subjects that are too painful. It was pitiful to watch Vincent Jopp in
his downfall. By the end of the first nine his lead had been reduced to
one, and his antagonist, rendered a new man by success, was playing
magnificent golf. On the next hole he drew level. Then with a
superhuman effort Jopp contrived to halve the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth. It seemed as though his iron will might still assert
itself, but on the fourteenth the end came.
He had driven a superb ball, outdistancing his opponent by a full fifty
yards. The latter played a good second to within a few feet of the
green. And then, as Vincent Jopp was shaping for his stroke, Luella
Mainprice gave tongue.
'Vincent!'
'Well?'
'Vincent, that other man--bad man--not playing fair. When your back was
turned just now, he gave his ball a great bang. I was watching
him.'
'At any rate,' said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, 'I do hope, when the game
is over, Vincent, that you will remember to cool slowly.'
'Flesho!' cried Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp triumphantly. 'I've been trying to
remember the name all the afternoon. I saw about it in one of the
papers. The advertisements speak most highly of it. You take it before
breakfast and again before retiring, and they guarantee it to produce
firm, healthy flesh on the most sparsely-covered limbs in next to no
time. Now, will you remember to get a bottle tonight? It comes
in two sizes, the five-shilling (or large size) and the smaller at
half-a-crown. G. K. Chesterton writes that he used it regularly for
years.'
Vincent Jopp uttered a quavering moan, and his hand, as he took the
mashie from his bag, was trembling like an aspen.
Ten minutes later, he was on his way back to the club-house, a beaten
man.
* * * * *
And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that in golf there is no
such thing as a soft snap. You can never be certain of the finest
player. Anything may happen to the greatest expert at any stage of the
game. In a recent competition George Duncan took eleven shots over a
hole which eighteen-handicap men generally do in five. No! Back horses
or go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from the
Rothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier.
But to bet at golf is pure gambling.
9
The Rough Stuff
Into the basking warmth of the day there had crept, with the approach
of evening, that heartening crispness which heralds the advent of
autumn. Already, in the valley by the ninth tee, some of the trees had
begun to try on strange colours, in tentative experiment against the
coming of nature's annual fancy dress ball, when the soberest tree
casts off its workaday suit of green and plunges into a riot of reds
and yellows. On the terrace in front of the club-house an occasional
withered leaf fluttered down on the table where the Oldest Member sat,
