Next came the death of Kōkiden’s father, the Grand Minister of the Right. There was nothing unexpected in this, for he had reached a very great age. But coming as it did on top of various other public calamities it caused widespread consternation. Kōkiden herself, though she had no definite malady, was also very far from well. As time went on she seemed gradually to lose strength. A general gloom spread over the Court. It was felt that if, as was alleged by his friends, Prince Genji had indeed been banished without any sufficient cause, the present misfortunes of the nation might well have been sent as punishment for this injustice. Again and again the Emperor thought of restoring Genji to his previous rank and appointments; but whenever he mentioned this project to Kōkiden, that lady would answer: ‘To do so would be to incur the public charge of inconsequence and frivolity. He was banished and if, when less than three years have elapsed, he is suddenly recalled to the Capital, a pretty figure you and I shall cut in history!’ She spoke with such fierce conviction that the Emperor was completely overawed. So the months went by, and meantime both he and Kōkiden were gradually sinking under the burden of their respective maladies.
At Akashi, as frequently happens in autumn, heavy winds were blowing in the bay. Genji began to find the long evenings very monotonous and depressing. Sometimes he would allow the priest to come and talk to him, and in the course of one of these conversations Genji said: ‘I am longing for a little diversion. Could you not manage, without attracting too much attention, to bring your daughter here one day to see me?’ It seemed somehow to be accepted that for Genji to pay a visit to the house on the hill was entirely out of the question. Unfortunately the lady herself was equally averse to making any move. She knew that gentlemen who visited the provinces on Government business would often take up with some wretched peasant girl and, for so long as they happened to be in the district, carry on a purely frivolous affair with her. The Lady of Akashi was convinced that Genji regarded her in just such a light. To accept his advances could only render her in the end more wretched than before. Her parents, she knew, were still clinging to the idea that all those long years of watchfulness and isolation had at last borne fruit. To them the inevitable disillusion would be a crushing blow. Her mind was quite made up; so long as this prince remained at Akashi she would continue to correspond with him, but further than that she would not go.
His name had been known to her for years past, and she had sometimes wondered whether it would ever fall to her lot to meet, even in the most superficial way, some such magnificent personage as he. Now, astonishing though it seemed, he was actually living a stone’s throw away. She could not be said exactly to have met him, but she constantly caught glimpses of him, heard his inimitable zithern-playing, and knew, one way and another, all that there was to know about his daily comings and goings. That such a person should even be aware of her existence was more than, as an inhabitant of this remote fishing-town, she had any right to expect. As time went on it seemed to her less than ever possible that any closer relationship should be established between them. Meanwhile her parents were far less confident about the situation than she supposed. They felt that in their anxiety to see the prayers of half a lifetime at last fulfilled they had perhaps acted somewhat precipitately. If Genji did not after all seem to regard their daughter as ‘counting,’ her feelings would have been upset for nothing. True he was a great catch and was worth certain risks; but that only made it harder to lose him. They had an uneasy feeling that while they had been placing all their trust in ‘Gods whom no eye seeth’ they had paid too little attention to the dispositions of the human beings for whose future they had schemed.
‘A little music,’ said Genji to the old priest one evening, ‘would mingle pleasantly with the sound of these autumn waves. It is only as a background to music that the sound of the sea is tolerable.’
The time for action had come. The old priest looked in his calendar, chose a lucky day, and despite the misgivings of his wife began to prepare the house on the hill for Genji’s visit. Not even to his most intimate acolytes and disciples did he explain the object of these elaborate preparations. The visit was to take place on the thirteenth day of the month. It turned out to be a resplendent moonlit night. The old man came to Genji’s room and recited the line: ‘Is this a night to lose?’ Genji at once understood that this was an invitation to the house on the hill. Suddenly what had seemed impossible became perfectly simple. He set his cloak to rights and left the house. His host had provided him with a magnificent coach, but the narrow lanes would have made its use inconvenient and Genji preferred to go on horseback. He was accompanied only by Koremitsu and one or two of his other trusted servants. The house stood a little way back from the shore and while he climbed to it he was all the time looking down over the bays that spread out on every side. He remembered the verse: ‘Would that to one who loves what I love I now might show it, this moon that lies foundered at the bottom of the bay!’ For the first time since he had agreed to set out upon this excursion he remembered the lady at his palace far away, and at that moment he could hardly resist turning his horse’s head and riding straight to the Capital. ‘O thou, my milk-white pony, whose coat is as the moon-beams of this autumn night, carry me like a bird through the air that though it be but for a moment I may look upon the lady whom I love!’ So he murmured as he approached the house, which was thickly girt with an abundance of fine timber. It was indeed a house impressively situated and in many ways remarkable; but it had not the conveniences nor the cheerful aspect of the house on the shore. So dark and shut-in an appearance did it present as he drew near, that Genji soon began to imagine all its inhabitants as necessarily a prey to the deepest melancholy and felt quite concerned at the thought of what they must suffer through living in so cheerless a place. The Hall of Meditation stood close by and the sound of its bell blent mournfully with the whispering of the pine-trees that on the steep uneven ground grew precariously out of a ledge of rock, their roots clutching at it like some desperate hand. From the plantations in front of the house came a confused wailing of insect voices.
He looked about him. That part of the house which he knew to be occupied by the lady and her servants wore an air of festive preparation. Full in the moonlight a door stood significantly ajar. He opened it. ‘I wish to rest for a few minutes,’ he said; ‘I hope you have no objection to my coming in?’ She had in fact the greatest objection, for it was against just such a meeting as this that she had resolutely set her face. She could not actually turn him away; but she showed no signs of making him welcome. He thought her in fact the most disagreeable young person whom he had ever met. He was accustomed to see women of very much greater consequence than this girl show at any rate a certain gratification at being thought worthy of his attentions. She would not, he felt, have dared to treat him so rudely but for the present eclipse of his fortunes. He was not used to being regarded so lightly, and it upset him. The nature of the circumstances was obviously not such that he could carry off the situation with a high hand. But though violence was out of the question, he would certainly cut a very ridiculous figure in the eyes of the girl’s parents if he had to admit that she showed no signs of wanting to be acquainted with him. He felt embarrassed and angry. Suddenly one of the cords of the screen-of-state behind which she was sitting fell across her zithern, making as it did so a kind of casual tune. As she bent over the instrument he saw her for an instant just as she must have looked before his entry had made her stiffen; just as she must look when carelessly and at ease she swept an idle plectrum over the strings. He was captivated. ‘Will you not even play me something upon this zithern of which I have heard so much?’ he added, and he recited the poem: ‘Were it but from your zithern that those soft words came which your lips refuse, half should I awaken from the wretched dream wherein I am bemused.’ And she: ‘A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest.’ Seen dimly behind her curtains she recalled to him in a certain measure the princess[14] who was now in Ise. It was soon evident that though she had answered his poem she was no nearer than before to treating his visit as otherwise than an impertinence. She had been sitting there so comfortable and happy, when suddenly this tiresome person burst in upon her without apology or warning. However, the remedy lay in her own hands, and rising to her feet she fled into a neighbouring closet, fastening the door behind her with ostentatious care. You might have supposed that this was the end of the matter, for she had evidently no mind to return, nor he any intention of forcing bolts and bars. Curiously enough, however, this was not the end of the matter. The difficulties that ensued may well be imagined if we remember the lady’s unusual shyness and pride. Suffice it to say that from this night’s meeting, which seemed at first to have been forced upon him by chance and other people’s intrigues, sprang an intimacy which was grounded in the deepest feeling. The night, generally so long and tedious at Akashi, passed on this occasion all too quickly. It was essential that he should leave unobserved, and at the first streak of dawn, with many last endearments and injunctions, he crept stealthily from the room. His next day’s letter was sent very secretly, for he was haunted by the fear that some story of this adventure might find its way back to the Capital. The lady for her part was anxious to show that she was to be trusted, and deliberately treated Genji’s messenger without ceremony of any kind, as though he were bound on some errand of merely domestic import. He paid many subsequent visits to the house on the hill, always with the greatest secrecy. Unfortunately the way there led nowhere else, and knowing that fisher-folk are notorious gossips he began to fear that his addiction to this particular road would be noticed and commented upon. His visits now became far less frequent, and the lady began to think that her early fears were soon to be fulfilled. The old priest’s thoughts were, if the truth must be told, for the time being much more frequently occupied with the coming of Genji than with the coming of Amida.[15] He could not make out what had gone wrong, and was in a terrible state of agitation. To make matters worse he knew that such earthly considerations ought to leave him quite unmoved and he was ashamed to discover how little his pious observances had availed to render him indifferent to the blows of fortune.
Genji would not for all the world have had the news of his latest adventure reach Murasaki as a piece of current gossip, even though it were represented in the most harmless light. Her hold upon him was indeed still strong as ever, and the mere idea of such a story reaching her, of her feeling that she had been superseded, of a possible quarrel or estrangement, filled him with shame and dismay. She was not indeed given to jealousy; but more than once she had shown plainly that his irregularities, so far from passing unobserved, were indeed extremely distressing to her. How bitterly he now regretted those trivial gallantries, so profitless to him, yet to her so miserably disquieting! And even while he was still visiting the lady of the hillside, since there was no other way of quieting his conscience concerning Murasaki, he wrote to the Nijō-in more frequently and more affectionately than ever before. At the end of one of these letters he added: ‘How it grieves me to remember the many occasions when I have spoilt our friendship for the sake of some passing whim or fancy in which (though you could not believe it) my deeper feelings were not at all engaged. And now I have another matter of this kind to confess, a passing dream, the insignificance of which you can guess by the fact that I tell you of it thus unasked. “Though with the shining seaweed of the shore the fisherman a moment toys, yet seeks he but assuagement of a sorrow that long ere this has filled his eye with burning tears.”’
Her answer showed no resentment and was couched in the tenderest terms. But at the end, in reference to his disclosure, she wrote: ‘As regards the “dream” which you could not forbear telling me, I have experience enough in that direction to enable me to draw several conclusions. “Too downrightly, it seems, have I obeyed it, our vow that sooner would the Isle of Pines by the sea-waves be crossed....”’ But though her tone was good-humoured, there was in all her letter an undercurrent of irony, which disturbed him. He carried it about with him for a long while and constantly re-read it. During this time his secret nocturnal excursions were entirely abandoned, and the Lady of Akashi naturally imagined that all her fears had now come true. He had amused himself to his fill and had no longer any interest in what became of her. With no support, save that of parents whose advanced age made it improbable that they could much longer be of any assistance, she had long ago given up hope of taking her place in the world with those of equal rank and attainments. But she did now bitterly regret the waste of all those empty months and years during which she had been so conscientiously guarded and kept—for what? At last she had some experience of the usages which prevailed in the ‘grand world’ outside, and she found them even less to her liking than she had anticipated. She indulged however in no outburst of spleen or disappointment, nor in her letters did she ever reproach him for his long absence. He had indeed as time went on become more and more attached to her, and it was only his desire to be able to allay the anxiety of one who had after all a prior claim upon him that induced him to suspend his visits to the lady on the hill. Henceforward his nights at Akashi were again spent in solitude.
He amused himself by making sketches upon which he afterwards scribbled whatever thoughts happened to be passing through his mind. These he sent to Murasaki, inviting her comments. No method of correspondence could have been better calculated to move and interest her. The distance between them seemed in some sort to have been annihilated. She too, at times when she was feeling out of spirits or at a loss for employment, would also make sketches of the scenes around her, and at the same time she jotted down all that was happening to her day by day in the form of a commonplace book or diary.
What, she wondered, would she have to write in her diary? And he in his?