Yūgiri had a high sense of duty. It was his practice at this time to visit his grandmother at least once a day, and it would have been a ferocious wind indeed that could deter him either from setting out for the Third Ward or returning thence at the hour when his father usually asked for him. There were of course ‘times of observance’ when he was obliged to remain shut up in the Emperor’s Palace for several days on end. But otherwise neither pressure of public business nor attendance at state ceremonies and festivals, however much they might impinge upon his leisure, ever prevented him from calling first at the New Palace and then upon the old Princess, before he dreamt of embarking upon any amusement of his own. Still less upon such a day as this, when, bad as the storm was already, there seemed every prospect that it would soon develop into something more alarming still, could he have brought himself to leave the old lady in solitude.
She was, indeed, delighted that he had not failed her. ‘This is the worst typhoon there has ever been in my lifetime,’ she said; ‘and I can assure you I have seen a good many.’ She was trembling from head to foot. Now and again came a strange and terrifying sound; some huge bough that a single breath of the hurricane had twisted from its trunk, crashed in splinters to the ground. Apart from all other dangers, showers of tiles were falling from every roof. To go into the streets at all on such a day was indeed no very safe undertaking, and for a while she listened with mingled gratitude and alarm to the recital of his perils and escapes.
The old Princess’s lonely and monotonous existence contrasted strangely with the brilliant scenes amid which she had moved during the days of her husband’s remarkable ascendancy. Indeed, that the visits of this staid young grandson should mean so much to her showed only too
