CHAPTER XI

Recounts the journey in A chariot, with A certain amount of dialogue, and A small incident on the road

In the morning the fight was over.  She looked at the signpost of The Crossways whilst dressing, and submitted to follow, obediently as a puppet, the road recommended by friends, though a voice within, that she took for the intimations of her reason, protested that they were wrong, that they were judging of her case in the general, and unwisely—­disastrously for her.

The mistaking of her desires for her reasons was peculiar to her situation.

‘So I suppose I shall some day see The Crossways again,’ she said, to conceive a compensation in the abandonment of freedom.  The night’s red vision of martyrdom was reserved to console her secretly, among the unopened lockers in her treasury of thoughts.  It helped to sustain her; and she was too conscious of things necessary for her sustainment to bring it to the light of day and examine it.  She had a pitiful bit of pleasure in the gratification she imparted to Danvers, by informing her that the journey of the day was backward to Copsley.

‘If I may venture to say so, ma’am, I am very glad,’ said her maid.

‘You must be prepared for the questions of lawyers, Danvers.’

’Oh, ma’am! they’ll get nothing out of me, and their wigs won’t frighten me.’

‘It is usually their baldness that is most frightening, my poor Danvers.’

‘Nor their baldness, ma’am,’ said the literal maid; ’I never cared for their heads, or them.  I’ve been in a Case before.’

‘Indeed!’ exclaimed her mistress; and she had a chill.

Danvers mentioned a notorious Case, adding, ‘They got nothing out of me.’

‘In my Case you will please to speak the truth,’ said Diana, and beheld in the looking-glass the primming of her maid’s mouth.  The sight shot a sting.

’Understand that there is to be no hesitation about telling the truth of what you know of me,’ said Diana; and the answer was, ‘No, ma’am.’

For Danvers could remark to herself that she knew little, and was not a person to hesitate.  She was a maid of the world, with the quality of faithfulness, by nature, to a good mistress.

Redworth’s further difficulties were confined to the hiring of a conveyance for the travellers, and hot-water bottles, together with a postillion not addicted to drunkenness.  He procured a posting-chariot, an ancient and musty, of a late autumnal yellow unrefreshed by paint; the only bottles to be had were Dutch Schiedam.  His postillion, inspected at Storling, carried the flag of habitual inebriation on his nose, and he deemed it adviseable to ride the mare in accompaniment as far as Riddlehurst, notwithstanding the postillion’s vows upon his honour that he was no drinker.