Chapter III · THE MAIDEN (continued 2)

So greatly had Yūgiri distinguished himself in the literary competitions which marked that day’s festivity, that upon the strength of them alone he was awarded the Doctor’s degree. Among those who had competed were many who were far older than he and some who were thought to possess remarkable ability. But besides Yūgiri only two others were passed. When the time of the autumn appointments came round he received the rank of Chamberlain. He longed as much as ever to see Lady Kumoi. But he knew that Tō no Chūjō had his eye upon him, and to force his way into her presence under such circumstances would have been so very disagreeable that he contented himself with an occasional letter. She, meanwhile, was fully as wretched as her young lover.

Genji had long had it in his mind, if only he could find a site sufficiently extensive and with the same natural advantages as the Nijō-in, to build himself a new palace where he could house under one roof the various friends whose present inaccessibility, installed as they were in remote country places, was very inconvenient to him. He now managed to secure a site of four machi⁸⁸ in the Sixth Ward close to where Lady Rokujō had lived and at once began to build.

The fiftieth birthday of Murasaki’s father Prince Hyōbukyō was in the autumn of the following year. The preparations for this event were of course chiefly in her hands; but Genji too, seeing that on this occasion at any rate he must appear to have overcome his dislike of the prince, determined to give the affair an additional magnificence by holding the celebrations in his new house; and with this end in view he hurried on the work of construction as fast as he could. The New Year came, and still the place was far from finished. What with spurring on architects and builders, arranging for the Birthday Service, choosing the musicians, the dancers and the like, he had plenty to keep him busy. Murasaki herself had undertaken the decking of the scripture-rolls and images that would be used at the Service; as well as the customary distribution of presents and mementos. In these tasks she was aided by the Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers, and it was at this time that an intimacy sprang up between them such as had never existed before.

The rumour of these preparations soon reached Prince Hyōbukyō’s ears. After the general amnesty which succeeded his return from Suma, Genji in general made no difference between those who had remained loyal to his cause and those who had stood aloof from him. But from the first Hyōbukyō felt that in his case an exception was made. Over and over again he found himself treated with marked coldness, and the refusal to accept his younger daughter as a candidate for the Emperor’s hand, together with a number of other small but vexatious incidents, finally convinced him that he must at some time have given Genji particular offence. How this had occurred he was at a loss to conjecture; it was indeed the last thing in the world which he would have wished to happen. The fact that, among the many women upon whom Genji had bestowed his favours, it was Murasaki who had been chosen to be the mistress of his house, gave to Hyōbukyō, as her father, a certain worldly prestige. But it could by no means be said that he had hitherto taken a personal share in any of his daughter’s triumphs. This time however, a celebration in which Hyōbukyō necessarily played the foremost part was being planned and prepared by Genji himself on a scale which had set the whole country talking. The prince began to hope that his old age would be lightened by a period of belated conspicuity, and he began to feel very well pleased with himself. This intensely irritated his wife, who could not endure that honours should come to him through the influence of her step-child, and saw no reason why Genji should so quickly be forgiven his obstructive attitude concerning the Presentation of her own little daughter.

The new palace was finished in the eighth month. The portions corresponding to the astrological signs Sheep and Monkey⁸⁹ were reserved for Lady Akikonomu’s occasional use, for they stood on ground that her own suite of rooms had once occupied. The Dragon and Snake quarters were for Genji himself; while the Bull and Tiger corner was to be used by the Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers. Finally the Dog and Wild Boar quarters were made ready for the Lady from Akashi, in the hope that she would at last consent to instal herself under his roof.

He effected great improvement in the appearance of the grounds by a judicious handling of knoll and lake, for though such features were already there in abundance, he found it necessary here to cut away a slope, there to dam a stream, that each occupant of the various quarters might look out of her windows upon such a prospect as pleased her best. To the south-east he raised the level of the ground, and on this bank planted a profusion of early flowering trees. At the foot of this slope the lake curved with especial beauty, and in the foreground, just beneath the windows, he planted borders of cinquefoil, of red-plum, cherry, wistaria, kerria, rock-azalea, and other such plants as are at their best in spring-time; for he knew that Murasaki was in especial a lover of the spring; while here and there, in places where they would not obstruct his main plan, autumn beds were cleverly interwoven with the rest.

Akikonomu’s garden was full of such trees as in autumn-time turn to the deepest hue. The stream above the waterfall was cleared out and deepened to a considerable distance; and that the noise of the cascade might carry further, he set great boulders in mid-stream, against which the current crashed and broke. It so happened that, the season being far advanced, it was this part of the garden that was now seen at its best; here indeed was such beauty as far eclipsed the autumn splendour even of the forests near Ōi, so famous for their autumn tints.

In the north-eastern garden there was a cool spring, the neighbourhood of which seemed likely to yield an agreeable refuge from the summer heat. In the borders near the house upon this side he planted Chinese bamboos, and a little further off, tall-stemmed forest-trees whose thick leaves roofed airy tunnels of shade, pleasant as those of the most lovely upland wood. This garden was fenced with hedges of the white deutzia flower, the orange tree ‘whose scent rewakes forgotten love,’ the briar-rose, and the giant peony; with many other sorts of bush and tall flower so skilfully spread about among them that neither spring nor autumn would ever lack in bravery.

On the east a great space was walled off, behind which rose the Racing Lodge⁹⁰; in front of it the race-course was marked off with ozier hurdles; and as he would be resident here during the sports of the fifth month, all along the stream at this point he planted the appropriate purple irises.⁹¹ Opposite were the stables with stalls for his racehorses, and quarters for the jockeys and grooms. Here were gathered together the most daring riders from every province in the kingdom. To the north of Lady Akashi’s rooms rose a high embankment, behind which lay the storehouses and granaries, screened also by a close-set wall of pine-trees, planted there on purpose that she might have the pleasure of seeing them when their boughs were laden with snow; and for her delight in the earlier days of the winter there was a great bed of chrysanthemums, which he pictured her enjoying on some morning when all the garden was white with frost. Then there was the mother-oak⁹² (for was not she a mother?) and, brought hither from wild and inaccessible places, a hundred other bushes and trees, so seldom seen that no one knew what names to call them by.

The move was to take place about the time of the Festival of the Further Shore.⁹³ He had at first intended to transfer all the occupants at one time. But it soon became apparent that this would be too vast an undertaking, and it was arranged that Lady Akikonomu should not arrive till somewhat later than the rest. With her usual amiability and good-sense the Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers readily fell in with the suggestion that she and her party should not form a separate cortège, but should join with Murasaki in the ceremony of removal. Genji regretted that the latter was not going to see her new domain at the season for which it had been principally designed; but still, the move itself was a diverting experience. There were fifteen coaches in the procession and almost all the outriders were gentlemen of the fourth or fifth rank. The ordering of the procession was not so elaborate as might have been expected, for it seemed likely at the moment that too lavish a display might try the temper of the common people, and some of the more ostentatious forms and ceremonies were either omitted or abridged.

But Genji was careful not to let it seem that any of these restrictions had been carried out to the detriment of one lady rather than another. The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers had indeed nothing to complain of, for Yūgiri had been told off to wait upon her exclusively during the whole ceremony. The gentlewomen and maids found their quarters in the new house admirably fitted out with every comfort and convenience, and they were louder than ever in Genji’s praises. About six days later the Empress Akikonomu arrived from the Palace. The ceremony of her arrival, though it had been intended that the whole move should be as little ostentatious as possible, was necessarily a very sumptuous and imposing affair. Not only had she risen from obscurity to the highest place which a woman can hold in the land, but she had herself advanced so much in beauty and acquired so great a dignity of carriage and mien that she now figured very large in the popular imagination, and crowds flocked the road wherever she was to pass.

The various quarters of which the New Palace was composed were joined by numerous alleys and covered ways, so that access from one to another was easy, and no one felt that she had been bundled away into a corner. When the ninth month came and the autumn leaves began to be at their best, the splendours of Akikonomu’s new garden were at last revealed, and indeed the sights upon which her windows looked were indescribably lovely. One evening when the crimson carpet was ruffled by a gusty wind, she filled a little box with red leaves from different trees and sent it to Murasaki. As messenger she chose one of the little girls who waited upon her. The child, a well grown, confident little thing, came tripping across the humped wooden bridge that led from the Empress’s apartments with the utmost unconcern. Pleased though Murasaki was to receive this prompt mark of friendship, she could for a while do nothing but gaze with delight at the messenger’s appearance, and she quite forgot to be resentful, as some in her place would have been, that an older and more dignified messenger had not been entrusted with the Empress’s gift. The child wore a silk shirt, yellow outside and lined with green. Her mantle was of brown gauze. She was used to running about on messages in the Palace, had that absolute faultlessness of turn-out and bearing which seems never to be found elsewhere, and was far from being overawed at finding herself in the presence of such a person as Lady Murasaki. Attached to the box was the poem: ‘Though yours be a garden where only Spring-time is of price, suffer it that from my house Autumn should blow a crimson leaf into your hand.’ It was amusing to see how while Murasaki read the missive, her ladies crowded round the little messenger and plied her with refreshments and caresses. For answer, Murasaki placed in the lid of the box a carpet of moss and on it laid a very little toy rock. Then she wrote on a strip of paper tied to a sprig of five-pointed pine: ‘The light leaf scatters in the wind, and of the vaunted spring no tinge is left us, save where the pine-tree grips its ledge of stone.’

The Empress thought at first that it was a real pine-branch. But when she looked closer she saw that, like the rock, it was a work of art—as delicate and ingenious a piece of craftsmanship as she had ever encountered. The readiness of Murasaki’s answer and the tact with which, while not exalting her own favourite season above that of Akikonomu’s choice, she had yet found a symbol to save her from tame surrender, pleased the Empress and was greeted as a happy stroke by all the ladies who were with her. But Genji when she showed it to him pretended to think the reply very impertinent, and to tease Murasaki he said to her afterwards: ‘I think you received these leaves most ungraciously. At another season one might venture perhaps upon such disparagement; but to do so now that the Goddess of Tatsuta⁹⁴ holds us all in sway seems almost seditious. You should have bided your time; for only from behind the shelter of blossoming boughs could such a judgment be uttered with impunity.’ So he spoke; but he was in reality delighted to find these marks of interest and good will being exchanged between the various occupants of his house, and he felt that the new arrangement was certain to prove a great success.

When the Lady of Akashi heard of the removal to the New Palace and was told that only her own quarters, as spacious and handsome as any of the rest, now remained untenanted, she determined at last to hold aloof no longer. It was the Godless month when she arrived. She looked around her and, mistrustful though she was, she certainly could see no sign here that as regards either elegance or comfort she would be expected to put up with less than her neighbours. And indeed Genji saw to it that on all occasions she should rank in the eyes of the household rather as mother of the little Princess for whom so brilliant a future was in store, than as the scion of a poor and undistinguished provincial family.