The Desert and the Sown | Page 5

Moya out of the portion Madame gives him on his marriage. My
poor little girl, as you know, will get nothing from me but a few old
bits and trinkets and a father's blessing,--the same doesn't go for much
in these days. I have been a better dispenser than accumulator, like
others of our name.
"I do assure you, Annie, it bores me down to the ground, this
humanitarian racket from children with ugly names who have just
chipped the shell. This one owns his surprise that we work in the army!
That our junior officers teach, and study a bit perforce themselves. His
own idea is that every West Pointer, before he gets his commission,
should serve a year or two in the ranks, to raise the type of the enlisted
man, and chiefly, mark you, to get his point of view, the which he is to
bear in mind when he comes to his command. Oh, we've had some
pretty arguments! But I suspect the rascal of drawing it mild, at this
stage, for the old dragon who guards his Golden Apple. He doesn't
want to poke me up. How far he'd go if he were not hampered in his
principles by the fact that he is in love, I cannot say. And I'd rather not
imagine."
The commandant's house at Bisuka Barracks is the nearest one to the
flag-pole as you go up a flight of wooden steps from the parade ground.
These steps, and their landings, flanked by the dry grass terrace of the
line, are a favorite gathering place for young persons of leisure at the
Post. They face the valley and the mountains; they lead past the
adjutant's office to the main road to town; they command the daily
pageant of garrison duty as performed at such distant, unvisited posts,
with only the ladies and the mountains looking on.
Retreat had sounded at half after five, for the autumn days grew short.
The colonel's orderly had been dismissed to his quarters. There was no
excuse, at this hour, for two young persons lingering in sentimental
corners of the steps, beyond a flagrant satisfaction in the shadow
thereof which covered them since the lighting of lamps on Officers'
Row.
The colonel stood at his study window keeping his pipe alive with slow
and dreamy puffs. The moon was just clearing the roof of the men's
quarters. His eye caught a shape, or a commingling of shapes,

ensconced in an angle of the steps; the which he made out to be his
daughter, in her light evening frock with one of his own old army capes
over her shoulders, seated in close formation beside the only man at the
Post who wore civilian black.
The colonel had the feelings of a man as well as a father. He went back
to his letter with a softened look in his face. He had said too much; he
always did--to Annie; and now he must hedge a little or she would
think there was trouble brewing, and that he was going to be nasty
about Moya's choice.

III
THE INITIAL LOVE
"Let us be simple! Not every one can be, but we can. We can afford to
be, and we know how!"
Moya was speaking rapidly, in her singularly articulate tones. A reader
of voices would have pronounced hers the physical record of unbroken
health and constant, joyous poise.
"Hear the word of your prophet Emerson!" she brought a little fist
down upon her knee for emphasis, a hand several sizes larger closed
upon it and held it fast. "Hear the word--are you listening? 'Only two in
the Garden walked and with Snake and Seraph talked.'"
The young man's answer was an instant's impassioned silence. Too
close it touched him, that vital image of the Garden. Then, with an
effect of sternness, he said,--
"Have we the right to do as we please? Have we the courage that comes
of right to cut ourselves off from all those calls and cries for help?"
"I have," said the girl; "I have just that right--of one who knows exactly
what she wants, and is going to get it if she can!"
He laughed at her happy insolence, with which all the youth and nature
in him made common cause.
"I shouldn't mind thinking about your Poor Man," she tripped along, "if
he liked being poor, or if it seemed to improve him any; or if it were
only now and then. But there is so dreadfully much of him! Once we
begin, how should we ever think about anything else? He'd rise up and
sit down with us, and eat and drink with us, and tell us what to wear.
Every pleasure of our lives would be spoiled with his