Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/71

Rh he had known her in days of old. She drove to the Palace without public escort. On many occasions when she had travelled in even less state than this, Genji had attended her and arranged every detail of her progress. This time he pleaded sickness and was not present. Previously he had been in the habit of sending constantly to enquire after her health. The fact that he had discontinued this practice was cited by the sympathetic Ōmyōbu as a proof that he must be now plunged in the utmost misery.

The little prince had grown into a handsome boy. His mother’s visit surprised and delighted him and he was soon telling her all his secrets. She looked at him sadly. The step that she contemplated seemed unendurably hard to take. Yet a glance at the Palace reminded her how great were the changes and upheavals that had taken place, how insecure had now become her own position at the Court. The Lady Kōkiden still showed the same unrelenting hostility, finding at every turn some means to inconvenience or humiliate her. Her high rank, so far from protecting her, now imperilled both herself and her son. For a long while she hesitated, torn by many conflicting feelings. At last she succeeded in saying to the child: ‘What would you think if I were to go away for a long while and, when at last I came back to see you, were to look quite different, almost as though it were another person?’ She watched his face while she spoke. ‘What would happen to you?’ he said, very much interested; ‘would you become like old Lady Shikibu? Why do you want to be like that?’ and he laughed. It was very difficult to tell him. She began again: ‘Shikibu is ugly because she is so old. That is not what I mean. I shall have even less hair than Shikibu and I shall wear a black dress, like the chaplain