4

Yu~giri had vague reports of what was taking place, and was much annoyed. He had had ideas of his own: Kaoru might not be as consumed with ardor as one might hope, but he could not in the end refuse if Yu~giri were to press his case. And now this strange development. Yu~giri's thoughts turned once again to Niou. It would have been sheer self-deception to credit Niou with great steadfastness, but he had continued all the while to send amusing and interesting little notes to Yu~giri's daughter Rokunokimi. Though people were no doubt right to call him a trifler, fate had dictated stranger things than that he fix his affections upon Rokunokimi. Impassioned vows, impermeable, watertight vows,* so to speak, often enough led to disappointment and humiliation when the man was not of grand enough rank.

“What sad days we have come upon,” said Yu~giri. “Even monarchs must go out begging for sons-in-law. Think how we commoners must worry as we see our daughters passing their prime.”

Though circumspect in his criticism of the emperor, he was otherwise so outspoken with his sister, the empress, that she felt constrained to pass at least a part of his complaints on to Niou:

“I do feel sorry for him, you know. He has been after you for a year and more, knowing quite well what sort of cooperation he can expect from you. You have spent the whole year dashing madly in the other direction, not very good evidence, I must say, of warmth and kindness. And you must remember that a good marriage is very important for someone like you. Your father begins to talk of leaving the throne, and—ordinary people are expected to be satisfied with only one wife, I suppose, but even with them—look at my brother himself, such a model of propriety, and still able to manage two wives without offending anyone. Just let things work themselves out as we hope they will, and you can have any number you like. No one will have the smallest objection.”

She was not a loquacious woman, and it had been a remarkable speech; and it did have a reasonable sound to it. Never having disliked Rokunokimi, Niou did not want to answer in a way that seemed to slam all the doors; but the prospect of being imprisoned in that excessively decorous household, of forgoing the freedom that was now his, made the proposed match seem unbearably drab. He could not, all the same, deny that his mother's remarks were very sensible, most particularly those about the folly of alienating important people who wished to become one's in-laws. He was caught in a dilemma. And then too there was his tendency to spread his affections generously, and the fact that he still had not found it possible to forget Ko~bai's stepdaughter.+ As the seasons presented occasions, the flowers of spring and the autumn leaves, he still sent her letters, and he would have had to include both of them, Rokunokimi and Ko~bai's daughter, on the list of those whom he found not uninteresting.

And so the New Year came.#