8
_The Heel of Achilles_
On the young man's face, as he sat sipping his ginger-ale in theclub-house smoking-room, there was a look of disillusionment. "Neveragain!" he said.
The Oldest Member glanced up from his paper.
"You are proposing to give up golf once more?" he queried.
"Not golf. Betting on golf." The Young Man frowned. "I've just been letdown badly. Wouldn't you have thought I had a good thing, laying sevento one on McTavish against Robinson?"
"Undoubtedly," said the Sage. "The odds, indeed, generous as they are,scarcely indicate the former's superiority. Do you mean to tell me thatthe thing came unstitched?"
"Robinson won in a walk, after being three down at the turn.
"Strange! What happened?"
"Why, they looked in at the bar to have a refresher before starting forthe tenth," said the young man, his voice quivering, "and McTavishsuddenly discovered that there was a hole in his trouser-pocket andsixpence had dropped out. He worried so frightfully about it that onthe second nine he couldn't do a thing right. Went completely off hisgame and didn't win a hole."
The Sage shook his head gravely.
"If this is really going to be a lesson to you, my boy, never to bet onthe result of a golf-match, it will be a blessing in disguise. There isno such thing as a certainty in golf. I wonder if I ever told you arather curious episode in the career of Vincent Jopp?"
"_The_ Vincent Jopp? The American multi-millionaire?"
"The same. You never knew he once came within an ace of winning theAmerican Amateur Championship, did you?"
"I never heard of his playing golf."
"He played for one season. After that he gave it up and has not toucheda club since. Ring the bell and get me a small lime-juice, and I willtell you all."
* * * * *
It was long before your time (said the Oldest Member) that the eventswhich I am about to relate took place. I had just come down fromCambridge, and was feeling particularly pleased with myself because Ihad secured the job of private and confidential secretary to VincentJopp, then a man in the early thirties, busy in laying the foundationsof his present remarkable fortune. He engaged me, and took me with himto Chicago.
Jopp was, I think, the most extraordinary personality I haveencountered in a long and many-sided life. He was admirably equippedfor success in finance, having the steely eye and square jaw withoutwhich it is hopeless for a man to enter that line of business. Hepossessed also an overwhelming confidence in himself, and the abilityto switch a cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other withoutwiggling his ears, which, as you know, is the stamp of the true Monarchof the Money Market. He was the nearest approach to the financier onthe films, the fellow who makes his jaw-muscles jump when he istelephoning, that I have ever seen.
Like all successful men, he was a man of method. He kept a pad on hisdesk on which he would scribble down his appointments, and it was myduty on entering the office each morning to take this pad and type itscontents neatly in a loose-leaved ledger. Usually, of course, theseentries referred to business appointments and deals which he wascontemplating, but one day I was interested to note, against the dateMay 3rd, the entry:
"_Propose to Amelia_"
I was interested, as I say, but not surprised. Though a man of steeland iron, there was nothing of the celibate about Vincent Jopp. He wasone of those men who marry early and often. On three separate occasionsbefore I joined his service he had jumped off the dock, to scrambleback to shore again later by means of the Divorce Court lifebelt.Scattered here and there about the country there were three ex-Mrs.Jopps, drawing their monthly envelope, and now, it seemed, hecontemplated the addition of a fourth to the platoon.
I was not surprised, I say, at this resolve of his. What did seem alittle remarkable to me was the thorough way in which he had thoughtthe thing out. This iron-willed man recked nothing of possibleobstacles. Under the date of June 1st was the entry:
"_Marry Amelia_";
while in March of the following year he had arranged to have hisfirst-born christened Thomas Reginald. Later on, the short-coating ofThomas Reginald was arranged for, and there was a note about sendinghim to school. Many hard things have been said of Vincent Jopp, butnobody has ever accused him of not being a man who looked ahead.
On the morning of May 4th Jopp came into the office, looking, Ifancied, a little thoughtful. He sat for some moments staring beforehim with his brow a trifle furrowed; then he seemed to come to himself.He rapped his desk.
"Hi! You!" he said. It was thus that he habitually addressed me.
"Mr. Jopp?" I replied.
"What's golf?"
I had at that time just succeeded in getting my handicap down intosingle figures, and I welcomed the opportunity of dilating on thenoblest of pastimes. But I had barely begun my eulogy when he stoppedme.
"It's a game, is it?"
"I suppose you could call it that," I said, "but it is an offhand wayof describing the holiest----"
"How do you play it?"
"Pretty well," I said. "At the beginning of the season I didn't seemable to keep 'em straight at all, but lately I've been doing fine.Getting better every day. Whether it was that I was moving my head orgripping too tightly with the right hand----"
"Keep the reminiscences for your grandchildren during the long winterevenings," he interrupted, abruptly, as was his habit. "What I want toknow is what a fellow does when he plays golf. Tell me in as few wordsas you can just what it's all about."
"You hit a ball with a stick till it falls into a hole."
"Easy!" he snapped. "Take dictation."
I produced my pad.
"May the fifth, take up golf. What's an Amateur Championship?"
"It is the annual competition to decide which is the best player amongthe amateurs. There is also a Professional Championship, and an Openevent."
"Oh, there are golf professionals, are there? What do they do?"
"They teach golf."
"Which is the best of them?"
"Sandy McHoots won both British and American Open events last year."
"Wire him to come here at once."
"But McHoots is in Inverlochty, in Scotland."
"Never mind. Get him; tell him to name his own terms. When is theAmateur Championship?"
"I think it is on September the twelfth this year."
"All right, take dictation. September twelfth win AmateurChampionship."
I stared at him in amazement, but he was not looking at me.
"Got that?" he said. "September thir--Oh, I was forgetting! AddSeptember twelfth, corner wheat. September thirteenth, marry Amelia."
"Marry Amelia," I echoed, moistening my pencil.
"Where do you play this--what's-its-name--golf?"
"There are clubs all over the country. I belong to the WissahickyGlen."
"That a good place?"
"Very good."
"Arrange today for my becoming a member."
* * * * *
Sandy McHoots arrived in due course, and was shown into the privateoffice.
"Mr. McHoots?" said Vincent Jopp.
"Mphm!" said the Open Champion.
"I have sent for you, Mr. McHoots, because I hear that you are thegreatest living exponent of this game of golf."
"Aye," said the champion, cordially. "I am that."
"I wish you to teach me the game. I am already somewhat behind scheduleowing to the delay incident upon your long journey, so let us start atonce. Name a few of the most important points in connection with thegame. My secretary will make notes of them, and I will memorize them.In this way we shall save time. Now, what is the most important thingto remember when playing golf?"
"Keep your heid still."
"A simple task."
"Na sae simple as it soonds."
"Nonsense!" said Vincent Jopp, curtly. "If I decide to keep my headstill, I shall keep it still.
What next?"
"Keep yer ee on the ba'."
"It shall be attended to. And the next?"
"Dinna press."
"I won't. And to resume."
Mr. McHoots ran through a dozen of the basic rules, and I took themdown in shorthand. Vincent Jopp studied the list.
"Very good. Easier than I had supposed. On the first tee at WissahickyGlen at eleven sharp tomorrow, Mr. McHoots. Hi! You!"
"Sir?" I said.
"Go out and buy me a set of clubs, a red jacket, a cloth cap, a pair ofspiked shoes, and a ball."
"One ball?"
"Certainly. What need is there of more?"
"It sometimes happens," I explained, "that a player who is learning thegame falls to hit his ball straight, and then he often loses it in therough at the side of the fairway."
"Absurd!" said Vincent Jopp. "If I set out to drive my ball straight, Ishall drive it straight. Good morning, Mr. McHoots. You will excuse menow. I am busy cornering Woven Textiles."
* * * * *
Golf is in its essence a simple game. You laugh in a sharp, bitter,barking manner when I say this, but nevertheless it is true. Where theaverage man goes wrong is in making the game difficult for himself.Observe the non-player, the man who walks round with you for the sakeof the fresh air. He will hole out with a single care-free flick of hisumbrella the twenty-foot putt over which you would ponder and hesitatefor a full minute before sending it right off the line. Put a driver inhis hands and he pastes the ball into the next county without athought. It is only when he takes to the game in earnest that hebecomes self-conscious and anxious, and tops his shots even as you andI. A man who could retain through his golfing career the almostscornful confidence of the non-player would be unbeatable. Fortunatelysuch an attitude of mind is beyond the scope of human nature.
It was not, however, beyond the scope of Vincent Jopp, the superman.Vincent Jopp, was, I am inclined to think, the only golfer who everapproached the game in a spirit of Pure Reason. I have read of men who,never having swum in their lives, studied a text-book on their way downto the swimming bath, mastered its contents, and dived in and won thebig race. In just such a spirit did Vincent Jopp start to play golf. Hecommitted McHoots's hints to memory, and then went out on the links andput them into practice. He came to the tee with a clear picture in hismind of what he had to do, and he did it. He was not intimidated, likethe average novice, by the thought that if he pulled in his hands hewould slice, or if he gripped too tightly with the right he would pull.Pulling in the hands was an error, so he did not pull in his hands.Gripping too tightly was a defect, so he did not grip too tightly. Withthat weird concentration which had served him so well in business hedid precisely what he had set out to do--no less and no more. Golf withVincent Jopp was an exact science.
The annals of the game are studded with the names of those who havemade rapid progress in their first season. Colonel Quill, we read inour Vardon, took up golf at the age of fifty-six, and by devising aningenious machine consisting of a fishing-line and a sawn-down bedpostwas enabled to keep his head so still that he became a scratch playerbefore the end of the year. But no one, I imagine, except Vincent Jopp,has ever achieved scratch on his first morning on the links.
The main difference, we are told, between the amateur and theprofessional golfer is the fact that the latter is always aiming at thepin, while the former has in his mind a vague picture of gettingsomewhere reasonably near it. Vincent Jopp invariably went for the pin.He tried to hole out from anywhere inside two hundred and twenty yards.The only occasion on which I ever heard him express any chagrin ordisappointment was during the afternoon round on his first day out,when from the tee on the two hundred and eighty yard seventh he laidhis ball within six inches of the hole.
"A marvellous shot!" I cried, genuinely stirred.
"Too much to the right," said Vincent Jopp, frowning.
He went on from triumph to triumph. He won the monthly medal in May,June, July, August, and September. Towards the end of May he was heardto complain that Wissahicky Glen was not a sporting course. The GreensCommittee sat up night after night trying to adjust his handicap so asto give other members an outside chance against him. The golf expertsof the daily papers wrote columns about his play. And it was prettygenerally considered throughout the country that it would be a pureformality for anyone else to enter against him in the AmateurChampionship--an opinion which was borne out when he got through intothe final without losing a hole. A safe man to have betted on, youwould have said. But mark the sequel.
* * * * *
The American Amateur Championship was held that year in Detroit. I hadaccompanied my employer there; for, though engaged on thisnerve-wearing contest, he refused to allow his business to beinterfered with. As he had indicated in his schedule, he was busy atthe time cornering wheat; and it was my task to combine the duties ofcaddy and secretary. Each day I accompanied him round the links with mynote-book and his bag of clubs, and the progress of his various matcheswas somewhat complicated by the arrival of a stream of telegraph-boysbearing important messages. He would read these between the strokes anddictate replies to me, never, however, taking more than the fiveminutes allowed by the rules for an interval between strokes. I aminclined to think that it was this that put the finishing touch on hisopponents' discomfiture. It is not soothing for a nervous man to havethe game hung up on the green while his adversary dictates to his caddya letter beginning "Yours of the 11th inst. received and contentsnoted. In reply would state----" This sort of thing puts a man off hisgame.
I was resting in the lobby of our hotel after a strenuous day's work,when I found that I was being paged. I answered the summons, and wasinformed that a lady wished to see me. Her card bore the name "MissAmelia Merridew." Amelia! The name seemed familiar. Then I remembered.Amelia was the name of the girl Vincent Jopp intended to marry, thefourth of the long line of Mrs. Jopps. I hurried to present myself, andfound a tall, slim girl, who was plainly labouring under a considerableagitation.
"Miss Merridew?" I said.
"Yes," she murmured. "My name will be strange to you."
"Am I right," I queried, "in supposing that you are the lady to whomMr. Jopp----"
"I am! I am!" she replied. "And, oh, what shall I do?"
"Kindly give me particulars," I said, taking out my pad from force ofhabit.
She hesitated a moment, as if afraid to speak.
"You are caddying for Mr. Jopp in the Final tomorrow?" she said atlast.
"I am."
"Then could you--would you mind--would it be giving you too muchtrouble if I asked you to shout 'Boo!' at him when he is making hisstroke, if he looks like winning?"
I was perplexed.
"I don't understand."
"I see that I must tell you all. I am sure you will treat what I say asabsolutely confidential."
"Certainly."
"I am provisionally engaged to Mr. Jopp."
"Provisionally?"
She gulped.
"Let me tell you my story. Mr. Jopp asked me to marry him, and I wouldrather do anything on earth than marry him. But how could I say 'No!'with those awful eyes of his boring me through? I knew that if I said'No', he would argue me out of it in two minutes. I had an idea. Igathered that he had never played golf, so I told him that I wouldmarry him if he won the Amateur Championship this year. And now I findthat he has been a golfer all along, and, what is more, a plus man! Itisn't fair!"
"He was not a golfer when you made that condition," I said. "He took upthe game on the following day."
"Impossible! How could he have become as good as he is in this shorttime?"
"Because he is Vincent Jopp! In his lexicon there is no such word asimpossible."
She shuddered.
"What a man! But I can't marry him," she cried. "I want to marrysomebody else. Oh, won't you help me? Do shout 'Boo!' at him when he isstarting his down-swing!"
I shook my he
ad.
"It would take more than a single 'boo' to put Vincent Jopp off hisstroke."
"But won't you try it?"
"I cannot. My duty is to my employer."
"Oh, do!"
"No, no. Duty is duty, and paramount with me. Besides, I have a bet onhim to win."
The stricken girl uttered a faint moan, and tottered away.
* * * * *
I was in our suite shortly after dinner that night, going over some ofthe notes I had made that day, when the telephone rang. Jopp was out atthe time, taking a short stroll with his after-dinner cigar. I unhookedthe receiver, and a female voice spoke.
"Is that Mr. Jopp?"
"Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking. Mr. Jopp is out."
"Oh, it's nothing important. Will you say that Mrs. Luella MainpriceJopp called up to wish him luck? I shall be on the course tomorrow tosee him win the final."
I returned to my notes. Soon afterwards the telephone rang again.
"Vincent, dear?"
"Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking."
"Oh, will you say that Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp called up to wish him luck?I shall be there tomorrow to see him play."
I resumed my work. I had hardly started when the telephone rang for thethird time.
"Mr. Jopp?"
"Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking."
"This is Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp. I just called up to wish him luck. Ishall be looking on tomorrow."
I shifted my work nearer to the telephone-table so as to be ready forthe next call. I had heard that Vincent Jopp had only been marriedthree times, but you never knew.
Presently Jopp came in.
"Anybody called up?" he asked.
"Nobody on business. An assortment of your wives were on the wirewishing you luck. They asked me to say that they will be on the coursetomorrow."
For a moment it seemed to me that the man's iron repose was shaken.
"Luella?" he asked.
"She was the first."
"Jane?"
"And Jane."
"And Agnes?"
"Agnes," I said, "is right."
"H'm!" said Vincent Jopp. And for the first time since I had known himI thought that he was ill at ease.
* * * * *
The day of the final dawned bright and clear. At least, I was not awakeat the time to see, but I suppose it did; for at nine o'clock, when Icame down to breakfast, the sun was shining brightly. The firsteighteen holes were to be played before lunch, starting at eleven.Until twenty minutes before the hour Vincent Jopp kept me busy takingdictation, partly on matters connected with his wheat deal and partlyon a signed article dealing with the Final, entitled "How I Won." Ateleven sharp we were out on the first tee.
Jopp's opponent was a nice-looking young man, but obviously nervous. Hegiggled in a distraught sort of way as he shook hands with my employer.
"Well, may the best man win," he said.
"I have arranged to do so," replied Jopp, curtly, and started toaddress his ball.
There was a large crowd at the tee, and, as Jopp started hisdown-swing, from somewhere on the outskirts of this crowd there camesuddenly a musical "Boo!" It rang out in the clear morning air like abugle.
I had been right in my estimate of Vincent Jopp. His forceful strokenever wavered. The head of his club struck the ball, despatching it agood two hundred yards down the middle of the fairway. As we left thetee I saw Amelia Merridew being led away with bowed head by two membersof the Greens Committee. Poor girl! My heart bled for her. And yet,after all, Fate had been kind in removing her from the scene, even incustody, for she could hardly have borne to watch the proceedings.Vincent Jopp made rings round his antagonist. Hole after hole he won inhis remorseless, machine-like way, until when lunch-time came at theend of the eighteenth he was ten up. All the other holes had beenhalved.
It was after lunch, as we made our way to the first tee, that theadvance-guard of the Mrs. Jopps appeared in the person of LuellaMainprice Jopp, a kittenish little woman with blond hair and aPekingese dog. I remembered reading in the papers that she had divorcedmy employer for persistent and aggravated mental cruelty, callingwitnesses to bear out her statement that he had said he did not likeher in pink, and that on two separate occasions had insisted on her dogeating the leg of a chicken instead of the breast; but Time, the greathealer, seemed to have removed all bitterness, and she greeted himaffectionately.
"Wassums going to win great big championship against nasty rough strongman?" she said.
"Such," said Vincent Jopp, "is my intention. It was kind of you,Luella, to trouble to come and watch me. I wonder if you know Mrs.Agnes Parsons Jopp?" he said, courteously, indicating a kind-looking,motherly woman who had just come up. "How are you, Agnes?"
"If you had asked me that question this morning, Vincent," replied Mrs.Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I should have been obliged to say that I felt farfrom well. I had an odd throbbing feeling in the left elbow, and I amsure my temperature was above the normal. But this afternoon I am alittle better. How are you, Vincent?"
Although she had, as I recalled from the reports of the case, beencompelled some years earlier to request the Court to sever her maritalrelations with Vincent Jopp on the ground of calculated and inhumanbrutality, in that he had callously refused, in spite of her pleadings,to take old Dr. Bennett's Tonic Swamp-Juice three times a day, hervoice, as she spoke, was kind and even anxious. Badly as this man hadtreated her--and I remember hearing that several of the jury had beenunable to restrain their tears when she was in the witness-box givingher evidence--there still seemed to linger some remnants of the oldaffection.
"I am quite well, thank you, Agnes," said Vincent Jopp.
"Are you wearing your liver-pad?"
A frown flitted across my employer's strong face.
"I am not wearing my liver-pad," he replied, brusquely.
"Oh, Vincent, how rash of you!"
He was about to speak, when a sudden exclamation from his rear checkedhim. A genial-looking woman in a sports coat was standing there, eyeinghim with a sort of humorous horror.
"Well, Jane," he said.
I gathered that this was Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, the wife who haddivorced him for systematic and ingrowing fiendishness on the groundthat he had repeatedly outraged her feelings by wearing a whitewaistcoat 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 ushave our weaknesses, and my employer's was the rooted idea that helooked well in knickerbockers. It was not my place to try to dissuadehim, but there was no doubt that they did not suit him. Nature, inbestowing upon him a massive head and a jutting chin, had forgotten tofinish him off at the other end. Vincent Jopp's legs were skinny.
"You poor dear man!" went on Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp. "What practicaljoker 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 withouthis liver-pad----"
"Little Tinky-Ting don't need no liver-pad, he don't," said Mrs. LuellaMainprice Jopp, addressing the animal in her arms, "because he was hismuzzer's pet, he was."
I was standing quite near to Vincent Jopp, and at this moment I saw abead of perspiration spring out on his forehead, and into his steelyeyes there came a positively hunted look. I could understand andsympathize. Napoleon himself would have wilted if he had found himselfin the midst of a trio of females, one talking baby-talk, anotherfussing about his health, and the third making derogatory observationson 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 hisface--the look of a man whose back is against the wall. Ten down on themorning's round, he had drawn on his reserves of co
urage and wasdetermined 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 meoff my stroke!"
"Put _you_ off your stroke!" I exclaimed, incredulously.
"Yes, me! How the deuce can I concentrate, with people babbling aboutliver-pads, and--and knickerbockers all round me? Keep them away!"
He started to address his ball, and there was a weak uncertainty in theway 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 sankinto 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 competitor inthe 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. Hemade a gallant effort to retrieve the lost ground, but the ball strucka stone and bounded away into the long grass 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 latehusband's blushing antagonist, "is quite right to wear knickerbockers.He can carry them off. But a glance in the mirror must have shown youthat you----"
"I'm sure you're feverish, Vincent," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp,solicitously. "You are quite flushed. There is a wild gleam in youreyes."
"Muzzer's pet got little buttons of eyes, that don't never have no wildgleam 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.
I need not recount the play hole by hole, I think. There are somesubjects that are too painful. It was pitiful to watch Vincent Jopp inhis downfall. By the end of the first nine his lead had been reduced toone, and his antagonist, rendered a new man by success, was playingmagnificent golf. On the next hole he drew level. Then with asuperhuman effort Jopp contrived to halve the eleventh, twelfth, andthirteenth. It seemed as though his iron will might still assertitself, but on the fourteenth the end came.
He had driven a superb ball, outdistancing his opponent by a full fiftyyards. The latter played a good second to within a few feet of thegreen. And then, as Vincent Jopp was shaping for his stroke, LuellaMainprice gave tongue.
"Vincent!"
"Well?"
"Vincent, that other man--bad man--not playing fair. When your back wasturned just now, he gave his ball a great bang. _I_ was watchinghim."
"At any rate," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I do hope, when the gameis over, Vincent, that you will remember to cool slowly."
"Flesho!" cried Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp triumphantly. "I've been trying toremember the name all the afternoon. I saw about it in one of thepapers. The advertisements speak most highly of it. You take it beforebreakfast and again before retiring, and they guarantee it to producefirm, healthy flesh on the most sparsely-covered limbs in next to notime. Now, _will_ you remember to get a bottle tonight? It comesin two sizes, the five-shilling (or large size) and the smaller athalf-a-crown. G. K. Chesterton writes that he used it regularly foryears."
Vincent Jopp uttered a quavering moan, and his hand, as he took themashie from his bag, was trembling like an aspen.
Ten minutes later, he was on his way back to the club-house, a beatenman.
* * * * *
And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that in golf there is nosuch thing as a soft snap. You can never be certain of the finestplayer. Anything may happen to the greatest expert at any stage of thegame. In a recent competition George Duncan took eleven shots over ahole which eighteen-handicap men generally do in five. No! Back horsesor go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from theRothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier.But to bet at golf is pure gambling.