The Heart of the Empire

by Philip McCutchan

  “We shall live to fight another day,” he said from horseback. “This is not disaster, General Warren. I myself shall take over for the withdrawal, and I shall march the men back in good order. First we must build bridges.” His eye lit on Ogilvie: there was a spark of recognition. “Who are you, sir? I believe we have met, have we not?”

  “Yes, sir. Captain Ogilvie of the Royal Strathspeys — ”

  “Ah, yes. And the lady is — ?”

  “Miss Smith, from Reitz, sir.”

  “The one who helped you — yes, yes. Well, I’m glad you managed to bring her out. Well done indeed — well done!” Buller paused, frowning. “Now I think of it — a despatch has come from Cape Town. You’re to have an audience — I believe that is a fitting word — with Lord Kitchener, as soon as you can be spared. My compliments to your Colonel, Ogilvie. I’d be much obliged if he would give you leave of absence to make the journey.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  With a nod of dismissal, Buller turned back to Warren. Ogilvie, marvelling at Buller’s extraordinary composure, made his way through the mass of men, searching for his regiment. He encountered Andrew Black looking dishevelled and with a bloodied shoulder from which his tunic-sleeve hung in strips.

  “So you’ve rejoined at last.”

  “I have.” Ogilvie’s face was stony.

  “And where’s Captain MacKinlay, may I ask?”

  “He’s dead.” Ogilvie turned away, but before doing so had seen the accusation in Black’s face: that accusation would linger, might be reflected in other faces. Ogilvie was uncaring about such accusations: he had lost a friend, and that was enough. The accusation that mattered was the one in his own mind. He had a word with Lord Dornoch, who understood and gave no blame. Ogilvie passed Buller’s message, and was granted the required leave of absence; before starting for the Cape with Maisie, he took part in the march back across the Tugela. On the 27th January, two days after the retreat from Spion Kop, in a teeming downpour, the British infantry of the line made the crossing over Buller’s bridges, marching in good order as Buller had promised, and with no Boer attack. The Royal Strathspeys marched behind their pipes and drums, a brave beat of tunes of war that echoed off the slopes of the hills as the regiments and the guns withdrew, the kilted, bonneted pipers stepping ghost-like through the misting rain, the tartan plaids of the Royal Strathspeys drooping from their shoulders. In the sound of those highland pipes there was the promise, and a savage one, of a return across the Tugela in the not far distant future. The men who had fallen were going to be avenged, their sacrifice honoured in victory. Ladysmith, Kimberley, Mafeking would never be left in Boer hands. Lord Roberts of Kandahar and Lord Kitchener of Khartoum were the guarantors of that! In the fierce strains of the 114th’s pipers and the strong beat of the drummers, in the tramp of the marching feet of all the regiments, Ogilvie heard that earnest for the future, and was able to find comfort. Buller’s simple words had been right: Spion Kop, though terrible enough in its loss of nearly two thousand British lives, was not disaster.

  *

  “It’s goodbye, I suppose.” Maisie sounded glum, even though she was standing beside the gangway of the ship that was about to take her back to baby Alexandra. “God, I’ll miss you, James. Oh, it’s daft — but it’s true!” She seemed close to tears. “P’raps we’ll meet again in London when all this is over.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed.

  “Kiss me.”

  He removed his helmet, and took her gently in his arms. It was to be a brotherly sort of kiss, but she wasn’t having any of that. She engulfed him, swamped him; she did begin to cry, and he felt her tears on his cheek. With difficulty he disengaged himself, and patted her on the shoulder. “There, there,” he said in embarrassment. “You’re going home to your baby, after all.”

  She brightened: she was a curious mixture of emotions with everything on the surface, mainly. “Well, that’s true. Thanks for all you’ve done, James love.”

  “Don’t mention it — ”

  There was the blast of a ship’s whistle. It came from another vessel in fact, but it galvanised Maisie Smith, who started up the gangway quickly, then turned to wave. “Well, ta-ta,” she said.

  “Goodbye … Dolly Gray!”

  She laughed and blew him a kiss. Stiffly, he saluted. He watched her go aboard and vanish into the steamer’s interior. It was a transport, and was carrying back a large number of wounded soldiers to Portsmouth and the military clearing hospital at Gosport. A band was waiting on the quay to play them out, and soon the England-bound troops in their sick berths and wheelchairs would be singing ‘Dolly Gray’ and ‘Soldiers of the Queen’. Before the band struck up, Ogilvie had turned away and was marching from the quay, as smartly as Bosom Cunningham, in his clean, starched khaki-drill tunic and his kilt swinging. He had to get back to the war; but he had first to have that audience with Lord Kitchener, and recover the Red Daniel from him, and hand it over to Katharine Gilmour. He went, in fact, straight to that meeting, in a hired brougham from the docks. Kitchener, he had been informed, had virtually occupied Government House, and it was here that the brougham took Captain James Ogilvie. He was punctiliously saluted by an armed sentry, met by an orderly, handed over to a Staff-Sergeant of Kitchener’s retinue, and thence to an A.D.C. who conducted him ceremoniously over acres of carpet and through magnificent apartments to the presence of the Chief of Staff, whom one might well have thought was the Commander-in-Chief himself, if not the Prince of Wales. Lord Kitchener was sitting at the head of a long, well-polished mahogany table set before a cluster of tall windows at the end of a high-ceilinged and most splendid chamber. Even had Ogilvie not known whom he was approaching, the moustache and the compelling eyes would have been identification enough. Those glittering, piercing eyes, the frown bringing the brows together over them, the heavy moustache failing to conceal the hard mouth, the firmly set jaw — the determined character of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. And Lord Kitchener, like Queen Victoria, did not that day appear to be amused.

  He was, in fact, in the instant that Ogilvie first saw him, engaged in throwing a seemingly heavy book at an officer wearing the uniform of a major-general. “Take it away!” he was shouting. “I will not consent to follow their damned printed rot!” Ogilvie never discovered which set of instructions and regulations was being referred to: the major-general vanished as if in a puff of smoke, and Ogilvie was alone, once the A.D.C. had withdrawn backwards as though from royalty, in the electric presence of K. He was rigid with apprehension as he came directly within the target area of the eyes and felt the hard gaze boring into his very guts.

  “Well?”

  Ogilvie cleared his throat, grasped the hilt of his claymore tightly with his left hand as if to gain courage. “Sir, I — ”

  “Silence, sir!” Lord Kitchener seemed to swell behind the polished table, whose top reflected his uniform with its medal ribbons on the left breast. “Captain Ogilvie, you are a damn disgrace to the British Army — d’you hear me, a damn disgrace!”

  “Sir — ”

  Kitchener’s fist slammed into the table-top and made a line of candles dance in their silver sticks. “You left your trenches to go to the aid of a damn woman, a woman of the damn servant class who didn’t matter a tinker’s curse to me or England! Worse than that — you were so determined to reach this wretched woman that you failed in your duty, which was to return to your Colonel with word that the stinking enemy was in retreat! Had you done that, Captain Ogilvie, do you know what would have been the result?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Kitchener seemed taken aback. “What, then?”

  “Sir, I would have broken my word to a lady — ”

  “Lady! Lady my damn bottom!” Kitchener, scarlet in the face, waved his arms violently in the air. “I’ve told you what she is, and that’s that. I will not have damn females of any class interfering with my campaigns,” he shouted, in total disregard of the fact that it had be
en Buller’s campaign and not his. “War’s war, Captain Ogilvie, and the army is the army. Now let me tell you what would have happened: had Colonel Thorneycroft known the facts, he would not have abandoned Spion Kop. General Warren would have followed up the obvious advantage. General Buller would have remained north of the Tugela and would have marched upon Ladysmith with his relieving army.” Kitchener lifted his right hand and pointed the forefinger at Ogilvie’s face. “You, sir, and you alone, sir, are responsible for leaving Sir George White unrelieved in Ladysmith. What have you to say to that, sir?”

  “Sir, I deny the charge absolutely.”

  “Do you?” Kitchener’s eyes bulged. “Do you indeed?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ogilvie was white-faced but composed. “At that time I didn’t know the Boers were pulling out — it could have been a strategic diversion, a feint. Any information I might have given Colonel Thorneycroft could have been misleading. And in the event, sir, it was seen that the Boers were still present in some force further to the rear. If they hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have been there to be rallied by General Botha, sir.”

  “You are impertinent, Captain Ogilvie.”

  “With respect, sir, I don’t mean to be. I am simply defending myself.”

  “I’ve had officers cashiered for less!”

  Ogilvie said nothing to this; he remained rigidly at attention, hating Kitchener’s guts. But Kitchener seemed to have spent the worst of his rage now. He was silent for a full two minutes, two interminable minutes during which he remained staring into Ogilvie’s eyes. Then at last he said grudgingly, “Well, you’re no coward, that’s one thing in your favour. You didn’t run from the enemy, you went to meet them. I like that about you. But all for a damn woman! If I allow you to remain in the army, Captain Ogilvie, you’ll have to mend your ways — and not detach yourself from your regiment in action to go off on a whore-hunt! Now to other matters. I’ve studied your report, of course. Another time, make it more concise — I can’t stand wordy people. That apart, I find it interesting.”

  “Thank you, sir — ”

  “Don’t interrupt me, Captain Ogilvie. You made reference to the Boers’ possible political gambits with Germany and France. In reporting that, you may have averted a disaster for your country. Your report has strengthened my hand with Whitehall and I’ve seen to it that Count Billow’s devilish machinations won’t succeed — spokes have already been put in certain wheels and that damned Kaiser’s going to feel a draught where he doesn’t expect it and won’t like it. Detestable fellow, whether or not he’s the Queen’s grandson, poor woman. He’ll not be using South Africa as a testing ground for his damned Uhlan Guards at all events! You’ve given me what I wanted, Captain Ogilvie. I’m grateful.”

  “Thank you, sir — ”

  “And there’s another thing that will have even further reaching results in the long run. In your report you wrote of the Boer field craft, their brilliant use of the natural features of their country, their use of camouflage. I referred to your report as wordy, but on this point I would like more and from your own mouth, Captain Ogilvie.”

  “Yes, sir. I spoke of this to General Buller — ”

  “General Buller has a rigid mind. I have not. Do as I say.”

  “Very good, sir.” Ogilvie gave Kitchener a full report of all he had seen of the Boers at exercise and in action, of the remarkable manner in which they could materialise almost from nowhere and cut down a force before that force had realised that a single Boer was hidden in the scrub, He spoke of their very different tactics from the British, of how, in his conversations with Opperman, he had learned the lesson that the Boers never showed their force in the field in the British manner, how they did not march as regiments — and how the British, who maintained their traditional formations no matter what the terrain, could be so easily cut to pieces with comparatively light casualties to the attacker.

  “A concept of war, different from Waterloo?” Kitchener asked with a cold, rather contemptuous smile.

  “Yes, sir — ”

  “And it is on the lessons of Waterloo and the Crimea that we seem, in your view, to have been relying so far?”

  “I think so, sir. To some extent at all events.” Ogilvie hesitated, feeling keenly his lack of years, rank and experience when confronted by the former Sirdar. “I … ”

  “Come on!”

  “Sir, I was merely going to say, the Boers naturally know their own territory better than we ever can. In that respect, perhaps, it’s not possible to adopt — ”

  “Nonsense — we can learn. We can abandon rigidity of thought and movement. Agile-minded officers such as Baden-Powell … a very great deal can be done. I was not unaware of a degree of senility in our tactics, of much more flexibility on the part of the Boer — and I am delighted to have your observations made at first hand. I am grateful again, Captain Ogilvie — you have done well. I promise many changes in our strategy and tactics — and soon! For a start you shall talk to my staff officers and thus begin the process of change. Things will not be the same again in the field.” Kitchener smiled once more; the smile was still cold, but somehow, this time, friendlier. “By the time this war is over, Captain Ogilvie, the British Army will have changed almost out of recognition. I shall see to it. You — and Commandant Opperman — may consider yourselves to have had some hand in that! And now I believe there is something you want from me — is there not?”

  “Sir?”

  Lord Kitchener reached into a pocket and brought out a package: the small bag that contained the Red Daniel. He sent it sliding along the polished table-top towards Ogilvie. “Take it and deliver it — to another of your confounded women! Not that I’m ungrateful to the lady. That stone has done well enough for the Empire, Ogilvie. It shall now have its place in history.”

  “Yes, sir. I — ”

  “The Boers,” Kitchener interrupted, getting suddenly to his feet. “The damn Boers … they meant to break the Empire! They meant to bring in against us all those who want to see us beaten, while we were facing difficulties. In that, you may take it from me, they’ve failed. And on their own they’re not going to win this war. There have been reverses and Spion Kop’s better not spoken of — except for the heroism of General Buller’s regiments. But we’re going to win, Captain Ogilvie, and I know it, and our soldiers know it, the damn civilians know it, and so do the Boers themselves. Now I’m here, there will be much more despatch towards victory. Do you ever read poetry, Captain Ogilvie?”

  Ogilvie gaped. “Sir?”

  “I don’t myself usually — still less do I care for recitations. Nevertheless, I’m going to quote you something I read in a Cape newspaper the other day. It impressed me with its basic truth. It’s supposed to be the thoughts of an old Boer rifleman … lamenting the fact of the British Army being deep in his damn territory.”

  He began reciting from memory, never moving his gaze from Ogilvie’s face:

  “The old, old faiths must falter, the old, old creeds must fail,

  I hear it in that distant murmur low,

  The old, old order changes, and ‘tis vain for us to rail;

  The great world does not want us — we must go.

  The veld and spruit and kopje to the stranger will belong,

  No more to trek before him we shall load;

  Too well, too well I know it, for I hear it in the song

  Of the rooi-baatje singing on the road.”

  There was; little melody in Kitchener’s harsh voice, little feeling for poetry; but it was simply said and movingly, and with much sincerity. Ogilvie, long after he had left the Chief of Staff’s presence and was making in the brougham for Katharine Gilmour’s house, found the sad words haunting his mind. At the same time he found his thoughts going back again to Maisie Smith, and their rumbustious love-making in those secret, dried out dongas on the veld. No doubt he would be passing across that same territory again before long, once Bobs got into his stride — always assuming that the womanising in
iquities of a mere Captain of Infantry soon faded from the mind of Lord Kitchener, which it behoved that Captain of Infantry to hope would happen! Here in Cape Town there was undoubtedly optimism, possibly largely Kitchener inspired. Ogilvie could feel it in the very air: the Boers were going to get it hot and strong when the British advanced to seek revenge for Spion Kop.

  *

  “It’s come to you the long way round, I’m afraid,” Ogilvie said, smiling down at Katharine. “I was waylaid … in the Ladysmith direction.” He shook the Red Daniel out from the wash-leather bag, from the surrounding tissue paper. As he had seen it in old Mrs Gilmour’s bedroom at Kimberley, as he had seen it under examination by Wessels and Opperman and Maisie Smith, so now he saw the diamond shine and gleam again, this time in Cape Town’s sun. “It’s beautiful, Katharine.”

  “It is, truly.”

  “Worth all the trouble.”

  She looked up into his eyes. “Do you mean that, James?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Was it a great deal of trouble?”

  He grinned. “We won’t go into that. I brought it back — and that’s all that matters.”

  “No,” she said in a low voice. “That’s not all. Oh, I’m so relieved you’re safe, James … so happy. If anything had happened to you — I would never, never have forgiven myself. It seems so dull of me just to say thank you … but I do thank you, from the bottom of my heart!”

  Smiling, he touched her cheek with his hand. “It was nothing,” he said. Suddenly into his mind came an image of old Mrs Gilmour, sitting up in her bedroom in Kimberley. “It was a privilege to meet your grandmother,” he said. “And she’ll be glad to see the Red Daniel again, once Kimberley’s relieved — and that won’t be so long now, Katharine. Keep it safe — the diamond, I mean.”