and her gratitude increased as the years went by.
The Third Princess came to Rokujo~ towards the middle of the Second
Month. The preparations to receive her were elaborate. The west room of
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the main southeast hall in which Genji had sampled the new herbs became
her boudoir. Very great attention had been given to appointing her wo-
men's rooms as well, in the galleries and two wings to the west. The
trousseau was brought from the Suzaku Palace with all the ceremony of
a presentation at court, and it goes without saying that similar pomp
accompanied the formal move to Rokujo~. Her retinue was enormous, led
by the highest courtiers. Among them was a reluctant one, the Fujiwara
councillor who had hoped to take charge of her affairs. Genji broke with
precedent by himself coming out to receive her. Certain limitations were
imposed upon a commoner, and she was after all neither going to court nor
receiving a prince as a bridegroom; and all in all it was a most unusual
event.
Through the three days following, the nuptial ceremonies, arranged
by the Suzaku and Rokujo~ households, were of very great dignity and
elegance.
It was an unsettling time for Murasaki. No doubt Genji was giving an
honest view of the matter when he said that she would not be over-
whelmed by the Third Princess. Yet for the first time in years she felt
genuinely threatened. The new lady was young and, it would seem, rather
showy in her ways, and of such a rank that Murasaki could not ignore her.
All very unsettling; but she gave no hint of her feelings, and indeed helped
with all the arrangements. Genji saw more than ever that there was really
no one like her.
The Third Princess was, as her father had said, a mere child. She was
tiny and immature physically, and she gave a general impression of still
greater, indeed quite extraordinary, immaturity. He thought of Murasaki
when he had first taken her in. She had even then been interesting. She
had had a character of her own. The Third Princess was like a baby. Well,
thought Genji, the situation had something to recommend it: she was not
likely to intrude and make Murasaki unhappy with fits of jealousy. Yet he
did think he might have hoped for someone a _little_ more interesting. For
the first three nights he was faithfully in attendance upon her. Murasaki
was unhappy but said nothing. She gave herself up to her thoughts and
to such duties, now performed with unusual care, as scenting his robes. He
thought her splendid. Why, he asked himself, whatever the pressures and
the complications, had he taken another wife? He had been weak and he
had given an impression of inconstancy, and brought it all upon himself.
Yu~giri had escaped because the Suzaku emperor had seen what an unshak-
able pillar of fidelity he was.
Genji was near tears. "Please excuse me just this one more night. I
have no alternative. If after this I neglect you, then you may be sure that
I will be angrier with myself than you can ever be with me. We do have
to consider her father's feelings."
"Do not ask us bystanders," she said, a faint smile on her lips, "to tell
you how to behave."
He turned away, chin in hand, to hide his confusion.
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"I had grown so used to thinking it would not change.
And now, before my very eyes, it changes."
He took up the paper on which she had jotted down old poems that
fitted her mood as well as this poem of her own. It was not the most perfect
of poems, perhaps, but it was honest and to the point.
"Life must end. It is a transient world.
The one thing lasting is the bond between us."
He did not want to leave, but she said that he was only making things
more difficult for her. He was wearing the soft robes which she had so
carefully scented. She had over the years seen new threats arise only to be
turned away, and she had finally come to think that there would be no
more. Now this had happened, and everyone was talking. She knew how
susceptible he had been in his earlier years, and now the whole future
seemed uncertain. It was remarkable that she showed no sign of her dis-
quiet.
Her women were talking as of the direst happenings.
"Who would have expected it? He has always kept himself well
challenge. So things have been quiet. I doubt that our lady will let them
defeat her--but we must be careful. The smallest mistake could make
things very difficult."
Murasaki pretended that nothing at all was amiss. She talked pleas-
antly with them until late in the night. She feared that silence on the most
important subject might make it seem more important than it was.
"I am so glad that she has come to us. We have had a full house, but
I sometimes think he has been a little bored with us, poor man. None of
us is grand enough to be really interesting. I somehow hope that we will
be the best of friends. Perhaps it is because they say that she is still a mere
child. And here you all are digging a great chasm between us. If we were
of the same rank, or perhaps if I had some slight reason to think myself
a little her superior, then I would feel that I had to be careful. But as it is
--you may think it impertinent of me to say so--I only want to be
friendly."
Nakatsukasa and Chu~jo~ exchanged glances. "Such kindness," one of
them, I do not know which, would seem to have muttered. They had once
been recipients of Genji's attentions but they had been with Murasaki for
some years now, and they were among her firmer allies.
Inquiries came from the ladies in the other quarters, some of them
suggesting that they who had long ago given up their ambitions might be
the more fortunate ones. Murasaki sighed. They meant to be kind, of
course, but they were not making things easier. Well, there was no use in
tormenting herself over things she could not change, and the inconstancy
of the other sex was among them.
Her women would think it odd if she spent the whole night talking
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with them. She withdrew to her boudoir and they helped her into bed. She
was lonely, and the presence of all these women did little to disguise the
fact. She thought of the years of his exile. She had feared that they would
not meet again, but the agony of waiting for word that he was still alive
was in itself a sort of distraction from the sorrow and longing. She sought
to comfort herself now with the thought that those confused days could
so easily have meant the end of everything.
The wind was cold. Not wanting her women to know that she could
not sleep, she lay motionless until she ached from the effort. Still deep in
the cold night, the call of the first cock seemed to emphasize the loneliness
and sorrow.
She may not have been in an agony of longing, but she was deeply
troubled, and perhaps for that reason she came to Genji in his dreams. His
heart was racing. Might something have happened to her? He lay waiting
for the cock as if for permission to leave, and at its first call rushed out as
if unaware that it would not yet be daylight for some time. Still a child,
the princess kept her women close beside her. One of them saw him out
through a corner door. The snow caught the first traces of dawn, though
the garden was still dark. "In vain the spring night's darkness," whispered
her nurse, catching the scent he had left behind.
The patches of snow were almost indistinguishable from the white
garden sands. "There is yet snow by the castle wall," he whispered to
himself as he came to Murasaki's wing of the house and tapped on a
shutter. No longer in the habit of accommodating themselves to nocturnal
wanderings, the women let him wait for a time.
"How slow you are," he said, slipping in beside her. "I am quite
congealed, as much from terror as from cold. And I have done nothing to
deserve it."
He thought her rather wonderful. She did nothing at all, and yet,
hiding her wet sleeves, she somehow managed to keep him at a distance.
Not even among ladies of the highest birth was there anyone quite like her.
He found himself comparing her with the little princess he had just left.
He spent the day beside her, going over their years together, and
charging her with evasion and deviousness.
He sent a note saying that he would not be calling on the princess that
day. "I seem to have caught a chill from the snow and think I would be
more comfortable here."
Her nurse sent back tartly by word of mouth that the note had been
passed on to her lady. Not a very amiable sort, thought Genji.
He did not want the Suzaku emperor to know of his want of ardor,
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but he did not seem capable even of maintaining appearances. Things
could scarcely have been worse. For her part, Murasaki feared that the
Suzaku emperor would hold her responsible.
Waking this time in the familiar rooms, he got off another note to the
princess. He took great trouble with it, though he was not sure that she
would notice. He chose white paper and attached it to a sprig of plum
blossom.
"Not heavy enough to block the way between us,
The flurries of snow this morning yet distress me."
He told the messenger that the note was to be delivered at the west
gallery.
Dressed in white, a sprig of plum in his hand, he sat near the veranda
looking at patches of snow like stragglers waiting for their comrades to
return. A warbler called brightly from the rose plum at the eaves. "Still
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inside my sleeve," he said, sheltering the blossom in his hand and raising
a blind for a better look at the snow. He was so youthfully handsome that
no one would have taken him for one of the great men of the land and the
father of a grown son.
Sure that he could expect no very quick answer from the princess, he
went to show Murasaki his sprig of plum. "Blossoms should have sweet
scents. Think what the cherry blossom would be if it had the scent of the
plum--we would have an eye for no other blossom. The plum comes into
bloom when there is no contest. How fine if we could see it in competition
with the cherry."
An answer did presently come. It was on red tissue paper and folded
neatly in an envelope. He opened it with trepidation, hoping that it would
not be too irredeemably childish. He did not want to have secrets from
Murasaki, and yet he did not want her to see the princess's hand, at least
for a time. To display the princess in all her immaturity seemed somehow
insulting. But it would be worse to make Murasaki yet unhappier. She sat
leaning against an armrest. He laid the note half open beside her.
"You do not come. I fain would disappear,
A veil of snow upon the rough spring winds."
It was every bit as bad as he had feared, scarcely even a child's hand
--and of course in point of years she was not a child at all. Murasaki
glanced at it and glanced away as if she had not seen it. He would have
offered it up for what it was, evidence of almost complete uselessness, had
it been from anyone else.
"So you see that you have nothing to worry about," he said.
He paid his first daytime call upon the princess. He had dressed with
unusual care and no doubt his good looks had an unusually powerful effect
on women not used to them. For the older and more experienced of them,
the nurse, for instance, the effect was of something like apprehension. He
was so splendid that they feared complications. Their lady was such a
pretty little child of a thing, reduced to almost nothing at all by the
brilliance of her surroundings. It was as if there were no flesh holding up
the great mounds of clothing. She did not seem shy before him, and if it
could have been said that her openness and freedom from mannerism were
for purposes of putting him at his ease, then it could also have been said
that they succeeded very well. Her father was not generally held to be a
virile sort of man, but no one denied his superior taste and refinement, and
the mystery was that he had done so little by way of training her. And of
course Genji, like everyone else, knew that she was his favorite, and that
he worried endlessly about her. It all seemed rather sad. The other side of
the matter was that she did undeniably have a certain girlish charm. She
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listened quietly and answered with whatever came into her mind. He must
be good to her. In his younger days his disappointment would have ap-
proached contempt, but he had become more tolerant. They all had their
ways, and none was enormously superior to the others. There were as
many sorts of women as there were women. A disinterested observer
would probably have told him that he had made a good match for himself.
Murasaki was the only remarkable one among them all, more remarkable
now than ever, he thought, and he had known her very well for a very long
time. He had no cause for dissatisfaction with his efforts as guardian and
mentor. A single morning or evening away from her and the sense of
deprivation was so intense as to bring a sort of foreboding.
The Suzaku emperor moved into his temple that same month. Num-
bers of emotional letters came to Rokujo~, for Genji and of course for the
princess. He said several times that Genji must not think about him but
must follow his own judgment in his treatment of the princess. He could
not even so hide his disquietude. She was so very young and defenseless.
He also wrote to Murasaki. "I fear I have left an unthinking child on
your hands. Do please be tolerant. I venture to comfort myself with the
thought that the close relationship between you will make it difficult for
you to reject her.
"Deep into these mountains I would go,
But thoughts of one I leave still pull me back.
"If I express myself foolishly it is because the heart of a father is
