completely in control of himself. In that respect I think he is more than his
father's equal, though of course Genji is so handsome that a smile from
him can make you think all the world's problems have been solved. I doubt
that anyone minds very much if he sometimes seems a little flippant in his
treatment of public affairs. Yu~giri is a sterner sort and he has studied hard.
I for one would have trouble finding anything wrong with him, and I
suspect that most people Would have the same trouble."
Dispensing with the stiffer formalities, he turned immediately to the
matter of honoring his wisteria.
"There is much to be said for cherry blossoms, but they seem so
flighty. They are so quick to run off and leave you. And then just when
your regrets are the strongest the wisteria comes into bloom, and it blooms
on into the summer. There is nothing quite like it. Even the color is
somehow companionable and inviting." He was still a very handsome
man. His smile said a great deal.
Though the lavender was not very apparent in the moonlight, he
worked hard at admiring it. The wine flowed generously and there was
music. Pretending to be very drunk and to have lost all thought for the
proprieties, he pressed wine upon Yu~giri, who, though sober and cautious
as always, found it hard to refuse.
<P 526>
"Everyone agrees that your learning and accomplishments are more
than we deserve in this inferior day of ours. I should think you might have
the magnanimity to put up with old dotards like myself. Do you have in
your library a tract you can refer to in the matter of filial piety? I must lodge
a complaint that you who are so much better informed than most about
the teachings of the sages should in your treatment of me have shown
indifference to their high principles." Through drunken tears--might one
call them?--came these adroit hints.
"You do me a very grave injustice, sir. I think of you as heir to all the
ages, and so important that no sacrifice asked of me could be too great. I
am a lazy, careless man, but I cannot think what I might have done to
displease you."
The moment had come, thought To~ no Chu~jo~. "Underleaves of wis-
teria," he said, smiling. Kashiwagi broke off an unusually long and rich
spray of wisteria and presented it to Yu~giri with a cup of wine. Seeing that
<P 527>
his guest was a little puzzled, To~ no Chu~jo~ elaborated upon the reference
with a poem of his own:
"Let us blame the wisteria, of too pale a hue,
Though the pine has let itself be overgrown."
Taking a careful though elegant sip from the cup that was pressed
upon him, Yu~giri replied:
"Tears have obscured the blossoms these many springs,
And now at length they open full before me."
He poured for Kashiwagi, who replied:
"Wisteria is like the sleeve of a maiden,
Lovelier when someone cares for it."
Cup followed cup, and it would seem that poem followed poem with
equal rapidity; and in the general intoxication none were superior to these.
The light of the quarter-moon was soft and the pond was a minor,
and the wisteria was indeed very beautiful, hanging from a pine of medium
height that trailed its branches far to one side. It did not have to compete
with the lusher green of summer.
Ko~bai, in his usual good voice, sang "The Fence of Rushes," very
softly.
"What an odd one to have chosen," To~ no Chu~jo~ said, laughing. Also
in fine voice, he joined in the refrain, changing the disturbed house into
"a house of eminence." The merriment was kept within proper bounds and
all the old enmity vanished.
Yu~giri pretended to be very drunk. "I am not feeling at all well," he
said to Kashiwagi, "and doubt very much that I can find my way home.
Let me borrow your room."
"Find him a place to rest, my young lord," said To~ no Chu~jo~. "I am
afraid that in these my declining years I do not hold my liquor well and
may create a disturbance. I shall leave you." He withdrew.
<N 5>
"Are you saying that you mean to pass one night among the flowers?"
said Kashiwagi. "It is a difficult task you assign your guide."
"The fickle flowers, watched over by the steadfast pine? Please, sir--
do not let any hint of the inauspicious creep into the conversation."
Kashiwagi was satisfied, though he did not think that he had risen to
the occasion as wittily as he might have. He had a very high opinion of
<P 528>
Yu~giri and would not have wished the affair to end otherwise. With no
further misgivings he showed his friend to Kumoinokari's room.
For Yu~giri it was a waking dream. He had waited, long and well.
Kumoinokari was very shy but more beautiful than when, all those years
before, he had last seen her. He too was satisfied.
"I knew that people were laughing," he said, "but I let them laugh,
and so here we are. Your chief claim to distinction through it all, if I may
say so, has been your chilliness. You heard the song your brother was
singing, I suppose. It was not kind of him. The fence of rushes--I would
have liked to answer with the one about the Kawaguchi Barrier."
This, she thought, required comment: "Deplorable.
"So shallow a river, flowing out to sea.
Why did so stout a fence permit it to pass?"
He thought her delightful.
"Shallowness was one, but only one,
Among the traits that helped it pass the barrier.
"The length of the wait has driven me mad, raving mad. At this point
I understand nothing." Intoxication was his excuse for a certain fretful
disorderliness. He appeared not to know that dawn was approaching.
The women were very reluctant to disturb him.
"He seems to sleep a confident and untroubled sleep," said To~ no
Chu~jo~.
He did, however, leave before it was full daylight. Even his yawns
were handsome.
His note was delivered later in the morning with the usual secrecy.
She had trouble answering. The women were poking one another jocularly
and the arrival of To~ no Chu~jo~ added to her embarrassment. He glanced
at the note.
"Your coldness serves to emphasize my own inadequacy, and makes
me feel that the best solution might be to expire.
"Do not reprove me for the dripping sleeves
The whole world sees. I weary of wringing them dry."
It may have seemed somewhat facile.
"How his writing has improved." To~ no Chu~jo~ smiled. The old resent-
<P 529>
ments had quite disappeared. "He will be impatient for an answer, my
dear."
But he saw that his presence had an inhibiting effect and withdrew.
Kashiwagi ordered wine and lavish gifts for the messenger, an assis-
tant guards commander who was among Yu~giri's most trusted attendants.
He was glad that he no longer had to do his work in secret.
<N 6>
Genji thought his son more shiningly handsome than ever this morn-
ing. "And how are you? Have you sent off your letter? The most astute
and sober of men can stumble in the pursuit of a lady, and you have shown
your superiority in refusing to be hurried or to make a nuisance of yourself.
To~ no Chu~jo~ was altogether too stern and uncompromising. I wonder what
people are saying now that he has surrendered. But you must not gloat and
you must be on your best behavior. You may think him a calm, unruffled
sort of man, but he has a strain of deviousness that does not always seem
entirely manly and does not make him the easiest person in the world to
get along with." Genji went on giving advice, it will be seen, though he
was delighted with the match.
They looked less like father and son than like brothers, the one not
a great deal older than the other. When they were apart people were
sometimes not sure which was which, but when they were side by side
distinctive traits asserted themselves. Genji was wearing an azure robe and
under it a singlet of a Chinese white with the pattern in clear relief,
sprucely elegant as always. Yu~giri's robe was of a somewhat darker blue,
with a rich saffron and a softly figured white showing at the sleeves. No
bridegroom could have been more presentable.
A procession came in bearing a statue of the infant Buddha. It was
followed somewhat tardily by priests. In the evening little girls brought
offerings from the several Rokujo~ ladies, as splendid as anything one
would see at court. The services too were similar, the chief difference being
the rather curious one that more care and expense would seem to have
gone into these at Rokujo~.
Yu~giri was impatient to be on his way. He dressed with very great
care. He had had his little dalliances, it would seem, none of them very
important to him, and there were ladies who felt pangs of jealousy as they
saw him off. But he had been rewarded for years of patience, and the match
was of the sort the poet called "watertight." To~ no Chu~jo~ liked him much
better now that he was one of the family. It was not pleasant to have been
the loser, of course, but his extraordinary fidelity over the years made it
difficult to hold grudges. Kumoinokari was now in a position of which her
<P 530>
sister at court might be envious. Her stepmother could not, it is true,
restrain a certain spitefulness, but it was not enough to spoil the occasion.
Her real mother, now married to the Lord Inspector, was delighted.
<N 7>
The presentation of the Akashi girl at court had been fixed for late in
the Fourth Month.
Murasaki went with Genji to the Miare festival, which preceded the
main Kamo festival. She invited the other Rokujo~ ladies to join them, but
they declined, fearing that they might look like servants. Her procession
was rather quiet and very impressive for the fact, twenty carriages simply
appointed and a modest number of outrunners and guards. She paid her
respects at the shrine very early on the morning of the festival proper and
took a place in the stands. The array of carriages was imposing, large
numbers of women having come with her from the other Rokujo~
households. Guessing from considerable distances whose lady she would
be, people looked on in wondering admiration.
Genji remembered another Kamo festival and the treatment to which
the Rokujo~ lady, mother of the present empress, had been subjected. "My
wife was a proud and willful woman who proved to be wanting in common
charity. And see how she suffered for her pride--how bitterness was
heaped upon her." He drew back from speaking too openly about the
horrible conclusion to the rivalry. "The son of the one lady is crawling
ahead in the ordinary service, and the heights to which the daughter of the
other has risen bring on an attack of vertigo. Life is uncertain for all of us.
We can only hope to have things our way for a little while. I worry about
you, my dear, and how it will be for you when I am gone."
<N 8>
He went to speak to some courtiers of the higher ranks who had
gathered before the stands. They had come from To~ no Chu~jo~'s mansion
with Kashiwagi, who represented the inner guards. Koremitsu's daughter
too had come as a royal legate. A much admired young lady, she was
showered with gifts from the emperor, the crown prince, and Genji, among
others. Yu~giri managed to get a note through the cordons by which she was
surrounded. He had seen her from time to time and she had been pained
to learn of his marriage to so fine a lady.
"This sprig of--what is it called?--this sprig in my cap.
So long it has been, I cannot think of the name."
One wonders what it may have meant to her. She answered, even in
the confusion of being seen into her carriage.
"The scholar armed with laurel should know its name.
He wears it, though he may not speak of it.
"Not everyone, perhaps--but surely an erudite man like you?"
<P 531>
Not a very remarkable poem, he thought, but better than his own.
Rumor had it that they were still meeting in secret.
<N 9>
It was assumed that Murasaki would go to court with the Akashi girl.
She could not stay long, however, and she thought that the rime had come
for the girl's real mother to be with her. It was sad for them both, mother
and daughter, that they had been kept apart for so long. The matter had
been on Murasaki's conscience and she suspected that it had been trou-
bling the girl as well.
"Suppose you send the Akashi lady with the child," she said to Genji.
"She is still so very young. She ought to have an older woman with her.
There are limits to what a nurse can do, and I would be much happier about
leaving her if I knew that her mother would be taking my place."
How very thoughtful of her, thought Genji. The Akashi lady was of
course delighted at the suggestion. Her last wish was being granted. She
threw herself into the preparations, none of the other ladies more energeti-
cally. The long separation had been especially cruel for the girl's grand-
mother, the old Akashi nun. The pleasure of watching the girl grow up,
her last attachment to this life, had been denied her.
It was late in the night when the Akashi girl and Murasaki rode to
court in a hand-drawn carriage. The Akashi lady did not want to follow
on foot with the lesser ladies. She was not concerned for her own dignity,
but feared that an appearance of inferiority would flaw the gem which
Genji had polished so carefully. Though Genji had wanted the ceremonies
to be simple, they seemed to take on brilliance of their own accord.
Murasaki must now give up the child who had been her whole life. How
