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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account