Part 32 (2/2)

I gathered that this was Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, the wife who had divorced him for systematic and ingrowing fiendishness on the ground that he had repeatedly outraged her feelings by wearing a white waistcoat with a dinner-jacket. She continued to look at him dumbly, and then uttered a sort of strangled, hysterical laugh.

”Those legs!” she cried. ”Those legs!”

Vincent Jopp flushed darkly. Even the strongest and most silent of us have our weaknesses, and my employer's was the rooted idea that he looked well in knickerbockers. It was not my place to try to dissuade him, but there was no doubt that they did not suit him. Nature, in bestowing upon him a ma.s.sive head and a jutting chin, had forgotten to finish him off at the other end. Vincent Jopp's legs were skinny.

”You poor dear man!” went on Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp. ”What practical joker ever lured you into appearing in public in knickerbockers?”

”I don't object to the knickerbockers,” said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, ”but when he foolishly comes out in quite a strong east wind without his liver-pad----”

”Little Tinky-Ting don't need no liver-pad, he don't,” said Mrs. Luella Mainprice Jopp, addressing the animal in her arms, ”because he was his muzzer's pet, he was.”

I was standing quite near to Vincent Jopp, and at this moment I saw a bead of perspiration spring out on his forehead, and into his steely eyes there came a positively hunted look. I could understand and sympathize. Napoleon himself would have wilted if he had found himself in the midst of a trio of females, one talking baby-talk, another fussing about his health, and the third making derogatory observations on his lower limbs. Vincent Jopp was becoming unstrung.

”May as well be starting, shall we?”

It was Jopp's opponent who spoke. There was a strange, set look on his face--the look of a man whose back is against the wall. Ten down on the morning's round, he had drawn on his reserves of courage and was determined to meet the inevitable bravely.

Vincent Jopp nodded absently, then turned to me.

”Keep those women away from me,” he whispered tensely. ”They'll put me off my stroke!”

”Put _you_ off your stroke!” I exclaimed, incredulously.

”Yes, me! How the deuce can I concentrate, with people babbling about liver-pads, and--and knickerbockers all round me? Keep them away!”

He started to address his ball, and there was a weak uncertainty in the way he did it that prepared me for what was to come. His club rose, wavered, fell; and the ball, badly topped, trickled two feet and sank into a cuppy lie.

”Is that good or bad?” inquired Mrs. Luella Mainprice Jopp.

A sort of desperate hope gleamed in the eye of the other compet.i.tor in the final. He swung with renewed vigour. His ball sang through the air, and lay within chip-shot distance of the green.

”At the very least,” said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, ”I hope, Vincent, that you are wearing flannel next your skin.”

I heard Jopp give a stifled groan as he took his spoon from the bag. He made a gallant effort to retrieve the lost ground, but the ball struck a stone and bounded away into the long gra.s.s to the side of the green.

His opponent won the hole.

We moved to the second tee.

”Now, that young man,” said Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, indicating her late husband's blus.h.i.+ng antagonist, ”is quite right to wear knickerbockers.

He can carry them off. But a glance in the mirror must have shown you that you----”

”I'm sure you're feverish, Vincent,” said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, solicitously. ”You are quite flushed. There is a wild gleam in your eyes.”

”Muzzer's pet got little b.u.t.tons of eyes, that don't never have no wild gleam in zem because he's muzzer's own darling, he was!” said Mrs.

Luella Mainprice Jopp.

A hollow groan escaped Vincent Jopp's ashen lips.

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