8

He always got all the attention, thought the lieutenant, looking glumly after him, in an even blacker mood than usual. This is the poem with which, sighing deeply, he made his departure:

“Everyone is thinking of the blossoms,

And I am left alone in springtime darkness.”

This reply came from one of the women behind the curtains:

“There is a time and place for everything.

The plum is not uniquely worthy of notice.”

The young chamberlain had a note from Kaoru the next morning. “I fear that I may have been too noisy last night. Was everyone disgusted with me?” And there was a poem in an easy, discursive style, obviously meant for young ladies:

“Deep down in the bamboo river we sang of

Did you catch an echo of deep intentions?”

It was taken to the main hall, where all the women read it.

“What lovely handwriting,” said Tamakazura, who hoped that her children might be induced to improve their own scrawls. “Name me another young gentleman who has such a wide variety of talents and accomplishments. He lost his father when he was very young and his mother left him to rear himself, and look at him, if you will. There must be reasons for it all.”

The chamberlain's reply was in a very erratic hand indeed. “We did not really believe that excuse about the carolers.

“A word about a river and off you ran,

And left us to make what we would of unseemly haste.”

Kaoru came visiting again, as if to demonstrate his “deep intentions,” and it was as the lieutenant had said: he got all the attention. For his part, the chamberlain was happy that they should be so close, he and Kaoru, and only hoped that they could be closer.