He was dangerously near losing control of himself. The mist had deepened
until he could barely make out the figures of the princesses. Summon it
forth again, he whispered--but a woman had come from within to tell
them of the caller. The blind was lowered and everyone withdrew to the
rear of the house. There was nothing confused, nothing disorderly about
the withdrawal, so calm and quiet that he caught not even a rustling of silk.
Elegance and grace could at times push admiration to the point of envy.
He slipped out and sent someone back to the city for a carriage.
"I was sorry to find the prince away," he said to the man who had been
so helpful, "but I have drawn some consolation from what you have been
so good as to let me see. Might I ask you to tell them that I am here, and
to add that I am thoroughly drenched?"
The ladies were in an agony of embarrassment. They had not dreamed
that anyone would be looking in at them--and had he even overheard that
silly conversation? Now that they thought of it, there had been a peculiar
fragrance on the wind; but the hour was late and they had not paid much
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attention. Could anything be more embarrassing? Impatient at the woman
assigned to deliver his message--she did not seem to have the experience
for the task--Kaoru decided that there was a time for boldness and a time
for reserve; and the mist was in his favor. He advanced to the blind that
bed been raised earlier and knelt deferentially before it. The countrified
maids had not the first notion of what to say to him. Indeed they seemed
incapable of so ordinary a courtesy as inviting him to sit down.
"You must see how uncomfortable I am," he said quietly. "I have
come over steep mountains. You cannot believe, surely, that a man with
improper intentions would have gone to the trouble. This is not the reward
I expected. But I take some comfort in the thought that if I submit to the
drenching time after time your ladies may come to understand."
They were young and incapable of a proper answer. They seemed to
wither and crumple. It was taking a great deal of time to summon a more
experienced woman from the inner chambers. The prolonged silence,
Oigimi feared, might make it seem that they were being coy.
"We know nothing, nothing. How can we pretend otherwise?" It was
an elegantly modulated voice, but so soft that he could scarcely make it
out.
<P 787>
"One of the more trying mannerisms of this world, I have always
thought, is for people who know its cruelties to pretend that they do not.
Even you are guilty of the fault, which I find more annoying than I can
tell you. Your honored father has gained deep insights into the nature of
things. You have lived here with him. I should have thought that you
would have gained similar insights, and that they might now demonstrate
their worth by making you see the intensity of my feelings and the diffi-
culty with which I contain them. You cannot believe, surely, that I am the
usual sort of adventurer. I fear that I am of a rather inflexible nature and
refuse to wander in that direction even when others try to lead me. These
facts are general knowledge and will perhaps have reached your ears. If I
had your permission to tell you of my silent days, if I could hope to have
you come forward and seek some relief from your solitude--I cannot
describe the pleasure it would give me."
Oigimi, too shy to answer, deferred to an older woman who had at
length been brought from her room.
There was nothing reticent about _her_. "Oh no! You've left him out
there all by himself! Bring him in this minute. I simply do not understand
young people." The princesses must have found this as trying as the
<P 788>
silence. "You see how it is, sir. His Highness has decided to live as if he
did not belong to the human race. No one comes calling these days, not
even people you'd think would never forget what they owe him. And here
you are, good enough to come and see us. I may be stupid and insensitive,
but I know when to be grateful. So do my ladies. But they are so shy."
Kaoru was somewhat taken aback. Yet the woman's manner sug-
gested considerable polish and experience, and her voice was not unpleas-
ant.
"I had been feeling rather unhappy," he said, "and your words cheer
me enormously. It is good to be told that they understand."
He had come inside. Through the curtains, the old woman could make
him out in the dawn light. It was as she had been told: he had discarded
every pretense of finery and come in rough travel garb, and he was
drenched. A most extraordinary fragrance--it hardly seemed of this world
--filled the air.
"I would not want you to think me forward," she said, and there were
tears in her voice; "but I have hoped over the years that the day might
come when I could tell you a little, the smallest bit, of a sad story of long
ago." Her voice was trembling. "In among my other prayers I have put
a prayer that the day might come, and now it seems that the
<P 789>
prayer has been answered. How I have longed for this moment! But see
what is happening. I am all choked up before I have come to the first
word."
He had heard, and it had been his experience, that old people weep
easily. This, however, was no ordinary display of feeling.
"I have fought my way here so many times and not known that a
perceptive lady like yourself was in residence. Come, this is your chance.
Do not leave anything out."
"This is my chance, and there may not be another. When you are my
age you can't be sure that you will last the night. Well, let me talk. Let me
tell you that this old hag is still among the living. I have heard somewhere
that Kojiju~, the one who waited upon your revered mother--I have heard
that she is dead. So it goes. Most of the people I was fond of are dead, the
people who were young when I was young. And after I had outlived them
all, certain family ties brought me back from the far provinces, and I have
been in the service of my ladies these five or six years. None of this, I am
sure, will have come to your attention. But you may have heard of the
young gentleman who was a guards captain when he died. I am told that
his brother is now a grand councillor. It hardly seems possible that we
have had time to dry our tears, and yet I count on my fingers and I see that
there really have been years enough for you to be the fine young gentleman
you are. They seem like a dream, all those years.
"My mother was his nurse. I was privileged myself to wait upon him.
I did not matter, of course, but he sometimes told me secrets he kept from
others, let slip things he could not keep to himself. And as he lay dying
he called me to his side and left a will, I suppose you might call it. There
were things in it I knew I must tell you of someday. But no more. You will
ask why, having said this much, I do not go on. Well, there may after all
be another chance and I can tell you everything. These youngsters are of
the opinion that I have said too much already, and they are right." She was
a loquacious old person obviously, but now she fell silent.
It was like a story in a dream, like the unprompted recital of a medium
in a trance. It was too odd--and at the same time it touched upon events
of which he had long wanted to know more. But this was not the time.
She was right. Too many eyes were watching. And it would not do to
surrender on the spot and waste a whole night on an ancient story.
"I do not understand everything you have said, I fear, and yet your
talk of old times does call up fond thoughts. I shall come again and ask
you to tell me the rest of the story. You see how I am dressed, and if the
mist clears before I leave I will disgrace myself in front of the ladies. I
would like to stay longer but do not see how I can."
As he stood up to leave, the bell of the monastery sounded in the
<P 790>
distance. The mist was heavy. The sadness of these lives poured in upon
him, of the isolation enforced by heavy mountain mists. They were lives
into which the whole gamut of sorrows had entered, he thought, and he
thought too that he understood why they preferred to live in seclusion.
"How very sad.
"In the dawn I cannot see the path I took
To find Oyama of the Pines in mist."
He turned away, and yet hesitated. Even ladies who saw the great
gentlemen of the capital every day would have found him remarkable, and
he quite dazzled these rustic maids. Oigimi, knowing that it would be too
much to ask one of them to deliver it for her, offered a reply, her voice soft
and shy as before, and with a hint of a sigh in it.
"Our mountain path, enshrouded whatever the season,
Is now closed off by the deeper mist of autumn."
The scene itself need not have detained him, but these evidences of
loneliness made him reluctant to leave. Presently, uncomfortable at the
thought of being seen in broad daylight, he went to the west veranda,
where a place had been prepared for him, and looked out over the river.
"To have spoken so few words and to have had so few in return," he
said as he left the princesses' wing of the house, "makes it certain that I
shall have much to think about. Perhaps when we are better acquainted
I can tell you of it. In the meantime, I shall say only that if you think me
no different from most young men, and you do seem to, then your judg-
ment in such matters is not what I would have hoped it to be."
His men had become expert at presiding over the weirs. "Listen to all
the shouting," said one of them. "And they don't seem to be exactly
boasting over what they've caught. The fish are not cooperating."
Strange, battered little boats, piled high with brush and wattles, made
their way up and down the river, each boatman pursuing his own sad,
small livelihood at the uncertain mercy of the waters. "It is the same with
all of us," thought Kaoru to himself. "Am I to boast that I am safe from
the flood, calm and secure in a jeweled mansion?"
Asking for brush and ink, he got off a note to Oigimi: "It is not hard
to guess the sad thoughts that must be yours.
"Wet are my sleeves as the oars that work these shallows,
For my heart knows the heart of the lady at the bridge."
<P 791>
He sent it in through the guard of the night before. Red from the cold,
the man presently returned with an answer. The princess was not proud
of the paper, perfumed in a very undistinguished way, but speed seemed
the first consideration.
"I have wet sleeves, and indeed my whole being is at the mercy of the
waters.
"With sodden sleeves the boatman plies the river.
So too these sleeves of mine, at morn, at night."
The writing was confident and dignified. He had not been able to
detect a flaw in the lady. But here were these people rushing him on, telling
him that his carriage had arrived from the city.
He called the guard aside. "I shall most certainly come again when His
Highness has finished his retreat." Changing to court dress that had come
with the carriage, he gave his wet traveling clothes to the man.
The old woman's remarks were very much on his mind after his return
to the city, and the princesses were still before his eyes, more beautiful and
reposed than he would have thought possible.
<P 792>
"And so," he thought, "Uji will not, after all, be my renunciation of
the world."
He sent off a letter, taking care that every detail distinguished it from
an ordinary love note: the paper was white and thick and firmly rectangu-
lar, the brush strong yet pliant, the ink shaded with great subtlety.
"It seems a great pity," he wrote, "that my visit was such a short one,
and that I held back so much I would have liked to say; but the last thing
I wanted was to be thought forward. I believe I mentioned a hope that in
the future I might appear freely before you. I have made note of the day
on which your honored father's retreat is to end, and I hope that by then
the gloomy mists will have dissipated."
The letter showed great restraint and avoided any suggestion of ro-
mantic intent. The guards officer who was his messenger was instructed to
seek out the old woman and give it to her along with certain gifts. He
remembered how the watchman had shivered as he made the rounds, and
sent lavish gifts for him too, food in cypress boxes and the like.
The following day he dispatched a messenger to the temple to which
the prince had withdrawn. "I have no doubt," said the letter that accom-
panied numerous bolts of cotton and silk, "that the priests will be badly
treated by the autumn tempests, and that you will want to leave offerings."
The prince was making preparations to depart, his retreat having
ended the evening before. He gave silk and cotton cloth as well as vest-
ments to the priests who had been of service.
The garments of which that watchman had been the recipient--a most
elegant hunting robe and a fine singlet of white brocade--were further
remarkable for their softness and fragrance. Alas, the man could not
change the fact that he had not been born for such finery. It was the same
everywhere he went: no one could resist praising him or chiding him for
the fragrance. He came to regret just a little that he had accepted the gift.
It restricted his movements, for he dreaded the astonishment each new
encounter produced. If only he could have the robes without the odor--
but no amount of scrubbing would take it away. The gift had, after all,
been from a gentleman renowned for just that fragrance.
