“It has been a trial for me to go on living, and now to have one such as you come through the dews of this wild garden — I cannot tell you how much it shames me.”
“A lady who visited your house the other day told us that she had to see with her own eyes before she could really understand your loneliness and sorrow. I am not at all a sensitive person, and yet I am unable to control these tears.”
After a pause she delivered a message from the emperor. “He has said that for a time it all seemed as if he were wandering in a nightmare, and then when his agitation subsided he came to see that the nightmare would not end. If only he had a companion in his grief, he thought — and it occurred to him that you, my lady, might be persuaded to come unobtrusively to court. He cannot bear to think of the child languishing in this house of tears, and hopes that you will come quickly and bring him with you. He was more than once interrupted by sobs as he spoke, and It was apparent to all of us that he feared having us think him inexcusably weak. I came away without hearing him to the end.” “I cannot see for tears,” said the old lady. “Let these sublime words bring me light.”
This was the emperor’s letter: “It seems impossibly cruel that although I had hoped for comfort with the passage of time my grief should only be worse. I am particularly grieved that I do not have the boy with me, to watch him grow and mature. Will you not bring him to me? We shall think of him as a memento.”
There could be no doubting the sincerity of the royal petition. A poem was appended to the letter, but when she had come to it the old lady was no longer able to see through her tears:
“At the sound of the wind, bringing dews to Miyagi plain,
I think of the tender hagi upon the moor.”
“Tell His Majesty,” said the grandmother after a time, “that it has been a great trial for me to live so long.‘Ashamed before the Takasago pines I think that it is not for me to be seen at court. Even if the august invitation is repeated, I shall not find it possible to accept. As for the boy, I do not know what his wishes are. The indications are that he is eager to go. It is sad for me, but as it should be. please tell His Majesty of these thoughts, secret until now. I fear that I bear a curse from a previous existence and that it would be wrong and even terrible to keep the child with me.”
“It would have given me great pleasure to look in upon him,” said Myōbu, getting up to leave. The child was asleep. “I should have liked to report to his royal father. But he will be waiting up for me, and it must be very late.”
“May I not ask you to come in private from time to time? The heart of a bereaved parent may not be darkness, perhaps, but a quiet talk from time to time would do much to bring light. You have done honor to this house on so many happy occasions, and now circumstances have required that you come with a sad message. The fates have not been kind. All of our hopes were on the girl, I must say again, from the day she was born, and until he died her father did not let me forget that she must go to court, that his own death, if it came early, should not deter me. I knew that another sort of life would be happier for a girl without strong backing, but I could not forget his wishes and sent her to court as I had promised. Blessed with favors beyond her station, she was the object of insults such as no one can be asked to endure. Yet endure them she did until finally the strain and the resentment were too much for her. And so, as I look back upon them, I know that those favors should never have been. Well, put these down, if you will, as the mad wanderings of a heart that is darkness.” She was unable to go on.
It was late.
“His Majesty says much the same thing,” replied Myōbu. “it was, he says, an intensity of passion such as to startle the world, and perhaps for that very reason it was fated to be brief. He cannot think of anything he has done to arouse such resentment, he says, and so he must live with resentment which seems without proper cause. Alone and utterly desolate, he finds it impossible to face the world. He fears that he must seem dreadfully eccentric. How very great — he has said it over and over again — how very great his burden of guilt must be. One scarcely ever sees him that he is not weeping.” Myōbu too was in tears. “It is very late. I must get back before the night is quite over and tell him what I have seen.”
The moon was sinking over the hills, the air was crystal clear, the wind was cool, and the songs of the insects among the autumn grasses would by themselves have brought tears. It was a scene from which Myōbu could not easily pull herself.
“The autumn night is too short to contain my tears
Though songs of bell cricket weary, fall into silence.”
This was her farewell poem. Still she hesitated, on the point of getting into her carriage.
The old lady sent a reply:
“Sad are the insect songs among the reeds.
More sadly yet falls the dew from above the clouds.
“I seem to be in a complaining mood.”
Though gifts would have been out of place, she sent as a trifling memento of her daughter a set of robes, left for just such an occasion, and with them an assortment of bodkins and combs.
The young women who had come from court with the little prince still mourned their lady, but those of them who had acquired a taste for court life yearned to be back. The memory of the emperor made them join their own to the royal petitions.
But no — a crone like herself would repel all the fine ladies and gentlemen, said the grandmother, while on the other hand she could not bear the thought of having the child out of her sight for even a moment.
Myōbu was much moved to find the emperor waiting up for her. Making it seem that his attention was on the small and beautifully plant garden before him, now in full autumn bloom, he was talking quietly with four or five women, among the most sensitive of his attendants. He had become addicted to illustrations by the emperor Uda for “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” and to poems by Ise and Tsurayuki on that subject, and to Chinese poems as well. He listened attentively as Myōbu described the scene she had found so affecting. He took up the letter she had brought from the grandmother.
“I am so awed by this august message that I would run away and hide; and so violent are the emotions it gives rise to that I scarcely know what to say.
“The tree that gave them shelter has withered and died.
One fears for the plight of the hagi shoots beneath.”
A strange way to put the matter, thought the emperor; but the lady must still be dazed with grief. He chose to overlook the suggestion that he himself could not help the child.
He sought to hide his sorrow, not wanting these women to see him in such poor control of himself. But it was no use. He reviewed his memo- ries over and over again, from his very earliest days with the dead lady. He had scarcely been able to bear a moment away from her while she lived. How strange that he had been able to survive the days and months since on memories alone. He had hoped to reward the grandmother’s sturdy devotion, and his hopes had come to nothing.
“Well,” he sighed, “she may look forward to having her day, if she will only live to see the boy grow up.”
Looking at the keepsakes Myōbu had brought back, he thought what a comfort it would be if some wizard were to bring him, like that Chinese emperor, a comb from the world where his lost love was dwelling. He whispered:
“And will no wizard search her out for me,
That even he may tell me where she is?”
There are limits to the powers of the most gifted artist. The Chinese lady in the paintings did not have the luster of life. Yang Kuei-fei was said to have resembled the lotus of the Sublime Pond, the willows of the Timeless Hall. No doubt she was very beautiful in her Chinese finery. When he tried to remember the quiet charm of his lost lady, he found that there was no color of flower, no song of bird, to summon her up. Morning and night, over and over again, they had repeated to each other the lines from “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow”:
“In