16

On about the fifth or sixth day of the Tenth Month he paid his next visit to Uji. He must make it a point to have a look at the weirs, said his men. It was the season when they were at their most interesting.

He would prefer not to, he replied. “A fly having a look at the fish*—a pretty picture.”

To present as austere a figure as possible, he rode in a carriage faced with palmetto fronds, such as a woman might use, and ordered a cloak and trousers of coarse, unfigured material.

Delighted to see him, the prince arranged a most tasteful banquet from dishes for which the region was known. In the evening, under the lamps, they listened to a discourse on some of the more difficult passages in scriptures they had been over together. The abbot was among those invited down from the monastery. Sleep was out of the question. The roar of the waters and the whipping of leaves and branches in the violent river winds, which in lesser degree might have moved one to a pleasant awareness of the season, invited gloom and even despair. Dawn would be approaching, thought Kaoru, and the koto strain he had heard that other morning came back to him.

He guided the conversation to the delights of koto and lute. “On my last visit, as the morning mist was rolling in, I was lucky enough to hear a short melody, a most extraordinary one. It was over in a few seconds, and since then I have not been able to think of anything except how I might hear more.”

“The hues and the scents of the world are nothing to me now,” said the prince, “and I have forgotten all the music I ever knew.” Even so he sent a woman for the instruments. “No, I am afraid it will not be right. But perhaps—if I had someone to follow, a little might come back?” He pressed a lute upon Kaoru.

“Can it be,” said Kaoru, tuning the instrument, “that this is the one I heard the other morning? I had thought that there must be something rather special about the instrument itself, but now I see that there is another explanation for that remarkable music.” He addressed himself to the lute, but in a manner somewhat bemused.

“You must not make sport of us, sir. Where can music likely to catch your ear have come from? You speak of the impossible.”

The prince's koto had a clearness and strength that were almost chilling. Perhaps it borrowed overtones from “the wind in the mountain pines.” * He pretended to falter and forget, and pushed the instrument away when he had finished the first strain. The brief performance had suggested great subtlety and discernment.

“Sometimes, without warning, I do hear in the distance a strain such as to make me think that one of my daughters has acquired some notion of what real music is; but they have had little training, and it has been a very long time since I last made much effort to teach them. As the mood takes them, they play a tune or two, and they have only the river to accompany them. It is most unlikely that their twanging would be of any interest to a musician like you. But suppose,” he called to them, “you were to have a try at it.”

“It was bad enough to be overheard when we thought we were alone.”

“I would disgrace myself.”

And so he was rebuffed by both his daughters. He did not give up easily, but, to Kaoru's great disappointment, they would have nothing of the proposal.

The prince was deeply shamed that his daughters should thus an-nounce themselves as rustic wenches, out of touch with the ways of the world.

“They have lived in such seclusion that their very existence is a secret. I have wished it to be so; but now, when I think how little time I have left, when I think that I may be gone tomorrow, I find that resignation eludes me. They have their whole lives yet to live, and might they not end their years as drifters and beggars? A fear of that possibility will be the one bond holding me to the world when my time comes.”

“It would not be honest of me to enter into a firm commitment,” said Kaoru, deeply moved; “but you are not to think, because I say so, that I am in the least cool or indifferent to what you have said. Though I cannot be sure that I will survive you for very long, I mean to be true to every syllable I have spoken.”

“You are very kind, very kind indeed.”