The Last Days of a Rake (6 page)

“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 might 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.”

But his friend’s question reverberated through Hamilton’s being. How could Lankin receive absolution for sins that had their most devastating effect on others? Hamilton believed in absolution. A compassionate God would not allow mankind to wallow in sin without some offer of salvation. It was troubling, though, to wonder, and he contemplated how one man’s selfishness can have repercussions that would echo through time for perhaps a century or more. Susan Bailey, disgraced and possibly dead. If she had lived, would she have given the world a great composer, or a statesman? If Viscount Trilby had not lost a fortune and been banished home, would he have become a worthy diplomat, helping their dear England to forge a more perfect relationship with some other nation?

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, and so on down the line until a kingdom was razed.

“John!” Lankin gasped.

“Yes, my friend, I am here,” Hamilton said, kneeling by his friend’s bed, watching him as the first gray light of dawn began to peep in between the gap in the curtains.

“Find…find Susan Bailey, if she is alive. Tell her…” He trailed off, choking like a fish on the bank of the river, drowning in air.

Hamilton prayed, as he gathered Lankin to his chest, then gently said, “Yes, Edgar? What do you want me to tell her?”

“Tell her…my last thoughts on earth were of her, and the wrong I did her. Tell her…I’m sorry.” Lankin sighed, the sound of expired breath not followed by one of intake.

~End

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