In the cowed house Yuki moved like some waxen automaton, living only in the one sense of hearing. Every cry from the street, every wind-jangle of the gate-bell, sent her currents of hope and apprehension. Tetsujo grimly ignored the intensifying strain, but Iriya's pitying eyes turned more often to her child. The servants kept to themselves, whispering and exchanging glances.
Now the bamboo hedges which shut out the main street-line bent over, at times almost to the earth, writhing, stretching, and squeaking at the confining strips of wood that sought to hold them erect. Besides the hedge-bamboo, "sa-sa," the fence had an inner line of cruel orange-thorn.
Yuki had watched the elemental conflict greedily. Suddenly a snatch of Carmen's love-song rode the wind. It was the sound she had expected. Her little hands sought each other within the silken sleeves, and clutched so fiercely that a nail snapped. Again came the song, nearer this time, just without the gate. It was a strange, incongruous note, as if an English lark should rise from the bruised and battered hedge. Yuki heard a movement in the next room, where Tetsujo sat among his books. Perhaps it was coincidence that Suzumè brought her, exactly at this moment, a fresh tray of tea. The blue gardeners strolled together into full view, and stooped, as if to discuss the condition of a botan bush, now beaten down.
Square upon the back of one of them fell a queer winged missive, a scrap of foreign paper weighted with a pebble. Yuki saw it clearly. Old Suzumè, with a stifled gasp, crouched in her place. The girl poured tea for herself, and drank it calmly. The pelted gardener, without so much as a look around, lifted the scrap of paper as if it had been a broken bud, and slipped it, weight and all, into his sleeve.
The Carmen song stopped. Suzumè, with a last sly glance, slipped from the room. Yuki pressed one hand to her throat. It would be no harm to sing the answering strain. What though her father and her jailers heard? If once the song sped forth, not even their craft could recall it. Pierre would understand, then, that she heard, but was a prisoner; that even the written note he threw could not be received. Once, twice, the white lips parted, and the slender throat stiffened for an answering phrase; but no sound came. It was as in nightmare dreams, where one seeks to cry aloud, and finds that the voice is gone.
Now her father was on his feet. She heard his long, swinging stride go through the house. At the door she heard him kick his wooden clogs, and give a gruff order to O Maru San. Then the harsh scraping feet passed along the garden stones, the little bell clamored, and the gate-panel closed with a bang.
"Ma-a-a!" she heard old Suzumè cry. "This is not the master I have known for fifty years. He must be bewitched by a fox." Maru gave a little giggle, which the elder woman quickly suppressed. Iriya, in the guest-room, moved like a cat. Yuki knew that all were against her,—spies, enemies. Passages from the Psalms of her Christian Bible came to the girl. "They compass me round about on every side. I am set in the midst of snares." She ran out into the garden, now, listening for sounds of violence from the street. Nothing came but the wailing of wind. Tetsujo returned as abruptly as he had gone. Yuki, steeling herself against the look of aversion certain to be met, went before him, not questioning, but searching his face with haggard eyes for some possible sign of at least a will-conflict between him and Pierre. She fancied, in her abnormal state of mind, that something of Pierre's thought must cling to his enemy, and so be transmitted to her. But Tetsujo's face was as blank and expressionless as the glazed side of one of Suzumè's tea-jars on the kitchen shelf.
Unable to breathe longer that overweighted air, Yuki caught up a gray shawl from her room, and went boldly out again into the garden. The rain had ceased entirely. The wind, though fiercer when it came, came at increasing intervals. Through one of these temporary lulls Yuki reached the bleak little pond. The encircling rocks appeared older, grimmer, and more shrunken. A few of the bordering plants had been twisted and split. One was overturned, its ochre roots clutching at the unfriendly air, the evergreen branches plunged deep into quivering gray water.
As if in wonder that so frail a creature as a girl should dare its strength, the storm, crouching and growling for a last effort, hurled the full bulk of its viewless majesty upon her. She was beaten bodily upon the rocks. But for the protecting shawl she might have been blinded, or the long black hair torn from her. For an instant breath stopped; but in the wake of it came exultation. Lifting her head, she smiled a challenge to the storm to snatch her faint soul from her lips, and bear it far, like a petal, on that streaming tide of heaven. The blue-robed gardeners, crouching in the shelter of a rock, stared at her in wonder. Iriya's face came for one white instant to the veranda and vanished. Yuki could hear the very timbers groan. The bands of dead bamboo, lashed in horizontal strips to the living hedge, squeaked and buckled, and squeaked again, in absurd imitation of animate torture. In the pond the pear-shaped water was smitten into one gelatinous, cowering mass.
Suddenly the wind went. Sounds all about her of stress and terror changed into whimpers, whispers, moans, and small complainings. The pond-water sprang up in small simultaneous waves which all pawed and clamored at the rooks for explanation. Yuki stood upright, realizing dully her slow return to sanity and poise. The storm had swept her, for a moment, out of her own reach. In the recoil she grudged her soul its habitation.