The City of Beautiful Nonsense

by E. Temple Thurston

It was his father! Had he seen him? No! He slipped back again into the darkness of the shop and the brocades and the tapestries fell together once more into their place as though nothing had happened.

What did it mean? Was it true? With an effort, he held back from his inclination to rush into the shop, making sure of the reality of what he had seen. If it were true, then he knew that his father had not meant him to know. If it were true, he knew what the pain of such a meeting would be.

Crossing to the opposite side of the street, he tried to peer in through the shop door; but there was that clear-cut ray of sunshine on the step, barring the entrance. Only vaguely, like dim, black shadows on a deep web of gloom, could he see the moving figures of the two ladies who had entered. On an impulse, he turned into the magazzino by which he was standing.

Who was the owner of the curio shop on the other side? They did not know. What was his name? They could not say? Had he been there long? Not so very long. About a year. He was an Englishman, but he spoke Italian. He lived in Venice. They had heard some say in the Rio Marin. He was not used to the trade. It was quite true that he did not like to sell his things. They had been told he was a painter--but that was only what people said.

That was sufficient. They needed to say no more. This answered the questions that John had put that morning to his mother. His father could no longer sell his pictures. In a rush of light, he saw the whole story, far more pathetic to him than he had imagined with his study in brown.

One by one, they were selling the treasures they had collected. Now, he understood the meaning of those empty night-caps which Claudina carried away with her every evening. They said the things were broken; they had said it with nervous little glances at each other and then at Claudina. At the time, he had read those glances to mean that it was Claudina who had broken them. But no--it was not Claudina. This was the work of the heavy, the ruthless hand of cruel circumstance in which the frailest china and the sternest metal can be crushed into the dust of destruction.

In a moment, as it was all made clear, John found the tears smarting in his eyes. As he stood there in the little shop opposite, he painted the whole picture with rapid strokes of the imagination.

The day had come when his father could no longer sell his pictures. Then the two white heads had nodded together of an evening before Claudina came in with the night-caps. More emphatically than ever, they had exclaimed--"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?" And Claudina, laying the box on the table, beginning to take out the night-caps and place forth the treasures before she tucked them up, would vouchsafe the answering nod of her head. At last, one evening, watching the Dresden figure being put to bed, his father had thought of the way out of the difficulty.

They had not decided upon it at once. Such determinations as these come from the head alone and have to pass before a stern tribunal of the heart before license is given them. He could just imagine how bitter a tribunal that had been; how inflexibly those two brave hearts had sat in judgment upon so hard a matter; how reluctantly in the end they had given their consent.

Then, with the moment once passed, the license once granted, John could see them so vividly, questioning whether they should tell him, their decision that it would not be wise, his father fearing that it would lessen his esteem, his mother dreading that he would feel called upon to help them. Finally, that first day, when the Treasure Shop had been opened and his father, the artist, the man of temperament, with all the finest perceptions and sensibilities that human nature possesses, had gone to business.