Kaoru was much pleased at the graceful and unassuming answer he
had had from Oigimi.
"What is this?" said her father, shown a copy of Kaoru's letter. "Such
a chilly reception cannot have at all the effect we want. You must bring
yourselves to see that he is different from the triflers the world seems to
produce these days. I have no doubt that his thoughts have turned to you
because I once chanced to hint at a hope that he would watch over you
after my death." He too got off a letter, his thanks for the stream of gifts
that had flooded the monastery.
Kaoru began to think of another visit. He thought too of Niou, always
mooning over the possibility of finding a great beauty lost away in the
mountains. Well, he had a story that would interest his friend.
<P 793>
One quiet evening he went calling. In the course of the usual court
gossip, he mentioned the prince at Uji, and went on to describe in some
detail what had taken place in the autumn dawn.
He was not disappointed. "A masterpiece!" said Niou.
He added yet further exciting details.
"But what of the letter? You said there was a letter, and you haven't
shown it to me. That is not kind of you. You know that I would hold
nothing back if I were in your place."
"Oh, to be sure. All those letters you've had from all those ladies and
you have not shown me the smallest scrap. But I know that something of
this sort is not for the weak and obscure of the world to have all to
themselves. I would like to take you for a look sometime, I most definitely
would; but it is out of the question. I could not think of taking such an
important man to such a place. We who are not too burdened with glory
are in the happier position. We have our affairs as we want to have them.
But think: there must be _hundreds of beauties hidden away from us all.
There they are, poor dears, cut off from the world, hidden behind this and
that mountain, waiting for us to find them. As a matter of fact, I had for
a number of years known of princesses off in the Uji mountains, but the
thought of them had only made me shudder. A man knows, after all, the
effect of saintliness on women. But if the sun sets them off as the moon
did, then it would be hard to ask for more."
By the time he had finished, his companion was honestly jealous.
Kaoru was not one to be drawn to any ordinary woman. There must be
something truly remarkable here. Niou longed to have a look for himself.
"Do, please, investigate further," he said, openly impatient with his
rank, which made such expeditions difficult.
And he had not even seen the ladies, thought Kaoru, smiling to him-
self. "Come, now. Women aren't worth the trouble. I must be serious: I had
reasons for wanting to get my mind off of my own affairs, and I especially
wanted to avoid the sort of frivolity that so excites you. And if my feelings
were to pull me against my resolve--you cannot tell me, can you, that any
good would come of it."
"Fine!" Niou said, laughing. "Another sermon. Let us all fall silent and
hear what our saint has to say. But no. I think we have had enough."
It was with longing and dismay that Kaoru thought of the events the
old woman's story had hinted at. He had never been very strongly drawn
even to women of uncommon charm and talent, and now they interested
him still less.
On about the fifth or sixth day of the Tenth Month he paid his next
visit to Uji. He must make it a point to have a look at the weirs, said his
men. It was the season when they were at their most interesting.
He would prefer not to, he replied. "A fly having a look at the
fish--a pretty picture."
<P 794>
To present as austere a figure as possible, he rode in a carriage faced
with palmetto fronds, such as a woman might use, and ordered a cloak and
trousers of coarse, unfigured material.
Delighted to see him, the prince arranged a most tasteful banquet
from dishes for which the region was known. In the evening, under the
lamps, they listened to a discourse on some of the more difficult passages
in scriptures they had been over together. The abbot was among those
invited down from the monastery. Sleep was out of the question. The roar
of the waters and the whipping of leaves and branches in the violent river
winds, which in lesser degree might have moved one to a pleasant aware-
ness of the season, invited gloom and even despair. Dawn would be ap-
proaching, thought Kaoru, and the koto strain he had heard that other
morning came back to him.
He guided the conversation to the delights of koto and lute. "On my
last visit, as the morning mist was rolling in, I was lucky enough to hear
a short melody, a most extraordinary one. It was over in a few seconds,
and since then I have not been able to think of anything except how I
might hear more."
"The hues and the scents of the world are nothing to me now," said
the prince, "and I have forgotten all the music I ever knew." Even so he
sent a woman for the instruments. "No, I am afraid it will not be right. But
perhaps--if I had someone to follow, a little might come back?" He pressed
a lute upon Kaoru.
"Can it be," said Kaoru, tuning the instrument, "that this is the one
I heard the other morning? I had thought that there must be something
rather special about the instrument itself, but now I see that there is
another explanation for that remarkable music." He addressed himself to
the lute, but in a manner somewhat bemused.
"You must not make sport of us, sir. Where can music likely to catch
your ear have come from? You speak of the impossible."
The prince's koto had a clearness and strength that were almost chill-
ing. Perhaps it borrowed overtones from "the wind in the mountain
pines." He pretended to falter and forget, and pushed the instrument
away when he had finished the first strain. The brief performance had
suggested great subtlety and discernment.
"Sometimes, without warning, I do hear in the distance a strain such
as to make me think that one of my daughters has acquired some notion
of what real music is; but they have had little training, and it has been a
very long time since I last made much effort to teach them. As the mood
takes them, they play a tune or two, and they have only the river to
accompany them. It is most unlikely that their twanging would be of any
interest to a musician like you. But suppose," he called to them, "you were
to have a try at it."
<P 795>
"It was bad enough to be overheard when we thought we were alone."
"I would disgrace myself."
And so he was rebuffed by both his daughters. He did not give up
easily, but, to Kaoru's great disappointment, they would have nothing of
the proposal.
The prince was deeply shamed that his daughters should thus an-
nounce themselves as rustic wenches, out of touch with the ways of the
world.
"They have lived in such seclusion that their very existence is a secret.
I have wished it to be so; but now, when I think how little time I have left,
when I think that I may be gone tomorrow, I find that resignation eludes
me. They have their whole lives yet to live, and might they not end their
years as drifters and beggars? A fear of that possibility will be the one bond
holding me to the world when my time comes."
"It would not be honest of me to enter into a firm commitment," said
Kaoru, deeply moved; "but you are not to think, because I say so, that I
am in the least cool or indifferent to what you have said. Though I cannot
be sure that I will survive you for very long, I mean to be true to every
syllable I have spoken."
"You are very kind, very kind indeed."
When the prince had withdrawn for matins, Kaoru summoned the old
woman. Her name was Bennokimi, and the Eighth Prince had her in
constant attendance upon his daughters. Though in her late fifties, she was
still favored with the graces of a considerably younger woman. Her tears
wing liberally, she told him of what an unhappy life "the young cap-
tain," Kashiwagi, had led, of how he had fallen ill and presently wasted
away to nothing.
It would have been a very affecting tale of long ago even if it had been
about a stranger. Haunted and bewildered through the years, longing to
know the facts of his birth, Kaoru had prayed that he might one day have
a clear explanation. Was it in answer to his prayers that now, without
warning, there had come a chance to hear of these old matters, as if in a
sad dream? He too was in tears.
"It is hard to believe--and I must admit that it is a little alarming too
that someone who remembers those days should still be with us. I
suppose people have been spreading the news to the world--and I have
had not a whisper of it."
"No one knew except Kojiju~ and myself. Neither of us breathed a
word to anyone. As you can see, I do not matter; but it was my honor to
be always with him, and I began to guess what was happening. Then
sometimes--not often, of course--when his feelings were too much for
him, one or the other of us would be entrusted with a message. I do not
think it would be proper to go into the details. As he lay dying, he left the
testament I have spoken of. I have had it with me all these years--I am
no one, and where was I to leave it? I have not been as diligent with my
prayers as I might have been, but I have asked the Blessed One for a chance
<P 796>
to let you know of it; and now I think I have a sign that he is here with
us. But the testament: I must show it to you. How can I burn it now? I have
not known from one day to the next when I might die, and I have worried
about letting it fall into other hands. When you began to visit His Highness
I felt somewhat better again. There might be a chance to speak to you. I
was not merely praying for the impossible, and so I decided that I must
keep what he had left with me. Some power stronger than we has brought
us together." Weeping openly now, she told of the illicit affair and of his
birth, as the details came back to her.
"In the confusion after the young master's death, my mother too fell
ill and died; and so I wore double mourning. A not very nice man who had
had his eye on me took advantage of it all and led me off to the West
Country, and I lost all touch with the city. He too died, and after ten years
and more I was back in the city again, back from a different world. I have
for a very long time had the honor to be acquainted indirectly with the
sister of my young master, the lady who is a consort of the Reizei emperor,
and it would have been natural for me to go into her service. But there were
those old complications, and there were other reasons too. Because of
the relationship on my father's side of the family I have been
<P 797>
familiar with His Highness's household since I was a child, and at my age
I am no longer up to facing the world. And so I have become the rotted
stump you see, buried away in the mountains. When did Kojiju~ die? I
wonder. There aren't many left of the ones who were young when I was
young. The last of them all; it isn't easy to be the last one, but here I am."
Another dawn was breaking.
"We do not seem to have come to the end of this old story of yours,"
said Kaoru. "Go on with it, please, when we have found a more comforta-
ble place and no one is listening. I do remember Kojiju~ slightly. I must have
been four or five when she came down with consumption and died, rather
suddenly I am most grateful to you. If it hadn't been for you I would have
carried the sin to my grave."
The old woman handed him a cloth pouch in which several mildewed
bits of paper had been rolled into a tight ball.
"Take these and destroy them. When the young master knew he was
dying, he got them together and gave them to me. I told myself I would
give them to Kojiju~ when next I saw her and ask her to be sure that they
got to her lady. I never saw her again. And so I had my personal sorrow
and the other too, the knowledge that I had not done my duty."
With an attempt at casualness, he put the papers away. He was deeply
troubled. Had she told him this unsolicited story, as is the way with the
old, because it seemed to her an interesting piece of gossip? She had
assured him over and over again that no one else had heard it, and yet--
could he really believe her?
After a light breakfast he took his leave of the prince. "Yesterday was
a holiday because the emperor was in retreat, but today he will be with
us again. And then I must call on the Reizei princess, who is not well, and
there will be other things to keep me busy. But I will come again soon,
before the autumn leaves have fallen."
"For me, your visits are a light to dispel in some measure the shadows
of these mountains."
Back in the city, Kaoru took out the pouch the old woman had given
him. The heavy Chinese brocade bore the inscription "For My Lady." It
was tied with a delicate thread and sealed with Kashiwagi's name. Trem-
bling, Kaoru opened it. Inside were multi-hued bits of paper, on which,
among other things, were five or six answers by his mother to notes from
Kashiwagi.
<P 798>
And, on five or six sheets of thick white paper, apparently in Ka-
shiwagi's own hand, like the strange tracks of some bird, was a longer
letter: "I am very ill, indeed I am dying. It is impossible to get so much as
a note to you, and my longing to see you only increases. Another thing
adds to the sorrow: the news that you have withdrawn from the world.
" Sad are you, who have turned away from the world,
