CHAPTER XVITREMOR CORDIS
Richardshowed no indication to leave his comfortable place on Phœbe Norris’ porch. And Phœbe hummed about her work like a young healthy bee. When she felt particularly pleased she put little burbles of low laughter between her sentences; chuckles is not the exact word; they were suggestive rather of the cooing of pigeons. On the Lake the conversation could not be distinguished, but these interjectory ripples floated out clearly enough.
It was the first thing Walter heard when he had staggered down to the dock with an old mainsail and a tattered jib which he had resurrected from the top of a neighbouring oat stack. The music heartened him, though he was physically pretty well spent. It was all right, he said to himself; all right.
“Don’t you think you had better be going to the rescue of your friend Jawn De Lancey Galloway O’Toole?” Phœbe remarked as she stood before Richard and polished a plate. “He’ll be needin’ you, I’m thinkin’.”
“Jawn can take care of himself,” Richard had rejoined.
“Ordinarily, yes,” she agreed, “if he weren’t gallivantin’. But when an Irishman like Jawn begins to gallivant, his tongue waggles at both ends.”
“What’s gallivanting?” inquired Richard lazily. “Comes from ‘galli’ to gallop—doesn’t it?—and ‘vanti,’ vanity; ‘The vanity of horsemanship.’ The only thing Jawn can ride successfully is a subway express.”
“You’re wrong entirely on your etymology, young man,” she nodded sagely. “The word ‘gallivant’ comes from the ‘gal,’ meaning ‘woman,’ and ‘vanting,’ meanin’ ‘wantin’ ’em bad.’ At the rate he was goin’ when I left him,” she chuckled—or burbled, or whatever name you choose for a yet unnamed accomplishment, “he’s probably on the way to the priest-house by this time.”
“Who’s the woman?” Richard inquired.
“Well,hedidn’t begin by pretendin’ it was the old lady!”
Richard considered that statement for several seconds, while Phœbe hummed about him.
“Let him!” he finally said.
“One of the first symptoms of insanity,” Phœbe suggested judicially, although she knew exactly the train of unexpressed thought that led to the “Let him!” “one of the very first signs—and I should know what I am talking about—is sudden and unexpected jumps in the conversation. When I would remark to Seth that it was time to feed the chickens and he would reply, ‘I wish I had a white rat,’ I always knew it was time to hide the hammer and lock up the axe.... You’re not feelin’ a bit ferocious, are you?”
It was the joking over Richard’s possible madness that led to the particular set of intimate “burbles” which caught Walter’s attention suddenly, and made him stop in the midst of “bending on” the mainsail, and listen. He caught not a single word, but thetimbre,if one may so describe it, of the conference was unmistakably friendly and affectionate. Just so she had laughed and joked with him to cheer him out of moodiness, and the lilt in her voice had been the only decent memory in his life. Somehow, he could not believe that she would ever offer it to anyone else—madmen and lovers have such notions—it was his private possession, he thought; but now she was hovering over another man and——
Something Richard said—a bit of nonsense, no doubt—had brought a little shriek of delight from Phœbe, but the remainder of his speech she would not have. Quickly she had darted back of him and had placed a hand firmly over his mouth, cutting off a sentence in mid-air. But her low vibrating laughter showed that she had appreciated the humour of whatever had been said.
That act, trifling in itself and thoroughly characteristic of Phœbe Norris, inflamed Walter; it sent a shock through him that started the blood coursing and left him shaking violently with nervousness. He opened his mouth the better to breathe; spasms of trembling swept over him; he sat crouched up amid a swirl of sail-cloth and stared at the two happy persons before him.
An impartial judge would have decided that the relations between Mr. Richard and Mrs. Norris had not altered one thousandth of a millimetre from luncheon. Before Walter or behind Walter there had not been the slightest shadow of change in the outward attitude. The low laughter had been pulsating before; the jests had been passed and repassed; and even the friendly fillip had been exposed to view. But to Walter, seared with the burning iron of sudden jealousy, all these personal touches were born of the moment, staged now forthe first time, as the bill-boards say. The data for that sort of thing has been worked over pretty thoroughly; see the case of Othello versus Desdemona, or Leontes, king of Sicilia, versus Hermione, his queen. Over an innocent public leave-taking, one remembers,—the guest, Polixenes, is making his farewells to the hostess—Leontes cries, “I have tremor cordis on me! My heart dances, but not for joy! not joy!”
“Tremor cordis” it was, but Walter could make no pretty speeches about it. No word could have come from him. It was pitiful to see him struggling to get breath; pitiful unless one saw also the gleam of hate in his eye.
What should he do to rid himself of the suffering that possessed him? His first impulse was to burst in upon them and fight it out openly with whatever weapon appeared; but that impulse never got so far as a single movement: the big man, he knew, could fling him into the Lake, and the woman could pierce him with a glance and a score of scornful words. Craft whispered in his ear to bide his time and, above all, make sure. Jealousy demands evidence, concrete proof, specific torture to add to the mental anguish. Perhaps—Phœbe had gone off in a matter-of-fact way to see to her chickens, and Richard was coming down to the dock—perhaps there was nothing to it after all.
Almost as abruptly as it came the feeling of being dispossessed left him; all but the memory of it and a vague presentiment that he must be ever watchful. The exultant mood that followed took him to the other extreme. He laughed and seized the sail vigorously; and when Richard reached the dock he was humming a sort of a tune.
“Good boy!” Richard encouraged, when he saw theamount of work already done. “Here Phœbe and I have been fooling away the time while you have been working like a shoemaker. Why, we’ll be able to try her out to-day; won’t we?”
In spite of his feeling that all was well again Walter found it hard to control his speech.
“N-not t-to-day,” he managed. “No w-wind.”
What he meant to say was that he was too dog-tired to hoist sail and take the trial. It took all his strength to make the boat shipshape for the night.
“Oh, isn’t there?” Richard squinted about the heavens. “Well then, if it’s all the same to you, old chap, I’ll just trot up to the house and see my friend Jawn. Jawn’s a wild one when he’s on his vacation, and the Lord only knows what I’ll have to apologize for. So long!”
Walter watched him greedily to see if he really took the road that led to the Big House; and then, when his eyes had assured him, his suspicious brain suggested plots and stratagems. He stood up in the boat and craned his head to listen for sounds of Phœbe talking to her chickens. From the “chicken-runs” came not a single “cluck.” Some of the former “tremor cordis” seized him again, but not so violently; he shot a leg into the tender, tilting it at a frightful angle, and luckily managed to pilot the skiff to shore successfully. There was ten feet of water at the end of the dock.
Phœbe was not among the chickens; nor could he see her in the orchard, nor in the vineyards tilted up in full view on the hill. They had gone off together! It was a ruse to fool him! Oaths slipped from him, as he dashed up the hill and then down through the orchard to Phœbe’s house. He almost ran into her as she emerged suddenly from among the dahlias. She had alarge bunch of deep purple flowers in her arm, which she almost dropped at his sudden excited appearance.
“Land o’ Goshen!” she ejaculated. “If you start runnin’ wild about here, I’ll be forgettin’ myself and takin’ ye for Seth and lock you up for the night in the ‘pen’!... What’s the matter with you, boy? You’re all of a shake.”
A little tenderness softened her tone. She tried to take hold of his trembling hand, but he grinned and brought himself together.
“Jus’ l-lookin’ for y-you,” he stammered foolishly.
“You’re a funny boy,” she laughed, with some of her native crooning in her voice. “A funny boy!... Come in and sit down and tell me all about the new boat. I’m all excited about the races. I see myself standin’ on the dock at Alley’s Inn with a pair of field-glasses screwed to me two eyes and rainin’ curses on my good friends Tyler and Fagner.”
“Goin’ to beat ’em both;” Walter glowed under her loyal chatter.
“An’ don’t forget, boy,” she told him gravely, “that if you don’t win I’ll be feelin’ all the more sympathy for you. It’ll be much better for you if you lose; for then I’ll spendallmy time thinkin’ of you.”
“If I don’t win,” he began savagely, “I’ll—I’ll——”
“You’ll do nothin’ of the kind,” she calmed him firmly. “You’ll just try again, like everybody else. There isn’t a skipper on the Lake but what has lost a race some time or other.”
After a long chat together—Walter could always talk to Phœbe Norris—Phœbe told him it was time to go home. He did not want to go. The lunch was fine, but there were too many at lunch. Why not have alittle cosy supper together—just the two of them—on the porch, watching the sunset?
“You’re goin’ home, boy;” she was jocular but determined. “The breath of scandal has never yet tarnished me fair escutcheon. I don’t know what an escutcheon is, my boy, or whether it’s right and proper for a female to have one; but I know I’m not goin’ to be entertainin’ handsome young bachelors—meanin’ you—all alone by meself at seducin’ suppers. Go ’long with you.”
And although she drove him off and he was very much disappointed, yet he walked up the hill delighted with himself. Phœbe always had that effect on him, and she was quite aware of it. She watched him like a mother as he stalked on, and waved a hand when he turned half-way up the hill and looked back.
“Well, he seems chipper enough now,” she puzzled over him, “but he was rather wild at first.... I wonder what got into the lad.”
Richard had not gone directly up to “Red Jacket.” The vineyards took his eye. The rows and rows of dwarfed grape plants and their thick clusters of perfect grapes—now hard and green, of course—reminded him of similar vineyards in France and along the banks of the Rhine. A negro workman here and there was quite willing to stop and talk. There were two interests here for Richard—one was the methods used for keeping these vines free from the thousand and one enemies of the fruit, and the other was the curious bit of history represented by these descendants of a Virginia slave plantation transferred to the North and still working for the old family.
So it was growing upon dusk before he left the vineyard and strolled up to the Big House. “Tshoti,”“Non,” “Da” and “Waga”—the four huge porch columns—loomed tremendously in the half light. He caught a portion of their mystery and remembered Jerry’s prediction that one night he should come upon them unexpectedly as they performed their sentinel guard, and that he would feel himself grow small in their presence.
Jawn was entertaining the Wells family when Richard arrived.
“Make a limerick on Phœbe Norris?” he was repeating a question, possibly to gain time. “Sure I can!” He rolled his eyes upward. “Sure I can! It’s a simple matter, if you know how. Uh—let me see. ‘There was a young lady named Phœbe.’ No! That would never do. The only rhyme for Phœbe is ‘Hebe,’ the goddess of beer. U-m!... I have it! Well, how’s this?”
Richard spoiled that limerick by asking:
“Won’t someone introduce me to the poet?” and his hand went out eagerly to meet Jawn’s.
Jawn, however, was not so receptive. With a jocularity that was understood by everyone but the watchful Walter, he protested that he couldn’t be certain whether he ought to meet the gentleman for the first time or kiss him on either cheek as an old boyhood friend; he couldn’t be certain until they got together secretly and connived a bit. A bit of conniving now and then, he assured everybody, was relished by the best of men—and the worst of women. He had come to “Red Jacket,” he complained, with a perfectly good alias, and hardly had he been enjoying a high-class name for an hour when the daughter of the house saw through his verbal disguise and exposed him to the ridicule of the natives.
“Under the aristocratic name of Jawn Dalrymple—or was it Dalton?” he looked about him imploringly.
“It was De Lancey,” helped Jerry.
“De Lancey, of course!——”
Mrs. Wells interrupted. “I beg pardon,” she said, “I don’t want to seem stupid, but I thought you said your name was De Lancey? Isn’t that your name, Mr. De Lancey?”
Jerry explained carefully. “He was just joking us, mother. He is Mr. Richard’s old friend Mr. Galloway, Professor John Galloway of Columbia University.”
“The cat’s out!” Jawn turned disconsolately to Richard; “so I might as well shake hands and own up. It was a great mistake. I see it now. I ought to have worn whiskers.”
“But, really,” Mrs. Wells seemed very much concerned, “I can’t see why he should not have said Galloway from the beginning.”
The attempt to make clear Jawn’s reason for an incognito was not very successful, due to the fact that Richard’s incognito could not be explained. Even Jawn saw that. Both Richard and Jerry gave him open signals that it would not be politic to try to clear up two incognitos in one evening—all of which was not lost on Walter—and Mrs. Wells’ disturbed face was ample evidence that silence on that score was the best policy.
“I’ll tell you how it is,” Jawn jumped into the breach. “My real name is De Lancey, but when a lad I was adopted by a wealthy New York banker named Galloway. Well, he lost all his money and died leaving me nothing but the name. Naturally I sometimes forget and use the old one out of habit.”
The romantic explanation pleased Mrs. Wells immensely.She grew tremendously interested in the rich banker and wanted to know many particulars. Jawn was never at a loss for details.
Walter was keenly interested in Jawn’s talk but, he told himself, he was not at all taken in by it. A numbing remembrance of the afternoon’s suspicions came into the background of his mind and settled there. It was a spectre at all his banquets of happiness: it darted its chill into his best re-visioning of even that latest chat with Phœbe when she called him a handsome young bachelor and hinted scandalous things. So it behoved him to prepare his defences against attack.
The situation was very clear to Walter. This “Mr. Richard” was some sort of a confidence man. He first attracted the ladies and then subtracted their purses, or borrowed huge sums from them on bad notes, or got them to invest in worthless stocks. He had heard about these fellows. The books were full of them—not only the paper-backs, either, but real books—meaning cloth-covers—likeWallingfordandBlacky DawandRaffles. Jawn, of course, was a detective on the trail of Richard. In spite of all his joking and laughing, anyone could see that he kept his eye on Richard. Did Richard know that he was being trailed? Walter suspected that he did not.
He wondered if it were criminal to use another man’s name, a big man’s name at that, one whose reputation was world-wide, whose millions of money earned as railroad and steamship owner, international banker and dealer in monopolies in general, had made his name known even to children. That was the name on the card tacked carelessly on “Mr. Richard’s” door. He must be engaged in crime on a big scale to need to assume that name. And why had he changed it? And whatwas his real name? These were questions which Walter would like answered. Perhaps a little careful probing of Jerry would tell him something.
Later in the evening she was conscious of his following her about. In the tail of her eye she could see him sidling along the hall as she turned into a room, or standing afar off and watching strangely while she talked to someone. One got used to having a “queer” brother in the house, but these movements, stealthy and clumsy at once, were not usual.
“Want to see yuh,” he said to her finally.
“All right, Walter,” she agreed; “go out on the porch and sit beside ‘Waga.’”
“Jes’ y-you,” he nodded; “n-nobody else.”
“All right, Walter.”
Between “Waga” and “Da” they sat and looked out upon the wide sheet of blue water, startlingly clear in the moonlight.
“H-he’s gotta keep away from Phœbe,” Walter managed to begin.
Jerry was too used to managing her brother to show astonishment at any remark. He was easily frightened off.
“What makes you think so?” she asked quietly.
“H-he’s been hangin’ ’round, laughin’ and—lookin’ at her.”
“But everyone does, Walter,” she said; “who can help it? She is wonderful, you know.”
“She’s all right,” said he.
Walter seemed to have nothing further to add to that topic, and Jerry knew better than to try to force him to talk. She waited until he began again.
“Smart boy, he is.” His speech became clearer as he grew in confidence, and his manner became more aggressive. “Talks a lot.... But he’s a crook.”
The “he,” Jerry figured, must mean Jawn.
“Funny names, and all that,” he explained.
After a moment he laughed derisively, almost vindictively. “Says his name’s Richard! Huh! Richard Richard! Hah! Fools the women all right. But don’t fool me.... Has ’nother name, too.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced the card that Richard had ripped off his stateroom door. “But I cornered him. Tol’ me ’at was a fake name, too. Found it on his things ... in his stateroom.... Big gun, he was tryin’ to be.... Big gun.”
Mechanically Jerry took the card. By the light from the window she could see the hold black characters. It was indeed a big gun, one of the Crœsuses of his age. It seemed less like the name of a person, as she studied it, than that of some heavily advertised merchandise.
Jerry was not a newspaper reader, but vaguely she was conscious of knowing something about that name. While Walter bragged of his cleverness in discovering this further act of imposture, she was searching over her memory. Suddenly it became clear that the man whose card she held in her hand had been dead several years; he had gone down at sea with his whole family; she was not sure, but she thought she remembered something about an accident to a sea-going yacht off the Newfoundland Banks.
“Where did you find this card?” she asked.
“On his door.”
“His stateroom door?”
“Yes. That’s the name he was goin’ to use at first, but I scared him off. Tore it down, he did, when I came ’long.”
“Perhaps somebody else put it there by mistake.”
“Nope! He owned up all right, when I put it to him.”
“Just how did he ‘own up,’ as you say?”
“Said——” Walter thought for a moment to get the words right, “—said he was sorry to use a fine name like that; said if I’d keep mum he’d stick by me.”
“And so you are keeping mum.”
“Well!” he flared. “Guess I c’n tell it to my own sister, can’t I?... An’ he ain’t stickin’ by me.”
“Oh!” she recalled. “You think he is interested in Phœbe?”
“Well, he better not be.”
No matter what Jerry may have privately thought she knew her duty at this moment, and that was to rid this boy’s mind of the suspicions that had begun to darken it. She was startled by the revelation; she would have to get alone and think things together before she could make up her mind as to the meaning of the facts Walter had presented; particularly was she astonished at Walter’s interest in protecting Phœbe Norris; but all that she cast aside and bent to the task of reassuring Walter of Richard’s good faith. She reminded him of the scene at the back of theVictoria, and drew tactfully the picture of Richard’s work in saving Walter from a terrible “accident”; she repeated Richard’s constant expression of interest in Walter’s welfare; but none of these seemed to affect the boy in the least.
Then she was driven out of the truth. “A fib in time saves nine,” she remembered one of Richard’s jokes. Prevarications had been piling up ever since that first deception. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!” One must keep in mind that in spite of Jerry’s calm in Walter’s presence shehad always been afraid of him. He was absolutely heartless and, when he had the courage, brutal. In her own heart she believed he was a harmless lunatic who might any moment become violent. So she steadied herself for a final effort.
“You are quite wrong about Richard and Phœbe. They are simply good friends,” she said.
“How do you know?” he cried. “I’ve seen ’em together and he talks soft to her an’——” He began to work himself into a dangerous mood.
“I know what I’m talking about, Walter,” she increased the firmness of her tone. “Richard is not interested in Phœbe at all, in the way you mean.”
“Got to show me,” he muttered.
“I can prove it.”
“Aw! He’d lie quick enough.”
“Do you think I would lie to you, Walter?”
No; Walter did not think so. Jerry always spoke the truth. Jerry was all right.
“Well, then,” she said, nerving herself for the statement, “Richard is not interested in Phœbe Norris; he—he is interested in me.”
The effect upon Walter was all that she had expected. He softened up suddenly, grew exultant at the turn which his clogged mind had not guessed, but which, all at once, seemed perfectly apparent.
“Is that so!” he cried. “Did he ask you to marry him?”
“Richard and I understand each other,” she replied evasively.
“Good girl!” he said, thinking only of his own luck.
After ruminating over the new situation for a while he rose to go. His laugh was almost pleasant.
“Clever boy, that Richard,” he said; “clever boy,he is! Always said he was a clever boy. Smart, he is! Smart! I tol’ him——” He chuckled at the thought.
“Yes?”
“I tol’ him once ’at you had the tin——”
“Tin? Oh, yes; I understand. Go on.”
“I tol’ him you’d have a good share; and he seemed mighty pleased. Oh, he’s smart, he is!”
“How is your boat, Walter?” she asked.
“Aw right.... Tol’ me, he did, ’at he didn’t believe in work. Pfut!” he spluttered out an ironic laugh; “no use workin’ when you c’n jus’ pick it up easy. Oh, he’s a very smart, clever boy!”
It took all Jerry’s will to control her instinctive desire to slap the boy’s smirking face.
“Well,” she smiled; “it’s rather late for a skipper, isn’t it? Early to bed nowadays if you want to have a chance in these races.”
“Tha’s right,” he agreed and yawned prodigiously. “Guess I’ll be goin’ to bed.” But the single idea was not easily dislodged from his mind. “Clever boy, he is! Clever and—smart!”
“Good-night, Walter.” Jerry spoke very sweetly, a great tribute to her growing power of control over speech.
As Walter sauntered in the great central door she heard the voices of Jawn and Richard. Evidently they were coming out upon the porch.
“Where’s Jerry?” she heard Richard ask.
While Walter was mumbling his reply—his tones were cheerful, she was glad to note—she slipped into the grounds at the side and made quickly off to the winding road at the back which leads up to the top of the ridge. Until she could collect her thoughts she did not want to see either man. In her perturbed conditionRichard’s mildness would have stirred her to quarrel, and Jawn’s hearty volubility would have led to a blow. She was quite sure that if he had attempted another limerick she would have screamed.
The walk up the old familiar road was a soothing delight. She went on till she came to the hunter’s hut wherein she had spent many a fine winter night. An old kitchen chair was waiting invitingly on its slender porch. There she sat and tried to get her mental bearings while the serene moon grew higher and higher in the sky.
Alone on the porch of the hunter’s lodge with the dark valley before her and a patch of the white-blue Lake shining brilliantly in the moonlight, Jerry called herself to account. The quickly planned “fib” which she had just told to Walter was worrying her. To be sure, Richard of all persons would understand exactly the motive that led her to her supposed confession and he would see the necessity of it. That did not bother her half so much as the effect which the spoken words had had upon herself. The moment they were uttered she experienced a most uncomfortable feeling of joy and guilt. It was as if she had unwittingly expressed her very self.
Richard, no doubt, would explain it glibly with his theory of “subliminal self,” which is always telling us the unknown truth. Why had that expedient come so pat to her tongue? She did not need to ask. Whether or not the questionable “subliminal” had spoken, she, the only self she really believed in, knew it to be the expression of her own wish.
Had she known this disturbing fact from the beginning? Lovers are prone to claim as much. Isn’t it the time-honoured formula to ask. “When did you—ah—beginto care?” and to answer, “From the beginning.” As she reviewed their days together from that long uncomfortable first day on the steamer when unknown to him she had lounged beside him in her steamer-chair and watched him repel each invader of his solitude, the design of her life began to appear; and she knew, then, that she had “cared from the beginning.”
Predestination, Richard would call it. She smiled at the picture of his mild interested face as he would analyze the rare experience into terms of kismet. “The gods” would be blamed cheerfully.
Each incident was fitted into its mate to make the full design. She had watched the modern Gobelin weavers in Paris and noted how the meaningless splotches of colour here and there grew gradually into a meaningful pattern. Life was like that. Her suggestion that they go about Naples together; the intimacy caused by the incognito; her own insistence upon secrecy; the invitation to “Red Jacket”; even her indignation at his suggestion that she would eventually make eyes at him—all these were parts of the curious weaving.
And she had begun already to make eyes at him! Not in a literal sense, to be sure—she would die before she did that—but in confessing her hopes to Walter she had gone a considerable step toward making the first move.
Hers was the type of mind which cleared up one confused thought at a time. The important matter of her own relation to Richard having been settled, she permitted Walter’s accusations to come in review. Was this impersonal friendly Richard a genteel bad man, after all? She could not decide. The actualcard which Walter had found on his door looked like the practice of some sort of confidence man. She remembered that he had been most reluctant to give up the comfortable “Mr. Richard” which she had dubbed him. And his philosophy of drifting along, coupled with no occupation and a shocking state of low funds—all that seemed to fit in; along with his even more shocking lack of a sense of the culpability of all wrong-doers.
And she had been quite taken by his philosophy. A faithful Episcopalian—true to her Virginia traditions—she had never questioned religious matters. She had neither believed deeply nor troubled herself to disbelieve. Richard it was who constantly reminded her of the foundation principles of her own faith. “Neither do I condemn thee” had been one of his most striking quotations. “Judge not lest ye also be judged” was another; and “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” And now she saw that this attitude would be consistent with the credo of a man who might choose to act against the moral code of those about him. According to Walter, Richard was after her “tin.” “Well,” she laughed, “he is welcome to it—what there is of it—so long as he is willing to take me, too.”
But Walter had also hinted rather strongly—strange how this important thought had come last in review!—that Richard had been paying open court to Phœbe Norris. So far her mind had worked openly and frankly in the light. Now it began to deceive her; or rather, to put it in terms that Richard might have employed, the subliminal self did not lay all its cards on the table. It was a most uncomfortable thought that Richard and Phœbe Norris should be chattingand laughing together intimately—a most uncomfortable thought. But Jerry did not at all recognize the little wave of “tremor cordis” that made her “heart dance.” She saw instead the evil that might come to Richard and to Phœbe if an innocent and proper relationship should be allowed to grow until Walter might be aroused to some vile deed. They must all be saved from that! She would warn them both. Oh, it was very necessary that they should be warned.
And with that decision a tranquil feeling possessed her, which assured her that she had decided exactly right; so tranquil and inspiriting that she rose and walked along the ridge for a mile or more until she came to the spot where she could see the main body of Lake Keuka spread out wondrously before her. Then she walked briskly home and went light-heartedly to bed.