Part 5

People were packing their household goods in haste and wending their ambitious ways toward the greater cities. In a single month Fukui lost half its population, and those left behind seemed to move about the affairs of life as if in a dream, from which presently they would awake.

Thus the political upheaval served for a time, at least, to distract the people’s mind from the Tojin and the fox-woman. It was but a temporary distraction. A whispering, sinister voice was at work. It ran in and out the houses of Fukui, and breathed its suggestive message to the disaffected, impoverished ones, and pointed out the cause of the calamity that had befallen them; for so sudden and drastic a change of government was bound to react disastrously upon the people at first, no matter how fortunate its ultimate end. The people of Fukui, like those of other feudal strongholds, were at present feeling only the first blighting, threatening touch of coming poverty.

For hundreds of years the samourai and their families had been dependent aristocrats, who shared the rich fortunes of their lords. Now they found themselves suddenly thrust out of service; in the same position as the despised merchant or farmer, forced to seek employment no matter how repugnant or menial. Many of them chose what they considered the noblest and most heroic solution of the problem—suppuku! The entire destruction of themselves and families. Many sought the larger cities intent on obtaining lucrative positions under the new government; many families were reduced to the direst poverty, and became dependents upon their own servants and tradespeople.

Fukui had known the noblest of princes, and it was with a feeling of despairing confidence that the people awaited his return from Tokio. He was high in the councils of the Imperial Government. He could and would—he must do much to save his beloved province from disaster. So they waited patiently, helplessly. Hope is at best but the comforter of despair, and as the days passed drearily by a new feeling took its place.

A sullen, rebellious hatred for the white nations who had brought this new state of affairs about—a murderous, resentful impulse of revenge. It was the same feeling that had animated the misguided patriots of Satsuma, when they fought the allied fleet at Kagoshima, but it was uglier, meaner, for its force was directed upon two individuals, who, to the Fukui mind, represented the detested nations of the West. One of these, so Fukui firmly believed, was directly responsible for the disaster. She, the accursed outcast, who had descended from the mountains and taken up her abode in their very midst; who had laid her spell upon the great Tojin-san, who had been their friend!

Many a samourai’s itching hand crept stealthily to the forbidden sword, for, by the new law, they were not permitted to wear the sword, as he measured his misfortunes through the blighting nearness of the fox-woman. Many a distracted mother crooned a promise to her sleeping babe that the dread gagama (goblin) of Atago Yama that had menaced them for so long was at last to be extinguished.

And meanwhile, in the Shiro Matsuhaira, another kind of dream was unfolding its rose-lined wings.

XV

“TO what are you listening, Tama?”

He had come upon her pressed closely against a latticed screen, whose opening looked out upon the river leading to the city below.

She started at his coming, and turned toward him, her back against the screen.

“I listen to the noise of thad river,” she said, and there was a conciliating, pleading note in her voice.

“You cannot hear the river from here. It is very shallow—barely stirs. There is something else you are listening to?”

“It is the uguisu,” she said quickly, as though she sought to disarm his fears. “It no longer sings, Tojin-san. I listen for hees voice again.”

“It never sang, my child, save at night. What is it that troubles you? You seem always to be listening, waiting—so fearfully—so anxiously. You are afraid of something. Tell me what it is?”

His deep, lowered voice was as caressing and tender as a mother’s. She faltered, turned from him. Her voice overran with vague sighs.

“I hear even those mos’ sof’ of honorable whisper. I hear some noise of—trobble! I am afraid—for you—kind Tojin-san.”

“For me! I am amply protected here in Fukui. I have a body-guard of samourai, besides Genji Negato, who will come back quickly enough when he has mastered his foolish fears.”

“The samourai gone,” she said, simply.

He was silent a moment, realizing there was nothing to be gained by attempting to deceive her. How, when or where she learned of these matters he never knew; but she knew perhaps more than he did of what was happening in Fukui.

“Even if it is so,” he finally said, “and the samourai too are gone, you have nothing to fear. Less than a week ago a courier brought word to me from Tokio. I am expecting friends in Fukui very shortly now.”

“Frien?” she repeated wistfully. “Like unto you, kind Tojin-san?”

“Yes—white men, and Japanese, too, for that matter. I have good friends in Tokio. They are coming here to see you, my child.”

“Alas!” she said, shrinking slightly from him, “Why do they come?”

“I asked them to come,” he said, very gravely. “I feel I am right, and that by a simple operation we will be able to make you see, as other people do, my child.”

The word appeared to trouble her.

“I see already, Tojin-san,” she said.

“What do you see, Tama?” he asked her huskily.

The words came floodingly, tumultuously to her lips. The misty eyes were blue as the sea and as beautiful.

“I see thee, Tojin-san. Thou art beautiful ad my sight, lig’ unto the gods.”

A look of suffering left its mark upon the face of the Tojin. He gazed at the kindling face of the girl before him, and the old strangling, yearning emotion swept over him.

“Give me more sight—if it is your honorable wish,” she said, “bud already I see—I know!” She pressed her fingers impetuously to her eyes.

“I see the light—the dark. It is a worl’ of shadows on my eyes, and shadows are lig’ unto our dream—mos’ beautiful of all!”

His voice was firm, almost solemn.

“You have been wandering around in a black wilderness all of your life; you do not know what it is, my poor little one, to see the sun! But, with God’s good help, I am going to lead you out of the wilderness—into the light!”

“You are the light!” she said, throbbingly, and slipped to her knees, putting her face against his hand.

Something bounded against the wall and came whistling through the shoji. It grazed the cheek of the kneeling fox-woman, and imbedded itself against the woodwork of the opposite wall. She put up her hand with a quick, startled movement, but though she turned a questioning, fearful face upon the great Tojin, she could not see how deathly white he had become. He bent suddenly above her.

“Make me a promise. Repeat after me, that no matter what might befall us, you will remain with me—you will not desert me!”

With her face pressed against his hand, her eyes fervently closed, she repeated the words as a veritable prayer.

XVI

IN the sunken garden directly beneath his rooms he saw that sinister thing below, waiting in a throbbing silence. It seemed as if his gardens were alive with them. Who had summoned them? For what were they waiting?

From his elevation above them he spoke, his clear voice booming out above their heads.

“Genji Negato, I desire your services.”

From somewhere in the shadows the voice of the interpreter came back at him like a cold slap in the face.

“When the evil spirit of Atago Yama shall have left the abode of the exalted Tojin-san, Genji Negato will humbly return for service.”

The Tojin-san’s incisive, perfectly controlled voice continued coldly:

“By command of the Prince of Echizen you are in my service. In his name, I order you to control your foolish fears, or take the consequences of your Prince’s displeasure.”

A strange voice, rumbling, sneering, responded to this statement. Like a flash, upon the retort, came the Tojin’s ringing order to the interpreter:

“Translate the words just spoken, if you please.”

“He says, your excellency, that the Prince of Echizen has been summarily called to Tokio. If the new law is indeed enforced he may not return.”

For a moment the far-seeing mind of the Tojin staggered before this appalling news, which, if true, meant the possibility of his being suddenly cast adrift and left to protect himself from the Jo-i menace, against which Echizen himself had taken such precautions in his behalf. While his mind revolved all the possible perils of his position, a new voice sprang ringingly out of the shadows of his garden—a boy’s clear, unfaltering voice with its reassuring note of loyalty and affection.

“Beloved sensei, we, your students, offer ourselves in place of your guard.”

“What may babes know of a sword’s honor?” snarled the samourai, who had already spoken. “Upon what strength may the foreign devil lean for his new support?” he demanded with cutting sarcasm.

The burly laugh that followed was suddenly stopped, as the student Higo flung himself defiantly before them all.

“I, Higo, kin of your absent Prince, will answer you. There are nine hundred students, samourai themselves, and sons of a thousand samourai before them. All of these are loyal to our teacher. They will protect and fight for him, if necessary.”

Now the answering voice snarled merely in explanation.

“Who spoke of harm to your sensei? It is not him we seek. We have come for the Fox-Woman of Atago Yama, who blights our fortunes, who brings sickness, poverty, and disaster upon our ancestors and our children, and whose doom has been spoken by Fukui. You have trapped her, young sirs of the college, like any other female beast of the woods. Let older, more experienced hands finish your honorable work. There are those of us whose hands performed a like service upon the debased parents of the gagama, and whose palms itch now to mingle her blood with her sire’s. Let but the Tojin-san eject this siren of the mountains, and we will be satisfied.”

“It cannot be done,” frantically cried the boy Junzo. “I myself have touched the wretched, helpless one, and, as the gods in heaven hear me, she is but—human, as ourselves!”

A roar of derision greeted the boy’s passionate outcry, and there was a concerted movement toward where the Tojin-san stood towering above them, his arms crossed, his keen, stern eyes regarding them piercingly.

Some one pushed forward the interpreter, and the craven, agitated fellow now faced his master. He made several ineffectual efforts to speak, gulped at the lump which rose persistently in his throat. Before him loomed the grim, sardonic face of this west-countryman he had always inwardly feared and respected; behind him the rabble of dissatisfied ronin.

Gasping, trembling, he repeated to the Tojin the verdict of the mob. They called upon him to deliver into their hands the fox-woman. Failing to do that, they would storm the Shiro and take her by force. Whiningly, pleadingly, he begged his master to hurl from his house the wretched spirit he was harboring.

To this demand the Tojin-san returned slowly, as though he carefully chose his words, that if one hair upon the head of the one he protected were touched, the whole Fukui should feel a vengeance such as never had befallen it before. He, the Tojin-san—a citizen of a mightier country than this—was the guest of one of their princes. Not alone his friends at home, but those here—the very Emperor himself, who had pledged himself publicly to uphold the new enlightened laws, borrowed from the West—would avenge insult and wrong done to him—the Tojin.

His answer, translated by Negato, raised a turmoil of angry discussion, and that one who seemed to be the leader of the company, sprang headlong forward, as if to show the way to those who hesitated. He climbed half-way up the steps to where the Tojin stood, and quick as a cat drew forward his swords.

Every eye was turned upon the Tojin-san. He was standing tautly erect, his heavy, pugnacious chin thrust out. As the sword of the samourai touched him he drew slightly backward, then with a swift, merciless bound sprang headlong upon his assailant, his great white fists flashing more vividly than the steel had done. Backward went the samourai, his swords flying out of either hand. Without a cry, he fell upon the grass path beneath.

And the Tojin-san was back in his place, facing them, waiting for them, calm, still unmoved, but very terrible and mighty to look upon.

In the deadly silence that followed, the student Nunuki passed the castle gates, followed by his valiant, stalwart little army of fellow-students. They moved in a line steadily onward, spread out on all sides and completely surrounded the house of the Tojin.

Ere the samourai could realize it they found themselves encircled by an army four times their own in number. Their leader lay before them, unmoving; and above them towered the grim, terrible figure of this west-countryman, who represented in his gigantic person all the power and strength they had come to know and superstitiously believe belonged to the West.

One by one, they moved toward the gates, broke into smaller groups, passing the long line of student warriors without a word or sign of war.

Presently the Tojin moved a step lower down into the garden. He stood a moment, staring frowningly at the still form lying at his feet. Then slowly, unwillingly he stooped, and turned it over. A deep breath escaped him. For a moment things swam dazedly before him, for the white, agonized face upturned was that of the Daimio’s high officer, the Samourai Gihei Matsuyama!

XVII

AS a mother seeks a lost child, so the Tojin-san frantically scoured every nook and corner of the Shiro Matsuhaira for the fox-woman.

In the interval in which he had faced that threatening, blood-hungry mob, she had gone! He was torn with sick forebodings of the fate that might have befallen her. That she had gone of her own free will, he could not believe—no, not after the promise she had made him!

And so, with his wound untended, his brain swimming in vertigo, he staggered from room to room, until the morning dawned dim and gray, and the sun crept over the horizon with its bright, hard eye.

Wild and haggard-eyed, shaking as though he were afflicted with ague, he came finally back to his own chamber. Here his students awaited him, eager to show him their good-will, to congratulate him and gossip over the certain punishment that would overtake those who had molested him. But he heard no word that they spoke, and presently they seemed to realize that something was wrong with the great Tojin, and they drew apart, whispering, and regarding him with awed glances.

The maid, Obun, snivelling and shaking with fear, crept into the vast, deserted kitchen and fell to putting it in order. In another wing of the house the voice of the lately craven Genji Negato was heard, and out along the road, loaded down with their belongings, trailed the little caravan of menials, creeping humbly back to their old employment.

Oh, these were dark, impoverished days for Fukui! Who could refuse remunerative employment such as this? The honorably enlightened students of the university had vanquished the disgruntled, fighting ones; Samourai Matsuyama, their leader, was desperately sick, shorn of his power, and deserted even by his friends.

And the fox-woman was gone! No one knew how or when she had gone. They told, in whispers, of her ghostly vanishing, and some said the bottom-less lake of Matsuhaira, with its white, chilly lotus, held a secret all its own. But “The Lotus tells no tales,” as the proverb has it, and how should they know, and why should they care whether the fiendish gagama, who had haunted their master for so long, floated beneath the smiling water-flowers or not?

They gathered together, these gabbling, faithless servants, and discussed ways and means to propitiate the Tojin-san. Following the lead of Genji Negato, finally, they took their courage into their hands and came to his apartment. Barely had they entered the room, however, ere they fled again.

One look only at the distorted face was enough. Like a pack of startled sheep they turned tail and fled from his presence, leaving him once more alone, pacing and repacing, with staggering, irregular steps, the floor, crunching his great hands together as if in some mortal agony.

What weakness was this that robbed him of his manhood! What anguish that pierced to his very marrow? Was this what the son of the Daimio’s high officer had endured when he had followed the fox-woman out into the mountains? Persistently, dazedly he thought of Gihei Matsuyama, and he asked himself repeatedly why—why? Suddenly it was clear—he knew why. He had killed the Daimio’s high officer! With his own mighty hands he had killed the father of Gihei Matsuyama!

A Chinese doctor, brought by the students Junzo and Higo, examined him at a safe distance, and he said the foreign sensei was afflicted with a malady of the brain.

Outside in the summer gardens, serious-eyed, grave-faced boys looked at each other with startled glances, and in the city people were telling in the streets of the dreadful punishments certain to be meted out to those who had molested the guest of their absent Prince; for word had, at last, come from Tokio that he had started on his way back to Fukui.

The day with its sun and fragrance passed away unseen to the great, blank-minded Tojin. But when the night came, with a whispering breeze about the ancient Matsuhaira, he raised a listening head.

As on that first night in Fukui, plainly, distinctly he heard the fluttering, human knocking upon his shoji. Holding his breath, treading on tiptoe, he found his way to the doors, drew them apart and looked out into the dusky woods beyond. How his ears tingled now, straining for that old caressing call:

“T-o-o—jin-san! Too-jin-san!”

Gently, softly, wooingly, he answered the fox-woman, breathing her name into the still air about him:

“Tama! Tama!”

And, as on that other night, again he dropped down into the garden. Over the green-clipped lawn he went, across the wing of the moat, into the bamboo grove, and on and on into the beckoning, luring woods of Atago Yama.

XVIII

TO awaken on an afternoon in summer upon a bed of moss and fragrant leaves; to rest tired, aching eyes upon a clear, pale sky, which smiled divinely through interlacing boughs of towering pines and hemlocks; to hear the whistling calls of the wood-birds; the murmuring, sobbing laughter of some fairy brooklet close at hand; to feel the touch of a fugitive gentle breeze upon one’s brow—this was the fate of the Tojin-san!

For how long he could not have told he lay unmoving, staring dreamily at the sky above him, a sense of contentment, of rest, of comfort—such as one might feel after a long, exhausting race, permeating his whole being.

Then suddenly upon his consciousness there stole another sense—the dim, exquisite feeling of a loved presence close at hand, and he raised himself slowly, weakly upon his elbow. It was like music in his ears, that faint, caressing voice he had listened for for so many days:

“To-o-jin-san! Goran nasai!” (august glance deign).

She was kneeling by his side, her questioning, wistful face hovering above his own; her soft, timid little fingers touching his brow, his eyes, his lips.

He felt himself falling backward again, as if in some delicious swoon, from which there could be no awakening. Then like the dimly remembered scenes of a vague dream, he seemed to recall a time wherein he had wandered through some unending woods, seeking, seeking! Now the dream had ended in this—this that was part of the dream itself!

She stirred ever so slightly, and as if he feared she might vanish by her mere stirring, he reached up the great, once mighty arms, and sought to envelop her within them.

Her hair had the odor of the pine woods; upon her lips there was the breath of some sweet incense. She remained passive within his grasp, but presently her voice, with its tremulous tone of tears, broke the spell between them—reached him with the gentle appeal of a child distressed.

“Honorable water good for thirsty throat,” she said.

Now he released her, and she drew back to find the little cup beside her. He let her raise his head and bring the cup to his lips, and with his eyes still hungrily upon her he drank the water.

He was content merely to gaze at her, though it troubled him that she no longer smiled. She said in a very stricken voice:

“August food also good for Tojin-san. Bud, alas! I god nudding bud rice! Thas good enough for Tama—bud nod for you, Tojin-san.”

Even in his weakness he laughed joyously at the mere notion of food fit for her being unfit for him, and at the sound of his low laughter her face lighted up wonderfully.

“You gittin’ better!” she exclaimed joyously. “Now I bring you thad rice. Too bad—bud thas all I got! I go ad grade temple at top those hill. Priest too fat run quick to catch at me.” She laughed with an element of her old mischievous defiance.

As he did not speak, too intent upon gazing at and marvelling on the fairness of her face, her expression changed to one of melting anxiety.

“I am lig’ unto those foolish karasu [crow], who mek chatter all thad time. Condescend forgive me, Tojin-san. I nod speag agin mebbe for—for twenty hour—yaes?”

No one had ever kissed her hands before. The sound, the touch aroused her wonder, her apprehension. She drew her hands instinctively from his, and for a moment held them up before her, almost as if she looked at them. Then with an impetuous, laughing little sob she thrust them back upon him:

“Do agin ad my hands, Tojin-san! I lig’ those,” she said.

It was not alone the pallor of bodily illness, but of some mental pain that swept over his face, as he set the little hands back into her lap, reverently, gently.

Later, when strengthened with the simple meal she made for him, she told him how the night before she had come upon him in the Atago Yama woods. It was but two days since the terrible events at the Shiro had driven them both forth into this enchanted wilderness. He had been ill but a night; yet it seemed to him many days.

No, she had not heard him calling her, nor had she called him. This, too, was part of the dream; but something louder than any human cry had reached her in her hiding-place in the mountains, the intuitive, certain sense of the blind. She had retraced her steps down the mountain-side, and had gone cautiously seeking in the woods for him; and the gods had guided her aright. Ah! to his very feet.

She humbly begged him to pardon her for leaving him; but she had thought this was the only way she could save him from those who hated her. Now—now she wished to repeat the prayer and promise she had made him down in the old Shiro. Never again would she desert him. She would always abide by his side. She humbly entreated that he would permit her to remain with him, even if she must follow him throughout the world as a slave, the meekest and lowliest of servants.