The years passed, and Genji had not forgotten the dew upon the evening faces he had seen so briefly. As he came to know a variety of ladies, he only regretted the more strongly that the lady of the evening faces had not lived.

Ukon, her woman, was not of very distinguished lineage, but Genji was fond of her, and thought of her as a memento of her dead lady. She was now one of the older women in his household. He had transferred everyone to Murasaki’s wing of the Nijō house when he left for Suma, and there she had stayed. Murasaki valued her as a quiet, good-natured servant. Ukon could only think with regret that if her own lady had lived she would now be honored with treatment similar at least to that accorded the Akashi lady. Genji was a generous man and he did not abandon women to whom he had been even slightly drawn; and the lady of the evening faces, if not perhaps one of the really important ones, would surely have been in the company that recently moved to Rokujō.

Ukon had not made her whereabouts known to the little girl, the lady’s daughter, left with her nurse in the western part of the city. Genji had told her that she must keep the affair to herself and that nothing was to be gained by letting his part in it be known at so late a date. She had made no attempt to find the nurse. Presently the nurse’s husband had been appointed deputy viceroy of Kyushu and the family had gone off with him to his post. The girl was four at the time. They had prayed for information of any sort about the mother. Day and night, always in tears, they had looked for her where they thought she might possibly be. The nurse finally decided that she would keep the child to remember the mother by. Yet it was sad to think of taking her on a hard voyage to a remote part of the land. They debated seeking out her father, Tō no Chūjō, and telling him of her whereabouts When no good entree presented itself, they gathered in family council: it would be difficult to tell him, since they did not know what had happened to the mother; life would be hard for the girl, introduced so young to a father who was a complete stranger; and if he knew that she was his daughter he was unlikely to let her go. She was a pretty child, already showing signs of distinction, and it was very sad indeed to take her off in a shabby boat.

“Are we going to Mother’s?” she asked from time to time.

The nurse and her daughters wept tears of nostalgia and regret. But they must control themselves. Tears did not bode well for the journey.

The scenery along the way brought memories. “She was so young and so alive to things — how she would have loved it all if she could have come with us. But of course if she were alive we would still be in the city ourselves.”

They were envious of the waves, returning whence they had come.

“Sadly, sadly we have journeyed this distance,” came the rough voices of the sailors.

The nurse’s daughters looked at each other and wept.

“To whom might it be that the thoughts of these sailors turn,

Sadly singing off the Oshima strand?”

“Here on the sea, we know not whence or whither,

Or where to look in search of our lost lady.

“I had not expected to leave her for these wilds.”

“We will not forget” was the refrain when the ship had passed Cape Kane; and when they had made land, tears welled up again, in the awareness of how very far they had come.

They looked upon the child as their lady. Sometimes, rarely, one of them would dream of the dead mother. She would have with her a woman who might have been her twin, and afterwards the dreamer would fall ill. They had to conclude that she was no longer living.

Years passed, and the deputy viceroy’s term of service was over. He thought of returning to the city, but hesitated, for he was a man of no great influence even off in that remote land. He was still hesitating when he fell seriously ill. On the point of death, he looked up at the girl, now ten, and so beautiful that he feared for her.

“What difficult times you will face if I leave you! I have thought it a shameful waste that you should grow up so far from everything, and I have wanted to get you back to the city as soon as I possibly can. I have wanted to present you to the right people and leave you to whatever destinies may be yours, and I have been making my preparations. The capital is a large place and you would be safe there. And now it seems that I must end my days here.”

He had three sons. “You must give first priority to taking her back. You need not worry about my funeral.

No one outside of his immediate family knew who the girl was. He had let it be known that she was a grandchild whom, for certain reasons, it had fallen his lot to rear, and he had let no one see her. He had done what he could, and now, suddenly, he was dying. The family went ahead with preparations for the return, There were many in the region who had not been on good terms with the deputy viceroy, and life was full of perils. The girl was even prettier than her mother, perhaps because her father’s blood also flowed in her veins. Delicate and graceful, she had a quiet, serene disposition. One would have had to look far to find her equal.

The young gallants of the region heard about her and letters came pouring in. They produced only grim and irritable silence.

“You wouldn’t call her repulsive, exactly,” the nurse said to people, “but she has a most unfortunate defect that makes it impossible for her to marry. She is to become a nun and stay with me as along as I live.”

“A sad case,” they all said, in hushed tones as of something dark and ominous. “Did you hear? The old deputy’s granddaughter is a freak.”

His sons were determined to take the girl back to her father. He had seemed so fond of her when she was little. It was most unlikely that he would disown her now. They prayed to all the various native and foreign gods.

But presently they and their sisters married into provincial families, and the return to the city, once so devoutly longed for, receded into the distance. Life was difficult for the girl as she came to understand her situation a little better. She made her retreats three times a year. Now she was twenty, and she had attained to a perfection wasted in these harsh regions.

The family lived in the province of Hizen. The local gentry continued to hear rumors and to pay court. The nurse only wished they would go away.

There was an official of the Fifth Rank who had been on the viceroy’s staff and who was a member of a large clan scattered over the province of Higo. He was something of a local eminence, a warrior of very considerable power and influence. Though of an untamed nature, he did have a taste for the finer things, and among his avocations was the collecting of elegant ladies.

He heard of the girl. “I don’t care if she is the worst sort of freak. I’ll just shut my eyes.” His suit was earnest and a little threatening too.

“It is quite impossible,” the nurse sent back. “Tell him that she is to become a nun.”

The man came storming into Hizen and summoned the nurse’s sons for conference. If they did what he wanted, they would be his allies. He could do a great deal for them. The two young sons were inclined to accede.

“It is true that we did not want her to marry beneath her. But he will be a strong ally, and if we make an enemy of him we will have to pack up and leave. Yes, she is very wellborn. That we do not deny — but what good does it do when her father doesn’t recognize her and no one even knows she exists? She is lucky he wants her. She is probably here because she was meant all along to marry someone like him. There’s no point in trying to hide. He is a determined and ruthless man, and he will do anything if he is crossed.”

But the oldest brother, who was vice-governor of Bungo, disagreed. “It is out of the question. Have you forgotten Father’s instructions? I must get her back to the capital.”

Tearfully, the daughters supported him. The girl’s mother had wandered off and they had quite lost track of her, but they would think themselves sufficiently repaid for their worries if they could make a decent life for the girl. They most certainly did not want to see her marry the Higo man.

Confident of his name and standing and unaware of this disagreement, the man showered her with letters, all of them on good Chinese paper, richly colored and heavily perfumed. He wrote a not at all contemptible hand, but his notion of the courtly was very provincial. Having made an ally of the second son, he came calling. He was about thirty, tall and powerfully built, not unpleasant to look at. Perhaps it was only in the imagination that his vigorous manner was a little intimidating. He glowed with health and had a deep, rough voice and a heavy regional accent that made his speech seem as alien as bird language. Lovers are called “night crawlers,” one hears, but he was different. He came of a spring evening, victim, it would seem, of the urgings which the poet felt more strongly on autumn evenings.

Not wishing to offend him, the “grandmother” came out.

“The late deputy was a great man and he understood things. I wanted to be friends with him and i’m sorry he died. Now I want to make up for it. I got my courage up and came to see the little lady. She’s too good for me, but that’s all right. I’ll look up to her and be her servant. I hear Your Grace doesn’t want me to have her. Maybe because of all my other women? Don’t worry. She won’t be one of them. She’ll be the queen.” It was a very forceful statement.

“Thank you very much. It is gratifying to hear of your interest. But she has been unlucky. To our great regret we must keep her out of sight and do not find it possible to let her marry. It is all very sad.”

“Oh, come on. I don’t care if she’s blind and has a club foot. I swear it by all the gods.”

He asked that a day be named when he might come for her. The nurse offered the argument often heard in the region that the end of the season was a bad time to marry.

He seemed to think that a farewell poem was called for. He deliberated for rather a long time.

“I vow to the Mirror God of Matsura:

If I break it he can do what he wants with me.

“Pretty good” He smiled.

Poetry was not perhaps what he had had most experience with.

The nurse was by this time too nervous to answer, and her daughters protested that they were in an even worse state. Time ran on. Finally she sent back the first verse that came into her head.

“It will be for us to reproach the Mirror God

If our prayers of so many years remain unanswered.”

Her voice trembled.

“What’s that? How’s that?”

He seemed about to attack them frontally. The nurse blanched.

Despite her agitation, one of the daughters managed a brave laugh. “Our niece is not normal. That is I’m sure what she meant to say, and we would be very unhappy if she had bad luck in the matter of your kind proposal. Poor Mother. She is very old, and she is always saying unfortunate things about her gods.”

“I see, I see.” He nodded. “A very good poem. You may look down on us country people, but what’s so great about city people? Anyone can come up with a poem. Don’t think I can’t do as well as the next one.”

He seemed to think demonstration called for, but it refused to take shape. He left.

With her second son gone over to the enemy, the old woman was terrified. She urged her oldest son to action.

“But what can I do? There is no one I can go to for help. I don’t have all that many brothers, and they have turned against me. Life will be impossible if we make an enemy of the man, and if I try something bold I will only make things worse.”

But he agreed that death would be better for the girl than marriage to such a man. He gathered his courage and they set sail. His sisters left their husbands. The one who had as a child been called Ateki was now called Hyōbu She slipped off in the night and boarded ship with her lady.

The man had gone home to Higo, to return on the day appointed, late in the Fourth Month. The older of the nurse’s daughters had a large family of her own and was unable to join them. The farewells were tearful, for it seemed unlikely that the family would ever be united again. They had no very great love for Hizen, in which they had lived for so long, but the departing party did look back in sorrow at the shrine of Matsura. They were leaving dear ones in its charge.

“Shores of trial, now gloomy Ukishima.

On we sail. Where next will be our lodging?”

“We sail vast seas and know not where we go,

Floating ones, abandoned to the winds.”

The girl sat weeping, the picture of the sad uncertainty which her poem suggested.

If news that they had left reached the Higo man, he was certain to come in pursuit. They had provided themselves with a fast boat and the winds did good service, and their speed was almost frightening. They passed Echo Bay in Harima.

“See the little boat back there, almost flying at us. A pirate, maybe?”

The brother thought he would Prefer the cruelest pirate to the Higo man. There was nothing to be done, of course, but sail on.

“The echoes of Echo Bay are slight and empty

Beside the tumult I hear within myself.”

Then they were told that the mouth of the river Yodo lay just ahead. It was as if they had returned from the land of the dead.

“Past Karadomari we row, past Kawajiri.” It was a rough song, but pleasing. The vice-governor hummed with special feeling the passage about dear wives and children left behind. Yes, it had been a step, leaving them all behind. What disasters would now be overtaking them? He had brought with him everyone in the province who might have been thought an ally, and what sort of revenge would the Higo person be taking? It had been reckless, after all these years. In the calm following the crisis he began to think once more of his own affairs, and everything now seemed rash and precipitate. He collapsed in weak tears. “We have left our wives and children in alien lands,” he intoned softly.

His sister Hyōbu heard. She now feared that she had behaved very strangely, turning against her husband of so many years and flying off in the night. What would he be thinking?

They had no house and no friends in the city. Because of the girl, they had left behind a province which over the years had become home and put themselves at the mercy of wind and waves. They could not think what to do next, nor had they any clear notion of what was to be done for the girl. But there was no point in hesitating. They hurried on to the city.

The vice-governor searched out an old acquaintance who was still living at Kujō. It was to be sure within the city limits, but not a place where gentlemen lived; a gloomy place, rather, of tradesmen and peddlers. Autumn came, amid thoughts of what had been and what was to be. The vice-governor was like a seabird cast ashore. He was without employment in a strange new world and unable to return to the old. The whole party was now having regrets. Some left to take positions sought out through this and that acquaintance, others to return to Kyushu.

The old nurse wept at this inability to find a new foothold.

Her son, the vice-governor, did what he could to comfort her. “I am not in the least worried I have been prepared to risk everything for our lady and what does it matter that I am not doing so very well at the moment? What comfort would wealth and security have been if they had meant marrying her to that man? Our prayers will be answered and she will be put back in her rightful place someday, you may be sure of it. Hachiman, now, just over there. Our lady prayed to Hachiman at Matsura and Hakozaki just before we left. Now that you are safely back, my lady, you must go and thank him.” And he sent the girl off to the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine.

He had learned that an eminent cleric whom his father had known was among the Buddhist priests in service at the shrine. The man undertook to be her guide.

“And then,” said the vice-governor, “there is Hatsuse. It is known even in China as the japanese temple among them all that gets things done. It can’t help doing something for a poor lady back after all those years so far away.” And this time he sent her to Hatsuse.

The pilgrimage was to be on foot. Though not used to walking, the girl did as she was told. What sort of crimes had she been guilty of, she was asking, that she must be subjected to such trials? She prayed that the powers above, if they pitied her, take her to whatever world her mother might be in. If her mother was living, please, then, just a glimpse of her. The girl could not remember her mother. She had thought how happy she would be if only she had a mother. Now the problem was a much more immediate one. Late on the morning of the fourth day, barely alive, they arrived at Tsubaichi, just below Hatsuse.

Though they had come very slowly, the girl was so footsore when they reached Tsubaichi that they feared she could not go on. Led by the former vice-governor, the party included two bowmen, three or four grooms and pages, three women, heavily veiled, and a pair of ancient scullery women. Every effort had been made not to attract attention. Darkness came on as they were replenishing their stock of candles and the like.

The monk who kept the way station was very uncivil, grumbling about arrangements that had been made without consulting him. “Who are these people? We have some others coming. Stupid women, they’ve botched it again.”

A second party did just then come up, also on foot, including two women who seemed to be of considerable standing and a number of attendants, men and women. four or five of the men were on horseback. Though display was obviously being avoided, the horses were nicely caparisoned. The monk paced the floor and scratched his head and generally made himself objectionable. He was determined to accommodate the second party. Well, he would not insist that the others move on, but he would put the menials out in back and divide the room with curtains.

Though respectable, the second party did not seem to be of the most awesome rank. Both parties were polite and deferential, and all was presently quiet.

In fact, the principal pilgrim in the second party was that Ukon who had never ceased weeping for the lady of the evening faces. In all the uncertainties of her life, she had long been in the habit of making pilgrimages to Hatsuse. She was used to travel, but the walk was exhausting even so. She was resting when the vice-governor came up to the curtains, evidently with food for his lady.

“Give this to her, if you will, please. I know of course that she is not used to such rough service.”

Obviously a lady of higher rank than the others, thought Ukon, going over to look through an opening in the curtains. She had seen the man before, she was sure, but could not think where. Someone she had known when he was young, and much less stout and sunburned, and much better dressed. Who might he be?

“Sanjō. Our lady wants you.”

She knew the woman who came forward at this summons: a lesser attendant upon the lady of the evening faces, with them in the days of hiding. It was like a dream. Ukon longed to see the lady they were in attendance upon, but she remained out of sight. Now Ukon thought she knew the man too. Yes, without question, the one they had called Hyōt-ōda. Perhaps the girl would be with them. Unable to sit still, she went again to the curtain and called to Sanjō, who was just inside. Sanjō was not easily torn from her meal. It was a little arbitrary of Ukon, perhaps, to think this an impertinence.

At length Sanjō presented herself. “It can’t be me you want. I’m a poor woman who’s been off in Kyushu these twenty years and more, and I doubt there would be anyone here who would know me. It must be a mistake.” She had on a somewhat rustic robe of fulled silk and an unlined jacket, and she had put on a great deal of weight.

“Look at me,” said Ukon, hating to think how she herself must have changed. “Don’t you recognize me?”

Sanjō clapped her hands. “It’s you! It’s you! Where did you come from? Is our lady with you?” And she was weeping convulsively.

Ukon too was in tears. She had known this woman as a girl. So many months and years had passed!

“And is my lady’s nurse with you? And what has happened to the little girl? And Ateki?” She said nothing for her part about the lady of the evening faces.

“They are here. The little girl is a fine young lady. I must go tell Nurse.” And she withdrew to the back of the room.

“It is like a dream,” said the nurse. “Ukon, you say? We have every right to be furious with Ukon.” But she went up to the curtains.

She was at first too moved to speak.

“And what has happened to my lady?” she asked finally. “I have prayed and prayed for so many years that I might be taken wherever she is. I have wanted to go to her, even if it be in a dream. And then I had to suffer in a place so far away that not even the winds brought word of her. I have lived too long. But thoughts of the little girl have kept me tied to this world and made it difficult for me to go on to the next one. And so, as you see, I have come limping along.’,

Ukon almost wished she were back in the days when she had not been permitted to speak. “There is no point in talking of our lady. She died long ago.”

And the three of them gave themselves up to tears.

It was now quite dark. Ready for the walk up to the temple, the men were urging them on. The farewells were confused. Ukon suggested that they go together, but the sudden friendship might seem odd. It had not been possible to take even the former vice-governor into their confidence. Quietly the two parties set forth. Ukon saw ahead of her a beautiful and heavily veiled figure. The hair under what would appear to be an early-summer singlet was so rich that it seemed out of place. A flood of affection and pity swept over Ukon.

Used to walking, she reached the temple first. The nurse’s party, coaxing and helping the girl on, arrived in time for the evening services. The temple swarmed with pilgrims. A place had been set out for Ukon almost under the right hand of the Buddha. Perhaps because their guide was not well known at Hatsuse, the Kyushu party had been assigned a place to the west, behind the Buddha and some distance away. Ukon sent for them. They must not be shy, she said. Leaving the other men and telling the vice-governor what had happened, they accepted the invitation.

“I am not one who matters,” said Ukon, “but I work in the Genji chancellor’s house. Even when I come with the few attendants you see, I can be sure that nothing will happen to me. You can never be sure what country people will do, and I would hate to have anything unpleasant happen to our lady.”

She would have liked to continue, but the noise was overwhelming. She turned to her prayers. What she had prayed longest for had been granted. She had sensed that Genji too continued to think about the girl, and her prayer now was that, informed of her whereabouts, he would make her happiness his concern.

Among the pilgrims, from all over the land, was the wife of the governor of the province.

Sanjō was dazzled and envious. She brought her hands to her forehead. “O Lord of Great Mercy,” she proclaimed, “I have no prayer but this, that if my lady cannot be the wife of the assistant viceroy you let her many the greatest one in this province. My name is Sanjō. If you find decent places for us, then I will come and thank you. I promise I will.”

Ukon would have hoped that Sanjō might aim a little higher. “You have a great deal to learn. But you must know, and you must have known in the old days, that Lord Tō no Chūjō was meant for great things. He is a grand minister now and he has everything his way. Our lady comes from the finest family, and here you are talking about marrying her off to a governor.”

“Oh, hush. You and your ministers and lordships. You just ought to see the lady from the assistant viceroy’s house when she goes off to Kiyomizu. Why, the emperor himself couldn’t put on a better show. So just hush, please.” And she continued her peroration, hands pressed always to forehead.

The Kyushu party planned to stay three days. Ukon had not thought of staying so long, but this seemed the opportunity for a good talk. She informed one of the higher priests of a sudden wish to go into retreat. He knew what she would need, votive lights and petitions and the like. She described her reasons.

“I have come as usual in behalf of Lady Tamakazura of the Fujiwara. Pray well for her, if you will. I have recently been informed of her whereabouts, and I wish to offer thanks.”

“Excellent. Our prayers over the years have been heard.”

Services went on through the night, very noisily indeed.

In the morning they all went to the ce............