In the ancient days there was a great lord who, feeling himself near to his ending, admonished his only daughter.
"The green of the plum tree has come and gone. Now is the time of blossoming. But still you have not chosen a husband. This and that suitors comes and goes but none is to your liking. Must I die and leave you unaccompanied?"
"Not so my father," said the Lady Yumiyo. "I shall cause to be fashioned a drum of silk - of silk stretched upon a bamboo frame. He who hears the note when my fingers strike it is the man whom I shall marry."
"This is foolishness," her father said. "A silken drum will make no sound. Alas, I shall never see a grandchild."
But the drum, nevertheless, was made. And many a one came to listen, head stretched foward, urgent to hear - some because of the ladys beauty, some for the readiness of her wit, some because was widely known that she would be well provided. And some for all three reasons.
But not a sound did anyone hear when she struck the drum with her hand.
"I told you so," her father said.
But the Lady Yumiyo said nothing. She merely went on striking the drum as the suitors came and went.
And then, one day, in the frame of the doorway, there appeared a well-set-up young man, richly appareled, keen of glance, with the air of one who had come a long way.
He made a deep bow to the old Lord and a lesson one to his daughter.
"From where do you come?" the father asked.
"From beyond the mountains and seas and valleys"
"And from what have you come, man from afar?"
"For your daughter, the Lady Yumiyo."
"She is for him who can hear the silk drum. Never tell that the sound has reached you, across the seas and mountains!"
"No sound of the drum has reached me, sir."
"Then why, stranger, linger here?"
"I have heard its silence," the young man said.
The Lady Yumiyo smiled at her father and put the silk drum aside. She no longer had any need of it.
P. L. Travers
