The Famine
It came to pass as the Master of the Tower of Dago had foretold. A
year of famine visited the island.
There in his loneliness he had taken continual counsel of that great
vital principle which he chose to associate with the Prince of Evil,
but to which the learned give the name of "Gæa"--Earth.
And the Earth-demon has, in truth, diabolical humours. Between Earth
and her minions, and the favourites of Heaven, there is eternal
strife. It pleases Earth to let the ill weeds grow. The poppy and the
corn-flower are her darlings. And yet, that child of Heaven, man's
finer nature, forces her to bring forth white wheat for him! The
Earth-spirit favours the savage and grosser instincts, while man does
her violence by pressing upon her his nobler fruits and virtues. Man,
doubtless, has a right to ask, "Why has the Creator brought forth
these myriads of caterpillars and cockchafers that devastate my
fruit-trees?" But surely the caterpillar and the cockchafer have an
equal right to demand, "To what purpose has Earth given birth to that
misshapen, two-legged creature that delights to sweep me down from my
tree, and trample me under foot?" But, after all, the Earth-spirit is
not the gardener's friend, but rather the caterpillar's.
The hermit in the Tower of Dago included in his studies that centre of
the other infernos, the sun. He had observed that the spots and
eruptions on the sun's disc exercise an influence upon the weather of
our planet. He had, moreover, imbibed the wisdom of the wind and
waves. He had carefully noted the migrations of whales and
kingfishers, as well as the displays of the aurora borealis and the
shooting stars. All these had told him that the hot days of May, which
so quicken the growth of the crops, would be succeeded by a frost that
would blight utterly the whole field produce of the island of Dago in
a single night.
And so it happened. Not on that island alone but throughout the whole
of northern Russia, the hopes of the agriculturists were shattered by
that terrible frost. The capricious weather brought in its train that
pestilence which attacks only the poor--Starvation.
In such circumstances larger and more powerful States may easily
procure money, and tide over the evil day by purchasing grain in lands
more blessed than theirs, and distributing it among their people. But
a small and poverty-stricken republic like the island of Dago could
not so easily get gold and silver to give in exchange for bread. The
poor people had to fall back upon such nutriment as fish and cheese.
"This year," they said, "we must eat no bread." That was the
solution.
The old women of the island now came much more frequently to the tower
to sell their flowers. But instead of gold they now begged for a
little corn.
"Listen to me!" said the Master of the tower to them one day. "You
want bread. Well, I know a secret which enables me to transform earth
at once into corn and barley. Bring me earth, then--but rich and
fertile it must be--and I will give you corn in exchange for it.
However large the sack may be in which you bring the clods, just so
large will be the sack of corn I will give you in return."
At first it was only the women that made the trial. They brought the
magician good, dark loam in small sacks. For this they received a like
quantity of wheat. The grain was such as they had never before seen.
At once the strong young men were seized with the desire to
participate in such profitable barter, and soon they too were carrying
to the tower as heavy sacks of mother earth as their brawny arms and
broad shoulders could support.
The Very Reverend Pastor Waimoener did, indeed, pronounce his anathema
against all who dared to make such pilgrimages to the Satanic shrine
in order to barter their own blessed earth for a stranger's accursed
corn. He warned them that grain grown in such a mysterious and
suspicious soil could not but give them the itch and elflock, and that
one day their souls must inevitably sink for ever in the pool of fire.
His threats and warnings, however, were of no avail. The people's
skins did not turn black with eating the mysterious corn, neither did
their hair become entangled. Their souls' welfare, they therefore
reasoned, might well be equally secure.
The grain was, in fact, the best ever reaped in Brandenburg. The
Russian Government had had it shipped for their northern ports. That
year so many grain-laden vessels had gone on the rocks beneath the
Tower of Dago, that its inmates had soon no more room to store the
booty. Thus it was that they came to exchange it with the islanders
for earth.
Earth! But for what purpose could the Destroying Spirit require earth?
To create!
[Illustration]
There was a little hollow on the south side of the tower which was
sheltered from the wind on every side. This hollow the Master filled
with the earth, and planted the little plot all over with flowers. In
this way he soon had a perfect flower-garden laid out.
There was, then, one human being in the tower who took pleasure in
flowers.
But did the terrible doctrines professed by the Master permit him to
act thus kindly towards any living creature?
Alas! Nothing in creation is flawless--not even the Satanic confession
of faith. Even Satan is sometimes tricked by his disciples, and
unbelief itself has its hypocrisy.
To his own thinking, this man had succeeded in banishing every human
feeling from his heart--but this one still remained. He had, he
thought, been able to renounce every virtue in favour of its opposite
vice--but this one he could not renounce. He could not fight down the
kindliness that filled his heart for the poor girl, Mashinka, who had
saved his child, who had accompanied him into exile, and who had
become a loving mother to his boy and a devoted companion to him. So
he felt grateful to her.
But that was surely a heresy against the religion he professed and
preached--a positive breach of the all-denying dogma! For Gratitude is
itself a virtue and closely related to Love. Gratitude being merely a
tyranny of the soul over the body, how could the body, which had now
become master, admit it? And if the body be indeed the ruling lord,
the right of thought also belongs to it. Its philosophy must, then,
determine the course of both action and feeling. Was it not plain that
this one contradiction in the Master's principles might--nay, must,
overturn the whole edifice of Babel?
Nevertheless, the Master found it impossible to shut his heart against
this one feeling. With the most painstaking art he had laid out this
garden--bought at a higher price even than the gardens of Semiramis;
and that, too, for a poor peasant girl who alone in that Babel of hate
had retained in her heart the priceless feeling of Love.
When the garden was finished and planted with all the flowers the
island could afford, the Master led Mashinka to the door, which had
hitherto been closed to her, opened it, and said simply:
"The garden is yours!"
[Illustration: "The garden is yours!"]
And as the girl, weeping with joy, threw herself at his feet, pressed
his hand to her lips and covered it with her tears--did not the
captive spirit throb rebelliously within its weak bodily prison, and
ask: "Is not a single tear like these--a single cry of joy--sweeter
far than a sea of blood, and a chorus of death-shrieks from the
throats of thousands of vanquished enemies?"
At the thought, he pushed the girl away from him and rushed up to his
laboratory, there to continue the work of destruction.
[Illustration]