“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.
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