Title: Tama
Author: Onoto, Watanna
Language: English
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[Illustration:

  See page 80
  THE FOX-WOMAN AMONG THE LOTUS]


------------------------------------------------------------------------


TAMA

by

ONOTO WATANNA

Illustrated by Genjiro Kataoka


Publish’s Logo



New York and London
Harper & Brothers
Publishers  ✥  MCMX


------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             BOOKS BY

                          ONOTO WATANNA

     TAMA                  Illustrated. Crown 8vo, net $1.60
     A JAPANESE NIGHTINGALE             Ill’d. 8vo, net 2.00
  THE WOOING OF WISTARIA                   Ill’d. Post 8vo. 1.50
     THE HEART OF HYACINTH      Ill’d in Tint. 8vo, net 2.00
     A JAPANESE BLOSSOM           Illustrated. 8vo, net 2.00

               HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Copyright, 1910, by HARPER & BROTHERS
─────────
Published October, 1910.
Printed in the United States of America



------------------------------------------------------------------------



                             ILLUSTRATIONS


               THE FOX-WOMAN AMONG THE LOTUS  Frontispiece

               WELCOME TO TOJIN-SAN                   16

               “TOUCH HER NOT, BELOVED               106
                 SENSEI! SHE IS ACCURSED,
                 UNCLEAN!”

               TAMA AT THE TEMPLE TOKIWA             188


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  TAMA



------------------------------------------------------------------------


                                  TAMA



                                   I


FUKUI was in an unwonted state of excitement. For days the people had
talked of but one event. Even the small boys, perilously astraddle the
bamboo poles, the scullery wenches of the kitchen, the very mendicants
of the street, the highest and lowest of the citizens of Fukui talked of
the coming of the O-Tojin-san (Honorable Mr. Foreigner).

For at last the exalted Daimio of the province had acceded to the
pleadings and eager demands of the students of the university, and, at
great expense and trouble, a foreign professor had been imported.

Signs of preparation were everywhere visible. Vigorous housecleaning was
in evidence. The professional story-tellers, who took the place of
newspapers in these days, reaped small fortunes in their halls. Some of
them opened booths on the streets and regaled their auditors with
strange accounts of America and its people.

Already the Tojin-san’s house and household had been chosen for him,
from the Daimio’s high officer and the four samourai body-guard, who
were to protect him from any possible Jo-i (foreign hater), down to his
body-servant.

An enormous old historical Shiro (mansion), two hundred and seven years
old, was assigned as his residence, and was now undergoing certain
remarkable changes. For heavy woollen carpets, with flowers and figured
designs, were being nailed down over the ancient matting in the chief
rooms. Strange articles of furniture, massive and heavy as iron, were
pushed into the great chambers, under the supervising hand of a dapper,
rosy-cheeked young samourai who was to serve as interpreter to the
Tojin. His name was Genji Negato, and he had already lived among
foreigners in the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama. He spoke the English
language very well indeed, and his knowledge of the white man and his
ways was extraordinary.

Now, as he ordered this or that article set in place, his full red lips
curled smilingly under his little bristly mustache. He called the
servants in one by one, lecturing each in turn in regard to his especial
duties. Incidentally he regaled them with tales of the habits and
desires of the white man.

Food sufficient for six ordinary mortals must be prepared for his
individual consumption. Raw meat and game, slightly scorched before
fire, were essential. A never-failing spring of what the original
American had aptly called “fire-water” must be constantly flowing at and
between meals and day and night. Such was the thirst of the white man.
Brooms must be in readiness to follow the trail of the dust and
mud-laden boots of the professor, since he would not remove them even in
the house. Finally, his supreme favor could be won by having at hand
always the sweetest and prettiest maidens to entertain and caress him.
And so on through a strange list.

If the students of the college where the Tojin-san was to teach were
elated at the prospect of his coming, their joy was hardly shared by his
household. It was in a flutter of excited fear. Even the stolid,
impassive-faced samourai guard discussed in undertones among themselves
the degrading service to which they were reduced in these degenerate
days. To guard the body of a mere Tojin! Well, such was the will of the
Daimio of Echizen, and a samourai is the right hand of his Prince. His
the task to obey even the caprice of his lord, or take his own life in
preference to service too far beneath his honor.

In the humbler regions of the Shiro, however, the servants discussed the
matter less pessimistically. Some rumor of the generosity and wealth of
foreigners had floated across the vague tide of gossip. Anyhow, the
preparations for his coming went blithely on here, and already odors of
vigorous advance cooking were being wafted from the kitchen regions,
warming and savoring the great chambers, and awakening into noisy life
the vast army of rats and bats which had long made their homes in the
eaves and rafters of the old deserted mansion, now for the first time in
years to be occupied by a tenant.

Everything was quite in readiness when the cook’s wife’s baby’s nurse
(for his entire family were, of course, also domiciled in the Shiro)
missed a portion of her rice. She had turned about to give better
attention to master baby-san, when, so she averred, a “white hand”
reached out of nowhere and seized the remnants of her supper. She ran
squealing with her tale to her mistress, who, in turn, rushed with it to
her lord, the cook. He put aside his apron and sought Genji Negato, who
solemnly called a council of war. To the four samourai guard the entire
household looked for a solution and ending of the impending trouble.

Measures should be taken at once, it was unanimously decided. It would
be to their Prince’s everlasting disgrace should the exalted foreign
devil also become a victim of the dreaded Fox-Woman of Atago Yama, for,
undoubtedly, this mischievous and irrepressible sprite of the mountains
was at her tricks again. In the names, therefore, of the august
Tojin-san, nay, in the very name of the Imperial Daimio of Echizen, it
was the duty of the honorable samourai to spare in no wise the witch
should she be caught trespassing upon the estate of the Prince’s guest
and protégé.

They fell to telling weird tales of the latest doings of the fox-woman.
A Tsuruga child had followed the witch-girl into the mountains,
believing her glittering hair to be the rays of the sun, and stretching
out his tiny hands to touch and hold it. To propitiate the dread
creature, the parents had set out daily food at the foot of the
mountains, and thus, for a time at least, the hunger of the fox-woman
had been satisfied, but the child had never been the same again,
fretting and crying constantly for the “Sun Lady.” As its peevishness
continued, the parents revenged themselves upon its abductor, and ceased
to set out the nightly repast, bravely facing down their fear of the
witch’s certain anger and retaliation.

Since then she had been forced to seek her sustenance elsewhere. A
basket of fish disappeared overnight from a vendor’s locked stand. A bag
of rice was found on the mountain-side of the river, as if the thief,
finding it too heavy, had dropped it in her flight.

And now—could it be possible that the most distinguished (though
augustly degraded) guest Fukui had known in years was to suffer by the
depredations of the fox-woman?

Samourai Iroka voted in favor of killing the witch outright. But not by
the means of his own personal sword, for he was unmarried and had no
descendants to pray for his soul should it be forced to pass along on a
journey.

Samourai Asado feared for the safety of his wife and family in the event
of his honorable sword being stained by the blood of the witch-girl.
Once a similar goblin had torn the head and arms from the body of a
sleeping babe, in revenge for the mere pin-prick of a samourai sword.

Samourai Hirata suggested referring the matter to the Daimio himself;
but was urged against this by the others, for was not the fox-woman the
one black blot upon the escutcheon of their exalted Prince, seeing she
was indeed, and alas! of his own blood?

Finally, Samourai Numura, an ancient, grizzled warrior of the most
stolid common sense, gruffly insisted that the matter was the affair of
the Tojin himself, and from him alone should they receive commands upon
the matter. It was agreed, therefore, that they should wait for the
coming of the Tojin-san. Out of his vaunted western wisdom certainly
should he be able to suggest the solution of the problem.

And, in the Season of Greatest Cold, while the snow whirled in feathery
flakes over all the Province of Echizen, and the winds blew in laughing,
whispering murmurs through the glistening camphor and pine trees, across
the sacred bosom of Lake Biwa, and over the snow-crowned mountains
between, the Tojin-san came to Fukui, the “Well of Blessing.”


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                   II


THE room was so large that even with the seven lighted andon and the
three ancient takahiras glimmering dully where they hung from the
raftered ceiling overhead, it was chiefly in shadow. Set at intervals
against the sliding walls were a few large pieces of heavy black-walnut
furniture, grotesque objects in the otherwise completely empty chamber.
The room itself was cold, but a kotatsu in the centre of the room had
been filled with live coals, and over this the Tojin-san crouched. He
sat upon the floor, close to the fire-frame, his knees drawn up, his
hands encircling them.

After a long and tortuous journey over land and water, by boat, by
horse, by kurumma, and often on foot—a never-ending, long-winding, cold
journey, the Tojin-san was at last at home! This was Fukui, where he had
contracted to live for seven years of his life; this vast, empty, bleak
mansion was his house.

He had started upon the journey with an alert and quickened pulse, and
an ardent ambition to serve, to raise up, to love this strange people to
whom he had pledged himself. A short sojourn was made in Tokio and
Kioto—days of sheer delight in a charm so new it intoxicated. Then,
leaving the open ports, under the escort sent by the Prince of Echizen,
he had taken finally that plunge into the great unknown country itself,
where only half a dozen foreigners had been before him.

The journey had been one of many weeks. Crossing waters in a fragile
craft, which tossed and heaved with every tide, he had come to know the
true meaning of the Japanese saying that “a sea voyage is an inch of
hell.”

For days his party had been snow-bound on a desolate mountain, far from
even the smallest village or town, and, when finally they had issued
forth, it was only to encounter new perils, in savage-souled ronins who
hung about the vicinity of the Tojin-san’s party, their narrow, wicked
eyes intent upon his destruction. How many white men before him had
started upon a similar journey, in other provinces of Japan, and met the
then common fate—a stab in the back, or in the dark! And the
punishments, the indemnities, the humiliations forced upon the
government by the foreigners, but added to the hatred and malice of the
Jo-i (foreign haters).

But the Prince of Echizen was of the most enlightened school. No foreign
teacher or guest within his province should suffer the smallest hurt!
His edicts in the matter were so emphatic that they reached even the
humblest of the citizens, and the Tojin-san, did he but know it, was
practically immune from attack. Indeed, his pilgrimage was in the nature
of one of triumph. Whatever their inner feelings toward the intruder,
the people met him with smiles and expressions of welcome. Every little
town and hamlet sent to him on its outskirts deputations of high
officials. There had been feasts here and banquets there, and always and
everywhere about him he saw the same brown face, the same glittering
eye, the same elusive smile.

Now the last Daimio’s officer was gone, the last officious minister of
his Prince had chanted his singsong poem of welcome, and the Tojin-san
was alone!

Even the individual members of his household had dispersed. They had
come in one by one in solemn procession, led by the samourai guard, who,
as they prostrated themselves, sucked in their breath fiercely,
expelling it in long, sibilant hisses. The cook, his assistants, and
wife and family formed a small procession of their own, one behind the
other, executing a series of such comical bows and bobs that the stern
lips of the Tojin-san had softened in spite of himself, particularly so,
when the tiniest one, a toddling baby no more than two years old, had
solemnly brought its diminutive shaven pate to the floor, and had almost
capsized in a somersault in its efforts to emulate its elders’
politeness.


[Illustration:

  WELCOME TO TOJIN-SAN]


Now the weary, half-closed eyes of the Tojin-san were seeing other
faces, his mind travelling backward over other scenes, very far away. He
saw a great, green campus, overshadowed by towering elms. Bright-eyed,
white-skinned boys were singing huskily as they swept across the lawns
into the tall stone buildings, which seemed to smile at them with
maternal indulgence. The Tojin-san was seated at a desk, looking across
at that sea of boyish faces. Strange how they had repulsed him; how he
had even felt a bitterness that was almost hatred for them in that other
time and place! And now! Now he caught himself thinking of them with a
tenderness which almost stifled.

Then the jaded mind of the Tojin-san wandered out into another scene of
the past, and out of a longer, darker memory a woman’s cold, unsmiling
face mocked him.

“Marry you!” she had cried, and not even her native courtesy could
suppress the note of horror in her voice. “Oh—h!” she had cried out,
covering her eyes shudderingly, “if you could but—see—yourself!”

The Tojin-san had indeed seen himself that night. Glaring back at him in
a tragic grimness his own fearful face had looked at him from the
mirror. Not that he had not known the blight upon him; but he had been
dull, stupid, slow to realize its full horror.

Time was when the Tojin-san was as other men, smooth-skinned,
level-eyed, very good to look upon. But in a God and Man forsaken little
town crushed between the mountains and the sea, a young and ardent
doctor of long ago had given himself up to a sublime heroism. Shoulder
to shoulder with a few—one or two only beside himself—they had fought
the plague of smallpox. From this fight the Tojin-san had emerged
marked! With the optimism and blindness of youth, however, he had gone
back to the woman he loved, and she had struck at him!

There is a Japanese proverb which says: “The tongue three inches long
can kill a man six feet tall.” The Tojin-san thought of this now. A
woman’s tongue, the mere brutal smiting of her words, had wrought a
curious effect upon his entire life. From that time on he had avoided
women as he had not a vile plague. He led the life of an ascetic,
wrapped in his books and sciences, making few friends, avoiding others,
with the sensitive fear upon him that the whole world avoided and shrank
also from him. And while still a young man—under forty—they had named
him “Old Grind” at the university.

Then upon him suddenly had come a new upheaval, a pent-up, passionate
longing to break away from the dull hopeless treadmill to which he
seemed bound.

“Old Grind!” So age was to be clapped upon him while the vital fires of
youth still throbbed in an agony in his blood. There was a new life, an
exhilarating, more inspiring life to be led, out in that old-new world
across the seas! It beckoned to those of adventurous souls and those who
were weary of a drowsy, torpid existence, wherein hope of a new dawn had
vanished beyond memory. The Tojin-san panted for this new life. He
wanted to swing his arms in a wilder world, to breathe less vitiated
air, to feel himself _alive_ again! He had made of himself, for half a
lifetime, a mummy for the sake of a woman he had not even really loved.
It was fantastic!

Out of this curious rebellion against Fate which had swept upon him like
a tidal wave, the Tojin-san had broken his bonds.

He was in the strange wild land he had yearned for, strange faces peered
at him askance, and strange gods mocked him from their temples with
their sphinx-like impenetrability. And he crouched, shivering, over a
kotatsu in a great, historical yashiki, cold and empty as a very
mausoleum, and the strong man within him recognized and fought the
weakness come upon him—the aching, longing, praying, for the mere sight
of a white, familiar face!

So still was the night, even the glide of a gaki (spirit) across the
cracking snow without must have been heard. A breeze just trembled
through the frost-incrusted bough of a camphor-tree, and it bristled and
broke, the twigs snapping and bouncing down on the frozen ground
beneath.

Something crept out of the shadows of the woods at the foot of the
mountains, leaped like a fawn across the wide arm of the castle moat,
and slid over the grounds between it and the shiro Matsuhaira. An army
of crows which lodged in the attic of a dilapidated ruin of what had
once been a go-down (treasure-house) suddenly began to flap their wings,
calling to each other querulously and making short, futile, terrified
flights. A rat fled from the go-down interior and scuttled across to the
kitchen in the rear of the mansion, and the Tojin-san raised a startled
face, listening to a new sound.

It was as if one without were tapping or scratching ever so faintly upon
the amado (winter walls). He did not move, but fastened his gaze upon
the point whence he had fancied the sound proceeded. Now it came from
another direction and tapped lightly, timidly again, as a child might
have done.

The Tojin-san came to his feet with a bound. He flung wide the screens
of his chamber, now on this side, now on that, and now those opening
upon the grounds. Not a soul was visible. Nothing but the white, still
snow, glittering like silver under the moon-rays. He looked up at the
outjutting eaves, felt along them with his hand, though a curious
instinct told him insistently that the touch upon his screens had been
intelligent and human. Slowly he drew them into place again, and, as he
did so, a voice, low as a sigh, called to him across the bleak snow:

“To-o—jin-san! To-o-o-jin—san! To-o-o-jin—san! To-o-o—!”

Tojin-san! That was the name he had heard everywhere. The one they had
given him. Some one was calling him, wanted him, needed him, perhaps!

It was a step only down to the gardens below. He took it at a leap,
crossed the intervening lawn and plunged into the wooded grove beyond.
On and on he followed the sound of the voice, still sighing across to
him, now pleading, now wistful, now wild and now—mocking, with the tone
of a teasing sprite which laughed through a veil of tears.

Suddenly he stopped, white-lipped. He had been within a step of the but
half-frozen moat. One more, and he would have plunged into it. A
shuddering sense of horror, of shock, seized him, and held him there
rooted to the spot, bewildered, stunned, his ears still strained
listening to the drifting voice, which had vanished across the heights
and lost itself in the white looming shadows of the mountains.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  III


“YOUR excellency, though he live a million honorable years, could not
estimate the augustly degraded chagrin experienced by my exalted Prince
in my humble and servile person.”

So spoke the Daimio’s high officer, through the interpreter, Genji
Negato.

The American held his shaking hands over the replenished kotatsu as the
Daimio’s officer, hastily summoned by the guard, set himself the
distasteful task of explaining to him the existence of the fox-woman.

A fox-woman, so he explained solemnly, was a female human being into
whose body the soul of a fox had entered. In Japanese mythology the fox
occupies an important position, and the fox-woman is a creature greatly
to be feared. Her face and form, so said the Japanese, were of a
marvellous whiteness and a beauty so dazzling that a mortal must cover
his eyes to escape blindness. Her hair resembled the sun-rays, so bright
and glittering its color and effect. Gifted with this beauty of face and
form, but devoid of soul, she had but one ruling and controlling
ambition. She spent her days and nights lurking about the mountain
passes, behind and within rocks and caves, luring men—aye, and women and
children, too!—to destruction.

Something in the half-skeptical smile on the taciturn face of the
Tojin-san stopped the officer’s recital. His expression became troubled,
revealing a sensitive pride unduly wounded. Plainly the foreign Sensei
looked upon his explanations in the light of a fairy-tale.

“Your excellency disbelieves our legend of the fox-woman?” he queried
courteously.

“Legends,” said the Tojin-san slowly, “belong to literature, and are
tales to charm and beguile adults and deceive children. In the West we
no longer heed them. We name them superstitions, and we’ve burned out
our superstitions as we did our witches in the early days.”

The Japanese sat up stiffly, and in the chilly room he waved his fan
regularly to and fro.

“You deny the existence of spirits in the West?”

“At least we do not create them out of our fancy or thought,” said the
American gravely.

The officer said vehemently:

“They exist actively in Japan, honorable sir. Though you ignore them,
they will force themselves upon you—as to-night, excellency!”

The Tojin-san frowned slightly. Then, thoughtfully, he emptied his pipe
on the old bronze hibachi.

“You wish me to believe that my visitor to-night was a—spirit?”

“She was worse,” said the officer earnestly, “for she was invested with
at least the form of a human being.”

“How do you know she is not human?”

It was the Japanese’s turn to frown. His narrow eyes drew sternly
together. His voice was stubborn. He spoke as if determined to justify
some indisputable course he had taken.

“She is unlike us in any way, exalted sir. No human being ever was
created with such fiendish beauty. Her acts are those of the gaki,
moreover. She is mischievous, impish, wicked, delighting as much in
torturing and frightening the poor as well as the rich, little children
as well as their elders. The birds of the air come at her calling and
follow her whithersoever she bids them. Degraded dogs and cats, forlorn
beasts of the mountains and the forests are her body-guard, defying mere
human beings to molest or take her. Her home is among the tombs of Sho
Kon Sha. She is of the Temple Tokiwa, long forsaken of men and accursed
by the gods.”

The Tojin-san raised himself with a show of more interest.

“A temple housing your dreaded fox-woman!” he exclaimed, whimsically.

“Yes, alas so, excellency,” admitted the Japanese miserably. “Her mother
was Nii-no-Ama (noble nun of second rank) and kin to our august Prince.
She broke her vows to the Lord Buddha, desecrated and disgraced his
temple. The gods visited their wrath upon her offspring. They gave it a
body only—no soul, save that of the fox. She is beyond the pale, honored
sir, and no clean being may look upon or touch her.”

The Tojin-san, sitting up erectly now, was holding his lower lip
thoughtfully between thumb and forefinger.

“Your fox-woman then is some sort of outcast, who has lived all her life
avoided by her kind?”

“She had the company of her degraded parents,” said the officer gruffly,
“until she was the age of ten. Then a zealous band of former Danka
(parishioners) assaulted the temple by fire and sword. The parents of
the fox-woman met a deserved death, being literally torn to pieces
before the very altar of Great Shaka himself.”

The Daimio’s officer paused, his little black eyes glittering with a
fanatical light. Then the exhilaration dropped from his voice.

“But the ways of the Lord Buddha are strange. How could the devoted
Danka conceive that Shaka would turn his wrath upon them also, for thus
scorching his altar with unclean blood. Since the Restoration,
excellency, our city’s history has been one of blood and poverty. Some
assert the province is doomed. Others, more optimistic, that it is but
passing through its new birth pains, and that, as of old, its history
will be glorious.”

The Tojin-san puffed at his relighted pipe in meditative silence. Then,
very quietly, he asked:

“Do you lay the misfortunes of your province upon this fox-woman, as you
call her?”

“Aye!” said the officer almost fiercely. “The hand of Fate fell heaviest
upon us after the assassination of the intruder. We have never recovered
from the humiliations heaped upon us by—the countries of the West. The
bombardment of beloved Kagoshima by the allied forces of the western
nations followed almost instantly after the death by violence of—”

He stopped abruptly, and coughed in gruff alarm behind his now
sheltering fan. He had been upon the verge of telling what had been
forbidden.

The Tojin-san looked puzzled, baffled.

“I do not see the connection,” he said.

“Yet—it is so,” said the Japanese vaguely, shifting his eyes from the
averted faces of the samourai guard.

Said the American forcefully:

“It seems to me an amazing thing that to-day when you are frankly hoping
to join the nations of enlightenment, you still give yourselves up to
barbarous persecution because of what, after all, is nothing but a
legend fit for children only. For my part, I intend to sweep from my
house vigorously the absurd belief I find actually seated on my
hearth-stone.”

The Japanese said solemnly:

“There are several things in life it is impossible to do, exalted sir.
We cannot throw a stone to the sun, or scatter a fog with a fan. We
cannot build a bridge to the clouds. With this little hand I cannot dip
up the ocean. We bow to the elevated wisdom of the West your excellency
has come to teach us in honorable chemistry and physics, but, though we
humbly solicit pardon for thus stating, there is nothing your augustness
can tell us of our own beliefs—and knowledge.”

He made a slight, stiff sign to his attendants and they assisted him to
arise. The American stood up also. He was smiling grimly.

“When the snows melt,” he said, “I shall ask for guides of your
excellency, and personally make a pilgrimage to the lair of this dreaded
fox-woman of the mountains.”

At that the Daimio’s officer’s face distinctly paled. His impassive
features were anxious, troubled.

“What does your augustness seek to do?—regenerate one without a soul?”

“I wish merely to see her. She must be an interesting specimen—of her
kind.”

“‘Making an idol does not give it a soul,’” quoted the Daimio’s officer,
solemnly. “Honored sir, a snake has its charm to some, and the vampire
is kin to the snake. In Japan we believe the fox-woman one form of
vampire. Condescend, exalted sir, to beware.”

The Tojin-san laughed shortly, contemptuously. He was a man of gigantic
stature, and as he stood there towering above his gleaming-eyed visitor
there was something about his attitude careless, indifferent, fearless,
and beyond the understanding of the Oriental. With a morbid recollection
of specific instructions from his Prince, the officer restrained his
fingers, turned almost automatically toward the two short swords hanging
at his side.

“It is my duty, excellent sir,” he said with forced courtesy, “to
convince you of the danger wherewith you seek to play. Condescend to
permit the humble one once again to be seated.”

“By all means,” said the American, hospitably, and, in a moment, they
were back seated upon their respective mats, their pipes refilled at the
hibachi.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                   IV


“YOU have stated, honored sir, that the Fox-Woman of Atago Yama is but a
superstition worthy of a child, and you have laughed, Mr. sir, at the
possibility of danger from proximity with the forsaken creature. Thus
spoke and laughed another before your time in Fukui. We of Echizen do
not forget the very recent fate of Gihei Matsuyama.”

“And pray who was Gihei Matsuyama, and what was his fate?” asked the
Tojin-san, good-humoredly.

The fanatical fire was back in the eyes of the officer. He had thrust
forward his thin, yellow face and was regarding the Tojin-san with an
almost venomous glance. His words, however, were pacific, and, as he
talked, the American showed a greater interest with every moment.

“We sent seven of our youths to the universities of the West. They were
chosen from the most intelligent and noblest of our families. Gihei
Matsuyama was one of these, and in him we had particular interest, for
he was of Fukui. After two years’ sojourn in Europe he returned for
service in Dai Nippon, and we gave him a position of honor and housed
him in an honorable yashiki hard by Atago Yama.

“As a youth—as a child, he had known the story of the fox-woman. His
honorable sire and other male kin had participated in the slaughter of
the parents of the creature. Now with this new wisdom he had acquired in
the West, as fresh as new-spread varnish upon him, Gihei laughed to
scorn the stories of her fiendish origin, and boasted he would dissipate
them as the air does the steam. Making a bold and ingenuous wager that
he would enslave the sprite, he set himself the task of tracking her.
Unaided by even the counsel of the priests of neighboring temples, he
blithely followed the trail of the witch over the river, through the
woods and mountains and in and out of the cemeteries, until he had
driven her to her final refuge—the Temple of Tokiwa, wherein no man had
stepped since the accursed blood spilt before the eye of the eternal
Lord.”

Here the Daimio’s high officer reverently bowed to the floor, ere he
continued his narrative, his eyes gleaming more fiercely as he
proceeded.

“As he hesitated upon the threshold, divided between a desire to
penetrate its mysteries, and an instinct which peremptorily bade him
depart, she came forth from the temple doors dancing, as the nuns of old
danced for the gods, with her wild, unbound hair outmatching the sun,
and her hungry, vivid, smiling lips scarlet as the deadly poppy. He,
having looked upon her face, became blinded to all else on earth.
Infatuated and maddened, he sought to touch, to seize the creature, when
she fled suddenly before him, mocking him with the silver laughter of
the sea-siren and hiding her face in the glimmering veil of her hair.

“Thus they sped on, she ever before him, with her luring hair streaming
like a gilded cloud in the wind, springing as lightly as a breeze from
rock to rock, over brooks and slender streams that melted in between, up
this cliff and down that dell and through this valley, on and on she led
the infatuated seeker.

“Suddenly, while his dazzled eyes were fastened solely upon her, and he
reached forth a hand to seize her, she darted like a nymph over some
unseen chasm of the mountains. He stumbled in her tracks, reached out
vainly to seize her, saw not the gulf at his feet, and plunged headlong
down into the abyss.”

The mask-like face of the Daimio’s officer quivered. He wiped his face
with a hand that shook visibly. Then, rejecting his breath in that
hissing fashion so peculiar to the Japanese, he added fiercely:

“This, honorable sir, is the story of Gihei Matsuyama and the Fox-Woman
of Atago Yama. It belongs not to the lips only of the children, as you
name them, but is true, well-authenticated history, which any one in
Fukui can prove to you.”

The Tojin-san was silenced. He had followed the officer’s story with
unabated interest. He had no word now in defense of this Japanese
Lorelei. His voice was grave, stern:

“What did she do—when the boy disappeared?”

“There are different stories, honored sir. Some say she not even stopped
in her flight. Others that she came of nights and hung over the edges of
the chasm, shrouding her mouth in her hands and calling to her victim
beneath as if she had the power to lure him back. But we have no certain
version of this part of the tragedy. For the first part, we have the
tale, four times repeated, from the body-servants of Gihei Matsuyama,
who dutifully had followed their master upon his wild quest.”

The Daimio’s high officer arose and made several profound obeisances to
the Tojin-san. His face had resumed its immobile melancholy. As he was
backing formally toward the exit, bowing at every step, the American
suddenly remembered his name. He took a step toward him, his hand
impetuously outstretched:

“Pardon me, the boy you speak of was—near and dear to you, was he not?”

Slowly the officer raised his head. Not a quiver broke the stony
impassivity of his face. His eyes met the Tojin’s blankly:

“He was—my son!” he said.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                   V


THE sense of discouragement and gloom which had seemed to take full hold
upon the Tojin-san on his first night in Fukui was, after all, but
temporary. He awoke the following morning, feeling refreshed and
invigorated. The sun was pouring into his room, gilding even the
farthest corner with a friendly touch. He jumped out of bed, donned a
warm bath-robe and shoved his feet into fur slippers. Crossing the room
in a few quick strides, he threw open one of the latticed sliding doors.

It was a clear, cold day, but the snow, enshrouding trees and ground,
glistened with the warm sun upon it. The army of crows on the roof of
the go-down were chattering and fighting among themselves like magpies,
and a monkey, swinging by one foot from a camphor bough, shook its fist
playfully in his direction, screwing up its face in apparent derision.

From the direction of the narrow river, which threaded its ribbon-like
way in the valley below, a rollicking voice was heard in song, and,
presently, the owner of the voice climbed up the crest of the slope,
skirted the sunken garden hard by the Tojin-san’s windows and moved
across the lawns toward the kitchen regions in the rear. She was a
great, fat girl, whose enormous, muscular arms were balancing on either
side huge pails of water. As she waddled along, wheezing and singing,
she resembled, to the Tojin-san’s humorous sense, a bag of jelly, her
bosoms and thighs shaking at every step, her fat soft cheeks keeping
time in unison. Close upon her heels, and, himself carrying two smaller
pails of water, the cook’s diminutive heir toddled solemnly after her.

It was he who first perceived the Tojin-san at the opened door, and he
promptly dropped his pails upon the serving-maid’s heels, causing her to
kick backward in squalling alarm as the cold water splashed about her
bare legs and drenched her scanty skirts. Doubtless she would have
punished her small charge, had she not at this juncture also perceived
the Tojin. Her thick red lips fell instantly agape. She stared at him in
a stunned wonder. Then her knees began to wabble, and she attempted to
make an obeisance. With every kowtow she essayed, the waters from her
pails bounced up and merrily splashed her. The Tojin-san burst into
hearty laughter, and after a moment maid and youngster joined in his
mirth. They then scuttled off like a pair of panic-stricken rats, their
shining, wet heels flashing like snowballs in the sun behind them.

This simple domestic incident put the Tojin-san into an excellent humor
at once. As he looked after the comical pair, and then turned back to
gaze, entranced, at the magnificent view on all sides of him, his garden
exquisite even in its winter dress, he marvelled at his gloom of the
previous night. Then his glance went upward, travelled across the pure
blue sky, and rested upon the snowy bosoms of Atago Yama and Hakusan.
Suddenly he thought of the fox-woman. There was something chill,
forbidding, sinister in those great, beautiful mountains of snow,
looming out there in the sunny sky. He pictured this forsaken creature
threading her bleak way under the towering frost-incrusted pines. The
gloom of the previous night fell upon him again like a shadow.
Shivering, he went indoors, snapping the closed latticed doors behind
him.

A fine horse had been provided for the American teacher, and he rode
abroad through the streets of Fukui, under an escort sent by the Prince
of Echizen himself. Everywhere the friendly and curious citizens ran out
to see the white-faced teacher, and bows and smiles were the general
rule on all sides.

Occasionally, however, he met the scowling, threatening glance of some
roving samourai, who, the interpreter explained, under the new order of
things, was out of office and consequently a ronin. It was one of the
unfortunate effects of the Restoration that so many men of the sword,
who had previously been supported by the people as retainers in the
service of princely houses, now found themselves without aristocratic
employment, and, too proud to turn to trade, or other equally debasing
labor, they wandered about the provinces, voicing their discontent of
the order of things, picking quarrels on the slightest provocation, and
prophesying dread things for the empire when it should fall under the
dominion and patronage of the nations of the West. The ronins were all
Jo-i (foreign haters), and they alone the Tojin-san need fear. Happily,
the Prince of Echizen had furnished an adequate guard for his
protection, and the students of the college, themselves samourai, or
sons of samourai, were all pledged to protect the Tojin-san from harm.

Presently they arrived at the school, an enormous building, once the
citadel of the Castle, and here nine hundred students received the
Tojin-san with a veritable ovation.

As he stood straightly before them, looking across at that sea of bright
friendly faces, is it any wonder he recalled another scene in America,
so similar, yet dissimilar, and that his heart went out yearningly to
the youths facing him?

These intelligent, eager-faced boys were looking to him to guide and
lead them. And, in turn, already they had pledged themselves to be his
vital friends and allies. He felt emboldened, courageous, proud, elated.
Not for a moment would he have retraced his steps to that other land he
had regretted.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                   VI


IN the Tojin-san’s absence several aggravating accidents had happened in
his house. While little Taro, the cook’s youngest child, was sitting on
the doorstep in the sun, nibbling on a sammari sembei (thunder cake),
suddenly from behind an adjacent pine-tree the fox-woman had appeared,
and before the frightened child could open its mouth to scream she had
pounced upon him, nipped the cake cleanly from his hand and was off.

The child’s nurse (who was none other than the fat wench of the
morning), who adored her charge, and had already herself suffered at the
hands of the mountain witch, rushed out valiantly at the child’s loud
cry of alarm. Her fury getting the better of her fear, she started in
pursuit of their tormentor.

The latter she discovered serenely seated upon the topmost bough of a
bamboo-tree, where she was demolishing the rice cracknel at her leisure.
From this perch she threw white pebbles, with which her sleeves seemed
loaded, down upon the head of the irate Obun, and while the latter was
execrating her and calling upon Ema (the Lord of Hell) to come to her
assistance the fox-woman slid down the bamboo trunk so swiftly and so
silently she was beside the terrified serving-maid before the latter
knew. She felt her arms caught in a sudden squeezing grip. Sharp fingers
sank into her thick, fat flesh, crept up along her arms to her
shoulders, nipped at her breast, her neck, her cheeks, her great
muscular legs, and with a last vicious tweak at her nose, the fox-woman
had again vanished.

The kitchen was in an uproar, the cook’s wife in hysterics, and Obun
herself reduced to such a state of stunned terror it was impossible to
get her to stir from a corner of the kitchen whither she had fled like a
whipped dog for refuge.

The Tojin-san, as master of the house, was besought to lend his
honorable assistance and advice. He ordered that Obun be brought before
him.

After some delay there was a sound as of scuffling and shoving in the
hall, and presently the perspiring face of the cook was seen through the
parted screens. He was pushing something which looked like a great soft
ball along before him, and, in turn, ordering and pleading with the
object in question to stand upon its feet and help itself. He was
assisted in his pushing endeavors by a small army of lesser menials of
the kitchen, who took turns in pushing and shoving the unwilling Obun
into the presence of her dread master, the Tojin-san. Presently she was
at his feet, her face hidden on the floor.

“Come, come!” said he, suppressing his inclination to laugh. “Stand up,
my good girl.”

This was translated in sharp peremptory tones by his interpreter:

“Thou worm of a slattern! Rise to thy degraded and filthy feet. How dare
thee bring agitation into the chamber of the Guai-koku-jin [outside
countryman] guest and protégé of His Imperial Highness the terrible
Prince of Echizen.”

Whereupon Obun came tremblingly to her feet, and shaking from head to
foot, raised a pair of eyes that rolled with terror to the face of the
Tojin-san. What she saw there must have reassured her. The rugged
features of the giant foreigner were softened humorously. In the keen
gray eyes bent upon her she saw nothing but kindness and understanding.
Instantly she began to whimper, like a great baby unexpectedly
comforted.

“You are in trouble, my good girl,” said the Tojin, in his deep, kindly
voice. “Pray tell me what ails you.”

And the interpreter translated:

“Repeat to your terrible and inflexible master the incidents of the
morning, and arouse not his dreadful wrath with vain exaggerations and
lies.”

She opened her lips to speak, encouraged by his smile, closed them
again, and mutely uncovered first her arms, then her neck, and finally
her great soft breast.

The Tojin-san, his brows now drawn in a slight frown together, examined
the girl’s wounds, and with the quick eye of a surgeon instantly
perceived their nature. She had been pinched sharply by little
relentless fingers which had evidently flown with lightning swiftness
from one portion of the hapless maid’s body to the other, and finally
with a last mischievous tweak had left their mark upon the round bit of
putty which served Obun for a nose. The Tojin-san whistled under his
breath. Obun had certainly been the victim of a most curious and
spiteful antagonist.

He gave some brief directions for healing the wounds, and then turning
gravely to his interpreter admonished his servants for their excitement
and foolish fears.

Undoubtedly, Obun had got the worst of her fight with this fox-woman, as
they chose to name her; but probably, had she not permitted herself to
be overcome with fears, she might have left her own mark upon her
assailant also. It was vain and foolish to regard this troublesome one
who annoyed them so often in the light of a spirit or witch or ghost, as
they believed her to be. There were no such things in the world.

The interpreter repeated these instructions with personal
embellishments, and the little army of servitors with sidelong glances
of wonder and awe at their master sucked in and expelled their breaths,
and, with final servile bumping of heads to the floor, retreated
kitchenward.

The Tojin-san remained for a moment apparently plunged in puzzled
thought. Suddenly he turned toward his interpreter, who was regarding
him with popping eyes of interest. Indeed no move, no word, no action of
the white man escaped the notice of Genji Negato, who found him an
object of absorbing interest and wonder. His manner of eating, his
manner of sleeping, his manner of thinking, talking—all things about
him, were a source of wonder and entertainment to the young samourai,
who was more than satisfied with this interesting position he had
obtained.

“Genji,” now said the Tojin-san abruptly, “you have seen something of
the world. At all events you have lived in the open ports among people
of other lands. You speak English excellently and must have read
considerably. Tell me what is your opinion of this fox-woman?”

Genji Negato was all flattered smiles. He drew up his well-groomed
shoulders in a profound French shrug.

“It would give me supreme pleasure to agree with your excellency,” he
said ambiguously, and smiled apologetically.

“I see,” said the Tojin-san, “you, too! Why?”

The stiff expression on the interpreter’s face relaxed. In a blurt of
confidence he said:

“I have felt the fox-woman’s touch also, honored sir,” and blushed like
a boy at the admission.

The Tojin-san was smiling broadly.

“Ah! When?”

“The first night in your service, excellency—a month before your
coming.”

“Indeed. Tell me about it.”

“I was changing duty with Samourai Hirata. As a large amount of
provisions had been put in the storerooms it was necessary to mount
guard at various points of the Shiro and the grounds. I was assigned by
the Daimio’s officer to the lodge gates, and there, to my humiliating
condemnation be it said, I fell asleep. I carried with me a box
containing my rations for the night, and this was strapped upon my back.
I am addicted to sleeping on my honorable belly, which your excellency
is aware is the proper position for all sleeping animals—to which
kingdom I unworthily belong.

“While I slept, I dreamed I was climbing down a mountain-side when
suddenly an avalanche of rock and earth swooped down upon my defenceless
back, pinioning me to the ground with the excess of its weight. I sought
to throw off the burden, shaking my shoulders from side to side, and as
I cast back my hands, the better to seize it, something caught them in a
quick, elastic grip. I rolled over bodily, and, as I opened my eyes,
perceived the fox-woman leaning over me. She had cut loose the straps of
my luncheon-box and was drawing it from under my back when, with a cry
of rage, I caught her by the shoulders and pulled her down upon me in a
vise-like grip. The blood rushed to her unearthly white face, her
piercing wild eyes blazed upon mine till my own eyeballs felt afflicted
as if with fire. I felt her breath, sweet as the Spring, coming yet
nearer and nearer to my face. I was like one inebriated by saké, with
but one impulse, one desire, to feel the actual touch of her unhuman
face against my own. As finally we touched cheek to cheek, honored
excellency, my fingers released their grip. Just as they did so a sharp
pain stabbed me in the cheek. Before I could regain my wits the witch
was gone.”

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.

As the American looked at them, nerving themselves thus bravely for an
encounter which to them at least was a deadly one, he suddenly thought
of that frail, fleeing shadow which had gone before him in the gloom of
the unlighted halls, and, unconsciously, he smiled. Why, boys as they
were, any one of them could surely have crushed her between the palms of
his sinewy young hands. If there were a real risk to run, he knew he
would be the first to thrust himself in their way. But no! The
undertaking was worth while, necessary, indeed, if only for the purpose
of demonstrating the foolishness and cruelty of superstition. Even the
melancholy tones of his favorite pupil, chanting almost monotonously the
Buddhist text:

“Brief is the time of pleasure, and quickly turns to pain, and
whatsoever is born must necessarily die,” failed to move him.

Young heroic fatalists! His heart went out to them overwhelmingly.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                   X


THEY had dug a trench hard by the castle moat. Over this they spread a
net made of stout hempen rope, the edges of which were threaded in and
out with elastic of great strength. This was stretched out and pinned,
not too firmly, till it encircled and covered the pit. Then the sod and
leaves and flower petals were carefully, though thinly, replaced, and
the trap was ready for the Fox-Woman of Atago Yama.

Over all the Matsuhaira Shiro a tense, silent excitement pervaded.
Though the students had worked in secret, swiftly and silently on a
dusky, rainy night, when their prey would not be likely to be abroad,
nevertheless no smallest menial on the place but knew that measures had
been taken to entrap the fox-woman. They shivered deliciously over the
dreadful prospect, for dire things had been promised them by the too
garrulous Genji Negato, should any slightest inkling of the plans leak
out from the Shiro itself.

Even the Tojin-san, who had been kept in complete ignorance of the
actual methods they had taken to entrap her, was affected by that
nameless feeling of uneasiness and unquiet, of repressed excitement and
strained fear, which animated every other individual of his household.

Throughout the evening he paced his great chamber in a moody, wretched
silence. The sense of aloneness, of homesickness that sometimes came
upon him in this land, seemed somehow this night to be deeper, more
depressing. For days, indeed, he had been affected by a feeling of
impending gloom and disaster. He had been restless, dissatisfied,
nervous—unconsciously listening and waiting for something he seemed to
expect was about to happen. Now he found himself analyzing this sick
sense of depression which had pervaded his whole being these latter
days, and seemed to reach its culmination on this silent night.

Was it something in the look or tone of a student who recalled one of
his own people, or was it the letters that had come to him from across
the seas that made him realize they had cared for him more in that other
country than he had realized? No—he faced the situation. This was not
what had awakened the fever within him.

It was something deeper, something very beautiful and mystic. It was the
golden hair of this Japanese Lorelei which had ensnared his longing! He
could not banish its glitter, its “sun” as they called it here, its wild
appeal from his mind. What was this creature of the mountains then, whom
the gentlest of people had outcast? And what was this spell they said
she had cast upon him? The words seized upon his fancy, writhed his lips
into a tortured smile. He, whom a mere woman had scorned, under the
spell of a witch—a wild creature of these Japanese mountains whose face
he had never even seen! It was preposterous—fantastic! And yet!

The blood forsook his face, his lips. For days, for weeks, aye, for
months he had thought of little else. Through half the luminous nights
he had watched and waited for her—had sought her desperately, hungrily.
Day and night he had been waiting for her—waiting and listening, always
listening, for that appealing voice of mockery and anguish that called
to him insistently—to him alone! What mad fancies were these that had
woven themselves like a subtle spider’s web into his clear, sane mind?
It was the country, the people! He was in a land of gods and spirits!

The night was very still and humid. The rain was gone, but its wet touch
still clung in the air and was moist upon the grass and trees. The shoji
of the chamber had been removed entirely on the garden side, so that he
practically was out-of-doors in an open pavilion or verandah. He could
see the moon-tipped branches of the trees under whose shade myriad
fireflies flickered in and out, rivalling the distant stars above them
in brilliancy.

A cherry grove, from which blew fairy flakes, like confetti at a
carnival, was at the extremity of the garden, and ever and anon a shower
of these dancing-petals blew into his apartment, giving it an almost
festive air. Great drifts of them lay in the corners of the room, like
snow, and upon his couch, his tables, chairs and other furnishings,
marking them with a white touch. In the shadow of a bamboo grove an
uguisu thrilled forth its liquid song, and the wind-bells on the eaves
tinkled musically back and forth in a faint breeze, as if in unison with
the song of the wood-bird.

From across the mountains came the gentle booming of the temple bells,
telling the hour of the night, and, as if they were a signal listened
for, the fox-woman crept out of the dense bamboo grove and felt her way
among the shadows till she came to the brink of the castle moat. Along
its edge she wended her fleet, cautious way, till she came to a narrow
wing, and over this she stepped silently. In the vague light of the
moon, she seemed indeed a wraith, in her clinging gown of white,
enshrouded in the wild veil of her hair. On and on she moved, as though
she travelled over known and familiar paths.

Suddenly, piercingly, in the still moonlight sounded the cry of the
fox-woman, and, as suddenly, a silence fell, still as death itself. It
was as if every living thing had paused to listen to that appealing cry
of agony and terror.

Silence! No one stirring. No one breathing.

Then, as if brought violently into life, the Tojin-san bounded to his
feet, and in the light of the swinging takahiras, for a moment his great
form loomed up menacingly. From all parts of the estate now came the
sound of movement, and he saw the samourai guard, their gleaming swords
drawn fully and flashing eerily in the moonlight, charge down blindly in
the direction of the cry. Within the woods came the sound of battle, the
rumble of men’s savage, triumphant voices—a wild stirring and crying,
and then again—the silence!

Presently from out the brush they came, bearing their burden—stalwart
men of war, all with their hands upon her. Out along the whitewashed
paths, across the green-clipped lawns and through the garden of
fragrant, blowing flowers they carried the fox-woman into the
cherry-petalled chamber of the Tojin-san. There they set her down, still
entangled, like a wild beast of the woods, in the net they had made to
snare her.

Unmoving she lay, as one indeed in whom life was extinct; but when the
Tojin-san moved with an impulse of passionate yearning toward her, the
boy Junzo, who loved him, sprang in his path.

“Touch her not, beloved sensei! She is accursed, unclean!”


[Illustration:

  “TOUCH HER NOT, BELOVED SENSEI!
  SHE IS ACCURSED, UNCLEAN!”]


He put the boy roughly, savagely aside, and in a moment was kneeling
above her. It was the task of a minute to cut free the bonds that bound
her. Still she did not move. With hands that trembled in spite of
themselves, gently, softly, he put back from her face the glittering
veil of her hair, and as he did so his heart came up in his throat in a
great, suffocating bound—for the face he uncovered was that of a white
woman!

So perfect, so exquisite the small, sensitive face, he could only gaze
upon it spell-bound. The great purple eyes, wide open, and shadowed with
their long, gilded lashes; the thin little nose; the lips red as a new
blown rose, and as sweet!—and crowning it all, the golden glory of her
hair.

In this land where only the brown face and densely black hair and eyes
had been known for centuries, was it strange that this creature of the
mountains seemed as of another world—a sprite indeed. This persecuted,
hunted creature, whom they had trapped with ropes, as the hunter does
the wild animals of the forests; this fragile, trembling, quivering
little child—of his own skin and blood—_this_ was the fox-woman!

She spoke not at all, though her wide-open eyes never moved from the
Tojin’s face. Something in their glassy stare, their curious look as of
a mist before them, brought an exclamation to his lips. He bent nearer
to her, looked deeply, keenly into those unflickering eyes, and an
imprecation swept his lips.

“And blind! My God!” he cried.

As if his voice had moved her spirit into a sudden life, the fox-woman
stirred soundlessly as a cat would have done. Suddenly she leaped
blindly in the face of the Tojin. He stood unmoving, a great stolid wall
against which she might hurl her puny strength in vain.

Presently, gasping, exhausted, she drew backward, her fluttering hands
crushed upon her heart as if to stop its frantic beating. A sound that
had the vaguest, most piteous of human notes came from the fox-woman’s
lips, and suddenly, with the motion of a lost child in despair, she
buried her face in the fragile shelter of her hands.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                   XI


SHE was the daughter of the damyuraisu (foreign sailor) and of the
Nii-no-ama (Noble Nun of second rank). Bit by bit he drew forth her
history from the students, who remained with him throughout the night.
There was little enough they could tell him, beyond the fact of her
parentage. Her father had betrayed his friend and benefactor, an Echizen
prince; her mother had broken her vows to the Lord Buddha. And the
creature herself! Now the Tojin-san could see for himself that the tales
told about her were by no means chimerical.

She was free to go, for he had cut the ropes that bound her. Though
blind, she could have found any exit of the chamber unaided. She made
not the slightest move to go. Crouched back there against the farthest
wall she stayed, with her wild flushed face peering out from between her
parted hair, the eyes wide open, unblinking, scarcely moving. If she
understood what they spoke, she made no sign; yet her face had a
strained, listening look—as though she heard strange sounds that both
baffled and troubled her.

The dawn crept into the chamber, murky and sunless, and found them still
there on guard as it were, with the distance of almost the entire room
between them and the fox-woman, but watching her with unabated emotion.
It was the Tojin-san who at last approached her. She sensed his coming
and shrank back farther, if that were possible against the wall. Now he
stood directly before her, studying her in a profound silence.

Slowly, cautiously she raised herself to her knees, and then to her
feet. Now she stood fairly facing him, her back against the wall. A
thin, searching little hand felt blindly before her, touched him. With a
quick, animated movement her fingers now flew from his hand, up along
his arm and shoulder, paused upon his pitted cheek, moved to his lips
and rested there, soft as a feather, fragrant as a flower.

Never in all the days of his life had he looked upon such a face as
hers. Every quivering, sensitive feature seemed alive with the
quickened, subtle sense of the blind. Even the little feeling fingers,
how mortally alive they were, as they swept with their light, electrical
touch across him!

When he put his great, firm hands upon her shoulders, he felt the shock,
the startling tremble that agitated her. She stood poised for flight,
uncertain, fearful, with the wild defiance of her nature only in part
checked; but as his deep, compassionate voice addressed her, she became
gradually passive and very still.

“You may not understand my words,” he said, “but you will their meaning.
I want to help you. I am your friend.”

Her eyes became curiously blue, and the misty look faded like a shadow
from their depths. Across the tremulous, scarlet lips a smile crept like
the dawn. She moved a step nearer to him, and as he regarded her,
fascinated, thrilled, the student, Junzo, broke the spell of silence. He
had thrust himself forward with an impetuous, imploring motion.

“Sensei!—honored sir, teacher—!”

She turned her head craftily in the direction of the new voice, then
slowly back to the Tojin-san. There was a low, accusing note in her
voice:

“To-o-jin-san! Thou too!” she said.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XII


THE Palace Matsuhaira, wherein the courteous Prince of Echizen had
housed the foreign teacher, had lost all but two of its tenants. The
odorous kitchens where but lately the army of servants had happily and
noisily labored were now quite empty. So were the vast, cool halls, and
the great, bare chambers. Like an army of rats, one and all, they had
deserted the place, leaving the Tojin-san alone, save for that unseen
one, who alternatively teased and entreated him.

Even the faithful students, who had brought about her capture, had
ceased to visit the Shiro, having vainly implored the Tojin-san to
abandon the place. With a grim and stubborn patience, he kept doggedly
to the course he had set himself.

All over the house he found traces of her. Now she had slept in this
chamber, now in that. Here she had prepared her diminutive, stolen meal
of fruit, honey, and rice.

He was aware of her constant nearness, and had he so desired, at almost
any moment, he could have again seen her; but he was taking a more
subtle means this time to entrap her. She must come forth of her own
free will; then he would know he had her confidence, that she knew him
for a friend. He found himself talking to her, sometimes sternly, in the
chiding, coaxing tone one uses to a child. He would move from screen to
screen as he talked, until he knew behind which one she pressed; but he
made no effort to force her from her hiding-place.

Never a word would she speak in response until he was seated far removed
from the sheltering screens, then she would begin reiterating the one
appealing, accusing sentence:

“Tojin-san, thou too! thou too!”

It was as if she knew no other words of her father’s language. He
pondered their meaning. What was it she asked of him? Of what accused
and reproached him? Did she hold him responsible for the manner of her
capture—its cruelty? He told her in slow, forceful words that he had
known nothing of this, and waited in anxiety for some word or sound from
her to indicate that at least she understood. She only laughed, that
soft, mocking, tremulous little laugh with its inner sound of tears.

The burning, humid days of June slipped by on drowsy wing. School was
closed for the season, and the foreign sensei was at liberty to travel
if he wished upon his vacation. The samourai body-guard were anxious to
attend him upon any expedition that would take them away from the Shiro.
Genji Negato was available, outside the place. Every cringing, fearful,
cowardly servant, who still drew wages from the Daimio’s high officer,
was anxious again to serve him. They made up deputations and committees,
which fearfully approached the mansion, and threw their messages in
little balls that pelted against the paper summer walls of the shoji and
pierced their way into the Tojin-san’s apartment. And still not once did
he venture forth.

Every sliding door and screen he had himself put in place. He did not
venture outside the house, even to step into the grounds. And a strange
restless rumor began to float about the little town below, which told of
the spell which chained the white man.

Meanwhile within the mansion itself, the Tojin-san was winning a strange
victory. Timidly, like a fascinated wild bird, now approaching, now
retreating, nearer and yet nearer, had come the fox-woman. There came a
day when, though he did not turn to look at her, fearing instantly to
lose her, she stood at last revealed. Only a few paces from him, there
of her own free will, timorous, trembling, but unafraid.

Her name was Tama (Jewel). She told it to him voluntarily, her hand upon
her breast. He had not even asked her, nor did he by the slightest
motion reveal the eager emotion her words aroused when he found they
were spoken in his own tongue. Haltingly, uncertainly, like a child for
the first time feeling for its words, she essayed to speak.

“I am Tama,” softly she said, and then, as if enchanted by her ability
to speak actual words to one who might hear and understand, she lapsed
into excited, trembling speech, wholly unintelligible to the Tojin-san,
for it was a medley of both her father and her mother tongue, neither of
which she could properly speak.

Suddenly she stopped abruptly, as if affrighted by her own bravado, and
her fears again besetting her panically she retreated behind the
screens. For the rest of that day, at least, he saw nothing further of
her. But he was well pleased with matters as they were. It was worth
waiting for this, he told himself. As he paced his chamber, he made no
effort to curb the exhilarating excitement that pervaded his whole
being.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XIII


TWO days later she again came forth from her hiding-place. He had been
aware of her hovering nearness all through the morning, but made no
effort to induce her to come to him. One may entrap a wild bird; one
cannot make it sing. He knew the course he was taking with her was
right; he was exuberantly, boyishly happy at its evident success.

Shyly, trustingly, of her own free will, again she had come to him. On
the sensitive questioning face there was scarcely a trace of the wild,
impish defiance that had seemed on that first day its only expression.
She even smiled tentatively, pleadingly, as though she sought in this
wise to win his approval. He spoke to her quietly, as though her
presence there were but natural:

“Won’t you be seated?” he said.

She hesitated a moment, sat a moment, rose to her knees uncertainly, and
gradually subsided to the mat. Her face was down-drooped, the little
white hands folded meekly in her lap.

“You are not Japanese,” said the Tojin-san, gently. It was a simple,
clear statement. If she understood anything of his language, it would be
plain to her what he meant. A marvellous flush spread over her eager
little face. The humid, misty eyes were clear as blue-bells now. A sound
like an excited sob, half laugh, escaped her.

“Nipponese?” she said. “No—me? I am—To-o-jin-san!”

Her hands went out to him in a sudden impulsive motion. She moved on her
knees nearer to him.

“Ah,” she cried, “speag those words of my father! Thas—beautiful!”

He was deeply moved, and took the little hands closely in his own. They
were soft and small, clinging and confiding as a child’s. How they
trembled and fluttered at first; then rested still, as if with a joyous
new confidence.

He could not bear to look at her beseeching face. In all the days of her
life he knew he was the first she had not held at bay. She knew mankind
only as creatures of prey. Was this the mocking sprite of the mountains,
who even when entangled in the ropes of the hunter had fought so
desperately, so savagely? What could he say to her, what words of
assurance that would penetrate her full understanding? As he pondered
the matter, he saw the startled change that swept suddenly across her
face. The hands in his own grew tense, rigid, clung to his own in a
passionate frenzy of fear.

“You are afraid of something? What is it?”

The old hunted, listening look was upon her face again. She was
shivering, trembling violently. Her voice came in a whispering gasp:

“I hear—those sound!” she said, her head uplifted.

Only a lazy breeze was stirring, and moving the wind-bells to and fro.
Suddenly he saw the silhouetted shadow on the shoji wall. It moved
silently, cautiously. Then the screens were slid soundlessly open, and
the student Junzo appeared. For a moment he remained staring down upon
them, his young face becoming gray and stern.

“Sensei! Then it is true!” he burst out, and the look of despair on his
face deepened.

The Tojin-san arose to his full gigantic height. His hand fell like a
heavy weight upon the shoulder of the youth. His voice was rough,
commanding.

“Look at this child, Takemoto Junzo. What is there you see in her to
fear—to hate?”

“Ah, you, beloved sensei,” cried the boy passionately, “are bewitched,
enchanted. Do I not see with my honorable eyes the change that has
befallen you? It is spoken of all over Fukui that you are in the toils
of this siren. I could not longer bear it, and, against my honorable
parent’s stern command, I came here to see for myself. Alas, it is too
true! You are bewitched, obsessed!”

The Tojin-san curbed his temper. His voice, though stern, was calm, as
though he sought to humor the boy.

“What is the change you observe in me then?”

“Your eyes are weak and soft like the dove’s. There is a melting, tender
look unfit for man upon your face. Your voice is gentle, like unto a
woman’s. It is as if—as if—the enamored weakness of a love possessed
you!”

“A love!” repeated the Tojin-san, as though the very word were new to
him. Suddenly a look of anguish came into his face, giving it a
poignant, withering expression.

The fox-woman had crept softly across the room. Now she leaned upon the
farthest shoji, her head lifted in a dreaming trance.

“Leave this accursed place with me to-day,” urged the boy entreatingly.
“My honorable father will gladly receive you as our honored guest. Throw
off the burden of this foul witch of the mountains. She can only soil
your excellency, and Fukui is prepared to mete out to her at last her
proper fate.”

“I am a white man,” said the Tojin-san slowly, in a deadly voice, and
never had his student seen such an expression upon his face before. “As
such I protect, not abandon, the women of my race. It will not be well
for Fukui if harm comes to either me, your guest and teacher, or to her,
whom I choose to befriend.”

“Sayonara, then, excellent sensei,” said the boy brokenly, “I have done
my best.”

As he pushed back the doors, the fox-woman glided soundlessly across his
path. The boy found himself looking directly into that shining face that
had distracted all who had gazed upon it. Breathing heavily, almost as
if he sobbed, he drew backward from her, his young face drawn and
shaken. She spoke not at all, though she touched him with a timid,
questioning hand. Something in the expression of the upturned face, in
the tears that stood like dew in the wide, sightless eyes, aroused a new
strangling emotion in the Japanese youth—reached at last his innermost
sense of chivalry. He threw up his arm, with a sudden motion almost as
of defense. Then, without a word or look backward, he jumped into the
garden below, and fled along its paths.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XIV


THE days stole by with light tread. Without the Shiro Matsuhaira events
of great national import were taking place. Fukui was disrupted, torn by
the new tide of events that was to alter its destiny, for the Yaku doshi
(evil years) were again upon them.

No longer were the provinces to be ruled by individual princes, for one
and all had come under the dominion of the Emperor.

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.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                   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!


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  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.

He did not reply, so obsessed was he still with the vision of her
loveliness. Throughout the golden afternoon he lay there watching her
every little movement, her slightest change of expression; thrilling
under the touch of her hands, the sound of her voice; obeying her
slightest request; permitting her to serve him as if he were a babe and
she his mother.

Gradually the murmuring of the crickets in the grass, the soft chirping
of the birds, even the babbling of the brook, the sighing of the gentle
breezes seemed to soften their tone to one concerted murmuring lullaby.
A veil crept gently over the sky, shutting out the sun and its light.

She put a pillow of pine needles beneath his head, and she covered him
over with a downy, silken mantle that smelled of temple incense and was
gorgeous beyond words with the golden embroidery of some sacred order.

And presently as he drowsed deliciously under the warm fragrant silk, he
felt her stirring at his feet, and her tired little voice came
whispering to him as if from very far away:

“Sayonara, Tojin-san! Imadzuka!” (Now we rest).


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XIX


ONE does not always count the gilded days of summer in the mountains. It
might have been a month, a week, or a few days in which the Tojin-san
and the fox-woman wandered over Atago Yama. But the season of Little
Heat passed into that of the Great Heat, and they did not know it.

The mountains were cool; there was a green wonder world about them. Soft
shadows flickered across the sun-burned paths; intangible breezes fanned
them with their scented breaths. They trod a carpeted paradise that was
all beauty, all harmony. They felt like the birds which blew over them,
or came shyly, timorously at her calling to share her morsel of rice and
berries.

Even had he desired to do so, the Tojin could not have found his way
back to the city. Seven-eighths of the province is mountain land, and
she had led him over paths she alone knew, and indeed had made—narrow,
hidden little paths that traced their unending way in and out the
densest portion of the wooded mountains.

They passed no humblest lodge, no smallest temple even, though he knew
that there were many in the mountains, and the music of their bells
reached them at times like the tingling call of a familiar voice very
far away.

She knew every secret corner of the mountains. The purest springs,
hidden pools and lakelets, caves of unbelievable wonder and beauty, she
showed now to the Tojin-san.

Clouds of sacred pigeons followed her as if they knew her. They were of
her own Temple Tokiwa, she told him, and were part of her heritage from
the ancestors of her mother who had founded the temple. She knew them
all—every single bird, so she told him proudly; knew, too, why they were
wandering thus far from home. They were seeking her, their guardian, who
had been gone for so many, many days.

For the first time she recoiled from him when he suggested that they
utilize the birds for food. Up till then they had depended entirely upon
the seemingly inexhaustible stores of rice she seemed to have hidden in
a hundred different places in the mountains, and upon the fish trapped
in the streams, the fruit and wild vegetables which were plentiful
enough. She had never dreamed of the pigeons as an addition to their
diet, and her expression was quite tragic and piteous.

“They are of the temple,” reverently she said. “The gods love them, and
I—I may not eat the forbidden meat.”

“Forbidden meat?”

She looked at him timidly with a new expression in her face. It was as
if a flame had crept into her eyes and set its touch upon her lips. She
had crossed her hands upon her bosom.

“I, too, am Ni-no ama, like unto my mother,” she softly said. “For both
our sin I got mek thad atonement unto Buddha!”

He regarded her in a spell-bound silence. There was something about her
words, her actions, withal their simplicity, that held a sacredness.
She, against whom the hostile hands of an entire Buddhist community had
been raised, a priestess of the Buddha! It was impossible, preposterous!
She had been but a child when her parents were killed. What could they
have taught her thus early?

She seemed to realize from his silence his doubts, and suddenly she
stepped back, raising her hands high above her head, bringing the tips
of the fingers together. A moment she stood with her face upraised, her
eyes closed.

“For you, oh Tojin-san, I will danze! It is as my mother have tich me
the danze for the gods. Haiken suru!” (Adoringly look).

From side to side she swayed, her small, exquisite hands moving in the
languorous motions of the dance. Never in even the greatest temples of
Kioto or Nikko had he seen a priestess perform as she was doing. He
thought of the glittering robes of the hundred nuns chanting their
splendid ritual before some gorgeous altar, of their impassive, stony
faces, their ebony hair, their narrow, inscrutable eyes. But she, with
her unbound hair of gold, her bosom and face of snow!

Yes, they were right, they of Fukui! She was an incarnation of the Sun
Goddess, tripping like the Spring upon the earth, and inspiring in the
hearts and eyes of all who saw her sensations of adoration, and of those
who dared not look, of fear—fear and hatred!

She had stolen the face and vestments of the goddess, so they had said;
but her soul was that of a fox!

There burst upon him suddenly a realization of the impassable gulf
between them, and with the knowledge came an overwhelming sense of
revolution, the mad, irresistible passion of the primitive man who knows
only his desires.

But a moment later she was at his feet, her pure, trusting face smiling
appealingly up at him.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                   XX


NOW came the Season of White Dew. The days were unbelievably beautiful.
The first russet touch of the autumn barely cast its shadow upon the
green about them, the yellow tints of leaf and flower mellowed into a
dull crimson glory.

But the nights turned chill, and in the early mornings there was the
heavy print of the frosted dew upon the ground.

Unconsciously they quickened their lagging footsteps, and turned into
shorter paths that would bring them sooner to Sho Kon Sha, the cemetery
of “Soul Beckoning Rest,” which was to be the end of their journey. This
was her home, so she said—the gardens of the temples of her ancestors.
Only a few hill-lengths from the cemetery was the Temple Tokiwa,
deserted, almost in ruins, but—her home!

There her parents had lived—and died! Here she had been happy in her
solitary childhood, hidden and sheltered by fearful but loving parents.
Here her mother had taught her to dance for the gods and entreat them
with her prayers; here her father had told her of another God, another
heaven. After her parents were gone, the aged temple had been her only
sure place of refuge, a sanctuary wherein even the stoutest of hunters
dared not penetrate; for the wrathful gods still stared with their
dreadful eyes upon the affronted altar, and at the very portals the
demons Ni-o, guarding the sacred gates, might no longer be propitiated.

Now confidently, happily, with the pride of a child thither she was
leading the Tojin, eager to show him this beautiful shelter she wished
to share with him forever. But, ah! how sweet had been the mountain
paths this summer, and why need they hasten? The restless, vindictive
little city was very far away, and the fox-woman trod upon territory all
her own, hers by right of every instinct, and by the very law of the
land, did she but know it, which made her proper heir to her ancestors’
property.

Now they were very near to the temple, and soon she would spread forth
her arms and say to the Tojin:

“Behold, dear exalted one, here is my honorable home. Condescend to step
upon its floor.”

And in her mind she fancied the face of the Tojin would shine with a
great light of happiness.

Now he said to her dreamily, as he followed her through a shadowy
by-path which crept into a sunlit forest of dripping willow-trees:

“Some day I shall awake. It cannot be true that I am here with you alone
in these wild mountains, wandering along in this aimless bliss!”

Because she put back her hand, and he took it perforce in his own, he
continued in his low, wooing voice:

“And when I wake, little Tama, I will know the truth of what you once
said to me: that our dreams are the most beautiful of all.”

She stopped and turned back to him, with the tall foliage and grass
almost burying her in its thickness:

“You god no udder dream more beautiful?” she questioned wistfully.

“No other,” he answered softly. “Have you?”

“No. This is mos’ bes’ dream of all—jost be ’lone wiz you ad those
mountains! Thas bes’ dream in all the whole worl’, Tojin-san!”

In the silence that fell between them, and as he still clasped her
hands, a momentary shadow flitted across her face, and she stood
wide-eyed, as though she saw a vision.

“Alas!” she said in such a mournful tone: “Dreams like unto thad mist.
Now here so sweet, so—so beyond our touch. Next hour gone—gone perhaps
foraever! Nod even the gods know where they gone!”

He scarcely knew his own voice, so full of a deep encompassing
tenderness and yearning was it:

“Our dream is to be different from others,” he said solemnly. “It will
never end. Not for a lifetime, little Tama!”

“It surely goin’ last foraever ad this worl’?” she asked with sceptical
wistfulness.

“If you wish it,” said he huskily.

                  *       *       *       *       *

When the sun was dipping down in the west, and but half its red face
showed above the shadowy hills of Hakusan, the fox-woman felt the fears
seize her in their throttling grip again.

She stood like one under some spell, her back against the trunk of a
giant oak, her hair like a veritable aureole above her.

Down in a little ravine, but a few feet from where she stood, the
Tojin-san was gathering dried sticks to build their evening fire. She
could hear him as he moved from point to point. Sometimes he whistled
softly to himself, sometimes hummed vague snatches of song.

Farther away—at a distance beyond her sight, even if she could have
seen—she knew, with that intuitive certainty of the blind, that others
were passing over their tracks.

Her hand sought her heart, and clung to it, as if to stop its beating.
Fear lent sudden wings to her feet, as with a little gasping cry she
fled downward to the hollow where the Tojin labored. She was beside him
before he had heard or seen her, and now in surprise he looked at her
white little face of anguish.

“Tama!”

“You speag right,” she said, and could not smile with her white lips so
tremulous, “thas only—beautiful dream. Thad mist gone—away!”

“Dream! No, it’s a beautiful reality. We are here, together, and nothing
in the world shall ever tear us apart again.”

“Nothing in the worl’,” she repeated.

Suddenly she covered her eyes, as if the light pained them. From behind
her little sheltering hands came her voice, still with that note of
pleading terror:

“They come—tear you ’way from me now, Tojin-san! All the way—how many
miles I kinnod say—I see them! In my heart I know! Ad my ears I hear!
Those feet—ah, cannot you hear them also, kind Tojin-san? Listen!”

She put up her hands, and they stood in a silence, straining for the
sound that only she could hear, or believed she did.

He knew she was right. Her instinctive sense was keener than mere sight.
Simply, with a tender strength that could not be resisted, he took her
little hand in his.

“Come, Tama. We must reach Sho Kon Sha to-night.”

“Yaes,” she murmured, and now there was a note of plaintive weariness in
her voice. “I thought she said the gods were good, an’ that perhaps they
goin’ forgit us here in those mountains.”

She sighed and moved along step by step beside him.

“Now I know,” she said, “I god new visitor ad my heart!”

“What is it, little Tama?”

“Fear,” she said, “—for you!”

“What blessed nonsense!”

“You are Tojin, like unto my father,” she said, in a voice of anguish,
“and oh, all those days my life how I kin forgit what happen unto my
father!”

“That was many years ago,” he said. “It is a New Japan we live in
to-day, and I have friends—even in Fukui!”


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XXI


A NEW impulse drew them now more closely together. Side by side, pressed
closely to each other, they travelled swiftly toward Sho Kon Sha. They
dared not wait to eat, to sleep, to rest but a moment, and the night
found them still moving onward.

They spoke scarcely at all to each other; but she rested like a child in
the curve of his arm, her head against his breast. Once she sighed, ever
so faintly—a little breath of weariness that escaped her almost
unconsciously.

Instantly he stopped, lifted her face in his hands, and, in the dark
woods, anxiously examined it.

“You are crying, Tama.”

“No-o,” she said.

“But your face is wet.”

“It is the dew upon my face,” she said.

Again they moved onward. About them towered the giant trees, silhouetted
against the starlit skies. Sometimes as the ascent became more steep,
they clung to outjutting shrubs and bushes, and once when he fancied her
footsteps slightly dragged, he lifted her bodily in his arms and carried
her for a space. But she begged to be permitted to walk. There was still
a great distance to go. He must not be hampered by her burden. She
wished to help—not hinder him.

The night grew more still, and a penetrating chill descended about them.
He drew off his coat, to put about her; but she showed him where she had
strapped to her back, with the string of her obi, the quilt. He had
thought it part of her sash, and was all compunction that he had
permitted her to carry even so slight a load. She laughed in her little
tremulous way, and challenged him to untie the knot. In the dark his
big, clumsy fingers picked at it in vain. Again she laughed,
caressingly, with a teasing tenderness, and she drew the little bundle
round in front. It fell at her feet in a soft, silken heap.

He was for wrapping it several times around her; but she insisted she
would not proceed even the fraction of a step unless he shared the quilt
with her. And so, his arm again about her, under the down-padded temple
quilt, they moved along in the chilly darkness, defying with the new
warmth of their hearts and bodies the cold of the autumn night.

Thus all night long they travelled, their feet moving mechanically, but
never unwillingly, pausing not at all to look backward over the paths
they had followed, but pressing steadily onward toward their goal. And
the first pale streak of dawn found them climbing up the last height,
within the very sight of Sho Kon Sha.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XXII


AS the laggard sun crept stealthily out of the east, a vision of
extraordinary loveliness burst upon them. There, within but the length
of a single hill and field from them, the ragged peaks of the old Temple
Tokiwa raised a lordly head above the sun-flecked pines.

Stripped of its wealth, but not its beauty, showing the ravages of fire
and assault upon its burnished walls, deserted, falling to the decay of
neglected age, it was more compellingly majestic than any of the famous
structures the Tojin-san had seen.

The approach was over terraces made of countless stone steps, many of
them now loose and entirely overgrown with grass and weeds.

The pagoda was of seven stories, its crimson eaves still fringed with
shattered wind-bells.

A swarm of pigeons flew about its eaves and roof, and came to meet them
in a voluble, almost intelligent cloud. She ran to meet them, holding
out her arms and calling and chirping to them. Dipping into her long
sleeves, she brought up handfuls of the rice she had not forgotten to
bring with her, and threw it generously among them. They pecked at her
hand, seeking scoldingly for the food, and sprang upon her shoulders,
her head, her hands. Presently, chidingly, she drove them off, shaking
her sleeves at them and waving them back.

Now she drew the Tojin into the temple, pushing back its rusty doors
with a careful hand.


[Illustration:

  TAMA AT THE TEMPLE TOKIWA]


He was struck with the empty majesty of the interior. It had been
stripped of all its treasures, save the great stone images, which still
sat inscrutably upon their thrones.

The altar was devoid of vestments; no twinkling lights or swinging
censers burned their incense for the delectation of the gods; yet the
penetrating odor of sandalwood and the dim fragrance of umegaku and the
pine seemed to cling about the very air.

By the great main altar, the hideous old god Bunzura glared at them from
beneath his sleepy eyelids, resting fatuously upon his haunches. Before
him was the bar where once thousands of slips of paper containing
written prayers, were tied. Now it was entirely stripped and glittered
up in the face of the god in a mocking irony.

Tama moved softly by the image, pausing only to put her hand upon its
knee, caressing it gently, as if with a conciliating, loving pat. It was
evident she did not stand in awe of the gods. She had been born among
them; knew them as part of her own silent family, exiled like herself
upon the mountains.

She even put her cheek against the head of a peculiarly sinister-looking
image, who was attended by three smaller gods. The Tojin-san recognized
the group. They were in every Buddhist temple. Ema, the Lord of Hell,
with his assistant torturers, one of which wielded a sword, one a pen,
and one a priest’s staff.

Now she made her first prostration, bowing lowly, and slipping devoutly
to her knees. She was in a little alcove wherein no image whatever was
to be seen.

As he stood wondering why she should choose this empty corner for her
prayers, he perceived upon the wall a curious print or scroll. It was a
faded paper chromo, apparently many years old, the picture upon it
almost obliterated, the ends of the paper showing charred marks where it
must have once started to burn.

A curious sensation stirred within the Tojin, such a feeling as one
might only know when in a land of gods one sees for the first time an
emblem or a token of one’s own true God; for the tattered, shabby scroll
upon the wall was a picture of the Christ!

She seemed to sense his emotion and excitement, and, still kneeling,
raised a pair of smiling eyes:

“It is my father’s God,” she said. “To him, mos’ of all; I speag me my
petitions.”

“Why to him?” he asked, deeply moved.

“Because,” she answered simply, “he, too, lig’ me, knew trobble. Thas
why I speag to him my heart—account I _know_ he—listen!”


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                 XXIII


THE Tojin-san took what measures he could for their future protection.
An exploration throughout the seven-storied pagoda brought to light some
old weapons—a rifle and a sword, once evidently her father’s. They were
out of date, and in bad condition, but better than nothing, he decided.

As she had shown him a small exit in the rear, of which the outside of
the pagoda gave no inkling, he decided to barricade the main entrance.
This he did, after a gigantic effort, by piling several of the images
before it until they effectually blocked the entrance. As their faces
were turned outward he surmised their weird effect upon the marauders
when, after forcing the doors, they should find themselves fronted with
so formidable a guard as these.

No one, so she said, had stepped across the threshold since that
frightful day when, in their fanatical hatred, the danka had murdered
her parents.

She had always been kept hidden in one of the upper stories of the
pagoda, and at this time no one had seen her save her parents.

On that day she had fled to the very roof in her first impulse of mortal
terror; but even from there, with her ears covered by her hands, she had
heard the cries of her father and her mother, and the wild, brutal,
triumphant shouting of those who had killed them.

A strange sense of quiet came suddenly upon her. She crept stealthily,
but fearlessly, back down the seven stories of the pagoda, and opened
the great doors that gave ingress to the temple. There for the first
time the people of Fukui saw her, standing like a flame upon the altar
of the great Shaka, whither she had leaped from the door in a single
bound.

Her hair was more glittering than the altar itself; her eyes, her skin
were of a color no man in Fukui had ever seen before. She seemed to
their dazzled eyes a vengeful spirit, whom the Lord Buddha had uplifted.
They stood as if petrified, staring at her as she swayed before them on
the very lap of the god. Then, with a concerted cry of superstitious
fear and horror, they slunk from the temple, leaving her alone—with her
dead!

As the Tojin looked about the great chamber, he felt himself almost
unconsciously rehearsing that grim scene of the past. He knew why her
hand had been set against the whole world, why she had terrified and
defied her tormentors. Even now, as she repeated the tale to him her
face was white and fixed.

“Now you know,” she said, “why I am call the fox-woman! Perhaps thas
true ’bout me. Mebbe I am gagama!”

“You are not,” he said, “even in spite of them.”

She was silent, staring out before her in some abstracted trance.
Suddenly she sighed:

“I nod lig’ udder people! Thas bedder nod come near unto me. I mek the
trobble, and sometimes—the death for those who seek me! Down in Fukui
perhaps already they have tol’ you of thad—Gihei Matsuyama?”

“They told me,” he said, “but I do not believe them.”

“Thas true,” she said, and there was a plaintive note of weariness in
her voice. “He cum lig’ unto a storm that fall down from those sky wiz
no warning. When I am come from my door, he there to await me. He speag
my name sof’—kind—lig’ you, Tojin-san! No one aever speag unto me lig’
thad before. No! They bud cry to me those name and curse and throw the
stone upon me! Bud he! he speag lig’ you augustness.

“Ad firs’ my heart stan’ still—it ’fraid. I thing of my father—my
mother, and I am ’fraid he come kill me also. Then again he speag my
name sof’ and kind, an’ I say ad my heart: ‘Thas god come veesit me!’
An’ so—an’ so—for him I mek the sacred danze. But when I am through, I
know I mek meestake—thas nod god ad all! Thas jost man from Fukui!

“Then my heart laugh wizin me, and my feet carry me quick across those
mountain. I loog nod bag, though I hear his voice, for I am thad ’fraid
agin. I know nod why, Tojin-san.”

Her voice faltered. She went a timid step nearer to him, touched his
hand questioningly with her own.

“The blind see wiz one thousand inner eye, bud, ah, alas! they see nod
also for another. How could I know thad the foolish one would nod loog
upon his steps?”

She shuddered and covered her face with her little shaking hands.

“How many days I waiting ad thad pool—jos’ waiting, Tojin-san, wiz the
hope that mebbe some day he goin’ come bag out those water.”

“You must never think of it again,” he said. “You were entirely
blameless.”

“Sometime I thing,” she went on wistfully, “thad mebbe those Fukui
people right, an me?—I am truly a fox-woman. For see what trobble,
what—death I mek for those who see me. Even for you, kind Tojin-san,
alas! I mus’ bring you those pain!”

“No—that is not so,” he said.

“I know nod when or how firs’ I have hear of your comin’. They talk of
nothing else at Fukui, an’ I am always listen, though they see me nod.
Something tell me, when you come all those worl’ goin’ change for me!
Thas’ why I wait, wait, all thad winter for your comin’.”

A smile, wistful, yet joyous, crept over her lips.

“You din know,” she said, “thad firs’ day in Fukui, thad I too am ad
your house to welcome you. Bud me? I am nod wizin thad house. I am out
in thad snow. I kinnod speag unto you lig’ those others. I may nod even
touch you honorable hand. Bud all same I know you are Tojin—lig’ unto my
father! Oh, how glad—how joy I am! Though my feet, my hand, my nose, my
honorable ears perish wiz those cold, still I am wait for you. When all
those honorable exalted ones gone—then—then I, too, call you name!
To-o-jin-san!”

She made a little shivering motion.

“Bud sup-pose I bring you also thad—thad death?”

“There is nothing to fear,” he said steadily, “and if there were, I am
strong enough to face any peril with you at my side!”

“Oh, my mind travel bag on thad past! I hear again my father’s voice—my
mother’s cry! I am toaching their beloved body. I am tek them in thad
black night unto the Sho Kon Sha, and wiz these liddle hands, all alone,
I am put them in their—grave! Tojin-san! Ah-h!”

She hid her face against his arm.

“If they should do to you the same!” she said.

“For myself I have no fear,” he said.

“Why nod leave me now?” she urged. “Go bag alone down those mountain. No
one speag hard to you who so moch mek respect. Wiz me there is moch
trobble, an’ mebbe worse!”

“Without you,” he said, “there is more trouble, and a deep pain—an
aching void that could never again be filled. With you here alone, cut
off from all the world, holding your little hands in my own, looking
into your face, why, even facing death, I am content—happier than I had
ever dreamed it possible to be.”

“Thas beautiful word you speag,” she said. “Bud if the gods—”

She folded her hands across her breast and closed her eyes in prayer.

“Temmei itashikata kore maku!” she whispered lowly. (From the decree of
heaven there is no escape.)


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XXIV


THE rapping on the temple doors was not loud or menacing, but it was
insistent, questioning. The Tojin-san drew the fox-woman to the winding
staircase which led up the seven stories to the tower above.

Once before Tama had been sent up yonder. Then she had gone willingly,
even frantically. Now she made no movement up the stairs. Instead, she
turned her back upon them, and faced the Tojin fairly. Upon her face a
smile shone luminously as a star. Simply, steadily, she laid her hands
in those of the man.

For a moment he held them in his own, his eyes fixed yearningly upon her
face, and even while the knocks resounded louder upon the door the
clouds cleared from his mind.

Looking into those uplifted, adoring eyes he forgot all else. A sound
that was half a sob, half a passionate cry escaped him. He reached out
irresistibly and took her into his arms. For the first time his lips
hungrily, passionately found her own, and clung in a kiss that over all
the years of a lifetime neither he nor she might ever forget. They saw
nothing, heard nothing, felt only that close, encompassing embrace that
made them one indeed.

Then upon their dream at last broke the lowly calling, almost whispering
voice of the one without. They drew apart, though their eyes and hands
still clung unconsciously together.

“Sensei. Sensei! Sensei!”

It was the voice of the student, Junzo!

With a low cry, the Tojin was at the doors, wrenching and tearing the
great images away with the strength of a veritable giant. At last the
doors were reached, and these in turn thrust aside.

There, with their anxious, faithful young faces pale with apprehension
in regard to his fate, were his three loyal boys, Junzo, Higo, and
Nunuki. They fell literally upon him with tears and shouts of joy. They
devoured him with their youthful embraces. Higo clung to one hand, Junzo
to the other; and at the back of him Nunuki hovered, seeking to examine
the wound upon his neck where the sword of the Daimio’s high officer had
pierced. It was healed, so well had the fox-woman cared for it.

Now, step by step, slowly, uncertainly, she crept toward them,
white-faced, wild-eyed, every nerve in her thrilling, and reaching out
blindly for the arms that had held her, the lips that had clung to her
own. But she stopped with her tragic little face clasped on either side
with her hands as the joyous voices of the students reached her. They
were telling the Tojin of the coming of his friends to Fukui; of the
return of the Echizen Prince; of the punishments to be meted out to
those who had attacked him; the rewards for those who had defended.

“Even we,” said Higo, with boyish pride, “are to have our due reward,
for we have honorably been chosen as the body-guard of the Be-koku-jin
(American), who has come to Fukui to minister to the unfortunate one,
and to take her, if your excellency is willing, to the capital.”

“The unfortunate one?” repeated the Tojin dully. “To whom do you refer?”

The boys stared at him in round-eyed amazement.

The fox-woman of course! Who else? That unfortunate one to whom the
whole heart of Fukui had melted like the snows of her native mountains
in the Spring. It was the work of the Tojin himself that had
accomplished the miracle; for he had pointed out to them all the
absurdity, the wrong of the ancient superstition, which had been kept
alive chiefly throughout the years by the hatred of those who were
ignorant or fanatic.

Now the Prince himself was convinced a wrong had been committed, and
Fukui was taking its cue from him. The friend of the Tojin coming at
such a time had also had its effect upon the people; and now the
remorseful ones were prepared to atone for the past if that were
possible. It was the suggestion of the Be-koku-jin, however, that the
girl should be taken out of Fukui.

Her history had created a sensation among her father’s race in Tokio,
and there they were eager, anxious to receive her among them. But it was
for the Tojin alone to say. The change of heart in Fukui was complete.
There was nothing further to fear.

“Even I,” said Nunuki with Spartan-like courage, “am prepared to look
upon her. We have learned from the tongue of our own Prince and from the
Be-koku-jin that many females of your race have her skin and hair and
eye-color. Is it not so, honored teacher?”

But the Tojin-san was silent. His face had turned strangely gray; his
arms hung limply by his side. He was staring out before him fixedly as
though he saw a vision.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration]


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XXV


“BUD speag to me as before! Touch me wiz those hands—those lips!
Adoringly look upon me! My honorable heart and body are cold. Condescend
to warm them!”

She had followed him down a declivity, unmindful of the students who
pressed with their grave, wondering young faces closely about her.

She could not understand why now no longer she might travel beside him,
his sheltering arm supporting her; why she might not even take his hand,
or rest her wet cheek against his sleeve. In the three days they had
been upon the journey back to Fukui, he had seemed to avoid her, almost
as if he feared her.

Once he tried to explain, stupidly, and with a forced coldness.

Things were very different now. When alone, they were like lost children
and the silent woods and mountains had put strange dreams and fancies
into their heads, so that they had wandered along in a blind, gilded
delirium. Now they had awakened. They must go back to the city, where
they would be like other people, and where, shortly, their ways must
separate. It was for her good. She would understand some day.

She must forget the mountain days, or think of them only as a dream that
had vanished, as she herself had predicted it would, like the mist.

She was very stupid, very stubborn, pathetically dense. She did not wish
their paths to separate—she would not have it so. No, though they tore
her from him by force. She would return to him. Did he not recall the
words he had spoken when he declared the dream would never end unless
she wished it. She did not wish it. She never would. Patiently,
persistently she entreated him, until he was beside himself and felt his
strength of mind weakening, and in desperation turned to his students
for help. He bade them explain to her more clearly than he could do the
new life she was soon to lead—of the change in fortunes that had come to
her.

Manfully, but in the bungling, uncertain language of boys they tried to
obey him. The unfortunate one, as unconsciously they called her, was
soon to see, promised the gentle Junzo. There was to be an honorable
operation upon her eyes. These western wizards of science, said the
Japanese student, had given sight to hundreds in their own land. The
Tojin, himself once a doctor, had diagnosed her trouble as an invisible
cataract of a congenital nature, not uncommon nor difficult of removal.
He had sent for a great and eminent surgeon who was sojourning in the
capital. He had come all the way to Fukui, at the bidding of the Tojin.
He was a miracle-worker, whose fame encircled the globe, said the boy
with a kindling eye.

A hundred friends awaited her in Tokio, so Higo courteously informed
her. They were eager and anxious to receive her—Japanese as well as
foreigners. To them Tama was to be sent; for Fukui had been unkind to
her, and she would be happier away from it. She would understand
by-and-by, they promised her.

She listened patiently, but densely, as if what they told her but half
reached her understanding. That she was to be sent away into some
distant country—very far from the Temple Tokiwa and Atago Yama—an
immeasurable distance away from the Tojin-san—this alone she
comprehended.

Her mother had taught her that the life of a Buddhist nun must be one
long act of expiation for sins and faults committed in some former
state. She tried dazedly to conceive of the terrible crimes of which she
must have once been guilty that now she was to be punished so
dreadfully; and she reached out blindly for the only comfort possible
for her in the world now—the voice, the touch of the Tojin-san, who had
held her in his arms!

They travelled by the public roads of the mountain that she had so
carefully avoided. They passed the nights as guests of the priests of
the mountain temples, who read the letters of the Prince of Echizen,
which the students proudly exhibited, and with courteous and profound
obeisances welcomed the travellers, even regarding the fox-woman with
eyes that were more speculative than resentful. Perhaps they alone of
Echizen had best understood this little creature who had lived among
them, yet beyond their pale, for so long; for though they had not sought
her, neither had they persecuted her, as they could readily have done.
Indeed for years she had practically subsisted upon the food she
surreptitiously obtained from the temples—some of which was
unostentatiously placed as if prepared for her.

The journey back to Fukui was long and tortuous. Summer was gone
completely. The days were cold; wind and rain came about them and drove
them constantly into refuges of one sort and another; but after many
days they came at last to the foot-hills of the mountains, passed
through these into the pine woods, through bamboo groves and camphor
groves, till they came to the Winged Foot River, which brought them to
their destination.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XXVI


THE last courteous and obsequious emissary of the Prince of Echizen had
bowed himself out of the apartment of the Tojin-san, having sonorously
delivered the speeches of regret of their master.

The room was piled with the rich gifts sent by the now soon departing
Prince, who was to take office directly under his imperial master. Now
he was sojourning in Echizen merely for the purpose of setting his
affairs in order, and to do what lay in his power to set his former
vassals in the new path they were to follow. Because he was the soul of
chivalry and of justice, he was righting the wrong and slight paid to
the foreigner he had himself invited to his province.

The Tojin was inexpressibly weary. One deputation after another of the
citizens of Fukui had been arriving all day. They had commenced coming
before daybreak, for the earlier a Japanese makes a call the greater he
expresses his respect.

Delegations from the college presented petitions asking him to continue
in Fukui, despite the change of government, and promising to make his
stay there as happy and prosperous as lay within their power. He
listened to them all a bit grimly, making no effort to emulate their
politeness. Through the new interpreter who had entered his service, he
merely signified that he would take the matter under consideration. It
could not be decided at once.

At last he found himself alone with the Be-koku-jin, as they called his
American friend, who was in fact what the Japanese youth had said, an
eminent surgeon, with whom the Tojin had once been associated.

He was a small, but very dignified and important individual, whose most
noticeable features were his bright eyes, which twinkled incongruously
beneath a pair of fierce and uncompromising eyebrows. In his
well-fitting English clothes he was as out of place in the Tojin’s great
chamber as was the awkward furniture the deluded Genji Negato had chosen
for his master.

Now he wandered about the room examining this and that article, and
fingering the gifts brought by the Japanese with anticipatory fingers.
His eyes, however, turned constantly toward his friend, who, now that
they were for the first time alone together, had nothing to say.

The American surgeon was blessed with more than an ordinary
intelligence, and he had learned a great deal from the students. A man
seemingly absolutely wrapped up in his work, he had for years secretly
cherished what he had become to believe was positively a vice. He was in
fact as sentimental as a girl. When supposedly he was deeply engrossed
in the study of some scientific work, locked in his study with stern
orders without that on no account was he to be disturbed, he was in fact
reading some love-story—or some romance of adventure usually enjoyed by
very youthful persons.

Now he felt himself, as it were, part of a moving captivating drama cut
out of life itself. No written page had ever absorbed him quite like
this love-story of the fox-woman and his friend the Tojin-san.

There was something appallingly tragic in that little listening, waiting
figure crouching there in the hall against the Tojin’s door! The
Be-koku-jin knew very well indeed what it was this forlorn little
creature of the mountains wanted; he knew, too, why it was that the
Tojin believed he could not give it to her.

He had come to Fukui chiefly because he had been unable to resist the
lure of the story of the fox-woman as the Tojin-san had written it to
him. Now here he had stumbled upon a more entrancing story still.

He looked at his friend with his bright, clear eyes, and it occurred to
him that there was something wonderfully attractive about the man’s
face, grim and stony as was its expression, marked and marred as were
the features. The mouth was that of the revolutionist, grim, unyielding,
almost bitter; but the eyes were those of the poet, full of vague dreams
and tenderness. The Be-koku-jin, assuming his most professional and
uninterested manner, drew up a chair before his friend, and settled his
plump little body comfortably into its depths.

“What are your plans?” he asked abruptly.

The other did not look up.

“That depends on you,” he said quietly.

“Your refusal or acceptance of the position here depends on me?”

“Absolutely.”

“What do you mean?”

The Tojin-san leaned forward in his chair. His eyes were no longer dull,
there was a flame behind them.

“If you are successful—I remain here, in Fukui.”

“Ah. Er—you mean as regards the operation?”

“Yes.”

The Be-koku-jin regarded the tips of his fingers, which he had brought
precisely together, reflectively. He purposely avoided the other’s
almost pleading glance. He cleared his throat gruffly, and frowned as he
crossed and recrossed his legs.

“Why stay in any event?” he demanded shortly, and put up his hand before
the other could answer. “Your attitude is sentimental moonshine. You
have nothing to fear—even if the operation is successful. I don’t agree
with—er—what you have upon your mind.”

“That is because you do not understand,” said the Tojin wearily. “She is
indeed what these people have imagined her—a creature almost of another
world. She has lived only in her exquisite imagination, and because she
is so beautiful and good and pure, to her all things too are fair. I was
the first to treat her humanly. She has made me something in her mind’s
eye that it is preposterous even to think of. To her I—_I_—think of
it!—am a thing of beauty—a flawless, perfect god!”

He glared in a fierce sort of anguish at his friend, then stood up
suddenly and began pacing the floor in long irregular strides, to bring
up suddenly again before the other.

“I do not wish her to see me—at all! It will not be necessary. I ask you
to take her for me to Tokio. There my sister will meet you, and take her
with her to America.” He smiled for the first time. “At least I can do
that for her. I claimed the right to care for her, and refused even the
smallest help from Echizen and others. I have means—other than my work;
and what I have will be hers. I want no one else to do for her,” he
added jealously. “I can give her everything she needs or may want.”

The Be-koku-jin was still studying his finger-tips, and there was a
curious expression upon his face. Suddenly he looked up directly at the
Tojin-san.

“Why have the operation?”

The Tojin-san had turned very pale, but his voice was steady and strong.

“I have been through all that, my friend—have wrestled, tortured my very
soul threshing it out. That’s the solution of a coward. I am a man!”

Said the other:

“I decline to perform the operation.”

The Tojin-san stared at him as if he could not believe his ears. Then he
brought his hand so heavily down upon the other’s shoulder that the
smaller man jumped under the touch.

“You prefer to leave it to my bungling hands? Is that what you came to
Fukui to tell me?”

“As I said,” said the other, wincing still under the Tojin’s hand, “in
any event you exaggerate the effect upon her. Just as you say—you are a
man!”

He stood up abruptly.

“You will do it?” demanded the Tojin hoarsely.

“Yes,” said the other, blinking angrily, “I suppose I must.”

He glared for a moment at his friend and then for the first time
permitted himself to show some emotion in his voice and expression:

“We’ll fight it out between us. Sight or no sight, I know you will be
the same to her!”

“It is not alone my physical deformity,” said the Tojin, steadily, “but
the fact that I am old enough to be her father. I have no longer the
splendid courage of youth to take her in spite of my misfortune. ‘Old
Grind,’ that was what they called me, even in America!”

“Stuff!” grunted the other. “‘Old Bones’ was the affectionate term
applied to me. At this rate you’ll put us in our dotage. A man under
forty is in his best youth. I never felt younger in my life!” he snorted
indignantly.

“But she is only a child,” said the Tojin softly, “—a child in years—and
in heart!”

“If you could see her,” said the other, with intense earnestness, “as I
have had occasion to since last night, you would say differently. Child!
why, man, she is a suffering, neglected, forsaken little woman! Open
your door to her. Don’t let her think it as stony as your heart!”


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                 XXVII


“TAMA!” He opened the sliding doors at last. She did not stand, even
when he spoke to her, but with a mute, wordless sob moved a pace nearer
to him on her knees, and put her head submissively at his feet.

He stooped above her, his face working, his hands trembling. Gently he
lifted her to her feet, only to release her instantly.

“Stand there,” he said, “while I speak to you. You must do whatever the
Be-koku-jin wishes of you. He tells me you have resisted his attempts to
help you. If I tell you it is my wish, my very dear wish, you will go
with him, will you not?”

She had put out her hands in the old blind way, and would have found him
had he not stepped back soundlessly as she approached him. She sighed in
her distress, sighed and sobbed, like a tortured child. As he looked at
her he felt his resolve far from weakening, becoming even more fixed. He
would not have her this way, blind in mind and in sight. She must know
the truth.

“The Be-koku-jin will help you, Tama. Soon you are going to see, and
then things will appear very differently to you. What you believe now to
be beautiful may prove to be otherwise. For example,” he continued
steadily, “you believe me other than I am in fact. My face is horrible.
It may even frighten you, as it did another woman once!”

A hush fell between them. Her eyes, very wide and dark, were fixed upon
his face, almost as though they were endowed with sight.

“Though all keep dark foraever ad my eyes, still I would know your
face—ad—my heart!” she said.

“If you could really see—” he murmured hoarsely, almost imploringly.

“Tojin-san!” she said, “though all the worl’ come before my eyes, I
would know you only! I would follow you—yaes to thad worl’s end—if you
bud would permit me.”

He made a motion toward her, and with that smile still upon her face she
went blindly to meet him; but as quickly he had drawn back again, and a
moment later turned desperately toward the doors. She heard him slide
them open, felt the cold draught of air enter; then they closed again,
and she heard only the sound of his steps as he passed along the paths.

She stood unmoving, listening until even the faintest sound of him was
gone. Then suddenly she ran forward, feeling her way with her hands till
she came to his chair. Upon her knees she sank, sighing, sobbing, and
buried her face upon her arms in the lap of the chair. Here the
Be-koku-jin found her, sleeping her first sleep in many, many days,
exhausted, but with a strange look of peace upon her face at last!


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                 XXVIII


THE whole of the city of Fukui had turned forth into its streets.
Jostling, pushing, shoving each other aside they elbowed their way to
the front. Children were raised to the shoulders of parents, boys
climbed upon roofs and poles and trees to see the spectacle.

The runners could hardly make a passageway through the throngs; but
there was no disorder, nor the slightest trace of antagonism, as the
norimono passed slowly down the streets. A respectful silence—a silence
that had in it an element of torturing remorse more than curiosity—fell
upon the throng.

The bamboo hangings had been drawn back from the norimon, for it was the
desire of the Tojin that all of Fukui might see the fox-woman
themselves, see and judge what manner of creature was this they had
outcast and persecuted through all her short life.

Beside the Be-koku-jin, who had performed the miracle upon her eyes, she
sat, her face white as snow, her wide, dazzled eyes gazing bewilderedly
about her, as if she were but half conscious of what she saw, but half
comprehended its meaning. They had confined most of her golden hair in
some shimmering gray veil that floated about her like a cloud, but
little moist curls clung about her brow and blew from beneath the veil
in tender, kissing tendrils about her cheeks.

At her feet, with her fascinated, infatuated eyes pinned upon her face,
crouched the maid Obun, who was pledged to her service by the Tojin-san.

The carriage was full of flowers that those friendly inclined had sent
her, and the white hands of the fox-woman now aimlessly held a sheaf of
poems and of love-letters penned her by ardent and impetuous youths, who
found their warm hearts and imaginations suddenly fired by her appealing
history and beauty.

She spoke not at all, neither to answer the occasional word of
re-assurance from the Be-koku-jin, nor the sometimes sobbing utterances
of Obun, who seemed to find in her triumphal progress through the city
an occasion for tears.

It grew darker, the air chillier. It was the Season of Cold Dew, when
even the last gasping, fading beauty of the autumn ceased to appeal.

As the cortège reached the city’s limits the crowds following gradually
drew back, and as it passed out into the great road whereon they were to
travel on the long journey, the last of the followers departed.

Besides the Be-koku-jin and the maid Obun there were three students,
proudly acting as body-guard. Several dozen bearers and servants also
accompanied the party. No halt was made until the last rays of the
setting sun had disappeared entirely from the sky. Then the runners
rested, and the Be-koku-jin alighting walked with his head bent, his
hands behind him, as if plunged in some troubled thought. The students
drew together in a whispering group and watched the famous surgeon, or
threw furtive glances in the direction of the fox-woman, whom none of
them, as yet, had found the courage to look upon unmoved.

She was sitting upright in her norimon. The veil had blown back partly
from her head, and her hair shone like the moon above her. Obun
entreated her to rest, and when she received no response, herself drew
the hangings about them, and prepared the carriage for the night. As if
she had been a child, she laid the fox-woman down among the quilts, and
then herself crept under the covers, falling into a heavy sleep which
lasted without a break the long night through as jerking, swinging,
tossing on high upon the shoulders of the kurumaya they travelled on and
on toward Tokio.


------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                  XXIX


IN the Shiro Matsuhaira the Tojin sat alone. They had taken away the
untasted meal upon the trays; his pipe lay unlit upon the hibachi; upon
a table hard by his American mail and papers lay untouched, unopened. He
sat staring at something he held in his hands. It was no larger than his
hand, worn, ragged, and soiled—a little sandal of straw! This was all he
had left of her. She had passed out of his life as completely as the
mist vanishes into the clouds.

What were her thoughts now, he wondered dully—now that she knew! He had
seen her but once, after the operation. She had come like a shadowy
little spirit into his chamber; and she had said nothing at all; had
merely looked at him out of her wide, hungry eyes. As silently as she
had come, so she had gone! Passively, obediently she had gone with the
Be-koku-jin. This was what he had wished, had required of her. Then why
this aching, harrowing sense of anguish?

He closed his eyes, and gave himself up to the last luxury left him—the
casting of his mind adrift upon a sea of memories, wherein he might
recall her as she had been, see her again pressed against his side,
breathe the dear fragrance of her hair, hear the music of her voice.

Outside the wind was whistling and moaning through the leafless gardens,
and a rain began to fall, pelting against his shutters, dripping in
melancholy splashes from the eaves. How barren, how God-forsaken seemed
this Yashiki of feudal days! He recalled his first night in this same
chamber. How cold it had been, how penetratingly desolate!

Now the winter was coming again. Soon the white snow would wrap its icy
shroud about the Palace Matsuhaira, and there would be a silence—a
silence less bearable than the grave—out there on those mountains of
snow.

But the people of Fukui would come to him daily with their problems,
their ambitions, and questions; and they would look to him as a guide
and supporter along the new glittering road they wished to tread; for
the fever of the New Japan was animating the entire nation, and Fukui
had caught the epidemic. And they would bestow honors and favors upon
the Tojin-san, fame and riches, too; for at the period of the rebirth of
a nation its teachers become its prophets—its leaders! Yes, there was
such a career to his hand as he could never have attained in that other
land, whither they were taking the fox-woman now. It was this, had said
the Be-koku-jin, which must be his solace, his comfort.

He stood up unsteadily, his hand resting upon the table. Some one had
knocked upon his door. He smiled, in the old grim, bitter way.

He could not be tricked by his imagination again. She was very far away
by now, miles from Fukui, for it was past midnight, and her cortège
would take an unbroken course toward the great highway which eventually
would lead them to the metropolis.

But the knocking was repeated, softly, gently, a sound such as a little
timid bird in the wet night might have made in beating its wings upon
the wall.

He heard the soft moving of the doors, and still he did not stir.

Now she stood between them, her eyes fully upon him, drawing, compelling
his gaze. Upon her vivid, passionate little face there was, at last,
that look of peace and rest that comes to one upon a journey’s end.

The water dripped from her haori, and clung in glittering drops upon her
hair, her lashes.

He could not even speak her name. He could only gaze at her entranced,
as at that other time when he had come to consciousness within the
woods, and had found her face hovering like a spirit’s above his own.

She said as if answering the question he could not speak:

“Yaes—it is I—To-o-jin-san!”

With a motion, inexpressibly sweet, she put out her little hands, just
as she had done ere she could see, and a beseeching, quivering little
smile was on her lips.

“In the honorable wet dark—all those way—I have come bag to you, kind
Tojin-san!”

His voice shook so that he did not recognize it as his own.

“You found your way—”

“Wiz these my eyes closed,” she said, “ad udder end those whole
worl’—tha’s same thing Tojin-san—I find way bag unto you!”

“Why?” he demanded with a rough passion that yet tore and intoxicated
him.

She reached out her arms to him yearningly, pleadingly.

“Tek me ad you arms again!” she said. “Toach me on my lips wiz yours. I
will tell you—then!”

His last reserve was gone; he had no wish to hold it. Subtly,
irresistibly, she had drawn him to her; now he had taken her back into
his arms!

He felt her little fingers, as of old, passing across his face until
they found his lips, and there she placed her own.



------------------------------------------------------------------------



 ● Transcriber’s note:

    ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

    ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

    ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
      when a predominant form was found in this book.





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