Part 7

Once outside the door, Martha Scweinvolt became perfectly livid with rage. She turned round on the top of the stairs, faced the Baroness’s room, and shook her fist {057}vehemently towards it, vowing by her eleven-o’clock bread and cheese and beer (the most solemn oath known among domestic servants of the feminine gender) that she would have her revenge. Nor was Martha a person by any means likely to forget or neglect such a vow. Day and night she brooded over the matter, and ground her teeth savagely together as she remembered the indignity to which she had been subjected. And the more she brooded, the more determined did she become to seek vengeance from some quarter whence it could be surely and safely obtained. By herself she knew she could do but little; and as she was by no means popular among the other servants of the household, she could place but little reliance on any assistance from them. How to proceed, therefore, she had great doubts, but to proceed in some manner she was quite determined.

Now unfortunately for me, Brother Thames, as you may perhaps be aware, a part of my stream has always been more or less under the influence of a class of river demons from which you in England are happily free. I believe a milder kind of demon exists in Scotland under the name of water kelpie, and possibly there may be something of the sort here and there even in your favoured English rivers, but you have nothing to match the demons of the Rhine. It is not a theme upon which I love to dwell. No respectable river desires to have anything to do with such creatures, and I frankly confess that at times they have brought my waters into great disrepute.

Well (or rather not at all “well,” according to my view of the case), it happened that the Rhine near the castle of the Baron von Bandelboots was terribly infested {058}by these noxious spirits, only too ready at all times to do any mischief in their power to any human being, or to assist one mortal in gratifying his or her malice against another. To these demons did Martha Scweinvolt determine to appeal, and made up her mind to risk, if necessary, body and soul in order to obtain vengeance upon her hated mistress.

Very often I am able to prevent the wicked plans and machinations of these spirits, and I never fail to do so if I can manage it. If things had gone rightly, I should have stopped the affair of which I am about to tell you, and nipped it in the bud if possible, either by overflowing my banks suddenly and drowning the wretch Martha, or by some other means which my knowledge of the world would have enabled me to provide. But it most unfortunately happened that the nymphs and trolls and friendly elves of the river and forests near had given me an entertainment that very evening, at which they played me several very curious tricks. The jovial rascals insisted on my drinking my Steinbergh in large pint measures, so that I got rather more than my usual allowance; then they fastened a huge white beard upon my chin, pulled my whiskers, combed my hair, whispered soft things in my ear, climbed on my knees, and altogether kept me so well amused, that I never went out at all that evening to patrol the river banks, according to my usual habit, and was therefore entirely ignorant of all that occurred, until I was told it some time after by a member of the Rhine Conservancy Board, who had it from good authority.

It. seems that Martha Scweinvolt, having gone out late {059}that evening, wandered down to the river, and there prayed vehemently to the demons for aid. Such prayers are hardly necessary to procure the assistance of bad spirits, when their object is to do mischief to somebody else.

A demon, therefore, who happened to be near the spot, forthwith presented himself to the waiting-maid, and that so suddenly that she fainted away immediately. Demons, however, being very skilful in the ways of women, know perfectly well that the best way to ensure their speedy recovery in such cases is to take no notice whatever of their proceeding. The evil spirit, therefore, followed this sensible plan, and waited patiently until Martha “came to,” when he politely inquired {060}what her wishes might be and what service he could render.

The woman unfolded her grievance, and used several bad expressions with regard to her mistress, which caused her companion to grin with sympathetic pleasure. He then inquired what revenge she desired to take; to which Martha replied that she should like to have the power given her of inflicting severe personal chastisement upon the Baroness. But the demon scouted the idea. The pride of birth and rank work too much good to the objects which are dear to evil spirits to make them partial to any plan for the degradation of either one or the other, and such a degradation would have been inflicted had the well-born Baroness been subjected to personal chastisement at the hands of her menial. Besides this, the power of the demon was but limited, and this would have been possibly beyond it.

Martha suggested several other things, but at length she broke out in joyful tones, as if an unusually bright idea had suddenly struck her: “I know!” she cried; “let’s do something to the child, the young Baron Hubert. Strangle him, or lame him for life, or make him humpbacked; that will wring her old heart-strings!”

On hearing these words, the demon, who was a decent fellow at bottom, though withal up to any mischief of a reasonable kind, positively shuddered at the bitterness of the waiting-maid’s speech, accompanied as it was with a look of fiendish exultation which would have done credit to the worst of devils.

“Stop a bit, miss, stop a bit,” said he. “Fair and softly wins the race; you go too fast, and want too much, all at once. You must know that we demons cannot do everything {061}just how and when, we please, as you seem to imagine. Not a bit of it! Fortunately for mortals who have enemies (and who has not?) our power is limited; and even suppose you had the child with you at this moment, I could not do what you require.”

“Then,” exclaimed Martha angrily, “what in the name of goodness can you do?”

At these words the demon shuddered visibly. “Don’t use such language, young lady,” said he, “if you want my help, but listen attentively to what I am about to say.”

Much flattered at being called a young lady, and probably all the more so from her knowledge that to neither the substantive nor the adjective had she any right whatever, Martha bent her head forward eagerly, to hear what the water-demon had to suggest.

“If you like,” said he, “I can change the child.”

“Change the child!” cried the disappointed woman; “why, what would be the good of that?”

“All the good in the world,” replied her counsellor, “if you really wish to plague the mother. In the first place, the child I shall put in the place of the young Baron will not be nearly so pretty as the real child, and this will gall the mother’s heart not a little, unless baronesses are unlike other women. Then this false child will have a very much worse disposition. He will be cunning, ill-natured, greedy, mischievous, and a plague to the whole household.”

“The deuce he will!” cried Martha hurriedly. “But he won’t plague me, will he?”

“Better language by a good deal, my dear,” rejoined the demon, smiling good-humouredly at the exclamation {062}of his companion; “but as to the inquiry you make, I can hardly reply. Should the little changeling, however, prove any annoyance even to yourself, I am sure you would willingly submit thereto in consideration of the glorious revenge which you will wreak upon the wretched mother. Why, your poor ears must even now be tingling from the effects of those shameful slaps, and, if I were in your place, it would be long enough before I forgot them!”

“Don’t be afraid, Mr. Demon,” answered the maid, gnashing her teeth fiercely as she spoke. “I am not one to forget or forgive either, and, after all, a child can’t really annoy me much. I’ll risk it, anyhow, so that my brute of a mistress is made to suffer.”

“That’s right, my brave girl,” merrily replied her friend, smiling with as pleasant a look as he knew how to put on. “That shows the true spirit of a German lady. Never fear, you shall have your revenge, and that speedily.” Thereupon he commenced a series of questions as to the habits of the household and the rooms which were occupied by the youthful Baron, and having ascertained all the particulars which he required, bade Martha Scweinvolt return home, and rest assured that her desire should be accomplished upon the innocent baby, and his mother made to rue bitterly the hour when she first laid hands upon her waiting-maid.

Martha departed, having, I suppose, in the first instance given some such pledge to the demon as these creatures are in the habit of exacting from those who seek their good offices, which usually consists of a simple arrangement regarding their future which they have no power whatever to make, and which may hereafter {063}be set aside on an appeal to the proper tribunal.

Meanwhile, the Baroness von Bandelboots had not the slightest suspicion of the calamity which was hanging over herself and her family. She ate, drank, slept, and scolded after her usual fashion, and did not alter her behaviour one whit after the adventure with her waiting-maid, which had so painfully affected the latter.

The young Baron Hubert was but a few months old, and his nurse, Sophie Grutchen, had the sole charge of his precious person. His nursery was, as luck would have it, on the side of the castle facing the river; but I apprehend that to demons and creatures of that description the situation of the apartment would have made but little difference, and indeed there was the lake to cross in any case.

Late one evening the demon set out to fulfil his promise. He swam the lake, climbed the wall of the castle, entered the room in which the young Baron slept by the window, and, during the scarcely more than momentary absence of the nurse, abstracted the baby from his cot, deposited therein an elfin child of the same size, and departed with the real baby by the same way he had come.

Now, the little Baron had, from his first entrance into the world, been distinguished by his remarkably docile and tractable nature. He rarely cried, never fretted, and was, in consequence, a general pet, so far as such a term can be applied to an infant of such tender age. Within an hour or two, however, after the occurrence which I have just related, Mother Grutchen began to find {064}her charge less quiet and more troublesome than had previously been the case. She forthwith reported the fact to the Baroness, who, however, took her to task sharply for the same, saying that it was all fancy, and that the dear child was a little angel. This the poor nurse by no means wished to deny, but it entered her head that there were different kinds of angels, and that vowed {065}and declared that this was not the right child.

This was an unpleasant and curious exclamation, and put Mother Grutchen in a terrible flurry. She owned that she thought the young Baron looked rather queer, but remarked that babies varied considerably from time to time; and, moreover, that as she had scarcely had him out of her sight since the day he was born, he could not by any possibility be anything else than the young Baron. Still the Baroness held to her opinion, and even some of these might occasionally be troublesome. She determined faithfully to do her duty by the child nevertheless, and to make no more complaints to her mistress. The latter was not slow, however, to find out that something was amiss with the infant. The very next morning, when it was brought to her, she looked at it with a strange and startled expression, and declared that it was not her child.

Upon this the Baron was appealed to at once. He, poor man, was terribly annoyed at being asked the question. Proud as he had been from the first of his infant son, he was one of those who held the theory that all babies are, up to a certain age, very much alike, and was positively quite incapable of pronouncing upon the identity of his own child. He put on his large gold-rimmed spectacles, stared vacantly down upon the infant, and said several things which had nothing whatever to do with the question.

This put the Baroness in a passion, which by no means mended matters at all, and there seemed every probability of a general row. But Martha Scweinvolt, who had been hovering about the door, waiting to be summoned, now found an excuse for entering the room, and so strongly expressed her decided belief and conviction that the child was the right child, and none other, that the good nurse felt her own opinion coming more strongly to the same conclusion. The Baron, for very peace and quietness, agreed with the two servants; and the Baroness, finding them all against her, had a regular good scold all round, and said no more about it.