25

The wind moaned the whole day through. “The wandering monk off in the mountains wants to sob aloud on such a day,” said the bishop.

She had become one of the wanderers herself, thought the girl, and it was perhaps for that reason that she was so given to weeping.

Gazing out from the veranda, she saw in the distance a troop of men in variegated travel robes. Even people on their way up the mountain tended to pass the nunnery by, though occasionally the nuns would catch a glimpse of a monk, from perhaps Black Valley.* Men in lay dress were a very rare sight indeed. These proved to be in attendance upon the captain whom she had so disappointed. He had come with further complaints, now useless, of course, but the autumn leaves, just at their best, more richly tinted here at Ono than elsewhere along the range, made him forget them for a time. What a start it would give a man, he thought, to come upon a bright, lively girl in such a place.

“I had a bit of spare time, and it seemed meant for your autumn colors.” He gazed admiringly about him. “Yes, your trees do invite one to spend a night among them—to borrow a night from the past, so to speak.”

The bishop's sister, generous as ever with her tears, offered a poem:

“Harsh the winds that come down these mountain slopes.

Our trees are bare. They give not shade or shelter.”

He replied:

“Mountain trees, I know, where none awaits me;

And yet I cannot easily pass them by.”

“Let me at least see her in her new robes,” he said to Sho~sho~, in the course of lengthy observations about the girl now beyond retrieving. “Allow me a single sign that you remember your promises.”

Sho~sho~ went inside. Yes, she did indeed want to show the girl off, slight, delicate, graceful, in a cloak of light gray and a singlet of a quiet burnt yellow, her rich hair spread about her like a five-plaited fan. The fine skin was as if it had been freshly and tenderly powdered. More than show her off: Sho~sho~ would have liked to paint a picture of the little figure engrossed in prayer, a rosary hung over a curtain rack nearby, a sutra unrolled before her. Sho~sho~ wanted to weep. How much more extreme was the effect likely to be upon a man who had come as a suitor! The moment seemed propitious. She pointed to a small aperture below the latch and pushed aside curtains and the like that might obstruct his view. He had not been prepared for such beauty. A flawless creature—and she had become a nun! The regrets and the sorrow were as if some dreadful mistake of his own had brought matters to this pass. He withdrew, unable to hold back his tears and afraid that he might break into open sobbing. Was it conceivable that no one would be searching for this lost paragon? He would have heard if a daughter of one of the great families had disappeared or turned in bitterness from the world.

An enigma, certainly; but one did not look with aversion upon nuns when they were great beauties. Indeed, their condition added to the excitement. Concluding that the girl was worth a secret visit from time to time, he appealed to the bishop's sister.

“I can see that there were reasons for shyness before she had these new defenses, but I should think that we might now have a quiet talk. Suggest as much to her, if you will. I have called on you from time to time because I have not been able to forget the past, and now I have another reason.”

“Yes,” said the nun, in tears, “I have worried about her a great deal, and I would be much happier if I could think that she had a friend, someone who would promise in all honesty to see her from time to time. I shall not be here forever, you know.”

But who might the girl be? The nun's words suggested that she was a relative.

“I may not live long myself, and I am not of much consequence in any case; but I keep a promise when I have made one. Tell me: does no one come to see her? You must not think that I am holding back because I do not know who she is—and yet it does somehow stand between us.”

“If she had any notion that the world ought to be paying its respects, then she would have no lack of callers, I am sure. But as you see, she has quite given up such things. She seems interested in her prayers and nothing more.”

He sent a note in to the girl:

“You have chosen to turn your back upon the world.

It pains me to think that I have been the occasion.”

He could not have been warmer or more courteous, said the woman who brought the note.

“Think of me as a brother,” he persisted. “The most trivial sort of conversation would be such a comfort.”

“I fear that your remarks are above me,” she sent back, not attempting a real answer.

Those disastrous events had so turned her against men, it seemed, that she meant to end her days as little a part of the world as a decaying stump. The gloom of the last months lifted a little, now that she had had her way. She would joke with the bishop's sister and they would play Go together. She turned to her studies of the Good Law with a new dedication, perusing the Lotus Sutra and numbers of other holy texts. It was winter, the snows were deep, and there were no visitors; and now if ever was the tedious time.