What it might bring afterward was the recognition of her marriage and her translation into a rich family. This would mean the end of her father's and mother's material cares, Teddy's advancement at the bank, and brilliant careers for Gussie and Gladys in New York social life. Jennie could think of at least half a dozen picture plays in which the sacrifice of some lovely, virtuous girl had done as much as this for her relatives.
So, all that day, sacrifice was much in her mind. Against a vague background of grandeur, it had the same emotional effect as of passion sung to the accompaniment of a great orchestra. To see herself with a limousine at her command, and the family established in a modest villa somewhere near Marillo Park, if not quite within it, enabled her mentally to face another embrace from Bob in the spirit of an early—Christian maiden thinking of the lions awaiting her in the arena. It would be terrible—but it could be met.
The vision of the limousine at her command seemed to have come partly true as a trim chauffeur stepped up to her in the station at Marillo, touching his cap and asking if he spoke to Miss Follett. He touched his cap again when he closed the door on her, and the car tooled away along a road which bore the same relation to the roads with which Jennie was familiar as a glorified spirit to a living man.
The park was not so much a park as it was a country. It had hills, valleys, landscapes, lakes, and what seemed to Jennie immense estates for which there was plenty of room. There were houses as big as hotels and much more beautiful. Trees, flowers, lawns, terraces, fountains, tennis courts, dogs, horses, and motor cars were as silver in the building of the Temple of Jerusalem—nothing accounted of. Jennie had seen high life as lived by the motion-picture heroine, but she had not believed that even wealth could buy such a Garden of Eden as this. Expecting to reach Collingham Lodge a few minutes after passing the grille, she had gone on and on, over roads that branched, and then branched, and then branched again, like the veinings of a leaf.
After descending at the white-columned portico, she went up the steps in a state bordering on trance. She knew what to do much as Elijah, having come by the chariot of fire to another plane of life, must have known what to do when required to get out and go onward. Since a man in livery opened a door of wrought-iron tracery over glass, she had no choice but to pass through.
It is possible that Max, by his supersenses, knew that she belonged to his master, for, springing toward her, he nosed her hand. It was, as she put it to herself, the only human touch in the first stages of her welcome. Thenceforward, during all the forty or fifty minutes of her stay, he kept close to her, either on foot or crouched beside her chair, till a curious thing happened when she regained the car.
I have said in the first stages of her welcome, for as soon as she entered the hall she heard a cheery voice.
"Oh, so it's you, Miss Follett! So glad you've come. It's really too bad to bring you so far—only, it seemed to me we might be cozier here than if I went up to town."
Adown the golden space which seemed to Jennie much too majestic for anyone's private dwelling, a brisk figure moved, with hand outstretched. A few seconds later Jennie was looking into eyes such as she didn't suppose existed in human faces. Beauty, dignity, poise, white hair dressed to perfection, and clothes such as Jennie had never seen off the stage—and rarely on it—were all subordinated to a hearty, kindly, womanly greeting before which they sank out of sight. Overpowered as she was by the material costliness of all she saw, the girl was well-nigh crushed by this unaffected affability. Like the Queen of Sheba at the court of Solomon, to be Scriptural again, there was no more spirit left in her.
Mrs. Collingham went on talking as, side by side, they walked slowly up the strip of red carpet into the cool recesses of the house.