that no one goes trailing _you_. We'd look very silly."
The man bowed. He remembered that Michisada was always prying
into Kaoru's affairs and had asked about the situation at Uji, but it seemed
wise not to tell unsolicited tales. Kaoru questioned him no further. Too
much had been spied out already, he feared.
At Uji, the increasing frequency of his messages was a new worry. The
latest said only:
"It yet stands firm, the pine-clad mount of Su?"
Thought I. And even then the waves engulfed it!
Do not, I pray, make us an object of unkind laughter."
An odd thing to say--what could he mean? She did not wish to make
it seem that he had scored a hit, and it was always possible that there had
been a mistake.
She refolded the note and added a note of her own: "This seems to
have been missent. I am not at all well, and am sure that you will forgive
me for not writing a decent letter."
He smiled as he read it. This talent for evasion had not been apparent
earlier. He could not really be angry with her.
She was in despair. He had not exactly said so, but he had hinted
rather broadly that he knew. The strangest, unhappiest of fates was press-
ing down upon her.
"Why are you sending the general's letter back?" Ukon had come in.
"That's as good as inviting bad luck."
"It doesn't seem to be for me. The address must be wrong."
Ukon thought her mistress's behavior very odd, and (knowing per-
fectly well that good servants should be more reticent) unfolded the note
as she took it back to the messenger.
"Very sad," she said to Ukifune, not letting it be known that she had
seen the letter. "For you, for me, for all of us. The general seems to have
guessed."
Ukifune flushed and did not answer. She concluded that someone had
been talking. She did not ask who it might be. How would she seem to
her women, what would be on their minds? She had not asked for these
complications. Her hapless destiny was working itself out.
"Let me tell you about my sister," Ukon was saying to Jiju~. "It was
when we were off in Hitachi. This sort of thing can happen to the likes
of us too, you know. She had two men after her, and she just couldn't make
up her mind, they both seemed so fond of her. Then she began edging
<P 1004>
toward the new one and the other up and killed him. And never spoke to
her again. So we lost a good soldier, and the other one, the one who did
the murdering, he was a good man too, but naturally he couldn't be kept
on. So he was ordered to leave Hitachi, and my sister was let go from the
governor's house, because, after all, nothing would have happened if it
hadn't been for her and her bad habits. She stayed on in the east and
(more's the sin) Nurse goes on weeping for her to this very day. You may
think I'm asking for trouble when I say so, but it's just not the sort of thing
people do. I don't care what sort of families they come from, a muddle is
a muddle. It doesn't always end up in bloodshed, of course, but things
every bit as bad can happen, I don't care whether you're a princess or a
laundress. I don't know, maybe it's even worse for a princess. Maybe she'd
be better off dead than in a predicament like my sister's. Well, my lady.
Make up your mind. If the prince seems so fond of you, just panting after
you, then go to him, and stop moping. There's no point at all in letting
yourself waste away. Your mother is so worried, and Nurse is all in a dither
about the general and his plans for you. Myself, I wish the prince would
just go away and stop trying to snatch you from under the general's nose."
"You're dreadful." Jiju~ preferred Niou and did not hesitate to say so.
"No one can fight his destiny, my lady, and yours is to go to the one you're
even a little fonder of. And really, the prince is so warm about it all, so
sincere, why, my lady, you couldn't think of throwing it all away. I can
see that you're not happy about these people trying to rush you off into
the general's arms. You may have to hide yourself for a little while, but
I say you should go to the one you like best."
"I don't care which one she goes to. I just want her to go safely, and
I've said my prayers at Hatsuse and at Ishiyama too. The people on the
general's land are thugs, there's no other way to describe them, and this
town is swarming with them, all related to each other. Everyone here in
Yamashiro and over in Yamato is related to Udoneri and that Ukon-
nodaibu, you know, his son-in-law, the ones the general left to look after
us. I'm not saying, mind you, that a fine gentleman like the general himself
would order any rough business, but you can't tell about country people,
and they're the ones who take turns guarding the house. Every last one of
them is determined that nothing will go wrong while he is on duty--it's
a point of honor--and, why, anything could happen. It was very foolish
and very careless of the prince to do what he did the other night. He's so
bent on secrecy that he comes incognito with no guard to speak of at all.
Anything could happen, I tell you, if one of those men were to catch him."
Ukifune listened in an agony of embarrassment. It was clear that they
had guessed everything, even her feelings toward Niou. She had not de-
cided upon either of the two. Niou's ardor quite dizzied her, and left her
<P 1005>
incredulous that she should be its cause and object; and on the other hand
she could not bring herself to say her final farewells to the man who had
so long been her chief source of strength. Hence her agony and the
paralyzing indecision. And how awful if Niou's heedlessness really were
to invite "rough business."
"Leave me alone, please. Please--just let me die." She lay with her
face pressed against a cushion. "Has anyone, the lowest beggar, ever had
more to worry about than I have?"
"You are not to say so. I was only flying to make things a little easier
for you. You used to throw off worries as if they weren't there, and now
you fret and fret. I really don't understand you."
For the two women who knew the truth, the tension mounted. Nurse,
meanwhile, hummed a happy song as she went on with her preparations,
dyeing this piece of cloth, cutting that. "Now here's someone who might
amuse you," she said, calling to Ukifune's side a pretty little girl who had
just come into their service. "Do you have to lie around the house all day
long when there's nothing in the world the matter with you? I wonder if
someone might be trying to get at you and spoil everything."
The days went by and there was no answer from Kaoru. One after-
noon that Udoneri whom Ukon had described as so menacing came to the
house. He was an old man with a rough growl, not at all refined; yet
something in his manner commanded respect.
"I want to speak to one of the ladies." Ukon came out. "The general
sent for me and I went to town this morning. I've just come back. He gave
me a long list of orders. He'd trusted us to keep guard all night and hadn't
sent guards from town. Now he's heard that men with no business here
have been seen around the place. Our fault, nobody else's, he said. We
might try keeping our eyes open. If we weren't up to it, well, he'd have
to think of something else, and it might not be good for us. He sent out
a man with his orders and that's what he told the man to tell me. I told
the man to tell him I'd been sick myself and off duty, and wouldn't know
what might be going on. They had been told to keep their eyes and ears
open, I said, and they'd have told me if they'd seen any prowlers. The
general said he'd know what to do with us if it happened again. What was
he talking about? It didn't make me feel very good, you can guess."
An owl hooting beside her pillow could not have given Ukon a more
unpleasant start. Silently, she went back into the house. "I was right. The
general knows everything. That's why he's stopped writing."
Nurse had overheard only a part of Udoneri's remarks. "Good. He
needed a dressing down. They've been careless and there are robbers all
over the place. He sends plowboys to keep watch. Nobody really keeps
watch at all."
Ukifune saw doom approaching. Niou wrote asking over and over
again to be kept abreast of the preparations, and pleading the unhappiness
<P 1006>
of "waiting, as the moss beneath the pines." Doom seemed to come yet
a few steps closer. One or the other of the two men was certain to be made
desperately unhappy, and the obvious solution was for her to disappear.
Long ago there had been a maiden who drowned herself for no greater
cause than that two men seemed equally fond of her. Why should she
have regrets for a world that promised only torment? Her mother would
grieve for a time; but she had all those other children and would presently
gather grasses of forgetfulness. Death would bring less lingering sorrow
than disgrace. Ukifune was on the surface a gentle, docile, obedient girl,
but perhaps because she had been reared on the outer edges of society, she
was capable of sudden, impulsive action. Unobtrusively, she began tearing
up suggestive papers, burning them in her lamp and sending the ashes
down the river. Women not in her confidence assumed that she was
destroying fugitive notes written to beguile the tedium and not worth
taking to the city.
But Jiju~ too saw what was happening. "My lady! Whatever are you
doing? I can understand not wanting people to see your little love notes,
but the day will come when you will regret burning them. The thing to
do--they all do it, princesses and servants too--is put them away in a
corner of some box and take them out from time to time. He does express
himself so beautifully, and his letters even _look_ beautiful. How can you be
so heartless?"
"Heartless? I do not have long to live, I'm afraid, and I wouldn't want
to leave them behind. For his sake, really. Think what people would say.
She wanted us to know all about it--that's what they would say."
She remembered having heard, back before she knew much of the
world, that to die in advance of one's parents is a grave sin--but she had
reached something like a decision, and, so paralyzing were the thoughts
that trailed one another through her mind, she feared she would not have
the strength to reach another.
The end of the month approached. The house to which Niou proposed
moving her was to be vacated on the twenty-eighth.
"I will send for you that night, I promise you," wrote Niou. "Do not
let your women know what is happening. I will not breathe a word of it
myself."
If he were to come in the usual incognito, she would have to turn him
away, and be resigned to not seeing him again. She could not invite him
into the house, even to rest a moment for the return journey. His image
(so tenacious, that image), defeated and going off angry, came before her
again and would not leave. She pressed his letter to her forehead, trying
to control herself; but soon she was weeping bitterly.
<P 1007>
"Please, my lady, please," said Ukon. "These people will guess what
has happened. I'm afraid that some of them are suspicious already. You
must make up your mind. Tell him you will go to him, if that is what you
want. I will not leave you. I am ready for anything, even if he carries you
off through the skies, tiny little thing that you are."
The girl managed to control her sobs for a time. "I'm sure you want
to help, but you don't understand. It would be so easy if that seemed the
right thing to do. He makes it seem that I am begging him to come for me.
What will he do next? It is all too awful."
She did not answer the letter.
Niou had his own worries. She gave no sign of surrender, and he
seldom even heard from her any more. Kaoru's reasonable arguments had
no doubt led her in the safer direction. He could not deny their justice. Yet
he boiled with resentment and jealousy. She had been fond of him and he
had been defeated by the women around her. His gloom and longing
seemed to spread until the heavens offered them no further refuge.
Impulsively, as always, he rushed off to Uji.
He tried the reed fence that had admitted him before, but the guards
were more alert.
"Who's there?" came voices.
He withdrew and this time sent a man who knew the precincts well.
Again came the challenge. Matters were not as simple as they had been.
"An emergency message from the city," said the man, asking for one
of Ukon's maids.
Ukon was in consternation. "It will be quite impossible for him to
disturb her tonight. I am very sorry indeed that he should have come all
this way for nothing."
Niou was wringing his hands. How could they be so unfeeling?
He called Tokikata. "Go and arrange something with Jiju~."
A devious fellow, Tokikata contrived an interview.
"It will be difficult." Jiju~ could only second Ukon. "The guards have
had some special order from the general, I don't know what or why. It
touched their pride and they are being careful. My lady has been very
upset to think that the prince might come all this way for nothing, but if
they catch you things will only be worse. Suppose you tell him that we
are making our plans and not letting anyone know, and we will be ready
when the night he has spoken of comes." And she added that Nurse was
even jumpier than usual.
