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A date told of his change from Larmone to the village, and this was written below it: "Too heavy a sense of obligation destroys freedom, and only a free man can dare to love."
"Queer kinder fellow," said a wrinkled old bayman with whom I walked up the sandy road, "I seen him a good deal round here, but 'twan't like havin' any 'quaintance with him. He allus kep' himself to himself, pooty much. Used ter stay round 'Squire Ladoo's place most o' the time keepin' comp'ny with the gal I guess. Larmone?
Ah, friend, in thy deep grave, What now can change; what now can save?" So there was a message after all, but it could never be carried; a task for a friend, but it was impossible. What better thing could I do with the poor little book than bury it in the garden in the shadow of Larmone? The story of a silent fault, hidden in silence.
I have told her only that I am going to prove myself an artist, AND TO LIVE FOR WHAT I LOVE BEST. She understood, I am sure, for she would not lift her eyes to me, but her hand trembled as she gave me the blue flower from her belt." The date of his return to Larmone was marked, but the page was blank, as the day had been.
Then came the date of his first visit to Larmone, and an expression of the pleasure of being with his own people again after a lonely life, and some chronicle of his occupations there, studies for pictures, and idle days that were summed up in a phrase: "On the bay," or "In the woods."
An air of loneliness and pensive sorrow breathed from the picture; a sigh of longing and regret. It was haunted by sad, sweet memories of some untold story of human life. In the corner Falconer had put his signature, T. F., "LARMONE," 189-, and on the border of the picture he had faintly traced some words, which we made out at last "A spirit haunts the year's last hours."
Falconer had come down from the city; he stayed at Larmone first, and then he came to the boarding-house, but he was over at the Ledoux' house almost all the time. He was a Southerner too, and a relative of the family; a real gentleman, and very proud though he was poor. It seemed strange that he should not live with them, but perhaps he felt more free over here.
The broad saffron light of evening fading over a still lagoon; two converging lines of pine trees running back into the sunset; a grassy point upon the right; and behind that a neglected garden, a tangled bower of honeysuckle, a straight path bordered with box, leading to a deserted house with a high, white-pillared porch yes, it was Larmone.
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.
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