The Last Days of a Rake (4 page)

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.

“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?”

“If it doesn’t tire you too much. Are you sure you should not be better for some sleep?”

“Sleep, when it comes, will be eternal,” Lankin said. “Let me talk. It occupies the time.”

“Tell me, then.”

Life can be viewed as a body of water; either it is a still pond fed only by rainwater, and therefore stagnant in time, or it moves and refreshes itself as it goes, like a river or stream. Think of that stagnant pond, never changing except in the addition of foul detritus from the animals that live near it. That was Lankin’s life for the next ten years, as he strove to live on as he had in that first heady year of his adulthood. He drank, gambled, stayed out all night, led gangs of young men who boxed the watch and joined the Four-in-Hand club, spending his days careening about London on his yellow barouche, wearing his many-caped coat and driving his matched set of bays.

He found, though, that every season fewer and fewer of his past cronies accompanied him on his revels. They were all getting married, starting families, less and less likely to be free to carouse. Oh, they belonged to the same clubs, but they disappeared from White’s after a quiet supper and some cards. They chatted desultorily amongst themselves, these married men, about what school their junior would attend, and how their money was doing on the exchange. They complained about their wives with affection-tinged irritation, and compared their mistresses, beautiful young women with whom they set up separate establishments.

Few indulged in all night binges anymore. In fact, some began to shun him altogether, and appeared queasy when he bragged of his indiscriminate seductions. He had made the secret “Susan” bet, as it was known to certain members of White’s, a yearly event, and so there was a trail of ten betrayed innocents behind him by then. One fellow club member, a man who in the past could drink all night and charm a duchess at an outdoor breakfast the next day, even took him to task. He was raising a daughter, and said if Lankin came near her, he would shoot him dead, like a mad dog.

Lankin laughed and asked the little girl’s name for future reference, then asked if she promised to be pretty in six years or so. He jested, but the other man challenged him. An intermediary stepped in before it came to blows or pistols. That particular disagreement became legendary in the card room of White’s, but not many of the members supported Lankin, sympathizing with the outraged father in this instance.

Time passed, as it inevitably does, even for those who ignore its passage. Lankin was forced to take up with younger and younger men, or at least, the age of the young men never changed. He was the one getting older. There were fewer, though, accompanying him on his revels. He awoke on his thirty-first birthday and acknowledged that even the young bucks no longer wished to follow his well-trod path to debauchery. His reputation as a rake was firmly established, but at some point the description went from a compliment to an insult.

It was spring of 1821 and the dear, insular island was changing. The government had responded to fomenting reformists with more severe restrictions and more cries against sedition. Old Nappy was dead, and the Regent, that debauched, grotesque figure of ridicule, was now the king, and more august in his reign than he had been in his Regency, with the added gravity and sadness of having lost his only child. The prosperous citizenry of the nation turned toward more conventional morals in reaction to the licentiousness of the passing age and fear of the reforming hordes.

Boredom, Lankin’s besetting sin, was taking its toll. There was no spice to life, until one of his less savory acquaintances came to him with an idea.

Bernard Merkin owned a gambling hell, and one night, as Lankin was at a table winning, Merkin asked him to come back to his sitting room for a glass of brandy. It could have been a ruse to interrupt another winning streak, but Lankin saw something, some sign of mischief, in the old man’s watery eyes, and followed him, intrigued. Once they were settled down with their glasses of amber liquid fire, Merkin observed him for a long moment, then said, “Lankin and Merkin…sounds like a dry goods shop, dontcha think?”

Lankin did not reply, and merely raised his glass, drained it and held it out for more. Merkin refilled it and sat back, watching the younger man.

“You’ve bin coming ‘ere for what, ten years now?” he finally said.

Lankin nodded, waiting.

“Lost some money to me, won some, too. We’re prob’ly ‘bout equal by now.” He sat forward. “Most o’ my clientele are on the red side of the ledger, though, y’know?”

“You wouldn’t still be in business if that weren’t so, Merkin. I do know how a gambling house operates.”

“How’d you like to gamble with my money from now on? You gets to keep whatever you wins?”

“I don’t believe I understand what you’re getting at, old man,” Lankin drawled, sitting back, trying to conceal his sudden spurt of interest.

“I won’t beat about the bushes,” Merkin said. “You’re a right ‘un, Mr. Lankin, sharp as they come. Know when to quit at the cards, know when they’re against you. I can’t afford many customers like you, an’ that’s a fact. My business is built on the fools who think they’re sharp, those what see a ‘pattern’ on the cards, and the others, those what can’t help themselves, but play one more hand, and one more hand, and one more…you know the ones.”

Lankin nodded. He was wealthy, and he stayed wealthy because he was able to walk away when the cards were against him. “Come to the point, Merkin. I’ll drink your brandy all night—and I appreciate that you’ve given me the good stuff, not the watered down horse piss you give club members—but I won’t pay for it in some other way.”

“Aye,” Merkin said, eyeing the other man with appreciation. “Always did like that about you, sir…your straight-to-the-point manner.” He set his glass aside and leaned forward, one hand planted on each knee. “So, I seen you bringing some young gentlemen into my club, an’ we been winning off them pretty good. But they leave too early. I want to dig into their pockets, y’know? I know they got more money.”

“Greedy bastard, aren’t you?” Lankin said with some irritation. “What are you asking?”

“If you could keep them here a little longer, let us get some more of the gold outta their pockets, I’d see you right.”

“I have no interest in bankrupting young men.”

“Not asking you to do that, sir, just let us dig a little deeper.” Merkin eyed him with a sly look. “If you don’t think yer up to it, sir, I’ll understand.”

It was a masterful touch, that combination of insult and challenge. “I would bet I can,” Lankin said, squinting over his glass at the other man. He held it out to be refilled.

“Nah…I ain’t takin’ a bet on that,” Merkin said, tipping the decanter and generously pouring. “Be crazy.”

“What, are you backing off?” Lankin thought for a moment, and said, “Let’s say I bring in a fellow, what would be enough to win such a bet?”

Merkin had not run a gambling house for so long without knowing when a man was bored and in need of diversion, and Lankin had that look about him, the irritability, the shifty gaze, the quick moodiness. “I’d need some honest proof the fella was about to leave, and I’d need to witness his change o’ heart.”

Lankin again drained the glass. “Say I get him to stay at the tables another…three hours, after such a display? Would that do it?”

“Done,” Merkin said, quickly. “But he’ll have to lose a pile. Otherwise how would I know you hadn’t set it up with the fella to just stay one for a while?”

“Are you implying I would cheat you? You, sir, are no gentleman.”

“No, I ain’t. Thank God.”

Mollified, Lankin chuckled. Terms of the bet were discussed and they shook hands on it. The very next evening Lankin surveyed the suitable youngsters at White’s, and found several new candidates, inviting them one at a time to Merkin’s gambling club. In a season of overwhelming boredom, the challenge added some spice to his bland life.

The first fellow was adamant and unshakable. Once he had lost a few thousand pounds, he headed for the door and Lankin was unable to persuade him to stay to try to “change his luck.” Merkin smirked at that, and raised his eyebrows. Lankin swore to do better with the next fellow. Alcohol, the sly demon that perched on many a man’s shoulder for his whole life, digging at him and urging him on to downward paths, must be his tool.

The next night, Lankin came to Merkin’s club with a fresh-faced sprig of the noble tribe. Viscount Trilby, a stripling of twenty-one, strolled into the gambling hell with an excited quiver, like a hound that has scented the game. Three hours later, as he lost a thousand pounds more than his yearly allowance, he began to look haunted, and miserably told Lankin he had to leave. Four hours after that, Trilby was staggering drunk and had signed markers for ten thousand pounds.

Merkin nodded in appreciation as he sidled up to Lankin. “I underestimated you, sir,” he murmured, his words concealed from the other patrons by the noise of the tables. “You got him in nice and deep.”

The praise merely spurred Lankin to fresh efforts. “You haven’t seen anything yet. Watch this.” With a deftly timed barb aimed at the young man’s gambling acumen, he incited him to add his signature to another marker, extending his credit by another ten thousand pounds. By dawn, the young viscount had committed himself to fifty thousand pounds.

That very day the lad was banished to the country by his father. The marker was paid, using loans from the moneylenders, and Lankin was banished from White’s. The unfairness of such an expulsion, after a decade of dues and attendance, had him raging and looking for vengeance.

Merkin’s coffers gained from that quest for revenge, while several titled and untitled, but wealthy, families suffered. Being barred from White’s merely meant Lankin sought out the sons of club members at other watering holes in the city. He led several to their doom in Merkin’s hell, taking particular glee in destroying their family finances, each destruction a blow for the injustice done to him.

But his enterprise with Merkin did not mean Lankin had not made the wager he undertook every spring with whatever White’s club denizens covertly took part. His absolute success in the yearly “Susan” gamble meant he had few who would go against him, but this particular year, the bet had changed slightly. The gaming men of White’s had protested that he rigged the wager each year by choosing a beauty who was vulnerable in some way through recent loss (Eleanor, in 1812, who had lost her parents a year earlier, and so was still soft from the emotions) or one whose chaperone was bribable (Diane, in 1819, whose chaperone was greedy and poor, and so amenable to some gold to look the other way while Lankin took Diane walking, then took her innocence). This year, they had chosen, as the object, a particular frozen beauty who they judged to be both more intelligent than the previous “Susans” and less emotional.

Miss Harriet Lascelles, at twenty-one, was beautiful and haughty. Ambitious men sought her for the grandeur of her family’s estate, which rivaled an earldom in its sweep and wealth, and for the connections she could bring to a marriage. Her father was one of those rare men of the gentility to whom “trade” was not an epithet, and so, for the new breed of ambitious young man who haunted High Change, she was a pearl beyond price. Lankin didn’t want any of that, he just wanted her maidenhead.

Brooding about his eviction from White’s, Lankin was in a care nothing mood. Even ruining the heirs of members was not soothing his wounded sense of privilege. It was doubtful that the wager still stood, as all the bettors were club men, but once Lankin made a bet he would accomplish it or die trying. He had made what he thought was progress on Miss Lascelles. She did not glare through him, as she had at first, nor did she ignore his overtures. In a reckless mood one night, he approached her more openly than was his habit. Her chaperone, a beady-eyed beldame, made sure to guide Miss Lascelles away from Lankin, but the young lady would not be so sternly directed.

She evaded the chaperone. “Walk with me, Mr. Lankin,” she said in her bored, cultured tone.

From there the night progressed speedily, until by the end, Lankin had agreed to be outside her London townhouse at three in the morning. He wasn’t even sure he liked Miss Lascelles. She was unfeminine in her manner, he thought, too bold, too openly aware of her ability to manipulate the male population. But if she wished to aid him in winning his bet in such an audacious manner, he would not fight it. It would allow him to flaunt his victory, collect his winnings and then gladly be shed of London for the season. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he was sick of the city, his former friends, and even of himself, though he would never admit it.

Change was in the air, but Lankin had never been equipped to recognize or adjust to transformation.