BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
In the kindliest natures there is a certain sensitiveness, which,
when wounded, occasions the same pain, and bequeaths the same
resentment, as mortified vanity or galled self-love.
It is exactly that day week, towards the hour of five in the evening, Mr.
Hartopp, alone in the parlour behind his warehouse, is locking up his
books and ledgers preparatory to the return to his villa. There is a
certain change in the expression of his countenance since we saw it last.
If it be possible for Mr. Hartopp to look sullen,--sullen he looks; if it
be possible for the Mayor of Gatesboro' to be crestfallen, crestfallen he
is. That smooth existence has surely received some fatal concussion, and
has not yet recovered the shock. But if you will glance beyond the
parlour at Mr. Williams giving orders in the warehouse, at the
warehousemen themselves, at the rough faces in the tan-yard,-nay, at Mike
Callaghan, who has just brought a parcel from the railway, all of them
have evidently shared in the effects of the concussion; all of them wear
a look more or less sullen; all seem crestfallen. Could you carry
your gaze farther on, could you peep into the shops in the High Street,
or at the loungers in the city reading-room; could you extend the vision
farther still,--to Mr. Hartopp's villa, behold his wife, his little ones,
his men-servants, and his maid-servants, more and more impressively
general would become the tokens of disturbance occasioned by that
infamous concussion. Everywhere a sullen look,--everywhere that
ineffable aspect of crestfallenness! What can have happened? is the
good man bankrupt? No, rich as ever! What can it be? Reader! that
fatal event which they who love Josiah Hartopp are ever at watch to
prevent, despite all their vigilance, has occurred! Josiah Hartopp has
been TAKEN IN! Other men may be occasionally taken in, and no one
mourns; perhaps they deserve it! they are not especially benevolent, or
they set up to be specially wise. But to take in that lamb! And it was
not only the Mayor's heart that was wounded, but his pride, his self-
esteem, his sense of dignity, were terribly humiliated. For as we know,
though all the world considered Mr. Hartopp the very man born to be taken
in, and therefore combined to protect him, yet in his secret soul Mr.
Hartopp considered that no man less needed such protection; that he was
never taken in, unless he meant to be so. Thus the cruelty and
ingratitude of the base action under which his crest was so fallen jarred
on his whole system. Nay, more, he could not but feel that the event
would long affect his personal comfort and independence; he would be more
than ever under the affectionate tyranny of Mr. Williams, more than ever
be an object of universal surveillance and espionage. There would be one
thought paramount throughout Gatesboro'. "The Mayor, God bless him! has
been taken in: this must not occur again, or Gatesboro' is dishonoured,
and Virtue indeed a name!" Mr. Hartopp felt not only mortified but
subjugated,--he who had hitherto been the soft subjugator of the hardest.
He felt not only subjugated, but indignant at the consciousness of being
so. He was too meekly convinced of Heaven's unerring justice not to feel
assured that the man who had taken him in would come to a tragic end. He
would not have hung that man with his own hands: he was too mild for
vengeance. But if he had seen that man hanging he would have said
piously, "Fitting retribution," and passed on his way soothed and
comforted. Taken in!--taken in at last!--he, Josiah Hartopp, taken
in by a fellow with one eye!
