These things happened in the ninth month; but Tamakatsura’s actual arrival could not take place for some while afterwards, for though her quarters had been chosen she still lacked attendants. The first thing was to find her some pretty pages and serving-girls. Even in Tsukushi the old nurse had managed to procure some very passable children to wait upon her; for it sometimes happened that some one from the City, having fallen upon evil days, would get stranded on the Island and be glad to place his boy or girl in a respectable home. But in the sudden flight from Tsukushi all these young people had been left behind. Orders were given to market-women and trades-people to keep their eyes open and report upon any suitable children whom they came across; and in this way, as could scarcely fail to happen in so vast a town, a fine batch of attendants was quickly brought together. Nothing was said to them about Tamakatsura’s rank, and they were mustered in Ukon’s own house, whither Tamakatsura herself now repaired, that her wardrobe might be finally inspected, her staff fitted out with proper costumes and instructed in their duties. The move to Genji’s Palace took place in the tenth month. He had already visited the Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers and prepared her for the arrival of her new neighbours: ‘A lady to whom I was much attached, being seized with a sudden melancholy, fled from the Court and soon afterwards ended her days in a remote country place. She left behind a daughter, of whom I could for years obtain no news. All this happened many years ago and this daughter is now of course a full-grown woman; but though I have been making enquiries ever since it was only quite recently (and in the most accidental way) that I at last obtained a clue. I at once determined to invite her to my palace, and I am going to give her quarters close to yours, in the unused Record Office. To one motherless child of mine you have already shown infinite kindness, and have not, I think, found the care of him unduly irksome. If you will do for this new-comer what you have been doing for Prince Yūgiri, I shall be deeply thankful to you. She has been brought up in very humble and rustic surroundings. In many ways she must be ill-prepared for the life which she will lead in such a place as this. I hope that you will instruct her ...’ and he made many suggestions for Tamakatsura’s polite education. ‘I had no idea,’ the Lady replied, ‘that you had more than one daughter. However, I am extremely glad, if only for the Akashi child’s sake. I am sure she will be delighted to find that she has a sister....’ ‘The mother,’ said Genji, ‘was the most gentle and confiding creature I have ever encountered. This girl, Lady Tamakatsura, doubtless resembles her; and since you yourself are the easiest person to get on with....’ ‘I have so much time on my hands,’ she answered quickly. ‘Some one of my own sort to look after and advise a little.... That is just what I long for.’

Genji’s own servants and retainers had been told nothing save that a strange lady was shortly to arrive. ‘I wonder whom he has picked up this time?’ one of them said. ‘I don’t believe this is a fresh affair,’ said another. ‘In all probability she is only some discarded mistress who needs looking after for a time....’

The party arrived in three carriages. As Ukon had superintended every detail, the whole turn-out was quite adequately stylish, or at any rate did not betray such rusticity as to attract attention. On their arrival they found their quarters stacked with all sorts of presents from Genji. He gave them time to settle in, and did not call till late the same night. Long, long ago Tamakatsura used often to hear him spoken of in terms of extravagant admiration; ‘Genji the Shining One,’ that was what people had called him. All the rest she had forgotten; for hers had been a life from which tales of Courts and palaces seemed so remote that she had scarcely heeded them. And now when through a chink in her curtains-of-state she caught a glimpse of him—vague enough, for the room was lit only by the far distant rays of the great lamp beyond the partition—her feeling was one of admiration, but (could it be so, she asked herself) of downright terror.

Ukon had flung open both halves of the heavy maindoor and was now obsequiously ushering him into the room. ‘You should not have done that,’ he protested. ‘You are making too much of my entry. No such ceremonies are necessary when one inmate of this house takes it into his head to visit another,’ and he seated himself alongside her curtained chair. ‘This dim light too,’ he continued, addressing Ukon, ‘may seem to you very romantic. But Lady Tamakatsura has consented to make believe that she is my daughter, and family meetings such as this require a better illumination. Do you not agree?’ And with this he slightly raised one corner of her curtain. She looked extremely shy and was sitting, as he now discovered, with face half-turned away. But he knew at once that as far as looks were concerned she was not going to cause him any anxiety. ‘Could we not have a little more light?’ he said, turning again to Ukon. ‘It is so irritating....’ Ukon lit a candle and came towards them holding it aloft in her hand. ‘It is rather heavy work to get started!’ he whispered, smiling. ‘Things will go better presently.’ Even the way she hung her head, as though frightened of meeting his eyes, reminded him so vividly of Yūgao that it was impossible for him to treat her as a stranger; instinctively indeed he began to speak to her in a tone of complete familiarity as though they had shared the same house all their lives: ‘I have been hunting high and low for you ever since you were a baby,’ he said, ‘and now that I have found you, and see you sitting there with a look that I know so well, it is more than I can bear. I wanted so much to talk to you, but now ...’ and he paused to wipe the tears from his eyes, whilst there rushed to his mind a thousand tender recollections of Yūgao and her incomparable ways. ‘I doubt,’ he said at last, reckoning up the years since her death, ‘whether true parent has ever reclaimed a child after so long a search as I have made for you. Indeed so long a time has passed that you are already a woman of judgment and experience, and can tell me a far more interesting story of all that has befallen you on that island of yours than could be told by a mere child. I have that compensation at least for having met you so late....’

What would she tell him? For a long while she hung her head in silence. At last she said shyly: ‘Pray remember that like the leech-child,¹¹⁰ at three years old I was set adrift upon the ocean. Since then I have been stranded in a place where only such things could befall me as to you would seem nothing at all.’ Her voice died away at the end of the sentence with a half-childish murmur, exactly as her mother’s had done long ago. ‘I was “sorry for you” indeed,’ he said, ‘when I heard whither you had drifted. But I am going to see to it now that no one shall ever be sorry for you again.’ She said no more that night; but her one short reply had convinced him that she was by no means a nonentity, and he went back to his own quarters feeling confident that there could be no difficulty in launching her upon a suitable career. ‘Poor Tamakatsura has lived in the country for so long,’ he said to Murasaki later,’ that it would not at all have surprised me to find her very boorish, and I was prepared to make every allowance.... But on the contrary she seems very well able to hold her own. It will be amusing to watch the effect upon our friends when it becomes known that this girl is living in the house. I can well imagine the flutter into which she will put some of them,—my half-brother Prince Sochi no Miya for example. The reason that quite lively and amusing people often look so gloomy when they come here is that there have been no attractions of this kind. We must make as much play with her as possible; it will be such fun to see which of our acquaintances become brisker, and which remain as solemn as ever.’ ‘You are certainly the strangest “father”!’ exclaimed Murasaki. The first thing you think of is how to use her as a bait to the more unprincipled among your friends. It is monstrous!’ ‘If only I had thought of it in time,’ he laughed, ‘I see now how splendidly you would have served for the same purpose. It was silly of me not to think of it; but, somehow or other, I preferred to keep you all to myself. She flushed slightly as he said this, looking younger and more charming than ever. Sending for his ink-stone Genji now wrote on a practising-slip the poem: ‘Save that both she and I have common cause to mourn, my own is she no more than a false lock worn upon an aged head.’¹¹¹ Seeing him sigh heavily and go about muttering to himself, Murasaki knew that his love for Yūgao had been no mere boyish fancy, but an affair that had stirred his nature to its depths.

Yūgiri, having been told that a half-sister (of whose existence he had never heard) was come to live with them in the palace, and that he ought to make friends with her and make her feel at home, at once rushed round to her rooms, saying: ‘I do not count for very much, I know; but since we are brother and sister, I think you might have sent for me before. If only I had known who you were, I would have been so glad to help you to unpack your things. I do think you might have told me....’ ‘Poor young gentleman,’ thought Ukon, who was close at hand; ‘this is really too bad. How long will they let him go on in this style, thinking all the while she is his sister? I don’t think it’s fair....’

The contrast between her present way of life and the days at Tsukushi was staggering. Here every elegance, every convenience appeared as though by magic; there the simplest articles could be procured only by endless contriving, and when found were soiled, dilapidated, out-of-date. Here Prince Genji claimed her as his daughter, Prince Yūgiri as his sister.... ‘Now these,’ thought old Sanjō, ‘really are fine gentlemen. However I came to have such a high opinion of that Lord-Lieutenant I do not know!’ And when she remembered what airs a miserable creature like Tayū had given himself on the Island, she almost expired with indignation.

That Bugo no Suke had acted with rare courage and wisdom in planning the sudden flight from Tsukushi was readily admitted by Genji when Ukon had laid all the circumstances before him. It was unlikely that any stranger would serve Tamakatsura with such devotion as this foster-brother had shown, and in drawing up for her a list of gentlemen-in-attendance, Genji saw to it that Bugo no Suke’s name should figure among them.

Never in his wildest dreams had it occurred to Bugo no Suke that he, a plain Tsukushi yeoman, would ever set foot in a Minister’s palace; nay, would in all his living days so much as set eyes on such a place. And here he was, not merely walking in and out just as he chose, but going with the lords and ladies wherever they went, and even arranging their affairs for them and ordering about their underlings as though they were his own. And to crown his content, no day passed but brought to his mistress some ingenious intention, some well-devised if trifling act of kindness from their host himself.

At the end of the year there took place the usual distribution of stuff for spring clothes, and Genji was determined that the new-comer should not feel that she had come off worse than the greatest ladies in the house. But he feared that, graceful and charming though she was, her taste in dress must necessarily be somewhat rustic, and among the silks which he gave her he determined also to send a certain number of woven dresses, that she might be gently guided towards the fashions of the day. The gentlewomen of the palace, each anxious to prove that there was nothing she did not know about the latest shapes of bodice and kirtle, set to work with such a will that when they brought their wares for Genji’s inspection, he exclaimed: ‘I fear your zeal has been excessive. If all my presents are to be on this scale (and I have no desire to excite jealousy), I shall indeed be hard put to it.’ So saying he had his store-rooms ransacked for fine stuffs; and Murasaki came to the rescue with many of the costly robes which he had from time to time given her for her own wardrobe. All these were now laid out and inspected. Murasaki had a peculiar talent in such matters, and there was not a woman in all the world who chose her dyes with a subtler feeling for colour, as Genji very well knew. Dress after dress was now brought in fresh from the beating-room, and Genji would choose some robe now for its marvellous dark red, now for some curious and exciting pattern or colour-blend, and have it laid aside. ‘This one in the box at the end,’ he would say, handing some dress to one of the waiting-women who were standing beside the long narrow clothes-boxes; or ‘Try this one in your box.’ ‘You seem to be making a very just division, and I am sure no one ought to feel aggrieved. But, if I may make a suggestion, would it not be better to think whether the stuffs will suit the complexions of their recipient rather than whether they look nice in the box?’ ‘I know just why you said that,’ Genji laughed. ‘You want me to launch out into a discussion of each lady’s personal charms, in order that you may know in what light she appears to me. I am going to turn the tables. You shall have for your own whichever of my stuffs you like, and by your choice I shall know how you regard yourself.’ ‘I have not the least idea what I look like,’ she answered, blushing slightly; ‘after all, I am the last person in the world to consult upon the subject. One never sees oneself except in the mirror....’ After much debating, the presents were distributed as follows: to Murasaki herself, a kirtle yellow without and flowered within, lightly diapered with the red plum-blossom crest—a marvel of modern dyeing. To the Akashi child, a long close-fitting dress, white without, yellow within, the whole seen through an outer facing of shimmering red gauze. To the Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers he gave a light blue robe with a pattern of sea-shells woven into it. Lovely though the dress was as an example of complicated weaving, it would have been too light in tone had it not been covered with a somewhat heavy russet floss.

To Tamakatsura he sent, among other gifts, a close-fitting dress with a pattern of mountain-kerria woven upon a plain red background. Murasaki seemed scarcely to have glanced at it; but all the while, true to Genji’s surmise, she was guessing the meaning of this choice. Like her father Tō no Chūjō, Tamakatsura (she conjectured) was doubtless good-looking; but certainly lacked his liveliness and love of adventure. Murasaki had no idea that she had in any way betrayed what was going on in her mind and was surprised when Genji suddenly said: ‘In the end this matching of dresses and complexions breaks down entirely and one gives almost at hazard. I can never find anything that does justice to my handsome friends, or anything that it does not seem a shame to waste on the ugly ones ...’ and so saying he glanced with a smile at the present which was about to be dispatched to Suyetsumu, a dress white without and green within, what is called a ‘willow-weaving,’ with an elegant Chinese vine-scroll worked upon it.

To the Lady of Akashi he sent a white kirtle with a spray of plum-blossom on it, and birds and butterflies fluttering hither and thither, cut somewhat in the Chinese fashion, with a very handsome dark purple lining. This also caught Murasaki’s observant eye and she augured from it that the rival of whom Genji spoke to her so lightly was in reality occupying a considerable place in his thoughts.

To Utsusemi, now turned nun, he sent a grey cloak, and, in addition, a coat of his own which he knew she would remember—jasmine-sprinkled, faced with Courtier’s crimson and lined with russet. In each box was a note in which the recipient was begged to favour him by wearing these garments during the Festival of the New Year. He had taken a great deal of trouble over the business and could not imagine that any of the presents was likely to meet with a very bad reception. And indeed the satisfaction which he had given was soon evidenced not only by the delighted letters which came pouring in, but also by the handsome gratuities given to the bearers of these gifts. Suyetsumu was still living at the old Nijō-in palace, and the messenger who brought her present, having a quite considerable distance to travel, expected something rather out of the ordinary in the way of a reward. But to Suyetsumu these things were matters not of commerce, but of etiquette. A present such as this was, she had been taught long ago, a species of formal address which must be answered in the same language, and fetching an orange-coloured gown, very much frayed at the cuffs, she hung it over the messenger’s shoulders, attaching to it a letter written on heavily scented Michinoku paper, which age had not only considerably yellowed, but also bloated to twice its proper thickness. ‘Alas,’ she wrote, ‘your present serves but to remind me of your absence. What pleasure can I take in a dress that you will never see me wear?’ With this was the poem: ‘Was ever gift more heartless? Behold, I send it back to you, your Chinese dress,—worn but an instant, yet discoloured with the brine of tears.’ The handwriting, with its antique flourishes, was admirably suited to the stilted sentiment of the poem. Genji laughed afresh each time he read it and finally, seeing that Murasaki was regarding him with astonishment, he handed her the missive. Meanwhile he examined the bedraggled old frock with which the discomfited messenger had been entrusted, with so rueful an expression that the fellow edged behind the bystanders and finally slipped out of the room, fearing that he had committed a grave breach of etiquette in introducing so pitiful an object into the presence of the Exalted Ones. His plight was the occasion of much whispering and laughter among his fellow servants. But laugh as one might at the absurd scenes which the princess’s archaic behaviour invariably provoked, the very fact that adherence to bygone fashions could produce so ludicrous a result suggested the most disquieting reflexions. ‘It is no laughing matter,’ said Genji. ‘Her “Chinese dress” and “discoloured with the brine of tears” made me feel thoroughly uncomfortable. With the writers of a generation or two ago every dress was “Chinese,” and, no matter what the occasion of the poem, its sleeves were invariably soaked with tears. But what about your poems and mine? Are they not every bit as bad? Our tags may be different from those of the princess; but we use them just as hard and when we come to write a poem are as impervious as she is to the speech of our own day. And this is true not only of amateurs such as ourselves, but of those whose whole reputation depends on their supposed poetical gifts. Think of them at Court festivals, with their eternal madoi, madoi.¹¹² It is a wonder they do not grow tired of the word. A little while ago adabito “Faithless one” was used by well-bred lovers in every poem which they exchanged. They declined it (“of the faithless one,” “from the faithless one” and so on) in the third line, thus gaining time to think out their final couplet. And so we all go on, poring over nicely stitched Aids to Song, and when we have committed a sufficient number of phrases to memory, producing them on the next occasion when they are required. It is not a method which leads to very much variety.

‘But if we need a change, how much more does this unfortunate princess whose scruples forbid her to open any book except these old-fashioned collections of standard verse, written on dingy, native paper, to which her father Prince Hitachi introduced her long ago? Apart from these the only other reading which he seems to have permitted her was the Marrow of Native Song. Unfortunately this book consists almost entirely of “Faults to be avoided;” its comminations and restrictions have but served to aggravate her natural lack of facility. After such an education as this it is no wonder that her compositions have a well-worn and familiar air.’

‘You are too severe,’ said Murasaki, pleading for the princess. ‘Whatever you may say, she managed this time to send an answer, and promptly too. Pray let me have a copy of her poem that I may show it to the Akashi child. I too used to have such books as the Marrow of Poesy, but I do not know what has become of them. Probably book-worms got into them and they were thrown away. I believe that to any one unfamiliar with the old phrase-books Suyetsumu’s poem would seem delightfully fanciful and original. Let us try....’ ‘Do nothing of the kind,’ said Genji. ‘Her education would be ruined if she began to take an interest in poetry. It is an accepted principle that however great the aptitude which a girl may show for some branch of science or art, she must beware of using it; for there is always a risk that her mind may be unduly diverted from ordinary duties and pursuits. She must know just so much of each subject that it cannot be said she has entirely neglected it. Further than this, she can only go at the risk of undermining the fortress of chastity or diminishing that softness of manner without which no woman can be expected to please.’

But all this while he had forgotten that Suyetsumu’s letter itself required a reply; indeed, as was pointed out by Murasaki, the princess’s poem contained a hidden meaning which might be construed as a direct plea for further consolation. It would have been very unlike him not to have heeded such an appeal, and feeling that the standard she had set was not a very exacting one, he dashed off the following reply: ‘If heartlessness there be, not mine it is but yours, who speak of sending back the coat that, rightly worn, brings dreams of love.’¹¹³