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Updated: May 2, 2025
"If I do, they will say that I am in love with some man who either won't have me, or is already married, or that I am forced to, by my debts. If I don't then this will go on indefinitely, and some fine day I shall jump into the carp-pond and drown in four feet of nasty, slimy water." Brigit Mead stood behind the heavy curtains by an open window and whispered the above reflections to herself.
The Earl of Kingsmead lay flat on his stomach on the warm, short grass by the carp-pond, and studied therein the ponderous manoeuvres of an ancient fish, believed by the people thereabouts to be something over two hundred years old. Carp had a great charm for Lord Kingsmead; so had electricity; so had toads; so had buns, and stable-boys, and pianolas, and armour, and curates, and chocolates.
All his great achievements came back to him again, from the butler who had shot himself in the pantry because he had seen a green hand tapping at the windowpane, to the beautiful Lady Stutfield, who was always obliged to wear a black velvet band round her throat to hide the mark of five fingers burnt upon her white skin, and who drowned herself at last in the carp-pond at the end of the King's Walk.
"Take your cousin to see the new carp-pond," says Gore, addressing Fabian, but watching Portia attentively. "You will like to see it, Portia?" "So very much," says Portia. "But if I do go it must be with Dicky." Her manner as she says this gives both the men fully to understand that early in the day she had pledged herself to go for a walk some time in the afternoon.
Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or would listen to his mother's simple music of summer evenings but he was very restless and wretched in spite of all: and has been known to be up before the early daylight even; and down at a carp-pond in Clavering Park, a dreary pool with innumerable whispering rushes and green alders, where a milkmaid drowned herself in the Baronet's grandfather's time, and her ghost was said to walk still.
Indeed, they had been quite distressed at hearing of Virginia's disappearance, as they were very grateful to Mr. Otis for having allowed them to camp in his park, and four of their number had stayed behind to help in the search. The carp-pond had been dragged, and the whole Chase thoroughly gone over, but without any result.
What the sword has won, we shall keep. 'The pike in the European carp-pond, said Bismarck once, 'prevent us from becoming carp. They compel us to exertions which voluntarily we should hardly be willing to make. They compel us to hold together, which is in direct contradiction to our innermost nature.
I then wished to pluck the first Easter lilies to send to you, who were once my wife, and went to the gardener down by the carp-pond. Whom did I meet on the path under the ivy, this plant of eternity, which only knows of death and birth, but not the changes of the seasons?
"No you may not kiss me to-night," she added. "You may come for that to-morrow. Now would you mind going? I I want to be alone." Quite humbly, hardly daring to believe in his good fortune, he left her, and she wandered aimlessly over the grass towards the carp-pond. "Nasty, slimy water," she said aloud, "you have lost me!"
"'Is lordship is still alive, my lady," Jarvis told her, choking a little, "but pretty bad, my lady." Tommy had always laughed at Jarvis' manner, but Brigit liked it now. The drive seemed endless, but at length there was the lodge, and the carp-pond, and the tennis-court, and the beautiful old house, all blurred in the driving rain. "Her ladyship is upstairs, my lady."
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