The Last Days of a Rake

cried, his tone full of anguish as he pulled away from her yet again.
    She caught him to her, laying her head on his chest. “Tell me, my dearest, tell me. What can I do?”
    At that moment, fate intervened. At first, Lankin thought it was the end of his plot, just when he had her where he wanted her, but as it turned out, it was quite the opposite.
    “Susan!” a loud voice trumpeted. It was Lady Stoddart. She had awoken to find her charge gone.
    “I have to go.” Susan softly said, looking over her shoulder toward the opening to the treed copse.
    “Susan Bailey, where are you?” The voice was getting louder.
    Trembling, Susan gazed up into Lankin’s eyes. “Meet me here tonight, about midnight,” she whispered. “I shall steal away after it is thought that I am abed. Meet me here—or rather, meet me at the cottage.”
    “The cottage?” he asked.
    “Yes. It is a folly on the hill in the copse of alders. You will see it if you go just beyond the stew pond and up the hill. Meet me there at midnight.” She fled from him on light feet, but looked back just before leaving the bower and blew him a kiss.
    He caught it and put it to his chest. He knew in his heart that he had her, then. She would surrender. Triumph tempered by trepidation surged through him.

Part 4 - Reflection
    The room was silent after Lankin’s long, rambling story, and Hamilton thought his friend might be sleeping, but he turned his gaunt face toward the other man and sighed. Shrugging, Lankin turned his face away again before speaking.
    “It was the moment in my life when I had the potential to go toward light and life and normalcy, or toward darkness and self-indulgence and loathsome hardheartedness,” Lankin said, staring at the ceiling. “I think you can guess which choice I, in my benighted idiocy, took.”
    Hamilton watched him for a long moment, then said, “What was it that made your decision for you? The young lady was only doing what hundreds of girls do every season, what they are taught from the cradle to do—seek the safety and security of a kindhearted husband.”
    “I’ve told you, John, I was willful, conceited and concerned only with my own happiness.”
    “I’m not sure how your happiness could be secured by ruining her life?”
    Lankin smiled, a ghostly rictus grin. “Ah, see, John, even you cannot help but judge. But you have the right of it. How can happiness ever be secured by someone else’s pain?” His smile died, for he was beyond stamina for such a bold expression. “How to explain?” he muttered.
    He was silent for a long while. The house settled, as all old buildings do, like an ancient beldame, bones creaking and grateful sighs spilling from partly open lips. It groaned and muttered and finally silenced in the fitful sleep of the elderly. Hamilton began to wonder if his friend had given up the ghost, and was about to get a mirror to check for breath.
    “I haven’t a real answer, John. I was absorbed wholly in my own wants, and I did not wish my pleasure-seeking life to end. I had made the bet, and I would win it. That’s all.”
    “Tell me, then, what happened. But not in detail. I have no stomach for the downfall of such a sweet young lady as you have described.”
    “Now you begin to understand my revulsion, when I look back on my youth. I will continue, though, not sparing myself, but not giving the most intimate details of poor Susan’s downfall.”

Part 5 - The Cottage
    The moon, a lustrous and beautiful lady in nacreous robes, strolled across the heavens as Lankin slipped from the house and across the broad lawn. He arrived early at the cottage, a small, tidy hermit’s hut tucked in a copse of swaying young alders, and paced anxiously on the crest of the hill overlooking the manse. Now, at the very point of winning his bet, misgivings plagued him. If he left that moment, Susan would stay as she was, a virtuous and sweet young lady. Perhaps she would complain to her friends about her heart being broken by his defection, but that would merely add to her cache among the other girls who all longed for courtship, love and broken hearts.
    But he’d lose his bet, bitter medicine for an inveterate gambler. For just that moment he resented the hold the other bettors had on him. Was he not a free man to walk away if he wanted? In that one moment, by the moon’s gracious light, he glimpsed the truth. He would never be free as long as he allowed others to hold him in the iron grip of