Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/157

Rh Canterbury. The lady was baptised by the name of Matilda, and was united to the man of her choice. She bore him a son named Thomas, who became Lord Chancellor and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Had he not possessed the strain of hot impetuous Eastern blood–inherited from his mother–which made him reckless of the consequences of opposing his king, England might never have seen the tragedy of his death.

Every whit as romantic as Becket’s are the love stories of the more modern progenitors of the Eurasians. That of Colonel William Linnæus Gardner is very well known; his descendants, who occupy the position of zemindars in an Indian village, being heirs to the barony. Colonel Gardner was a nephew of Alan, first Baron Gardner. He came out in the King’s service, but left it to serve with Holker, for whom he raised a brigade of regular infantry. He married a princess of the house of Cambay, who was only thirteen years old at the time. She lived with him for over forty years and died broken-hearted in 1835, just six months after his death. The story of his marriage as told by himself to Lady Fanny Parkes is as follows:

‘When a young man I was entrusted to negotiate a treaty with one of the native princes of Cambay’ (on behalf of the English). ‘Durbars and consultations were continually held. During one of the former, at which I was present, a curtain near me was gently pulled aside, and I saw, as I thought, the most beautiful black eyes in the world. It was impossible to think of the treaty; those bright and piercing glances, those beautiful dark eyes completely bewildered me.

‘I felt flattered that a creature so lovely as she of those deep, black, loving eyes should venture to gaze upon me. To what danger might not the veiled beauty be exposed should the movement of the purdah be seen by any of those present at the durbar? On quitting the