The Professor by Charlotte Brontë Read Free Book Online Page B

have neither inclination nor temptation to talk about
you."
    "You lie! It is your practice to talk about me; it is your
constant habit to make public complaint of the treatment you
receive at my hands. You have gone and told it far and near that
I give you low wages and knock you about like a dog. I wish you
were a dog! I'd set-to this minute, and never stir from the spot
till I'd cut every strip of flesh from your bones with this whip.
    He flourished his tool. The end of the lash just touched my
forehead. A warm excited thrill ran through my veins, my blood
seemed to give abound, and then raced fast and hot along its
channels. I got up nimbly, came round to where he stood, and
faced him.
    "Down with your whip!" said I, "and explain this instant what you
mean."
    "Sirrah! to whom are you speaking?"
    "To you. There is no one else present, I think. You say I have
been calumniating you—complaining of your low wages and bad
treatment. Give your grounds for these assertions."
    Crimsworth had no dignity, and when I sternly demanded an
explanation, he gave one in a loud, scolding voice.
    "Grounds I you shall have them; and turn to the light that I may
see your brazen face blush black, when you hear yourself proved
to be a liar and a hypocrite. At a public meeting in the
Town-hall yesterday, I had the pleasure of hearing myself
insulted by the speaker opposed to me in the question under
discussion, by allusions to my private affairs; by cant about
monsters without natural affection, family despots, and such
trash; and when I rose to answer, I was met by a shout from the
filthy mob, where the mention of your name enabled me at once to
detect the quarter in which this base attack had originated. When
I looked round, I saw that treacherous villain, Hunsden acting as
fugleman. I detected you in close conversation with Hunsden at
my house a month ago, and I know that you were at Hunsden's rooms
last night. Deny it if you dare."
    "Oh, I shall not deny it! And if Hunsden hounded on the people
to hiss you, he did quite right. You deserve popular execration;
for a worse man, a harder master, a more brutal brother than you
are has seldom existed."
    "Sirrah! sirrah!" reiterated Crimsworth; and to complete his
apostrophe, he cracked the whip straight over my head.
    A minute sufficed to wrest it from him, break it in two pieces,
and throw it under the grate. He made a headlong rush at me,
which I evaded, and said—
    "Touch me, and I'll have you up before the nearest magistrate."
    Men like Crimsworth, if firmly and calmly resisted, always abate
something of their exorbitant insolence; he had no mind to be
brought before a magistrate, and I suppose he saw I meant what I
said. After an odd and long stare at me, at once bull-like and
amazed, he seemed to bethink himself that, after all, his money
gave him sufficient superiority over a beggar like me, and that
he had in his hands a surer and more dignified mode of revenge
than the somewhat hazardous one of personal chastisement.
    "Take your hat," said he. "Take what belongs to you, and go out
at that door; get away to your parish, you pauper: beg, steal,
starve, get transported, do what you like; but at your peril
venture again into my sight! If ever I hear of your setting foot
on an inch of ground belonging to me, I'll hire a man to cane
you."
    "It is not likely you'll have the chance; once off your premises,
what temptation can I have to return to them? I leave a prison, I
leave a tyrant; I leave what is worse than the worst that can lie
before me, so no fear of my coming back."
    "Go, or I'll make you!" exclaimed Crimsworth.
    I walked deliberately to my desk, took out such of its contents
as were my own property, put them in my pocket, locked the desk,
and placed the key on the top.
    "What are you abstracting from that desk?" demanded the
millowner. "Leave all behind in its place, or I'll send for a
policeman to search you."
    "Look sharp about it, then," said I, and I took down my hat, drew
on my