Flowers For the God of Love Read online

  Then, as always when he was perplexed and unsure of himself, he saw the two golden eagles hovering against the sky at Naini Tal.

  He could see them so clearly that it was as if he flew into the sky to join them.

  They hovered and then dropped with the velocity of a bullet and an indescribable grace into the sunlit valley.

  Rex knew then that the Power would be given to him.

  *

  They had reached Lucknow and Quenella was entranced by the beauty of the land that they had passed through, the fields rich with blue linseed and yellow mustard and backed by acres of sugar cane.

  There were tropical jungles and marshy alluvial plains below snow-capped mountain ranges.

  She loved the curious horizontal lines of smoke near a village at sunset and the cows moving homewards in a cloud of pale gold dust.

  Now she saw the City that was to be her home.

  Rex had already told her that it had originally been the Capital of the Kings of Oudh and that it was a City where magnificence rubbed shoulders with squalor, a City of pleasure, vice and intrigue that adventurers flocked to from all over Asia.

  Quenella had therefore expected it to be exciting, but she had not been able to imagine the half of it.

  Lucknow was renowned for producing the best roses in India and also the best Nautch dancing girls.

  But what Quenella saw first was a warren of mud huts and streets packed with all kinds of humanity and savage beasts including tethered tigers.

  There were also Palaces, Mosques and tombs, gimcrack architectural fantasia and, of course, the Government buildings on rising ground screened by a girth of trees looked very British.

  The original Residency, which had been the centre of a terrible siege during the Indian Mutiny, had been left as it was.

  Tattered, roofless and with a mass of shell marks where two thousand European women and children who had sheltered there had been killed, it was a ruin that no one could look at unmoved. It had been left as a monument to British valour.

  During the stifling June days of 1857 there were nearly five thousand people within the cramped and exposed area of the compound.

  So fierce was the ceaseless cannonade and musket fire from the surrounding houses that the Residency was really untenable and part of it fell in.

  Yet those who survived held out for eighty-seven days against heat, sickness, flies, privation and enemy attack, until relieved by Sir Henry Havelock on September 25th.

  After the Mutiny the Chief Commissioner took up residence in a house in the South-Eastern part of the City, which was known as ‘Hayat Baksh Kothi’ or ‘Life-Giving House’, a somewhat ironic name. It had originally been used as a powder magazine.

  To the British at the time of the Mutiny it was known more simply as ‘Bank’s Bungalow’.

  Because it was in a good position it was merely enlarged and improved by each succeeding Governor.

  The thatched roofs had been done away with, the upper storey extended, verandas added and by now Bank’s Bungalow had become a large, conventional and attractive Government House.

  New kitchens, a ballroom and a porte-cochère made it impressive and Quenella was delighted with the large lofty rooms, the white panelled walls and the marble floors.

  She admired particularly a stone chimneypiece of Oriental design, carved with chrysanthemums, mermaids and fish that stood in one of the drawing rooms.

  But before she had time to inspect the house she and Rex were installed at a Ceremony in the ballroom. The Chief Justice and other dignitaries of the City were assembled at one end and a Regimental Band was in the gallery.

  They entered to a fanfare of trumpets and Rex took his seat on the gold chair of State.

  When the Ceremony was over and seventeen guns had thundered deafeningly outside, he and Quenella proceeded down a red carpet to the strains of The Star of India March leading the assembled company into an adjoining room where refreshments and champagne were served.

  What thrilled Quenella perhaps more than anything else were the gardens.

  She had expected that there would be flowers in Lucknow, but not in such profusion nor so exquisitely beautiful or so breathtakingly colourful.

  Later she was to find that the bazaar with its saris, gold and silver brocades, pottery, clay figures and fancy hubble-bubbles, had a fascination that made her go back again and again.

  But first the flowerbeds filled with fragrant roses and the temple blossoms of the ashoka trees scenting the air were too entrancing to leave.

  The lawns were weeded and watered by an army of gardeners and the blossoms of the shrubs and trees, almost overwhelming in their profusion, made Quenella wander round feeling that she could never look at them for long enough to appreciate their sheer beauty.

  Rex, however, found in the garden something different.

  Always in India the Memsahibs planted English flowers that reminded them of home, pansies, asters, phlox, nasturtiums, and marigolds, which did not grow well in India.

  They always looked a little sickly, as if it was too much effort to battle against the exuberance of the flowers indigenous to the country.

  But still every Englishwoman went on planting and there were a great number of daisies, asters and daffodils to be found in the garden at Lucknow and introduced by Lady Hyall, the wife of the last Governor or Lady Cowper before her.

  Strangely amongst them all Rex found a cluster of tiger lilies.

  Goodness knows why they had ever been imported from their native land of South America and they had only reached England in the early 1800s.

  But there they were, flamboyant, defiant and exotic, their orange petals spotted with black, reminding him vividly of the tiger-like emotions he had felt when he first met Quenella and what might lay beneath the freezing white untouched snow of her reserve.

  Once he had found them he stood looking at them for a long time.

  Would he ever arouse Quenella, he wondered, to what Kitty Barnstaple had called so aptly the ‘fire of love’?

  He knew how her mind was turning towards the peaks of knowledge and her instinct towards the innermost truths that he himself recognised were essential to a soul’s development.

  Yet just as the God Krishna represented the unity of both spiritual and human love, that was what he sought in the woman he loved.

  Would the time ever come when they touched the peaks of ecstasy and became both human and Divine?

  He was afraid of the answer and he walked away, but when he returned to the house he ordered some of the tiger lilies to be picked and placed in a vase on the desk in his office.

  Quenella soon realised that it was more difficult to see Rex in Lucknow than she had ever imagined it could be.

  When they were in the Liner, they had been together and, when they travelled in the train, she had been able to talk to him.

  But at Government House there were always people to be entertained, aides-de-camp in attendance and so many servants that she had ceased trying to count them.

  When they went driving, their carriage was escorted by a Squadron of Cavalry and invariably at the end of the drive there was some Ceremony that they had to take part in.

  She understood that, as Rex was the new Governor, everybody of importance must call on him, to be received and entertained.

  Yet she suddenly found herself longing for them to be alone together and, when she thought of it, she realised that perhaps the only time a Governor and his wife could be together without being disturbed was if they slept in the large white bed that stood in her bedroom.

  Then they at least could talk secretly and intimately as they were unable to do at any other time.

  She felt herself blush at the thought and wondered what Rex would say if she asked him to come to her boudoir after they had both retired for the night.

  Of course she only wished to discuss what she had been reading and perhaps he would go on teaching her the mysteries of the Indian religions as he had done on the voya
ge from England.

  Then she told herself almost despondently that he would not be interested.

  She had learnt that every night he worked late in his office at the far end of the house on the ground floor.

  There he could be quiet and, although she longed to interrupt him, she was far too shy to attempt it.

  Every morning an aide-de-camp would knock on the door of her private sitting room to show her the programme for the day.

  She suddenly had a distinct urge to cross out one of her commitments and put instead,

  “His Excellency and Lady Daviot will be alone from five o’clock to seven!”

  Or better still,

  “From ten o'clock until midnight!”

  She could imagine the surprise on the aide-de-camp’s face and she knew that she could never risk the humiliation that Rex might not agree and that those who served them would be aware of his refusal.

  He was always courteous and charming when they met and, when he complimented her on her appearance or gave her information about those they were going to meet, she felt that he was interested in her.

  She longed to suggest that they should perhaps have breakfast together before the hurly-burly of the day started.

  But she was sure that if Rex wished to see her he would have contrived that they should be alone without it seeming strange or in any way unusual.

  Then unexpectedly everything changed.

  To Quenella’s astonishment, although she told herself that she had been silly not to anticipate it, she learnt that in two days’ time they were leaving Lucknow for Naini Tal, the summer Capital of the North-west Provinces.

  She supposed that she should have realised that just as the Viceroy left Calcutta for Simla, the Governor of the North-West Provinces would also have in the summer a residence somewhere cooler, but it had never occurred to her.

  Rex said casually,

  “I think you will enjoy Naini Tal. I know I am looking forward to being there.”

  “Naini Tal?” Quenella repeated questioningly.

  “We are going there on Wednesday. Did you not know?”

  “Nobody told me. Where is it?”

  He looked at her in surprise.

  Then he said,

  “I apologise. It was extremely remiss of me to have kept you in ignorance. You must forgive me.”

  “What am I to forgive?”

  “My being so obtuse as not to realise that you did not know that Naim Tal is where the Ruler of this Province lives during the hot weather from the beginning of April.”

  “Where is it?” she asked him.

  “It is somewhere that I know will thrill you,” he answered, “and to me it is one of the most perfect places in the world.”

  It was not surprising that Quenella was excited and when they reached Naini Tal she understood why it appealed so much to Rex.

  “It was not until 1839 that the British had discovered a lake hidden amongst the wooded heights of the Himalayan foothills, which according to local legend had grown out of a hole dug by the Goddess Naini.

  She had, Quenella learnt, forbidden the place to strangers and, when a landslide occurred in 1880, burying the Victoria Hotel, the Assembly Rooms and the library together with a large number of people, the natives all averred that this was her way of punishing an invasion of her privacy.

  Sir John Strachey, then Lieutenant-Governor, was unafraid of the Goddess’s wrath and had built himself a new Government House sited out of reach of landslides and twelve hundred feet above the lake on a lofty summit.

  Strangely enough he had built what was to all intents a Gothic Castle with a row of battlement turrets, some square and some octagonal, in yellow-grey stonework, which was gradually covered with creeper vines.

  Government House therefore looked as if it was part of Scotland and it seemed out of place in the middle of the Himalayas where the mountains and valleys were haunted by a multitude of malign spirits.

  Quenella, however, was delighted with the Gothic arches, the top-lit Baronial staircase of dark wood and the panelling in the dining room relieved only by a few stags’ heads.

  She loved the log fires blazing in the huge fireplaces because, although it was warm in the daytime, it was cold at night.

  If she had been thrilled with the flowers in Lucknow, they paled into insignificance beside the flowers of Naini Tal.

  The compound where Government House was situated was as large as an English estate and the flowers grew even in the surrounding forest.

  When they arrived, the garden was fragrant with lilies-of-the-valley, the slopes were scarlet with rhododendrons, mauve orchids lined the paths and wild white clematis covered the jungle-shrubs.

  What made Quenella breathless with delight were the snow-capped Himalayas rising above Naini Tal and below, like a stage picture, the plains stretched away for over sixty lovely miles.

  Also for the first time since they had arrived in the North-West Provinces, Quenella could now see something of Rex.

  She learnt that there was still entertaining to be done, but to reach them if they gave a dinner, a ball or a garden party, their guests had to make a weary trek up the hill by rickshaw, pony, or dandy.

  She found it rather amusing and Rex remarked,

  “We are fortunate. In a few years’ time I am quite certain that there will be motor cars and people will be bursting in on us when we least want them.”

  “Motor cars?” Quenella questioned.

  She had seen a few motor cars before they had left England, but somehow she could not imagine them in India.

  She could only hope that Rex was not being an accurate prophet.

  There was time when the first Receptions were over for her to be alone and more important, although she did not exactly admit it to herself, to be with Rex.

  “I want to show you something,” he suggested one day.

  He led her through the mass of pink and white cosmos that grew near the house, past the great banks of hydrangeas and into what seemed at first to be almost like a Park in England.

  There were oak, beech and chestnut trees, but their trunks were covered with moss and ferns and the paths they walked on were edged with orchids.

  “Is the compound very large?” Quenella asked.

  “It includes a farm, which provides the house with milk, meat and poultry and many acres of forest and jungle inhabited by wild deer and panthers!”

  They walked for some way and then suddenly Rex came to a halt and Quenella saw in front of her a break in the ground where there had been a landslip.

  There was a sheer drop of hundreds of feet and it seemed fathomless as a small cloud curled below them.

  Then she looked up at the stupendous vista of the Himalayas silhouetted against the sky, their peaks encircled by white clouds and the sunshine gleaming golden on the untouched snow.

  She could find no words to say how beautiful it was and Rex beside her said quietly,

  “Once when I came here there were two golden eagles hovering high in the sky. Somehow they became a part of me. Whenever I am in danger or have to make a difficult decision, I think of them.”

  “And that has – helped you?” Quenella asked in a low voice.

  “They have told me what to do,” he replied, “and they have never been wrong.”

  He turned to look at her as he spoke and then he said very quietly,

  “I saw them clearly when I was deciding whether or not I would come to meet you at your uncle’s invitation.”

  “They – told you to – come?”

  Quenella did not know why, but it was difficult to speak.

  She felt almost as if she were breathless and there was a strange constriction in her throat.

  “They told me it was my Fate.”

  “I wish I had – known.”

  “Why?”

  “I think I – wasted a lot of time being – afraid and – hating you.”

  “I understood what you felt.”

  “I know yo
u did and it made me – angry.”

  “And now?”

  She gave him a sudden smile that seemed to illuminate her face.

  “I am – glad the eagles told you – what to do.”

  They stood for some time, both gazing at the sunshine on the peaks.

  It was almost, Rex thought, as if they communicated with them without words and he was afraid to break the silence.

  Then, as they turned to walk back and he thought that there was so much more he wanted to say to her, they saw in the distance coming towards them through the trees an aide-de-camp.

  “Damn!” Rex swore beneath his breath and Quenella’s heart missed a beat.

  She knew that he did not want to be interrupted while they were together.

  Somehow the sunshine seemed more golden and she looked back to see if it still illuminated the peaks behind them.

  It was dazzling and she saw with a feeling that she did not quite understand and was afraid to put into words that Rex was scowling at the aide-de-camp.

  He was being informed that an important caller had arrived, who must be received with all due Ceremony.

  The first day that she had a chance to slip away alone from Government House, Quenella went back to the place where Rex had taken her.

  It was after a rather dreary luncheon party with dull people and she would have liked to ask Rex to accompany her. But she had learnt before she left that he was in conference and not likely to be free for some time.

  She therefore set out alone, carrying a sunshade and most unconventionally not wearing a hat.

  It was delightful to feel that she could be free and untrammelled by strict protocol and the conventions there had been in Lucknow.

  She hummed a little tune to herself as she wandered between the orchids and looked at the white clematis encircling the trees and climbing their trunks with a closeness that had something sensuous about it.

  There were also the scarlet flowers of the dhak tree, the famous simal tree, the mauve blossoms of the Bauhinias and, as she moved on through, she felt that they were a perfect setting.

  ‘A setting for what?’ she asked herself.

  Then she knew almost as if she saw him dancing through the temple blossoms that no place could be more perfect for Krishna, the God of Love.