Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1921)

6+ minute. The weight of the bag did not lessen his general discomfort. He dropped into the nearest transfer place and had the bag sent to his apartments. While he was not at all sure where he was going, he did at least know it would be some place where he wouldn't want the outfit in the bag, nor the fishing-rods in the case on top of it. So, relieved of the bag, he resumed his wholly aimless ramble, still on the sunny side of the street, since it required too much mental effort to reason out how much more comfortable the shady side would be. Here was everyone telling him he simply must drop things for a time and go and play. It looked simple enough to do a little thing like that. But he had discovered it wasn't. Trying to play seemed to be more work than work itself. Maybe he was the sort of man who couldn't play; who couldn't interest himself in anything save work. But they were telling him he wouldn't be in shape to work unless he stopped to play for a space. They might be right, or again they might not. Work had been getting on his nerves these past few months but thi> trying to play got on them worse. There you were! He seemed to have run up against a great futility. He came to a little square with a plot of grass in the center of it, quite a sizable plot of grass with trees shading it, and benches beneath the trees. Paths crisscrossed this young park and an iron fence that had all the ornateness of the late '60's enclosed it. The locality was one that was changing. Old residences with brownstone fronts told what it had been. The too numerous milk bottles showing on the window ledges and the little shop in every basement told what it soon would be. Here and there a flatfronted metal-corniced tenement house began the fulfillment of the prophecies of the milk bottles on the window ledges and the emporiums of fish and provisions and groceries and dry-goods in every basement. The benches beneath the trees were sparsely occupied for so hot a day. The shade of the trees looked inviting. All in all the little park in the middle of the square seemed a fairly quiet place. Peter crossed over to it. He espied a bench, fairly secluded and made for it. His nearest neighbor was three benches distant and dozing as well. It seemed feasible to sit down on this bench in the shade and think things over; whether he'd rake up something new to try in the way of amusing himself or spare himself further disappointment by letting well enough alone. IF he intended to thresh this thing out he must cut out the circles around which he had been chasing himself of late. He must keep his mental processes to a straight line and get somewhere. To play or not to play seemed to be the question he must settle. He perched himself on the bench and took off his hat and thrust his hands into his pockets and puckered up his forehead. But before he could get under way with his problem the quiet of the place, which had been the main element of attraction to him, was suddenly shattered by shrill whoops and calls and chatter and a high-pitched squeal or two. Peter Judkins swung about in annoyance. For the first time he noticed a group of children beneath the trees. It was a very animated group at that moment. They were scurrying hither and yon, some fifteen of them, egged on by a young woman who was dressed in white. There was a peculiar note in the whoops and squeals. They sounded like made-toorder affairs. Also the children trotted about with machine-like movements, like so many automatons. It struck Peter Judkins that the small faces were all of them too sober and too vacant. There was some signal from the young woman. The voices ceased. The young The Proper Abandon (Continued from page 50) sters gathered about her. She seated herself on the grass, and they pushed closer. She was a remarkably good-looking young woman, very cool in her white dress, very efficient seeming, very patient, Peter noticed. She explained something at length. Peter liked her quick little gestures. Then all the children scattered to various appointed stations beneath the trees, some of them placed by the patient and efficientseeming young woman herself, who gave these over-backward ones yet further attention in the way of long-suffering explanation. And presently they were off again, with all the rushing about, the whoops, the chatter, the squeals, and the young woman clapping her hands and urging them to it. PETER JUDKINS became greatly interested. Finally it came to him with something of a jolt that she was teaching them to play; these sorry little human misfits who must needs be taught that which should have come to them through intuition. She was doing it with a thoroughness and an understanding of their poor little needs that was really touching. Peter Judkins became absorbed in the progress of that game in the mottled shadows of the trees; more absorbed than he had been in anything for weeks and months. It struck him at length that his own case was analogous to that of these backward children who must be taught to play. It struck him with such force he caught his breath and scowled and then chuckled. "Now, maybe," mused the most brilliant member of the well-known law firm of Bronson and Judkins, "that's what I've got to do. Learn to play!" The quaint thought amplified itself as he turned it over in his mind. "And it's quite possible," he added to himself, "I've got to learn from the beginning; start in the primer class." Forthwith, with a great deal of his old decision, Peter Judkins arose from his bench. It would have surprised him to realize he was still able to make any decision in so short a time, had he stopped to think about it. But he did not stop to think about it. He marched across the grass into the middle of the game. Naturally it terminated rather abruptly at his appearance in the midst of it. The vacantfaced children withdrew a space and stared at him. The young woman in white beheld him and reddened with annoyance. Peter took off his hat and engineered a decidedly stiff and formal bow, refusing to recognize the fact that he was an unwarranted intruder and that the young woman's face had grown more angrily — and becomingly — red as he accomplished that jerky bow. "I have been watching your work with these children," said Peter. "I am tremendously interested in it." Since she had taken up this work at the Elizabeth Patterson House, which was the one old brownstone front on the square whose window ledges were guiltless of milk bottles or similar decorations, Sarah Wendell had listened to that statement several times. She had heard it from many men who had invaded her precincts beneath the trees, in the little park and lifted their hats and bowed just as this man had bowed. Some of them were young men and some of them were men who were trying desperately to hide the fact that they were not young. All of them were more or less vapid of face and too carefully groomed. None of them had the air of distinction of this latest invader; none of his seriousness of purpose; none of his quiet force. He might be young or he might be old. His hair, the freshness of his skin, his general appearance gave weight to the former supposition; but a droop to his shoulders, something tired in the gray eyes, and deep lines at the corners of them suggested the exuberance of youth was well behind him. Whatever his years, he was old enough to know better. He was not at all like the other men who had simpered their expressions of interest in her work, and whom she had promptly and most effectively dealt with. This man with his rather nice smile and his air of distinction was much more dangerous. It made Sarah Wendell madder — both with him and with herself for admitting such things about him to herself. There was an overlong interval before she spoke. "Oh, are you?" she said in a voice some ten degrees below the freezing point. The man before her refused to be congealed. He was apparently able to ignore sudden drops in temperature without so much as the quiver of an eyelid. "Fearfully interested," he rattled on eagerly. " I am wondering if you happen to have room in your class for another member?" Sarah waited for the specific designation of that prospective member, and somehow the designation did not surprise her in the least. "I mean myself," said Peter. The request being unusual enough to demand explanatory bolstering up, and the young woman offering not so much as a helpful question about such explanation' Peter, perforce, in simplest self-defense, launched into it: "You see, people who ought to know all about such things have told me I must drop everything and run about and play for a time. I've been trying to do it. But I don't know how to play. I've tried — oh, lots of things these past three weeks, but they've all been worse than work. I've worked ever since I was so high. My people died when I was a little shaver, and some neighbors — that was in a little upstate town — took me in out of the goodness of their hearts or else because I was an asset in the work line. I've always tried to be fair about it; but I'm convinced the latter was the strongest motive. I worked, anyway, until I ran away from them because there was always so much work waiting for me. I never learned to play because I never had the time to play." He paused, apparently to see how the explanation was going with her. There was nothing about her to give him an inkling in this line. She was still a block of ice, carven into the shape of a most attractive young woman. She was thinking: " He's clever, too, as well as distinguishedlooking. So much the worse." " QO when they told me to run away and O play, "Peter hurried on, "I was all at sea because I'd never learned how to play. In my sink-or-swim life until I found my footing and got under way there wasn't anything but work. There hasn't been much else since, either. I've grown quite familiar with vork; know it inside out and upside down and over and under and through and between. But play is a different proposition. I don't know anything about it. I've really tried very hard to play; golf, and cruising along the coast in a motor-boat, and scaring marsh-birds to death with a shot-gun, and fishing, but I couldn't seem to get the hang of any of them. And they shoo me out of the office when I go back there and tell them work is my one best bet, after all. And I was getting pretty discouraged about it all when I saw you teaching these kids how to play. I really believe you could teach me the trick. You see, I've got to start in the A-B-C class. That's perfectly clear." Sarah W'endell was saying to herself: "He is clever. It's even a plausible yarn. He needs a lesson." {Continued on page 66)