Contract

When the Sheltons were settled in their new home in the pretty little suburb of Linden, Mrs. Shelton was afraid nobody would call on them. Her husband was afraid somebody would. For ages Mrs. Shelton had bravely pretended to share her husband’s aversion to a social life; he hated parties that numbered more than four people and she had convincingly, so she thought, played the role of indifference while declining invitations she would have given her right eye to accept. Shelton had not been fooled much, but his dislike of “crowds” was so great that he seldom sought to relieve her martyrdom by insisting that they “go” somewhere.

This was during the first six years of their connubial existence, while it was necessary to live, rather economically, in town. Recently, however, Shelton’s magazine had advanced him to a position as associate editor and he was able, with the assistance of a benignant bond and mortgage company, to move into a house in Linden. Mrs. Shelton was sure suburbanites would be less tedious and unattractive than people they had known in the city and that it would not be fatal to her spouse to get acquainted and play around a little; anyway she could make friends with other wives, if they were willing, and perhaps enjoy afternoons of contract bridge, a game she had learned to love in three lessons. At the same time Shelton resolved to turn over a new leaf for his wife’s sake and give her to understand that he was open for engagements, secretly hoping, as I have hinted, that Linden’s denizens would treat them as if they were quarantined.

Mrs. Shelton’s fears were banished, and Shelton’s resolution put to a test, on an evening of their second week in the new house. They were dropped in on by Mr. and Mrs. Robert French who lived three blocks away. Mrs. French was pretty and Shelton felt inclined to like her until she remarked how fascinating it must be to edit a magazine and meet Michael Arlen. French had little to say, being occupied most of the while in a petting party with his mustache.

Mrs. Shelton showed Mrs. French her seven hooked rugs. Mrs. French said, “Perfectly darling!” seven times, inquired where each of the seven had been procured and did not listen to the answers. Shelton served highballs of eighty dollar Scotch he had bought from a Linden bootlegger. French commented favorably on the Scotch. Shelton thought it was terrible himself and that French was a poor judge, or was being polite, or was deceived by some flavor lurking in the mustache. Mrs. Shelton ran out of hooked rugs and Mrs. French asked whether they played contract. Mrs. Shelton hesitated from habit. Shelton swallowed hard and replied that they did, and liked it very much.

“That’s wonderful!” said Mrs. French. “Because the Wilsons have moved to Chicago. They were crazy about contract and we used to have a party every Wednesday night; two tables⁠—the Wilsons, ourselves, and the Dittmars and Camerons. It would be just grand if you two would take the Wilsons’ place. We have dinner at somebody’s house and next Wednesday is our turn. Could you come?”

Mrs. Shelton again hesitated and Shelton (to quote O. O. McIntyre) once more took the bull by the horns.

“It sounds fine!” he said. “We haven’t anything else on for that night, have we, dear?”

His wife uttered an astonished no and the Frenches left.

“What in the world has happened to you?” demanded Mrs. Shelton.

“Nothing at all. They seem like nice people and we’ve got to make friends here. Besides, it won’t be bad playing cards.”

“I don’t know about contract,” said Mrs. Shelton doubtfully. “You’ve got good card sense, and the only time you played it, you were all right. But I’m afraid I’ll make hideous mistakes.”

“Why should you? And even if you do, what of it?”

“These people are probably whizzes.”

“I don’t care if they’re Lenz’s mother-in-law.”

“But you’ll care if they criticise you.”

“Of course I will. People, and especially strangers, have no more right to criticise your bridge playing than your clothes or your complexion.”

“You know that’s silly. Bridge is a game.”

“Tennis is a game, too. But how often do you hear one tennis player say to another, ‘You played that like an old fool!’?”

“You’re not partners in tennis.”

“You are in doubles. However, criticism in bridge is not confined to partners. I’ve made bonehead plays in bridge (I’ll admit it), and been laughed at and scolded for them by opponents who ought to have kissed me. It’s a conviction of most bridge players, and some golf players, that God sent them into the world to teach. At that, what they tell you isn’t intended for your edification and future good. It’s just a way of announcing ‘I’m smart and you’re a lunkhead.’ And to my mind it’s a revelation of bad manners and bad sportsmanship. If I ask somebody what I did wrong, that’s different. But when they volunteer⁠—”

It was an old argument and Mrs. Shelton did not care to continue it. She knew she couldn’t win and she was sleepy. Moreover, she was so glad they were “going out” on her husband’s own insistence that she felt quite kindly toward him. She did hope, though, that their new acquaintances would suppress their educational complex if any.

On Wednesday night this hope was knocked for a double row of early June peas. Mrs. Shelton was elected to play with French, Mrs. Cameron and Mr. Dittmar. Mrs. Cameron was what is referred to as a statuesque blonde, but until you were used to her you could think of nothing but her nostrils, where she might easily have carried two after dinner mints. Mr. Dittmar appeared to be continuing to enjoy his meal long after it was over. And French had to deal one-handed to be sure his mustache remained loyal. These details distracted Mrs. Shelton’s mind to such an extent that she made a few errors and was called for them. But she didn’t mind that and her greatest distraction was caused by words and phrases that came from the other table, where her husband was engaged with Mr. Cameron, Mrs. Dittmar and the hostess.

The French cocktails had been poured from an eye-dropper and Shelton maintained perfect control of his temper and tongue. His polite reception of each criticism was taken as a confession of ignorance and a willingness to learn, and his three table-mates were quick to assume the role of faculty, with him as the entire student-body. He was stepped on even when he was dummy, his partner at the time, Mrs. Dittmar, attributing the loss of a trick to the manner in which he had laid out his cards, the light striking the nine of diamonds in such a way as to make her think it was an honor.

Mrs. Dittmar had married a man much younger than herself and was trying to disguise that fact by acting much younger than he. An eight-year-old child who is kind of backward hardly ever plays contract bridge; otherwise, if you didn’t look at Mrs. Dittmar and judged only by her antics and manner of speech, you would have thought Dittmar had spent the final hours of his courtship waiting outside the sub-primary to take her home. Mrs. French, when she was not picking flaws in Shelton’s play, sought to make him feel at home by asking intelligent questions about his work⁠—“Do the people who draw the illustrations read the stories first?” “Does H. C. Witwer talk Negro dialect all the time?” And “How old is Peter B. Kinney?” Cameron, from whom Work, Lenz, Whitehead and Shepard had plagiarized the game, was frankly uninterested in anything not connected with it. The stake was half a cent a point and the pains he took to see that his side’s score was correct or better proved all the rumors about the two Scotchmen.

Mrs. Shelton was well aware that her husband was the politest man in the world when sober; yet he truly amazed her that evening by his smiling acquiescence to all that was said. From the snatches she overheard, she knew he must be afire inside and it was really wonderful of him not to show it.

There was a time when Mrs. Dittmar passed and he passed and Cameron bid two spades. Mrs. French passed and Mrs. Dittmar bid three hearts, a denial of her partner’s spades if Shelton ever heard one. Shelton passed and Cameron went three hearts, which stood. Shelton held four spades to the nine, four diamonds to the king, two small hearts and the eight, six and five of clubs. He led the trey of diamonds. I am not broadcasting the battle play by play, but when it was over, “Oh, partner! Any other opening and we could have set them,” said Mrs. French.

“My! My! My! My! Leading away from a king!” gurgled the child-wife.

“That lead was all that saved us,” said Cameron.

They waited for Shelton to apologize and explain, all prepared to scrunch him if he did either.

“I guess I made a mistake,” he said.

“Haven’t you played much bridge?” asked Mrs. French.

“Evidently not enough,” he replied.

“It’s a game you can’t learn in a minute,” said Cameron.

“Never you mind!” said Mrs. Dittmar. “I’ve played contract ever since it came out, and Daddy still scolds me terribly for some of the things I do.”

Shelton presumed that Daddy was her husband. Her father must be dead or at least too feeble to scold.

There was a time when a hand was passed around.

“Oh! A goulash!” crowed Mrs. Dittmar.

“Do you play them, Mr. Shelton?” asked his hostess.

“Yes,” said Shelton.

“Mrs. Shelton,” called Mrs. Dittmar to the other table, “does your big man play goulashes?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Shelton.

“You’re sure you know what they are,” said Cameron to Shelton.

“I’ve played them often,” said the latter.

“A goulash,” said the hostess, “is where the hand is passed and then we all put our hands together like this and cut them and the dealer deals five around twice and then three. It makes crazy hands, but it’s thrilling.”

“And the bidding is different,” said Mrs. Dittmar, his partner at this stage. “Big mans musn’t get too wild.”

Shelton, who had dealt, looked at his hand and saw no temptation to get wild; at least, not any wilder than he was. He had the king, queen and jack of spades, four silly hearts, four very young clubs and two diamonds of no standing. He passed. Cameron bid three clubs and Mrs. Dittmar four diamonds. That was enough to make game (they already had thirty), and when Mrs. French went by, Shelton unhesitatingly did the same. So did Cameron. It developed that Mrs. Dittmar had the ace, king, jack, ten and another diamond. Cameron had none and Mrs. French reeked with them. The bidder was set two. Her honors counted one hundred and the opponents’ net profit was two hundred, Mrs. Dittmar being vulnerable, or “venerable,” as Mrs. French laughingly, but not very tactfully, called it.

Cameron lighted into Mrs. French for not doubling Mrs. Dittmar and Mrs. French observed that she guessed she knew what she was doing. Shelton hoped this would develop into a brawl, but it was forgotten when Mrs. Dittmar asked him querulously why he had not shown her his spades, a suit of which she had held the ace, ten to five.

“We’re lucky, partner,” said Mrs. French to Cameron. “They could have made four spades like a breeze.”

“I’d have lost only the ace of hearts and queen of diamonds,” said Mrs. Dittmar, doubtless figuring that the maid would have disposed of her two losing clubs when she swept next morning.

“In this game, everything depends on the bidding,” said Mrs. French to Shelton. “You must give your partner all the information you can.”

“Don’t coach him!” said Cameron with an exasperating laugh. “He’s treating us pretty good.”

“Maybe,” said Mrs. French to Mrs. Dittmar, “he would have shown you his spades if you had bid three diamonds instead of four.”

“But you see,” said Mrs. Dittmar, “we needed four for game and I didn’t know if he’d think of that.”

And there was a time when Shelton bid a fair no trump and was raised to three by his partner, Cameron, who held king, queen, ten to five hearts and the ace of clubs for a reentry. The outstanding hearts were bunched in Mrs. French’s hand, Shelton himself having the lone ace. After he had taken a spade trick, led his ace of hearts and then a low club to make all of dummy’s hearts good (which turned out to be impossible), he put over two deep sea finesses of the eight and nine of diamonds from the dummy hand, made four odd and heard Cameron murmur, “A fool for luck!”

“My! What a waste of good hearts!” said Mrs. Dittmar, ignoring the facts that they weren’t good hearts, that if he had continued with them, Mrs. French would have taken the jack and led to her (Mrs. Dittmar’s) four good spade tricks, and that with the ace of clubs gone, Shelton couldn’t have got back in the dummy’s hands with a pass from Judge Landis.

At the close of a perfect evening, the Sheltons were six dollars ahead and invited to the Dittmars’ the following Wednesday. Mrs. Shelton expected an explosion on the way home, but was agreeably disappointed. Shelton seemed quite cheerful. He had a few jocose remarks to make about their new pals, but gave the impression that he had enjoyed himself. Knowing him as she did, she might have suspected that a plot was hatching in his mind. However, his behavior was disarming and she thought he had at last found a “crowd” he didn’t object to, that they would now be neighborly and gregarious for the first time in their married life.

On the train from the city Friday afternoon, Shelton encountered Gale Bartlett, the writer, just returned from abroad. Bartlett was one of the star contributors to Shelton’s magazine and it was he who had first suggested Linden when Shelton was considering a suburban home. He had a place there himself though most of his time was spent in Paris and he was back now for only a brief stay.

“How do you like it?” he asked.

“Fine,” said Shelton.

“Whom have you met?”

“Three married couples, the Camerons, the Frenches and the Dittmars.”

“Good Lord!” said Bartlett. “I don’t know the Dittmars but otherwise you’re slumming. Cameron and French are new rich who probably made their money in a hotel washroom. I think they met their wives on an excursion to Far Rockaway. How did you happen to get acquainted?”

“The Frenches called on us, and Wednesday night we went to their house for dinner and bridge.”

“Bridge!”

“Contract bridge at that.”

“Well, maybe Dittmar’s a contractor. But from what I’ve seen of the Frenches and Camerons, they couldn’t even cut the cards without smearing them with shoe polish. You break loose from them before they forget themselves and hand you a towel.”

“We’re going to the Dittmars’ next Wednesday night.”

“Either call it off or keep it under your hat. I’ll introduce you to people that are people! I happen to know them because my wife went to their sisters’ boarding school. I’ll see that you get the entrée and then you can play bridge with bridge players.”

Shelton brightened at the prospect. He knew his wife was too kindhearted to wound the Camerons et al. by quitting them cold and it was part of his scheme, all of it in fact, to make them do the quitting. With the conviction that she would be more than compensated by the promised acquaintance of people they both could really like, he lost what few scruples he had against separating her from people who sooner or later would drive him to the electric chair. The thing must be done at the first opportunity, next Wednesday at the Dittmars’. It would be kind of fun, but unpleasant, too, the unpleasant part consisting in the mental anguish it would cause her and the subsequent days, not many he hoped, when she wouldn’t be speaking to him at all.

Fate, in the form of one of Mrs. Shelton’s two-day headaches, brought about the elimination of the unpleasant part. The ache began Wednesday afternoon and from past experience, she knew she would not be able to sit through a dinner or play cards that night. She telephoned her husband.

“Say we can’t come,” was his advice.

“But I hate to do that. They’ll think we don’t want to and they won’t ask us again. I wish you’d go, and maybe they could ask somebody in to take my place. I don’t suppose you’d consider that, would you?”

Shelton thought it over a moment and said yes, he would.

Before retiring to her darkened room and her bed, Mrs. Shelton called up Mrs. Dittmar. Mrs. Dittmar expressed her sympathy in baby talk and said it was all right for Mr. Shelton to come alone; it was more than all right, Mrs. Shelton gathered, because Mrs. Dittmar’s brother was visiting her and they would be just eight.

Shelton, who had learned long ago that his wife did not want him around when her head was threatening to burst open, stayed in town until six o’clock, preparing himself for the evening’s task with liberal doses of the business manager’s week-old rye. He was not going to be tortured by any drought such as he had endured at the Frenches’. He arrived at the party in grand shape and, to his surprise, was plied with cocktails potent enough to keep him on edge.

Mrs. Dittmar’s brother (she called him her dreat, big B’udder) was an amateur jazz pianist. Or rather, peeanist. He was proving his amateur standing when Shelton got there and something in the way he treated “Rhapsody in Blue” made Shelton resolve to open fire at once. His eagerness was increased when, on the way to the dining room, Mrs. Dittmar observed that her b’udder had not played much contract “either” and she must be sure and not put them (Shelton and B’udder) at the same table, for they might draw each other as partners and that would hardly be fair.

Dinner began and so did Shelton.

“A week ago,” he said, “you folks criticised my bridge playing.”

The Camerons, Dittmars and Frenches looked queer.

“You didn’t mind it, I hope,” said Mrs. Dittmar. “We were just trying to teach you.”

“I didn’t mind it much,” said Shelton. “But I was just wondering whether it was good manners for one person to point out another person’s mistakes when the other person didn’t ask to have them pointed out.”

“Why,” said Cameron, “when one person don’t know as much about a thing as other people, it’s their duty to correct him.”

“You mean just in bridge,” said Shelton.

“I mean in everything,” said Cameron.

“And the person criticised or corrected has no right to resent it?” said Shelton.

“Certainly not!”

“Does everybody here agree with that?”

“Yes,” “Of course,” “Sure,” came from the others.

“Well, then,” said Shelton, “I think it’s my duty to tell you, Mr. Cameron, that soup should be dipped away from you and not toward you.”

There was a puzzled silence, then a laugh, to which Cameron contributed feebly.

“If that’s right I’m glad to know it, and I certainly don’t resent your telling me,” he said.

“It looks like Mr. Shelton was out for revenge,” said Mrs. Cameron.

“And I must inform you, Mrs. Cameron,” said Shelton, “that ‘like’ is not a conjunction. ‘It looks as if Mr. Shelton were out for revenge’ would be the correct phrasing.”

A smothered laugh at the expense of Mrs. Cameron, whose embarrassment showed itself in a terrifying distension of the nostrils. Shelton decided not to pick on her again.

“Let’s change the subject,” said Mrs. Dittmar. “Mr. Shelton’s a mean, bad man and he’ll make us cwy.”

“That verb,” said Shelton, “is cry, not cwy. It is spelled c-r-y.”

“Tell a story, Bob,” said Mrs. French to her husband.

“Well, let’s see,” said French. “I’ll tell the one about the Scotchman and the Jew playing golf. Stop me if anybody’s heard it.”

“I have, for one,” said Shelton.

“Maybe the others haven’t,” said French.

“They must have been unconscious for years,” said Shelton. “But go ahead and tell it. I knew I couldn’t stop you.”

French went ahead and told it, and the others laughed as a rebuke to Shelton.

Cameron wanted things understood.

“You see,” he said, “the reason we made a few little criticisms of your bridge game was because we judged you were a new beginner.”

“I think ‘beginner’ is enough, without the ‘new,’ ” said Shelton. “I don’t know any old beginners excepting, perhaps, people old in years who are doing something or taking up something for the first time. But probably you judged I was a beginner at bridge because of mistakes I made, and you considered my apparent inexperience justified you in criticising me.”

“Yes,” said Cameron.

“Well,” said Shelton, “I judge from observing Mrs. French eat her fish that she is a new beginner at eating and I take the liberty of stating that the fork ought never to be conveyed to the mouth with the left hand, even by a left-handed eater. To be sure, these forks are salad forks, not fish forks, as Mrs. Dittmar may believe. But even salad forks, substituting for fish forks, must not be carried mouthward by the left hand.”

A storm was gathering and Mrs. Cameron sought to ward it off. She asked Mrs. Dittmar what had become of Peterson, a butler.

“He just up and left me last week,” said Mrs. Dittmar. “He was getting too impudent, though, and you can bet I didn’t object to him going.”

“ ‘His going,’ ” said Shelton. “A participle used as a substantive is modified in the possessive.”

Everyone pretended not to hear him.

“This new one is grand!” said Mrs. Dittmar. “I didn’t get up till nearly eleven o’clock this morning⁠—”

“Eleven!” exclaimed Mrs. French.

“Yes. Imagine!” said Mrs. Dittmar. “The itta girl just overslept herself, that’s all.”

“Mrs. Dittmar,” said Shelton, “I have no idea who the itta girl is, but I am interested in your statement that she overslept herself. Would it be possible for her, or any other itta girl, to oversleep somebody else? If it were a sleeping contest, I should think ‘outsleep’ would be preferable, but even so I can’t understand how a girl of any size outsleeps herself.”

The storm broke. Dittmar sprang to his feet.

“That’s enough, Shelton!” he bellowed. “We’ve had enough of this nonsense! More than enough!”

“I think,” said Shelton, “that the use of the word ‘enough’ three times in one short speech is more than enough. It grates on me to hear or read a word reiterated like that. I suggest as synonyms ‘plenty,’ ‘a sufficiency,’ ‘an abundance,’ ‘a plethora.’ ”

“Shut your smart aleck mouth and get out!”

“Carl! Carl! Mustn’t lose temper!” said Mrs. Dittmar. “Lose temper and can’t digest food. Daddy mustn’t lose temper and be sick all nighty night.”

“Shelton just thinks he’s funny,” said Cameron.

“He’s drunk and he’ll leave my house at once!” said Dittmar.

“If that’s the way you feel about it,” said Shelton.

He stopped on the way out to bid Mrs. Dittmar’s brother good night.

“Good night, B’udder old boy,” he said. “I’m glad to have met you, but sorry to learn you’re deaf.”

“Deaf! What makes you think I’m deaf?”

“I understood your sister to say you played the piano by ear.”

Knowing his wife would have taken something to make her sleep, and therefore not afraid of disturbing her, Shelton went home, got out a bottle of Linden Scotch and put the finishing touches on his bender. In the morning Mrs. Shelton was a little better and came to the breakfast table where he was fighting an egg.

“Well, what kind of time did you have?”

“Glorious! Much more exciting than at the Frenches’. Mrs. Dittmar’s brother is a piano playing fool.”

“Oh, wasn’t there any bridge then?”

“No. Just music and banter.”

“Maybe the brother can’t play contract and I spoiled the party by not going.”

“Oh, no. You didn’t spoil the party!”

“And do we go to the Camerons’ next Wednesday?”

“I don’t believe so. Nothing was said.”

They did go next Wednesday night to the palatial home of E. M. Pardee, a friend of Gale Bartlett’s and one of the real aristocrats of Linden. After dinner, Mrs. Pardee asked the Sheltons whether they played contract, and they said they did. The Pardees, not wishing to impoverish the young immigrants, refused to play “families.” They insisted on cutting and Shelton cut Mrs. Pardee.

“Oh, Mr. Shevlin,” she said at the end of the first hand, “why didn’t you lead me a club? You must watch the discards!”

Author’s Postscript: This story won’t get me anything but the money I am paid for it. Even if it be read by those with whom I usually play⁠—Mr. C., Mrs. W., Mr. T., Mrs. R. and the rest⁠—they will think I mean two other fellows and tear into me like wolves next time I bid a slam and make one odd.