Chapter 72 "That's a real shame, I hope..."
“That’s a real shame. I hope I haven’t disappointed you, Miss?” William Cavendish looked intently at Mary, a gentle smile playing on his lips.
“Your Highness, if dancing with you is disappointing, then there is no other dance partner here who can satisfy the ladies. I dare say that Countess Spencer was not the only one in the hall who was jealous of me at the time.”
However, the Duke of Devonshire alone could not alleviate Mary's boredom with the men. Having experienced the guests at Althorp Manor, Mary already had little fondness for most aristocratic men.
She realized how fortunate she had been in the past, or perhaps that the middle class was simply the most morally conscious group of the time. While middle-class men, including her brothers William and Richard, did hold some contempt for women, they were still far better than the aristocracy.
Arrogance is a common phenomenon among this elite group of men. The sense of superiority brought by their aristocratic status, coupled with deep-rooted discrimination against women, makes it impossible for Mary to have any expectations of making friends at the ball. She would rather stay in a corner and chat.
Seeing that Mary really didn't want to dance, William Cavendish stood beside her and chatted with her. The two talked about Mary's desire to collect Goethe's manuscript of "Faust" and William's order for a reclining statue of Endymion from Antonio Canova.
The more the prince chatted with Mary, the more he realized that Miss Price seemed to have a problem with the men of the time, and he couldn't imagine what it would be like for her to marry a vulgar man. The two did not dance again until the ball ended.
Mrs. Bertram had finished chatting with others and was looking for Mary in the banquet hall when she happened to see this scene. Although she was usually lacking in judgment and slow to notice many things, she unusually refrained from disturbing the couple at this moment.
Although it was the Earl Spencer who extended the invitation, and Mary met several of his children, she only had a brief exchange with the Earl near the end of the ball.
Earl Spencer was in his sixties, considered old in an era when the average lifespan of the middle class was only in their forties. His hair was completely white, but he looked to be in good shape and still maintained the demeanor of his youth. He was in even better spirits and didn't look like an old man at all.
To Mary's slight surprise, Earl Spencer only asked her a few questions and didn't give her any trouble. Although His Highness the Duke downplayed the reason for her invitation, Mary didn't believe that the Earl had invited her merely out of curiosity. Miss Spencer's anger couldn't have come without a reason, could it?
After the ball ended, Lord Althorp accompanied his elderly father to see off all the guests, and finally asked, "Father, why did you invite Miss Price here? I don't think Margaret still has any hope of getting engaged to William. Isn't inviting Miss Price just giving her a chance to get to know William?"
"You think I'm getting senile, don't you?" The Earl chuckled. "I just wanted to know what kind of person this Miss Price was, and it turns out she's not what I thought. As for Margaret, I'm already planning to write to Earl Fitzwilliam to arrange her engagement to that heir."
"So you're inviting Miss Price to the ball?"
“William is, after all, my nephew. If there were any hope, I would certainly prefer Margaret to marry him. As for Miss Price, if he really liked her, he could keep her as a mistress,” Earl Spencer said helplessly. “But William refused.”
The truth, of course, was not as simple as the Earl described. Before the ball began, Earl Spencer met his nephew in the manor's library. After discussing the Earl's extensive book collection, the uncle couldn't help but inquire about his nephew's marriage.
“Dear Uncle, I don’t think I can find a suitable wife. She must share my interests, have elegant aesthetics and good taste. In addition, most importantly, she must accept that her husband does not want children.”
“You don’t want children, dear William, how could you think that? If you can’t stand those noisy little things, you can simply leave them with your wife and servants.”
“No, Uncle, you don’t understand. My mother loved us very much, but sometimes I think that if it weren’t for the children, she might have separated from my father long ago. Although my father erased the records, I have read the letters she wrote in France. She was forced to submit, wasn’t she? I don’t even understand what kind of relationship she, my father, and that lady ultimately had.”
When the topic turned to his deceased sister, Earl Spencer paused for a moment: “It’s a complicated matter. I think she had accepted it all before she died and forgiven your father, otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed to your father marrying that woman.”
"But what's the point of such a marriage? Is she happy? I don't think so."
"What will happen to your family's title if you have no children?" Earl Spencer asked the same question as his son.
“The Cavendish family is not short of people; my cousin has a son. As for me, Uncle, I’ve heard someone say, ‘If you marry for the sake of passing on a title, are you marrying a person or a title?’ Since I don’t want to leave behind a biological child as an heir, I might as well not get married at all.”
As a traditional nobleman, if you were to ask Earl Spencer what he feared most, it would undoubtedly be the extinction of his bloodline. For a nobleman, the continuation of bloodlines is paramount, and William's refusal to fulfill the most important duty of a nobleman is the most insane act of rebellion.
Margaret was already twenty years old, and Earl Spencer, not wanting to gamble on whether his nephew would change his mind, preferred to agree to Earl Fitzwilliam's proposal to marry Margaret to his heir.
He certainly wouldn't tell his son all of this. As for Miss Price, she was indeed beautiful. If only Nong Mun Li had beauty, that would be good. There were many beauties like that in high society, who were treated as playthings and passed from one nobleman to another.
Love aroused by beauty is fleeting, a fact that Earl Spencer knew all too well. The most captivating beauty he had ever seen was not his sister Georgiana, but the former Viscountess of Melbourne, Elizabeth. In terms of charm and allure, Miss Price paled in comparison to the lady in her youth.
William, the nephew, never showed any interest in the socialite type of woman. The butler said that some people in town praised Miss Price as being like the laurel goddess, so he guessed that she had a classical and pure beauty. Coincidentally, William had always been fascinated by Greek and Roman art.
But after actually meeting Miss Price, Earl Spencer felt that she was more like Diana than Daphne, the laurel goddess. Despite being just a lieutenant's daughter, she exuded confidence, and there was not even any ambition to climb the social ladder in her eyes. If not pointed out, anyone would think that this young lady came from a very noble family.
When she stood next to her nephew, Earl Spencer was surprised to find that the two men were remarkably compatible, both possessing a certain cynicism. It was then that he realized perhaps this was the source of Mademoiselle Price's allure.
Meanwhile, Mary returned to Mansfield with her aunt and uncle after the ball. Both Mrs. Bertram and Mary were exhausted and quickly fell asleep. William and Anne could only ask about what happened at the ball after their sister had rested.
Even at dinner, Mrs. Bertram and Mary hadn't recovered their energy, and Mary realized that her aunt's aversion to socializing was justified. Socializing in high society was too exhausting; she'd rather stay in the factory studying blueprints and machines than attend a pointless ball.
Seeing that her aunt kept dozing off, and not daring to ask Sir Thomas, who had a serious face, Anne had no choice but to ask the person in question.
“Mary, if you could deny it in the past, now you should talk to me about that prince. Did you dance last night?”
"We danced a round."
"Just one round? Didn't he say anything else?" Annie raised one eyebrow.
“Other interpretations? Your imagination runs wild. If I were to say that His Highness and I are just friends who get along well, you certainly wouldn’t believe me.” Mary thought for a moment and said, “But I do think our interactions are all just right. I don’t see any other meaning in his words. Compared to other nobles, his tastes are indeed much more refined. Perhaps he also dislikes those boring fools at the ball.”
“I can’t trust your judgment this time, Mary. I’ll ask Aunt Bertram tomorrow. There may be some details that the parties involved didn’t notice, but they are very clear to outsiders.”
Sure enough, when Anne asked her aunt, although the lady was extremely slow to understand, Anne was even more convinced of her judgment from the scene described by her: unless the Duke of Devonshire was naturally a womanizer (though she had never heard of such a thing), his actions could only prove that his attention to Mary was extraordinary.
Anne completely forgot about Colonel Brandon, whom she had mentioned earlier. The poor colonel was far inferior to the handsome duke, and Mary would never choose him unless there were special circumstances.
Mary pondered to herself that if things were truly as Anne described, then the Earl Spencer's invitation and Miss Spencer's targeting would make sense. She admitted that her interactions with the Duke of Devonshire had almost always been pleasant, and the prince had never objected to her unconventional remarks.
But did the Duke's behavior mean he liked her? She hadn't sensed any obvious interest from the prince, and she couldn't very well assume he was just being presumptuous. Meanwhile, Margaret, meeting her new guest at Althorp Manor, was far less indifferent.
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