Love and Scandal (2010) (6 page)

Lankin left London, though he did not know where he was going. Italy was too cultured and cynical for him, he found, Germany too cold and ascetic. Russia too grim, Turkey too lavish, France too broken. He drifted to India, where a fine balance existed between English reserve and Eastern pleasure seeking. It suited him, he found, and he wandered the country, sitting with low-caste outcasts sharing a hookah, and visiting with the son of the Mughal ruler, (with whom he debated Hindu and Mussulman philosophy) enjoying the deliciously spicy food, so refreshing to a jaded palate, and learning about Hindu history.

The women were gorgeous, sinuously beautiful, doe-eyed and cultured in ways no Englishwomen ever would be. The Mughal believed that multiple wives were a blessing, and Lankin was intrigued. However stifling one wife, in the English tradition, seemed, would having many wives be more or less restrictive? Unfortunately for Lankin, the ladies were also well-guarded. As curious as they seemed about him, they were never allowed to be alone.

Finally, though, he tired of traveling and became weary of his cultural exploration. At a little entrepôt along the Indian coast, Lankin found other like-minded Englishmen, weary of the world, bored with their privileged lot in life. He became curious about their habits, especially after coming across a fellow he knew in school, who now spent most of his days in an ecstatic trance. He was one of the infamous opium eaters.

Lankin joined him, finding in opium an antidote for the tedium of life. In this endeavor Lankin was a more original De Quincey, for he took to opium eating in the garden of its creation, rather than the squalid streets of London. But that originality was barren of meaning, for at least De Quincey produced a great literary work out of his habit. All Lankin did was smoke, eat opium, drink and carouse with frowsier and frowsier expatriate Englishwomen—runaway wives, penurious prostitutes—sickly sybarites all. He became thin, wasting away in his addiction to the spell of the poppy.

To understand that time and place, one must know that all who became slaves to the wretched flower were looking to soothe pain, whether physical or spiritual. Lankin's pain stemmed from his resolute refusal to accept his deficiencies. He was intent on protecting his view of himself as a fine fellow indeed. Any evidence to the contrary was stifled, and inevitably that layer upon layer of suppressed truth caused immense suffering.

Opium is a delicious deceiver. It gives the eater the illusion of wealth, of endless time, of years and years of life in one night that stretches on for eons. Lankin contracted the illness that would ultimately end his life, for consumption follows naturally upon addiction. But the nature of opium is such that he had wasted to a hull of his former self before he even recognized he was ill. He forgot to eat for days at a time, forgot anything but the sweet narcotic haze, during which he would walk for hours, marveling at the palaces and splendor, only to finally lose the illusion as the drug wore off, when he would find himself in a slum of truly horrifying depravity.

He spiraled deeper and deeper, funding not only his own addiction, but that of others. Hangers-on flattered and curried favor with him. They were his friends until he ran out of money, when they drifted away, only to show up again when a draft came in from his bank.

Then one day he awoke, as if from a dream, and discovered that seven years had passed. How had it happened? It seemed just a few minutes ago he was wandering some riverbank and thinking how lovely India was on first look, and now he had spent over one-fifth of his life as if in a dream. It was a horrible moment, but worse was in store when he gazed at his ravaged face in the mirror and saw the truth in his eyes. He was dying.

It is strange how in the face of such knowledge the heart and soul returns to the past and the comfort of old philosophies, old beliefs. Did God—Lankin's God, not the pantheon of Indian lore—love him, even when he had strayed repeatedly so far from the safe shores of Christian hope? Could he return to the breast of the Savior, or was he lost forever? It was not that Lankin thought the Indian religion diabolical, but it was not suited to an Englishman who felt the need for some recognizable comfort, that of the pulpit and the pastor, the scolding of the wretch, the reassurance of the confessional. There was an English minister in the little entrepôt who was a particularly good fellow, not one of his multitudinous tribe who would fault a fellow for enjoying a bottle of wine or a woman's charms. He went to this man, asked for his help and the fellow's advice was quick and to the point. Lankin should go home.

England. What is it about a man's life that no matter where he has been, no matter how varied his experience, that word is a charm upon the senses, bringing with it the scent of heather and the feel of mist on the face, pudding bubbling in a stew pot, coal smoke and an hundred other sensory experiences? Whatever it is, it worked upon Lankin, and he remembered his youth with a nostalgic longing, a desire to return to his home country, the green pastures of Kent and the shore of the gray churning Channel, seabirds wheeling above. That single meeting and the minister's advice, became a pivot. Lankin turned and looked back in horror. He had wasted forty years on self-indulgence and self-deception.

He rallied and returned to England, but what a changed country! The last George was dead and England was crisscrossed with iron leviathans belching steam and whistling imperiously to oxen and cattle and sheep to get out of their self-important and unmovable path. Rail, in its infancy when Lankin left his country to travel, had become a full-blown adolescent, importunate and noisy. Even so, he was grateful to be home. The bracing Channel wind seemed to sweep from him the lingering lassitude that kept him in the thrall of opium, and he left his addiction on the boat like an undesirable piece of luggage.

The climate was not kind, though, and Lankin soon found that the cold and damp exacerbated his illness. Should he stay? Or should he go, perhaps to prolong his life, to Spain or Portugal?

“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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