The City of Beautiful Nonsense

by E. Temple Thurston

"I know him by sight," he said--"we've never met. But he always reviews me like that. I suppose I irritate him."

His mother felt gently for his hand. Without looking down, he found the withered fingers in his.

"How could you irritate him, my darling?" she asked. It seemed an impossibility to her.

"Well--there are always some people whom we irritate by being alive, my dearest. I'm not the only one who annoys him. I expect he annoys himself."

"Ah, yes!" The old gentleman brought down his fist emphatically upon the arm of his chair--"But he should keep these personal feelings out of his work. And yet--I suppose this kind of thing will always exist. Oh--if it only pleased the Lord that His people should be gentlemen!"

So his father talked, giving forth all the enthusiasm of his opinions which for so long had been stored up in the secret of his heart.

It was no longer his own work that interested him; for whatever contempt the artist may have for his wage, he knows his day is past when the public will no longer pay him for his labour. All the heart of him now, was centred in John. It was John who would express those things his own fingers had failed to touch. He had seen it exultantly in many a line, in many a phrase which this last book had contained; for though the mind which had conceived it was a new mind, the mind of another generation than his own, yet it was the upward growth from the thoughts he had cherished, a higher understanding of the very ideas that he had held. He, Thomas Grey, the artist, was living again in John Grey, the writer, the journalist, the driver of the pen. In the mind of his son, was the resurrection of his own intellect, the rejuvenescence of his own powers, the vital link between him, passing into the dust, and those things which are eternal.

It was not until John had been there two or three days, that his mother found her opportunity.

The old gentleman had gone to the Merceria to look after the Treasure Shop. Foscari, it seemed, had been selling some more of his beloved curios. A packet of money had been sent to him the evening before for a set of three Empire fans, treasures he had bought in Paris twenty years before. With a smothered sigh, the little old lady had consented to their going to the Merceria. Only to make a show, he had promised her that. They should never be purchased by anyone, and he put such a price upon them as would frighten the passing tourist out of his wits. It was like Foscari to find a man who was rich enough and fool enough to buy them. With his heart thumping and, for the first time in his life, not quite being able to look John in the eyes, he had made some excuse--a picture to be framed--and gone out, leaving them alone.

This was the very moment John had dreaded. He knew that those bright brown eyes had been reading the deepest corners of his heart, had only been biding their time until such moment as this. He had felt them following him wherever he went; had realised that into everything he did, they were reading the hidden despair of his mind with an intuition so sure, so unerring, that it would be quite useless for him to endeavour to hide anything from her.