away from the world.'"
"Such a beautiful night, and it is just beginning." The nun came out
towards the veranda. "Must you go?"
"What possible reason have I to stay? I sense very great distances
between us."
He had no wish at this point to seem eager. The one fleeting glimpse
had been interesting, and had offered possible relief from loneliness and
<P 1060>
boredom. That was all. Her haughtiness was rather out of keeping with her
circumstances, and cooled his ardor.
The nun was reluctant to see even the flute go. She sought to detain
him with a verse, though not a very clever one:
"A stranger to the late-night moon in its glory
That he now disdains our house at the mountain ridge?"
She had been clever in one respect: she had made it seem that the girl's
own sentiments were in the poem. His interest revived, he sent an answer-
ing poem:
"I shall watch till the moon goes behind the mountain ridge,
To see how it slips through the boards that roof your chamber."
The old nun, the bishop's mother, had caught a dim echo of a flute.
She tottered eagerly forward, coughing and sputtering, her voice tremulous
as she made her wishes known. Though she should have been over-
whelmed by memories, she said nothing of the old days. Perhaps she did
not recognize their guest.
"Play, play! Play on flute and koto. Oh, but a person does want a flute
on a moonlit night. Come on, you over there. Bring out a koto."
The captain had guessed who was addressing him. So she still lived
on in these mountains! How was it possible? Life dealt itself out capri-
ciously, giving some people more than their share of it. He offered the old
lady a deft melody in the _banjiki_ mode.
"Now for the koto."
"I think you have improved," said the younger nun, rather a connois-
seur, "but then you always were good. It may be that I have listened too
long to the wind in the pines. I am sure to disgrace myself in such competi-
tion." And she played a melody on the koto.
Not much in vogue these days, the seven-stringed koto had its own
charm. The wind blew a counterpoint through the pines, and the flute
seemed to be urging the moon to new splendors. Delighted, the old nun
was prepared to stay up until dawn.
"I used to do tolerably well on the Japanese koto myself; but my son
tells me it is in bad taste. I suppose the fashions have changed. He says
he can't bear the thing, and besides I am wasting my time. I ought to be
spending my time with my beads, every last minute of it, he says, and so
I am out of practice. If I could just give you something on that koto of mine,
such a fine, clear tone it does have."
She would like nothing better than to perform for them, the captain
could see. "Your reverend son has strange ideas of what you should and
should not be doing. Does he not know, and like all the rest of us think
it admirable, that the powers above play on instruments like these and the
angels dance to them? What sin can there be in music, what harm can it
do to your prayers? I for one cannot think of any. Come, let's have a tune
or two."
<P 1061>
The old lady was in ecstasy. "Tonomori," she coughed. "Bring me that
koto, the Japanese one."
The others looked forward to the performance with a certain dread,
but since even her son had aroused her ire, it hardly seemed politic to
discourage her. Not bothering to ask what mode the captain had been
using, she smartly plucked out a gamut that suited her fancy. The flutist
had fallen silent, doubtless, she thought, lost in admiration.
"_Takefu chichiri chichiri taritana_". It was a brave, sturdy effort, though
not a very modish one.
"How interesting," said the captain. "Not the sort of thing one hears
very often these days."
She did not quite catch his words, which had to be relayed to her by
someone a little nearer.
"Young people seem to have given up this sort of thing," she cackled.
"Take the girl who has been with us these last few weeks. She's very
pretty, I'm sure, but she lives in a world all her own. None of our little
frivolities for _that_ one, I can tell you."
To her daughter and the others she was beginning to seem a bit too
pleased with her own world; and a beautiful night was being spoiled.
The captain set out for the city, his flute coming in rich and full on
the wind from the mountain. There was no sleep at the nunnery that night.
Early in the morning a note was delivered: "It was because of all my
troubles that I took my leave so early.
"Ancient things came back, I wept aloud
At koto and flute and a lady's haughty ways.
"Do teach her a little, if you will, of the art of sympathy. If I were able
to endure in silence, would I thus be serenading you?"
Sadder and sadder, thought the nun, on the edge of tears as she
composed her reply:
"With the voice of your flute came thoughts of long ago,
And tears wet my sleeve, and sped you on your way.
"You will have guessed, from the remarks my mother was so generous
with, that the girl is so withdrawn as to suggest insensitivity."
It was not a letter that interested him a great deal.
As insistent as the wind through the rushes, the girl was thinking.
How very insistent men were! Memories of the Uji days, and especially of
Niou, were coming back. Well, she knew a way to be free of them all. She
quite gave herself up to her preparations, to study and prayer and invoca-
tion of the holy name. The bishop's sister was forced to conclude that the
girl had never been young, that she had somehow been withdrawn and
<P 1062>
gloomy from the start. But pretty she certainly was, so pretty that dissatis-
faction with her could not last. Indeed, the nun's life had come to center
upon her, and a rare little chuckle from her was a delight among delights.
In the Ninth Month the nun made a pilgrimage to Hatsuse. All those
months had done little to ease her grief, and now she had found a girl
whom she could only think of as a daughter; and the pilgrimage was by
way of showing her gratitude to Our Lady of Hatsuse.
"Suppose you come along, my dear. No one need hear of it. You may
say that one holy image is very much like another, but Hatsuse does seem
to produce very special results. Do come with me."
Her mother and nurse had said exactly that, she remembered, and had
more than once taken her to Hatsuse; and what good had their efforts
done? In those last desperate days, she had not even been allowed to
dispose of her own life. And the thought of going on a long journey with
a near stranger somehow frightened her.
But she made no effort to argue the matter. "I am not myself," she said
quietly, "and I am not at all sure what the trip would do to me."
Yes, poor child, she had every right to be apprehensive, thought the
nun. She said no more.
She came upon a scrap of paper on which, by way of writing practice,
the girl had jotted down a verse:
"On shoals unsought, I ask no further view
Of cedars twain beside that ancient river."
"Two cedars, is it?" said the nun banteringly. "So there actually are
two persons you might want to see again?"
The girl started and flushed crimson. The nun had said more than she
intended to. She thought this confusion charming, and rattled off a not
very distinguished poem:
"I know not the roots of the tree by the ancient river,
But it takes the place, for me, of one now gone."
She had hoped to steal off almost by herself, but everyone clamored
to go along. Fearing that the girl would be lonely, she left three attendants
behind: the sensitive and cultivated Sho~sho~, an elderly woman called
Saemon, and a little girl. Gazing moodily after the pilgrims, Ukifune felt
the loneliness close in upon her even more threateningly. Indeed, she felt
quite defenseless, her one ally now off for Hatsuse. In upon the tedium and
loneliness, as her thoughts wandered now to the past and now to the
perilous future, came a letter from the captain. Sho~sho~ asked her at least
to glance at it, but she refused.
"Come, now. This gloom is getting to be contagious. Let's see if I can
best you at Go."
"Of course you can. I always lose." The girl seemed not unhappy at
the suggestion, however, and the board was brought out. Expecting an easy
<P 1063>
victory, Sho~sho~ let her have the first play. But the girl was no weakling,
and in the next match Sho~sho~ was easily persuaded to play first.
"What a charming surprise. Something to tell my lady about, if she
will just hurry back. She is rather good at it herself. Her honored brother
has always been fond of the game, and there was a time when he was
taking on airs like the gentleman they called the High Priest of Go. It was
just about then that he challenged my lady to a match. He promised that
he would be a generous and forbearing conqueror, and he lost two in a row.
I am sure you would have no trouble besting His Reverence the High Priest
of Go. You are very, very good, I do not hesitate to tell you.,
Sho~sho~ was warming to her subject. But the girl was beginning to fear
that this unlovely, bald-pated person might be too insistent a companion.
She was a little tired, she said, and went to lie down.
"A game now and then would do you a world of good. It seems such
a pity that a girl as attractive as you should be forever moping. The flaw
in the gem, as they say."
The night wind moaning outside brought memories.
<P 1064>
Just as the moon came flooding over the hills the captain appeared.
(There had been that note from him earlier in the day.) The girl fled aghast
to the rear of the house.
"You are being a perfect fool," said Sho~sho~. "It is the sort of night
when a girl should treasure these little attentions. Do, I beg of you, at least
hear what he has to say--or even a part of it. Are you so clean that his
very words will soil you?"
But the girl was terrified. Though someone ventured to tell him that
she was away, he probably knew the truth. Probably his messenger had
reported that she was alone.
His recriminations were lengthy. "I don't care whether or not I hear
her voice. I just want to have her beside me, prepared to decide for herself
whether I am such an ugly threat. She is being quite heartless, and in these
hills too, where it might be imagined that there would be time to cultivate
the virtue of patient charity. It is more than a man should be asked to bear.
"In a mountain village, deep in the autumn night,
A lady who understands should understand.
"And I do think she should."
"There is no one here to make your explanations for you," said
Sho~sho~ to the girl. "You may if you are not careful seem rude and eccen-
tric."
"The gloom of the world has been no part of my life,
And how shall you call me one who understands?"
The girl recited the poem more as if to herself than by way of reply,
but Sho~sho~ passed it on to him.
He was deeply touched. "Do ask her again to come out, for a moment,
even."
"I seem to make no impression upon her at all," said Sho~sho~, who was
beginning to find his persistence, and with it a certain querulousness, a
little tiresome. She went back inside--and found that the girl had fled to
the old nun's room, which she had not before so much as looked in upon.
Sho~sho~ reported this astonishing development.
"With all this time on her hands," said the captain, "she should be
more than usually alive to the pity of things, and all the indications are
that she is a gentle and sensitive enough person. And that very fact, you
know, makes her unfriendliness cut more cruelly. Do you suppose there
is something in her past, something that has made her afraid of men? What
might it be, will you tell me, please, that has turned her against the whole
world? And how long do you expect to have her with you?"
Openly curious now, he pressed for details; but how was Sho~sho~ to
give them?
"A lady whom my lady should by rights have been looking after was
<P 1065>
lost for a number of years. And then, on a pilgrimage to Hatsuse, we found
her again."
The girl lay face down, sleepless, beside the old nun, whom she had
heard to be a very difficult person. The nun had dozed off from earl y
evening, and now she was snoring thunderously. With her were two nuns
as old as she, snoring with equal vigor. Terrified, the girl half wondered
whether she would survive the night. Might not these monsters devour
her? Though she had no great wish to live on, she was timid by nature,
rather like the one we have all heard of who has set out across a log bridge
and then changed her mind. She had brought the girl Komoki with her.
Of an impressionable age, however, Komoki had soon returned to a spot
whence she could observe this rare and most attractive caller. Would she
not please come back, would she not _please_ come back? Ukifune was asking;
but Komoki was little help in a crisis.
The captain presently gave up the struggle and departed.
"She is so hopelessly wrapped up in herself," said the women, "and
the worst of it is that she is so pretty."
At what the girl judged would be about midnight the old nun awoke
in a fit of coughing and sat up. In the lamplight her hair was white against
her shawl.
Startled to find the girl beside her, she shaded her eyes with her hand
as the mink (or some such creature) is said to do and peered over.
