12

He called Ukon off by herself. “You must bring her here. I have thought of her so often. I am delighted at this news and sorry that we lost her for so long. She must not be kept away any longer. Why should we tell her father? His house swarms with children. I am afraid the poor little thing would be overwhelmed. And I have so few myself—we can say that I have come upon a daugh r in a most unexpected place. She will be our treasure. We will have all the young gallants eager to meet her.

“I leave everything to your judgment, sir. If her father is to know, then you must be the one to tell him. I am sure that any little gesture in memory of the lady we lost will lighten the burden of sin.”

“The burden is mine, you are saying? ” He smiled, but he was near tears. “I have thought so often what a sad, brief affair it was. I have all the ladies you see here, and I doubt that I have ever felt toward any of them quite that intensity of affection. Most of them have lived long enough to see that I am after all a steady sort, and she vanished so quickly, and I have had only you to remember her by. I have not forgotten her. It would be as if all my prayers had been answered if you were to bring the girl here.”

He got off a letter. Yet he was a little worried, remembering the safflower princess. Ladies were not always what one hoped they would be, and this was a lady who had had a hard life.

His letter was most decorous. At the end of it he said: “And as to my reasons for writing,

“You may not know, but presently Fou will,

Where leads the line of rushes at Mishimae.” *

Ukon delivered it and gave an account of their conversation. She brought all manner of garments for the lady herself and for the others. Genji had told Murasaki the whole story and gone through his warehouses for the best of everything, and very different it all was from what they had been used to in Kyushu.

Tamakazura suggested that the delight would be more considerable if there were word from her father. She saw no reason to go and live with a stranger.

Ukon set about making her think otherwise. “Your father is sure to hear of you once you are set up in a decent sort of life. The bond between parent and child is not so easily broken. I am nobody, and I found you because of my prayers. There can be no other explanation. These things happen if we live long enough. You must get off an answer.”

The girl was timid, sure that any answer from her would seem hope-lessly countrified. She chose richly perfumed Chinese paper and wrote only this, in a faint, delicate hand:

“You speak of lines and rushes—and by what line

Has this poor rush taken root in this sad world?”

The hand was immature, but it showed character and breeding. Genji was more confident.