The Land of Joy

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“Lazy beggar,” muttered John virtuously.

He recovered his pipe from the grass, thereby interfering with the interested examination of a black ant, and filled it slowly, his gaze loitering lovingly across the landscape.

“It seems too good to be true,” he said to himself, bringing his feet together tailor-fashion and scratching a sputtering match on the sole of one broad shoe. “I can’t imagine a man wanting anything better than this.” He lighted his pipe and sent a column of soft gray smoke up into the branches of the big oak. “To know that this big, beautiful chunk of God’s earth is yours, with its fields and forests, hills and streams, yours to do with as you wish——” He shook his head eloquently and blew another cloud of smoke into the sunlight. “To be master of it! To plow its soil and seed it; to cut its timber and build upon it—— To the dickens with your wire nails and your stuffy offices; to the deuce with cities and clubs and white waistcoats; to the——” Language again failed him. He blew more smoke.

“There’s everything here to hand,” he went on again; “timber for planks—there ought to be a sawmill, though—stone for foundations, gravel for road-building—a whole hill of it ready for the quarrying—clay for bricks. A man could pretty near get everything he needed off the land; he might have to send to Melville for window-glass and doorknobs. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if there was ochre somewhere about; a chap could grind his own paint.

“There’s the site for the house over yonder—‘yonder’s’ appropriately Southern, by the way—on that round hill,” he thought, taking his pipe from his mouth and pointing with the stem as though he had a listener. “It’s almost as high as this; there can’t be more than twenty feet difference, I guess—that is, I reckon. There’d be about three acres of lawn, and the drive would sweep up to it in a long, easy curve. I’d have the building face the east, of course. The stables and outbuildings would be strung together about half-way down the farther slope, toward the creek bottom. There’d be no use trying to build a Southern style house so long as Elaine stood here to make it look like thirty cents. No; a modified old English would be best, something long and low and hospitable looking. Ten or twelve thousand ought to pay for it. We mustn’t be extravagant at first; we’ve our living to make.”

He relighted his pipe, which had gone out, and lay back, leaning on one elbow. Over at the stable Will was cleaning a harness and singing softly in the sunlight. A peafowl approached tentatively and viewed John’s recumbent and motionless form with suspicious eye, her neck stretched forth ludicrously, her expressionless, unblinking eyes like beads of glass.

“Oh, rubber!” muttered John. He tossed a pebble at her and she turned with a disgusted squawk and hurried away. He went on with his dreaming.

“I’d get Markham, if I could; Phil would scarcely need him, I should think. He ought to go with the place, anyhow, like any other fixture. He’s a genuinely good fellow, and I guess, as Phil says, he’s the best overseer in the county. I think, with Markham here, I could make it go from the start. Of course, there’d be somewhat of an outlay at first. I can see where twenty or thirty thousand could be sunk without trouble; yes, easily that. I guess dad was about right when he put it at fifty thousand.

“There’d be plenty of hard work, and that’s what I want—work that’ll make a fellow hungry and tired and sleepy. But I’d be going ahead all the time; every day’s labour would show, and the end would be worth toiling for. It’d be just the kind of work that’s more than half pleasure. And there’d be plenty of fun, too. There’s the shooting; and there’d be a few good nags and some dogs; and I’d have Davy down here often, of course; maybe he’d stay awake if he was riding to hounds. And I’d lay out a links and teach the natives to play golf; there’s old Colonel What’s-his-name—Brownell, isn’t it? He’s a regular old sport, and I’ll bet he’d take hold in great style. And there’s Phil, and some of those chaps in town; also there’s ‘Uncle Bob’—he’d come any old time, I guess, and stay as long as there was a drop of liquor left. Oh, I wouldn’t want for society. Only if—if what I want happens they can all go hang!