Part 3

He passed his hand nervously across his cheek.

“For weeks afterward my face was marked with the imprint of teeth sharp as a marmoset’s, your excellency.”

“And the luncheon?” queried the American, smiling in spite of himself.

“Gone, too,” said the interpreter, aggrievedly.

The Tojin-san laughed.

“What a curiously greedy elf it is! All its expeditions among mere mortals seem to be solely for the purpose of food-getting.”

Genji opened his little black eyes with an expression of surprise.

“But that is natural. Even a fox-woman needs sustenance.”

“Come to think of it, a fox-woman has the body of a human?”

“Certainly.”

“Then why not make proper provision, and thus protect yourselves from her pilfering?”

“Your excellency forgets that the fox-woman’s origin is malign. No clean Japanese would undertake to nourish an evil spirit. The priests of our temples give us certain charms which protect us, to a certain extent, and we heed their advice, which is ever to avoid and forsake her.”

VII

THEY had told the Tojin-san in Tokyo that he was to be the first white man to set foot upon Echizen soil since that historical period when the Jesuit fathers in the sixteenth century had come near to Christianizing the nation. The subsequent edicts which expelled all foreigners from the empire and made the study of Christianity a crime to be punished with fire, crucifixion or torture, had had their due effect. All this was long before the coming of the Tojin, however, and Japan had broken its hermit-like seclusion, and now was fearfully and curiously holding out a grudging hand to the Western nations pressing her on all sides.

The foreigner was already a familiar figure in the open ports, but so far, in the interior at least, no white faces were to be seen. It was therefore with amazement that the Tojin-san first discovered signs that one of his race had lived recently in Fukui before him.

It was in the Season of Rain-water, the end of February, a dreary period, when the inexhaustible store of drizzling gray rain dribbled unceasingly from the skies. To break up the monotony and depression of the period he had undertaken, with three favorite students, a short pilgrimage up the Winged Foot River for the purpose of examining a cave at the base of the mountains wherein, they said, had once been a curious image. The country people had believed it to be the image of Buddha’s mother, with her babe in her arms, and pilgrimages were made from all parts of the country because of its supposed healing abilities.

As the Tojin-san examined the cave, with the interest and eagerness of the born scientist and archæologist, the youths explained to him the fate of the image in question. A learned Bonze of the Nichiren sect had recognized it as an image of the “Criminal Faith,” and, in an excess of rage, had broken it into fragments.

Over the entrance of the cave a large board was nailed, and on this was emblazoned the same notice the Tojin had seen wherever he had travelled—in every city, town or hamlet, at every entrance to temple or palace, roadside or mountain-pass. He had often inquired what the notice was, but his questions had always been politely evaded, and once he was somewhat curtly told it was simply one of the laws of old Japan, now rapidly becoming obsolete. Now he turned abruptly upon the young students, who were all deeply devoted to him, and imbued with the new spirit and thirst for knowledge sweeping like a fever over all the empire. They, at least, would answer him.

“Higo, just what is this notice? Translate it for me, will you not?” for the three youths accompanying him spoke the English language with fluency.

Higo replied with a slight flush of embarrassment:

“It simply refers to the Criminal God, your excellency.”

“The Criminal God? You are very vague.”

“Condescend to pardon the allusion, honored sensei,” said the boy, apologetically. “To-day, we are ready to repel all such unworthy references to your exalted nation’s faith.”

“Indeed,” put in earnest-eyed Junzo, “we are not prepared to name any religion or god criminal. Our august Emperor has set us a divine example, since he has honorably thrown open the doors to any and all sects, however odious.”

“And for my part,” contributed Nunuki in his brusque and somewhat surly manner, “I agree with our ancient philosopher: ‘Dogma is a box in which small minds are kept.’”

“Dogma is a form of superstition,” said Junzo, “and superstition awakens the meaner, crueler passions. Do you not agree with me, honored sensei?”

But the latter, his brows drawn in puzzled wonderment, was examining something which had been cut into the wood of the board on which the notice appeared.

“What—” he began, when in a singsong voice, after a slight shrug of his shoulders, Higo began translating the text:

“It reads thus, honored teacher: ‘The evil sect called Christians is strictly prohibited. Suspicious persons should be reported to proper officers and rewards given,’ but be not afraid,” he added hastily, “for it is an old law, and even if still in force to-day your excellency is exempt.”

“I am trying to decipher what is written under it—in English!” said the Tojin-san slowly. He took out and applied a magnifying glass to the board.

A swift, oblique look passed from one student to the other; but when the American turned toward them for enlightenment, their faces were as impassive as their feudal ancestors.

“It appears to me,” said he, thoughtfully, “as though some one had cut words into the woodwork, and that—there are marks as if an attempt had been made to blot out the words. Now let us see: ‘On—this—Thomas Mor—18—’ Why, it is recent—within the last ten years!”

He turned about in a state of intense excitement. Something in the averted faces of his companions increased his curiosity and suspicions. Ere he could frame another question, Nunuki spoke up abruptly:

“It is well you should know the truth, Mr. Teacher. A Guai-koku-jin [outside countryman] lived in Fukui before your time.”

“Recently?” demanded the Tojin-san eagerly.

“Seven years since,” said the boy shortly.

The Tojin-san drew a great breath. His eyes kindled. He looked wonderfully pleased.

“Then that is why some of you students speak English so creditably?”

“No, teacher. Many of us studied in Yokohama. Many have learned by the book alone. After the coming of your exalted Lord Perry, it became the chief ambition of all thoughtful men of the New Japan to learn the English language and its sciences.”

Higo volunteered the above information, but the gruff Nunuki quickly followed him:

“Be not deceived, excellent sensei, in regard to the baku [fool] who was here before you. He was not like you, honored sir.”

“No? What was he, then?”

“He was—damyuraisu,” blurted the boy angrily.

The Tojin-san burst into laughter. It was a colloquial word well known in the open ports, and was applied to the foreign sailor of whatever nationality. It was the Japanization of the sailor’s favorite expression: “Damn your eyes.”

Suddenly his face went grave, remembering how the sailors of the white nations had misrepresented their nations! How, in a constant condition of drunkenness, they rioted around the open ports. The gravity in his face was reflected in that of the students.

“It is a subject,” said Junzo gently, “ignored by common consent in Fukui, because it is painful to our Daimio. He was the fellow’s patron and protector till the time when the honorable beast betrayed him. Pray thee, honored sensei,” he added almost pleadingly, “do not seek to know further in the matter.”

“At least tell me what became of him.”

“Your excellency’s honored feet are surely tired. Your honorable insides must be entirely empty. Food is good in that event. Let us call the kurumma.”

They were moving along the road toward the waiting vehicles, which were to carry them back to the little boat that had brought them down the river. It was indeed chilly and dreary, and their rubber-coats and hats of straw were dripping. The Tojin-san, his arm linked in that of the gentle Junzo, cast a look back at the dimly shadowed mountains, and, as he did so, the boy dreamily remarked:

“The Fox-Woman of Atago Yama will find wet passage back to Sho Kon Sha this night. It is said the streams and rivers are all billowing over, and not even a sprite may spring across them.”

“Have no fear,” said Nunuki gruffly, looking back over his shoulder. “The fox-woman will find wings suitable to her degraded feet. She’ll not lack the shelter so illy deserved.”

The words were so brutal, the tone of the boy so full of animus and hatred that the Tojin-san stopped abruptly. He laid a firm, kindly hand on either lad’s shoulder.

“Who was it spoke this afternoon of superstitions engendered by a fanatical dogma?”

For a moment neither of the students answered, then growlingly Nunuki snarled:

“It is hard to spit against the wind. Facts cannot be altered.”

“By facts—you mean the fox-woman?”

“Her origin, learned sir. It is impossible for the offspring of so vile a union to be otherwise than unclean, as says the law.”

The Tojin-san said solemnly, his hand emphasizing with its pressure on their shoulders his words:

“I know nothing of her origin, but to quote a favorite proverb of your own Japan, remember: ‘The lotus springs from the mud!’”

The Japanese were silenced, deeply moved.

VIII

IT became common knowledge in Fukui that the fox-woman had taken up her residence on the Matsuhaira estate. The palace grounds covered nearly twenty acres, and were surrounded like a veritable wall on all sides of the estate by smaller buildings, which had once housed the retainers of the Daimio, but which had not been occupied for years and were in a dishevelled and forlorn condition of ruin and decay. Two of these dwellings had been put in order, and these were occupied by the samourai guard, the aged gateman who guarded the road leading to the mansion and the family of the Tojin-san’s interpreter, who, himself, however, had an apartment in the Shiro.

It was, therefore, quite possible for the fox-woman to find lodging in almost any of the remaining structures, and she could, if she desired, move from one to the other, and when unduly pressed, return to her old refuge of the woods and foot-hills of the mountains that bounded them on two sides of the estate.

More than one of the household had thought they had seen and recognized her. On a still, hazy night, when the golden moon barely showed an inquiring face in promise of the summer nights to come, Genji Negato had shown her to the samourai guard. Just a white, fleeting face glimmering out like that of some hunted thing between the slender, towering trunks of a grove of bamboo. A moment only under the streak of moonbeam, and then it had vanished like a mist at twilight.

Was it a dream, they asked themselves, or indeed a manifestation of the just anger of the Buddha for sins committed in a former state. Were they henceforth to be harassed, goblin-haunted?

And in the dawn, before the sun had barely shown its first glimmer of light across the eastern sky—in the misty, dewy, clammy dawn—the maid Obun had again come face to face with her.

Obun was bent upon her usual task of the morning, the bringing of water from the pond to the house. Her eyes were swollen with sleep, she yawned cavernously, and as she stooped to dip the first of the pails into the water, something stirred the other side the pond, and she looked across to gaze, with fascinated eyes, at the fox-woman, whose long, sunlit hair dripped in and out among the lotus and the water-lilies, as if she bathed it in their perfumed purity. Through this dripping veil of hair her face gleamed whitely. Her lips fell apart as though she listened, her eyes were startled, wild, and looked not at but through and beyond the dumbstruck serving-maid as though she saw her not at all. Slowly, stealthily, the fox-woman came to her feet, still with that weird, seeking, listening look upon her face, and thus with backward, shivering glances, she retreated to the bamboo grove.

To his own amused dismay, the Tojin-san found himself constantly on the watch for her. He had never seen the witch, but he had heard and felt her. She crept upon him in the evenings when he strolled about his garden, and she seemed to follow his footsteps with the stealthiness of a wildcat, disappearing as fleetly as the wind at his mere turning.

He was aware of her constant nearness if he merely stepped out of his house. Once when something brushed his cheek he was startled to find himself believing at once that it was she who had touched him. He plunged into the brush at his side, and, in the dark, thrust back the branches of the low-growing trees and bushes only to find himself up to his knees in water where he had stepped unawares into an overgrown rookery and fish-pond. As he floundered helplessly about he heard her softly laughing in a weird, mocking voice, which nevertheless seemed to overrun with tears.

Holding his breath unconsciously he found himself straining his ears to listen to the sound, which indeed was so faint a whisper of a laugh he could have believed he dreamed it.

Sometimes as he drove abroad through the country she called to him from behind sheltering hillocks, and sometimes it seemed her voice floated down to him from some height—some giant tree-top, heavy laden with foliage; for it was the time of “Little Plenty” (May) and all the land was green and warm.

He found himself listening for her call—stopping, waiting for it, and returning with a sense of bitter disappointment when he heard it not. The servants gossiped, the samourai whispered among themselves. They said the fox-woman had put a spell upon him. Genji Negato repeated this to him, and was rewarded by a look of startled contempt and anger.

“Spell!” The man of science repelled the very thought; but he began to avoid the mountain-sides of his estate, and turned in preference to the river-road, whither she could not follow unless she revealed herself.

Late that month, with no advance warning of its coming, whatever, a typhoon swept venomously across the province, leaving in its wake a shattering storm that shook and beat upon the aged Shiro for a day and night; and, in the night, one encountered the shadow of the fox-woman in the great deserted halls of the Matsuhaira mansion.

A wildly shrieking housemaid, calling “Hotogoroshi!” (murder) at the top of her voice, gave the alarm, and from all parts of the palace the menials scuttled like frightened rats, taking refuge in the great kitchen in the rear.

Even Genji Negato, with blanched face and shaking knees, followed the last agitated obi into this dubious shelter. Here fortifying himself with heavier, if not trustier, implements than his swords he recovered his wits sufficiently to attempt to rally the panic-stricken army of servitors. Each in turn was ordered, urged, besought to go to the Tojin-san’s apartment. It was dastardly, so he averred, to leave the foreigner alone to face the unknown peril menacing him. For plain it was to be seen that she who had hitherto confined her malign activities to the large outdoors, had stepped at last across the threshold of the doomed palace. Undoubtedly, the typhoon which had crushed half the city so cruelly had been summoned by the witch in token of her power over them. Something horrible, sinister, was about to happen. Who could tell exactly what; but the signs were evil, evil!

He forgot the difference in his state and rank to these creatures of the kitchen, and found himself confiding to them his worst fears.

The Tojin-san slept from north to south, the position proper for a corpse alone! Genji Negato had pleaded with him to change, but the foreigner had laughed and insisted it was the true, scientific position, from pole to pole, in harmony with the electric currents of the atmosphere.

The night before all four of the samourai guard had heard the plaintive howling of a dog; an owl was seen black athwart the moon; a tail-less cat fled under the Uki (goblin-tree). The samourai had dutifully reported all these happenings to the Tojin-san, and now, when the blow seemed about to fall upon him, this stalwart guard, provided by their prince, were sleeping comfortably in their yashiki on the very edge of the estate. It was the workings of the gods!

Goto, the cook, found his fluttering tongue.

“This very morning,” said he, “I trod thrice upon an egg-shell.”

“I miserably entangled my obi when dressing,” said another.

“And I, alas! bit my tongue when eating. My mistress said it was a sign some one begrudged me my food. Who indeed but this spiteful fiend of the mountains?”

“Twice this week,” wailed the cook’s wife, “little Taro broke his chopsticks when eating.”

She fell to sobbing violently into her sleeve.

“Condescend to hush!” said Genji Negato. “Remaining silent is good.” The interpreter’s yellow face had turned ashen, his hair appeared to stand almost on end, as he listened with suspended breathing.

Outside the wild rain beat against the wind-swept trees, and dashed peltingly against the ancient Shiro. Jagged flashes of lightning zigzagged across the skies showing clearly through the walls, though the amado were in place. It was not, however, to the sound of the tempest that the interpreter was giving ear. Somewhere within the Shiro itself new sounds were heard. It was as if a wind passed along the great halls and corridors and close upon its soft-footed flight there dashed something heavy, pursuing.

Suddenly the main sliding screen or door, which led into the halls, fell inward with a crash. Over it something bounded like a ball of fiery light, passed through the kitchen swift as a lightning flash and shot out into the storm, letting in a gust of rain and wind and thunder through the shaking doors.

A moment later only, and panting like an animal in the chase, the great Tojin burst into the chamber. He stopped short, staring as if confounded at the group shuddering against the farthermost wall. Slowly his gray face relaxed its tension. He tried to speak normally, but in spite of himself his voice shook, though his words were terse, commanding.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Translate that, if you please, to the servants,” he sternly ordered his interpreter.

The latter’s teeth were chattering. He could barely speak.

“Your excellency—you yourself have seen—”

“I saw nothing,” said the Tojin-san, doggedly, “save the figure of a—woman!”

“A woman!” cried the interpreter, almost in tears at the evident stubbornness of this fool-white-man. “Ah, most high-up sir, would you have condescended pursuit of a mere female creature?”

The Tojin-san looked care-worn, haggard, as if he struggled within himself. His deep, stern voice quivered in spite of himself.

“She was pressed against my wall, and fled fleetly as a wild thing when I threw the doors open. The halls were unlighted. I could barely see her. My eyes were dazzled at the sudden darkness. I may have been mistaken. And yet—and yet—it seemed to me—her hair was—_gold_!”

IX

“I AM determined to satisfy my—call it curiosity if you will—in regard to this fox-woman,” the Tojin-san told the three students who were his almost constant companions outside the school.

“I can get no help whatever from my servants and less from the guard. Genji Negato is worse than a woman, and the Daimio’s officer has point blank refused to give me a guide to direct me to her home on Atago Yama.”

He paused and looked at the embarrassed faces of the students. They were devoted to him he knew, eager to serve and please him; yet even they, sons of the new, sane Japan, feared the fox-woman. He was determined to win them over.

“So I want your help, Junzo, and yours, and yours, Nunuki and Higo. You can help me if you will.”

“In what way?” demanded Nunuki cautiously.

“In any way you wish. Devise some scheme to trap this creature of the mountains.”

“Can we trap the north wind when it raves over the wilderness? Can we trap even the gentlest zephyr when it dances across sunlit paths?” asked Junzo, wistfully.

“But the fox-woman is neither the rough north wind, nor the playful zephyr of the south. She has a physical body, which even you will admit. The wildest thing of the wildest forest can be caught,” and he added, half under his breath, “and tamed.”

Higo was considering, his young patrician face very thoughtful and intent; but Junzo with a burst of boyish pity put his hand timidly, affectionately into that of the Tojin’s.

“Ah, dear sensei,” he said, “you are tortured, obsessed by this wretched witch. She has put her evil spell upon you.”

“Nonsense,” said his teacher, almost roughly, releasing his hand. “This is not helping me, Junzo.”

“But you have never heard the story of Chuguro. It happened in Yedo, many years ago, your excellency. He was in the service of a Hatamoto named Suzuki, and seemed like any other contented and healthy ashigaru. Then came a time when his comrades missed him in the night, and they would not again see him till just before the dawn, when he would creep back to his quarters looking very strange and white and exhausted. He became weaker and weaker from day to day, and at last was unable to leave his couch at all, though he pleaded and begged to be carried to the foot of a little bridge not far from the main gateway. But his friends were obdurate. They called in a great Chinese surgeon, who made an examination of the dying man and declared his veins had been literally drained dry of blood! All declared it was the fox-woman; but the Chinese doctor said: ‘It was a frog, which took to the soldier’s eyes the form of a woman.’” The boy paused, eying his teacher wistfully. “It is only a legend you will say, sensei, but I beseech thee, honored sir, to avoid contact with even a stray fly, a spider, any crawling thing that may beat its way into your yashiki. Who knows what form this dreadful fox-woman may take to lure you.”

Higo broke in impatiently:

“If indeed our sensei is tortured, why waste words on idle tales of the past? It is our duty to conceive some sensible scheme by which to rid his excellency of the torture.”

He began to talk swiftly and eagerly to his friends in Japanese, and gradually their resisting and doubting faces changed. With boy-like zeal they discussed the adventure proposed by Higo. Then the latter turned abruptly back to the Tojin-san.

“You will permit us free access to your grounds at all and any hours?”

“Most certainly. I will so instruct the gateman.”

“And, if necessary, we may call upon the guard for assistance?”

The Tojin-san slightly smiled.

“Come now, surely you don’t anticipate so hard a task?”

“We cannot tell. Even the guard may prove insufficient, but with Shaka’s aid we may succeed!”

A look of alarm came to the Tojin-san’s face.

“I wish no harm whatever to befall her. If you can surprise her upon one of her nightly peregrinations in our neighborhood, and induce her gently but firmly to accompany you, it will be gratifying. Once brought face to face with other people—for I am convinced she is the same as we are—I hope to be able to lay this bugaboo of a fox-woman.”

“As for that, impossible to say,” said Higo vaguely. “Now sinking, now floating, thus is life says the poet. If disaster befall us in the undertaking it will be as decreed of the gods. All things are beforehand ordained.”

“You anticipate hazard in the adventure?”

“We would not attempt it otherwise,” proudly asserted Nunuki, his hand unconsciously caressing his sword-hilt, for these boy-samourai all wore the sword. Higo indeed was of a princely house, and kin to Echizen himself.