The Ruling Passion [51]
if
it were possible by any means that their presence could flash for a
moment through the veil, it would be most natural that they should
come back again to hover around the work into which their experience
and passion had been woven. Here, if anywhere, they would "Revisit
the pale glimpses of the moon." Here, if anywhere, we might catch
fleeting sight, as in a glass darkly, of the visions that passed
before them while they worked.
This much of my train of reasoning along the edge of the dark, I
remember sharply. But after this, all was confused and misty. The
shore of consciousness receded. I floated out again on the ocean of
forgotten dreams. When I woke, it was with a quick start, as if my
ship had been made fast, silently and suddenly, at the wharf of
reality, and the bell rang for me to step ashore.
But the vision of the white blot remained clear and distinct. And
the question that it had brought to me, the chain of thoughts that
had linked themselves to it, lingered through the morning, and made
me feel sure that there was an untold secret in Falconer's life and
that the clew to it must be sought in the history of his last
picture.
But how to trace the connection? Every one who had known Falconer,
however slightly, was out of town. There was no clew to follow.
Even the name "Larmone" gave me no help; for I could not find it on
any map of Long Island. It was probably the fanciful title of some
old country-place, familiar only to the people who had lived there.
But the very remoteness of the problem, its lack of contact with the
practical world, fascinated me. It was like something that had
drifted away in the fog, on a sea of unknown and fluctuating
currents. The only possible way to find it was to commit yourself
to the same wandering tides and drift after it, trusting to a
propitious fortune that you might be carried in the same direction;
and after a long, blind, unhurrying chase, one day you might feel a
faint touch, a jar, a thrill along the side of your boat, and,
peering through the fog, lay your hand at last, without surprise,
upon the very object of your quest.
III
As it happened, the means for such a quest were at my disposal. I
was part owner of a boat which had been built for hunting and
fishing cruises on the shallow waters of the Great South Bay. It
was a deliberate, but not inconvenient, craft, well named the
Patience; and my turn for using it had come. Black Zekiel, the
captain, crew, and cook, was the very man that I would have chosen
for such an expedition. He combined the indolent good-humour of the
negro with the taciturnity of the Indian, and knew every shoal and
channel of the tortuous waters. He asked nothing better than to set
out on a voyage without a port; sailing aimlessly eastward day after
day, through the long chain of landlocked bays, with the sea
plunging behind the sand-dunes on our right, and the shores of Long
Island sleeping on our left; anchoring every evening in some little
cove or estuary, where Zekiel could sit on the cabin roof, smoking
his corn-cob pipe, and meditating on the vanity and comfort of life,
while I pushed off through the mellow dusk to explore every creek
and bend of the shore, in my light canoe.
There was nothing to hasten our voyage. The three weeks' vacation
was all but gone, when the Patience groped her way through a narrow,
crooked channel in a wide salt-meadow, and entered the last of the
series of bays. A few houses straggled down a point of land; the
village of Quantock lay a little farther back. Beyond that was a
belt of woods reaching to the water; and from these the south-
country road emerged to cross the upper end of the bay on a low
causeway with a narrow bridge of planks at the central point. Here
was our Ultima Thule. Not even the Patience could thread the
it were possible by any means that their presence could flash for a
moment through the veil, it would be most natural that they should
come back again to hover around the work into which their experience
and passion had been woven. Here, if anywhere, they would "Revisit
the pale glimpses of the moon." Here, if anywhere, we might catch
fleeting sight, as in a glass darkly, of the visions that passed
before them while they worked.
This much of my train of reasoning along the edge of the dark, I
remember sharply. But after this, all was confused and misty. The
shore of consciousness receded. I floated out again on the ocean of
forgotten dreams. When I woke, it was with a quick start, as if my
ship had been made fast, silently and suddenly, at the wharf of
reality, and the bell rang for me to step ashore.
But the vision of the white blot remained clear and distinct. And
the question that it had brought to me, the chain of thoughts that
had linked themselves to it, lingered through the morning, and made
me feel sure that there was an untold secret in Falconer's life and
that the clew to it must be sought in the history of his last
picture.
But how to trace the connection? Every one who had known Falconer,
however slightly, was out of town. There was no clew to follow.
Even the name "Larmone" gave me no help; for I could not find it on
any map of Long Island. It was probably the fanciful title of some
old country-place, familiar only to the people who had lived there.
But the very remoteness of the problem, its lack of contact with the
practical world, fascinated me. It was like something that had
drifted away in the fog, on a sea of unknown and fluctuating
currents. The only possible way to find it was to commit yourself
to the same wandering tides and drift after it, trusting to a
propitious fortune that you might be carried in the same direction;
and after a long, blind, unhurrying chase, one day you might feel a
faint touch, a jar, a thrill along the side of your boat, and,
peering through the fog, lay your hand at last, without surprise,
upon the very object of your quest.
III
As it happened, the means for such a quest were at my disposal. I
was part owner of a boat which had been built for hunting and
fishing cruises on the shallow waters of the Great South Bay. It
was a deliberate, but not inconvenient, craft, well named the
Patience; and my turn for using it had come. Black Zekiel, the
captain, crew, and cook, was the very man that I would have chosen
for such an expedition. He combined the indolent good-humour of the
negro with the taciturnity of the Indian, and knew every shoal and
channel of the tortuous waters. He asked nothing better than to set
out on a voyage without a port; sailing aimlessly eastward day after
day, through the long chain of landlocked bays, with the sea
plunging behind the sand-dunes on our right, and the shores of Long
Island sleeping on our left; anchoring every evening in some little
cove or estuary, where Zekiel could sit on the cabin roof, smoking
his corn-cob pipe, and meditating on the vanity and comfort of life,
while I pushed off through the mellow dusk to explore every creek
and bend of the shore, in my light canoe.
There was nothing to hasten our voyage. The three weeks' vacation
was all but gone, when the Patience groped her way through a narrow,
crooked channel in a wide salt-meadow, and entered the last of the
series of bays. A few houses straggled down a point of land; the
village of Quantock lay a little farther back. Beyond that was a
belt of woods reaching to the water; and from these the south-
country road emerged to cross the upper end of the bay on a low
causeway with a narrow bridge of planks at the central point. Here
was our Ultima Thule. Not even the Patience could thread the