Frau Krupp dropped her voice and went on in a whisper: "Do you understand now what your threatened retirement would mean? It would mean that, excepting France and Great Britain, the whole of the world, all the smaller nations, would be practically at the War Lord's mercy, because their guns wouldn't shoot, their swords and lances wouldn't pierce.
"Such is the goal he has been striving for, the goal he wants to attain through my little girl. 'Have them all inadequately armed, and it will be a walk-over for German arms,' he calculates."
"And how can I prevent the world's debacle?"
"By fighting fire with fire. You cannot fight the War Lord openly – pretend obedience, fall in with his plans apparently, be an enthusiastic faker, as far as he can see; but don't smirch my little girl's business honour and submerge the world under a tidal wave of blood by making other nations defenceless. I have your promise, Franz?"
"It's a vast prospect," answered the young engineer, "but I have sworn to stand by Bertha – "
"I thank you," said the Baroness, as the portières were noisily pushed aside and a child's voice cried: "Supper's ready."
CHAPTER IV
BERTHA KRUPP, WAR LADY, ASSERTS HERSELF
Science Steps In – Franz Incurs the Kaiser's Wrath
Six months of feverish activity in the Essen works, of tests and measuring velocities, of experimenting with ingots, hardening processes, chilled iron castings and compound steel – who knows or cares for the technique of murder machinery save generals of the staff? As Mark Twain at one time labelled a book, "There is no weather in this," so the present author will not burden his pages with figures and statistics of any sort. It would be a tantalising undertaking at best, for the War Lord himself was directing, and insisted that his every misunderstood, mis-stated and often wholly untenable whim be immediately gratified by the ready servility of Krupp employés – "his people."
Up to the time under discussion the Emperor Wilhelm had devoted nearly all his energies to drill, political intrigue and uttering platitudes. To dabble in formulary details, with nobody to dispute his opinion or correct his errors, flattered him in the proportion as his judgment about ordnance construction became more and more fantastic.
He was always going about with a half-dozen professors at his heels, losing no opportunity of propounding nebulous and remarkable theories to their startled but complaisant ears.
At the beginning of the present century the German professor was a hundred years behind the times in his dress, manners and social habits. The German Punch had rudely caricatured him into a new habitat, where soap and water, clean collars, unfrayed trousers and non-Cromwellian headgear held sway. Up to that period, he had bathed occasionally, had curled his hair now and then, and thereafter relapsed into that state of slovenliness which is labelled scientific preoccupation by the German mob, and stands in awe of learning, be it ever so badly digested and wrongfully applied.
The War Lord had an English mother; he is a Barbarian fond of the tub. He perceived that professors might be made useful to him. But how make them presentable?
A visit to England gave him the clue.
And forthwith the new order of Court dress was launched: short clothes and pumps, silk stockings and jabot-shirts; and the official Press rudely informed those "entitled to the uniform" that bathing was imperative before getting into it.
The brotherhood of science furthermore received hints to patronise the War Lord's own barber in regard to their flowing beards. "But Admiral von Tirpitz wears a forked beard too," pleaded some. "No precedent, Herr Professor, his Excellency has Majesty's special permit!"
With the superfluous hair, the professors likewise had to shed their accustomed hyperbole.
"Don't speak until spoken to." "Answer in as few informatory words as can be managed." "Invariably make your answer meet the Imperial wishes." "Never contradict," were the Grand Master's instructions, and the scientific men abiding by them soon found themselves in clover, because they were "useful," while the rest were discarded.
In particular, experts in chemistry were exploited by the War Lord. "They must help to feed my army and people" – in case war lasts longer than expected. "They must invent new weapons of destruction" – for while powder and lead are well enough in their way, they do not spell the end of things.
German scientific men are very fond of power and have an enormous idea of their own importance, but their notions are subject to fits of extravagant humility if policy, or personal advantage, can be served by Uriah Heepisms. The keener ones in the Imperial entourage found that it would pay to cater to the mobility in the War Lord's ideas while there was a certain degree of logic. And if, perchance, he happened to drop into incoherency or extravagance, was it the professor's business to set him right? Court usage registered an emphatic negative.
Such were the beginnings of the partnership between War Lordism and the perversion of German science into an instrument of destruction. "Science to the rescue of the lame and halt" – an out-of-date notion. Science makes them by the hundreds of thousands.
The professors were powerful assistants to the War Lord in maintaining his grip on the Krupp throat and acquiring further business concessions from the firm; but, of course, as to realising the technical chimeras of the War Lord's mind with respect to new-fangled war machinery, there was more pretence than activity, for dividends had to be considered, and the War Lord would have been the first to make an outcry if his earnings were reduced by the fraction of a per cent.
Franz maintained his position as chief experimenter, and, his expert judgment in gunmaking as well as in electricity being unquestioned, he was able openly to frustrate some of the War Lord's most bloodthirsty plans by proving them impracticable to the satisfaction of the board of directors, which put a stop to their execution for the time at least.
"Uncle Majesty is very wroth with you," said Bertha to her relative one evening, when the War Lord had returned to Berlin after one of his unofficial visits to the Ruhr metropolis. He was in the habit of coming to Essen every little while now, unheralded and incog. Likewise in mufti; and what discarding of regimentals and associated fripperies meant to him few people can imagine.
His uniforms are built to make him appear taller and more imposing, while affording a ready background for all sorts of decorative material – ribbons, scarfs, stars, crosses and medals galore.
"Wroth with me?" queried Franz.
"Yes, with you," replied the child; "and I heard him dictate a long letter, giving you a terrible talking to. I just signed it," added Bertha with a satisfied grin.
"And why am I hauled over the coals?" asked Franz.
"I'm sure I don't know," replied the child. "'One of the things little girls cannot understand,' said Uncle Majesty. But I do know that you must – I said must– not do it again. I won't let you, do you hear? I mean Uncle Majesty won't."
Franz raised his hat and knocked his heels together, military fashion. He was about to withdraw when Bertha caught him by the arm. "You are not angry with me, Franz?" she pleaded.
"No, my chief."
"Say 'no, liebe Bertha.'"
"No, liebe Bertha."
At this moment a messenger caught up with the two young people on the road to Villa Huegel and handed Franz an official-looking envelope. The engineer looked inquiringly at Bertha. "May I?"
Instead of answer the Krupp heiress picked up her skirts with both hands and ran towards the house.
Her letter informed Franz that the task of completing the Belgian guns had been entrusted to other hands. Secondly, that, in future, communications about experiments ordered by the War Lord must be addressed to the heiress direct, not to the board of directors.
CHAPTER V
HOW THE WAR LADY WAS CAJOLED
An Intoxication of Vanity – Barbara's Plain Words – A Shameful Memory
The Imperial Chief-Court-and-House Marshal, Count Eulenburg, has the honour to command Fraulein Bertha Krupp to attend upon their Imperial and Royal Majesties, His Majesty the Emperor and King, and Her Majesty the Empress and Queen, during the Christmas and New Year's festivities at the Schloss, Berlin.
A royal equipage will await Fraulein Krupp's pleasure at the station, meeting the early morning train of December 22nd.
Dress: Silks, Velvets and Laces.
Attendance: Wardrobe mistress and maid; A footman.
The invitation, copperplated on an immense sheet of rather cheap paper and sent through the mail free, created much excitement in Villa Huegel, the more so as it was wholly unexpected, the War Lord never having intimated that an honour of that kind was in store for his godchild.
In the meantime Bertha had risen to the dignity of opening her own letters and using her discretion as to divulging their contents, or not, as she saw fit, or rather as the War Lord saw fit. This was strictly opposed to native custom; but isn't the King above the law? And certain reports, such as those ordered to be addressed to Bertha direct – Franz's for instance – All-Highest wouldn't have communicated to any save himself, not even to Frau Krupp. Hence his command that the Krupp heiress keep her own counsel in regard to her correspondence.
Bertha broke the great seal of the Court Marshal's office and her eyes became luminous as she read the printed words and angular script. She sat staring at the latter for a minute or two, while the Baroness, chafing under her impotency, pretended to be busy with an orange. Finally Barbara tiptoed behind her sister's chair and looked over her shoulder. The fourteen-year-old girl being well up in Court lore – having seen dozens of such letters addressed to her late father – applied herself to the essentials, skipping the merely decorative lines.
"Christmas and New Year's festivities at the Schloss, Berlin," she read aloud. Then higher up: "Fraulein Bertha Krupp."
"Oh, Mamma!" she cried, "we are not invited, you and I. Isn't that mean of Uncle Majesty?" She stamped her foot. "But he shan't kiss me when he comes again – see if I let him kiss me."
"Hold your tongue, naughty child."
Bertha spoke with an air of unwonted authority. She folded up her letter.
"Just see how high and mighty we are!" mimicked Barbara. "'Naughty child,' and what are you? I shouldn't wonder if Uncle Majesty spanked you sometimes, when you are alone with him; you always come away full of humility to him and of arro – arro – " (she couldn't find the word) "the other thing to us – to Mamma and me, I mean."
The Baroness put out her arm as if she expected the children to resort to fisticuffs. "Barbara," she called half pleadingly.
"She will go to her room," insisted Bertha, ringing. The butler responded so promptly that there was no doubt he had been listening behind the portières.
"Fraulein Barbara's governess," Bertha ordered. And as the man was going out: "My secretary shall report at once in my council room."
"Are you mad?" cried Frau Krupp, when the curtains had dropped behind the servant. Bertha seemed so unlike herself – unlike what her child ought to be.
The Krupp heiress disdained to answer.
"Since I am to be their Imperial and Royal Majesties' guest, I must prepare for the honour," she deigned after a little while; "in half an hour I'll leave for Cologne. You may accompany me, if you like, Mother."
The Baroness grew white under the lash of Bertha's patronising tone. "You shall not go," she said hotly.
"If you will come to the council room you can see in black and white my authority to go where and when I please," replied Bertha, going out.
Barbara and her mother looked at each other in blank amazement, the child not understanding, the mother understanding but too well. Bertha was lost to her; the supreme egotist had gained a strangle-hold on her flesh and blood.
With the strange intuition that often moves children to do the right thing at the right time when grown-ups are at their wits' end, Barbara seemed to divine what passed in her mother's mind and, burying her face in the Baroness's lap, she sobbed out convulsively words of consolation, of endearment and unbounded affection. Frau Krupp bent over the child's head and kissed her again and again. "My little girl, my Barbara, won't discard Mother, will she?" she said in broken tones.
"Not for ten thousand Uncle Majesties," cried Barbara fiercely; and, as if the words had freed her from a spell, she rose of a sudden and planted herself in front of Frau Krupp.
" – Uncle Majesty," she said, clenching her little fists.
Then, overcome by her breach of the conventions, she ran out of the room and into the arms of her governess.
Frau Krupp would not have had the heart to scold Barbara even if she had not run away. " – him!" – her own sentiments. With such reflections she leaned back in her great arm-chair, undecided whether she should follow Bertha to the council room or not. Her motherly dignity said "No," while anxiety for her child urged her to go to her.
"To think of him playing the bully in my own house," she deliberated; "the coward, setting a child against her mother! But I know what it's done for. He wants her like wax in his hand – the hand getting ready to choke the world into submission."
The butler entered with soft step.
"Fraulein begs to say that she will leave for Cologne at 10.30 sharp, and she desires your ladyship to get ready."
"Thank you, my maid shall lay out the new black silk costume. Did you order the horses?"
"Fraulein's secretary is attending to everything," said the butler in a hurt voice. "I don't know by what authority he assumes my duties," he added.
"He shall not do so again, Christian," promised the Baroness.
Three hours later Frau Krupp and Bertha were going the rounds of Cologne's most exclusive shops. The Hochstrasse is too narrow to permit the use of a carriage; the ladies were followed, then, by a train of commissionaires laden with boxes, for Bertha was buying everything in the line of frocks, costumes and millinery that was pretty and expensive. Consult her mother? Not a bit of it. The Court Marshal's instructions were silk, velvet, laces; nothing else mattered.
The shopkeepers, of course, knew Frau Krupp; they had known Bertha familiarly ever since she was in short frocks. The girl of seventeen had blossomed into the richest heiress of the world, yet it would have been almost indecent not to consider the elder woman first.
So the best chair was pushed forward for the Baroness, and man-milliners and mannequins fell over each other trying to win her applause for the goods offered. The widow of the Ironmaster smiled and talked vaguely about their merits, but announced that Bertha was to do her own choosing.
Bertha went about her task like an inexperienced country lass suddenly fallen into a pot of money. The girl seemed to be working under a sense of assertiveness, tempered by responsibility to a higher power. That higher power regarded her mother of no consequence. Though of a naturally dutiful and kindly nature, Bertha assumed an air of independence unbecoming to so young a woman.
Indeed her want of respect was of a piece with her "Uncle Majesty's" behaviour in a little Italian town, when his father lay dying there. The War Lord, then a junior Prince, had crossed the Alps as the representative of his grandsire, head of the State, and instantly presumed to lord over his mother, who was the Princess Royal of an Empire, compared with which his own patrimony is a petty Seigneurie.
He arrived on a Saturday night, and at once ordered divine service for seven o'clock next morning, an hour suiting his restlessness and most unsuited to his parent, worn out with night vigils and anxieties.
However, to humour him, and also to gain more time to spend with her ailing husband, the Imperial Mother acquiesced in the arrangement; but imagine her surprise when in the morning she learned at the last moment that, at her son's behest, the House Marshal had not provided carriages as usual, and that she was expected to walk three-quarters of a mile to the chapel.
Meanwhile the official procession of church-goers had started. At the head a platoon of cuirassiers, followed by the Prince's Marshal and staff. Next, his adjutants and a deputation of officers from his regiment; his personal servants in gala livery; finally, himself, walking alone, the observed of all observers.
The father's own household was commanded to fall behind. So were his mother and sisters; the Prince was not at all interested in them. His Royal Mother might lean on the arm of a footman for all he cared.
Here we have an exaggeration of the most repulsive traits of egotism, self-indulgence, callousness, coarseness, cruelty and deceitfulness, for, as intimated, Wilhelm had been careful to keep his parent in ignorance of the affront to be put upon her.
Small wonder that a person so constituted, having vested himself with full charge of a girl's soul and mind as she approached mental and physical puberty, upset her filial equilibrium, while her actions reflected the impress of his own arrogance.
CHAPTER VI
FRAULEIN KRUPP INVITED TO COURT
The Virtue of a Defect – Bertha's Reception – A Disappointment
There is a streak of malignity in the best of women. Maybe the younger girl has nothing but praise for another a few years her senior, but she will add that naturally "age" inspires respect. Helen has the most beauteous eyes, the daintiest figure, the most transparent complexion, the softest colour, the most exquisite feet, the sweetest smile and the most delightful air of superiority, and when her friend tenders her a box at the Play she will invite some girl conspicuously deficient in most of these excellences – human nature, or just plain, ordinary devilry. So Bertha's mother took a sort of grim satisfaction in the poor taste Bertha displayed in selecting her Court gowns.
"He taught her to ignore her mother even in matters of dress; serves him right if her appearance jars on his sense of beauty," she said to herself more than once when superintending the packing of Bertha's many trunks.
The Baroness had never visited the Berlin Court, and her conception of its splendours resided in her own imagination.
As a matter of fact, the Berlin Court is the home of bad taste; plenty of fine shoulders, but draped with ugly and inappropriate material. Some few petite feet against an overwhelming majority too large and clumsily shod. Some fine arms and hands, since such are subjects of the War-Lord's appreciation, but faces broad, plain and uninteresting.
The taste of a man who allows his wife to keep a bow-legged attendant is necessarily deplorable; a king permitting that sort of thing, despite prevailing fashions, is inexcusable.
An anecdote in point.
When, in the 'nineties, the Medical Congress sat in Berlin, the learned gentlemen were commanded to a reception at the Palace, and in their honour the whole contingent of Court beauties was put on exhibition.
"Did you ever see an uglier lot of women?" asked a Russian professor afterwards, addressing a table full of colleagues. All shook their heads sadly, depressed by the remembrance of what they had witnessed.
Into this milieu of hallowed ugliness and organised ennui dropped the Krupp heiress like a pink-cheeked apple among a lot of windfalls.
As we know, she was not pretty from the stand-point of the English-speaking races. Her complexion was good, but it lacked the Scottish maid's transparency; her hair was fair to look upon, but there are a thousand English girls travelling on the Underground daily whose glossy tresses are to be preferred; her figure was a little too full, like that of Jerome Napoleon's Queen, Catherine of Würtemberg, whose finely chiselled bosoms scandalised the Tuileries when she was scarcely sixteen. She had the heavy gait of the German woman, and the vocabulary of them all: "Oh Himmel," "Ach Gott," "Verdammt," and so forth, a dreadful inheritance, which even the "Semiramis of the North" could not shake off after fifty and more years' residence in Imperial Russia.
Her Majesty's maid of honour, Countess von Bassewitz, went to the station with Count Keller, a minor gold stick, to receive and welcome Bertha. Bassewitz was young and pretty – "the only happy isle in an ocean of inelegancy," as Duke Gonthier of Schleswig used to say. Her sole perceptible defect was indifferent hands, but, strange to say, this very blemish got her the position at Court.
The War Lord had declared that he wouldn't have more of the "hideous baggage" (meaning Her Majesty's ladies) that "made his house a nightmare," and that the next Dame du Palais to be appointed was to be good-looking, or must wear a bell, so that he could keep out of her way. His Queen, who regards all women through the jaundiced lorgnette of jealousy, was in despair. In her mind's eye she saw the Schloss peopled with Pompadours, Du Barrys and Dianes de Poitiers.
The War Lord had instructed the Court Marshal to demand photographs of applicants for the vacant post, and Countess von Bassewitz's he considered the most promising. "Wire her to report to-morrow morning at eight," he ordered. She arrived while the War Lord was busy lecturing his Council of Ministers on international law, and Her Majesty saw the candidate first. She couldn't help admitting to herself that Ina was comely in the extreme, and that it would require a vast deal of intrigue to induce her husband not to appoint the young girl forthwith. Then a happy thought struck her. "You may remove your gloves," she said condescendingly.
Countess Ina blushed and grew pale in turn; conscious of her weak point, she was afraid it would work her undoing.
But, instead, Her Majesty smiled benignly upon those unlovely hands.
"His Majesty!" announced the valet de chambre.
"Be gloved, my child; hurry."
The War Lord didn't know what to make of it when "Dona" approved of his selection.
"She is mysteriously confiding," he said to his crony, Maxchen (the Prince of Fürstenberg). But he changed his mind when, a week or two later, he had induced Ina to take off her gloves in his presence.
The War Lord had instructed Bassewitz and Keller to treat Bertha "like a raw egg," saying: "Her income is bigger per minute than that of all you Prussian Junkers per annum" – a gratuitous slap, the more ungenerous since the old Kings of Prussia gobbled up a goodly part of their landed possessions, as Bismarck once pointed out to Frederick William IV.
Berlin pomp and circumstance! Three flags, paper flowers on lanterns, a much-worn red carpet leading from the spot where Bertha's saloon carriage was to draw up to the royal reception room in the station.
As Bertha, though Grand-Lady-Armouress-of-the-World, has no place in the Army List, she must be content with walking through lines of royal footmen in black and silver, on which account the War Lord sincerely pitied the girl. "Twenty marks for a precedent to endow her with a uniform," but even the obsequious Eulenburg failed to discover an excuse.
Inside the Royal waiting-room: red-plush furniture, with covers removed, in garish glory; a bouquet of flowers from the Potsdam hothouses; a silver teapot steaming; on a silver platter four bits of pastry, one for each person and one over to show that we are not at all niggardly – oh, dear, no!
The stationmaster enters in some kind of uniform, a cocked and plumed hat above a red face, toy sword on thigh. "The train is about to draw into the station, Herr Graf, and may it please Her Ladyship."
Countess von Bassewitz starts for the door. "One moment, pray," admonishes gold stick, "the noblesse doesn't run its feet off to greet a commoner even if she is laden with money."
Courtiers suit their vocabulary to their lord and master. Countess Bassewitz is young and hearty. Never before had she reflected on the sad fact that Bertha lacked birth, but now that a gold stick had mentioned it, a mere maid of honour must needs bow to superior judgment.
So the richest girl in the world was left standing in the doorway of her saloon carriage for a good half-minute before their Majesties' titled servants deigned to approach. "Will take some of the purse-pride out of her," observed Count Keller.
Then, hat in hand and held aloft, three bows, well measured, not too low, for high-born personages' privileges must not be encroached upon.
"Aham, Aham" (several courtly grunts, supposed to be exquisitely recherché), "Fraulein Krupp, I have the honour – Count Keller – Countess von Bassewitz, dame to Her Majesty. Had a pleasant journey I hope," delivered in nasal accents. In Germany, you must know, it is considered most aristocratic to trumpet one's speech through the nose after the fashion of bad French tenors chanting arias.
Countess von Bassewitz, amiable and enthusiastic, spouted genuine civilities. "Fraulein looks charming!" "What a pretty frock!" "I will show you all around the shops," and more compliments and promises of that kind.
Childlike, Bertha had expected a coach-and-four. Another disappointment! The carriage at the royal entrance was of the most ordinary kind – a landau and pair of blacks, such as are driven about Berlin by the dozen.
"If you please," said Count Keller, bowing her into the coach. She planted herself boldly in the right-hand corner, facing the horses. Bassewitz looked horror-stricken at the heiress's cool assumption of the gold stick's place, and to smooth him over attempted to take the rear seat; but Bertha pulled her to her side. "Don't leave me," she whispered, with a look upon the ruffled face of the Count, who marvelled that there was no earthquake or rain of meteors because he was obliged to ride backwards, with a "mechanic's daughter" in the seat of honour.