was in tears--perhaps they come more easily as one grows older.
The lieutenant continued the concert with "This House." He had a
fine voice and he was in very good form this evening. The concert had a
gay informality that would not have been possible had there been elderly
and demanding connoisseurs in the assembly. Everyone wanted to take
<P 757>
part in it, and the music flowed on and on. The chamberlain seemed to
resemble his father, Higekuro. He preferred wine to music, at which he was
not very good.
"Come, now. Silence is not permitted. Something cheerful and con-
gratulatory."
And so, with someone to help him, he sang "Bamboo River." Though
immature and somewhat awkward, it was a commendable enough per-
formance.
A cup was pushed towards Kaoru from under the blinds. He was in
no hurry to take it.
"I have heard it said that people talk too much when they drink too
much. Is that what you have in mind?"
She had a New Year's gift for him, a robe and cloak from her own
wardrobe, most alluringly scented.
"More and more purposeful," he said, making as if to return it
through her son. "There were all those other parties for the carolers," he
added, deftly turning aside their efforts to keep him on.
<N 8>
<P 758>
He always got all the attention, thought the lieutenant, looking
glumly after him, in an even blacker mood than usual. This is the poem
with which, sighing deeply, he made his departure:
"Everyone is thinking of the blossoms,
And I am left alone in springtime darkness."
This reply came from one of the women behind the curtains:
"There is a time and place for everything.
The plum is not uniquely worthy of notice."
The young chamberlain had a note from Kaoru the next morning. "I
fear that I may have been too noisy last night. Was everyone disgusted
with me?" And there was a poem in an easy, discursive style, obviously
meant for young ladies:
"Deep down in the bamboo river we sang of
Did you catch an echo of deep intentions?"
It was taken to the main hall, where all the women read it.
"What lovely handwriting," said Tamakazura, who hoped that her
children might be induced to improve their own scrawls. "Name me
another young gentleman who has such a wide variety of talents and
accomplishments. He lost his father when he was very young and his
mother left him to rear himself, and look at him, if you will. There must
be reasons for it all."
The chamberlain's reply was in a very erratic hand indeed. "We did
not really believe that excuse about the carolers.
"A word about a river and off you ran,
And left us to make what we would of unseemly haste."
Kaoru came visiting again, as if to demonstrate his "deep intentions,"
and it was as the lieutenant had said: he got all the attention. For his part,
the chamberlain was happy that they should be so close, he and Kaoru,
and only hoped that they could be closer.
<N 9>
It was now the Third Month. The cherries were in bud and then
suddenly the sky was a storm of blossoms and falling petals. Young ladies
who lived a secluded life were not likely to be charged with indiscretion
if at this glorious time of the year they took their places out near the
veranda. Tamakazura's daughters were perhaps eighteen or nineteen,
beautiful and good-natured girls. The older sister had regular, elegant
features and a sort of gay spontaneity which one wanted to see taken into
the royal family itself. She was wearing a white cloak lined with red and
a robe of russet with a yellow lining. It was a charming combination that
went beautifully with the season, and there was a flair even in her way of
quietly tucking her skirts about her that made other girls feel rather
<P 759>
dowdy. The younger sister had chosen a light robe of pink, and the soft
flow of her hair put one in mind of a willow tree. She was a tall, proud
beauty with a face that suggested a meditative turn. Yet there were those
who said that if an ability to catch and hold the eye was the important
thing, then the older sister was the great beauty of the day.
They were seated at a Go board, their long hair trailing behind them.
Their brother the chamberlain was seated near them, prepared if needed
to offer his services as referee.
His brothers came in.
"How very fond they do seem to be of the child. They are prepared
to submit their destinies to his mature judgment."
Faced with this stern masculinity, the serving women brought them-
selves to attention.
"I am so busy at the office," said the oldest brother, "that I have quite
abdicated my prerogatives here at home to our young lord chamberlain."
"But my duties, I may assure you, are far more arduous," said the
second. "I am scarcely ever at home, and I have been pushed quite out of
things."
The young ladies were charming as they took a shy recess from their
game.
"I often think when I am at work," said the oldest brother, dabbing
at his eyes, "how good it would be if Father were still with us." He was
twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and very handsome and well mannered. He
wanted somehow to pursue his father's plans for the sisters.
Sending one of the women down into the garden, a veritable cherry
orchard, he had her break off an especially fine branch.
"Where else do you find blossoms like these?" said one of the sisters,
taking it up in her hand.
"When you were children you quarreled over that cherry. Father said
it belonged to you" --and he nodded to his older sister-- "and Mother said
it belonged to _you_, and no one said it belonged to me. I did not exactly cry
myself to sleep but I did feel slighted. It is a very old tree and it somehow
makes me aware of how old I am getting myself. And I think of all the
people who once looked at it and are no longer living." By turns jocular
and melancholy, the brothers paid a more leisurely visit than usual. The
older brothers were married and had things to attend to, but today the
cherry blossoms seemed important.
Tamakazura did not look old enough to have such fine sons. Indeed
she still seemed in the first blush of maidenhood, not at all different from
the girl the Reizei emperor had known. It was nostalgic affection, no doubt,
that had led him to ask for one of her daughters.
Her sons did not think the prospect very exciting. "Present and im-
mediate influence is what matters, and his great day is over. He is still very
youthful and handsome, of course--indeed, it is hard to take your eyes
from him. But it is the same with music and birds and flowers. Every-
<P 760>
thing has its day, its time to be noticed. The crown prince, now--"
"Yes, I had thought of him," said Tamakazura. "But Yu~giri's daughter
dominates him so completely. A lady who enters the competition without
very careful preparation and very strong backing is sure to find herself in
trouble. If your father were still alive--no one could take responsibility for
the distant future, of course, but he could at least see that we were off to
a good start." In sum, the prospect was discouraging.
When their brothers had left, the ladies turned again to the Go board.
They now made the disputed cherry tree their stakes.
"Best two of three," said someone.
They came out to the veranda as evening approached. The blinds were
raised and each of them had an ardent cheering section. Yu~giri's son the
lieutenant had come again to visit the youngest son of the house. The latter
was off with his brothers, however, and his rooms were quiet. Finding an
open gallery door, the lieutenant peered cautiously inside. An enchanting
sight greeted him, like a revelation of the Blessed One himself (and it was
rather sad that he should be so dazzled). An evening mist somewhat
obscured the scene, but he thought that she in the red-lined robe of white,
the "cherry" as it is called, must be the one who so interested him. Lovely,
<P 761>
vivacious--she would be "a memento when they have fallen." He must
not let another man have her. The young attendants were also very beauti-
ful in the evening light.
The lady on the right was the victor. "Give a loud Korean cheer,"
said one of her supporters, and indeed they were rather noisy in their
rejoicing. "It leaned to the west to show that it was ours all along, and you
people refused to accept the facts."
Though not entirely sure what was happening, the lieutenant would
have liked to join them. Instead he withdrew, for it would not do to let
them know that they had been observed in this happy abandon. Thereafter
he was often to be seen lurking about the premises, hoping for another
such opportunity.
The blossoms had been good for an afternoon, and now the stiff winds
of evening were tearing at them.
Said the lady who had been the loser:
"They did not choose to come when I summoned them,
and yet I trmble to see them go away."
And her woman Saisho~, comfortingly:
"A gust of wind, and promptly they are gone.
My grief is not intense at the loss of such weaklings."
And the victorious lady:
"These flowers must fall. It is the way of the world.
But do not demean the tree that came to me."
And Tayu~, one of her women:
"You have given yourselves to us, and now you fall
At the water's edge. Come drifting to us as foam."
A little page girl who had been cheering for the victor went down into
the garden and gathered an armful of fallen branches.
"The winds have sent them falling to the ground,
But I shall pick them up, for they are ours."
And little Nareki, a supporter of the lady who had lost:
"We have not sleeves that cover all the vast heavens.
We yet may wish to keep these fragrant petals.
<P 762>
"Be ambitious, my ladies!"
The days passed uneventfully. Tamakazura fretted and came to no
decision, and there continued to be importunings from the Reizei emperor.
An extremely friendly letter came from his consort, Tamakazura's
sister. "You are behaving as if we were nothing to each other. His Majesty
is saying most unjustly that I seek to block his proposal. It is not pleasant
of him even if he is joking. Do please make up your mind and let her come
to us immediately."
Perhaps it had all been fated, thought Tamakazura--but she almost
wished that her sister would dispel the uncertainty by coming out in
opposition. She sighed and turned to the business of getting the girl ready,
and seeing too that all the women were properly dressed and groomed.
The lieutenant was in despair. He went to his mother, Kumoinokari,
who got off an earnest letter in his behalf. "I write to you from the darkness
that obscures a mother's heart. No doubt I am being unreasonable--but
perhaps you will understand and be generous."
Tamakazura sighed and set about an answer. It was a difficult situa-
tion. "I am in an agony of indecision, and these constant letters from the
Reizei emperor do not help at all. I only wish--and it is, I think, the
solution least likely to be criticized--that someone could persuade your
son to be patient. If he really cares, then someday he will perhaps see that
his wishes are very important to me."
It might have been read as an oblique suggestion that she would let
him have her second daughter once the Reizei question had been settled.
She did not want to make simultaneous arrangements for the two girls.
That would have seemed pretentious, and besides, the lieutenant was still
very young and rather obscure. He was not prepared to accept the sugges-
tion that he transfer his affections, however, and the image of his lady at
the Go board refused to leave him. He longed to see her again, and was
in despair at the thought that there might not be another opportunity.
He was in the habit of taking his complaints to Tamakazura's son the
chamberlain. One day he came upon the boy reading a letter from Kaoru.
Immediately guessing its nature, he took it from the heap of papers in
which the chamberlain sought to hide it. Not wanting to exaggerate the
importance of a rather conventional complaint about an unkind lady, the
chamberlain smiled and let him read it.
"The days go by, quite heedless of my longing.
Already we come to the end of a bitter spring."
It was a very quiet sort of protest compared to the lieutenant's over-
wrought strainings, a fact which the women were quick to point out.
Chagrined, he could think of little to say, and shortly he withdrew to the
room of a woman named Chu~jo~, who always listened to him with sympa-
thy. There seemed little for him to do but sigh at the refusal of the world
<P 763>
to let him have his way. The chamberlain strolled past on his way to
consult with Tamakazura about a reply to Kaoru's letter, and the sighs and
complaints now rose to a level that taxed Chu~jo~'s patience. She fell silent.
The usual jokes refused to come.
"It was a dream that I long to dream again," he said, having informed
her that he had been among the spectators at the Go match. "What do I
have to live for? Not a great deal. Not a great deal is left to me. It is as they
say: a person even longs for the pain."
She did genuinely pity him, but there was nothing she could say.
Hints from Tamakazura that he might one day be comforted did not seem
