The Heart of the Empire

by Philip McCutchan

  Ogilvie heard this with sorrow also: he remembered the face of the officer he had stumbled upon. He asked, “How are you Afrikaners going to react to the new appointments, General Botha?”

  “With determination! Would you expect it otherwise, Mr Bland?”

  “By no means. I was only wondering if it would mean fresh plans. If I can help in any way … perhaps by holding more meetings? You have only to ask, General.”

  Botha nodded absently. “Thank you. Mr Bland, do not be misled by our long faces! We are merely being realists, in facing up to the fact that both Roberts and Kitchener will be tougher adversaries — we must not belittle our current position, which is strong — strong, I say again! We have won a great victory at Colenso, and have seriously worried London. Possibly more important even, we have impressed the German Emperor and his — ” He broke off, staring away across the Tugela. “But you can still help, Mr Bland, by continuing to take orders from my good friend, Commandant Opperman.”

  *

  “What exactly,” Ogilvie asked that evening, as he and Opperman were eating their supper by the camp-fire, “did General Botha mean when he said you’d impressed the Germans?” He managed to sound casual enough; but all day he had been much intrigued by Botha’s reference to Germany, a country that so far had been fairly cool towards the British over South Africa, even though, on 20th November, Kaiser Wilhelm had paid a state visit to London, apparent proof of German neutrality.

  Opperman hesitated, gave him a close look, then laughed. “I dare say it can do no harm to talk of it. We are friends — and now allies, and I can trust you. The fact is that Germany is in a mood to help us, Mr Bland.”

  “How’s that?”

  Opperman pushed with his boot at the glowing embers of the camp-fire, and munched a mouthful of meat. “Your Royal Navy has been stopping ships, and searching them for materials of war — chiefly outside Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East. Among the ships stopped have been German ones … the Kaiser is said to be angry over this and is considering breaking off diplomatic relations with the Court of St James.” Opperman laughed loudly. “If he does — or even if he doesn’t go that far just yet — we stand to gain a great deal.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really, Mr Bland! Think: the Kaiser, a soldier himself, respects victory. Success, you see, brings success — for nothing in this world succeeds like success! Suppose the Kaiser should permit us the use of German South-West Africa — can’t you see the strategic advantage in that? Besides which, there is the German Army itself, that excellent fighting machine that — ”

  “You mean the Kaiser might send help?”

  Opperman nodded. “Yes, that is what I mean. President Kruger has already been in touch, secretly, with Count Billow, Foreign Minister of the German Empire. Billow’s own belief is that this war will end in a British defeat, complete and absolute. Other military experts in Germany also believe the same thing. Your Joseph Chamberlain has proposed an alliance with Germany — this was taken as little more than a joke by Kaiser Wilhelm, for the Germans do not ally themselves with a weak nation. I tell you this, Mr Bland: the whole world knows that one day there will be a clash of arms between the German and the British Empires, a war that may well be fought in the British Isles themselves, or on the continent of Europe. And Count Billow and his experts do not turn a blind eye to the advantages to be gained by trying out their war machine in South Africa, as a test of arms in which a great deal can be learned, and any deficiencies shewn up and put right before the big war begins!”

  “So this is how you are thinking, in your future plans, is it?”

  “Yes. We are moving on the diplomatic front as well as the fighting one.” Opperman leaned forward and tapped Ogilvie’s shoulder. “I trust you with this knowledge. It is not to be spoken of. It is very secret. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  The lie still did not come easily: Ogilvie hated his task more than ever, for Opperman was a genial, kindly man, and openhearted. So was Louis Botha. No doubt even Oom Paul Kruger had. his good points! Again and again, Ogilvie found his mind filled with the one thought, that the Boers, after all, were fighting only to preserve their own and not, like the British, to retain a hold over a basically alien territory. When he turned in that night beneath a cold sky brilliant with stars — turned in alone, for Opperman was bivouacked nearby — Ogilvie twisted and turned, unable to sleep, too mindful of the treachery he was wallowing in. Kitchener, who had been the distant evil genie till now, was soon to be very present in South Africa — and Kitchener would most certainly wish to know of the covert dialogue between Oom Paul Kruger and Count Bernhard von Billow. In the morning, having at last fallen into an uneasy sleep, Ogilvie awoke to a lazy, sun-filled day. It was a pleasant and peaceful scene. A light wind sent thin white cloud chasing along an otherwise blue sky. Men washed, and sang, and made breakfast. Apart from the Boers, the hills all around were empty. No British; but Ogilvie could hear the distant Boer guns keeping up their spasmodic bombardment on Ladysmith. At breakfast Opperman announced that Louis Botha had ridden off the night before to his head laager and that they, Old Red Daniel and Mr Bland, would be joining him there during the day.

  “What about the rest of the commando?” Ogilvie asked.

  “Oh,” Opperman said, “they’ll stay here and act as our outpost, to let us know when the British move again, if ever they do! They’ll have an easy life until that day comes — though it’s possible Botha will send some of them up to the siege line at Ladysmith, to help out. If so they’ll have the pleasure of seeing our guns being fired on the town. Louis Botha,” he added, “tells me that he expects visitors to come up from Pretoria to watch the bombardment.”

  Ogilvie stared. “Ordinary civilians — just to watch?”

  “Yes, and why not?”

  Ogilvie didn’t answer; it seemed a strange way to run a war. After breakfast he walked around the bivouacs with Opperman, talking to the men, most of whom said they would take the opportunity of some leave, a right to do which at will, Opperman said, was a confounded nuisance but one that the Afrikaners, as free citizens, insisted upon — and there was little that he or Louis Botha or anyone else could do about it. Certainly this lull in the fighting while the British licked their wounds and waited for Lord Roberts’s arrival at Cape Town was a good opportunity for the burghers to go home and attend to their private affairs. In the event Ogilvie and Old Red Daniel did not go that day to the head laager but went instead, at Botha’s personal invitation, to an encampment on the Ladysmith heights. There they were to spend many days, still waiting for Buller to re-group; and in the meantime they took life easy. For the men of the commandos there was little in the way of military duty to be performed apart from the odd picket and now and again a fatigue party was sent back to pick up supplies of food and arms and ammunition. Ogilvie was forced to watch the Boer guns firing into the town, and was occasionally, whilst riding on visits with Opperman to the camps and outposts, under fire from the Ladysmith garrison. When this happened every Boer vanished as if by magic into cover, and the British shelling in fact caused only minimal damage, mainly to the tents. During this period of inactivity in a fighting sense, Opperman made full use of Mr Harry Bland in giving talks to the commandos on the conditions as he had so recently left them in Kimberley, talks from which they were able to deduce a similar state of affairs inside Ladysmith. He was also taken to the small outlying townships, where once again he went, time after time, into his recruiting spiel: as a result of which fresh drafts soon began to reach the Boer siege lines, building up an ever stronger force against Sir George White.

  There was also plenty of time for Maisie Smith — too much time. Opperman, on one of their recruiting rides away from Ladysmith, broached the subject of marriage.

  “Here is the opportunity,” he said gruffly. “There are pastors in plenty to do what’s necessary.”

  “Not yet, Commandant.”

  “She has not agr
eed?”

  “No,” Ogilvie said, with his tongue in his cheek, for she certainly had not been asked. “And I don’t think I’m ready yet in any case.”

  “Why not, Mr Bland, why not?”

  “The war, Commandant! As you yourself said in Reitz … split loyalties are bad for efficiency. Let me get the war done with first.”

  Opperman gave a sardonic grunt. “You are remarkably full of self-control, Mr Bland,” he observed.

  Ogilvie didn’t comment; but wondered how much Old Red Daniel really knew. The Boer, in spite of his God and his biblical approach to life, was no drawing-room socialiser, no rose-spectacled maiden aunt. He knew the lusts of the body as well as any other vigorous man. Though he would be monumentally disapproving, he would quite possibly have wisdom enough never to notice. But Maisie Smith herself, as the quiet days went by, became more importunate, both in her physical desires and in her main ambition to get away from the Boer lines and back to Hounslow and baby Alexandra. Alone with James Ogilvie, she grew tearful and sentimental about home and childhood; she even brought photographs from the trunk that had followed them in a commissariat cart all the way from Reitz — photographs, old and faded, of her mother as a young girl, in service with a titled family — a young woman as pretty as Maisie, with starched white cap and streamers, an apron and a long black dress, hands demurely clasped in front with stiffly cuffed wrists. And her father, head gamekeeper ultimately at the same great house — a thickly whiskered man with a hard face, a bowler hat worn well forward, and gaitered legs. Photographs too — ones he had seen before — of her baby. He asked, looking at the small white bundle, “How do you feel about your father, Maisie? I mean — turning you out?”

  “He’s a bastard,” she said flatly. “I don’t feel anything about him at all — except I hate him.”

  “He’s not unusual, Maisie.”

  “Isn’t he?” The tone was dismissive, but she must have known the truth of what Ogilvie had said. The majority of fathers would have reacted to an illegitimate birth in precisely the same way, assuaging their feelings of outrage, of ingratitude, re-establishing their moral image before friends and neighbours and employers. It was a highly personal matter, and reflected upon the whole family’s honour. Opperman would behave in a similar manner if any daughter of his fell so far from grace. Ogilvie recalled a tenant farmer of his father’s, on the Corriecraig estate, coming in tears to the castle with such a tale of his child. “‘Tis the worst thing that can ever happen to a father, Sir lain,” the old man had said with tears running down his cheeks, “and I can only do the one thing, and that is, pray to God to take me.” In that case too the daughter had been turned out of the home; Sir kin Ogilvie, though fully understanding, had with the greater tolerance and wider mind of the aristocrat much disapproved; but had been powerless to prevent it short of a threat, which he would not utter, to evict the whole family. Passions ran strong: men could do these things, but not women. Often enough James Ogilvie had pondered on the ethics of such inequality without coming to any conclusions except the one of common humanity: a family in misfortune should close its ranks, and help, not hinder. Cruelty was inexcusable.

  He said nothing of all this to Maisie Smith. Clearly, she had shut her father out of her mind and did not wish to discuss that aspect. It was the future that mattered now with her — and once again he shrank from the thought that it was he who had become responsible for her future.

  One afternoon, when they had ridden out alone into the country, and had found a quiet hollow in the hills, a hollow shaded by trees where they could be very private, she found the Red Daniel. As Ogilvie had taken off his jacket, the little wash-leather bag had fallen from a pocket, and she had pounced upon it, holding it laughingly out of reach and then, when he remonstrated, putting it down the neck of her dress.

  “It’ll not be safe there,” he said, laughing back at her but with a hard edge to his tone. “We know each other too well for that!”

  She giggled. “That’s quite a point, but I could always make it look like you tried to rape me, and then old Opperman would have you buried in a dark pit full of Bibles or something, wouldn’t he — ”

  “Be quiet, Maisie, and give it back!”

  “Hoity toity!” she said with another giggle. “What is it, then, a ring — For me, James?”

  “No.”

  She dived her hand between her breasts and brought out the bag. Before he could stop her, she had opened it and shaken out the stone in its cottonwool surround. She gasped when she saw the Red Daniel bared in her hand, catching the strong sunlight so that it flashed and sparkled with changing brilliant lights. “My!” she said wonderingly. “A bloody great diamond! Must be worth a fortune.” She gave him a sharp look. “What’s its history?”

  “Nothing to do with you, Maisie.”

  “Did you steal it?” She caught her breath. “Did you really desert? Pinch this in Kimberley, then get out? Was that it?”

  He shook his head. “No. It’s not that at all. Please give it back.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll take it from you. If I have to hurt you, I will.”

  “Then you’ll have Opperman to reckon with.”

  Again he shook his head. “No, Maisie. Opperman knows all about the Red Daniel — ” he broke off, flushing with anger at his own lack of control on his tongue, but it was too late.

  “Red Daniel? It’s named after Opperman himself, d’you mean?”

  “Yes. I shouldn’t have said that, and you must keep it to yourself — ”

  “Look, whose side are you on, James? Are you really with the Boers?” There was fear in her face now, a growing anxiety that she had committed herself to the wrong camp after all. “Surely you wouldn’t really do that, would you?”

  He said between his teeth, “What I told you — under pressure, if you remember — was the truth. I’m not with the Boers, as you put it. I’m still a British officer. I can’t say any more than that. I’m sorry, but there it is. You must go on trusting me, as I trust you. We’re each dependent on the other now, Maisie, and I’m going to do my part as best I can. Now give me back the diamond.”

  “All right,” she said, and passed it back. There was a look in her eyes that was half hurt, half anger. “Is this to do with a girl?” she asked.

  “What if it is, Maisie? You and I … we’re together for reasons of the war, nothing else.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry for that,” he said with a touch of tenderness, putting his hand over hers. “It was clumsily put and I hope you’ll forgive me. But you do know what I mean, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do know. It’s just not my business, is it?”

  “Well, frankly it isn’t, but I didn’t mean quite that either.” He hesitated. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you just a little more, as a matter of fact. The Red Daniel … it’s the property of a lady in Cape Town. I’m taking it back to her — that’s all.”

  She lifted an eyebrow, smiling a little now. “Really all?”

  “Yes. A simple duty — to return the diamond to her.”

  She nodded. “All right,” she said, and gave a sigh, and let herself fall back into his arms. It was peaceful and utterly silent, with all the fighting very far away and no one around to bother them. In a low voice she said, “Come on, love … ”

  *

  From the Ladysmith siege lines they moved a few days later to the head laager, where General Botha was taking his physical ease but was mightily engaged in his planning for the future. Opperman was mostly in Botha’s secret councils, and much was discussed in the hearing of James Ogilvie who, as the days ran into weeks, became fully accepted and whole-heartedly trusted. He was finding that in many ways the Boers were as simple as children at play: that very largely the war itself was regarded with an extraordinary lightness, however much Oom Paul in Pretoria might preach the gospel of solemnity and duty and self-denial in the most splendid of all causes, a cause in
which God was firmly on the Boer side. Botha and his friends trusted Mr Harry Bland from Kimberley because they saw no reason not to. Had he not escaped at peril of his life from the British in Kimberley, had not the British shot at him in his attempt, as witness the holes in his ragged, wire-torn uniform? Had he not saved their Old Red Daniel’s own life? Had he not been hit by a British bullet at Colenso? Oh yes, Mr Bland was all right and was to be trusted! He had proved himself time and again. Look at his recruiting record, for one thing!

  Mostly, Ogilvie realised, Botha and his lieutenants did not think in terms of duplicity. They had their surly, close-hearted Krugers, of course — but their ponderous counsels seemed not to carry weight in the happy courts of Louis Botha.

  News filtered through: the British at home had not much enjoyed Christmas, coming as it did so soon after Black Week. For Ogilvie, Christmas 1899 had passed in a whirl of hymn-singing and readings from the Bible, sonorously uttered at length by Opperman in a well-brushed, long black frock-coat, his whiskers beautifully combed for the occasion. This, and a curious juxtapositioning of laager-inspired Boer folk-singing in the encampments outside Ladysmith, drew the momentous nineteenth century towards its close. Other items of news included word that an important prisoner, Winston Churchill, son of a leading British politician, had escaped with great courage and cunning from the compound at Pretoria, being at that time in total ignorance of the fact that the Boers intended releasing him the very day following his masterly dive for freedom via the concealment offered by a lavatory. Queen Victoria had marked Christmas for her troops by sending out to every man a tin of chocolate with her own portrait on the lid, whilst the ubiquitous Mr Lyons donated a vast quantity of Christmas puddings. Boxing Day provided more stirring news for Boer hearts: the British under Colonel Baden-Powell had tried to seize Game Tree Fort, a Boer outpost at Mafeking; the attack had failed, losing Baden-Powell almost fifty men. Soon after this came small Boer victories at Dordrecht and at Upington on the Orange River. Nevertheless, to the more thoughtful Boers, other news was not so good: Lord Roberts, Fighting Bobs, Bobs Bahadur of so much Indian Frontier glory and battle experience, had by now left London’s Waterloo Station amid scenes of unparalleled enthusiasm and a sea of Union Flags for Southampton, there to board the Dunnottar Castle for the Cape. At Gibraltar the ship would deviate to embark Lord Kitchener to join his Commander-in-Chief and plot the future conduct of the war.