*CHAPTER XII*
*THE FORTUNE TELLER SEES BERTHA IN A HAZE
OF BLOOD*
Mother Zara Speaks--Ghosts of Infamy--What the Blackbird
Foretold--The Crown Prince Stands Aloof
BERTHA _to_ FRANZ.
DEAR FRANZ,--The gipsy Wilhelm and I visited is not at all like the ones
that occasionally come to Essen at fair-time or by way of caravans. You
know we always thought them impostors and, small doubt, they were, for
the same yarn had to do for everybody: the tall, dark man, that would
come into one's life, was conjured up even for little Barbara at the
rate of ten _pfennigs_.
Mother Zara is a hundred years old if she is a day; a face the colour of
an old green-back American bank-note crumpled up--thousand and one
crow's-feet to the inch. Dress: rusty black silk, edged with moth-eaten
sable; sugar-loaf hat, filigreed with zodiacal signs; white mice
following her wherever she goes.
This much I observed while waiting. She was in an adjoining room and,
as I observed through the glass door, in no hurry to meet her visitors,
even though the servant had recognised the young master of Bellevue
Castle.
Meanwhile the Crown Prince was walking up and down, smacking his high
boots with the riding-whip. I believe he was looking for a mirror--vain
boy--and was furious at not finding one. Young Wilhelm affects to be as
nervous and impatient as Uncle Majesty, and won't sit down a second if
there is room to move about.
At last the door opened and the stooping figure of the clairvoyante
appeared on the threshold, a blackbird perching on her left shoulder and
half a dozen white mice circling round her feet, or riding on the train
of her dress.
"Mother Zara," cried Wilhelm advancing, "I brought my cousin----"
She shut him up with an imperious gesture. "Hold your tongue, young
braggart, for this is serious business."
She spoke in a high-pitched, authoritative voice, and I tell you, Franz,
I was all a-tremble when Zara fixed her eyes upon me--eyes that looked
you through, like the eyes of a sorceress you read about in the story
books.
"What do I see?" she murmured to herself, drawing figures on the sanded
stone floor.
"A deuced pretty girl," remarked the Crown Prince gallantly.
The clairvoyante shook her stick at Wilhelm. "Leave us alone," she
cried; "I want no interference."
When the door had closed Zara turned upon me like some wild thing, and I
tell you, Franz, I wished myself at our little bower at Villa Huegel,
playing dominoes with you or Mamma.
"Who art thou?" she cried. "So young, so gentle, so kind of aspect, yet
I see thee in a haze of blood."
She walked around me in a circle, dragging her terrible crutch, the mice
capering and vaulting.
"I can't make it out," she kept mumbling; "looks the German, but here
men do the ruling, and her power for destruction---- Where does it come
in?"
Of course I was too frightened to utter a word. I merely gazed upon my
tormenter and trembled.
The soothsayer drew her garments around her bones and settled down on a
low stool before the hearth. With her crutch she stirred the ashes,
separating them from live coals and addressing each heap in turn as if
they were human beings. As I perceived with horror, poor me was the
subject of her monologue.
"Keep to your hell-hole, Mother Toffana," she muttered, sending a
half-dead coal into the corner (I ought to tell you, Franz, that I have
been reading Alexandre Dumas of late, otherwise I wouldn't have
understood half the things she said). "Toffana, you are not in it with
this child," she continued. "And Joanna of Naples, husband-killer and
warrior, the number of men and women and children that died by you and
for you is nothing compared with the hosts she will send to slaughter."
"Madame la Marquise de Brinvilliers," she said to a live coal, drawing
it nearer, "come and feast your eyes on this girl. You did your work
all right for undertakers, but were a pitiful slacker just the same."
She rose and bowed ceremoniously.
"Your Majesty," she mumbled, pointing with her crutch to a glowing
ember, one of several detached from the rest. "You once waged war for
seven years on a stretch, yet the number of Prussians you killed, added
to that of your own people that perished in battle and by disease, may
be expressed in six noughts. And," turning to other debris, "your
record, Catherine of Russia, is quite as inadequate as Maria Theresa's
compared with the prospects for manslaughter held out by this young
lady!"
After an ominous silence: "Sheba, Elizabeth, Semiramis, aye, ye furies
of the White Terror who dined off Lamballe's liver, miserable failures
all of you----" She did not finish, but the end of her crutch continued
to poke fire and ashes, separating and piling up, moving and sweeping
along larger and again smaller quantities like figures on a chessboard.
She seemed dissatisfied, and as the minutes passed, her speech, or
rather her mumbling, became more and more disconnected. Suddenly she
drew her stick across the piles, levelling the lot. "No use," she
cried, turning round and addressing me; "I can't get anything out of
them. Are they holding back, or is Zara losing her cunning? But I
_will_ know," she added fiercely. "Who art thou, girl?"
I was speechless with fright, and all engrossed with her combinations as
Zara was, she scarce noticed my silence and lumbered on regardless.
Maybe, too, no reply was expected.
"Not the War Lord's wife," she mused. "Augusta is the mother of many
children, they tell me, nor----." (I didn't catch the rest, it was a
jumble of mumblings.)
After she became articulate again, I heard her say: "Oceans of blood
have been poured out. But what am I saying? She is only a child."
Then out of her black silk mantle she drew a pack of cards, threw them
on the table, and, resting her right hand heavily on the crutch, studied
the pasteboards anxiously for a while.
"Cursed mystery," she whispered. Then to the bird: "Jezebel, help!"
The black thing hopped on the table and scattered the cards with his
feet. Then he picked up one with his beak and presented it to his
mistress.
"A town in flames," said Zara after scrutiny.
More cards offered by the bird!
"A thousand baby-hands raised above the waves!
"A tumbling cathedral!
"Bodies piled mountain high!
"Women, children and old men for breastworks!
"A graveyard-ditch a hundred miles long!
"Death lying in wait on the floor of the ocean!
"Fire from the heavens," read Zara, and again and again her shrill voice
rang out, recording horrors even more dreadful.
When the bird of ill-omen had offered the last pasteboard, Zara shook my
arms with a fierce gesture. "Fiend incarnate, thy name and station!"
she yelled.
Probably Wilhelm had been listening. "How dare you touch Fraulein
Krupp," he demanded, as, running in, he stepped between me and the
sorceress.
At the mentioning of my name, a look of triumph came into Zara's face.
"My cards never lie, nor do the embers," she proclaimed. "The burning
towns, the wails of babies rendered fatherless by your works, the waste
of centuries of culture, the smoke, the fire, the calling upon all
resources of nature for the wholesale annihilation of life--five letters
cover it: K-R-U-P-P."
The feelings setting my head awhirl must have been pictured in my face,
for eventually even this fury of wrath was moved to mercy; yet like the
spirit that ever denies, Zara's pity took a cruel turn.
"Never fear," she said, with a profound curtsy; "it is written that the
oceans of blood you will help spill will not even soil the hem of your
dress.
"A world in arms, every mother's son turned upon every other mother's
son, shooting, stabbing, bombing, suffocating. Cities laid waste,
countrysides desolated, brave men changed to vultures, honest men to
thieves--your work, Bertha Krupp! But the War Lady remains scathless!
"Blood's a peculiar liquor--means death to those from whom it flows, and
profits to her that forges the bullets!
"Chimborazos of dead bodies: fathers, brothers, nephews and uncles;
excellent manure, and your dividends, little girl, going up by leaps and
bounds!
"Towns in ruins--_your_ ruins, Bertha, but they will have to be rebuilt.
More millions in your coffers!
"Ten thousands of miles of railways destroyed. Look out for big orders,
Bertha!
"The world groaning under unheard-of loads of debts--debts created that
Essen might flourish. Splendid opportunities for investment, eh?"
She continued a while longer in the same cruel vein, her basilisk eyes
glued upon mine--I couldn't get away, try as I might--while Wilhelm, my
self-proclaimed cavalier, did naught to help me. Indeed, I had to endure
her abuse till Zara herself became tired of hurling invectives, and
turned upon the Crown Prince with: "Twenty marks, please. I have wasted
enough time."
Then, like an imprisoned wild thing, seeing the open gate, I fled.
Oh, Franz, what does it all mean?