Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/238

 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!

CHAPTER II.

The Mayor is so protected that he cannot help himself.

A commotion without,—a kind of howl, a kind of hoot. Mr. Williams, the warehousemen, the tanners, Mike Callaghan, share between them the howl and the hoot. The Mayor started: is it possible! His door is burst open, and, scattering all who sought to hold him back,—scattering them to the right and left from his massive torso in rushed the man who had taken in the Mayor,—the fellow with one eye, and with that fellow, shaggy and travel-soiled, the other dog!

"What have you done with the charge I intrusted to you? My child! my child! where is she?"

Waife's face was wild with the agony of his emotions, and his voice was so sharply terrible that it went like a knife into the heart of the men, who, thrust aside for the moment, now followed him, fearful, into the room.