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A very intelligent custodian, who has written a book about the Abbey, was showing us round at that moment, and telling things about Sir Ralph Evers, whom the Douglases killed for revenge, on Ancrum Moor, and all about the pillar with the "curly green capital."
Upwards of forty freeholders voted for Henry Scott, and only fourteen for the puppy that opposed him. Even of this party he gained far the greater number by the very awkward coalition with Sir William Scott of Ancrum. I came home at seven at night. May 20.
He was himself in the midst of a hard struggle, and had neither money nor credit available. They parted at last, with the understanding that he was to go and consult Ancrum, and that she was to go to her friends at St. Damian's. Till now poor Dora had carefully refrained from bringing her private woes into relation with her life in and through St. Damian's.
Lung mischief had declared itself more than a year before this date, and had clearly made progress during this last attack of melancholia. He thought to himself that his old friend could not have long to live. 'Has Williams been to see you? he asked, naming a doctor whom Ancrum had long known and trusted. 'Oh yes! He can do nothing. He tells me to give in and go to the south.
It was a sign of mature life of something more than mere school-girlishness. Like the lover in the Elizabethan sonnet, 'She had been vexed, if vexed she had not been! 'Come in, David, said Mr. Ancrum, opening the door of his little sitting-room in Mortimer Street. 'You're rather late, but I don't wonder. Such a wind! I could hardly stand against it myself. But, then, I'm an atomy.
And, totally regardless of the presence of Dora and Ancrum, and of the efforts made to silence her by Dora or by the flushed and unhappy Reuben, she descended on her foe.
The English tradesman inherits a domineering tradition towards his subordinates, and in Purcell's case, as we know, the instincts of an egotistical piety had reinforced those of the employer. Yet Mr. Ancrum felt some sympathy with Purcell. 'Well, Davy, he said at last, 'so you were too 'cute for your man, that's plain. But I don't suppose he put it on that ground when he gave you the sack?
But in these agitated hours of such talk as belongs only to the rare crises of life, not only did Ancrum gain an insight into David's inmost nature, with all its rich, unripe store of feelings and powers, deeper than any he had possessed before, but David, breaking through the crusts of association, getting beyond and beneath the Sunday-school teacher and minister, came for the first time upon the real man in his friend, apart from trappings cast off the old sense of pupilage, and found a brother instead of a monitor.
Whenever any dispute, too, arose between the brother and sister, he took her part, whatever it might be, with an acrimony which pushed David's temper hard. Yet, on the whole, so Ancrum thought, the brother showed a wonderful patience.
His soul melted within him; tears began to rain over his cheeks. He tottered to the fire and sat down, instinctively spreading his hands to the blaze, that word 'father' echoing in his ears; and by midnight Mr. Ancrum knew all the story, or as much of it as man could to tell to man.
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