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!