Читать книгу The Secret Memoirs of Bertha Krupp - Fischer Henry William - Страница 1

On a bright August day of 1902 the neighbourhood of Villa Huegel, overlooking the forest of smoke-stacks, cranes, masts and other erections that silhouette the town of Essen, was like an armed camp. Its master, Frederick Krupp, cannon king and war promoter, while not entitled to household troops, has an army of firemen as large as the contingent of the mighty potentate of Reuss-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein, and this was pre-eminently the season and hour of military display.

The Krupp warriors resemble Prussian infantry in dress. In discipline and aggressiveness they are second to none serving under the eye of the "All Highest," as the Kaiser fondly calls himself. Give their master a dark look as he passes, and one or more of them will pounce upon you and pound you to jelly before you can say Jack Robinson; reach for your handkerchief or pencil in your back trouser-pocket, where a revolver might be, and they will spit you on their fire-axe.

To-day Krupp firemen were everywhere. They lined the roads, guarded crossings and bridges, looked up at every window, sentinelled gates and doors. They were posted, too, in the tree-tops and on telegraph and signal posts, while indoors, along the corridors of the villa, you met them at every turn. Right royal arrangement that! Yet why at Huegel?

On this particular day Essen was alive with colour. Hussars in green and silver – the Düsseldorf brand – galloping round and round the villa circuit, kept their eyes keenly alert for suspicious characters; in Essen, indeed, every stranger is looked upon as a double-crossed suspect. Dragoons were there, too, from East Prussia, to watch the hussars, for one never knows, you know. And, of course, there were bodyguards – white tunic and breeches, black cuirass and silver helmet, surmounted by the "bird of poisonous glare," as Heine described the Imperial eagle. Many other uniforms, too – uhlans, chasseurs, mounted infantry for the War Lord likes to strut abroad to the tune and clank of a variety of arms. He would have horse marines if he were not so deadly afraid of Mr. Punch.

Before the library door of the Villa Huegel two giant cuirassiers, sabre in hand, revolver in belt, dull men and dangerous, of the sort that always do their duty not as they see it, but as their superior officer sees it.

Suppose that earthling orders a death-dealing blow for anyone attempting to enter the room under guard. It follows, as a matter of course, that the person is a dead man or dead woman, or maybe a dead child – militarism rampant, but discipline triumphant! Who cares for a corpse more or less?

A much-bedizened personage is standing in the centre of the high-ceilinged, wainscoted room. A gewgawed War Lord; but how unimposing he looks on foot and unprepared to meet the gaze of admiring multitudes! He is not much taller than the average grocer's clerk, and until Father Time sprinkled his straight, wiry hair with grey was a decided red-pate.

The War Lord's clothes are Berlin pattern: all straight and right angles, like the tunics of the impossible marbles that spoil his Avenue of Victory. He wears jewellery of the kind the late mad King of Bavaria used to decorate his actors with: a watch-chain thick and strong enough to hold a two-year bull, a timepiece bulging like an alarum clock, and a profusion – or confusion – of gold-mounted seals and medals. But the finishing touch: sky-blue garters, set with rosettes of diamonds and pearls alternating.

We know his public face – stern, haughty, cast-iron, forbidding – and his official demeanour has been brought home to us a thousand times and more in statue and photograph, in colour and black and white, throned, on horseback, or standing alone in Imperial self-glory under a purple canopy – he knows how to stage-manage himself in uniform.

The London tailor who skimped his coat in front, he hates with a deadly hatred, for padding, plenty of it, is essential to his mise en scène. See him on his well-trained, high-stepping horse, and you have the ideal camera subject: broad shoulders, prominent chest (laden with seventy-odd medals), strong limbs, jingling spurs, bronzed face, skyscraping moustachios and all.

But in the drawing-room, and in mufti – what a difference! Heavy set, somewhat short-limbed, and the face that looks strong when framed in military cap or helmet now seems to possess only brute force.

At this moment his left hand sought the seclusion of a trouser-pocket, while his right, studded with gems like a chorus-girl's, sawed the air with coarse assertiveness.

"My dear Frederick," he addressed his host, balancing himself on his right foot, "while you are here to execute my orders, all's well. But suppose something happened to you. You are not in the best of health and" – lowering his voice – "a careless boy. Don't deny," he added quickly when Frederick Krupp ventured to protest. "Both my Roman ambassador and our envoy at the Holy See heard about your peccadilloes in the island." The speech, begun in a bantering tone, terminated shrilly.

The Ironmaster alternately blushed and blanched. "I hope you do not believe all you hear," he faltered.

"Never more than a third of what I'm told," replied the War Lord, softening his voice; "but, even so, things must not be left too entirely to chance."

Frederick Krupp went to the window, marking each step for the benefit of possible listeners, then tiptoed to the great folding doors. He opened the off wing suddenly and looked out. "All's safe," he said, returning; "and what fine brutes those outside."

"Fancy them?" laughed the War Lord jovially, for he knows how to unbend when he wants to carry a point. "Now to business. We are all liable to die almost any moment, and you, dear Frederick, are no more an exception to the rule than I am – or those brutes."

Frederick Krupp looked uncomfortable, and to hide his embarrassment or gain time dropped into courtly jargon. "And what may be your Majesty's pleasure?"

"Make a satisfactory last will, sir – a last will guaranteeing the Krupps' goodwill for ever and a day – likewise satisfactory dividends – for the chief stockholder, if you please."

Frederick Krupp bowed low. "Please?" he repeated. "Why, I lie awake nights planning wars for your benefit. If there were not a Persian Gulf, I would have invented one to pave the way for the little scrap with England you are aching for."

"Hold your horses!" cried the War Lord. "That Bagdad railway must be finished first. What I want is a guarantee, and a most binding guarantee, that the Krupp works be conducted in all future as now, according to my Imperial will and pleasure, in the interest of the Fatherland and – our pocket," he added flippantly.

Frederick Krupp surveyed himself in the glass. "You talk as if I had one foot in the grave," he said in the careless manner of addressing a boon companion, or like one intimate putting things pleasant, or the reverse, to another. Frederick Krupp died in the odour of eccentricity. There was certainly something eccentric in his relations with the War Lord. But the latter tolerates familiarity only so long as it suits him; and, presently observing the clouds gather on his guest's brow, Frederick Krupp changed his tone.

"At your Majesty's commands, I am all ears," he murmured, as, obedient to a sign from the Emperor, he drew up an arm-chair for him.

"Sit down yourself," the Emperor ordered curtly, pointing to a tabouret. Then, sneeringly: "Your idea was – "

"To leave everything to my wife."

The War Lord slapped his knees hard, as he always does when excited.

"So would Herr Müller and Herr Schulze," he cried, without attempting to conceal the insult. "Her Ladyship – chief of the Krupp works – of what use would the Baroness Marguerite be to myinterests?"

Mrs. Frederick Krupp was née von Ende, and the War Lord, always eager to use titles of nobility, chose to call her by her maiden name and style.

Frederick Krupp, who, despite his irregularities, was genuinely fond of his wife, moved uneasily on his low chair. "Your Majesty is pleased – "

"To have his head screwed on tightly and in the right place," declared the War Lord, bringing his fist down on a table at his elbow and making the Chinese ivories jump. "Now then, without further palaver, I don't choose to see the Baroness heiress of the Krupp works. She shall not control my interests, do you hear? nor those of the Fatherland."

The War Lord talked as if addressing a parcel of raw recruits. His withered left hand had pulled from the trouser-pocket, and was making spasmodic attempts to clutch the lapel of his coat. He has the curious taste to give this poor hand a liberal coating of rings, and his enormous emeralds seemed to gleam more poisonously than usual upon the cringing form of poor Frederick.

"Willy," gasped the Ironmaster pleadingly.

The War Lord was not to be cajoled.

"As I said, her Ladyship gets a pension. Leave her as big a share of your fortune as you please," he added on second thought. "Yes, the larger the better; it will avert suspicion – I mean forestall criticism, of course."

"But," remonstrated Frederick, in a weak way, "Marguerite and I have an understanding."

"Understanding," scowled the War Lord, brutality written all over him as if he were rehearsing his pretty phrase: "Those opposing me I smash."

He contemplated Frederick for a while as a big mastiff might a King Charles before mangling and killing it. At last he remembered there are two ways in most things. "Of course," he began rather soothingly, "understandings among subjects are null and void when opposed to the Imperial will. Explain to Lady Marguerite with my compliments, if you please," the last phrase emphasised three times by hand cutting the air vertically.

Frederick Krupp, thoroughly cowed by this time, nodded assent. This man, used to bull-dozing Governments the world over, a terror before his board of directors, and a demigod to his workmen, felt a mere atom with the eyes of the War Lord flashing wrath and contempt upon his yielding self.

"I will; but what may be your Majesty's precise commands?" he stammered meekly.

The War Lord perceived that his victim had become like wax under the lash of his tongue. He could afford, then, to be magnanimous. "You forget etiquette," he replied, with a half-smile; "since when is it customary to question a majesty? Still, I am no Eulenburg" (referring to the Grand Marshal of the palace), "and will overlook your faux-pas this time. Listen, Frederick." He softened his speech with a "dear Frederick," and then issued his mandate: "The Baroness eliminated – "

Herr Krupp raised his eyes supplicatingly, but the War Lord paid no attention. "Eliminated," he repeated, accentuating each syllable. Then, in pitying style: "Too bad you haven't got a son. However, the Salic Law does not apply to commoners."

The Ironmaster made bold to show annoyance at the word. "Commoner by my own free will," he protested. "Haven't I declined Earldoms and Dukedoms even?"

"More's the pity that you remain plain Krupp, like a grocer or the ashman, when you might be Prince of Essen," cried the War Lord, jumping up. The Ironmaster rose as well.

Courtly usage, of course, but also a measure of precaution. He meant to be on hand in case his august guest suffered a fall, and there is always a possibility of that when the War Lord labours under excitement, for his whole left side, from ear to toe, is weak and liable to collapse if the full weight of the body is thrust suddenly upon it. As a rule, the War Lord remembers, but when carried away by passion, or for other reasons loses control of himself, he is prone to forget or even fall in a heap with no warning. Such a contretempshappened once at Count Dohna's, when Frederick was one of the house party, and long remained in his memory.

Visiting at Proeckelwitz in the summer of 1891, the War Lord had deigned to be pleased with a pair of blacks. "Buy two more of them for a four-in-hand, as befits the Sovereign," he said to his host.

The hint, dropped with charming German delicacy, was a command, of course, and a year later, in June, the War Lord started for the castle in right royal style; but he did not get far that way, since the four-in-hand shied and bolted when the villagers burst into patriotic song, to the waving of a thousand and one flags. As an eye-witness put it: The leaders rose on their hind legs, the cross pieces came loose and began knocking against their pasterns, and off they were at a furious rate. Count Dohna let the reins of the runaways slip, and hung the more heavily on to those of the shaft horses, who were trying to follow the others. He let the blacks run for a while but without losing control, and as they were about to plunge into a bed of harrows he succeeded in checking them.

Then, for a mile or so, he gave them a run on freshly ploughed ground. After that they went steadily.

The War Lord had put his arm around his host's shoulders when the horses started off, and, the danger past, pressed the Count's hand, but did not say a word. Then came the collapse. He had to be helped down from his seat, and took no notice of the greetings of the ladies awaiting him. Leaning upon his chasseur and Adjutant Von Moltke (now Field Marshal), he crept to his room, his face pale as death and lips compressed.

Dinner was set back an hour, but the War Lord had not recovered his speech when, with difficulties, he put his feet under the mahogany. His body physician, Doctor Leuthold, was sitting opposite the august person, and upon a sign from the medical man the War Lord rose from table after vainly trying to swallow a spoonful of soup. Nor did he come down to breakfast, but attended luncheon, still looking pale and haggard. Then, for the first time, he greeted the ladies of the house, and spoke a few words to his host; but when a forward young miss referred to the accident he bade her keep silent by an imperious gesture, while a tremor seemed to run through his body. He would not hear of hunting, and left next day without having fired a shot.

Frederick Krupp, remembering Proeckelwitz, moved as near to his Imperial guest as politeness permitted, ready to catch him in his arms if need be, but the War Lord no sooner perceived his intention than he became more infuriated than ever. "For Heaven's sake no heroics, Frederick!" he roared, sitting down again. "Draw up a stool and listen."

"One second," pleaded the Ironmaster, "I will set the miniature orchestrella going." He pressed a button, and almost simultaneously a music-box near the door, sheathed in tortoise-shell and gold bronze, began trilling out melodies, so as to confuse, if not obscure, conversation to possible listeners if it waxed overloud again.

The War Lord nodded. "Not half bad. You may send me one of those things to put in Bülow's office. There are always some Italians lurking about – to report to Madame la Princesse, I fancy – and put the W.I.R. on the box.

"Well, let's get back to things," he added, quickly changing his tone to drill-ground clangour. "Madame eliminated and there being no son – "

"Your Majesty desires me to leave the business jointly to Bertha and Barbara?" asked Krupp.

"Are there six crown princes or one?" inquired the War Lord in his turn, with affected calmness.

"I don't follow," said Herr Krupp.

The War Lord could hardly master his impatience. Still more raising his voice, he demanded abruptly: "Is Prussia to be divided into six petty Kingdoms when I die because I happen to have six sons, and a small principality besides for my daughter?"

Herr Krupp opened his eyes wide: "Your Majesty wants me to disinherit one of my children?"

"I want you to proclaim my godchild Bertha Crown Princess of the Kingdom of Cannon."

"But my other daughter – "

"Bertha is my goddaughter!" (with the emphasis on the "my").

"Can I ever forget the honour conferred upon my humble house?"

"I trust not," said the War Lord, who is careful not to let people forget any small favours he may bestow.

His brain works in fits and starts, in bounds and leaps, and when he wants a thing it jumps at once to the conclusion that his fancy is a fait accompli. Persuading Frederick had been easy with its bits of browbeating and flashes of cajolery. Now, flushed with the triumph gained, he launched forth the details. "Bertha, Crown Princess, trust me to find the right consort for her."

"She is only a child."

"The very age when she ought to be taken in hand and moulded." The War Lord illustrated the intended process by kneading the air with grasping fingers, his "terrible right" alternately pushing and squeezing, attacking, relaxing and coaxing, with the father looking on, terror-stricken.

Such, then, was to be the fate of his little girl: a vice round her white neck, spurs to her sides. The man before him came into the world accoutred to ride, and seventy millions of people his cattle!

The jewels on the War Lord's ring-laden hand flashed and threatened. That twenty-carat ruby on his little finger meant blood, and the emerald, linked to it, might denote the poison-tongue eager to corrupt the childish mind into an instrument of high politics. Diamonds stand for innocence. There were diamonds galore. Oh, the farce of it! Opals, too, a rare collection, but the stone sacred to October tells at least an honest tale – tears.

The War Lord stripped off a gold hoop with a large turquoise. "Wear it in remembrance of this hour, dear Frederick," he said. "The turquoise signifies prosperity, you know."

He walked towards one of the windows and, standing within its deep embrasure, pointed to the towering chimneys. "My brave guardsmen," he exulted, half to himself, "outposts of my Imperial will, avant-guard of my seven millions of warriors; it will be great fun, old fellows, to make you dance as I whistle!"

Then, with a broad smile to Frederick: "That being settled, the Minister of Justice shall draw up your testament at once. I brought him to Essen for that. Now, don't look frightened, boy. 'Last will' does not mean 'last legs.' You will outlive us all, I bet. Let's think of a Prince Consort now."

"But, as said, Bertha is much too young," faltered Frederick.

"Herr," staccatoed the War Lord, "I already had the honour to inform you that Bertha is my godchild – m-y g-o-d-c-h-i-l-d. Do you hear?" he yelled, while startled Frederick looked anxiously towards the door.

The War Lord took the hint and resumed conversational tone. "Come now," he ordered, "roll call. Some of our dear friends are still in the marriage mart." (Reflectively): "Too bad; Fritzie got married." Bertha's father shuddered at the mentioning of a certain Count, who, though brother-in-law of a reigning Grand Duke, was prisoner Number 5429 at Siegen jail, in Rhineland, a few years later for crimes unspeakable. In 1902, however, the dashing Colonel of Horse had not yet been publicly disgraced, and the War Lord launched into a panegyric of his friend. "Yes, indeed, Fritz would have made a first-class master here. Not overburdened with brains, but knows enough to obey orders. No humming and hawing for him when the War Lord has spoken. But the Suien girl caught him. The kind of son-in-law you want, Frederick."

Krupp shook his head.

"I respectfully beg to differ; none of these for my little girl."

"These?" The War Lord again raised his voice, but dropped into a hoarse whisper when he heard the officer de jour address the sentinels in the corridor. "One can't say a word without being overheard," he grumbled; "nearer, Frederick, still closer." As he continued speaking he laid his massive right hand on Frederick's knee and hissed between his teeth: "These? You forgot that you were referring to my friends."

"I did not, most assuredly I did not," returned the Ironmaster, disengaging himself by a swift movement and jumping up.

"You dare!" hissed the War Lord, again losing control of himself.

"I dare anything for my child!" cried Krupp, his face livid with rage; "and I tell you to your face none of your free-living friends for my Bertha!"

"Insolence!" roared the War Lord. "Take a care that I don't send you to Spandau."

"I would endure Schlusselburg rather than suffer my child to marry one of these," insisted the Ironmaster doggedly.

The War Lord gazed at the speaker for twenty or more seconds, then said in a tone of command: "You can go. Send in Moltke" (referring to his adjutant, later chief of the general staff).

With the latter he remained closeted a quarter of an hour – quite a long space of time for a person of the War Lord's character – and it is said that he tried to persuade the blond giant (Moltke was blond and blooming then) that Krupp was a madman, as crazy as the Mad Hatter. Otherwise he would never have dared oppose his plebeian will against that of the supreme master. Of course not!

Of Moltke's counter-arguments we know naught, but the War Lord's visit to Essen wound up with a grand banquet of sixty covers, and in the course of it host and Imperial guest toasted each other in honeyed words.

* * * * *

Less than two months later Frederick Krupp died by his own hand, and Bertha Krupp – sixteen, homely and already prone to embonpoint – mounted the throne of the Cannon Kings, as the War Lord had willed.

And, as he had insisted, she became automatically a pawn in his hand, his alter ego for destruction and misery.

Ever since his intimacy with Frederick, the War Lord had looked upon the Krupp plant as the power house for the realisation of his ambition – the conquest of the world; and to a very considerable extent Frederick had aided and abetted his plans by employing his genius for invention and business to commercialise war, and making it fit in with the general scheme of high finance.

"Want a loan?" the Cannon King used to ask governments. "May we fix it for you? But first contract for so many quick-firing guns."

The loan being amply secured, and the quick-firers paid for, then the suggestion would come along: "Have some more Bleichroder or Meyer funds on top of our latest devices in man-killers." And so on, and so on; an endless chain.

Yet, while so eager to provide death with new-fangled tools wholesale, Frederick could not, or would not, divest himself from the shackles of business honesty – and his inheritance.

He wouldn't play tricks on customers. The steel and work he put into guns for, say, Russia or Chili were as flawless and expert as in the guns bought by his Prussian Majesty. And that was the "besetting sin of Frederick," the damning spot on the escutcheon of their friendship, as the War Lord viewed it. It followed, of course, that when one hundred of the Tsar's Krupp guns faced one hundred Krupp guns of the Government of Berlin, they would be an even match so far as material went – a thing and condition in strict contradiction to the Potsdam maxim: "Always attack with superior force."

How often the War Lord had argued with Frederick: Soft lining for enemy howitzers; a well-concealed, patched-up flaw in the barrel of quick-firers.

"I know no enemy, only customers," was Frederick's invariable rejoinder, garbed in politest language.

Customers! Decidedly the War Lord wanted customers – plenty of them, since, as we know, he had invested largely in Krupp stock; but to take customers' money was one thing, and to provide them with means for spoiling the War Lord's game was another.

When that pistol-shot startled Villa Huegel on November 22nd did it portend the death-knell of what the War Lord called "Krupp molly-coddledom"?

Even during Frederick Krupp's lifetime – just as if his early demise had been a foregone conclusion – technical experts of the Berlin War Office had been instructed to make extensive experiments with steel on the lines ordered by Wilhelm the War Lord.

The test would be the Day!