When the large lanterns were hung over and lit, the time he entered, she arose up and the red sandalwood table had set up for dinner where he sat by her enjoying the pleasures of the table, a day’s tiredness in the warmth of the turtle and ham soup fading away. Soon the sounds of the qin were anchored, up and down the strings; the white puff of the smoke through my father’ pipe, on a simple contentment path, pulsed through its expressiveness in the shifts of her hands.
According to the old servants in the house, Lady Jia had been a beauty and probably she was the most beautiful they have met in the Garden of Moon Mist, Muo Pingqian (莫平阡), my father’s house. When the colors of summer filling the city, the cloak of rainbow filling the Autumn Lake, the shadows of the flowers filling the yards, the clatter of the feet of the attendants and singing girls on the stone walkways filling the air, the bridal chair and lanterns entered, amid the sounds of drums and music. Jia Yunruo ( 賈雲若 )was ushered and walked downwards out of the chair with a veil over her face. Once she was on the winding paths in the house, a wind-blown fragrance of purple chrysanthemums drifted in and came up to the nostril like the same ever lingered beneath the sixteen-year-casement of the Maple Chamber from her youthful resident where she was engaged in her private obsession from reading fictions and drama manuscripts. For a moment, a little wave of the unknown feeling fluttered through, Yunruo recalled the repeated scenes of her rolling heart pondering through the lines, accompanied by the lamp shining through the purpled traces, with the silly cicadas, year after year.
A month after Jia Yunrou married Muo Pingqian it was the Mid-Autumn Festival, the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, the date of the periodical gathering of Yangcheng literati in the
Subsequently, Chanter of Ripples ( 淙音班 ), the theoretical troupe of the Garden of Moon Mist’s opera performance would end the festival as scheduled. Chanter of Ripples had established its prominent fame at performing kun opera (melodies that originated in Kunshan, in Ming Dynasty) in Yangcheng since the middle Qianlong reign by Muo Qianhui( 莫前暉 ), my grandfather, which remained its flourish until now.
Given the choice, Yunruo ordered a scene in Interrupted Dream from the play of the Peony Pavilion which she had been dreaming in her heart at her girlhood. See, the sober face, filled with self-righteous pride and a kind of stubborn indifference! “I will let you taste some of what I am interested in.” His voice was simply oozing in the air. Though physically unquestioned, her delicate fingers twisted the silk handkerchief with a flit of shiver, subconsciously.
It was a fact that he was too young to apprehend about a women’s heart.
還望各路高人多多指正, 小墨水給大家作揖了~~
