my gratitude for the other day, and the happiness it gave me."
She was really _too_ shy. "How very far away you seem. There are so
many things I would like to tell you."
She granted his point and came closer. He held himself under tight
control as he moved from subject to subject, offering a few words of
<P 908>
consolation, avoiding direct criticism of Niou and his rather astonishing
volatility.
As reluctant as he to complain, she had little to say, and that little she
said by indirection, implying that she did not blame the world so much as
her own destiny for what had befallen her. Behind her words were sad
hints that she wanted to go back to Uji for a time and wanted him to take
her.
"Alas, I am in no position to promise anything of the sort. You must
ask him, as clearly and directly as you can, and do as he wishes. And I must
beg of you not to give him the slightest excuse for thinking you frivolous
or undependable. Once you have made everything clear to him I shall have
no misgivings at all about going with you and bringing you back again. He
knows me well enough not to suspect anything improper."
The knowledge that his path was strewn with lost opportunities was
always with him. "Might I have it back again?" But he only hinted at his
feelings.
It was growing dark.
"I am afraid that this sort of talk rather tires me." He was making her
nervous, and the time had come to withdraw. "Perhaps when I am feeling
a little better."
"No, please tell me--if you are serious." He groped for words with
which to detain her. "When would you like to go? The road will be
overgrown, and I must have it cleared."
She turned back. "Let us say the first of next month. This month is
almost over. I think we should go very quietly. Do you really think I need
his permission?"
The soft voice was so like Oigimi's, more than he had ever known it
to be. Abruptly, he leaned towards the pillar by which he was sitting and
reached for her sleeve.
She should have known! She slipped deeper into the room. He pushed
his way after her as if he were one of the family and again took her sleeve.
"You misunderstand completely. I thought I heard you say you
wanted to go quietly off to Uji, and was delighted, and hoped to make sure
I had heard you correctly. That is all. You have no reason to run away."
She would have preferred not to answer. He was becoming a nuisance.
But at length she composed herself for a soft reprimand: "Your behavior
is so very strange at times. Try to imagine what all these people will be
thinking."
She seemed on the edge of tears. She was right, in a way, and he was
sorry for her. Yet he went on: "Have I done anything that I need feel guilty
about? Remember, please, that we had one rather intimate conversation.
I do not entirely relish being treated like a criminal when, after all, you
were once offered to me. But please do not fret. I will do nothing that might
shock you and the world."
Though he did not seem prepared to release her, he spoke calmly
<P 909>
enough of the regrets that had been building up over the months and were
by now almost too much for him. She felt helpless, cornered--but the
words that come most easily do little to describe her anguish. She was in
tears, more shamed and outraged than if it had been possible to dismiss
him as merely a boor.
"You are behaving like a child, my dear," he said at length, aroused
once more to pity by her fragile charms. Beneath the distraught exterior
he sensed a deep, calm strength, telling him how she had matured since
the Uji days. Why had he so heedlessly given her up? He had done it, and
deprived himself of all repose since, and he would have liked to cry out
his regrets to the world.
Two women were in close attendance upon her. Had he been a stran-
ger, they would have drawn closer against the possibility of something
unseemly. But he was an old friend, and the conversation was evidently
of a confidential nature. Tactfully, with a show of nonchalance, they
withdrew, and unwittingly made things worse for Nakanokimi. Though
he had not succeeded in keeping his regrets to himself, today as on other
days he was behaving with admirable restraint. She could not think of
curtly dismissing him.
One must presently draw a curtain upon such a scene. It had been a
useless sort of visit, and, everything considered, he thought it best to take
his leave.
Already it was dawn, and he would have said, if asked, that the sun
had only just set. His fear of gossip had much less to do with his own good
name than with concern for hers. The cause of her indisposition was by
now clear enough. She had tried to hide the belt that was the mark of
pregnancy. He had respected her shyness, and said nothing. A stupid sort
of reticence--and on the other hand any show of forwardness would have
gone against his deeper wishes. To surrender to the impulse of a moment
would have been to make future meetings more difficult; to demand secret
meetings, whatever her wishes, would have been to complicate his own life
infinitely and to leave her in the cruelest uncertainty. Would it be better
not to see her at all? But the briefest interval away from her was torment.
He had to see her. And so, in the end, the workings of his wayward heart
prevailed.
Though her face was somewhat thinner, her delicate beauty was as
always. It was with him after his departure, driving everything else from
his thoughts. He debated the possibility of taking her to Uji, but it was not
likely that Niou would agree, and it would be most unwise to go in secret.
How could he follow her wishes and the mandates of decorum at the same
time? He lay sunk in thought.
Very early in the morning he got off a note, folded into a formal
envelope:
"An autumn sky, to remind me of days of old:
I made my way in vain down a dew-drenched path.
<P 910>
Your cruelty is, I should say, both intolerable and senseless."
She did not want to answer, but knew that her women noticed any
departure from routine. "I have received your letter," she said briefly,
"and, not at all well, am not up to a reply."
It offered little consolation to its recipient, still haunted by the events
of the evening before. She had been dismayed by his behavior, for she had
little way of guessing what another man might have done; and yet she had
sent him off with composure and dignity and no suggestion of rudeness.
The memory was not comforting. He could tell himself that he had been
exposed to all the varieties and stages of loneliness.
She had improved enormously since the Uji days. If Niou were to
reject her, then he himself would be her support. They could not meet
openly, perhaps, but she would be his heart's refuge. A reprehensible
heart, that it should have room for only this--but such are the shortcom-
ings one finds in men of apparent depth and discernment. He had grieved
for Oigimi, and Iris present sufferings seemed far worse.
Thus the thoughts came and went. Upon hearing that Niou had put
in an appearance at the Nijo~ house, he quite forgot, in Iris jealousy, that
he had set himself up as her guardian.
Feeling guilty about Iris long absence, Niou had paid an unannounced
visit. Nakaokimi was determined to show no resentment. She had wanted
to go off to Uji, and now she saw that the man who was to take her could
not be depended upon. The world seemed to close in more tightly by the
day. She must accept her fate, and greet whatever came, so long as she
lived, with an appearance of cheerfulness. So successful was she in carry-
ing through her resolve, so open and charming, that Niou's affection and
delight rose to new heights. He apologized endlessly for his neglect. Her
pregnancy was beginning to show, and the belt that was its mark and had
been such a source of embarrassment the night before both moved and
fascinated him, for he had never before been near a woman in her condi-
tion. Coming from the strained formality of Rokujo~, he felt pleasantly
relaxed here at Nijo~, and his promises and apologies flowed on and on.
What a very clever talker, thought Nakanokimi. The memory of Kaoru's
alarming behavior came back. She was grateful to him, as she long had
been, but he had gone too far. Though little inclined to put faith in Niou's
vows, she found herself yielding before the flood. What a wretched posi-
tion Kaoru had put her in, lulling her into a sense of security and then
plunging into her room. He had said that his relations with her sister had
been pure to the end, and she had believed and admired him; but it would
not do to be too friendly. Apprehension turned to tenor at the thought of
what a really prolonged separation from Niou might bring. She said noth-
ing of her fears, and her manner, more girlishly endearing than ever, quite
ravished him. And then he caught a telltale scent. It was not one of the
scents that people purposely bum into their garments. Something of a
connoisseur in such matters, Niou had no doubt about its origins.
<P 911>
"And what is this unusual perfume?"
She was speechless. It was true, then; something was going on be-
tween the two of them. His heart was pounding. He had long been con-
vinced that Kaoru's feelings went beyond friendliness. She had changed
clothes and still that scent clung to her.
"Really, my dear, you cannot go on pretending that you have kept him
at a distance." His carefully measured speech left her feeling utterly help-
less. "I have given you no cause, not the slightest, to doubt the intensity
of my affection. _You_ are'the first to forget.' I must accuse you, indeed,
of bad taste--of forgetting what is expected of people like us. Perhaps you
think I have stayed away long enough to justify what you have done. I
have not, and I am deeply disappointed to find this strain of insensitivity."
His reproaches seemed endless, and were quite beyond transcribing. Her
silence adding fuel to his rancor, he presently capped them with an accus-
ing poem:
"Most friendly it was of him to give to your sleeve
The scent that maddens, sinks into the bones."
It was too much. She had to reply.
"The familiar robe has been a source of comfort.
And now, for cause so paltry, must I lose it?"
The fragile, weeping figure could not fail to move him--and at the
same time could not be permitted to escape responsibility for what had
happened. His agitation increased until he too was in tears (for he had few
defenses against tears). However terrible the mistake, it was not possible
to cast her off. Such touching gentleness did not permit resentment to last,
and soon he was seeking to comfort her.
He left Nijo~ the next morning after ablutions and a leisurely breakfast.
Used to a blaze of Chinese and Korean hangings, to layer upon layer of
damasks and brocades, he found the furnishings here intimate and repose-
ful, and her women, some of them in soft, unstarched robes, lent the place
a quiet dignity. Nakanokimi herself was wearing a soft robe of lavender
and over it a cloak of deep pink lined with blue. It was a quiet dress, and
yet he thought her entirely capable of competing with the rather florid lady
who, at Rokujo~, seemed almost vain in her attention to clothes. He was as
susceptible to retiring beauty as to bold, and did not think that Nak-
anokimi had cause to feel inferior to her rival. She had had a charmingly
round face, but emaciation and a new pallor had not spoiled its beauty.
Even before he had caught that alarming scent, he had been aware of an
unsettling possibility: given the quiet charms that so raised her above the
ordinary, any man not a close relative would have had trouble staying
<P 912>
away once he had come to know her. Niou knew all too well what his own
inclinations would have been, and he was always ready to judge others by
himself. And so he had for some time made it a practice to go nonchalantly
through this cabinet and that chest in search of evidence. He had found
nothing suspicious. There were, to be sure, brief, matter-of-fact notes
mixed in among other papers, though not in such a manner as to suggest
a particular wish to preserve them. There had to be more somewhere. The
absence of letters and the presence of that perfume made a particularly
alarming combination. When Kaoru was drawn to someone he was drawn
irresistibly. Would Nakanokimi be capable of repulsing him? They were
a good match, and no doubt they had much in common. Niou was sad,
angry, jealous, too much a prey to these various emotions to leave her. He
sent off two and three apologetic letters to Rokujo~. It did not take him long
to think of new things to say, grumbled some of the old women.
Kaoru continued to fret over Niou's presence at Nijo~. How stupid,
how undisciplined he was, he told himself again. He had undertaken to see
that she was looked after, and what right had he now to be jealous? Forcing
his thoughts in a new direction, he managed a certain semblance of happi-
ness at this evidence that Rokujo~ had not overwhelmed her. He thought
of the somewhat dowdy women in attendance upon her and decided to
consult with his mother.
"I wonder if you might have a few clothes you don't need just at the
moment? I know a house that could use something decent."
"I believe that some things will be coming for the services next
month, but the dyers have been so busy. Suppose we send off a order."
"Please don't bother. Whatever you have ready will do."
He sent off to see what the seamstresses had on hand and was offered
a wide selection of women's robes, some fine cloaks, and several bolts of
undyed silk and damask. For the princess herself he found a red singlet in
