Honey Harlot Read Free Page B

in the name of love. She’s filth, she’s vile she’s the lowest scum of all this low waterside.’
    She made a sort of forward little bowing movement, bending her head in unprotesting acquiescence. She said: ‘To which I will now return.’
    ‘Don’t let her go!’ I cried. ‘She repents, she doesn’t want to go, it’s only that there’s nothing else for her.’
    ‘Nothing else?’ he said, staring back into her pale face his own dark with indignation. ‘Let her be like other women. Let her work.’
    She lifted her head and gave him back look for look. ‘Do you think I don’t?’ she said.
    ‘You work!’ he said. ‘Is that work to you?—lying back in your sinful luxury, lying back against your soft pillows with that hair all spread out like a web of gold to trap men’s souls and drag them down to that hell that you make heaven for them… Is that work to you?—to part your red lips to those foul kisses, to wind your white arms round the naked bodies of men unknown to you outside the narrow bed of your whoring, is that work to you…?’ His words gushed forth now, his voice was raised to a pitch of something like fever, his face was white, dreadfully patched with red. He went on and on. My mind reeled, I stopped my ears against the filth of his accusations, the crudity of his expression, the horrible depths of his comprehension of the depravities of her trade. But she stood still and quiet and listened to him as though she were frozen in the icy hail of his wild impeachment; and when at last for very exhaustion, it seemed, he fell suddenly, abruptly silent, standing, head bowed, hands hanging at his sides, she said only, very quietly: ‘Then—help me!’
    He swayed where he stood, all the fury and fervour gone. He mumbled: ‘Help you?’
    ‘Your voice is like a silver trumpet,’ she said. ‘No man has spoken to me with such words before.’ And she made a little beseeching movement with those narrow white hands of hers and said again: ‘Help me!’
    He turned away from her. ‘You are lost,’ he said. ‘None can help you but God. Turn to God. Pray to God. No other can help you.’
    ‘I can’t pray,’ she said. She put out her hand to me where I stood sick and frightened. ‘She tried to teach me—this sweet thing, so innocent and lovely in her innocence. But I’ve forgotten what it is to pray—as I’ve forgotten what it is to be innocent. He can’t help me—my life has put God beyond my reach.’
    ‘Your way of life was your own choice,’ he said.
    ‘Do you think so?’ she said, sadly.
    ‘Its future at any rate is your own choice,’ he said.
    She said again, sadly: ‘Do you think so?’
    He straightened himself, squared his shoulders. ‘At any rate, it is nothing to do with me or mine. I shall not touch pitch. Get away from me. Your life is in your own hands.’
    She put up her arms slowly with a movement all careless grace and lifted her heavy hair with the back of her wrists so that her two hands might meet behind her neck and unfasten the chain that held the golden cross. Then she slid the cross from its chain and with one of those flashes of movement, before he could draw back, had put it into his hand. ‘Now my life’s in my own hands no longer,’ she said. ‘I have put it into yours.’ And while he stood bemused and I stricken almost into immobility, she had lifted the shawl once more around her shoulders and folding it about her, slipped out through the low door of the cabin and was gone.
    He said not a word to me; just stood there staring down at the little golden cross in the palm of his big hand. Then he turned at last and went out on to the deck. I followed him.
    She had come to the foot of the gangway, a man put out a hand to help her step ashore. She took his hand but released herself immediately she was safe on the cobble stones, and moved away from him with a word of thanks—with, I thought, a light shake of the head. The dark shawl clutched about her, she