The Lion's Den

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Not invariably, sir.’

  ‘H’m? What d’you mean, not invariably?’

  ‘Well, sir, not last time. It didn’t stop that crazy sadhu from Waziristan — the 114th Highlanders did that if you remember—’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Fettleworth rocked irritably in his chair. He always had his panaceas in order, and a show of strength came first in his priorities. The enemy apart, it did him good to see the regiments and the corps paraded before him, to hear the skirl of the pipes, and the thunderous brass of the English regiments, to see the dust rise as his cavalry, the Guides and the Bengal Lancers, rode past in column of squadron beneath their splendid guidons, the riders, with their lances, lifting with the grace of ballerinas from the shabracks. Yes, it was very splendid, very moving, reminded him sentimentally of the good old Queen at Windsor and put the fear of God into the damn natives when the word of it spread through the Khyber. This time, however, something the Chief of Staff had just said sent his mind off at a tangent.

  ‘The 114th,’ he murmured. ‘Barbarous lot, but good soldiers. Queer fish — the Scots. Uncouth in many ways their Colonel’s rather a rude man. Lord Dornoch...he’s the feller that’s supplied two officers to that bunch of natives, isn’t he?’

  ‘On your order, sir, yes.’

  ‘Quite’

  ‘Captain Ogilvie being one of them.’

  ‘Yes. We seem to hear rather a lot of that young man one way and another, don’t we, hey? Too uppish. Comes of being the Army Commander’s son, no doubt.’ Fettleworth sniffed.

  ‘There’s absolutely no connection, sir,’ the Chief of Staff said coldly. ‘If you remember, Ogilvie was the officer who dealt with the trouble in Waziristan — on his own in the first place. And before that at—’

  ‘Yes, all right, all right! What I was going to ask before you interrupted...how are those natives getting along? What are the reports?’

  ‘If you refer to the Rawalpindi Light Infantry, sir, the reports from Brigade indicate some improvement. They’ve been smartened up considerably by Captain Ogilvie, and a strict training programme has been put in hand, including rifle practice, route marching, co-operation with artillery—’

  ‘Artillery! I don’t trust the guns any more than ever I did, frankly. Are they practising forming square, tell me that?’

  ‘I doubt it, sir.’

  ‘Find out, Lakenham, find out! I may sound old-fashioned, but the square has proved its worth continually — continually! Who’s their Colonel?’

  ‘His name is Rigby-Smith, sir.’

  ‘Ah, yes, yes. When was he first commissioned?’

  The Chief of Staff crossed the room and brought out an Army List from a bookcase. He flipped the pages and said, ‘In 1859, sir, to the 14th Foot.’

  ‘Then he’s bound to be in favour of squares. See that he’s informed of my own wishes, please. And tell him something else at the same time: I’m giving him another fourteen days, if the damn Ghilzais allow us that long, then I’m advising Brigade I wish to carry out a full and personal inspection of his regiment, and I’ll be dining in his Mess that night. I’ll expect to see a fully fit fighting force in first-class trim and spirit or I’ll have somebody’s guts for garters.’

  *

  ‘I agree entirely with the General, Captain Ogilvie,’ Colonel Rigby-Smith said coolly, moving his heavy white eyebrows like antennae. ‘Even if I did not, his wish is 114 order and I must obey. So must you. Squares there will be.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘There are no buts, Captain Ogilvie. The British square has stood the test of time, and what better test than that, may I ask? I—’

  ‘Sir, with respect, I consider this a complete waste of time—’

  ‘Hold your tongue, sir—’

  ‘— we may not have long to bring the regiment up to scratch—’

  ‘Damn you, sir, are you attempting to suggest that my regiment is not up to scratch—’

  ‘It was not I, sir, who first suggested that. It was the General.’

  Rigby-Smith’s face grew mottled. ‘You insult me, sir! Remember what I said when you first joined us. You accuse me virtually of lying!’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Get out, sir. Get out of my sight!’

  ‘But, sir—’

  ‘Get out! Get out or I’ll have you in arrest, under the charge of a damn nigger!’

  Colonel Rigby-Smith, whose passionate anger had caused him to rise to his feet, fell back into his chair as Ogilvie saluted, turned about, and marched out of the room. Colonel Rigby-Smith, whose shout had been loud, realised that he would be considered guilty of a remarkable indiscretion if the word nigger happened to have reached the sepoy lines or the flapping ears of his subedars. And God damn Ogilvie! The man was a cad. With shaking fingers Colonel Rigby-Smith seized paper, pen and ink and scrawled a message to Brigade. He then rang a bell loudly and a sentry came in. The sentry was sent post haste to find a runner. Ten minutes later James Ogilvie was informed by the adjutant that his dismissal back to his own regiment had been requested by the Colonel and would become operative the moment Brigade’s confirmation came through. He was advised to tell his servant to pack his belongings, which he did light-heartedly enough; but by the time the Officers Dress for Dinner call was sounded upon the bugle, his servant was once again unpacking. For Colonel Rigby-Smith had received peremptory instructions from Division, via Brigade, that the services of Captain Ogilvie, having been ordered in the first place by the Divisional Commander himself, were, again on the General’s own order, to be retained whether the Colonel of Sepoys liked it or liked it not. Indeed, there had been, though naturally Ogilvie didn’t know this, more than a touch of the tantrums in the message. That night, Ogilvie went early to bed, leaving behind a good deal of the quiet, steady drinking of which he had not as yet spoken to the Colonel. Now, he feared he had left it too late. After this day’s little contretemps, the C.O. would scarcely be in any good mood to listen.

  Next day Ogilvie and Taggart-Blane diligently set the sepoys to the business of training in square formation. With blood-chilling howls and yells the attacking companies fell upon the compact squares and failed dismally to penetrate. Taggart-Blane was incredulous at the whole spectacle; Ogilvie, whilst still regretting the waste of time, was less so.

  ‘Our Divisional Commander,’ he said, ‘is rather set in his ways. What was good enough for Wellington...no, this doesn’t really surprise me, Alan. One must admit, too, that the usefulness of the square did outlast Wellington for a devil of a long time! I dare say its days aren’t quite over even now, if used in the proper place and at the proper time.’

  ‘The Sudan?’ Taggart-Blane suggested, with a smirk.

  ‘Well, not quite! But the Fuzzy-Wuzzies, my dear chap, were the only people that ever did break a British square, remember!’ He turned as the havildar-major came up, halted and saluted smartly. ‘Yes, Havildar-Major?’

  ‘Sahib...the Colonel Sahib, at the edge of the parade-ground.’

  Ogilvie looked; Colonel Rigby-Smith was impatiently tapping with a riding switch at his brightly-polished boots. ‘Thank you, Havildar-Major,’ Ogilvie said. With Taggart-Blane at his side, he marched across the parade and halted in front of the Colonel. ‘Sir?’

  ‘I merely wished to say, Captain Ogilvie, that I don’t care for my officers gossiping on the parade-ground like a couple of old women in the market-place.’

  Ogilvie flushed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I — er—’

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘I see no other of your officers, sir — with respect, I think they should be present when—’

  ‘Dammit, sir, you’re impertinent!’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘My officers are seasoned in Indian fighting. They need no instructions from you, Captain Ogilvie.’

  ‘As you say, sir. But if they were to be seen to impart their knowledge to the sepoys, sir, and more importantly their interest, then my presence and Mr. Taggart-Blane’s might not be
necessary!’ Ogilvie had spoken hotly, more so than he had intended. He added, ‘I say that with great respect, sir. I have noticed that the sepoys — and they’re first-class material — have responded well to the presence of officers on parade.’

  Rigby-Smith’s mouth opened and shut again; he looked furious. Without another word he turned on his heel and stamped away. Ogilvie was in a state of suspense all the rest of that day; but nothing further was in fact said, and next morning there was a satisfactory, if angrily reluctant, attendance of the British regimental officers at the training programme. It was a victory for Ogilvie, but he was very well aware of the hostility.

  *

  ‘Pariahs,’ Taggart-Blane said, ‘that’s what we are. Well, to hell with them, James. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it!’

  ‘You have to see their point of view, you know.’ Ogilvie reined in his horse, and leaned forward to pat its flanks. The two of them had left cantonments just before sundown, riding in the keen evening air, trying, at Ogilvie’s suggestion, to ride unpleasantness out of their systems. ‘We’re an ever-present reminder of dear old Fettleworth’s displeasure, after all!’

  ‘You’d think they’d appreciate that we’ve a job to do, one we didn’t exactly ask for.’

  ‘I agree. The thing is...Alan, India tends to warp a man’s judgment after a long time stationed here. You know what I mean — little things loom big and one’s sense of values goes. They’re not bad fellows at heart.’

  ‘Their hearts are buried very deep, then!’

  Ogilvie looked at Taggart-Blane’s face keenly through the gathering dark. ‘Don’t sound so bitter. I thought you said you weren’t going to lose any sleep over this.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ The outlines of the subaltern’s face looked very young to Ogilvie, young and guileless, but the droop of his shoulders seemed more than ever pronounced; there was some worry deep inside him, one that had not yet emerged and which, Ogilvie was becoming more and more convinced, was not wholly connected with their shabby treatment in the Mess. Watching, he had seen a twitch in the face, a flinching away when in contact with the British officers; Taggart-Blane seemed much more at ease with the subedars, and even with the sepoys when occasion arose. Taggart-Blane was currently learning the dialect and Ogilvie had noticed the different look that came into his face when he tried his prowess, often with funny results, on the sepoys. He didn’t in the least mind the amused smiles that spread over those native faces. Rather, he seemed to respond to them. For his own part Ogilvie found the natives easy to get on with too, though there was a difference between his and Taggart-Blane’s approach: he was beginning already to find that he was getting from the sepoys that respect of which Lord Dornoch had spoken. In Taggart-Blane’s case, he fancied, it was less a case of respect than of a curious kind of sympathy, a mutual recognition of a degree of common under-doggery; this, if carried to any extreme, could result in the very opposite of respect and the consequences of that to Alan Taggart-Blane might well be serious. But of course, the difference in station between a British officer and a mere sepoy was so immense that contact was inevitably on the smallest scale...Ogilvie gave himself a mental shake: like the long-service officers to whom he had referred earlier, he could be in danger of losing his own sense of balance!

  ‘Come on,’ he said briskly. ‘I’ll race you to that hill — see where I mean? — then we’d better get back to cantonments. All right?’

  Taggart-Blane nodded and Ogilvie touched his spurs to his horse’s flanks. He was still not a brilliant horseman, though India had improved his riding a good deal; Taggart-Blane, on the other hand, whatever else he might lack, was a skilful rider. He beat Ogilvie hands down, and was waiting for him as he came up.

  ‘Nicely done!’ Ogilvie said with a laugh. ‘You should apply for a transfer to the Guides, old boy!’

  ‘Oh, I think not. It’s pretty beastly, isn’t it?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Why, horses being made to go to war and get mangled. It’s not their concern, is it, when men fall out?’

  ‘No, I suppose not. But even in the infantry—’

  ‘Oh, I know we take horses into action too, but not so many as the cavalry. They’re not a basic and essential part of our armoury, as it were. No, James, you can keep the Guides!’

  They cantered back to cantonments, across the rough terrain with the moon starting to lift above the sky’s black rim. They were warm from exercise, but the air was cold now and growing colder. This was a different Peshawar from the oven-hot one that Ogilvie had left a few months before on leave. As, approaching the regimental lines, he heard the harsh notes of the bugles reminding the officers of dinner, he found his thoughts flying back across the wastes of land and sea to London, and that leave with Mary Archdale. They had gone one day to watch the guard being changed in the forecourt of the Palace. Ogilvie had, he recalled, tended to be a shade superior over the elegant Guards officers as they marched in pairs up and down the great forecourt, two with drawn swords, two with the regimental colour. It had been a fine sight, of course, with all the scarlet and blue, and the crimson sashes, but there had been a sense of unreality about it, for these splendid socialite officers fought, in the main, nothing more lethal than the good matrons of Berkeley Square and Belgravia — and that merely for the hands of the debutantes of the London season. There was no glittering jewel of Empire here, at least not in any military sense. Mary, with her memories of the North-West Frontier, had agreed with him, though she had been loyally sentimental about the old Queen — sentiments with which, naturally, James Ogilvie had felt no disagreement—and then, soon after the Old Guard, found that day from the Coldstream Guards, had slow-marched in their stately fashion through the gates, they had walked away in the sunshine, along the Mall, beneath the shade of the trees; and they had been passed by a squadron of the Life Guards in a jingle of harness and a rhythmic rise and fall of red tunics beneath gleaming breastplates, and of plumed helmets. It had been then that Mary had said something similar to what Taggart-Blane had just come out with.

  ‘Aren’t we brutes,’ she’d said, suddenly clutching his arm. ‘I’m sure those poor horses loathe all that ceremonial. They’d be so much happier in a field!’

  ‘Oh, come, Mary, they love it!’

  ‘Well...but not war if ever they see it. We are brutes, James, really we are. Look at poor Tom and that beastly pig-sticking he was so fond of!’

  ‘Pigs is pigs,’ he had said with heavy solemnity.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly! Besides, the horses break their legs often enough, don’t they? I think...I think India makes men cruel and heartless.’

  There was some truth in that; in India, the life of men and of animals was held very cheaply. Nevertheless, as they walked their mounts into the lines and handed them over to the grooms, James Ogilvie reflected that it was a woman’s sentiment, a woman’s way of looking at things; and it was a sentiment that — at any rate in regard to horses — was evidently shared by Second-Lieutenant Taggart-Blane.

  ‘We’ll ride again tomorrow evening,’ Ogilvie said as they went to their quarters. ‘Same time, Alan?’

  ‘Oh, I...if you don’t mind, old man, I can’t...not to-morrow.’

  ‘Something else on?’

  ‘Well, yes, I’ve an appointment with the munshi.’

  ‘Studying the lingo?’

  ‘Yes...yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Oh, well, some other time then.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’d love to, and thanks.’

  Ogilvie went into his room and washed and changed into Mess kit. Taggart-Blane had seemed embarrassed and ill-at-ease, and Ogilvie wondered why. Next evening he rode out alone; and, returning to the lines, happened to see Taggart-Blane emerging from a harness room at the side of the square. The subaltern seemed caught off guard for some reason or other. Ogilvie called out, ‘Hullo there, Alan. Riding after all?’

  ‘No, no. I’ve just finished with the munshi. I...I just went along to the harn
ess room to check on some of the leather equipment — that’s all.’

  Ogilvie nodded. ‘All right, all right, I only thought you might have changed your mind.’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t.’

  Ogilvie grinned. ‘Look here, I’ll stand you a chota peg before dinner if you cut along and get changed quickly.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  *

  Lieutenant-General Fettleworth rode at a solemn walk down the ranks of the Rawalpindi Light Infantry. Behind him, in procession, went the Chief of Staff, the A.D.C., Colonel Rigby-Smith, the adjutant, James Ogilvie, and the appropriate Company Commander, while the subedars in charge of half-companies remained at attention in front of their sepoys, waiting to receive either praise or condemnation from their General — praise or condemnation that would filter down to them from the Colonel by way of the adjutant, of Ogilvie Sahib, and of their own Company Commanders; and in the military tradition, would be handed still farther down until, by way of the havildars and the naiks, it would descend on the meek shoulders of the sepoys themselves.

  In point of fact Bloody Francis kept his own counsel until the very end of the inspection; and then, slowly turning his horse to run an eye up and down Colonel Rigby-Smith, he said loudly, ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

  ‘I think you heard what I said, Colonel, so I’ll not waste my breath by repeating it. Now I’ll tell you why I said it.’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘I said it because your battalion looks damn smart, that’s why—’

  ‘Thank you, sir—’

  ‘Looks smart, I said! Appearances can be deceptive, can they not, Colonel Rigby-Smith?’

  ‘Indeed, sir, but I—’

  ‘Proof of the pudding’s in the eating, what? Let’s see ‘em in action! Fall out the parade, if you please, Colonel. Dismiss your men and set ‘em about a demonstration of what they’ve been learning — hey? I’m sure you’ve laid on some sort of show for me, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I—’

  ‘Good, good! ‘ Fettleworth chuckled. ‘I expected no less! What’s it to be?’