Читать книгу The Secret Memoirs of Bertha Krupp - Fischer Henry William - Страница 5

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.