The Last Days of a Rake Read Online Free PDF Page B

“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