The Last Days of a Rake Page 3

  He was silent for a long while. The house settled, as all old buildings do, like an ancient beldame, bones creaking and grateful sighs spilling from partly open lips. It groaned and muttered and finally silenced in the fitful sleep of the elderly. Hamilton began to wonder if his friend had given up the ghost, and was about to get a mirror to check for breath.

  “I haven’t a real answer, John. I was absorbed wholly in my own wants, and I did not wish my pleasure-seeking life to end. I had made the bet, and I would win it. That’s all.”

  “Tell me, then, what happened. But not in detail. I have no stomach for the downfall of such a sweet young lady as you have described.”

  “Now you begin to understand my revulsion, when I look back on my youth. I will continue, though, not sparing myself, but not giving the most intimate details of poor Susan’s downfall.”

  Part 5 - The Cottage

  The moon, a lustrous and beautiful lady in nacreous robes, strolled across the heavens as Lankin slipped from the house and across the broad lawn. He arrived early at the cottage, a small, tidy hermit’s hut tucked in a copse of swaying young alders, and paced anxiously on the crest of the hill overlooking the manse. Now, at the very point of winning his bet, misgivings plagued him. If he left that moment, Susan would stay as she was, a virtuous and sweet young lady. Perhaps she would complain to her friends about her heart being broken by his defection, but that would merely add to her cache among the other girls who all longed for courtship, love and broken hearts.

  But he’d lose his bet, bitter medicine for an inveterate gambler. For just that moment he resented the hold the other bettors had on him. Was he not a free man to walk away if he wanted? In that one moment, by the moon’s gracious light, he glimpsed the truth. He would never be free as long as he allowed others to hold him in the iron grip of conventional morality. Pride had led to this wager, and to win he must despoil and betray a girl he quite liked.

  The only alternative was to admit he had not done the deed and pay up. Which was the lesser of two evils? Before he could resolve to leave, he saw her running on fleet, bare feet across the dew-pearled grass below the cottage folly, holding her filmy draperies above the soaking turf. He caught his breath, entranced by her loveliness. He should leave and never look back; let her find happiness and love, or at least contentment and marriage. In the space between two heartbeats, though, his better intentions died, for he thought of the sneer of his fellow gamblers should he confess he balked. After all, he rationalized, he would do nothing to Susan that she did not agree to. He was not a brute. But if she submitted…

  Her first words, though, were spoken in a breathless whisper. “I cannot stay,” she said. “My chaperone is suspicious, I fear, and may check on me in my room.”

  He gazed at her moonlit face turned up to his. It was an out, should he decide to take it. But he saw the color rise in her cheeks and knew it was a lie. She was playing her hand, and with that sly wager, he was freed from the doubts that had been plaguing him. They would play on, and see who was the better gambler. “You had better go, then,” he said, his voice husky with desire. She was lovely, and he wanted her. But he had to control that yearning and stay focused on the game. “I will leave tomorrow. Then there will be no reason for suspicion on her part.”

  Susan’s lip quivered. She had not expected that response. “Edgar, I—” She stopped and chewed her lip, her lovely oval face framed by tumbled blonde locks, the whole lit by gleaming moonlight. “I don’t want you to go,” she said, touching his arm with one soft, white, gloveless hand, as delicate as a snowy dove lighting on his shirtsleeve.

  “I think I was mistaken, Susan,” he said, giving his tone the tremor of wounded sensibility. He had always excelled at amateur theatrics.

  “Mistaken? About what?”

  He searched her eyes. “I think, perhaps, your feelings for me are not as strong as mine for you.”

  “But that’s not true!” She threw herself into his arms.

  “Isn’t it?” he asked, his tone cold. He disengaged himself from her clinging arms. “If you loved me, you would dare anything for my sake.”

  “But I will.” She paused, tears welling in her eyes. “Give me another chance, Edgar, please!”

  Triumph built to a crescendo in his being. She was his for the taking, her fear of losing him more alive than her fear of ruin. The balance was tipped in his favor. He took her hand, led her into the dark cottage and closed the door behind them.

  Far from the magnificent physical experience he had expected it to be, it was cold and unpleasant, the cottage not being fitted out for seduction. Afterward, she cried. He felt like a brutish oaf unfit to touch her lily-white flesh. It was an unpleasant feeling, and it burrowed into his heart like a worm into an apple. There was a moment of potential, when the awful situation could have been rescued and turned to a profit for Susan. If she had stopped crying, and let him take her in his arms to comfort her, he may have proposed out of guilt.

  How much of life turns on a moment, like a globe on an axis?

  She hunched her shoulder against him when he touched her arm, and the continuous weeping eventually hardened him in ways he didn’t understand. How could he sit in the dark, listening to her sobs, and be so cold? At first his heart had been full of remorse, then he just felt nothing, but after twenty minutes of such torment, anger flared. She made him feel like a reprehensible ruffian, and he was accustomed to thinking well of himself. He was a scoundrel, but not cruel, a rapscallion but not brutish, he had always thought.

  “Susan,” he said, trying to keep his voice gentle. “It’s not so bad, you know. Many girls do it. And like it.”

  He could not see her face in the dark cottage, but her voice had an hysterical edge as she said, “Many girls? Edgar, am I just one of a hundred?”

  “Not a hundred. Don’t be ridiculous,” he said sharply.

  “I’m not being ridiculous. That was…that was torture! You’re wicked to do such a hideous thing, and I don’t believe that other girls do it.” She sobbed again then, wailing louder, the sound echoing in the tiny folly.

  He clapped his hands over his ears, unable to bear it another moment, and strode out of the cottage, back down to the house. He had abused Susan, the hospitality of her family and the trust among them, he recognized, but it was not his fault. Blame was to be laid at the feet of all those willing gamblers who had bet he would not succeed.

  Though the first experience of sexual congress is often not pleasant for a woman, Lankin didn’t know that, never having been a lady’s first lover. Had he done it wrong, he wondered, long into the sleepless night, as he tossed and turned on his bed? Or perhaps Susan was just not capable of pleasure, unlike other girls he had been with, who all assured him he was a wonderful lover. Marriage, of course, ensures that a gentleman and lady, as husband and wife, will keep doing the deed, and so improve their relationship, eventually. In this case, he had no incentive to hope he could make her like it another time. He was left with the same sense as one who has eaten something tainted. His lip curled back in disgust and he was revolted by the memory.

  The next morning, she did not come down to breakfast. He had intended to leave, for the wager was won and he needed to return to London to claim his winnings, but some nagging consideration for Susan Bailey’s wellbeing made him stay, at least until he could reassure himself that she was all right.

  She appeared in the middle of the afternoon, dark circles under her eyes and a reproachful expression on her face. That evening, as they sat listening to another house guest playing the piano, she whispered to him, “How could you leave me, Edgar, to make my way back to the house alone? Weren’t you worried for me?”

  “Why would I be? You were safe enough.”

  She didn’t answer, and evidently caught the resentment in his tone. She calmed her expression and when she turned, it was with a softer look. “Edgar, when shall you speak to father?”

  He misunderstood her. “Speak to your father? I ba
rely know the man. And I don’t think he particularly likes me.”

  “But he will expect it!” she said.

  It struck him, then, what she meant. She expected that he would ask her father for her hand in marriage. Of course she did. It was what the night before was supposed to be about, after all. For a moment he was speechless, but then he said, “I don’t wish to rush things, my dearest.”

  Her cheeks paled as she stared at him. If she went on like that, her chaperone, Lady Stoddart, would notice and know something was amiss.

  “Tomorrow,” he said quickly, glancing around the room. The chaperone was, fortunately, a music lover and was tapping out the time with her cane and smiling at the young performer.

  Susan sighed and smiled. “All right. Tomorrow. Would you…would you like to meet me again tonight in the cottage? Not for…you know,” she said, blushing, “but just to talk?”

  “No,” he said. “No, uh, let us not make anyone suspicious.”

  He was gone before first light, the next morning. Over the next few months, he was able to forget about her, he thought. But in the fall of that celebratory year, he heard through Felix Bellwether that she was back in London. Curiosity tickled at him like an incipient itch, and he slipped into an event that she was meant to attend.

  It was a recital, where some wealthy gentleman’s baseborn brat was to prove how accomplished he was so suitable funding could be provided for a European tour. As the violin scratched over taut strings, Lankin crept in and took a seat, glancing about. He spotted Susan almost immediately, and his heart was tugged, just for a moment.

  She looked like she had been ill. She was thin, and the dewy freshness was gone from her skin, replaced by an ashen cast. Lady Stoddart, her chaperone, appeared even more grim than the previous spring. Susan listlessly watched the recital, never looking to the right, or the left, her attitude one of submission.

  After the recital, they all filed into the supper room, and Lankin approached, unable to leave her alone. What did he hope to accomplish? The gambling debt had been collected, her maidenhood was gone and, to his mind, no dire consequences had erupted.

  She turned away from some friend who was speaking animatedly to her, and saw him. In that instant, as she gasped and fell back, he saw all that had happened since his desertion. The hours spent crying, the betrayal she felt, the loss of her innocence that was only partly to do with her deflowering. She whispered something, shook her head and backed up one step, bumping into her friend, who looked up toward Lankin.

  Susan spoke rapidly to her friend, who glared at him as if he were something she had discovered slithering out from beneath a rock in the garden. He was indignant. He had forced Susan Bailey to do nothing. It had been she who suggested meeting at the cottage folly. What had she thought would be the outcome?

  The friend, a plain young lady with glasses, strode toward him and said, “Sir, I suggest you leave immediately, or Susan will do that which she has not seen fit to do as yet, and that is inform her father of the disgusting advantage you took of her.”

  His ire intensified. “Do you know, I think she should go ahead and do that, if she thinks she has been so dishonored.”

  The girl gasped and retreated, scuttling away like a mouse from a dangerous snake. Lankin drifted closer to Susan. Sending her friend to warn him away had the opposite effect. He resented the notion he should hide his face in shame. Society was a male bastion to which men only allowed women access as a favor, his youthful arrogance informed him.

  Instead he stayed, and because of his wealth, which was a well-known quantity in society, he was smiled at by mothers and patted on the back by fathers. Young ladies laughed at his jests and he was invited to more than one home for the upcoming season of frivolity and festivity. “Come down to the country for hunting,” one man said. “Come to Berkshire for Christmas,” said another. “Join us to ring in the new year,” said yet another.

  And all of this while Susan watched, her face bleached of all color, her lips trembling and causing those around her to gaze at her with censure at such a public display of emotion.

  What prompted such callousness on Lankin’s part? In the spring, when he defiled the poor girl, he had congratulated himself that he was not a brute. What had changed in the intervening months? For he was not done with her. Had Susan left that moment, or looked less vulnerable, he probably would have ceased, but every display of emotion urged him to new cruelty, and one particular young lady, an acknowledged diamond, allowed his extravagant flirtation and even left the room with him for a stroll on the terrace.

  When he returned, Susan had left the recital, and that was the end of it. Or so he thought.

  He had rooms, in those days, the top floor of a once extravagant London townhome, now the dominion of an old woman who provided meals, laundry service and cleaning, as well as an airy suite with plenty of space for Lankin and his valet. His horse was kept by the livery down the street, and he could come and go as he pleased.

  That very night, after the recital, he arrived back home from hours in a gambling hell. He had drunk too much, and was staggering, so when a young woman darted out of the shrubbery, he reared back in fright and fell up the steps to the front door.

  “Edgar,” she said. “I have run away from Papa. Please, let us go in to your rooms!”

  It was Susan, but Lankin was too befuddled to do aught but stare at her in dismay that was mingled with drunken outrage. What she was doing was beyond the pale, completely unladylike and faintly disgusting. He was unable to form any thought or deed, though, and in a moment, as he swayed and swore, she snatched the key from his hand and led him up the stairs.

  Over the next few days, while he went about his life as usual, she spent every waking moment (when he was home, and not at a gaming club, White’s, or some other affair) pleading, arguing, berating, browbeating and, when she failed with every other method, petting him, trying to convince him to marry her. Lankin loathed the scenes, was impatient with the petting, and his disgust grew.

  Finally, late one night when he came home a little high, though not stinking, she played her final card. She awaited him in his bed and offered herself again. He made love to her, and this time she did not cry. She lay like a plank, not pretending the amorous delight that more seasoned girls knew elicited the best rewards. It was not his fault, this confirmed for him. Other girls enjoyed his lovemaking. If she didn’t, it was her trouble, not his.

  Even at that moment, late as it was, one approach would have forced him to marriage. If she had gone home, confessed all to her father and let him handle it, Lankin may have been persuaded by the fear of reprisals. It would have become a business transaction. The Baileys were wealthy and had quite a bit of social power as well. Shame had not worked on his heart, but the vivid threat of being cut by society may have. Susan was too tender-hearted to wish him such ill, though. He lived for convivial society. She would do nothing to cause him to be turned away from it.

  His landlady had enough, and when she found the young lady alone, one day, flatly told her she was as stupid as any whore. Susan, finally accepting that Edgar Lankin did not love her enough to change his ways, retreated to her home and those who loved her.

  Lankin gave his landlady a generous tip for cleansing his room of the taint of perfidy and shame, as ripe a stink as ten-day-old fish.

  Susan was shuffled off to the country and did not show her face again in London that season, nor the next, to his knowledge. She was gone, and some said that she had left England altogether. Lankin never saw her again. But the cruelty that began that night in Lankin’s darkening heart grew like a malignant canker, fed with generous helpings of conceit and flattery, and his own sense that he was entitled to all that life could offer, while he owed nothing in return.

  Part 6 - Nightfall

  “You were right, Lankin, that is not a pretty story,” John Hamilton said, as his friend lay gasping for air. “Why behave thus? What did it gain you?”

  One long and
shuddering breath, another drink of cool water for his parched throat, and the man found his voice again. “I can only say, John, that what began as youthful arrogance led to further debauchery and an attitude of languid immorality. I just did not care for anyone but myself.”

  Hamilton appeared troubled, his face drawn and gray with emotion, as he trimmed the wick on the candle and lit another against the approach of the darkest hours of night. “I find it painful to picture you thus, my friend. You were an open-hearted lad, and in these last few months I have seen not only your regret for your past transgressions, but also the real steps you have taken to make up for them. How could the fine mind the Creator gave you be so misled and misused as you are telling me?”

  “You’re kind, John, as always, but you’re forgetting, in your compassion, how I mistreated your friendship when we were lads.” He turned his head and gazed toward the other man, reaching out one bony hand. “The lies I told you, the blame I misdirected on your shoulders, the beatings you took from the headmaster for my sake. You would forget it all, but I haven’t.”

  “Youthful folly,” Hamilton gently said, taking Lankin’s hand, letting their clasped hands lay on the bedclothes.

  “But an accurate barometer indicating the storm of reprehensible deeds to come.”

  Another coughing fit seized Lankin as a pretty maid came in and drew the curtains against the gloom outside the window. Hamilton helped him sit up, gave him a drink of water and then lowered him back to the bed, letting him recover his gasping breath. Finally he lay still and calm, as rain pattered and a changeable wind rattled the sash. The two men were silent until the maid was gone.

  “I know you had many years of dissolution, my friend,” Hamilton said. “Was there a point at which you could have changed, if you had been sufficiently motivated?”

  “Do you mean if I had been sufficiently intelligent?” Lankin asked, with a ghost of a smile. “Oh, yes, there was, John. Shall I tell you about it?”