Aylwin Part 30

Then, without waiting for his companion's reply, he turned to me, and giving an added volume to his sonorous voice, said:

'And you, Sir King, do you know whose bed Your Majesty was going to make at the bidding of--well, of a duke's chavi?'

I advanced with still growing anger. 'Stay, King Bamfylde, stay,'

said he; 'shall the beds of the mere ungenteel Aylwins, "the outside Aylwins," be made by the high Gypsy-gentility of Raxton?'

A light began to break in upon me. 'Surely,' I said, 'surely you are not Cyril Aylwin, the------?'

'Pray finish your sentence, sir, and say the low bohemian painter, the representative of the great ungenteel--the successor to the Aylwin peerage.'

The other painter, looking in blank amazement at my newly-found kinsman's extraordinary merriment, exclaimed, 'Bless me! Then you really can laugh aloud, Mr. Cyril. What has happened? What can have happened to make my dear friend laugh aloud?'

'Well he may ask,' said Cyril, turning to me. 'He knows that ever since I was a boy in jackets I have despised the man who, in a world where all is so comic, could select any particular point of the farce for his empty guffaw. But I am conquered at last. Let me introduce you, Wilderspin, to my kinsman, Henry Aylwin of Raxton Hall, alias Lord Henry Lovell of Little Egypt--one of Duke Panuel's interesting twinses.'

But Wilderspin's astonishment, apparently, was not at the _rencontre_: it was at the spectacle of his companion's hilarity.

'Wonderful!' he murmured, with his eyes still fastened upon Cyril.

'My dear friend can laugh aloud. Most wonderful! What can have happened?'

This is what had happened. By one of those strange coincidences which make the drama of real life far more wonderful than the drama of any stage, I, in my character of wandering Gypsy, had been thrown across the path of the _bete noire_ of my mother and aunt, Cyril Aylwin, a painter of bohemian proclivities, who (under the name of 'Cyril') had obtained some considerable reputation. This kinsman of mine had been held up to me as a warning from my very childhood, though wherein lay his delinquencies I never did clearly understand, save that he had once been an actor--before acting had become genteel. Often as I had heard of this eccentric painter as the representative of the branch of the family which preceded mine in the succession to the coveted earldom, I had never seen him before.

He stood and looked at me in a state of intense amus.e.m.e.nt, but did not speak.

'So you are Cyril Aylwin?' I said. 'Still you must withdraw what you said to my sister about the soap.'

'Delicious!' said he, grasping my hand. 'I had no idea that high gentility numbered chivalry among its virtues. Lady Sinfi,' he continued, turning to her, 'they say this brother of yours is a character, and, by Jove! he is. And as to you, dear lady, I am proud of the family connection. The man who has two Romany Rye kinsmen may be excused for showing a little pride. I withdraw every word about the virtues of soap, and am convinced that it can do nothing with the true Romany-Aylwin brown.'

On that we shook hands all round. 'But, Sinfi,' said I, 'why did you not tell me that this was my kinsman?'

''Cause I didn't know,' said she. 'I han't never seed him since I've know'd you. I always heerd his friends call him Cyril, and so I used to call him Mr. Cyril.'

'But, Lady Sinfi, my Helen of Little Egypt,' said Cyril, 'suppose that in my encounter with my patrician cousin--an encounter which would have been entirely got up in honour of you--suppose it had happened that I had made your brother's bed for him?'

'You make _his_ bed!' exclaimed Sinfi, laughing.

'Dordi! how you would ha' went down afore the Swimmin' Rei!'

[Footnote]

[Footnote: By the Welsh Gypsies, but few of whom can swim, I was called 'the Swimmin' Rei,' a name which would have been far more appropriately given to Percy Aylwin (Rhona Boswell's lover), one of the strongest swimmers in England; but he was simply called the Tarno Rye (the young gentleman).]

'But suppose that, on the contrary, he had gone down before me,' said Cyril; 'suppose I had been the death of your Swimming Rei, I should have been tried for the wilful murder of a prince of Little Egypt, the son of a Romany duke. Why, Helen of Troy was not half so mischievous a beauty as you.'

'You was safe enough, no fear,' said Sinfi. 'It 'ud take six o' you to settle the Swimmin' Rei.'

I found that Cyril and his strange companion were staying at 'The Royal Oak,' at Bettws y Coed. They asked me to join them, but when I told them I 'could not leave my people, who were encamped about two miles off,' Cyril again looked at me with an expression of deepest enjoyment, and exclaimed 'delightful creature.'

Turning to Sinfi, he said: 'Then we'll go with you and call upon the n.o.ble father of the twins, my old friend King Panuel.'

'He ain't a king,' said Sinfi modestly; 'he's only a duke.'

'You'll give us some tea, Lady Sinfi?' said Cyril.

'No tea equal to Gypsy tea.'

'Romany tea, Mr. Cyril,' replied Sinfi, with perfect dignity and grace. 'My daddy, the duke, will be pleased to welcome you.'

We all strolled towards the tents. I offered to carry an umbrella and a camp-stool. Cyril walked briskly away with Sinfi, leaving me to get on with Wilderspin as best I could. Before the other two were out of earshot, however, I heard Cyril say,

'You shouldn't have taken so seriously my chaff about the soap, Sinfi. You ought to know me better by this time than to think that I would really insult you.'

'How you would ha' went down afore the Swimmin' Rei!' replied Sinfi regretfully.

III

Between my new companion, Wilderspin, and myself there was an awkward silence for some time. He was evidently in a brown study. I had ample opportunity for examining his face. Deeply impressed upon his forehead there was, as I now perceived, an ancient scar of a peculiar shape. At last, a lovely bit of scenery broke the spell, and conversation began to flow freely.

We had nearly got within sight of the encampment when he said,

'I am in some perplexity, sir, about the various branches of your family. Aylwin, I need not tell you, was the name of the greatest man of this age, and I am anxious to know what is exactly your connection with him.'

'You surprise me,' I said. 'Out of our own family, in its various branches, there is, I have been told, no very large number of Aylwins, and I had no idea that one of them had become famous.'

'I did not say famous, sir, but great; two very different words. Yet, in a certain deep sense, it may be said of Philip Aylwin's name that since his lamented death it has even become famous. The Aylwinians (of which body I am, as you are no doubt aware, founder and president) are, I may say, becoming--'

'Philip Aylwin!' I said. 'Why, that was my father. He famous!'

The recollection of the essay upon 'Hamalet and Hamlet,' the thought of the bra.s.s-rubbings, the kneecaps and mittens, came before me in an irresistibly humorous light, and I could not repress a smile. Then arose upon me the remembrance of the misery that had fallen upon Winnie and myself from his monomania and what seemed to me his superst.i.tious folly, and I could not withhold an angry scowl. Then came the picture of the poor scarred breast, the love-token, and the martyrdom that came to him who had too deeply loved, and smile and frown both pa.s.sed from my face as I murmured,--'Poor father! he famous!

'Philip Aylwin's son!' said Wilderspin, staring at me. Then, raising his hat as reverentially to me as if I had been the son of Shakespeare himself, he said, 'Mr. Aylwin, since Mary Wilderspin went home to heaven, the one great event of my life has been the reading of _The Veiled Queen_, your father's book of inspired wisdom upon the modern Renascence of Wonder in the mind of Man. To apply his principles to Art, sir--to give artistic rendering to the profound idea hinted at in the marvellous vignette on the t.i.tle-page of his third edition--has been, for some time past, the proud task of my life. And you are the great man's son! Astonishing! Although his great learning overwhelms my mind and appals my soul (whom, indeed, should it not overwhelm and appal?) there is not a pamphlet of his that I do not know intimately, almost by heart.'

'Including the paper on "Hamlet and Hamalet, and the wide region of Nowhere"?'

'Including that and everything.'

'Did you know him, Mr. Wilderspin?'

'Not in the flesh; in the spirit, who knows him so well? Your mother I have had the pleasure of meeting at the house of Lord Sleaford, and indeed I have had the distinguished honour of painting her portrait; but the great author of _The Veiled Queen_--the inspired designer of the vignette symbolical of the Renascence of Wonder in Art--I never had the rapture of seeing. This very day, the anniversary of his birth,' he continued, 'is a great day in the Aylwinian calendar.'

'My father's birthday? Why, so it is!'

'Mr. Aylwin, is it possible that the anniversary of a day so momentous for the world is forgotten--forgotten by the very issue of the great man's loins?'

'The fact is,' said I, in some confusion, 'I have been living with the Gypsies, and, you see, Mr. Wilderspin, the pa.s.sage of time--'

'The son of Philip Aylwin a Gypsy!' murmured Wilderspin meditatively, and unconscious evidently that he was speaking aloud--'a Gypsy! Still it would surely be a mistake to suppose,' he continued, perfectly oblivious now of my presence, 'that the vagaries of his son can really bring shame upon the head of the father.'

'But, by G.o.d!' I cried, 'it is no mistake that the vagaries of the father can bring shame and sorrow and misery upon the child. I could name a couple of fathers--sleeping very close to each other now--whose vagaries--'

My sudden anger was carrying me away; but I stopped, recollecting myself.