthesis of Oxford and London, of London and Oxford!

Of the Café and its inhabitants, and of its paramount significance in the life of our time, Gaveston had already heard much, and read more. Monty Wytham, most _rusé_ of the Mongoons, had lowered his voice in speaking of it one night in far-away Wallace. Bold must the spirit be, and heedless of bourgeois condemnation, to actually affront so perilous a haunt after dark!

But Gaveston, though alone, was undismayed. Undeceived, true Londoner that he was, by the golden word

NICHOLS

emblazoned above the portal, he gave a determined push to the fateful revolving door. As its well-oiled sweep threw him into the fantastical lobby within, he reflected how often these very panels had revolved before the push of hands famous the world over for their cunning over marble and bronze, for the eloquent pens they wielded, for their intricate mastery of brush and easel, and of hands celebrated alas! only for their own manicured and expensive selves. How often indeed! But now it had known a new revolution! And he laughed at the unspoken quip as he walked towards the smoke-room.

Gaveston pushed open the innermost swing-door, fully realizing that this was perhaps his most crucial entry since that first evening in Mongo’s room, and for a moment he stood there, not indeed in any uncertainty, but in conscious appraisal of the spectacle that met his eyes.

A spectacle indeed!

For lo! athwart a score of rococo mirrored walls the dazzling lights answered each other in optical strophe and antistrophe. Incredible perspectives of painted ceiling with moulded garlands of gold, were upheld by bowed, silent caryatides, about whose bare gilded breasts hovered voluptuously the dim blue smoke of scented cigarettes that rose incense-like from the worshippers of pleasure below. From the thronged marble tables rose the heady, deadly fumes of wine and drugs--a mad clinking of glasses--a fierce rattling of hypodermic syringes--a Babel of tongues--wild hectic laughter--an undercurrent of whispers of dark intrigue and nameless insinuation--and there was a stall where French novels were openly for sale.…

“La Bohème!” he said instinctively to himself. But here reality had surely out-Murgered Puccini or Balfe.

From one plush-covered seat, where half-a-dozen picturesque figures sat, men and women jowl by cheek, he caught the wildest of foreign oaths.

“_Certes!_”

“_Pardi!_”

“_Je m’en f … de ce b … là!_”

“_N … d’un n…!_”

And many another untranslatable audacity that could only be conveyed by the vitriolic pen of a Zola or a Willy.

From a table on his right came sinister mutterings.

“But how _can_ he quit the country, Bill? D’you think there aren’t any ’tecs at Dover Harbour?”

“My G----! Harry, I wish I’d never touched the stuff!”

Dope, no doubt, reflected Gaveston sadly.

Farther over, near a respectable-looking door labelled GRILL ROOM, sat a group of hideous old satyrs playing, apparently, dominoes. But the deep ravages of time and disease had seared their absinthe-rotted faces too terribly for Gaveston to be deceived by their pretence of childish pastime, and he tiptoed discreetly over to see whether he might not catch some of their conversation, muffled though it obviously was.

Yes, he could hear the raucous whispering of their broken English.

“Oh, dere’s a market all right. And so I took seex of ’em at t’ree t’ousan’ francs--F.O.B., of course.”

“F.O.B., of course,” nodded his accomplice with a smile, and Gaveston looked down at the couple, fascinated by their strange redolence of sin. What vileness, he wondered, were the old traffickers discussing in their thievish cabalistic slang?[9]

[9] Mr. Budd’s sense of picturesque detail occasionally led him astray, though never more than is pardonable in a young novelist. As a close neighbour of the great industrial North of England, he would have been deeply interested to know that the gentlemen he here portrays in a somewhat sinister light are in reality the London representatives of two of the most prominent textile houses of Lille, a city which has been wittily (though not by Mr. Budd) described as the “Manchester of France.” (LIT. EXEC.)

But his reflections were broken with an unexpectedness worthy of the scene. Suddenly he felt a hand touch his shoulder.

Who could it be?

He turned.