“My father often talked of it when he had a reminiscent fit. He was quartered here forty-three years ago. His regiment was the Blue Hussars; their band played at the Lal Bagh, and all the beauty and fashion processed about like peacocks.”
“No beauty and fashion are to be seen there now, only nurses and soldiers and Eurasians—except on show days, at long intervals. Polo and golf and the club have combined to write ‘Ichabod’ over the Lal Bagh.”
“Well, let us go and see it all the same. I’d like to walk, or rather hobble, round in the pater’s footsteps.”
The Lal Bagh, or Red Garden, said to have been laid out by Hyder Ali, is an immense straggling enclosure, full of wonderful exotic plants and great trees shading long walks; it also contains many cages of wild animals.
This exhibition never appealed to me. I always felt so sorry for the animals; they looked, as a rule, hungry and miserable. We turned, therefore, in another direction and I gave my arm to Brian, who leant on me and his stick. Presently we found our way to the terrace and a seat. Here there was no one to disturb our tête-à-tête. We were entirely surrounded by the beauties of Nature; a wonderful profusion of sweet-scented flowering creepers, these and the palms, ferns, and forest trees in Hyder Ali’s old garden seemed to envelop us in an atmosphere of enchantment and peace.
There was the blazing “Sally Bindon,” the “Flame of the Jungle,” the yellow Burmese forest flower, and the rose-pink “Antigone,” with its clusters of blossoms, each and all draping trees and walls in our immediate vicinity. The cloudless sky was of a deep turquoise blue, the air soft and balmy, bulbuls sang in the rose bushes, brilliant butterflies and dragon-flies darted to and fro; the silence was languorous with serenity and ecstasy. We were in another world, far, far away from shame, disgrace and misery. As I sat absorbed in the scene and my own thoughts I was considerably startled to hear Brian say:
“Well, now, Eva our next step is to be married!”
“What!” I exclaimed, “but surely not here—not in India?”
“Why not in India? You could not return with me by train and ship as Miss Lingard! ‘Miss Lingard and maid, Captain Falkland and valet’—how do you think that would look? And what would Mrs. Potter say? No, no, I shall fix it all up with the chaplain. You won’t want any trousseau or wedding reception—for the latter, Heaven be praised! Sally Payne shall come down from Ooty, and give you away.”
“She has done that already,” I remarked.