“Expense, madam? There’s no expense. All that is needed is time, and of that we have as much as anybody living.”
He held up a hand for silence, and in his rich voice, warm with an almost boyish enthusiasm, he repeated a poem he had read but whose author he did not remember:
“‘Beyond the East, the sunrise, beyond the West, the sea—
And East or West, the wander-thirst will never let me be.
It works in me like madness, dear, to make me say good-bye,
For the stars call and the sea calls, and O! the call of the sky.“‘I know not where the white road leads, nor what the blue hills are,
But a man can have the sun for a friend, and for his guide a star.
And there’s no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
For the river calls and the road calls, and O! the call of the bird.“‘Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night or day,
The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away,
And come I may, but go I must, and if you ask me why,
You may put the blame on the stars and sun, and the white road and the sky.’
“Only it’s the red road with us, ladies—the long red road, and it winds up the mountains, and down the mountains, and we’ll follow it till we long for home again.”
“Oh,” whispered Annie Laurie to Carin as they walked from the dining room together, “how fine it will be to get the poor aunts away from that house where they worry and search, and search and worry!”
“And don’t you see,” returned Carin, “that papa is really having in the back of his mind the idea that he may run across the Disbrows? He thinks that, after all, Mr. Disbrow won’t quite dare spend that money—at least not much of it. He could talk about going West but he hasn’t really the courage to go. He’ll drive around in the mountains, shooting a little, and grazing his cow and horses, and eating up the chickens. Papa says that’s the way a man with his rearing would do, probably. So we’re to take to all sorts of byroads and odd ways in the hope of finding them.”
“Really?” said Annie Laurie. “But—Oh, Carin, if we found them! What a humiliation for them!”
“Well, so far as Mr. Disbrow is concerned, I think he has some humiliation coming to him,” said Carin sharply.
Annie Laurie hated to tell Sam they were going to the mountains. She feared he would read in her eyes her knowledge of this second intention—this hope of finding the fugitives. Perhaps he did. He was very silent these days, and he worked furiously. Annie Laurie tried to get him to sit with them evenings, but he would not. His old-time light-heartedness, preserved under so many difficulties, seemed to have passed entirely. Yet he was not sullen nor even sad—only very grave. He was indeed fighting his battle, and it was not an easy one.
But little by little he could see—everyone could see—that he was winning the respect of the townspeople. Men went out of their way to speak to him and to ask him how he was getting on in his new business and to say they’d be glad to help him out if he got in any difficulty. Some of the nicest women in Lee invited him to their homes; but to all such invitations Sam sent a respectful refusal. He seemed determined to keep to himself until he had won his right to enter other men’s doors as an honest boy, the son of an honest man.