“Last time I saw Peggy, she said why didn’t we come out there this summer and at least rent, but of course then I knew it was impossible. Now, though—Well, I can’t imagine anything more ideal.”
Walter had been married ten years and his record of arguments was, total—3,650; won, 0; lost, 3,650. So it was only half-heartedly that he pointed out the objections to his wife’s plan: That Hampton Dunes was one of the “swellest” and most expensive places on Long Island; that while the Finches and Bowens went to the theater and played bridge together about once a month in town, Jack Bowen’s annual income was five times as big as the salary Bernard and Craig were going to pay Walter and that the Bowens’ friends at the Dunes were all wealthy and much too fast for the Finches to travel around with; that the village was too far away from New York (nearly three hours on the good trains) to permit Walter to make the round trip daily, and that people living in Hampton Dunes without a car were virtually becalmed for the summer.
Walter and Marion and Junior and Anne packed up and moved out there in the latter part of June. Marion had rented a small furnished cottage for four thousand dollars. It was nearly half a mile from the beach, but directly behind the Bowens’ big house right on the ocean and the Finches were welcome to the use of the Bowen beach at any and all times.
Walter would have to go into New York early Monday mornings and stay there till Friday afternoon, but on Saturdays and Sundays he could make up for it by loafing, playing with the kids, swimming, golfing (a membership in the club was only five hundred dollars), enjoying himself in any way he saw fit. They bought a secondhand sedan for eight hundred and life for Marion, at least, became something more than a tedious struggle to keep herself and the kids from megrims and doldrums.
Junior and Anne, chaperoned by a safe and rather inexpensive nurse, went to the beach at the Bowens’ every morning, came home for luncheon and went back to the beach in the afternoon. For the first two weeks, their mother had luncheon with them and sat with them while they ate their supper, but after that she was elected a member of a contract bridge foursome that took all her afternoons and half her nights and made her so sleepy that she barely managed to get up in time to start all over.
Peggy Bowen, Mrs. Dick Parker and Mrs. Kenneth Hart were the others in the quartet and Marion owed her membership to the fact that Mrs. Spears was abroad for the summer. Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Hart were the wives of extremely rich men, men who had inherited money, gone through college and then enjoyed phenomenal luck in the stock market.
The women played for five cents a point, sometimes ten. Marion’s limit previously had been a penny, but in Hampton Dunes she raised it to two-and-a-half cents at first, the others “carrying” her for the balance, and soon was gambling for the same stakes as her companions, with a prayer that Walter would never hear about it.
She was a good player and a good holder, and by the middle of July was over eight hundred dollars ahead. But hadn’t been paid.
When her grocery and meat bills came at the end of the first month, she swooned. The prices were terrific. She resolved not to tell Walter the facts and to economize thereafter. She wrote checks and sent them to the grocer and butcher, who, in their turn, fainted dead away when they received them. They were not used to clients who settled their June and July bills before the following April.
Walter arrived home in time for dinner Friday nights. It was nice to get away from the stuffy, dirty, hot city and he made the most of his weekends by golfing, swimming and just lolling on the beach.
At first he golfed alone, but Jack Bowen at length persuaded him to make a fourth in a regular set game that lasted all through Saturday and Sunday. The others concerned were Jack and Kenneth Hart and Dick Parker. It seemed that Walter was filling in for Mr. Spears, who had accompanied his wife to Europe.
It soon became an understood thing that the four families—the Parkers, Harts, Bowens and Finches—would spend their Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings playing contract, at some house other than the Finches’, which was too small. The men always played together at one table and the women at another.
Walter announced that he couldn’t go higher than five cents a point; in fact, that was much higher than he ever had gone before. The other men said that was all right, but they were playing among themselves for ten, which Walter thought at first meant ten cents, but soon discovered was a hundred times that much. He got a shock one night when the totals were announced and it was found that Parker was three thousand points up on Hart. Just a matter of thirty thousand dollars.
“I’ll play you a cold hand for it, Dick,” suggested the loser.
“All right; just one,” said Parker.
Two poker hands were dealt and Parker won with two pair against four clubs and a spade.
“Another one?” asked Hart.
“Not tonight,” said Parker.
“OK. That’s sixty thousand,” said Hart, and set about getting his wife started for home.
This took place at the Bowens’, and Walter and Marion stayed on a while after the Parkers and Harts had gone.
“Are those fellas crazy?” asked Walter.
“No,” replied Jack Bowen, “but I am, to be playing with them. Sixty thousand is less than a month’s income to either Ken or Dick. They’ve both got so
