be a strong ally, and if we make an enemy of him we will have to pack
up and leave. Yes, she is very wellborn. That we do not deny--but what
good does it do when her father doesn't recognize her and no one even
knows she exists? She is lucky he wants her. She is probably here because
she was meant all along to marry someone like him. There's no point in
trying to hide. He is a determined and ruthless man, and he will do
anything if he is crossed."
But the oldest brother, who was vice-governor of Bungo, disagreed.
"It is out of the question. Have you forgotten Father's instructions? I must
get her back to the capital."
Tearfully, the daughters supported him. The girl's mother had wan-
dered off and they had quite lost track of her, but they would think
themselves sufficiently repaid for their worries if they could make a decent
life for the girl. They most certainly did not want to see her marry the Higo
man.
Confident of his name and standing and unaware of this disagree-
ment, the man showered her with letters, all of them on good Chinese
paper, richly colored and heavily perfumed. He wrote a not at all con-
temptible hand, but his notion of the courtly was very provincial. Having
made an ally of the second son, he came calling. He was about thirty, tall
and powerfully built, not unpleasant to look at. Perhaps it was only in the
imagination that his vigorous manner was a little intimidating. He glowed
with health and had a deep, rough voice and a heavy regional accent that
made his speech seem as alien as bird language. Lovers are called "night
crawlers," one hears, but he was different. He came of a spring evening,
victim, it would seem, of the urgings which the poet felt more strongly on
autumn evenings.
Not wishing to offend him, the "grandmother" came out.
"The late deputy was a great man and he understood things. I wanted
to be friends with him and i'm sorry he died. Now I want to make up for
it. I got my courage up and came to see the little lady. She's too good for
me, but that's all right. I'll look up to her and be her servant. I hear Your
Grace doesn't want me to have her. Maybe because of all my other
women? Don't worry. She won't be one of them. She'll be the queen." It
was a very forceful statement.
<P 391>
"Thank you very much. It is gratifying to hear of your interest. But
she has been unlucky. To our great regret we must keep her out of sight
and do not find it possible to let her marry. It is all very sad."
"Oh, come on. I don't care if she's blind and has a club foot. I swear
it by all the gods."
He asked that a day be named when he might come for her. The nurse
offered the argument often heard in the region that the end of the season
was a bad time to marry.
He seemed to think that a farewell poem was called for. He deliber-
ated for rather a long time.
"I vow to the Mirror God of Matsura:
If I break it he can do what he wants with me.
"Pretty good" He smiled.
Poetry was not perhaps what he had had most experience with.
The nurse was by this time too nervous to answer, and her daughters
protested that they were in an even worse state. Time ran on. Finally she
sent back the first verse that came into her head.
"It will be for us to reproach the Mirror God
If our prayers of so many years remain unanswered."
Her voice trembled.
"What's that? How's that?"
He seemed about to attack them frontally. The nurse blanched.
Despite her agitation, one of the daughters managed a brave laugh.
"Our niece is not normal. That is I'm sure what she meant to say, and we
would be very unhappy if she had bad luck in the matter of your kind
proposal. Poor Mother. She is very old, and she is always saying unfortu-
nate things about her gods."
"I see, I see." He nodded. "A very good poem. You may look down
on us country people, but what's so great about city people? Anyone can
come up with a poem. Don't think I can't do as well as the next one."
He seemed to think demonstration called for, but it refused to take
shape. He left.
With her second son gone over to the enemy, the old woman was
terrified. She urged her oldest son to action.
"But what can I do? There is no one I can go to for help. I don't have
all that many brothers, and they have turned against me. Life will be
impossible if we make an enemy of the man, and if I try something bold
I will only make things worse."
But he agreed that death would be better for the girl than marriage
to such a man. He gathered his courage and they set sail. His sisters left
their husbands. The one who had as a child been called Ateki was now
called Hyo~bu She slipped off in the night and boarded ship with her lady.
<P 392>
The man had gone home to Higo, to return on the day appointed, late
in the Fourth Month.<N 5> The older of the nurse's daughters had a large family
of her own and was unable to join them. The farewells were tearful, for
it seemed unlikely that the family would ever be united again. They had
no very great love for Hizen, in which they had lived for so long, but the
departing party did look back in sorrow at the shrine of Matsura. They
were leaving dear ones in its charge.
"Shores of trial, now gloomy Ukishima.
On we sail. Where next will be our lodging?"
"We sail vast seas and know not where we go,
Floating ones, abandoned to the winds."
The girl sat weeping, the picture of the sad uncertainty which her
poem suggested.
If news that they had left reached the Higo man, he was certain to
come in pursuit. They had provided themselves with a fast boat and the
<P 393>
winds did good service, and their speed was almost frightening. They
passed Echo Bay in Harima.
"See the little boat back there, almost flying at us. A pirate, maybe?"
The brother thought he would Prefer the cruelest pirate to the Higo
man. There was nothing to be done, of course, but sail on.
"The echoes of Echo Bay are slight and empty
Beside the tumult I hear within myself."
Then they were told that the mouth of the river Yodo lay just ahead.
It was as if they had returned from the land of the dead.
"Past Karadomari we row, past Kawajiri." It was a rough song, but
pleasing. The vice-governor hummed with special feeling the passage
about dear wives and children left behind. Yes, it had been a step, leaving
them all behind. What disasters would now be overtaking them? He had
brought with him everyone in the province who might have been thought
an ally, and what sort of revenge would the Higo person be taking? It had
been reckless, after all these years. In the calm following the crisis he began
<P 394>
to think once more of his own affairs, and everything now seemed rash and
precipitate. He collapsed in weak tears. "We have left our wives and
children in alien lands," he intoned softly.
His sister Hyo~bu heard. She now feared that she had behaved very
strangely, turning against her husband of so many years and flying off in
the night. What would he be thinking?
They had no house and no friends in the city. Because of the girl, they
had left behind a province which over the years had become home and put
themselves at the mercy of wind and waves. They could not think what
to do next, nor had they any clear notion of what was to be done for the
girl. But there was no point in hesitating. They hurried on to the city.
<N 6>
The vice-governor searched out an old acquaintance who was still
living at Kujo~. It was to be sure within the city limits, but not a place where
gentlemen lived; a gloomy place, rather, of tradesmen and peddlers. Au-
tumn came, amid thoughts of what had been and what was to be. The
vice-governor was like a seabird cast ashore. He was without employment
in a strange new world and unable to return to the old. The whole party
was now having regrets. Some left to take positions sought out through
this and that acquaintance, others to return to Kyushu.
The old nurse wept at this inability to find a new foothold.
Her son, the vice-governor, did what he could to comfort her. "I am
not in the least worried I have been prepared to risk everything for our
lady and what does it matter that I am not doing so very well at the
moment? What comfort would wealth and security have been if they had
meant marrying her to that man? Our prayers will be answered and she
will be put back in her rightful place someday, you may be sure of it.
Hachiman, now, just over there. Our lady prayed to Hachiman at Matsura
and Hakozaki just before we left. Now that you are safely back, my lady,
you must go and thank him." And he sent the girl off to the Iwashimizu
Hachiman Shrine.
He had learned that an eminent cleric whom his father had known
was among the Buddhist priests in service at the shrine. The man under-
took to be her guide.
<N 7>
"And then," said the vice-governor, "there is Hatsuse. It is known
even in China as the japanese temple among them all that gets things done.
It can't help doing something for a poor lady back after all those years so
far away." And this time he sent her to Hatsuse.
The pilgrimage was to be on foot. Though not used to walking, the
girl did as she was told. What sort of crimes had she been guilty of, she
was asking, that she must be subjected to such trials? She prayed that the
powers above, if they pitied her, take her to whatever world her mother
might be in. If her mother was living, please, then, just a glimpse of her.
The girl could not remember her mother. She had thought how happy she
would be if only she had a mother. Now the problem was a much more
<P 395>
immediate one. Late on the morning of the fourth day, barely alive, they
arrived at Tsubaichi, just below Hatsuse.
Though they had come very slowly, the girl was so footsore when
they reached Tsubaichi that they feared she could not go on. Led by the
former vice-governor, the party included two bowmen, three or four
grooms and pages, three women, heavily veiled, and a pair of ancient
scullery women. Every effort had been made not to attract attention.
Darkness came on as they were replenishing their stock of candles and the
like.
The monk who kept the way station was very uncivil, grumbling
about arrangements that had been made without consulting him. "Who
are these people? We have some others coming. Stupid women, they've
botched it again."
A second party did just then come up, also on foot, including two
women who seemed to be of considerable standing and a number of
attendants, men and women. four or five of the men were on horseback.
Though display was obviously being avoided, the horses were nicely
caparisoned. The monk paced the floor and scratched his head and gener-
ally made himself objectionable. He was determined to accommodate the
second party. Well, he would not insist that the others move on, but he
would put the menials out in back and divide the room with curtains.
Though respectable, the second party did not seem to be of the most
awesome rank. Both parties were polite and deferential, and all was pres-
ently quiet.
In fact, the principal pilgrim in the second party was that Ukon who
had never ceased weeping for the lady of the evening faces. In all the
uncertainties of her life, she had long been in the habit of making pilgrim-
ages to Hatsuse. She was used to travel, but the walk was exhausting even
so. She was resting when the vice-governor came up to the curtains,
evidently with food for his lady.
"Give this to her, if you will, please. I know of course that she is not
used to such rough service."
Obviously a lady of higher rank than the others, thought Ukon, going
over to look through an opening in the curtains. She had seen the man
before, she was sure, but could not think where. Someone she had known
when he was young, and much less stout and sunburned, and much better
dressed. Who might he be?
"Sanjo~. Our lady wants you."
She knew the woman who came forward at this summons: a lesser
attendant upon the lady of the evening faces, with them in the days of
hiding. It was like a dream. Ukon longed to see the lady they were in
attendance upon, but she remained out of sight. Now Ukon thought she
knew the man too. Yes, without question, the one they had called Hyo~t-
o~da. Perhaps the girl would be with them. Unable to sit still, she went again
to the curtain and called to Sanjo~, who was just inside. Sanjo~ was
<P 396>
not easily torn from her meal. It was a little arbitrary of Ukon, perhaps,
to think this an impertinence.
At length Sanjo~ presented herself. "It can't be me you want. I'm a poor
woman who's been off in Kyushu these twenty years and more, and I
doubt there would be anyone here who would know me. It must be a
mistake." She had on a somewhat rustic robe of fulled silk and an unlined
jacket, and she had put on a great deal of weight.
"Look at me," said Ukon, hating to think how she herself must have
changed. "Don't you recognize me?"
Sanjo~ clapped her hands. "It's you! It's you! Where did you come
from? Is our lady with you?" And she was weeping convulsively.
Ukon too was in tears. She had known this woman as a girl. So many
months and years had passed!
"And is my lady's nurse with you? And what has happened to the
little girl? And Ateki?" She said nothing for her part about the lady of the
evening faces.
"They are here. The little girl is a fine young lady. I must go tell
