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!