Upon the whole the planters' wives decided to call upon the countess,
once at least, to satisfy their curiosity. Afterwards they could visit
or drop her as might seem expedient.
Thus, as soon as the roads became passable, scarcely a day went by in
which a large, lumbering family coach, driven by a negro coachman and
attended by a negro groom on horseback, did not arrive at Brudenell.
To one and all of these callers the same answer was returned: "The Countess of Hurstmonceux is engaged, and cannot receive visitors."
The tables were turned. The country ladies, who had been debating with
themselves whether to "take up" or "drop" this very questionable
stranger, received their congée from the countess herself from the
threshold of her own door. The planters' wives were stunned! Each was a
native queen, in her own little domain, over her own black subjects, and
to meet with a repulse from a foreign countess was an incomprehensible
thing!
The reverence for titled foreigners, for which we republicans have been
justly laughed at, is confined exclusively to those large cities
corrupted by European intercourse. It does not exist in the interior of
the country. For instance, in Maryland and Virginia the owner of a large
plantation had a domain greater in territorial extent, and a power over
his subjects more absolute, than that of any reigning grand-duke or
sovereign prince in Germany or Italy. The planter was an absolute
monarch, his wife was his queen-consort; they saw no equals and knew no
contradiction in their own realm. Their neighbors were as powerful as
themselves. When they met, they met as peers on equal terms, the only
precedence being that given by courtesy. How, then, could the planter's
wife appreciate the dignity of a countess, who, on state occasions, must
walk behind a marchioness, who must walk behind a duchess, who must walk
behind a queen? Thus you see how it was that the sovereign ladies of
Maryland thought they were doing a very condescending thing in calling
upon the young stranger whose husband had deserted her, and whose
mother and sisters-in-law had left her alone; and that her ladyship had
committed a great act of ill-breeding and impertinence in declining
their visits.
At the close of the Washington season Mrs. Brudenell and her daughters
returned to the Hall. She told her friends that her son was traveling in
Europe; but she told her daughter-in-law that she only hoped he was
doing so; that she really had not heard a word from him, and did not
know anything whatever of his whereabouts.