The Yale literary magazine (Vol. LXXXIX, No. 3, December 1923)

The foundations of my acquaintance with Lord Rochdale’s family had been laid when the late earl, Helen’s grandfather, appeared one day in a wrought-up state, and declared that a painting sold to him by our firm as a genuine Hobbema was spurious. I can remember to this very hour the royal rage into which he flew, and the decidedly quaint invectives of an earlier day that he hurled at my defenseless head, for I was alone in our galleries that afternoon. I at once offered to repurchase the picture from him at the original figure. But, at the same time, I assured him that it was a genuine Hobbema, and in the course of our rather long conversation on the subject I think we each rose considerably in the other’s regard. The upshot was that he took the picture back to its place in the ancient halls of Rochdale—pending the arrival of a certain celebrated art critic from Italy. And, on the appearance of that personage, he was so good as to invite me to take dinner at The Lawns, and be present when the final judgment was passed. Had he known that our own considerably more modest establishment almost adjoined The Lawns, and that I had grown up to worship his granddaughter Helen from afar, perhaps many things might have been different. But, be that as it may, I made the most of this opportunity, as well as such others as were offered me, and came in time to be a not unwelcome visitor at Lord Rochdale’s household.

The death of the old Lord Rochdale, with whom I had far more in common than Helen’s father, coupled with the revelation, not long after, that Helen liked me exceedingly but by no means wanted to become my wife, had driven me to Paris, there to take charge of our French branch and occupy myself exclusively with art matters. When Helen’s letter came, I do not think it ever seriously occurred to me not to obey her request. I am not, at least, a bad loser, and I very soon found myself speeding across the Channel for the first time in almost a year. Arrived in London, I was met by the very chauffeur who, years before, had tremblingly followed the late Lord Rochdale into our galleries, carrying the disputed Hobbema. A short ride, or rather a fairly longish one, brought me once again to the threshold with which I associated so many varied memories. Lady Rochdale was away, but I was received by the Honorable Helen Rochdale with a wink and a hearty handshake, and by the Honorable Helen Rochdale’s Aunt Eugene without a trace of the former and only a very feeble attempt at the latter.

Of the ensuing evening there is, perhaps, no special need to tell. For this is a story of the Great Buddha of Kwang Ki, with whom I became acquainted next morning. I call it the Great Buddha of Kwang Ki because that was its official title, but it was of medium size, standing some four or four and a half feet high without the base, and hideously ugly—by which I mean that one must have lived among examples of Chinese art for many years to have understood its peculiar beauty. As the sale was to be that afternoon, I fell to work at once and examined the statue with the greatest care. It appeared to be an extraordinarily fine example of the bronze Buddhas occasionally discovered in the north of China, and belonging to the Chang period. I found that Helen, who had a keen eye for such things and an unusually well-stocked pocketbook, had discovered the Buddha in the not over reliable or pretentious shop where it now reposed, and had realized its great value if genuine, but feared to bid on it without advice to supplant her own knowledge of such things. I told her that I felt sure the Buddha was genuine, and that it undoubtedly was not later than the Chang period, which was made certain not only by various indications in the carving, but by the unusually fine greenish-golden patina, which the bronze had accumulated in the course of centuries. I had withdrawn with Helen to some distance from the crowd, in order to discuss this with her, when, just as I finished speaking, an extraordinarily ill-kempt little man bustled out from behind a curtained recess and spoke to us.

He seemed to be quivering with some suppressed emotion, and fairly blurted out, “Excuse me, sir, and you, ma’am. But I suppose they’ve been stuffing you with tales of how that’s the Great Buddha of Kwang Ki, and has killed all its former owners by magic, and them as speaks ill of it, too! But it’s all bosh! Perfect nonsense! The thing’s a fake! Plaster clear through with a copper facing and weighted with lead! I’ll show ’em!” And with that he rushed upon the Buddha, brandishing his umbrella, apparently prepared to demolish it. Well, it was only a coincidence, of course. But before the old fellow could reach the statue his foot slipped, and he came down with the most terrible crash right on the projecting corner of an antique bronze table that was standing in the way. It knocked him out dreadfully, and he had to be carried to a chemist’s shop across the street, and then taken to the hospital without ever recovering consciousness. Poor Helen was dreadfully affected, and I wanted her to abandon the whole thing and go back home. But she said no, that she wasn’t going to be kept from a real find just because some crank insisted it was made of plaster and had gotten himself hurt trying to prove it. So we went back once more, and I again verified my former conclusions, especially with regard to the patina, which was really extremely fine, and is an infallible indication of age in a bronze of that type.

Eventually I bid in the Buddha for Helen at £300, which was tremendously cheap and only accounted for by the comparative obscurity of the sale. We then arranged to have it delivered next day, and departed well pleased with ourselves. But the next day passed, and part of a third without its having arrived. At last, I decided to go and see what had become of it, since in London such small shops do not usually have a telephone, and this was one of those that did not. Arrived at the shop, I was greeted by the proprietor, who made a thousand apologies, but said that he could not deliver the Buddha before night. His story was that the “curse of the Buddha”, as he insisted upon calling it, had fallen upon one of his men who had attempted to remove it the day after the sale. This man, said the proprietor, had been engaged in erecting a crane, with which to lower the statue to the street. But he had been in a hurry, and had had so little respect for the sacred personage before him as to roundly curse it for an awkward, heavy slob of a heathen god. Whereupon, said my informant, the Buddha had blasted the scaffold upon which he sat with holy fire and hurled the impious blasphemer to his death in the street below. These details, with the exception of the heavenly fire, were corroborated by the other employees of the place, and the result was that not one of them could be persuaded to approach the angry god for fear its vengeance might not be exhausted. No outside truckman could be obtained until the evening of the present day. But I was assured that Buddha would be faithfully delivered before nightfall.

Returning to The Lawns, I endeavored to keep secret the cause of the Buddha’s non-appearance. But alas, Helen is a witch who will wring anything from my lips, which she suspects of being a secret. And so it was not long before she knew the whole story, as it had been told me. I confess that when the huge object finally loomed up the winding drive in the dusk, brought though it was by a very matter-of-fact electric dray, I did not feel entirely comfortable. But Helen, apparently, did not share whatever eerie feelings I may have had. The bronze was duly installed in a conspicuous place, the men were paid, we descended to dinner, we dined, and still no calamity befell. When the meal was over, Helen wanted to rush back to view her newly-acquired treasure, and I followed in her wake, quite reassured. We stood for a while examining the way in which the light from the chandelier fell across the statue and made queer shadows on the wall. Finally Helen laughed, and, making light of my previous nervousness, began calling “for little Buddha” by a string of pet names, hardly suited to its oriental dignity. She, at least, was not afraid, she said, of any lump of bronze, no matter how old it was. But something within me seemed to sound a warning. And, just as she was about to put her tongue out at the Great Buddha of Kwang Ki, I darted my hand out and pulled her back, why I hardly know. At the same moment there was a cracking sound, the table upon which the Buddha rested seemed to crumble, the huge bulk of that awful statue gathered itself together and hurled towards us with a terrific crash. At the same moment the lights were extinguished. And then—then came the moment that has made the Great Buddha of Kwang Ki my friend for life! I found Helen, sobbing, clinging in my arms, pouring out that we were going to die, but that she loved me, had always loved me!

* * * * *

The story really ends here—that is quite all that is of importance. For, when you have lived as long as I with the old bronzes of the East, you begin to have more than a vague sense of the unseen forces that may linger about them, even after so many thousand years. And especially when a very old and august god has troubled to bring you all the way from France, just to throw the only girl you have ever loved into your arms, it does not occur to you to search for the incredible series of coincidences that may have brought about that almost too perfect result. No, one allows others to speculate as to why a table, supposedly more than strong enough to support the weight of even so considerable a deity, should suddenly have crumbled at exactly the right moment, carrying the chandelier with it. Or perhaps one permits them to prove that it was only by coincidence that all who have ever insulted the Great Buddha of Kwang Ki have been punished for their temerity. Indeed, I myself have had to perform all those feats of explanation, in order to quiet Helen’s fears to the point of getting her to allow the Buddha to remain solidly ensconced in a little marble summer house, where he is admired and feared by all the children of the place. But as for me, well, on moonlight nights, I sometimes wander out to where the old bronze god sits quietly dreaming of the time when he was fearsomely adored. And, as the moonlight filters in upon him, I have a feeling that when he seems to nod in the flickering shadows, he is only answering my unspoken question. And when, again, the pale light softens the lines about his lips into a bland and oriental smile, I imagine that he is smiling at the success of our bargain—which has given to me a wife and to him a quiet place to dream.

LAIRD GOLDSBOROUGH.

_Yzlita-Audrey_

After ten years, Havana was again before him, bathed in the golden freshness of a Caribbean dawn. The first rays of the sun had dispelled the lingering strips of mist from the city, and they shone now in all the vigor of strong contrasting colors. The yellows and whites of the houses along the serpentine Malecon, the long drive above the apron of black rocks by the sea, seemed buoyantly and even defiantly to answer the morning challenge of the sun; while here and there the spring luxuriance of trees punctuated the lighter colors. Beyond and behind the long gay line of the Malecon was the body of the city, a welter of flat, tiled roofs gradually, indistinctly ascending to a hint of green hills in the distance, and of palms against the sky. The files of lofty trees that lined the promenade of the Prado made a long straight isle from the band-stand at the harbor’s mouth into the very heart of the city. Opposite the band-stand, on the other flank of the harbor entrance, the brooding grimness of the Morro Castle lifted an old gaze to the sunrise, while behind it the brilliant whiteness of the fortress Cabañas overlooked the city.

Havana was slowly rousing, and as the “Santiago” covered the last miles of ocean to the harbor, Henry Mayo could see a movement of boats across it, and a forest of the spars of small sailing-vessels beyond. The sight of the great colorful city had now a different meaning for him than the one it had borne when he had previously returned, and seen it as now flame out across the sea. He went back to the time when for eleven years it had been his home. His family had moved to Cuba when Mayo was three months old, and almost every summer thereafter in his memory had witnessed a trip back to the United States. He had in those years always felt an eager anticipation on returning to Havana through the wonder of the dawn, and some of his youthful breathlessness returned to his mind now. Then it had seemed a city of promise, a vision of great vividness, full of possibilities for childhood romance; a city where he could ride through the kind mystery of a tropic night in an open coach, while his father and his mother told him tales of the things they passed.

But now, due partly to the inevitable disillusion of growth combined with absence, and partly to the perspective in which history and accumulated impressions had since made him see the city, Havana seemed to him too gaudy to be really beautiful, while the dead hand of decay that strikes all tropical countries seemed palpably hanging over the city. From this standpoint, the flaunted beauty of the Malecon, the riot of color over the whole far-flung city, appeared empty and artificial and pitiful. What a contrast to that girl whom every thought of Cuba brought to him, and of whom the promise of the day, and all the fulsome glory before him, spoke so mockingly.

Yzlita-Audrey! He drew from his wallet with reverence a worn visiting-card, on which in old English type was engraved, “Mrs. Eduardo Carlos Poëy, Arroyo Apolo, Havana, Cuba”. But Henry Mayo was gazing at a line of writing above the engraving, where in a fine, dainty hand was “Yzlita-Audrey Poëy”. He considered it for a moment, with a feeling akin to awe, and then, just before the “Santiago” passed into the harbor, raised his eyes to the suggestion of hills and palms in the distance. Beyond those hills was “San Juan” de Poëy, where Yzlita-Audrey had once lived, and where Mrs. Poëy would presently give him word of her.

* * * * *

Inland from Havana runs the great white highway to Guïnes. It is one of the most magnificent roads in the island. Smooth as macadam can make it, the way yet gathers, from the over-arching rows of trees that line its entire course, a secluded vastness and solemnity. Of late years its quiet has been more and more invaded by the raucous klaxons and open cut-outs of a swelling stream of tourists. Whereas once great ox-carts lumbered slowly, picturesquely over it, the road is now the slave of the visitor and his forbidding chauffeur. One of the first things a child in the neighborhood learns to say is, “Gee me wan pen-nee!” On the way to Guïnes, the highway runs through the little town of Arroyo Apolo. Some miles beyond, the passing visitor can gaze to his right down a long lane of trees to the distant white façade of “San Juan” de Poëy.

As Henry Mayo stepped into an open carriage at Arroyo Apolo, the drowsiness of a Cuban afternoon was over everything. It was such a day as encouraged reflection, which in Mayo’s case was tinged with much melancholy. His thoughts were of Yzlita-Audrey, that vivacious youthful figure who had stepped from his life, and left it (as Mayo sadly assured himself) empty. The years of his childhood came back vividly. How often, on the way from Havana to see her, had he travelled over this same road! And how often, in the house that was his destination, had he and Yzlita-Audrey studied and played together, or vigorously pulled each other’s hair in youthful quarrels.

But Henry Mayo was frank enough with himself to realize that this youthful companionship, romantic and appealing as it was, nevertheless gained vitality only from his view of Yzlita-Audrey the autumn before, after he had been nine years absent from Cuba. During that time he had carried with him the affectionate memory of those far-off childhood days, epitomized in the flying golden hair and the dancing eyes of this girl. Yet he had never stopped to consider that she must in the interval have grown, and changed. Unconsciously, he had pictured her as always a child, always the same. His trip to New York in September had made him realize the impossibility of such a notion.

Passing through the city, he had gone to dine with some old Cuban friends at a downtown hotel which is the favorite resort of Cuban visitors to “the States”. As they sat at dinner, into the room had swept Mrs. Poëy and Yzlita-Audrey, fresh from Cuba. There had been a moment of excited recognitions, while Henry Mayo felt unsteady at the vision of this older, different girl. The Poëys had joined them at dinner, and he had sat beside her. With the reaction of his spirits to flood tide, he had buoyantly set out to renew the old friendship, while his eyes frankly appraised her. In one moment, the years of intimacy had come warmly nearer, and he felt the one-time comradeship strengthened.

Yzlita-Audrey, however, was not as eager as he, though there was a slight embarrassed flush on her face. She talked often. Her conversation, after the first glad recognition, was carefully general, and she glanced at him rather less than at the older people. But Mayo’s ardor was not so easily quenched, and he shamelessly heaped on her compliments and innuendos, and smiles playfully possessive. Her hair had been civilized to a simple coiffure, but retained its old glory of color. Her eyes danced with a suppressed excitement. Her face contained too much character to be really pretty, and too much vivacity to be anything but attractive. Mayo’s admiration had made her somehow thoughtful, until at last she had turned to him and said, “I want you to see the picture of my fiancé.” Then she had drily added, as though to temper the first effect, “You’ll be so interested in his medals!”

When she returned, they all went to the parlor. Silently he had looked at the picture, and then tried to hide the weariness of his tone as he praised the man’s handsomeness. He was Count Nini Something, an Italian naval officer, and with eager eyes Yzlita-Audrey had told of him. As she talked, her manner had returned to one of confidential intimacy. The love affair she sketched was one of dances on shore and on the count’s vessel, which came to Havana at frequent intervals; of an intrigued girl, and a loving but fiercely jealous man. As the tale unfolded, Mayo numbly imagined how different matters might have been if he had seen Yzlita-Audrey a year earlier, and realized sooner that she was, by history, and destiny, for himself. As things stood, she was to be married in January, and go to Italy—forever.

Life for Henry Mayo was from then on as the blank street into which he stepped as he left the hotel. The tragedy of it was with him in hardly lessened intensity for many months, until finally it had brought him back to the old scenes, where through late afternoon a slow coach carried him to “San Juan” de Poëy.

* * * * *

At length the coach turned down the long avenue of trees, and Mayo could see more and more clearly the familiar front steps of white stone, converging from a broad base to the simplicity of a massive oak door. The entire house was white, and responded eloquently to the sunlight. Mayo paused for a moment after stepping from the carriage, to look sentimentally about him, and gaze on familiar things. Here Mrs. Poëy saw him, from an open window on the first floor.

“Henry Mayo! How _glad_ I am that you’ve come!” she cried.