SUN AND MOON
CHAPTER I
The clear sun of July shone through the garden foliage, making circles of light on the grass wherever the inter-woven branches of the locusts allowed its passage. Summer rains had washed the air of all dustiness, swept the flags of the courtyards neat and clean, given new life to the climbing trumpet flowers and a mossy springiness to the path round the overflowing pool, into the waters of which the strong confident sunbeams seemed to plunge deeper than they had ever before dared dive, and to stay, joyfully exploring the green underdepths which matched the opulent color of the garden. For the garden too promised joyful exploring. One had to pass through courtyard after courtyard, through many large-timbered doors swinging on wooden axles and through each hallway of the Chinese house, sprawled out in section upon section, before entering this remote spot where the walls of gray tile shut out the city so completely and gave the impression of such space hidden in what really was quite small compass.
Here, like a hundred other wealthy families in their own unseen gardens, the household were able to enjoy rest from the urgent life of Peking yet never stray beyond the gates of the Tatar city. There was a sheltered pavilion in which to sip hot tea, a zigzag bridge of wood crossing the pool at its narrowest, shady nooks to suit the lazy reflective moods of the angler, best of all—if there were children—a labyrinth of stones, all heaped into grotesque mountains, through which the child, his imagination nimbly excited, could follow the circuitous path, absorbing the landscape of miniature lakes and tiny waterfalls and diminutive pagodas, and descend into the darkness of dripping grottoes as if he were the hero of them all.
Children there were; from behind a round moon gate came the clamor of their voices. But one stopped, astonished at the sight, for they were not the sedate children, the long-gowned boys and gracefully clad girls, one expected in so meditative a garden. They were not the offspring of Ming scrolls, as they should have been, transferred into life itself from the leisurely brush-strokes of old paintings, but strange barbarians, violent in their play, electric in the energy with which they defied the sun and its heat.
The moon gate opened on a place apart, a place of shrubs and formal pathways, but with two large pine trees, gnarled and misshapen as though they had outgrown human efforts to distort their branches, and with bamboo brake on all sides springing up in untidy profusion, yet with the mystery of its deep shadows making the walls seem more distant than they were.
In one of the middle branches of a pine tree sat a girl, swinging her feet mischievously as she dropped cones on the boy who lay at full length on the ground below. Whether he was trying to read or to write or even to sleep was not quite apparent, for, though he lay amid a litter of books and paper, with a stick of ink precariously balanced on the edge of an ink-stone and an unsheathed brush close to his elbow, his one endeavor was to defend himself with as little motion as possible from the bombardment above. This he did chiefly by agile wriggling, seeming to anticipate the course of each projectile by some sixth sense that spared him the trouble of looking up and, when a well-aimed cone struck his neck or his feet, strengthening his defense by racy Chinese abuse.
Yet it was not the sportiveness of the children which was so astonishing as their scantily free clothing and the fact, at once remarkable, that they were not Chinese children at all. The girl was easily fourteen or fifteen, but she swung on her bough with the unabashed grace of a tomboy. Her few garments suggested a creature that had grown up wild and untrammeled, for they were quite out of keeping with the delicate restraint of the garden or with the decorous attire the Chinese prescribe for their women. She wore only a loose gauze vest and a pair of white drawers fastened at her waist by a scarf of red silk. Her slippers had been flung off at the foot of the tree. Except for the heavy braid of hair tossed over her shoulders and the rounded curve of her breasts this strange maid might have been mistaken in her straight coolness for a boy in disarray. But the abiding memory of her, after even a moment's glimpse, was that she was not Chinese; the abiding memory was of arms and legs too white for the Chinese skin, even for the creamy ivory hue of the aristocrat, of a body longer, more fully built, feet more amply turned, of cheeks livelier flushed than the face of the ruddiest Chinese maiden, for the blood was not softened by that darker tinge of the complexion which makes one think of youth's picture painted on old silk. It was a miracle that under so ardent a sun the girl should have kept this spring-like clarity of skin. Unless in the deep color of her hair and her eyes she seemed to make no concession to the tropical warmth of July but to belong to forests where cold streams from the mountains pass amid trees.
Her brother was equally foreign to the baked sandy plains of Peking. He was possibly thirteen, with dark hair and dark eyes like the girl on the branch above him and with the same inviolable fairness of skin. He had reduced the encumbrance of garb to its limits and lay contentedly naked except for cotton trousers which he had rolled half-way up his thighs. So intent was he in countering pine cones with wordy retorts that he let a whole column of ants explore his shoulders unresented till suddenly his patience broke; he leaped to his feet, as swift as any untamed animal, and scrambled up the tree to grapple with his tormentor. The girl was too quick even for him and escaped from limb to limb, taunting him with her bare feet for his impudence in hoping to seize her.