to bring immediate comfort; and so the conclusion must be that the
glimpse he had had of the older sister--and she certainly was very beauti-
ful--had changed him for life.
Chu~jo~ assumed the offensive. "You are evidently asking me to plead
your case. You do not see, I gather, what a rogue and a scoundrel you
would seem if I did. A little more and I will no longer be able to feel sorry
for you. I must be forever on my guard, and it is exhausting."
"This is the end. I do not care what you think of me, and I do not care
what happens to me. I did hate to see her lose that game, though. You
should have smuggled me inside where she could see me. I would have
given signals and kept her from losing. Ah, what a wretched fate is mine!
Everything is against me and yet I go on hating to lose. The one thing I
cannot overcome is a hatred of losing."
Chu~jo~ had to laugh.
"A nod from you is all it takes to win?
This somehow seems at odds with reality."
It confirmed his impression of a certain want of sympathy.
"Pity me yet once more and lead me to her,
Assured that life and death are in your hands."
Laughing and weeping, they talked the night away.
The next day was the first of the Fourth Month. All his brothers set
off in court finery, and he spent the day brooding in his room. His mother
ed to weep. Yu~giri, though sympathetic, was more resigned and sensi-
ble. It was quite proper, he said, that Tamakazura should respect the Reizei
emperor's wishes.
"I doubt that I would have been refused if I had really pleaded your
case. I am sorry."
As he so often did, the boy replied with a sad poem:
"Spring went off with the blossoms that left the trees.
I wander lost under trees in mournful leaf."
<P 764>
His agents, among the more important women in attendance upon
Tamakazura and her daughters, had not given up. "I do feel sorry for him,"
said Chu~jo~. "He says that he is teetering between life and death, and he
may just possibly mean it."
His parents had interceded for him, and Tamakazura had thought of
consoling him, inconsolable though he held himself to be, with another
daughter. She began to fear that he would make difficulties for the older
daughter. Higekuro had said that she should not go to a commoner of
however high rank. She was going to a former emperor and even so
Tamakazura was not happy. In upon her worries came another letter,
delivered by one of the lieutenant's sentimental allies.
Tamakazura had a quick answer:
"At last I understand. This mournful mien
Conceals a facile delight with showy blossoms."
"That is not kind, my lady."
But she had too much on her mind to think of revising it.
The older girl was presented at the Reizei Palace on the ninth of the
month. Yu~giri provided carriages and a large escort. Kumoinokari was
somewhat resentful, but did not like to think that her correspondence with
Tamakazura, suddenly interesting and flourishing because of the lieuten-
ant's tribulations, must now be at an end. She sent splendid robes for the
ladies-in-waiting and otherwise helped with the arrangements.
"I was mustered into the service of a remarkably shiftless young
man," she wrote, "and I should certainly have consulted your convenience
more thoroughly. Yet I think that you for your part might have kept me
better informed."
It was a gentle and circumspect protest, and Tamakazura had to admit
that it was well taken.
Yu~giri also wrote. "Something has come up that requires me to be in
retreat just when I ought to be with you. I am sending sons to do whatever
odd jobs need to be done. Please make such use of them as you can." He
dispatched several sons, including two guards officers. She was most grate-
ful.
Ko~bai also sent carriages. He was her brother and his wife was her
stepdaughter and so relations should have been doubly close. In fact, they
were rather distant. One of Makibashira's brothers came, however, to join
Tamakazura's sons in the escort. How sad it was for Tamakazura, everyone
said, that her husband was no longer living.
From Yu~giri's son the lieutenant there came through the usual agent
the usual bombast: "My life is at an end. I am resigned and yet I am sad.
Say that you are sorry. Say only that, and I shall manage to struggle on
for a little while yet, I think."
She found the two sisters together, looking very dejected. They had
been inseparable, thinking even a closed door an intolerable barrier; and
<P 765>
now they must part. Dressed for her presentation at the Reizei Palace, the
older sister was very beautiful. It may have been that she was thinking
sadly of the plans her father had had for her. She thought the note rather
implausible, coming from someone who still had two parents living, and
very splendid parents, too. Yet perhaps he was not merely gesturing and
posing.
"Tell him this," she said, jotting down a poem at the end of his note:
"When all is evanescence we all are sad,
And whose affairs does'sad' most aptly describe?"
"An unsettling sort of note," she added, "giving certain hints of what
'sad' may possibly mean."
He shed tears of ecstasy at having something in the lady's own hand
--for his intermediary had chosen not to recopy it. "Do you think that if
I die for love...?" he sent back. She did not think it a very well-chosen
allusion, and what followed was embarrassing, in view of the fact that she
had not expected the woman to pass on her words verbatim:
"How true. We live, we die, not as we ask,
And I must die without that one word'sad.'
"I would hurry to my grave if I thought I might have it there."
She had only the prettiest and most graceful of attendants. The
ceremonies were as elaborate as if she were being presented to the reigning
emperor. It was late in the night when the procession, having first looked
in on Tamakazura's sister, proceeded to the Reizei emperor's apartments.
Akikonomu and the ladies-in-waiting had all grown old in his service, and
now there was a beautiful lady at her youthful best. No one was surprised
that the emperor doted upon her and that she was soon the most conspicu-
ous lady in the Reizei household. The Reizei emperor behaved like any
other husband, and that, people said, was quite as it should be. He had
hoped to see a little of Tamakazura and was disappointed that she with-
drew after a brief conversation.
Kaoru was his constant companion, almost the favorite that Genji had
once been. He was on good terms with everyone in the house, including,
of course, the new lady. He would have liked to know exactly how friendly
she was. One still, quiet evening when he was out strolling with her
brother the chamberlain, they came to a pine tree before what he judged
to be her curtains. Hanging from it was a very fine wisteria. With mossy
rocks for their seats, they sat down beside the brook.
There may have been guarded resentment in the poem which Kaoru
recited as he looked up at it:
<P 766>
"These blossoms, were they more within our reach,
Might seem to be of finer hue than the pine."
The boy understood immediately, and wished it to be known that he
had not approved of the match.
"It is the lavender of all such flowers,
And yet it is not as I wish it were."
He was an honest, warmhearted boy, and he was genuinely sorry that
Kaoru had been disappointed--not that Kaoru's disappointment could
have been described as bitter.
Yu~giri's son the lieutenant, on the other hand, seemed so completely
unhinged that one half expected violence. Some of the older girl's suitors
were beginning to take notice of the younger. It was the turn which
Tamakazura, in response to Kumoinokari's petitions, had hoped his own
inclinations might take, but he had fallen silent. Though the Reizei em-
peror was on the best of terms with all of Yu~giri's sons, the lieutenant
seldom came visiting, and when he did he looked very unhappy and did
not stay long.
<P 767>
And so Higekuro's very strongly expressed wishes had come to noth-
ing. Wanting an explanation, the emperor summoned Tamakazura's son
the captain.
"He is very cross with us," said the captain to Tamakazura, and it was
evident that he too was much put out. "I did not keep my feelings to
myself, you may remember. I said that people would be very surprised.
You did not agree, and I found it very difficult to argue with you. Now we
seem to have succeeded in alienating an emperor, not at all a wise thing
to do."
"Once again I do not entirely agree with you," replied Tamakazura
calmly. "I thought the matter over carefully, and the Reizei emperor was
so insistent that I had to feel sorry for him. Your sister would have had
a very difficult time at court without your father to help her. She is much
better off where she is, of that I feel very sure. I do not remember that you
or anyone else tried very hard to dissuade me, and now my brother and
all of you are saying that I made a horrible mistake. It is not fair--and we
must accept what has happened as fate."
"The fate of which you speak is not something we see here before us,
and how are we to describe it to the emperor? You seem to worry a great
deal about the empress and to forget that your own sister is one of the
Reizei ladies. And the arrangements you congratulate yourself upon hav-
ing made for my sister--I doubt that they will prove workable. But that
is all right. I shall do what I can for her. There have been precedents enough
for sending a lady to court when other ladies are already there, so many
of them, indeed, as to argue that cheerful attendance upon an emperor has
from very ancient times been thought its own justification. If there is
unpleasantness at the Reizei Palace and my good aunt is displeased with
us, I doubt that we will find many people rushing to our support."
Tamakazura's sons were not making things easier for her.
The Reizei emperor seemed more pleased with his new lady as the
months went by. In the Seventh Month she became pregnant. No one
thought it strange that so pretty and charming a lady should have been
plagued by suitors or that the Reizei emperor should keep her always at
his side, a companion in music and other diversions. Kaoru, also a constant
companion, often heard her play, and his feelings as he listened were far
from simple. The Reizei emperor was especially fond of the Japanese koto
upon which Chu~jo~ had played "A Branch of Plum."
The New Year came, and there was caroling. Numbers of young
courtiers had fine voices, and from this select group only the best received
the royal appointment as carolers. Kaoru was named master of one of the
two choruses and Yu~giri's son the lieutenant was among the musicians.
There was a bright, cloudless moon, almost at full, as they left the main
palace for the Reizei Palace. Tamakazura's sister and daughter were both
in the main hall, where a retinue of princes and high courtiers surrounded
the Reizei emperor. Looking them over, one was tempted to conclude that
<P 768>
only Yu~giri and Higekuro had succeeded in producing really fine sons. The
carolers seemed to feel that the Reizei Palace was even more of a challenge
than the main palace. The lieutenant was very tense and fidgety at the
thought that his lady was in the audience. The test on such occasions is
the verve with which a young man wears the rather ordinary rosette in his
cap. They all looked very dashing and they sang most commendably. As
the lieutenant stepped ceremoniously to the royal staircase and sang
"Bamboo River," he was so assailed by memories that he was perilously
near choking and losing his place. The Reizei emperor went with them to
Akikonomu's apartments. As the night wore on, the moon was immod-
estly bright, brighter, it almost seemed, than the noonday sun. A too keen
awareness of his audience was making the lieutenant feel somewhat un-
steady on his feet. He wished that the wine cups would not come quite
so unfailingly in his direction.
Exhausted from the night of caroling, which had taken him back and
forth across the city, Kaoru was resting when a summons came from the
Reizei Palace.
"Sleep is not permitted? " But though he grumbled he set off once
more.
The Reizei emperor wanted to know how the carolers had been re-
ceived at the main palace.
"Isn't it fine that you were chosen over all the old men to lead one of
the choruses."
He was humming "The Delight of Ten Thousand Springs" as he
started for his new lady's apartments. Kaoru went with him. Her relatives
had come in large numbers to enjoy the caroling and everything was very
bright and modish.
Kaoru was engaged in conversation at a gallery door.
"The moon was dazzling last night," he said, "but I doubt that moons
and laurels account entirely for an appearance of giddiness on the lieuten-
ant's part. It is just as bright up in the clouds where His Majesty lives, but
the palace does not seem to have that effect on him at all."
The women were feeling sorry for the lieutenant. "The darkness was
completely defeated," said one of them. "We thought the moonlight did
better by you than by him."
A bit of paper was pushed from under the curtains.
"'Bamboo River,' not my favorite song,
But somewhat striking, its effect last night."
