The Last Days of a Rake

sickly city tree outside his window.
    “If you had passed her by, she would have been ‘born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible’?” Hamilton quoted.
    “I knew you would have a Biblical verse, my better friend.” Lankin paused to catch his breath and looked over at the other man. “Why do you stay, when I abused even you in my past miserable life?”
    “A friend is tested not by smiles and handshakes, but by insults and rebuffs.”
    “You are a well-tested friend.”
    “Tell me the story, then, of Susan,” Hamilton said, as shadows deepened, creeping across the floor like a stealthy intruder on velvet shod feet. He got up and lit a taper from the smoldering fire, placing the candle on a small table between his chair and Lankin’s bed.
    “Fill my water glass, and I will pretend it is wine one last time. Then I will speak of Susan, and some of those who came after. If you don’t mind, I will take on the conceit of speaking of myself in the third person, as a good storyteller must.”
    “Be my Scheherazade, my good friend,” Hamilton said, his tone mild. The flickering candlelight shadowed his eyes, concealing the sorrow within them.
    “If only by playing Scheherazade I could delay the inevitable, like that wondrous woman, but it may be that God is less merciful even than her king. I will not hesitate, and I will not spare myself in the telling. Prepare to hear that which will shock, dismay and disappoint you.”

Part 2 - Susan
    When one is looking forward, the days of youth seem to stretch out along a shining path to forever. Once one is past them, though, the path behind contracts until, from the other end, it appears the merest garden walk, a few steps from the sheltering doorway of youth to the squalid dead-end street of fate. The beginning of a life journey is full of promise, and rarely is any destination forecast.
    It was June of 1811; to Edgar Godolphin Lankin, just up from Oxford and wealthy due to the untimely death of an unlamented grandparent, the path ahead gleamed gold. Possessed of all the arrogance of youth, he was at the first step, as thoughtless and callow as any young man of wealth and moderate good looks could be. He had never absorbed the precious traits of humility and decency others he knew in school embodied. In fact, he made fun of such men, thinking himself above them.
    So, in that glittering era, Lankin, with no need to form any intent beyond his own pleasure, set out to make his mark on London. Instead of the Godly or studious fellows like his worthy friend John Hamilton, who combined a religious nature with a scientific mind, he took as his pattern the Regent, that promulgator of all that was worldly, beautiful, artistic and licentious. That brilliant fellow was showing just how much he cared for his poor mad pater by holding a revelry at Carlton House—that brilliant palace of dreams—the like of which the world had never seen. All around the city festivities like the Carlton House debauch were in full gaudy bloom. Lankin, as a wealthy and indolent man about town with impeccable connections, had been invited to a few.
    Now, before progressing further, it is important to know that in the dream that was his life, Lankin was the center, the beau ideal, the prize beyond price. To his thinking he united a unique sensibility, an appreciation for beauty, an understanding of humankind that was rare and precious, fitting him to be a man of the world, an epicure and a sybarite. If he had been a lesser man this attitude would have been ludicrous, but he was just wealthy, just discriminating and just handsome enough to justify such conceit. He attracted flatterers, sycophants, that tribe whose members will stay for champagne and sweetmeats, but abandon ship when it begins to founder and sink. Their horde is verminous, like so many flea-bit rats.
    But who can blame them? It has ever been so in society. Money, after all, will buff away perceived faults into the appearance of glass. He was handsome, women said—too often in front of him—for again, wealth will often buy good looks. He was intelligent, though not wise, and witty, though not kind. He emulated Beau and Byron, and had his ticket for White’s on St. James, after rejecting invitations to join Boodle’s and the Alfred.
    The night he met Susan he was as drunk as a young man should be after two bottles of claret and one of hock. But his mind was clearing, since he had cast up his accounts in the