Part 5

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.

Thus it came to pass, Brother Thames, that the child Hubert was carried off by the water-demon, and a wretched little changeling put in his place and accepted as the young heir. It was not long before his evil propensities began to develop themselves. He could scarcely walk alone before he was in mischief, and, indeed, long before this time he knocked over his mother’s morning cup of tea whenever he could manage to do so in {066}his early visits to her bed, and scratched the Baron’s face, as he lay asleep, with a tiny fist which seemed hardly capable of hurting so much as it did.

He grew fast for a short time, and then remained as if he would never grow any bigger. But his appetite was more like that of a full-grown man, nor was he particular where or what he ate. At breakfast he would finish off a huge bowl of porridge, and make his old nurse tilt over the bowl so that he might lick off the last drop from the edge. He would clutch at everything on the dining-room table if brought in during meals, and roar and cry loudly if the things he wanted were not immediately given to him.

As he grew older, his conduct by no means improved. Not only was he abominably rude to his supposed father and mother, but he took every opportunity of endeavouring to make them fall out. He would, with an utter disregard of truth, but with a wonderful air of innocence, tell the Baroness how he had heard the Baron say she had a bad temper, and was a disagreeable woman; whilst he would tell the Baron, as an affair of everyday occurrence, that his wife spoke of him as a lazy sot, who was no companion whatever to her, and spent his life in eating, drinking, and smoking.

These little things were scarcely calculated to improve the happiness of the worthy couple, but this was by no means the only channel through which the little wretch poured discomfort upon the household. He set everybody by the ears whenever he could, and showed an utter heartlessness of character, coupled with a reckless depravity of disposition, which was perfectly horrible. He roared with laughter on being told of any misfortune having {067}happened to another person, and scowled sulkily when any one fell in with a piece of good luck. Crushing flies on the windows was one of his earliest amusements, and when this had become monotonous, he used to torture any animal he could get hold of with a cruelty beyond belief.

He would stick pins in his pony’s neck to {068}make it dance, as he said, and indulge in screams of laughter at its suffering. He snipped off his dog’s ears with a sharp pair of scissors, put the house-cat into the copper full of boiling water until its yells brought the cook to save it, and loved better than anything to get hold of some of the skewers out of the kitchen, in order to impale upon them any unfortunate mouse which he could find in the traps.

If any visitor came to the castle, he was fortunate indeed if he escaped unhurt. The little wretch began upon him as soon as he entered the house, creeping slyly behind him in order to cut off the buttons of his coat, give him a cruel pinch when least expected, and even sometimes went the length of running a pin into his leg. And when the unhappy gentleman rose to depart, if he did not find his coat-tails tied fast to the chair, ten to one but he was tripped up, as he ran down the stairs, by a thin but strong string, tied ankle-high by the young Baron about half-way down, nearly sure to produce a most awkward fall, the annoyance of which was increased by the triumphant and insulting chuckle of the little villain, who, perched on the highest step, or peeping through the banisters above, would watch with eager delight to witness the effects of his wicked trick.

It is not surprising that the young rascal was cordially detested throughout the whole household. Indeed, they had small cause to do anything else but detest him. There was no trouble he did not give the servants, and no trick which he did not play them. If he met the housemaids on the stairs or in the passages he invariably blew out their candles, or ran hastily against them, as if {069}by accident, so as if possible to make them drop any tray or jug they might be carrying. He rang the bell constantly for nothing, and pointed and laughed at the footman who came hurrying to answer it. He turned the lamp-oil into the soup just as the cook was about to send it up for the Baron’s dinner, put a quantity of vinegar into the beer which the butler had carefully drawn for the “hall” supper, and smeared the groom of the chamber’s chair in “the room” so thickly with bird-lime, that the respected individual in question had the greatest difficulty in ever getting out of it again. In short, he became the torment of the house, and everybody wished most devoutly that he had never been born.

The only consolation was that, somehow or other, he selected Martha Scweinvolt as his principal victim. That woman’s life became a burden to her. Her thimble was constantly missing, and, when put on hastily, was more than once full of tar or glue, cunningly placed therein by the malicious urchin. “Booby-traps” were constantly set for her, in the shape of heavy books or jugs of water skilfully balanced on the top of the door of the Baroness’s room, which was then left just ajar, and the bell hastily rung, so that, coming down-stairs and entering the apartment in a hurry, she was sure to get the benefit of the jug or books upon her devoted head. These tricks, however, were by no means his worst. The supposed young Baron, in his visits to the housekeeper’s room, never missed the chance of paying attention to Martha’s comfort after his own peculiar fashion. He put salt in her beer when her head was turned; slyly inserted needles in her bread, which more than {070}once proved nearly fatal to the woman; and upon one occasion doctored her tea with some drugs which he had abstracted from his mother’s medicine-chest, and which produced serious and most unpleasant results. Not content with these practical jokes, the urchin never spared the feelings of anybody, and Martha was oftentimes almost goaded to madness by his insulting remarks upon her personal appearance, disposition, and situation in life. As time went on, matters seemed to get rather worse than better, and the wretched woman experienced to her cost that revenge, sweet as it may be, cannot be purchased without a heavy sacrifice.

While these things were passing in the castle of Bandelboots, the question may not unnaturally be asked of me what had become of the real child, the unfortunate young Hubert, who had been carried away by the river-demon. It may easily be supposed that his was no pleasant fate. Fortunately for him, those who had taken him from his happy home had no power either to kill or injure him, neither could they alter the goodness of his natural disposition. The latter, however, rendered his condition somewhat more uncomfortable than would otherwise have been the case, for being forced to consort with witches, demons, imps, and other low and disreputable society, he was constantly brought into contact with many things and people most disagreeable and revolting to anything pure and good. He was obliged to attend the “bad language class” of the water-imps, where prizes were given for swearing and wicked conversation; the art of tormenting was taught him by an elderly demon, to whom the task was congenial; and general instruction in devilry was afforded him {071}by means of public lectures delivered by a spirit specially appointed for the purpose. Such, however, was his natural goodness, that he steadily refused to be perverted, maintaining a dignified silence amid the jesting and ribaldry of the imps around, and invariably declining to join in any of their misconduct.

All that the demons could do, under the circumstances, was to alter, without permanently injuring, the form with which he had entered the world. This they did by giving to his well-shaped body the appearance of a round and ill-made bulk, upon which they placed a bullet-head with a pair of short horns over the forehead, and ornamented it, moreover, with a long tail and a pair of bat’s wings. Thus being changed into a regular little devilet, it was marvellous that the boy should have continued to preserve the goodness and purity of his disposition. So it was, however; and as demons who live by tempting mortals to sin have a very large field over which to practise their skill, and cannot afford to devote to any one individual more than a fair share of their attention, they got tired after a while of trying it on with the young Baron, and ended by leaving him very much to himself. Then it was that the boy found amusement in flying about along the banks of the river.

By the mysterious laws of magic, he knew, and yet did not know, the misfortune which had befallen him, and the crime of which he had been made the victim. In other words, he knew that something was as it should not be, and that, somehow or other, he had been cruelly wronged, but of the exact nature of the wrong he was as yet ignorant. Still, some instinct led him to the lake in which was situated the island upon which stood his father’s {072}castle, and he loved better than anything else to fly by night round and round the old place, uttering from time to time mournful cries, which now and then found their way to the ears of some of the Baron’s household. Whenever the false heir heard these sounds, it was noticed that he, shivered terribly, and crept, groaning and growling; under the nearest sofa, or anywhere out of sight.

And upon one occasion, when the cry sounded louder and clearer than usual, and there came a noise as if a wing—had flapped against window of the state-room in which the family were assembled that evening, he howled miserably, the ground, and almost went into convulsions with alarm.

This behaviour on the part of his supposed son struck the Baron as strange, and was, indeed, the cause of some coldness between him and his wife. For, being a man somewhat proud of the chivalry and courage of his high ancestry, this display of cowardice on the part of his {073}probable heir and successor greatly irritated the old gentleman, and he boldly declared that he was sure it all came from the mother’s side. Such an accusation naturally put the Baroness into one of her passions, in the course of which she went so far as to pull off her husband’s wig and slap his cheeks. This indignity was one to which the Baron could scarcely be expected to submit, and having soundly shaken his respected consort, he left the room in high dudgeon, and took his meals alone for the next three days, which annoyed the Baroness more than anything else, as it left her only her daughters and servants to scold, which had become rather insipid. After a while this conduct of the child was set down to constitutional timidity, and the Baron only smiled contemptuously when it was repeated.