Aylwin eBook

Theodore Watts-Dunton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 645 pages of information about Aylwin.

Aylwin eBook

Theodore Watts-Dunton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 645 pages of information about Aylwin.

’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 brass-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 superstitious 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 passed 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 title-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.’

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Aylwin from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.