The Land of Joy. Ralph Henry Barbour

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      CHAPTER I

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      John North unlocked the door and threw it open. The study was in semi-darkness and filled with the accumulated heat and fust of the summer. Ghostlike objects took shape before him and resolved themselves into chairs and couches and tables draped with sheets or, as in the case of the low book-shelves, hidden beneath yellowing folds of newspapers. The windows were closed and the shades drawn. At the side casements the afternoon sunlight made hot, buff oblongs on the curtains.

      He crossed the room impatiently, overturning on the way a waste-basket and sending its contents—old books, battered golf-balls, brass curtain-rings, a broken meerschaum pipe, crumpled letters and invitations dating back to class day—rolling over the rug and beneath the big table. With mutterings of disgust he sent the front windows crashing upward, letting in a rush of fresher air, moist from the newly sprinkled pavement below. At the side casements, however, he drew down the shades again, for Dunster Street was as full of heat and glare as an Arizona cañon.

      Laying aside coat and vest, he stretched his arms luxuriously, and, thrusting big, brown hands into trousers pockets, looked disconsolately from a window. Cambridge was sweltering. Although it was late September summer had returned in the night, unexpected and unwelcome, and had wrapped the city in a smothering blanket of heat and humidity. The square was a broad desert of arid, shimmering, sun-smitten pavement that radiated heat like the bed-plate of a furnace. The trees across the way looked wilted, dusty and discouraged. The Yard, which he could glimpse here and there around the corners of the buildings, appeared cool and inviting, but instead of bringing comfort, only increased his longing for the breezy Adirondack lake which he had left the day before. The cumbersome crimson cars buzzed to and fro with much clanging of bell and gong, interspersed with impatient shrillings from the whistle of the starter in front of the waiting station. From the outbound cars men with suit cases slid dejectedly to the pavement and wandered away toward all points of the compass, seeking their rooms. College would begin again on the morrow.

      John’s thoughts went back to the day three years before when from this very window he had watched, as he was watching now, the scene beneath. Then he had been filled with the keenest interest, even excitement; had been impatient for the morrow and the real commencement of his college life. His mind had been charged with thoughts of the great things he was going to do. Well, that had been three years ago, he reflected; to-day his thoughts were somewhat soberer. In the three years he had seen many illusions fade and had stored by a certain amount of practical common sense. As for the great things, some few of them had come to pass; unfortunately, seen in retrospect they were shrunken out of all similitude to the glorious subjects of his early dreams.

      It must not be thought, however, that disillusionment had soured him. At twenty-four, given a sane mind and a healthy body, one can bear with equanimity more disenchantment than had fallen to the lot of John North. And John, being the possessor of twenty-four years, sanity and health, dismissed memories of the olden visions with a sigh, shrugged his very broad shoulders and looked about for a pipe.

      It was necessary to uncover most of the furniture before the pipe was found. And then he remembered that his tobacco pouch was in his kit-bag, that his kit-bag was outside the door, and that the door was twenty feet away. So after a moment of hesitation СКАЧАТЬ