The Last Days of a Rake (5 page)

Lankin began coughing, and Hamilton offered him laudanum once more, because the pain was wracking him most terribly.

His gaunt face drawn with suffering, Lankin gasped, “No, John, no laudanum! I don’t expect to see dawn, but I will not go from this life without a struggle, nor will I die in a drugged haze. I spent my life running from the truth, but this final certainty I shall stare in the face like a man and accept.”

“My dear friend,” Hamilton said, his voice thick with pity. “You don’t know you are at death’s door. You may yet rally. You’ve done so before, or so you’ve told me.”

Lankin lay shivering and retching with his body’s perturbations. When he could speak again, he said, “I wish that were so, but this time is different.” He paused, staring at the ceiling, his lean face gray even in the warm light of the candles Hamilton had lit. “I felt something different coming over me that night. If I had understood myself better, I might have changed the course of my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“That night, with Miss Lascelles. Oddly enough, though it was her idea to meet me, and I knew she was in a reckless mood and felt sure of winning my bet, I quailed at the thought. One more maiden to despoil should not have mattered, but I had begun to be a little sick of myself by then. I glimpsed the truth; men were using me, making sport of me, but the true cost was borne by others, by the young ladies and fellows. Even as I led those poor lads to poverty and shame in Merkin’s gambling hell, so the men I knew—the ones who called me friend and clapped me on the shoulder and offered me a drink—led me down paths to truly indecent depths. And I, idiot lamb that I was, let it happen.”

“You’re claiming innocence?” Hamilton said, his tone showing his revulsion at the notion.

“No, no, of course not. Not innocence.” He was silent for a moment, but continued, saying, “I’m not sure how to explain it. The culpability rests with me alone. I was led, at least at first, but I chose my actions as surely as, though society dictates I must wear a waistcoat, I choose the tailor and the fabric and style.”

“So did you meet her that night? And if you did, did you recognize then how wrong you were?” Hamilton asked.

“If I did, John, I would have become a better man then and there. I can’t explain it. I knew what I was doing was wrong and did it anyway, caring nothing for the consequences. It has taken all my life and this illness to change me, to show me the ungodly path I trod for so long. Too late, I fear.” He chuckled, a dry rattle in his throat, followed by another coughing fit and a long silence, with only his wheezing efforts to regain his breath to break the stillness. “Witness God’s sense of humor.”

“How could you resist the truth, if you were beginning to see it?”

“As men have ever withstood the truth when it showed them in a bad light. I wore blinkers, black stuff blinders over my eyes so I could say, with honesty, that I saw nothing wrong with my life as it was.”

Silence fell between them again, but finally Lankin said, “There is more that happened after that night, more wickedness and weakness that allowed me to resist the truth for so long, but that comes after my night with Miss Harriet Lascelles.”

“Do you feel strong enough to continue your story now, my poor friend?”

“I do.”

Lankin waited under Miss Lascelles’s window that night in a fever of impatience, but it was not for the honor of taking her virginity that he was so eager. Rather, it was the end of the bet, so he could collect, flaunting his success in the faces of his former friends at White’s. He had pictured the end, with him entering the forbidden rooms, demanding the betting book, and signing his name to his triumph. In the case of the annual “Susan” bet, the book never detailed exactly what the wager concerned, of course, but was couched in delicate terms, such as “Mr. Edgar Lankin has bet that he will succeed in a certain endeavor agreed to by…” It then listed the other men who bet he would not succeed. By signing their names, they all agreed they understood the terms and would pay up upon Lankin’s word of honor—laughable phrase, given the object of the bet—that he had succeeded. Right-thinking gentlemen would have abhorred the wager, but the participants were careful to keep the exact details of the bet a secret from the stuffier club members.

If Lankin achieved his goal that night, then he would go the next afternoon to the club, sign his name, collect his winnings and tell them all what he thought. Nagging in his mind was one question only the men of White’s could answer: Why had ten years of betting on taking a young lady’s virginity been allowable, but leading young men astray into financial ruin was not? Both events ended in a youth disappointing societal constraints in some way, but only the second had resulted in something more than being called a rascal and a rake.

Lankin had never been adept at analyzing his own actions, nor asking himself soul-searching questions, but for the first time in his life he asked himself, what was it like to be a woman? Horrifying thought, but once it occurred to him it would not let him go. As he spotted Miss Lascelles above where he stood in an alley, ready to climb out her window as if they were eloping to Gretna, he wondered what compelled her to break away from her chaperone and family?

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.

“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?”

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?