Page:A Wreath of Cloud.djvu/111

Rh asked her to play to them on her zithern. Princess Ōmiya herself performed excellently on several instruments and had taught all she knew to her granddaughter. ‘The lute,’ said Tō no Chūjō, ‘seems to be the one instrument which women can never master successfully; yet it is the very one that I long to hear properly played. It seems as though the real art of playing were now entirely lost. True, there is Prince So-and-so, and Genji….’ And he began to enumerate the few living persons whom he considered to have any inkling of this art. ‘Among women-players I believe the best is that girl whom Prince Genji has settled in the country near Ōi. They say that she inherits her method of playing straight from the Emperor Engi, from whom it was handed on to her father. But considering that she has lived by herself in the depths of the country for years on end, it is indeed extraordinary that she should have attained to any great degree of skill. Genji has constantly spoken to me of her playing and, according to him, it is absolutely unsurpassed. Progress in music more than in any other subject depends upon securing a variety of companions with whom to study and rehearse. For any one living in isolation to obtain mastery over an instrument is most unusual and must imply a prodigious talent.’ He then tried to persuade the old princess to play a little. ‘I am terribly stiff in the fingers,’ she said; ‘I can’t manage the “stopping” at all.’ But she played very nicely. ‘The Lady of Akashi,’ said Tō no Chūjō presently, ‘must, as I have said, be exceptionally gifted; but she has also had great luck. To have given my cousin Genji a daughter when he had waited for one so long was a singular stroke of good fortune. She seems moreover to be a curiously self-effacing and obliging person; for I hear that she has resigned all claim to the child and allows her betters to bring it up as though it were their own.’ And he told the