"It doesn"t matter," said Arthur Jukes.
8
_The Heel of Achilles_
On the young man"s face, as he sat sipping his ginger-ale in the club-house smoking-room, there was a look of disillusionment. "Never again!" 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 let down badly. Wouldn"t you have thought I had a good thing, laying seven to 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 that the thing came unst.i.tched?"
"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 for the tenth," said the young man, his voice quivering, "and McTavish suddenly discovered that there was a hole in his trouser-pocket and sixpence had dropped out. He worried so frightfully about it that on the second nine he couldn"t do a thing right. Went completely off his game 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 on the result of a golf-match, it will be a blessing in disguise. There is no such thing as a certainty in golf. I wonder if I ever told you a rather 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 the American 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 touched a club since. Ring the bell and get me a small lime-juice, and I will tell you all."
It was long before your time (said the Oldest Member) that the events which I am about to relate took place. I had just come down from Cambridge, and was feeling particularly pleased with myself because I had secured the job of private and confidential secretary to Vincent Jopp, then a man in the early thirties, busy in laying the foundations of his present remarkable fortune. He engaged me, and took me with him to Chicago.
Jopp was, I think, the most extraordinary personality I have encountered in a long and many-sided life. He was admirably equipped for success in finance, having the steely eye and square jaw without which it is hopeless for a man to enter that line of business. He possessed also an overwhelming confidence in himself, and the ability to switch a cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other without wiggling his ears, which, as you know, is the stamp of the true Monarch of the Money Market. He was the nearest approach to the financier on the films, the fellow who makes his jaw-muscles jump when he is telephoning, that I have ever seen.
Like all successful men, he was a man of method. He kept a pad on his desk on which he would scribble down his appointments, and it was my duty on entering the office each morning to take this pad and type its contents neatly in a loose-leaved ledger. Usually, of course, these entries referred to business appointments and deals which he was contemplating, but one day I was interested to note, against the date May 3rd, the entry:
"_Propose to Amelia_"
I was interested, as I say, but not surprised. Though a man of steel and iron, there was nothing of the celibate about Vincent Jopp. He was one of those men who marry early and often. On three separate occasions before I joined his service he had jumped off the dock, to scramble back to sh.o.r.e 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, he contemplated the addition of a fourth to the platoon.
I was not surprised, I say, at this resolve of his. What did seem a little remarkable to me was the thorough way in which he had thought the thing out. This iron-willed man recked nothing of possible obstacles. Under the date of June 1st was the entry:
"_Marry Amelia_";
while in March of the following year he had arranged to have his first-born christened Thomas Reginald. Later on, the short-coating of Thomas Reginald was arranged for, and there was a note about sending him to school. Many hard things have been said of Vincent Jopp, but n.o.body has ever accused him of not being a man who looked ahead.
On the morning of May 4th Jopp came into the office, looking, I fancied, a little thoughtful. He sat for some moments staring before him 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 into single figures, and I welcomed the opportunity of dilating on the n.o.blest of pastimes. But I had barely begun my eulogy when he stopped me.
"It"s a game, is it?"
"I suppose you could call it that," I said, "but it is an offhand way of describing the holiest----"
"How do you play it?"
"Pretty well," I said. "At the beginning of the season I didn"t seem able 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 or gripping too tightly with the right hand----"
"Keep the reminiscences for your grandchildren during the long winter evenings," he interrupted, abruptly, as was his habit. "What I want to know is what a fellow does when he plays golf. Tell me in as few words as 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 compet.i.tion to decide which is the best player among the amateurs. There is also a Professional Championship, and an Open event."
"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."