The Last Days of a Rake

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