On that Monday the meet was comparatively near to them—distant only twelve miles. On the following Wednesday it would be sixteen, and they would use the railway—having the carriage sent to meet them in the evening. The three ladies and Lord George filled the carriage, and Sir Griffin was perched upon the box. The ladies’ horses had gone on with two grooms, and those for Lord George and Sir Griffin were to come to the meet. Lizzie felt somewhat proud of her establishment and her equipage;—but at the same time somewhat fearful. Hitherto she knew but very little of the county people, and was not sure how she might be received;—and then how would it be with her if the fox should at once start away across country, and she should lack either the pluck or the power to follow? There was Sir Griffin to look after Miss Roanoke, and Lord George to attend to Mrs. Carbuncle. At last an idea so horrible struck her that she could not keep it down. “What am I to do,” she said, “if I find myself all alone in a field, and everybody else gone away!”
“We won’t treat you quite in that fashion,” said Mrs. Carbuncle.
“The only possible way in which you can be alone in a field is that you will have cut everybody else down,” said Lord George.
“I suppose it will all come right,” said Lizzie, plucking up her courage, and telling herself that a woman can die but once.
Everything was right—as it usually is. The horses were there—quite a throng of horses, as the two gentlemen had two each; and there was, moreover, a mounted groom to look after the three ladies. Lizzie had desired to have a groom to herself, but had been told that the expenditure in horseflesh was more than the stable could stand. “All I ever want of a man is to carry for me my flask, and waterproof, and luncheon,” said Mrs. Carbuncle. “I don’t care if I never see a groom, except for that.”
“It’s convenient to have a gate opened sometimes,” said Lucinda, slowly.
“Will no one but a groom do that for you?” asked Sir Griffin.
“Gentlemen can’t open gates,” said Lucinda. Now, as Sir Griffin thought that he had opened many gates during the last season for Miss Roanoke, he felt this to be hard.
But there were eight horses, and eight horses with three servants and a carriage made quite a throng. Among the crowd of Ayrshire hunting men—a lord or two, a dozen lairds, two dozen farmers, and as many men of business out of Ayr, Kilmarnock, and away from Glasgow—it was soon told that Lady Eustace and her party were among them. A good deal had been already heard of Lizzie, and it was at least known of her that she had, for her life, the Portray estate in her hands. So there was an undercurrent of whispering, and that sort of commotion which the appearance of newcomers does produce at a hunt-meet. Lord George knew one or two men, who were surprised to find him in Ayrshire, and Mrs. Carbuncle was soon quite at home with a young nobleman whom she had met in the vale with the Baron. Sir Griffin did not leave Lucinda’s side, and for a while poor Lizzie felt herself alone in a crowd.
Who does not know that terrible feeling, and the all but necessity that exists for the sufferer to pretend that he is not suffering—which again is aggravated by the conviction that the pretence is utterly vain? This may be bad with a man, but with a woman, who never looks to be alone in a crowd, it is terrible. For five minutes, during which everybody else was speaking to everybody—for five minutes, which seemed to her to be an hour, Lizzie spoke to no one, and no one spoke to her. Was it for such misery as this that she was spending hundreds upon hundreds, and running herself into debt? For she was sure that there would be debt before she had parted with Mrs. Carbuncle. There are people, very many people, to whom an act of hospitality is in itself a good thing; but there are others who are always making calculations, and endeavouring to count up the thing purchased against the cost. Lizzie had been told that she was a rich woman—as women go, very rich. Surely she was entitled to entertain a few friends; and if Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke could hunt, it could not be that hunting was beyond her own means. And yet she was spending a great deal of money. She had seen a large wagon loaded with sacks of corn coming up the hill to the Portray stables, and she knew that there would be a long bill at the corn-chandler’s. There had been found a supply of wine in the cellars at Portray—which at her request had been inspected by her cousin Frank;—but it had been necessary, so he had told her, to have much more sent down from London—champagne, and liqueurs, and other nice things that cost money. “You won’t like not to have them if these people are coming?” “Oh, no; certainly not,” said Lizzie, with enthusiasm. What other rich people did, she would do. But now, in her five minutes of misery, she counted it all up, and was at a loss to find what was to be her return for her expenditure. And then, if on this her first day she should have a fall, with no tender hand to help her, and then find that she had knocked out her front teeth!
But the cavalcade began to move, and then Lord George was by her side. “You mustn’t be angry if I seem to stick too close to you,” he said. She gave him her sweetest smile as she told him that that would be impossible.
