9

Niou too sent messages, but they were not of a sort that the princesses could bring themselves to answer.

“My friend gets different treatment,” he said, much chagrined. “Why am I the one they will have nothing to do with?”

He had thought that Uji with the autumn leaves at their best might feed his poetic urges, but now, regretfully, he had to conclude that the time was inappropriate. He did send a long letter. The initial period of mourning+ was over, he thought, and there must be an end to grief and a pause in tears. Dispatching his letter on an evening of chilly showers, he had this to say, among many other things:

“How is it in yon hills where the hart calls out

On such an eve, and dew forms on the _hagi_? I cannot think how on an evening like this you can be indifferent to melancholy like mine. Autumn brings an unusual sadness over Onoe Moor.” #

“He is right,” said Oigimi, urging her sister on. “We do let these notes pile up, and I'm sure he thinks us very rude and unfeeling. Do get something off to him.”

Enduring the days since her father's death, thought Nakanokimi, had she once considered taking up brush again? How cruel those days had been! Her eyes clouded over, and she pushed the inkstone away.

“I cannot do it,” she said, weeping quietly. “I have come this far, you say, and sorrow has to end? No—the very thought of it makes me hate myself.”

Oigimi understood, and urged her no further.

The messenger had left the city at dusk and arrived after dark. How could they send him back at this hour? They told him he must stay the night. But no: he was going back, he said, and he hurried to get ready.

Though no more in control of herself than her sister, Oigimi wished to detain him no longer, and composed a stanza for him to take back:

“A mist of tears blots out this mountain village,

And at its rustic fence, the call of the deer.”

Scarcely able to make out the ink, dark in the night, against dark paper, she wrote with no thought for the niceties. She folded her note into a plain cover and sent it out to the man.

It was a black, gusty night. He was uneasy as he made his way through the wilds of Kohata; but Niou did not pick men Who were noted for their timidity. He spurred his horse on, not allowing it to pause even for the densest bamboo thickets, and reached Niou's mansion in remarkably quick time. Seeing how wet he was, Niou gave him a special bounty for his services.

The hand, a strange one, was more mature than the one he was used to, and suggestive of a deeper mind. Which princess would be which? he wondered, gazing and gazing at the note. It was well past time for him to be in bed.

They could see why he would wish to wait up until an answer came, whispered the women, but here he was still mooning over it. The sender must be someone who interested him greatly. There was a touch of asperity in these remarks, as of people who wished they were in bed themselves.

The morning mists were still heavy as he arose to prepare his answer:

“The call of the hart whose mate has strayed away

In the morning mist—are there those whom it leaves unmoved?* My own wails are no less piercing.”

“He is likely to be a nuisance if he thinks we understand too well,” said Oigimi, always withdrawn and cautious in these matters. “Before Father died we had him to protect us. We did not want to outlive him, but here we are. He thought of us to the last, and now we must think of him. The slightest little misstep would hurt him.” She would not permit an answer. Yet she did not take the view of Niou that she did of most men. His writing and choice of words, even at their most casual, had an elegance and originality which seemed to her, though she had not had letters from many men, truly superior. But to answer even such subtle letters was inappropriate for a lady in her situation. If the world disagreed, she had no answer: she would live out her life as a rustic spinster, and the world need not think about her.