Honey Harlot Read Online Free PDF

flushed red across his tan. ‘Trot away, little man,’ she seemed to say to him, ‘or I shall tell tales of you to this stern master of yours, that will lose you your berth in his fine ship, Amazon.’ He was not a little man but a fine, upstanding fellow and yet, indeed, he turned and moved away. But my husband, I think, had spoken a word also. ‘Leave me to deal with her,’ no doubt he said.
    And so into my world of reconstructed dialogue again. ‘Well, well, my fine Captain, so you would deny old friends?’
    ‘Go away from me, woman, get away from me! How dare you approach me like this?’
    ‘Why, Captain, it was you who approached me, but two days ago: and approached very close indeed.’
    ‘All that’s forgotten, buried deep, covered over; get away from me now and no more trouble me.’
    ‘Ah, but it’s you who now trouble me, Captain Briggs. For you tell me to forget, but how can I forget such an hour as that which we two spent together—?’
    ‘I came to save your soul. You with your wickedness came very near to condemning mine to everlasting perdition.’
    ‘How happy a perdition, however, since we shall share it together!’
    ‘Get away, get away!’ he will have cried, turning about and about as though a venomous insect troubled him.
    ‘How can I go when all this body hungers for your body again?’
    I saw how he made to leave her, if she would not leave him; but she caught him by the arm. Did she whisper to him then that threat of blackmail?—that threat which amounted to blackmail, against his great reputation for Godliness and good. Did she say: ‘Shall I tell all the world how I crave for your kisses and yet you will leave me?’ Did he, succumbing to blackmail, ask her: ‘What will you take to let me be?’
    I saw her glance up to where the men stood on the hanging cradle, staring down, wondering. The price of her silence?’—‘Name your ship after me!’
    And proclaim his hideous wrong-doing to all the world! ‘You know that’s impossible, you know I could never do that.’
    ‘Well, then…’ And the mischievous, teasing smile, taunting him, threatening him. I think that she meant him no harm; not really. She thought him a self-righteous, preaching prig and would teach him a lesson; I think she never dreamt of the cringing terror within his soul at the thought that his world of high reputation might tumble about his ears. Or, Morehouse, perhaps, without some outward sign would not credit her story of conquest, simply could not believe it accomplished so easily. At any rate, ‘Come, Captain, you know my name, it’s written on the cross you so considerately brought back to me—’
    ‘And betrayed,’ he would bitterly acknowledge.
    ‘And having betrayed it, must now write up on your ship’s bows the name inscribed upon it. Mary Sellers. Come, call it up to your men!’
    ‘You know that I can’t. Anything else. Money; I’ve paid you already. I’ll pay you yet more to hold your wicked tongue.’
    ‘My wicked tongue has touched your lips, Captain Briggs, and all the world shall know of it if you won’t do me this simple favour—paint my name up there!’
    ‘If I leave the name as it is,’ he mutters, poor wretch, ‘it will suit you well enough.’
    ‘Then write Mary Sellers, Amazon. Or Mary Sellers, Harlot or Whore or Mary Sellers my own Bad Angel or what you will; but Mary Sellers it must be.’ And she clung to his arm, looking up at him, laughing, teasing, and all the world looking on. ‘I’ll call her by your name, Mary,’ he said at last. ‘That will satisfy your vanity and no one need know of it.’
    ‘Mary Sellers,’ she insisted and swung herself about—I watched from the deck, keeping back out of sight, sick with fear for him, sick with compassion—and hung her arms now about his neck and raised her face as though he must stoop to kiss her. ‘Come, lover, give to Mary Sellers that hot, sweet mouth of yours, and say no more of refusal to paint her name