The Last Days of a Rake Read online

  His mind went back, unbidden to Susan, sweet Susan, who had given her virginity in the misguided assurance that he wished to marry her. Could Miss Lascelles have the same thought? Impossible. They had exchanged a few dozen words, and this night’s adventure was all her idea. He had a carriage waiting, and as he put her in it, he noted, by lantern-light, the smug expression on her face. What did it mean? He climbed in and took a seat beside her.

  She turned to him and said, “So, Mr. Lankin, shall we proceed with the seduction? Your little cottage, perhaps? You have one in Chelsea, and I have heard it described as quaint.”

  He was taken aback and simply stared at her, and then tapped the roof of the carriage to start the driver. They were indeed headed to his cottage, a recent purchase few knew about. Regaining his composure, he slid closer to her and caressed her arm. She knew what they were about so there was no need for such finesse, but he was like an old carriage horse that turns the way it always has, on a well-worn route home. Flattery first, then some gentle lovemaking before moving on to the manipulation necessary to convince a woman to part with her most valuable asset, her virginity. “I have never seen a young lady so…so confident and lovely. You have inspired me to—”

  “Mr. Lankin, such old-fashioned manners!” She hooted with laughter, her pretty face alight with mischief, and batted his hand. It was the most emotion she had shown so far. “I am all agog to see your little love nest.” She leaned forward and peered out of the window.

  Lankin was silent, unsure how to proceed with such an unorthodox young woman. When they reached the cottage he silently handed her down, and she strode up to the door and waited for him to unlock it with all the subtlety of a prostitute. It was dreadfully off-putting. Seduction, when the object was so bold and forward, could hardly be called seduction, unless he were the one being solicited for his favors. He let her in and she walked the rooms, her ecru lace gown in the fashion of those days high-waisted, the silhouette slim, brushing the floor with a soft shush of sound, like waves on the shore.

  “A very pretty lair, sir,” she said, as he lit a candle and a lantern.

  His housekeeper was roused and provided them with glasses and wine with which to toast the illicit activity which brought them there. Lankin was confounded for a subject that did not sound ridiculous. In fact, he was baffled how to proceed without seeming utterly absurd.

  She seemed to sense his confusion, for she turned from admiring the painting over the fireplace and smiled at him, lifting her wine glass in a salute, and then downed the liquid in one gulp. “Shall we?” She took his hand and led him down the hall to the bedchamber.

  It soon became apparent to him that his bet was null and void, as the lady did not possess that which he was supposed to take. The “lovemaking” was quick and pedestrian. He had performed poorly, he felt. He sat on the edge of the bed while she drew on her stockings and pulled her chemise over her head.

  “Please don’t feel too badly, Mr. Lankin, at your failure to provide any pleasure to me,” she said, her gaze deliberately malicious as she eyed his naked form with a withering glance. Her melodious voice was throaty with spite, as she continued, “I shall tell no one how pitiful you are at this endeavor. I wouldn’t want to damage your hard-earned reputation, or spoil whatever future debauchment you intend.”

  He sprang to his feet, thrust his arms into a robe and whirled to confront her. “What kind of unfeminine woman are you, to behave thus? You have no becoming modesty. You’re shrill, coarse, without the delicacy to—”

  “To what, feign reluctance?” She glared at him in disgust. “Or to have the insipidity to fall in love with you, as my cousin, Susan Bailey, did?”

  The name struck him and he gaped at her like a landed fish.

  “Oh yes, Susan was my cousin.” She smiled, but there was no softer emotion in her expression, only loathing.

  “Was?” he asked, and his voice echoed sadly in the cold room.

  “Didn’t anyone tell you?” she said, her eyes flashing fury as she stalked around the room toward the door. “My dear, sweet, vulnerable cousin Susan, despairing in her unwavering love for you, ran away with a violin master and took too much laudanum in Venice. She died. Hopefully, for her eternal soul’s sake, not a suicide.”

  She walked out, and the next day Lankin heard that Miss Harriet Lascelles was engaged to a wealthy earl, a secret engagement just then being revealed. The couple was to be married within the month. Being the object of the White’s bet that Season had been rigged between her and a male friend to end the long-standing “Susan” wager with a failure.

  Part 10 - Morti Della Notte

  “Poor Miss Bailey died?” Hamilton asked Lankin.

  “I was meant to think so, but could never confirm it through any source and now believe Miss Lascelles was lying out of justifiable anger and spite. How could she do aught but despise me?” Lankin took in a long, shuddering breath. “The young lady did me a great service in forcing me to consider what my behavior led to. I am humbly grateful.”

  Silence, then, as both men thought about what may have happened to Miss Bailey.

  “What time is it, John?”

  “It is midnight. Listen. You can hear bells toll the hour.” Distant church bells, muffled by the rain, sounded.

  “The witching hour. The dead of night. Morti della notte. Will you stay with me yet, to wait for dawn?”

  “I will, of course.”

  “You’re very kind to me. Let me just close my eyes for a moment.” Lankin shivered as the last toll melted away in the night.

  Though it was warm in the room, Hamilton fetched another blanket from the maid, who awaited orders in the hall.

  The girl anxiously asked, “How is the master, sir?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  Tears pooled in the girl’s blue eyes. “He’s such a kind and gentle man. It’s not right that God should treat him so cruelly. Why does the Lord do such things, sir?”

  “It is not for us to know, Mary. He has a larger plan for each of us, we are told.” Hamilton touched her shoulder gently, then went back into his friend’s room and laid the blanket over him. As he watched Lankin’s irregular pulse fluttering weakly in his throat, he reflected on the different faces men present through their lives.

  Where in the past Lankin—the last true “rake” of the Regency years—was a dangerous roué, capable of seducing a maid or a lady, he was now, in the first years of the newly-married Queen Victoria’s reign, an object of pity for a pretty little housemaid. Hamilton would not tell his old friend, for it would only depress him further. Hamilton settled back down in his chair and picked up his book, thinking his old friend might sleep for a while, or even drift into the eternal rest. He was startled, then, by his voice.

  “If I had been half the man I should have been,” Lankin said, his eyes still closed, “I would have reformed that moment and made a new start.”

  It took a minute to remember what he was talking about, but Hamilton soon was back to the story, of Miss Lascelles and her announcement to her “conquest”. “Why did you not?” he asked, genuinely curious. “You were one of the most intelligent lads at school, far brighter than I. What made you so obtuse to the path that would have brought you some satisfaction and lasting happiness in life?”

  “Stubbornness. Conceit. Indolence.”

  “Did you have no friends to guide you? No one whose advice you trusted?”

  With great effort, Lankin turned his face to his friend and regarded him, a ghostly smile fleeting across his lips. “John, add to the previous named lovely qualities a willful and spiteful disregard for the advice of others,” he said.

  “So, the bet was null and void, as Miss Lascelles was not a virgin. Did you tell the men of White’s the truth?”

  “No. I was shocked to the core and retreated from everything for a few days. Then I told myself I was bored with London. That was the truth, I suppose, but the boredom could have been mended in a more positive manner
if I had then decided to try my hand at some occupation. Writing, perhaps, or good works, as dreadful as that sounds. Instead, I set out on my travels. The journey began that spring which would eventually bring me to this bed, and my last night, my last friend.”

  Moved beyond mere pity, Hamilton surreptitiously wiped the moisture from his eyes, cleared his throat and said, “Do you wish to tell me?”

  Lankin chuckled, wheezed, and coughed, taking a long few minutes to recover. Finally, he said, “Did you think I would save the rest of my tale for another day, John?”

  Part 11 - The Spell of the Poppy

  Lankin left London, though he did not know where he was going. Italy was too cultured and cynical for him, he found, Germany too cold and ascetic. Russia too grim, Turkey too lavish, France too broken. He drifted to India, where a fine balance existed between English reserve and Eastern pleasure seeking. It suited him, he found, and he wandered the country, sitting with low-caste outcasts sharing a hookah, and visiting with the son of the Mughal ruler, (with whom he debated Hindu and Mussulman philosophy) enjoying the deliciously spicy food, so refreshing to a jaded palate, and learning about Hindu history.

  The women were gorgeous, sinuously beautiful, doe-eyed and cultured in ways no Englishwomen ever would be. The Mughal believed that multiple wives were a blessing, and Lankin was intrigued. However stifling one wife, in the English tradition, seemed, would having many wives be more or less restrictive? Unfortunately for Lankin, the ladies were also well-guarded. As curious as they seemed about him, they were never allowed to be alone.

  Finally, though, he tired of traveling and became weary of his cultural exploration. At a little entrepôt along the Indian coast, Lankin found other like-minded Englishmen, weary of the world, bored with their privileged lot in life. He became curious about their habits, especially after coming across a fellow he knew in school, who now spent most of his days in an ecstatic trance. He was one of the infamous opium eaters.

  Lankin joined him, finding in opium an antidote for the tedium of life. In this endeavor Lankin was a more original De Quincey, for he took to opium eating in the garden of its creation, rather than the squalid streets of London. But that originality was barren of meaning, for at least De Quincey produced a great literary work out of his habit. All Lankin did was smoke, eat opium, drink and carouse with frowsier and frowsier expatriate Englishwomen—runaway wives, penurious prostitutes—sickly sybarites all. He became thin, wasting away in his addiction to the spell of the poppy.

  To understand that time and place, one must know that all who became slaves to the wretched flower were looking to soothe pain, whether physical or spiritual. Lankin’s pain stemmed from his resolute refusal to accept his deficiencies. He was intent on protecting his view of himself as a fine fellow indeed. Any evidence to the contrary was stifled, and inevitably that layer upon layer of suppressed truth caused immense suffering.

  Opium is a delicious deceiver. It gives the eater the illusion of wealth, of endless time, of years and years of life in one night that stretches on for eons. Lankin contracted the illness that would ultimately end his life, for consumption follows naturally upon addiction. But the nature of opium is such that he had wasted to a hull of his former self before he even recognized he was ill. He forgot to eat for days at a time, forgot anything but the sweet narcotic haze, during which he would walk for hours, marveling at the palaces and splendor, only to finally lose the illusion as the drug wore off, when he would find himself in a slum of truly horrifying depravity.

  He spiraled deeper and deeper, funding not only his own addiction, but that of others. Hangers-on flattered and curried favor with him. They were his friends until he ran out of money, when they drifted away, only to show up again when a draft came in from his bank.

  Then one day he awoke, as if from a dream, and discovered that seven years had passed. How had it happened? It seemed just a few minutes ago he was wandering some riverbank and thinking how lovely India was on first look, and now he had spent over one-fifth of his life as if in a dream. It was a horrible moment, but worse was in store when he gazed at his ravaged face in the mirror and saw the truth in his eyes. He was dying.

  It is strange how in the face of such knowledge the heart and soul returns to the past and the comfort of old philosophies, old beliefs. Did God—Lankin’s God, not the pantheon of Indian lore—love him, even when he had strayed repeatedly so far from the safe shores of Christian hope? Could he return to the breast of the Savior, or was he lost forever? It was not that Lankin thought the Indian religion diabolical, but it was not suited to an Englishman who felt the need for some recognizable comfort, that of the pulpit and the pastor, the scolding of the wretch, the reassurance of the confessional. There was an English minister in the little entrepôt who was a particularly good fellow, not one of his multitudinous tribe who would fault a fellow for enjoying a bottle of wine or a woman’s charms. He went to this man, asked for his help and the fellow’s advice was quick and to the point. Lankin should go home.

  England. What is it about a man’s life that no matter where he has been, no matter how varied his experience, that word is a charm upon the senses, bringing with it the scent of heather and the feel of mist on the face, pudding bubbling in a stew pot, coal smoke and an hundred other sensory experiences? Whatever it is, it worked upon Lankin, and he remembered his youth with a nostalgic longing, a desire to return to his home country, the green pastures of Kent and the shore of the gray churning Channel, seabirds wheeling above. That single meeting and the minister’s advice, became a pivot. Lankin turned and looked back in horror. He had wasted forty years on self-indulgence and self-deception.

  He rallied and returned to England, but what a changed country! The last George was dead and England was crisscrossed with iron leviathans belching steam and whistling imperiously to oxen and cattle and sheep to get out of their self-important and unmovable path. Rail, in its infancy when Lankin left his country to travel, had become a full-blown adolescent, importunate and noisy. Even so, he was grateful to be home. The bracing Channel wind seemed to sweep from him the lingering lassitude that kept him in the thrall of opium, and he left his addiction on the boat like an undesirable piece of luggage.

  The climate was not kind, though, and Lankin soon found that the cold and damp exacerbated his illness. Should he stay? Or should he go, perhaps to prolong his life, to Spain or Portugal?

  Part 12 - Departing at Dawn

  “But you decided to stay here.”

  Lankin nodded, his eyes closed. “That was…three years ago. I spent the intervening time repenting, John. Oh yes, a penitent I have become. And good deeds—while I was able—I did them by the score, but the lives I ruined weigh on me like Coleridge’s albatross.” He opened his eyes, and his gaze, wretched with suffering, fixed on Hamilton. “What good is penance, my friend? What good, I ask?”

  Hamilton ordered a cool, damp cloth from the teary-eyed maid and pressed it to Lankin’s fevered brow. He muttered a prayer under his breath, then, donning his clerical robe and retrieving his Bible, he knelt by his friend and performed the ritual of absolution, which Lankin’s confessions seemed to deserve.

  “Penance, my friend, has cleansed your soul of the guilt of your past behavior. The Lord has put away all your sins.”

  “How can that be,” Lankin whispered, “when every person I have harmed bears the burden of my sin?” He coughed, spitting blood into a snowy handkerchief, and it was ten minutes before he could continue, but when he did, he said, “Those girls—the poor girls I seduced and betrayed—and the young men, the ones who I induced to bankrupt their families…What good does my absolution do to them?”

  Honesty would not allow Hamilton to offer false reassurance. “Not one iota of good, Edgar.”

  Lankin nodded, his eyes closed and his breath rattling in his throat. Hamilton regarded his friend’s wan face with compassion, and leaned over, giving him a sip of cool water. Placing the glass back on the table, knowing it migh
t be the last time he did that, he gently said, “You must forgive yourself, my friend, because you have confessed and received absolution for your part in their downfall. Somewhere, somehow, I pray that each of those men and women are confessing their own responsibility, for you did not force anyone to follow your lead.”

  The patter of driving rain on the window and the rattling of the sash were the only sounds in the room for a long time, time that Hamilton spent in prayer and in contemplation of Lankin’s tale, and his life, and his ultimate penitence. Straw on the street outside deadened the sound of carriages passing, a tribute to the dying man inside.

  How many men like Lankin were there, fellows who may have done good but out of lassitude, instead, did evil? It puzzled Hamilton that evil was so often the easier path, while good required effort and dedication. Was there another path, a neutral one that meandered between resolute evil and shining good?

  Perhaps there was. If Lankin had confined his sexual transgressions to women who were already firmly on the path downward, and if he had confined his gambling to his own pocket, what evil would there really have been? The Susan Baileys and Viscount Trilbys would have chosen their own path, for good or for evil, instead of being led astray. There was no saying they would have chosen correctly—they showed their weakness when they gave in to Lankin’s coaxing—but at least the dishonor would not have soiled Lankin’s immortal soul.

  He believed in the redemptive power of forgiveness; he had to, as an honest man of the cloth. Finally, Reverend Hamilton murmured, “Almighty God, look on this man, Edgar Lankin, your servant, lying in great weakness, and comfort him with the promise of life everlasting, given in the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”