第十一章
Set on a tranquil midsummer evening at the Calmady family estate, with dusk softening the landscape, nightingales singing in the laurels and coppice, and nightjars flitting over bracken beds, this chapter opens with 10-year-old Dick Ormiston’s ecstatic homecoming from boarding school, a full month ahead of schedule after his schoolmates contracted measles. Overjoyed, Dick plays with two new half-grown bulldog puppies gifted to him by Richard Calmady, naming them Adam and Eve as the first of his planned pedigree show dog line, and announces he will have the servant Andrews as his valet going forward, preferring a male attendant to female household staff. As Dick runs off to bed after extracting a promise from Honoria Calmady to visit him later, Honoria walks with Lady Katherine Calmady and her longtime companion Julius March. Honoria offers to quiet Dick if he disturbs Katherine, who counters that innocent laughter from young play is a divine gift, rejecting joyless puritan strictures. Katherine reflects on past nights on the same terrace: first when she learned of her pregnancy with Richard, then when she received a spiritual message from her late husband that fortified her through subsequent grief. She apologizes to Julius for prioritizing the household’s younger members over him in recent months, noting his declining health, and recalls his decades-long vow of silent devotion to a woman he has never revealed his love to, to preserve his ability to serve her. Katherine urges Julius to prioritize their quiet friendship, then greets Richard, who expresses profound gratitude for his life, his work supporting disabled people, the young boy in his care, his mother, and the stable staff that saw him through hard times, noting he will wind down the racehorse training operation as sport shifts from romance to commerce, but keep the stud farm, and adds he would not alter even the four years of childhood disability that shaped his path. The chapter closes with the pervasive sense of peace, security, and hard-won joy that defines the Calmady household, rooted in both past sorrow and present abundance.
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