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.