prettiest little girls to deliver them, dressing four as birds and four as
butterflies. The birds brought cherry blossoms in silver vases, the butter-
flies _yamabuki_ in gold vases. In wonderfully rich and full bloom, they
completed a perfect picture. As the party rowed out from the hillock to
<P 423>
Akikonomu's end of the lake, a breeze came up to scatter a few cherry
petals. The skies were clear and happy, and the little girls were charming
in the delicate spring haze. Akikonomu had declined Murasaki's offer of
awnings and had instead put out seats for the orchestra in one of the
galleries adjoining her main hall. The little girls came to the stairs with
their flowers. Incense bearers received them and set them out before the
holy images.
Yu~giri delivered this poem from Murasaki:
"Low in your grasses the cricket awaits the autumn
And views with scorn these silly butterflies."
Akikonomu smiled, recognizing an answer to her poem about the
autumn leaves.
"No, Your Majesty, nothing surpasses that garden," said one of the
women, still drunk with the joys of the day before.
The music for the dance of the Kalavinka bird rang forth to the singing
of warblers, to which the waterfowl on the lake added their clucks and
chirps, and it was with very great regret that the audience saw the dance
come to an end. The butterflies seemed to fly higher than the birds as they
disappeared behind a low fence over which poured a cascade of _yamabuki_.
Akikonomu's assistant chamberlain asked that courtiers of appropriate
rank distribute gifts: to the birds, white robes lined with red, and to the
butterflies robes of pale russet lined with yellow. It would seem that
Akikonomu had made careful preparations. Then came gifts for the musi-
cians, white singlets and bolts of cloth. Yu~giri received a lady's ensemble,
most conspicuously a lavender robe lined with blue.
This was Akikonomu's reply:
"I weep in my longing to follow your butterflies.
You put up fences of _yamabuki_ between us."
Are the grand ones of the realm consistently good at poetry? One is
sometimes disappointed.
I had forgotten: Murasaki had had lavish gifts for her guests too. But
I fear that the details would be tiresome. In any event, there were tasteful
diversions morning and night to keep the least of the serving women
happy, and there were these poetic exchanges.
<N 3>
Murasaki and Tamakazura sometimes wrote to each other, now that
they had been introduced. It was too early perhaps to know whether
Tamakazura was a comrade to turn to for help, but she did seem to be
quietly good-natured and not the sort to cause trouble. People were on the
whole favorably disposed towards her. She had many suitors by now, but
it did not seem that Genji was ready for a decision. Perhaps not quite sure,
indeed, that he wished to be consistent in the role of the good parent, he
considered telling her father everything.
Yu~giri was permitted to approach her curtains and she favored him
<P 424>
with direct replies. She was uncomfortable at the need to do so, but her
Women quite approved. He was always very solemn and proper. To~ no
Chu~jo~,s sons, who were his constant companions, were seen sighing and
mooning about the house, and now and again they dropped hints of their
interest. She was much disturbed, not because she disliked them but be-
cause they were victims of false appearances. It was not a matter she could
discuss openly with Genji, however. He was charmed at the evidences, shy
and girlish, that she considered him her guardian. He could not have said
that she looked very much like her mother, but there was an indefinable
resemblance in tone and manner. She was clearly the more intelligent of
the two
<N 4>
The Fourth Month came, and the change to bright summer clothes.
Even the skies seemed to favor the occasion. Genji passed his spare time,
of which he had a great deal, in music and the like. It was as he had
expected: the flood of love letters was rising. Looking them over as he
visited her apartments, he encouraged her to answer the more likely ones.
These promptings had the effect of putting her on guard.
Prince Hotaru was already describing the torments of unrequited love.
Genji smiled. "He was my favorite brother when we were boys. We
kept nothing from each other. Or rather he kept one thing from me, his
romantic life. He was very secretive about that. It is interesting and at the
same time a little sad that he should still burn with such a youthful flame.
You must answer. When a lady really matters to him, there is no one quite
like him, I often think, for letting her know it. And he is most amusing
company."
He made his brother seem very attractive, but she looked away in
embarrassment.
General Higekuro was on the whole a very earnest and serious man,
but he seemed bent on illustrating the truth that even the most superior
of men, even Confucius himself, can stumble as he makes his way through
the wilderness of love. Yet his letters were interesting.
Genji's attention was caught by a bit of azure Chinese paper gently
but richly perfumed and folded into a tiny knot.
"You haven't even opened it," he said, undoing the knot himself. The
hand was a strong one in the modern style. This was the poem:
"You cannot know how deep my feelings are.
Their colors are hidden, like waters among the rocks."
"And whose feelings might they be?" he asked. Her answer was
evasive.
He summoned Ukon. "You must rate them carefully and have her
answer the ones that seem deserving. The dissolute gallants of our day are
capable of anything, but sometimes they are not wholly to blame. My own
<P 425>
experience has been that a lady can at the outset seem cold and unfeeling
and unaware of the gentler things, and if she is of no importance I can call
her impertinent and forget about her. Yet in idle exchanges about birds and
flowers the lady who teases with silence can seem very interesting. If the
man does forget, then of course part of the responsibility is hers; but a lady
is not well advised to answer by return messenger a note that has not
meant a great deal to the man who sent it, and profuse answers all satu-
rated with sensibility can come to seem very tiresome. But Prince Hotaru
and General Higekuro are grown men who know what they are doing.
Your lady should not risk giving them the impression that she is unfeeling
and unsympathetic. When it comes to lesser people, you must judge each
on his own merits. Some may be serious and some may not. The genuine
should be recognized."
Tamakazura was very beautiful as she listened with averted gaze to
this long discourse. Her dress was dignified and fashionable, a robe of pink
lined with blue and a singlet that caught the colors of the season. She had
had a certain air of rustic stolidity, but, though traces remained, it was
rapidly giving way to a subtler, more delicate sort of calm. No one could
have found fault with her dress, and her beauty seemed to glow ever more
brightly. Genji was beginning to think that she was too good to let go.
Ukon looked smilingly from the one to the other. He was much too
youthful for the role of father. They were far more like husband and wife.
"I have not delivered letters from anyone else," said Ukon. "I did
accept the few which you have seen. It seemed altogether too rude to turn
them back. My lady has answered only the ones which you have specifi-
cally told her to answer, and those very reluctantly."
"And whose is the one in the boyish little knot?" He was smiling.
"The hand is very good."
"He was very insistent indeed. Captain Kashiwagi, the minister's son.
He has known our Miruko for a rather long time and is making use of her
services. I gather that there is no one else he can ask."
"Charming. He may not be very important yet, but he is not to be
dismissed. In some ways he is as highly thought of as the best of them,
and he is a good deal more dependable than his brothers. He will eventu-
ally learn the truth, but for the moment it seems best to keep him in
ignorance. Yes, he does write a very good hand." He examined it admir-
ingly. "You may think it strange of me," he said to Tamakazura, "but I
think you would have a difficult time if you were dropped down in that
enormous family of your father's, all of them as good as strangers. The
time will come, when you have found a place for yourself. Prince Hotaru
is a bachelor at the moment, but he is, I fear, a promiscuous sort, and the
gossips associate him with innumerable women, some of whom are called
ladies-in-waiting and others of whom go by less dignified names. A lady
of tolerance and very great skill might possibly steer her way through, but
<P 426>
the first sign of jealousy would be fatal. It is all in all a situation calling
for tact and caution.
"There is General Higekuro. He has been married for some years but
it appears that he is not at all happy with his wife, and so he has turned
to you. There are people who do not look favorably upon his suit. I can
quite see the arguments, and am reluctant to hand down an opinion. You
might not find it easy to tell your own father how you feel, but you are
no longer a child and I see no reason why you should not presently come
to your own conclusions. Perhaps you can think of me as a sort of substi-
tute for your mother and we can tell ourselves that we have gone back to
the old days. The last thing I would wish is to make you unhappy." He
looked at her solemnly.
She was extremely uncomfortable and would have preferred not to
answer; but she was, as he said, no longer a child. "I have been an orphan
ever since I can remember," she said quietly, " and I fear that I have no
thoughts in the matter."
He could see her point. "Well, as they say, a foster parent sometimes
does better than a real parent. You will find me an unusually devoted
foster parent." He preferred not to say what he was really thinking.
Though he had dropped a hint or two, she had pretended not to notice.
He sighed and went out.
He paused to admire a luxuriant new growth of Chinese bamboo
swaying in the breeze.
"The bamboo so firmly rooted within our hedges
Will send out distant shoots to please its convenience?"
He raised the blind. She slipped away, but not before she had given
him an answer:
"Why should the young bamboo at this late date
Go forth in search of roots it has left behind,
and make trouble for itself?"
He had to feel sorry for her.
She was by no means as much at home as her poem suggested. She
longed to announce herself to her father. Yet she knew, from what she had
read and seen, and she was seeing more, that the father from whom she
had been separated from infancy was not likely to be as thoughtful as
Genji had been. She held her tongue, increasingly aware of how difficult
it would be to do otherwise.
<N 5>
She pleased him more and more "There is something singularly ap-
pealing about her," he said to Murasaki. "Her mother was a little too
solemn and humorless. She is very quick and bright, and somehow a
Person immediately wants to be friends with her. I am very sure now that
she will not be an embarrassment."
<P 427>
Familiar with his inability to let well enough alone, she had guessed
what was happening. "It must be rather difficult for her not to have any
secrets and to be so completely dependent on you."
"And why should she not be dependent on me?"
She smiled. "Can you think that I have forgotten all the sighs and
pains your way of doing things produced in my own younger years?"
How quick she was! "You find very odd and foolish things to worry
about. Do you think she would permit anything of the sort?" He changed
the subject; but she had surveyed the scene and come to her conclusions,
and he had to admit that there were matters on his conscience.
<N 6>
He thought a great deal about Tamakazura. He often visited her and
he was of service to her in many ways. One quiet evening after a rainfall,
when the green of the maples and oaks was clean and rich, he looked up
into a singularly affecting twilight sky and intoned a phrase from $$ Po Chu-i:
"It is gentle, it is fresh." At such times it was more than anything the fresh
glow of the new lady that he was thinking of. He slipped quietly away to
her apartments. At her writing desk, she bowed courteously and turned
shyly away, very beautiful indeed. Suddenly, gently, she was exactly like
her mother. He wanted to weep.
"You must forgive me, but I cannot help it. When I first saw you I did
not think you looked so very much like her, and yet there have been times
when I could have mistaken you for her. Yu~giri is not in the least like me
and so I had come to think that children do not on the whole resemble
parents. And then I come on an instance like this."
There was an orange in the fruit basket before her.
"Scented by orange blossoms long ago,
The sleeve she wore is surely the sleeve you wear.
"So many years have gone by, and through them all I have been
unable to forget. Sometimes I feel as if I might be dreaming--and as if the
dream were too much for me. You must not dismiss me for my rudeness."
And he took her hand.
Nothing like this had happened to her before. But she must not lose
her composure.
"The sleeve bears the scent of that blossom long ago.
Then might not the fruit as quickly vanish away?"
He found this quiet confusion delightful. She sat with bowed head,
