The Heart of the Empire Read online

  For the first time, Ogilvie was fully aware that he had left India: had left behind him one particularised form of soldiering. Here in South Africa, he would to a large extent go back to the beginning. Much was to be learned.

  “Here we are,” Haig said when they had reached the suburbs. He pulled up the gig, then added, “I shall collect you at ten-thirty. Be ready outside. That’s the house.” He pointed his whip at a low, two-storey house set in a small garden, one of many in a long, quiet street. A lamp was burning behind half-opened shutters, in a room to the right of a porch. Ogilvie got down from the gig, saluting Major Haig, who turned his horse and went off the way he had come, at a fast trot. Ogilvie, his heart thumping now with expectancy and curiosity, opened a garden gate and went up a well-kept path between lawn and flower-beds which, as he could see from a high-climbing moon, were already showing the effects of the approaching South African summer: there had evidently been little rain for some while.

  In the porch, he pulled at the bell. From within, he heard the gentle dying tinkle. A native servant, a woman black as coal, shining and smiling, answered the door.

  “Miss Gilmour — she’s expecting me. Captain Ogilvie.”

  A bob of the head, almost a curtsey: the Negro woman stood aside. Ogilvie went in, was taken towards the room where he had seen the lamp. When he was announced a girl in a jade-green dress rose from a chair at a bureau, where she had been writing. Katharine Gilmour — a girl yet, but one who had blossomed in the interval.

  Smiling, nodding at the servant who withdrew, Katharine came towards Ogilvie, holding out her hands. He took them both in his, feeling strangely awkward.

  “Dear James! It’s been so long. How nice to see you — how nice of you to come!” Her eyes were full of happiness: he would have been the dullest man not to have seen that and responded. “Or did Major Haig bully you into it?”

  He met her smile. “Of course not — he was anxious I should, but I’d have come anyway. How are you, Katharine? And how did you know my regiment was here at the Cape?”

  She laughed. “Oh, James, as to that, it was Major Haig who told me you’d been ordered here. Since he learned the facts of my father’s death, he’s followed your career with some interest, I may tell you. And he’s going to be an officer of distinction, I’m certain — one to be reckoned with. As to how I am … I am very well indeed, and so delighted to see you that I feel, all of a sudden, even better!”

  Flattery? Flattery, in an attempt to procure his acceptance of whatever it was she was about to ask of him? But no: she was, surely, too ingenuous for that! She shone with innocence and honesty, as did her Negro woman with kitchen-sweat. Besides, there was always this Major Douglas Haig to push him into acceptance — which thought, to his intense irritation, pricked pinlike in two ways, one of them being an awakening jealousy.

  “How was Peshawar, James, when you left cantonments?”

  He shrugged. “As ever. Things don’t change much. Patrols, the odd expedition, a great deal of boredom in between.” He decided to come to the point. “Katharine, we haven’t long. What’s this you want — why did you want to see me? I rather gathered it was important. Not just poodle-faking.”

  Lightly, she put a finger to her lips. Melodramatic: crossing the room to the door, the jade-green dress rustling with movements that Ogilvie found provocative, she turned the handle gently, slowly, and looked out.

  Then she closed the shutters across the window.

  “Come and sit with me, James, on the sofa.”

  “So much secrecy?”

  “It’s necessary. Come!” Sitting herself, she patted the cushion close to her.

  He moved across, frowning. “Don’t tell me Haig’s given you some military secret, some campaign information — ”

  “No, no, no, Douglas would never do such a thing as that.” Douglas? Major Haig was a damn sight older than her. “It’s nothing like that, I promise you — though the campaign does come into it insofar as you’ll be going up to Kimberley, James.”

  “Yes.” No secret about that; the Boers must know the relieving force would come. “Can you please explain, Katharine?”

  “Of course!” She had a wonderfully fresh scent: like mimosa. “James, some years ago my father and mother were out here, on leave from India. I think I told you once — while we were in the Khyber — my grandmother, my father’s mother, lived out here. She still does. She’s a very old lady now. This is her house. Father was her only child — they were very close. After my parents died, I came here to live with her, only for a time originally, and then I found I couldn’t leave her. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “When Father was here, at the time I spoke of, he was on long leave … he became bored I think — anyway, it was at the time of the First Boer War, the Boer Insurrection some people call it, for it was little more than that. Father attached himself to the 58th Regiment, which in fact was his old regiment — ”

  “Unofficially, I take it?”

  She nodded. “But no less factually, James! He fought at Laing’s Nek … on the 26th of January 1881, nearly twenty years ago, just before I was born. It was a Boer victory, of course, and General Colley lost a large number of men. But there were also Boer casualties — fourteen killed and twenty-seven wounded in the first assault — and Father brought in one of them. He saved the man’s life, at the risk of his own, James.”

  “I can imagine him doing that.”

  “You thought well of him, James, did you not?”

  “I did.”

  She went on, “That man’s name was Opperman. A Boer, son of a farmer … a man with a mass of flaming red hair, Father often told me. When the rising was over and Father had not yet returned to India, they became friends. Opperman was naturally grateful for what Father had done and he gave him a present: a diamond, from the Kimberley diamond fields.” She laughed. “Father always suspected he’d stolen it, even if only by finding it on another man’s diggings, for Opperman was no digger himself. However, he said he’d come by it honestly and had had it cut and polished.”

  “Valuable?”

  “Very! Father put a value of twenty thousand pounds on it. It’s beautiful, James, it glows … with a sort of pink glow. I can’t really describe it properly. That’s partly why it became known as the Red Daniel, that, and the fact that Opperman’s name is Daniel, and he’s known as Old Red Daniel too, because of his hair.”

  “Is? He’s still alive, then?”

  She said, “Yes, and apparently full of vim and vigour. Presently, he’s Commandant Opperman of the Boer commandos, and he commands the Boers at Carolina in the eastern Transvaal. But that’s only by the way, James. The thing is this: the Red Daniel, the diamond, is in Kimberley. So is my grandmother — she has the Red Daniel with her. She went up there before there was any threat to Kimberley, to stay with friends — a Mrs Hendrikson whose husband’s with De Beers. She took the Red Daniel with a view to having a proper valuation put upon it.” Katharine looked down at her hands. “We have little money left, James,” she said quietly but with a curious inner tension. “So little! Virtually, the Red Daniel is all that’s left — that, and a little money of my grandmother’s invested in England. The Red Daniel’s terribly important to us, really it is. It’s vital, James. And if the Boers take Kimberley — ”

  “They won’t do that.”

  “But if they do, James,” she said with insistence, looking at him pleadingly. “If they do, then the Red Daniel may be lost.”

  “I see — or I think I do! You’re asking me, aren’t you, to get into Kimberley, find your grandmother, and bring the Red Daniel out?”

  She said in a tight, passion-controlled voice, “Yes! Oh, I know it’s asking an awful lot — ”

  “A lot!” He laughed; a hard laugh. “Let us not discuss that for now, Katharine! First, I’ll dissect your theories. To begin with: from all I hear, the Boers are magnanimous in victory, and chivalrous towards women. I doubt if they’d take the
Red Daniel from an old lady! Next: if I should manage to get into Kimberley, which is pretty doubtful to say the least, then the Red Daniel will be on my person afterwards. If I should be wounded, or killed … then the Boers may take the stone — take it from a British officer, don’t you see? Thirdly: if your grandmother is friendly with De Beers, why doesn’t she hand the Red Daniel to them for safe keeping until Kimberley is relieved?”

  Once again the girl looked down at her hands. “All that … it is easily enough answered, James. My grandmother and I do not wish to chance the Boers’ chivalry — there are Boers and Boers. You must not believe all you have been told about their chivalry! Kimberley means wealth to the Boers, James, great wealth, and all their eyes will be on diamonds, diamonds, diamonds! As to De Beers … well, I think there will be no safe keeping there if Kimberley should fall! As to what might happen to you, I pray to God that nothing will.”

  “Many wives and mothers and children will be praying that for their men, Katharine, but men will still fall, you know.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “I’m not unfamiliar with a soldier’s life, or with his death either — ”

  “I’m sorry.” Impulsively, his hand closed over hers in her lap. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. If you’re really set on this business, if — ”

  “It means my whole security, James.”

  “Then, for the reason I gave, isn’t it a foolish risk?”

  She shook her head. “Major Haig will arrange for the Red Daniel to be collected from you outside Kimberley, and brought direct to Cape Town by a trusted courier.”

  Haig again! “H’m. And do I take it that Major Haig will also make certain other arrangements?”

  She looked at him, frowning. “I don’t understand, James. Please will you explain?”

  “Yes. How do I arrange to be absent from my column, from my regiment, while I’m trying to burrow like a mole into Kimberley?”

  “Oh,” she said in a low voice. “Oh, yes, I — I believe Major Haig will see to that for you, James — ”

  “Why?”

  “Why, James?”

  “Yes — why? French’s Chief of Staff … he’s nothing to do with me, French is to command on the Central Front — I don’t come under his orders — ”

  “No. But Major Haig was my father’s friend. As a friend, he asked for, and was given, permission to leave General French so he could go aboard your ship and — and ask you to help me. That’s all, James.”

  “Is he in love with you?” He sounded stiff and pompous, and he knew it, but didn’t care. “Is that it? Am I being made use of, to — ”

  “No, no!” She laughed impatiently, angrily. “There’s nothing like that on the part of Douglas Haig — ”

  “Then on your part? Is Haig married, Katharine?”

  “He’s not married as it happens, but — ”

  “Then he’s paying attention to you. And doubtless you to him. From the little I saw of him tonight, I’d have said he’d probably be attractive to women — ”

  “True, James, he is. But not to me — and anyway, he’s an ambitious man. When Douglas Haig marries, it will not be to a dead major’s daughter, an obscure officer from the North-West Frontier — much as he respected my father as a man. In any case, he has no thought of marrying, I believe. His passion is the Army, James, and he is very single-minded, like all efficient officers. He is much too engrossed in the task on hand even to notice a woman.”

  “In that case I still ask — why, Katharine?”

  “I think that is something you must ask Major Haig himself,” she said after a pause. “All I can say is, he is a kind man, and — and chivalrous.” She gave him a sideways glance, a mischievous one. “And you, I think, are jealous!”

  He laughed at that; but an edgy laugh. “Come now, Katharine, you’re fishing for compliments. Jealous or not, I’d like to know a little more about Haig’s motives in this — so perhaps I will ask him myself. I take it, from what you’ve said already, that I do have your permission?”

  “Yes, of course, James.” She hesitated, looking into his face, searchingly and with hope. “And does it follow from that, that you’ll help me?”

  “I haven’t said so yet. But if I should decide to … how shall I establish my bona fides with your grandmother? She’s not going to trust someone she doesn’t know, who turns up in Kimberley to relieve her of — ”

  “James, you were with my father when he. died. When you speak of that, she’ll know you’re telling the truth — you knew enough of him to talk about him, to be obviously sincere in what you say.” Again Katharine hesitated. “I’ve discussed this with Major Haig. A letter of introduction would be too dangerous, clearly, and there is no means, beyond the open heliograph, of telling her you are coming. The telegraph into Kimberley has been cut by the Boers. But if you give her this, she will know you come from me.”

  Reaching into her bodice, she produced a small golden locket, hanging from a thin chain about her neck. She handed this to Ogilvie. He studied a faded photograph of a young woman very like Katharine herself.

  He met her eye. “Your mother?”

  “Yes, as a young married woman, James. It will mean nothing to anyone … with whom you might fall in on your way to Kimberley. It could be your own mother’s. Take it — leave it with my grandmother when you take the Red Daniel. That is, if you will … I’d be so terribly grateful.” Her voice was low now, and he felt there was a hint of tears. “The Red Daniel was always to be our security … my father always said so. He had little else to leave. If it should be lost, it would seem like a betrayal.”

  *

  The tug at the bell-pull had sounded impatient. “I don’t like being kept waiting,” Major Haig said as he whipped up the horse.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I said ten-thirty, I meant ten-thirty.”

  “And I’ve said I’m sorry, Major.”

  Haig grunted. “The army’s going to the dogs. Young officers are becoming a pest.”

  “Then, sir, I doubt if a pest can accommodate Miss Gilmour in what I consider a stupidly dangerous mission!”

  “Ha!” Major Haig gave a sudden barking laugh, half angry, half amused. “Damn it, Ogilvie, you’re a cool young man! Still — no bad thing to stand up to your elders and betters — to a point, that is. I’ll withdraw the pest. Are you frightened off by the thought of danger?”

  “No”

  “Good! You’ve agreed to do as she asks?”

  “Provisionally, yes.”

  Haig slowed the pace a little. There was a hard note in his voice as he repeated, “Provisionally? What does that mean?”

  “It means I want to know a little more. I want to know where you stand, Major.”

  Haig said, “I stand as a friend. A friend who can smooth certain paths.”

  “So Miss Gilmour hinted. For the rest, she suggested I ask you. I’m asking now, Major.”

  “H’m. Well, of course, I can scarcely order you to recover a diamond for a young woman in distress. When I was a young officer, anyone’d have jumped at the chance!”

  “You said you can’t order me, Major. True — you can’t. Lord Methuen’s my Commander, not General French. But you are requesting very pressingly. Will you tell me what’s behind this business?”

  There was a long pause, during which Ogilvie was very conscious of a close sideways scrutiny from Major Douglas Haig. At last Haig seemed to reach a decision, grumpily. He said, “Yes, I’ll tell you what’s behind it, Ogilvie, on your word that you’ll keep your mouth shut for ever afterwards. And that part is an order. Well?”

  “You have my word, Major Haig.”

  Haig nodded. “Thank you. You may discuss this with your Colonel — no one else. What’s behind it? Lord Kitchener’s behind it — that’s what!”

  *

  Kitchener.

  A name to conjure with — Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. Horatio Herbert Kitchener who, having vengefully avenged the murder of Chinese Gordon, had
achieved total victory in the Sudan and had celebrated it by having the Mandi drawn in chains behind his horse at the great triumphal procession through the streets of Cairo. Kitchener the Sirdar, Commander-in-Chief of the Anglo-Egyptian Army, currently ensconced in Khartoum, loved by many serving soldiers and officers, loathed and detested by many more as ‘that stinking Egyptian’, nevertheless the idol, after Lord Roberts, of the British public.

  Surprise was an understatement: Ogilvie was astounded. Haig saw this, and laughed quietly. “Rumour has it,” he said, “and for now I’ll put it no stronger than that — rumour has it that there are moves afoot in Whitehall. Moves to relieve General Buller as Commander-in-Chief out here … much depends on the conduct of the war in the next few weeks, Ogilvie — ”

  “To relieve Buller by appointing Kitchener?”

  “No. By appointing Lord Roberts, with Kitchener as his Chief of Staff. Two very popular appointments, Ogilvie — if only Salisbury can be convinced, then they’ll be made, I do believe. Trouble is, Salisbury’s said to consider Roberts too old at sixty-seven — doubts his stamina, don’t you know — but that’s poppycock in Bobs’ case. They should never have put him out to grass in Ireland. But Kitchener, now … ”

  Kitchener! The iron-hard face, the compelling eyes, the tremendous black moustache. Kitchener was a dictator. Handsome, square-faced, glittering … eyes ice-blue with a cast in one of them, the result of desert experiences. Kitchener the hater of the Press, Kitchener who had most strongly objected even to the presence of Lord Randolph Churchill’s son Winston as a journalist disguised as a cavalry officer in the Sudan. Kitchener, always accustomed to be master in a foreign land, Kitchener single-minded and celibate, Kitchener the big, big personality — who, when commanding an Egyptian outpost, had often dressed as an Arab and gone out alone … to spy.

  When Major Haig said, “But Kitchener, now.” it was to this aspect of the Sirdar’s character and service onto which Ogilvie’s mind immediately latched.

  And he was right.