Aoi’s things were still as she had left them. His New Year clothes had as in former years been hung out for him on the clothes-frame. Aoi’s clothes-frame which stood empty beside it wore a strangely desolate air. A letter from the Princess her mother was now brought to him: ‘To-day,’ she said, ‘our bereavement was more than ever present to my mind, and though touched at the news of your visit, I fear that to see you would but awaken unhappy recollections.’ ‘You will remember,’ she continued, ‘that it was my custom to present you with a suit of clothes on each New Year’s Day. But in these last months my sight has been so dimmed with tears that I fear you will think I have matched the colours very ill. Nevertheless I beg that though it be for to-day only you will suffer yourself to be disfigured by this unfashionable garb ...’ and a servant held out before him a second[33] suit, which was evidently the one he was expected to wear to-day. The under-stuff was of a most unusual pattern and mixture of colours and did not at all please him; but he could not allow her to feel that she had laboured in vain, and at once put the suit on. It was indeed fortunate that he had come to the Great Hall that day, for he could see that she had counted on it. In his reply he said: ‘Though I came with the hope that you would be the first friend I should greet at this new springtide, yet now that I am here too many bitter memories assail me and I think it wiser that we should not meet.’ To this he added an acrostic poem in which he said that with the mourning dress which he had just discarded so many years of friendship were cast aside that were he to come to her[34] he could but weep. To this she sent in answer an acrostic poem in which she said that in this new season when all things else on earth put on altered hue, one thing alone remained as in the months gone by—her longing for the child who like the passing year had vanished from their sight.
But though hers may have been the greater grief we must not think that there was not at that moment very deep emotion on both sides.
[1] We learn in Chapter XXXIV that he was made Commander of the Bodyguard at the age of twenty-one. He is now twenty-two.
[2] Genji’s son by Fujitsubo (supposed by the world to be the Emperor’s child) had been made Heir Apparent.
[3] An Emperor upon his succession was obliged to send one unmarried daughter or grand-daughter to the Shintō Temple at Ise, another to the Shintō Temple at Kamo. See Appendix II.
[4] She was seven years older than Genji.
[5] a Daughter of Prince Momozono. See above, p. [68].
[6] We learn later that he was a son of Iyo no Kami.
[7] Father of Princess Asagao; brother of the ex-Emperor and therefore Genji’s paternal uncle.
[8] The clash of coaches took place at the Purification. The actual matsuri (Festival) takes place some days later.