Produced by David Widger
By Winston Churchill
In the religious cult of Gad and Meni, practised with such enthusiasm atQuicksands, the Saints' days were polo days, and the chief of allfestivals the occasion of the match with the Banbury Hunt Club—Quicksands's greatest rival. Rival for more reasons than one, reasonstoo delicate to tell. Long, long ago there appeared in Punch a cartoon ofLord Beaconsfield executing that most difficult of performances, an eggdance. We shall be fortunate indeed if we get to the end of this chapterwithout breaking an egg!
Our pen fails us in a description of that festival of festivals, theBanbury one, which took place early in September. We should have to goback to Babylon and the days of King Nebuchadnezzar. (Who turns out tohave been only a regent, by the way, and his name is now said to bespelled rezzar). How give an idea of the libations poured out to Gad andthe shekels laid aside for Meni in the Quicksands Temple?
Honora privately thought that building ugly, and it reminded her of acollection of huge yellow fungi sprawling over the ground. A few of theinevitable tortured cedars were around it. Between two of the largerbuildings was wedged a room dedicated to the worship of Bacchus, to-daylike a narrow river-gorge at flood time jammed with tree-trunks—some ofthem, let us say, water-logged—and all grinding together with anintolerable noise like a battle. If you happened to be passing thewindows, certain more or less intelligible sounds might separatethemselves from the bedlam.
"Four to five on Quicksands!"
"That stock isn't worth a d—n!"
"She's gone to South Dakota."
Honora, however, is an heretic, as we know. Without going definitely intoher reasons, these festivals had gradually become distasteful to her.Perhaps it would be fairer to look at them through the eyes of LilyDallam, who was in her element on such days, and regarded them as themost innocent and enjoyable of occasions, and perhaps they were.
The view from the veranda, at least, appealed to our heroine's artisticsense. The marshes in the middle distance, the shimmering sea beyond, andthe polo field laid down like a vast green carpet in the foreground;while the players, in white breeches and bright shirts, on the agilelittle horses that darted hither and thither across the turf lent anadded touch of colour and movement to the scene. Amongst them, TrixtonBrent most frequently caught the eye and held it. Once Honora perceivedhim flying the length of the field, madly pursued, his mallet poisedlightly, his shirt bulging in the wind, his close-cropped head bereft ofa cap, regardless of the havoc and confusion behind him. He played,indeed, with the cocksureness and individuality one might have expected;and Honora, forgetting at moments the disturbing elements by which shewas surrounded, followed him with fascination. Occasionally his namerippled from one end of the crowded veranda to the other, and sheexperienced a curious and uncomfortable sensation when she heard it inthe mouths of these strangers.
From time to time she found herself watching them furtively, comparingthem unconsciously with her Quicksands friends. Some of them she hadremarked before, at contests of a minor importance, and they seemed toher to possess a certain distinction that was indefinable. They had cometo-day from many mysterious (and therefore delightful) places whichHonora knew only by name, and some had