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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 174 ***</div>
<h1>The Picture of Dorian Gray</h1>
<h2 class="no-break">by Oscar Wilde</h2>
<hr >
<h2>Contents</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap00">THE PREFACE</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX.</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap00"></a>THE PREFACE</h2>
<p>
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the
artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another
manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
</p>
<p>
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those
who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.
This is a fault.
</p>
<p>
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For
these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only
beauty.
</p>
<p>
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written,
or badly written. That is all.
</p>
<p>
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own
face in a glass.
</p>
<p>
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing
his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter
of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an
imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are
true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an
artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The
artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist
instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the
musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the
type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface
do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the
spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a
work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics
disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making
a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a
useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
</p>
<p>
All art is quite useless.
</p>
<p class="right">
OSCAR WILDE
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
<p>
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer
wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door
the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the
pink-flowering thorn.
</p>
<p>
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying,
smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could
just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a
laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a
beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds
in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in
front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and
making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the
medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of
swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way
through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the
dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more
oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant
organ.
</p>
<p>
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length
portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it,
some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward,
whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public
excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
</p>
<p>
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully
mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed
about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed
his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain
some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.
</p>
<p>
“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,”
said Lord Henry languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to the
Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there,
there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the
pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to
see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered,
tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at
him at Oxford. “No, I won’t send it anywhere.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the
thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his
heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow,
why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in
the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to
throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world
worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait
like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the
old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”
</p>
<p>
“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really
can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.”
</p>
<p>
“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you
were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance between you, with
your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who
looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is
a Narcissus, and you—well, of course you have an intellectual expression
and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression
begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony
of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all
forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned
professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church.
But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the
age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a
natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious
young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really
fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless
beautiful creature who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers
to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our
intelligence. Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least
like him.”
</p>
<p>
“You don’t understand me, Harry,” answered the artist.
“Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I
should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you
the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction,
the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of
kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and
the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and
gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the
knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed,
indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor
ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such
as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good
looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer
terribly.”
</p>
<p>
“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walking across
the studio towards Basil Hallward.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”
</p>
<p>
“But why not?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell
their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to
love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious
or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.
When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I
would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it
seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you
think me awfully foolish about it?”
</p>
<p>
“Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, “not at all, my dear
Basil. You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is
that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I
never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we
meet—we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to
the Duke’s—we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most
serious faces. My wife is very good at it—much better, in fact, than I
am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does
find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she
merely laughs at me.”
</p>
<p>
“I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,” said
Basil Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. “I
believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly
ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a
moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a
pose.”
</p>
<p>
“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I
know,” cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into
the garden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood
in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the polished
leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.
</p>
<p>
After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I am afraid I must be
going, Basil,” he murmured, “and before I go, I insist on your
answering a question I put to you some time ago.”
</p>
<p>
“What is that?” said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the
ground.
</p>
<p>
“You know quite well.”
</p>
<p>
“I do not, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you
won’t exhibit Dorian Gray’s picture. I want the real reason.”
</p>
<p>
“I told you the real reason.”
</p>
<p>
“No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself
in it. Now, that is childish.”
</p>
<p>
“Harry,” said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face,
“every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist,
not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not
he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the
coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is
that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry laughed. “And what is that?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
“I will tell you,” said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity
came over his face.
</p>
<p>
“I am all expectation, Basil,” continued his companion, glancing at
him.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry,” answered the
painter; “and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will
hardly believe it.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the
grass and examined it. “I am quite sure I shall understand it,” he
replied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered disk, “and
as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite
incredible.”
</p>
<p>
The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with
their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper
began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly
floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear
Basil Hallward’s heart beating, and wondered what was coming.
</p>
<p>
“The story is simply this,” said the painter after some time.
“Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon’s. You know we
poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to
remind the public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white
tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation
for being civilized. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes,
talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, I suddenly
became conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way round and
saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was
growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had
come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that,
if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my
very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You know
yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. I have always been my own
master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then—but I
don’t know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I
was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that
fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid
and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was a
sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape.”
</p>
<p>
“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience
is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t believe that, Harry, and I don’t believe you do
either. However, whatever was my motive—and it may have been pride, for I
used to be very proud—I certainly struggled to the door. There, of
course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon. ‘You are not going to run away
so soon, Mr. Hallward?’ she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill
voice?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,” said Lord Henry,
pulling the daisy to bits with his long nervous fingers.
</p>
<p>
“I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, and people
with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot
noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her once before,
but she took it into her head to lionize me. I believe some picture of mine had
made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the
penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality.
Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had
so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met
again. It was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him.
Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would
have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian
told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each
other.”
</p>
<p>
“And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?” asked
his companion. “I know she goes in for giving a rapid <i>précis</i> of
all her guests. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old
gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in
a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the
room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I like to find out people for
myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his
goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about
them except what one wants to know.”
</p>
<p>
“Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!” said Hallward
listlessly.
</p>
<p>
“My dear fellow, she tried to found a <i>salon</i>, and only succeeded in
opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she say
about Mr. Dorian Gray?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, something like, ‘Charming boy—poor dear mother and I
absolutely inseparable. Quite forget what he does—afraid
he—doesn’t do anything—oh, yes, plays the piano—or is
it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?’ Neither of us could help laughing, and we
became friends at once.”
</p>
<p>
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far
the best ending for one,” said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
</p>
<p>
Hallward shook his head. “You don’t understand what friendship is,
Harry,” he murmured—“or what enmity is, for that matter. You
like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.”
</p>
<p>
“How horribly unjust of you!” cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat
back and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy
white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky.
“Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people. I
choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good
characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too
careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They
are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate
me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.”
</p>
<p>
“I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be
merely an acquaintance.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance.”
</p>
<p>
“And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, brothers! I don’t care for brothers. My elder brother
won’t die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.”
</p>
<p>
“Harry!” exclaimed Hallward, frowning.
</p>
<p>
“My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can’t help detesting
my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other
people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathize with the rage of
the English democracy against what they call the vices of the upper orders. The
masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own
special property, and that if any one of us makes an ass of himself, he is
poaching on their preserves. When poor Southwark got into the divorce court,
their indignation was quite magnificent. And yet I don’t suppose that ten
per cent of the proletariat live correctly.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is
more, Harry, I feel sure you don’t either.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his
patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. “How English you are
Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one puts
forward an idea to a true Englishman—always a rash thing to do—he
never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing
he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. Now, the
value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who
expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is,
the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be
coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I
don’t propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I
like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles
better than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How
often do you see him?”
</p>
<p>
“Every day. I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t see him every
day. He is absolutely necessary to me.”
</p>
<p>
“How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your
art.”
</p>
<p>
“He is all my art to me now,” said the painter gravely. “I
sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the
world’s history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and
the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the
invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to
late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is
not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course, I
have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I
won’t tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or
that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is nothing that art
cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray,
is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way—I
wonder will you understand me?—his personality has suggested to me an
entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things
differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that
was hidden from me before. ‘A dream of form in days of
thought’—who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian
Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad—for he seems
to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty—his merely
visible presence—ah! I wonder can you realize all that that means?
Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is
to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the
spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body—how much that is! We
in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is
vulgar, an ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is
to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a
huge price but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have
ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat
beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time
in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for and
always missed.”
</p>
<p>
“Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray.”
</p>
<p>
Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After some
time he came back. “Harry,” he said, “Dorian Gray is to me
simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.
He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a
suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of
certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. That is
all.”
</p>
<p>
“Then why won’t you exhibit his portrait?” asked Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all
this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to
speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it.
But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow
prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too
much of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself!”
</p>
<p>
“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is
for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”
</p>
<p>
“I hate them for it,” cried Hallward. “An artist should
create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We
live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of
autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show
the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait
of Dorian Gray.”
</p>
<p>
“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won’t argue with you. It is
only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond
of you?”
</p>
<p>
The painter considered for a few moments. “He likes me,” he
answered after a pause; “I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him
dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I
shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in
the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly
thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel,
Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it
were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an
ornament for a summer’s day.”
</p>
<p>
“Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger,” murmured Lord Henry.
“Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think
of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts
for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild
struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill
our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The
thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of
the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a
<i>bric-à-brac</i> shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above
its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day you will
look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or
you won’t like his tone of colour, or something. You will bitterly
reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very
badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and
indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. What you have told
me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of
having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.”
</p>
<p>
“Harry, don’t talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of
Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can’t feel what I feel. You change too
often.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are
faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know
love’s tragedies.” And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver
case and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied air, as
if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of chirruping
sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows
chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How pleasant it was in the
garden! And how delightful other people’s emotions were!—much more
delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One’s own soul, and the
passions of one’s friends—those were the fascinating things in
life. He pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he
had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had he gone to his
aunt’s, he would have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the
whole conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor and the
necessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the
importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their
own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle
grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all
that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to
Hallward and said, “My dear fellow, I have just remembered.”
</p>
<p>
“Remembered what, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray.”
</p>
<p>
“Where was it?” asked Hallward, with a slight frown.
</p>
<p>
“Don’t look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady
Agatha’s. She told me she had discovered a wonderful young man who was
going to help her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am
bound to state that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no
appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not. She said that he was
very earnest and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a
creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about
on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend.”
</p>
<p>
“I am very glad you didn’t, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“Why?”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t want you to meet him.”
</p>
<p>
“You don’t want me to meet him?”
</p>
<p>
“No.”
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir,” said the butler, coming
into the garden.
</p>
<p>
“You must introduce me now,” cried Lord Henry, laughing.
</p>
<p>
The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.
“Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few moments.” The
man bowed and went up the walk.
</p>
<p>
Then he looked at Lord Henry. “Dorian Gray is my dearest friend,”
he said. “He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite
right in what she said of him. Don’t spoil him. Don’t try to
influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many
marvellous people in it. Don’t take away from me the one person who gives
to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.
Mind, Harry, I trust you.” He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed
wrung out of him almost against his will.
</p>
<p>
“What nonsense you talk!” said Lord Henry, smiling, and taking
Hallward by the arm, he almost led him into the house.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
<p>
As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano, with his back
to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann’s “Forest
Scenes.” “You must lend me these, Basil,” he cried. “I
want to learn them. They are perfectly charming.”
</p>
<p>
“That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don’t want a life-sized portrait
of myself,” answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool in a
wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush
coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. “I beg your pardon,
Basil, but I didn’t know you had any one with you.”
</p>
<p>
“This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. I have
just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now you have spoiled
everything.”
</p>
<p>
“You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray,” said
Lord Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. “My aunt has often
spoken to me about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am afraid, one of
her victims also.”
</p>
<p>
“I am in Lady Agatha’s black books at present,” answered
Dorian with a funny look of penitence. “I promised to go to a club in
Whitechapel with her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We were to
have played a duet together—three duets, I believe. I don’t know
what she will say to me. I am far too frightened to call.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you.
And I don’t think it really matters about your not being there. The
audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the
piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people.”
</p>
<p>
“That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me,” answered
Dorian, laughing.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his
finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was
something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth
was there, as well as all youth’s passionate purity. One felt that he had
kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.
</p>
<p>
“You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray—far too
charming.” And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and opened his
cigarette-case.
</p>
<p>
The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. He
was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry’s last remark, he
glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Harry, I want to
finish this picture to-day. Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked
you to go away?”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray. “Am I to go, Mr.
Gray?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, please don’t, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his
sulky moods, and I can’t bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to
tell me why I should not go in for philanthropy.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so
tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I
certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You
don’t really mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked
your sitters to have some one to chat to.”
</p>
<p>
Hallward bit his lip. “If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.
Dorian’s whims are laws to everybody, except himself.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. “You are very pressing, Basil, but
I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans. Good-bye,
Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I am nearly always
at home at five o’clock. Write to me when you are coming. I should be
sorry to miss you.”
</p>
<p>
“Basil,” cried Dorian Gray, “if Lord Henry Wotton goes, I
shall go, too. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is
horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to
stay. I insist upon it.”
</p>
<p>
“Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me,” said Hallward,
gazing intently at his picture. “It is quite true, I never talk when I am
working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my
unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay.”
</p>
<p>
“But what about my man at the Orleans?”
</p>
<p>
The painter laughed. “I don’t think there will be any difficulty
about that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and
don’t move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says.
He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of
myself.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr, and
made a little <i>moue</i> of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather
taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast. And he
had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, “Have you
really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?”
</p>
<p>
“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is
immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view.”
</p>
<p>
“Why?”
</p>
<p>
“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He
does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His
virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are
borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part
that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To
realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.
People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of
all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are
charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls
starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never
really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror
of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that
govern us. And yet—”
</p>
<p>
“Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good
boy,” said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look
had come into the lad’s face that he had never seen there before.
</p>
<p>
“And yet,” continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and
with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him,
and that he had even in his Eton days, “I believe that if one man were to
live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling,
expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the
world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the
maladies of mediævalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal—to something
finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst
us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival
in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every
impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body
sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification.
Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a
regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it,
and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to
itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and
unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the
brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world
take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your
rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts
that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere
memory might stain your cheek with shame—”
</p>
<p>
“Stop!” faltered Dorian Gray, “stop! you bewilder me. I
don’t know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find
it. Don’t speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to
think.”
</p>
<p>
For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes
strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at
work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. The
few words that Basil’s friend had said to him—words spoken by
chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in them—had touched some secret
chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating
and throbbing to curious pulses.
</p>
<p>
Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music
was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it
created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid,
and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there
was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things,
and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere
words! Was there anything so real as words?
</p>
<p>
Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He
understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to
him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it?
</p>
<p>
With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise
psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was
amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a
book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him
much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing
through a similar experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it
hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was!
</p>
<p>
Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true
refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes only from
strength. He was unconscious of the silence.
</p>
<p>
“Basil, I am tired of standing,” cried Dorian Gray suddenly.
“I must go out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can’t think
of anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I
have caught the effect I wanted—the half-parted lips and the bright look
in the eyes. I don’t know what Harry has been saying to you, but he has
certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose he has been
paying you compliments. You mustn’t believe a word that he says.”
</p>
<p>
“He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the
reason that I don’t believe anything he has told me.”
</p>
<p>
“You know you believe it all,” said Lord Henry, looking at him with
his dreamy languorous eyes. “I will go out to the garden with you. It is
horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink,
something with strawberries in it.”
</p>
<p>
“Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will tell
him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I will join you
later on. Don’t keep Dorian too long. I have never been in better form
for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my masterpiece. It is my
masterpiece as it stands.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the
great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had
been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. “You
are quite right to do that,” he murmured. “Nothing can cure the
soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
</p>
<p>
The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his
rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There was a look of fear
in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. His finely
chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his
lips and left them trembling.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” continued Lord Henry, “that is one of the great
secrets of life—to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses
by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you
think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the
tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured
face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low languid
voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even,
had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a
language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid.
Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known
Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered
him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life who seemed to have
disclosed to him life’s mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid
of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened.
</p>
<p>
“Let us go and sit in the shade,” said Lord Henry. “Parker
has brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you will
be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must not
allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming.”
</p>
<p>
“What can it matter?” cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down
on the seat at the end of the garden.
</p>
<p>
“It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.”
</p>
<p>
“Why?”
</p>
<p>
“Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing
worth having.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.”
</p>
<p>
“No, you don’t feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled
and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion
branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it
terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? ...
You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don’t frown. You have.
And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it
needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or
spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the
moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes
princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you
won’t smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial.
That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me,
beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by
appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the
invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods
give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really,
perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and
then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or
have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past
will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer
to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and
your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will
suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don’t
squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the
hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the
vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the
wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always
searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new
Hedonism—that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.
With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to
you for a season.... The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious
of what you really are, of what you really might be. There was so much in you
that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought
how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that
your youth will last—such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither,
but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now.
In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the
green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our
youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs
fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory
of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations
that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely
nothing in the world but youth!”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his
hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then
it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He
watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop
when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new
emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that
terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a
time the bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian
convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made staccato signs
for them to come in. They turned to each other and smiled.
</p>
<p>
“I am waiting,” he cried. “Do come in. The light is quite
perfect, and you can bring your drinks.”
</p>
<p>
They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white
butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the
garden a thrush began to sing.
</p>
<p>
“You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray,” said Lord Henry, looking
at him.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?”
</p>
<p>
“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it.
Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it
last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a
caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little
longer.”
</p>
<p>
As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry’s
arm. “In that case, let our friendship be a caprice,” he murmured,
flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his
pose.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. The
sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the
stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped back to look at his work
from a distance. In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway
the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood
over everything.
</p>
<p>
After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long
time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of
one of his huge brushes and frowning. “It is quite finished,” he
cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on
the left-hand corner of the canvas.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a wonderful
work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.
</p>
<p>
“My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly,” he said.
“It is the finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over and look
at yourself.”
</p>
<p>
The lad started, as if awakened from some dream.
</p>
<p>
“Is it really finished?” he murmured, stepping down from the
platform.
</p>
<p>
“Quite finished,” said the painter. “And you have sat
splendidly to-day. I am awfully obliged to you.”
</p>
<p>
“That is entirely due to me,” broke in Lord Henry.
“Isn’t it, Mr. Gray?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned
towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment
with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized
himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly
conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of
his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had
never felt it before. Basil Hallward’s compliments had seemed to him to
be merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them,
laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had
come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible
warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood
gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description
flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled
and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and
deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his
hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become
dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.
</p>
<p>
As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and
made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst,
and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid
upon his heart.
</p>
<p>
“Don’t you like it?” cried Hallward at last, stung a little
by the lad’s silence, not understanding what it meant.
</p>
<p>
“Of course he likes it,” said Lord Henry. “Who wouldn’t
like it? It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you
anything you like to ask for it. I must have it.”
</p>
<p>
“It is not my property, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“Whose property is it?”
</p>
<p>
“Dorian’s, of course,” answered the painter.
</p>
<p>
“He is a very lucky fellow.”
</p>
<p>
“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed
upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible,
and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older
than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were
I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For
that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the
whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”
</p>
<p>
“You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil,” cried Lord
Henry, laughing. “It would be rather hard lines on your work.”
</p>
<p>
“I should object very strongly, Harry,” said Hallward.
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. “I believe you would, Basil. You
like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze
figure. Hardly as much, I dare say.”
</p>
<p>
The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that.
What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks
burning.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” he continued, “I am less to you than your ivory Hermes
or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till
I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses
one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your
picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the
only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill
myself.”
</p>
<p>
Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. “Dorian! Dorian!” he
cried, “don’t talk like that. I have never had such a friend as
you, and I shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material
things, are you?—you who are finer than any of them!”
</p>
<p>
“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of
the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every
moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it
were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always
what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me
horribly!” The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and,
flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he
was praying.
</p>
<p>
“This is your doing, Harry,” said the painter bitterly.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “It is the real Dorian Gray—that
is all.”
</p>
<p>
“It is not.”
</p>
<p>
“If it is not, what have I to do with it?”
</p>
<p>
“You should have gone away when I asked you,” he muttered.
</p>
<p>
“I stayed when you asked me,” was Lord Henry’s answer.
</p>
<p>
“Harry, I can’t quarrel with my two best friends at once, but
between you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever
done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will not let
it come across our three lives and mar them.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and
tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal painting-table
that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? His
fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes,
seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin
blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the
canvas.
</p>
<p>
With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to
Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the
studio. “Don’t, Basil, don’t!” he cried. “It
would be murder!”
</p>
<p>
“I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian,” said the
painter coldly when he had recovered from his surprise. “I never thought
you would.”
</p>
<p>
“Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I feel
that.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and
sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself.” And he walked
across the room and rang the bell for tea. “You will have tea, of course,
Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple
pleasures?”
</p>
<p>
“I adore simple pleasures,” said Lord Henry. “They are the
last refuge of the complex. But I don’t like scenes, except on the stage.
What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a
rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many
things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all—though I
wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me
have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn’t really want it, and I really
do.”
</p>
<p>
“If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive
you!” cried Dorian Gray; “and I don’t allow people to call me
a silly boy.”
</p>
<p>
“You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it
existed.”
</p>
<p>
“And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you
don’t really object to being reminded that you are extremely
young.”
</p>
<p>
“I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.”
</p>
<p>
There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray
and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and
saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two globe-shaped china dishes
were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. The
two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the
covers.
</p>
<p>
“Let us go to the theatre to-night,” said Lord Henry. “There
is sure to be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at
White’s, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to
say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a
subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would
have all the surprise of candour.”
</p>
<p>
“It is such a bore putting on one’s dress-clothes,” muttered
Hallward. “And, when one has them on, they are so horrid.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” answered Lord Henry dreamily, “the costume of the
nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the
only real colour-element left in modern life.”
</p>
<p>
“You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one
in the picture?”
</p>
<p>
“Before either.”
</p>
<p>
“I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,” said
the lad.
</p>
<p>
“Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won’t
you?”
</p>
<p>
“I can’t, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to
do.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.”
</p>
<p>
“I should like that awfully.”
</p>
<p>
The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. “I
shall stay with the real Dorian,” he said, sadly.
</p>
<p>
“Is it the real Dorian?” cried the original of the portrait,
strolling across to him. “Am I really like that?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes; you are just like that.”
</p>
<p>
“How wonderful, Basil!”
</p>
<p>
“At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,”
sighed Hallward. “That is something.”
</p>
<p>
“What a fuss people make about fidelity!” exclaimed Lord Henry.
“Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing
to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men
want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t go to the theatre to-night, Dorian,” said Hallward.
“Stop and dine with me.”
</p>
<p>
“I can’t, Basil.”
</p>
<p>
“Why?”
</p>
<p>
“Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him.”
</p>
<p>
“He won’t like you the better for keeping your promises. He always
breaks his own. I beg you not to go.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.
</p>
<p>
“I entreat you.”
</p>
<p>
The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from
the tea-table with an amused smile.
</p>
<p>
“I must go, Basil,” he answered.
</p>
<p>
“Very well,” said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his cup
on the tray. “It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had
better lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me soon.
Come to-morrow.”
</p>
<p>
“Certainly.”
</p>
<p>
“You won’t forget?”
</p>
<p>
“No, of course not,” cried Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“And ... Harry!”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, Basil?”
</p>
<p>
“Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this
morning.”
</p>
<p>
“I have forgotten it.”
</p>
<p>
“I trust you.”
</p>
<p>
“I wish I could trust myself,” said Lord Henry, laughing.
“Come, Mr. Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own
place. Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon.”
</p>
<p>
As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a
look of pain came into his face.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
<p>
At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon Street over
to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat
rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it
derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by
Society as he fed the people who amused him. His father had been our ambassador
at Madrid when Isabella was young and Prim unthought of, but had retired from
the diplomatic service in a capricious moment of annoyance on not being offered
the Embassy at Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled
by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his dispatches, and
his inordinate passion for pleasure. The son, who had been his father’s
secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat foolishly as was thought
at the time, and on succeeding some months later to the title, had set himself
to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.
He had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less
trouble, and took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the
management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this
taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that
it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth.
In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which
period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to
his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he
bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that
the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but there
was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.
</p>
<p>
When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough
shooting-coat, smoking a cheroot and grumbling over <i>The Times</i>.
“Well, Harry,” said the old gentleman, “what brings you out
so early? I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible
till five.”
</p>
<p>
“Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get
something out of you.”
</p>
<p>
“Money, I suppose,” said Lord Fermor, making a wry face.
“Well, sit down and tell me all about it. Young people, nowadays, imagine
that money is everything.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat;
“and when they grow older they know it. But I don’t want money. It
is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay
mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly upon it.
Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor’s tradesmen, and consequently they
never bother me. What I want is information: not useful information, of course;
useless information.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue Book, Harry,
although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in the
Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now by
examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from
beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is
not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.”
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue Books, Uncle George,” said
Lord Henry languidly.
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?” asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy
white eyebrows.
</p>
<p>
“That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather, I know who
he is. He is the last Lord Kelso’s grandson. His mother was a Devereux,
Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell me about his mother. What was she
like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your time, so you
might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray at present. I have
only just met him.”
</p>
<p>
“Kelso’s grandson!” echoed the old gentleman.
“Kelso’s grandson! ... Of course.... I knew his mother intimately.
I believe I was at her christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl,
Margaret Devereux, and made all the men frantic by running away with a
penniless young fellow—a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot
regiment, or something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as
if it happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few
months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it. They said Kelso
got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his son-in-law in
public—paid him, sir, to do it, paid him—and that the fellow
spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed up, but, egad,
Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time afterwards. He brought his
daughter back with him, I was told, and she never spoke to him again. Oh, yes;
it was a bad business. The girl died, too, died within a year. So she left a
son, did she? I had forgotten that. What sort of boy is he? If he is like his
mother, he must be a good-looking chap.”
</p>
<p>
“He is very good-looking,” assented Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“I hope he will fall into proper hands,” continued the old man.
“He should have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso did the right
thing by him. His mother had money, too. All the Selby property came to her,
through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean dog.
He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was ashamed of him.
The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was always quarrelling
with the cabmen about their fares. They made quite a story of it. I
didn’t dare show my face at Court for a month. I hope he treated his
grandson better than he did the jarvies.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t know,” answered Lord Henry. “I fancy that the
boy will be well off. He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know. He told me
so. And ... his mother was very beautiful?”
</p>
<p>
“Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry.
What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could understand. She
could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad after her. She was
romantic, though. All the women of that family were. The men were a poor lot,
but, egad! the women were wonderful. Carlington went on his knees to her. Told
me so himself. She laughed at him, and there wasn’t a girl in London at
the time who wasn’t after him. And by the way, Harry, talking about silly
marriages, what is this humbug your father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to
marry an American? Ain’t English girls good enough for him?”
</p>
<p>
“It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle
George.”
</p>
<p>
“I’ll back English women against the world, Harry,” said Lord
Fermor, striking the table with his fist.
</p>
<p>
“The betting is on the Americans.”
</p>
<p>
“They don’t last, I am told,” muttered his uncle.
</p>
<p>
“A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a steeplechase.
They take things flying. I don’t think Dartmoor has a chance.”
</p>
<p>
“Who are her people?” grumbled the old gentleman. “Has she
got any?”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry shook his head. “American girls are as clever at concealing
their parents, as English women are at concealing their past,” he said,
rising to go.
</p>
<p>
“They are pork-packers, I suppose?”
</p>
<p>
“I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor’s sake. I am told that
pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after
politics.”
</p>
<p>
“Is she pretty?”
</p>
<p>
“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the
secret of their charm.”
</p>
<p>
“Why can’t these American women stay in their own country? They are
always telling us that it is the paradise for women.”
</p>
<p>
“It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious
to get out of it,” said Lord Henry. “Good-bye, Uncle George. I
shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the
information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new friends,
and nothing about my old ones.”
</p>
<p>
“Where are you lunching, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“At Aunt Agatha’s. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her
latest <i>protégé</i>.”
</p>
<p>
“Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her
charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I have
nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads.”
</p>
<p>
“All right, Uncle George, I’ll tell her, but it won’t have
any effect. Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their
distinguishing characteristic.”
</p>
<p>
The old gentleman growled approvingly and rang the bell for his servant. Lord
Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street and turned his steps in
the direction of Berkeley Square.
</p>
<p>
So that was the story of Dorian Gray’s parentage. Crudely as it had been
told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange, almost
modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few
wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of
voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by
death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man.
Yes; it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect,
as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something
tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... And
how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as with startled eyes and
lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club, the
red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face.
Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every
touch and thrill of the bow.... There was something terribly enthralling in the
exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one’s
soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear
one’s own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music
of passion and youth; to convey one’s temperament into another as though
it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in
that—perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and
vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common
in its aims.... He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a
chance he had met in Basil’s studio, or could be fashioned into a
marvellous type, at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood,
and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one
could not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was
that such beauty was destined to fade! ... And Basil? From a psychological
point of view, how interesting he was! The new manner in art, the fresh mode of
looking at life, suggested so strangely by the merely visible presence of one
who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland,
and walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryadlike and not
afraid, because in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened that
wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes
and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of
symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and
more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all was! He
remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that artist in
thought, who had first analyzed it? Was it not Buonarotti who had carved it in
the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our own century it was
strange.... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing it,
the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful portrait. He would
seek to dominate him—had already, indeed, half done so. He would make
that wonderful spirit his own. There was something fascinating in this son of
love and death.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses. He found that he had passed
his aunt’s some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back. When he
entered the somewhat sombre hall, the butler told him that they had gone in to
lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick and passed into the
dining-room.
</p>
<p>
“Late as usual, Harry,” cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.
</p>
<p>
He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to her,
looked round to see who was there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from the end of
the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek. Opposite was the
Duchess of Harley, a lady of admirable good-nature and good temper, much liked
by every one who knew her, and of those ample architectural proportions that in
women who are not duchesses are described by contemporary historians as
stoutness. Next to her sat, on her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member
of Parliament, who followed his leader in public life and in private life
followed the best cooks, dining with the Tories and thinking with the Liberals,
in accordance with a wise and well-known rule. The post on her left was
occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and
culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he
explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was
thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, one of his aunt’s oldest
friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so dreadfully dowdy that she
reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book. Fortunately for him she had on the
other side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a
ministerial statement in the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in
that intensely earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he
remarked once himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which
none of them ever quite escape.
</p>
<p>
“We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry,” cried the
duchess, nodding pleasantly to him across the table. “Do you think he
will really marry this fascinating young person?”
</p>
<p>
“I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess.”
</p>
<p>
“How dreadful!” exclaimed Lady Agatha. “Really, some one
should interfere.”
</p>
<p>
“I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American
dry-goods store,” said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.
</p>
<p>
“My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas.”
</p>
<p>
“Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?” asked the duchess,
raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.
</p>
<p>
“American novels,” answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some
quail.
</p>
<p>
The duchess looked puzzled.
</p>
<p>
“Don’t mind him, my dear,” whispered Lady Agatha. “He
never means anything that he says.”
</p>
<p>
“When America was discovered,” said the Radical member—and he
began to give some wearisome facts. Like all people who try to exhaust a
subject, he exhausted his listeners. The duchess sighed and exercised her
privilege of interruption. “I wish to goodness it never had been
discovered at all!” she exclaimed. “Really, our girls have no
chance nowadays. It is most unfair.”
</p>
<p>
“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered,” said Mr.
Erskine; “I myself would say that it had merely been detected.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants,” answered the
duchess vaguely. “I must confess that most of them are extremely pretty.
And they dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris. I wish I could
afford to do the same.”
</p>
<p>
“They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,” chuckled
Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour’s cast-off clothes.
</p>
<p>
“Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?” inquired
the duchess.
</p>
<p>
“They go to America,” murmured Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
Sir Thomas frowned. “I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against
that great country,” he said to Lady Agatha. “I have travelled all
over it in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are extremely
civil. I assure you that it is an education to visit it.”
</p>
<p>
“But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?” asked Mr.
Erskine plaintively. “I don’t feel up to the journey.”
</p>
<p>
Sir Thomas waved his hand. “Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on his
shelves. We practical men like to see things, not to read about them. The
Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are absolutely reasonable.
I think that is their distinguishing characteristic. Yes, Mr. Erskine, an
absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no nonsense about the
Americans.”
</p>
<p>
“How dreadful!” cried Lord Henry. “I can stand brute force,
but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use.
It is hitting below the intellect.”
</p>
<p>
“I do not understand you,” said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.
</p>
<p>
“I do, Lord Henry,” murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.
</p>
<p>
“Paradoxes are all very well in their way....” rejoined the
baronet.
</p>
<p>
“Was that a paradox?” asked Mr. Erskine. “I did not think so.
Perhaps it was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality
we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can
judge them.”
</p>
<p>
“Dear me!” said Lady Agatha, “how you men argue! I am sure I
never can make out what you are talking about. Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with
you. Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up the East
End? I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his
playing.”
</p>
<p>
“I want him to play to me,” cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he
looked down the table and caught a bright answering glance.
</p>
<p>
“But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel,” continued Lady Agatha.
</p>
<p>
“I can sympathize with everything except suffering,” said Lord
Henry, shrugging his shoulders. “I cannot sympathize with that. It is too
ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the
modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty,
the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores, the better.”
</p>
<p>
“Still, the East End is a very important problem,” remarked Sir
Thomas with a grave shake of the head.
</p>
<p>
“Quite so,” answered the young lord. “It is the problem of
slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves.”
</p>
<p>
The politician looked at him keenly. “What change do you propose,
then?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry laughed. “I don’t desire to change anything in England
except the weather,” he answered. “I am quite content with
philosophic contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt
through an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal
to science to put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that they lead
us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.”
</p>
<p>
“But we have such grave responsibilities,” ventured Mrs. Vandeleur
timidly.
</p>
<p>
“Terribly grave,” echoed Lady Agatha.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. “Humanity takes itself too
seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how
to laugh, history would have been different.”
</p>
<p>
“You are really very comforting,” warbled the duchess. “I
have always felt rather guilty when I came to see your dear aunt, for I take no
interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to look her in
the face without a blush.”
</p>
<p>
“A blush is very becoming, Duchess,” remarked Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“Only when one is young,” she answered. “When an old woman
like myself blushes, it is a very bad sign. Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would
tell me how to become young again.”
</p>
<p>
He thought for a moment. “Can you remember any great error that you
committed in your early days, Duchess?” he asked, looking at her across
the table.
</p>
<p>
“A great many, I fear,” she cried.
</p>
<p>
“Then commit them over again,” he said gravely. “To get back
one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”
</p>
<p>
“A delightful theory!” she exclaimed. “I must put it into
practice.”
</p>
<p>
“A dangerous theory!” came from Sir Thomas’s tight lips. Lady
Agatha shook her head, but could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” he continued, “that is one of the great secrets of
life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover
when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s
mistakes.”
</p>
<p>
A laugh ran round the table.
</p>
<p>
He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed
it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged
it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy,
and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure,
wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like
a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being
sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod
the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose
round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over
the vat’s black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary
improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the
consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he
wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to his
imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed his
listeners out of themselves, and they followed his pipe, laughing. Dorian Gray
never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing
each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.
</p>
<p>
At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the
shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. She wrung
her hands in mock despair. “How annoying!” she cried. “I must
go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd
meeting at Willis’s Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am
late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn’t have a scene in this
bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear
Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully
demoralizing. I am sure I don’t know what to say about your views. You
must come and dine with us some night. Tuesday? Are you disengaged
Tuesday?”
</p>
<p>
“For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess,” said Lord Henry with
a bow.
</p>
<p>
“Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you,” she cried;
“so mind you come”; and she swept out of the room, followed by Lady
Agatha and the other ladies.
</p>
<p>
When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking a chair
close to him, placed his hand upon his arm.
</p>
<p>
“You talk books away,” he said; “why don’t you write
one?”
</p>
<p>
“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I
should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a
Persian carpet and as unreal. But there is no literary public in England for
anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. Of all people in the
world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.”
</p>
<p>
“I fear you are right,” answered Mr. Erskine. “I myself used
to have literary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago. And now, my dear young
friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really meant all
that you said to us at lunch?”
</p>
<p>
“I quite forget what I said,” smiled Lord Henry. “Was it all
very bad?”
</p>
<p>
“Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if
anything happens to our good duchess, we shall all look on you as being
primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to you about life. The
generation into which I was born was tedious. Some day, when you are tired of
London, come down to Treadley and expound to me your philosophy of pleasure
over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate enough to possess.”
</p>
<p>
“I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. It
has a perfect host, and a perfect library.”
</p>
<p>
“You will complete it,” answered the old gentleman with a courteous
bow. “And now I must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt. I am due at the
Athenaeum. It is the hour when we sleep there.”
</p>
<p>
“All of you, Mr. Erskine?”
</p>
<p>
“Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English
Academy of Letters.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry laughed and rose. “I am going to the park,” he cried.
</p>
<p>
As he was passing out of the door, Dorian Gray touched him on the arm.
“Let me come with you,” he murmured.
</p>
<p>
“But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him,”
answered Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must come with you. Do let
me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time? No one talks so
wonderfully as you do.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day,” said Lord Henry,
smiling. “All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it
with me, if you care to.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
<p>
One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious
arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry’s house in Mayfair. It
was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled wainscoting of
olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling of raised plasterwork,
and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk, long-fringed Persian rugs. On a
tiny satinwood table stood a statuette by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of
Les Cent Nouvelles, bound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve and powdered
with the gilt daisies that Queen had selected for her device. Some large blue
china jars and parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the
small leaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a
summer day in London.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always late on principle, his principle
being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the lad was looking rather
sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages of an elaborately
illustrated edition of Manon Lescaut that he had found in one of the
book-cases. The formal monotonous ticking of the Louis Quatorze clock annoyed
him. Once or twice he thought of going away.
</p>
<p>
At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. “How late you are,
Harry!” he murmured.
</p>
<p>
“I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray,” answered a shrill voice.
</p>
<p>
He glanced quickly round and rose to his feet. “I beg your pardon. I
thought—”
</p>
<p>
“You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let me
introduce myself. I know you quite well by your photographs. I think my husband
has got seventeen of them.”
</p>
<p>
“Not seventeen, Lady Henry?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the
opera.” She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her
vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked
as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually
in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all
her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being
untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.
</p>
<p>
“That was at Lohengrin, Lady Henry, I think?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes; it was at dear Lohengrin. I like Wagner’s music better than
anybody’s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other
people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage, don’t you think
so, Mr. Gray?”
</p>
<p>
The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began
to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.
</p>
<p>
Dorian smiled and shook his head: “I am afraid I don’t think so,
Lady Henry. I never talk during music—at least, during good music. If one
hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! that is one of Harry’s views, isn’t it, Mr. Gray? I
always hear Harry’s views from his friends. It is the only way I get to
know of them. But you must not think I don’t like good music. I adore it,
but I am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped
pianists—two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don’t know
what it is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are,
ain’t they? Even those that are born in England become foreigners after a
time, don’t they? It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to art.
Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn’t it? You have never been to any of my
parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I can’t afford orchids, but I
spare no expense in foreigners. They make one’s rooms look so
picturesque. But here is Harry! Harry, I came in to look for you, to ask you
something—I forget what it was—and I found Mr. Gray here. We have
had such a pleasant chat about music. We have quite the same ideas. No; I think
our ideas are quite different. But he has been most pleasant. I am so glad
I’ve seen him.”
</p>
<p>
“I am charmed, my love, quite charmed,” said Lord Henry, elevating
his dark, crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused
smile. “So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old
brocade in Wardour Street and had to bargain for hours for it. Nowadays people
know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
</p>
<p>
“I am afraid I must be going,” exclaimed Lady Henry, breaking an
awkward silence with her silly sudden laugh. “I have promised to drive
with the duchess. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Good-bye, Harry. You are dining out, I
suppose? So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady Thornbury’s.”
</p>
<p>
“I dare say, my dear,” said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind
her as, looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the
rain, she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni. Then
he lit a cigarette and flung himself down on the sofa.
</p>
<p>
“Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian,” he said
after a few puffs.
</p>
<p>
“Why, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“Because they are so sentimental.”
</p>
<p>
“But I like sentimental people.”
</p>
<p>
“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women,
because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love.
That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do
everything that you say.”
</p>
<p>
“Who are you in love with?” asked Lord Henry after a pause.
</p>
<p>
“With an actress,” said Dorian Gray, blushing.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “That is a rather commonplace
<i>début</i>.”
</p>
<p>
“You would not say so if you saw her, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“Who is she?”
</p>
<p>
“Her name is Sibyl Vane.”
</p>
<p>
“Never heard of her.”
</p>
<p>
“No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They
never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the
triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over
morals.”
</p>
<p>
“Harry, how can you?”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing women at present, so I
ought to know. The subject is not so abstruse as I thought it was. I find that,
ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured. The
plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a reputation for
respectability, you have merely to take them down to supper. The other women
are very charming. They commit one mistake, however. They paint in order to try
and look young. Our grandmothers painted in order to try and talk brilliantly.
<i>Rouge</i> and <i>esprit</i> used to go together. That is all over now. As
long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is
perfectly satisfied. As for conversation, there are only five women in London
worth talking to, and two of these can’t be admitted into decent society.
However, tell me about your genius. How long have you known her?”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! Harry, your views terrify me.”
</p>
<p>
“Never mind that. How long have you known her?”
</p>
<p>
“About three weeks.”
</p>
<p>
“And where did you come across her?”
</p>
<p>
“I will tell you, Harry, but you mustn’t be unsympathetic about it.
After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. You filled me
with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days after I met you,
something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged in the park, or strolled
down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one who passed me and wonder, with a
mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. Some of them fascinated me. Others
filled me with terror. There was an exquisite poison in the air. I had a
passion for sensations.... Well, one evening about seven o’clock, I
determined to go out in search of some adventure. I felt that this grey
monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and
its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me.
I fancied a thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I
remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we first
dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. I
don’t know what I expected, but I went out and wandered eastward, soon
losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black grassless squares.
About half-past eight I passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring
gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I
ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He
had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled
shirt. ‘Have a box, my Lord?’ he said, when he saw me, and he took
off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him,
Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster. You will laugh at me, I know, but
I really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. To the present day
I can’t make out why I did so; and yet if I hadn’t—my dear
Harry, if I hadn’t—I should have missed the greatest romance of my
life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid of you!”
</p>
<p>
“I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you
should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first
romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love
with love. A <i>grande passion</i> is the privilege of people who have nothing
to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don’t be
afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the
beginning.”
</p>
<p>
“Do you think my nature so shallow?” cried Dorian Gray angrily.
</p>
<p>
“No; I think your nature so deep.”
</p>
<p>
“How do you mean?”
</p>
<p>
“My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the
shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either
the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the
emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a
confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyse it some day. The passion
for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we
were not afraid that others might pick them up. But I don’t want to
interrupt you. Go on with your story.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a
vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. I looked out from behind the curtain
and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and cornucopias,
like a third-rate wedding-cake. The gallery and pit were fairly full, but the
two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there was hardly a person in
what I suppose they called the dress-circle. Women went about with oranges and
ginger-beer, and there was a terrible consumption of nuts going on.”
</p>
<p>
“It must have been just like the palmy days of the British drama.”
</p>
<p>
“Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder what
on earth I should do when I caught sight of the play-bill. What do you think
the play was, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“I should think ‘The Idiot Boy’, or ‘Dumb but
Innocent’. Our fathers used to like that sort of piece, I believe. The
longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for
our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, <i>les
grandpères ont toujours tort</i>.”
</p>
<p>
“This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was Romeo and Juliet. I must
admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare done in such
a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, in a sort of way. At any
rate, I determined to wait for the first act. There was a dreadful orchestra,
presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove
me away, but at last the drop-scene was drawn up and the play began. Romeo was
a stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a
figure like a beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the
low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms
with the pit. They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if
it had come out of a country-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly
seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with
plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips
that were like the petals of a rose. She was the loveliest thing I had ever
seen in my life. You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that
beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I
could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. And her
voice—I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep
mellow notes that seemed to fall singly upon one’s ear. Then it became a
little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautboy. In the
garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn
when nightingales are singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the
wild passion of violins. You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the
voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my
eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don’t
know which to follow. Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is
everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening
she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the
gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover’s lips. I
have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty
boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the
presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste
of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her
reedlike throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary
women never appeal to one’s imagination. They are limited to their
century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as
one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any
of them. They ride in the park in the morning and chatter at tea-parties in the
afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable manner. They
are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an actress is! Harry! why
didn’t you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?”
</p>
<p>
“Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an
extraordinary charm in them, sometimes,” said Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane.”
</p>
<p>
“You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you
will tell me everything you do.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things.
You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would come and
confess it to you. You would understand me.”
</p>
<p>
“People like you—the wilful sunbeams of life—don’t
commit crimes, Dorian. But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same.
And now tell me—reach me the matches, like a good
boy—thanks—what are your actual relations with Sibyl Vane?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
“Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!”
</p>
<p>
“It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian,”
said Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. “But why
should you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day. When one is
in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends
by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. You know her, at
any rate, I suppose?”
</p>
<p>
“Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the
horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over and offered
to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I was furious with him,
and told him that Juliet had been dead for hundreds of years and that her body
was lying in a marble tomb in Verona. I think, from his blank look of
amazement, that he was under the impression that I had taken too much
champagne, or something.”
</p>
<p>
“I am not surprised.”
</p>
<p>
“Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I
never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and confided to
me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him, and that
they were every one of them to be bought.”
</p>
<p>
“I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other hand,
judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all expensive.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means,” laughed
Dorian. “By this time, however, the lights were being put out in the
theatre, and I had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he strongly
recommended. I declined. The next night, of course, I arrived at the place
again. When he saw me, he made me a low bow and assured me that I was a
munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, though he had an
extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. He told me once, with an air of pride,
that his five bankruptcies were entirely due to ‘The Bard,’ as he
insisted on calling him. He seemed to think it a distinction.”
</p>
<p>
“It was a distinction, my dear Dorian—a great distinction. Most
people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of
life. To have ruined one’s self over poetry is an honour. But when did
you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?”
</p>
<p>
“The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I could not help going
round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me—at least I
fancied that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He seemed determined to take
me behind, so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know her,
wasn’t it?”
</p>
<p>
“No; I don’t think so.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Harry, why?”
</p>
<p>
“I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the
girl.”
</p>
<p>
“Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy and so gentle. There is something of a child
about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told her what I
thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her power. I
think we were both rather nervous. The old Jew stood grinning at the doorway of
the dusty greenroom, making elaborate speeches about us both, while we stood
looking at each other like children. He would insist on calling me ‘My
Lord,’ so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the kind. She
said quite simply to me, ‘You look more like a prince. I must call you
Prince Charming.’”
</p>
<p>
“Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments.”
</p>
<p>
“You don’t understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a
person in a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother, a faded
tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta dressing-wrapper on
the first night, and looks as if she had seen better days.”
</p>
<p>
“I know that look. It depresses me,” murmured Lord Henry, examining
his rings.
</p>
<p>
“The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest
me.”
</p>
<p>
“You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean about
other people’s tragedies.”
</p>
<p>
“Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she came
from? From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely
divine. Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every night she is more
marvellous.”
</p>
<p>
“That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now. I
thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have; but it is not
quite what I expected.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I have
been to the opera with you several times,” said Dorian, opening his blue
eyes in wonder.
</p>
<p>
“You always come dreadfully late.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, I can’t help going to see Sibyl play,” he cried,
“even if it is only for a single act. I get hungry for her presence; and
when I think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory
body, I am filled with awe.”
</p>
<p>
“You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can’t you?”
</p>
<p>
He shook his head. “To-night she is Imogen,” he answered,
“and to-morrow night she will be Juliet.”
</p>
<p>
“When is she Sibyl Vane?”
</p>
<p>
“Never.”
</p>
<p>
“I congratulate you.”
</p>
<p>
“How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in one.
She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she has genius. I
love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know all the secrets of life,
tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I
want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a
breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their
ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!” He was walking up and
down the room as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was
terribly excited.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How different he was
now from the shy frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward’s studio!
His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame.
Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his soul, and desire had come to meet
it on the way.
</p>
<p>
“And what do you propose to do?” said Lord Henry at last.
</p>
<p>
“I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. I have
not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to acknowledge her
genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew’s hands. She is bound to him
for three years—at least for two years and eight months—from the
present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course. When all that is
settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring her out properly. She will
make the world as mad as she has made me.”
</p>
<p>
“That would be impossible, my dear boy.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in her,
but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is
personalities, not principles, that move the age.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, what night shall we go?”
</p>
<p>
“Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays Juliet
to-morrow.”
</p>
<p>
“All right. The Bristol at eight o’clock; and I will get
Basil.”
</p>
<p>
“Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before the
curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she meets Romeo.”
</p>
<p>
“Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, or
reading an English novel. It must be seven. No gentleman dines before seven.
Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to him?”
</p>
<p>
“Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather horrid
of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame, specially
designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of the picture for being
a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I delight in it. Perhaps you
had better write to him. I don’t want to see him alone. He says things
that annoy me. He gives me good advice.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry smiled. “People are very fond of giving away what they need
most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of
a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that.”
</p>
<p>
“Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his
work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices,
his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who
are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what
they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A
great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But
inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more
picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate
sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot
write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”
</p>
<p>
“I wonder is that really so, Harry?” said Dorian Gray, putting some
perfume on his handkerchief out of a large, gold-topped bottle that stood on
the table. “It must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is
waiting for me. Don’t forget about to-morrow. Good-bye.”
</p>
<p>
As he left the room, Lord Henry’s heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to
think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as Dorian Gray, and
yet the lad’s mad adoration of some one else caused him not the slightest
pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by it. It made him a more
interesting study. He had been always enthralled by the methods of natural
science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that science had seemed to him
trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had
ended by vivisecting others. Human life—that appeared to him the one
thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value.
It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and
pleasure, one could not wear over one’s face a mask of glass, nor keep
the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid
with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that
to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so
strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their
nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole
world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the
emotional coloured life of the intellect—to observe where they met, and
where they separated, at what point they were in unison, and at what point they
were at discord—there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost
was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.
</p>
<p>
He was conscious—and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his
brown agate eyes—that it was through certain words of his, musical words
said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray’s soul had turned to this
white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his
own creation. He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people
waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect,
the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes
this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt
immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex
personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its
way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry
has, or sculpture, or painting.
</p>
<p>
Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it was yet
spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was becoming
self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful face, and
his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It was no matter how it all
ended, or was destined to end. He was like one of those gracious figures in a
pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows
stir one’s sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.
</p>
<p>
Soul and body, body and soul—how mysterious they were! There was
animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses
could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly
impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary
definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between
the claims of the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of
sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The
separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with
matter was a mystery also.
</p>
<p>
He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a science
that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always
misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no
ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists
had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain
ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something
that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no
motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience
itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same
as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do
many times, and with joy.
</p>
<p>
It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by which
one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly
Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and
fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological
phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to
do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences, yet it was not a
simple, but rather a very complex passion. What there was in it of the purely
sensuous instinct of boyhood had been transformed by the workings of the
imagination, changed into something that seemed to the lad himself to be remote
from sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the
passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly
over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It
often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were
really experimenting on ourselves.
</p>
<p>
While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door, and
his valet entered and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner. He got up
and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into scarlet gold the
upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed like plates of heated
metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He thought of his friend’s
young fiery-coloured life and wondered how it was all going to end.
</p>
<p>
When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o’clock, he saw a telegram
lying on the hall table. He opened it and found it was from Dorian Gray. It was
to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl Vane.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
<p>
“Mother, Mother, I am so happy!” whispered the girl, burying her
face in the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back turned to the
shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their dingy
sitting-room contained. “I am so happy!” she repeated, “and
you must be happy, too!”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuth-whitened hands on her
daughter’s head. “Happy!” she echoed, “I am only happy,
Sibyl, when I see you act. You must not think of anything but your acting. Mr.
Isaacs has been very good to us, and we owe him money.”
</p>
<p>
The girl looked up and pouted. “Money, Mother?” she cried,
“what does money matter? Love is more than money.”
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts and to get
a proper outfit for James. You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty pounds is a
very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate.”
</p>
<p>
“He is not a gentleman, Mother, and I hate the way he talks to me,”
said the girl, rising to her feet and going over to the window.
</p>
<p>
“I don’t know how we could manage without him,” answered the
elder woman querulously.
</p>
<p>
Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. “We don’t want him any
more, Mother. Prince Charming rules life for us now.” Then she paused. A
rose shook in her blood and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted the petals
of her lips. They trembled. Some southern wind of passion swept over her and
stirred the dainty folds of her dress. “I love him,” she said
simply.
</p>
<p>
“Foolish child! foolish child!” was the parrot-phrase flung in
answer. The waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the
words.
</p>
<p>
The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice. Her eyes
caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed for a moment, as
though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a dream had passed
across them.
</p>
<p>
Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted
from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense. She did
not listen. She was free in her prison of passion. Her prince, Prince Charming,
was with her. She had called on memory to remake him. She had sent her soul to
search for him, and it had brought him back. His kiss burned again upon her
mouth. Her eyelids were warm with his breath.
</p>
<p>
Then wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery. This young
man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of. Against the shell of
her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The arrows of craft shot by her.
She saw the thin lips moving, and smiled.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The wordy silence troubled her.
“Mother, Mother,” she cried, “why does he love me so much? I
know why I love him. I love him because he is like what love himself should be.
But what does he see in me? I am not worthy of him. And yet—why, I cannot
tell—though I feel so much beneath him, I don’t feel humble. I feel
proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you love my father as I love Prince
Charming?”
</p>
<p>
The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her cheeks, and
her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. Sybil rushed to her, flung her arms
round her neck, and kissed her. “Forgive me, Mother. I know it pains you
to talk about our father. But it only pains you because you loved him so much.
Don’t look so sad. I am as happy to-day as you were twenty years ago. Ah!
let me be happy for ever!”
</p>
<p>
“My child, you are far too young to think of falling in love. Besides,
what do you know of this young man? You don’t even know his name. The
whole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when James is going away to
Australia, and I have so much to think of, I must say that you should have
shown more consideration. However, as I said before, if he is rich ...”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! Mother, Mother, let me be happy!”
</p>
<p>
Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false theatrical gestures that
so often become a mode of second nature to a stage-player, clasped her in her
arms. At this moment, the door opened and a young lad with rough brown hair
came into the room. He was thick-set of figure, and his hands and feet were
large and somewhat clumsy in movement. He was not so finely bred as his sister.
One would hardly have guessed the close relationship that existed between them.
Mrs. Vane fixed her eyes on him and intensified her smile. She mentally
elevated her son to the dignity of an audience. She felt sure that the
<i>tableau</i> was interesting.
</p>
<p>
“You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think,” said
the lad with a good-natured grumble.
</p>
<p>
“Ah! but you don’t like being kissed, Jim,” she cried.
“You are a dreadful old bear.” And she ran across the room and
hugged him.
</p>
<p>
James Vane looked into his sister’s face with tenderness. “I want
you to come out with me for a walk, Sibyl. I don’t suppose I shall ever
see this horrid London again. I am sure I don’t want to.”
</p>
<p>
“My son, don’t say such dreadful things,” murmured Mrs. Vane,
taking up a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it.
She felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. It would have
increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation.
</p>
<p>
“Why not, Mother? I mean it.”
</p>
<p>
“You pain me, my son. I trust you will return from Australia in a
position of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the
Colonies—nothing that I would call society—so when you have made
your fortune, you must come back and assert yourself in London.”
</p>
<p>
“Society!” muttered the lad. “I don’t want to know
anything about that. I should like to make some money to take you and Sibyl off
the stage. I hate it.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, Jim!” said Sibyl, laughing, “how unkind of you! But are
you really going for a walk with me? That will be nice! I was afraid you were
going to say good-bye to some of your friends—to Tom Hardy, who gave you
that hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who makes fun of you for smoking it. It is
very sweet of you to let me have your last afternoon. Where shall we go? Let us
go to the park.”
</p>
<p>
“I am too shabby,” he answered, frowning. “Only swell people
go to the park.”
</p>
<p>
“Nonsense, Jim,” she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.
</p>
<p>
He hesitated for a moment. “Very well,” he said at last, “but
don’t be too long dressing.” She danced out of the door. One could
hear her singing as she ran upstairs. Her little feet pattered overhead.
</p>
<p>
He walked up and down the room two or three times. Then he turned to the still
figure in the chair. “Mother, are my things ready?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
“Quite ready, James,” she answered, keeping her eyes on her work.
For some months past she had felt ill at ease when she was alone with this
rough stern son of hers. Her shallow secret nature was troubled when their eyes
met. She used to wonder if he suspected anything. The silence, for he made no
other observation, became intolerable to her. She began to complain. Women
defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange
surrenders. “I hope you will be contented, James, with your sea-faring
life,” she said. “You must remember that it is your own choice. You
might have entered a solicitor’s office. Solicitors are a very
respectable class, and in the country often dine with the best families.”
</p>
<p>
“I hate offices, and I hate clerks,” he replied. “But you are
quite right. I have chosen my own life. All I say is, watch over Sibyl.
Don’t let her come to any harm. Mother, you must watch over her.”
</p>
<p>
“James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I watch over
Sibyl.”
</p>
<p>
“I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre and goes behind to
talk to her. Is that right? What about that?”
</p>
<p>
“You are speaking about things you don’t understand, James. In the
profession we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying
attention. I myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. That was when
acting was really understood. As for Sibyl, I do not know at present whether
her attachment is serious or not. But there is no doubt that the young man in
question is a perfect gentleman. He is always most polite to me. Besides, he
has the appearance of being rich, and the flowers he sends are lovely.”
</p>
<p>
“You don’t know his name, though,” said the lad harshly.
</p>
<p>
“No,” answered his mother with a placid expression in her face.
“He has not yet revealed his real name. I think it is quite romantic of
him. He is probably a member of the aristocracy.”
</p>
<p>
James Vane bit his lip. “Watch over Sibyl, Mother,” he cried,
“watch over her.”
</p>
<p>
“My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my special
care. Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why she
should not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the aristocracy.
He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be a most brilliant
marriage for Sibyl. They would make a charming couple. His good looks are
really quite remarkable; everybody notices them.”
</p>
<p>
The lad muttered something to himself and drummed on the window-pane with his
coarse fingers. He had just turned round to say something when the door opened
and Sibyl ran in.
</p>
<p>
“How serious you both are!” she cried. “What is the
matter?”
</p>
<p>
“Nothing,” he answered. “I suppose one must be serious
sometimes. Good-bye, Mother; I will have my dinner at five o’clock.
Everything is packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble.”
</p>
<p>
“Good-bye, my son,” she answered with a bow of strained
stateliness.
</p>
<p>
She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, and there was
something in his look that had made her feel afraid.
</p>
<p>
“Kiss me, Mother,” said the girl. Her flowerlike lips touched the
withered cheek and warmed its frost.
</p>
<p>
“My child! my child!” cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in
search of an imaginary gallery.
</p>
<p>
“Come, Sibyl,” said her brother impatiently. He hated his
mother’s affectations.
</p>
<p>
They went out into the flickering, wind-blown sunlight and strolled down the
dreary Euston Road. The passersby glanced in wonder at the sullen heavy youth
who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the company of such a graceful,
refined-looking girl. He was like a common gardener walking with a rose.
</p>
<p>
Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of some
stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at, which comes on geniuses late
in life and never leaves the commonplace. Sibyl, however, was quite unconscious
of the effect she was producing. Her love was trembling in laughter on her
lips. She was thinking of Prince Charming, and, that she might think of him all
the more, she did not talk of him, but prattled on about the ship in which Jim
was going to sail, about the gold he was certain to find, about the wonderful
heiress whose life he was to save from the wicked, red-shirted bushrangers. For
he was not to remain a sailor, or a supercargo, or whatever he was going to be.
Oh, no! A sailor’s existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a
horrid ship, with the hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a black
wind blowing the masts down and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands!
He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite good-bye to the captain,
and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before a week was over he was to come
across a large nugget of pure gold, the largest nugget that had ever been
discovered, and bring it down to the coast in a waggon guarded by six mounted
policemen. The bushrangers were to attack them three times, and be defeated
with immense slaughter. Or, no. He was not to go to the gold-fields at all.
They were horrid places, where men got intoxicated, and shot each other in
bar-rooms, and used bad language. He was to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one
evening, as he was riding home, he was to see the beautiful heiress being
carried off by a robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of
course, she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would get
married, and come home, and live in an immense house in London. Yes, there were
delightful things in store for him. But he must be very good, and not lose his
temper, or spend his money foolishly. She was only a year older than he was,
but she knew so much more of life. He must be sure, also, to write to her by
every mail, and to say his prayers each night before he went to sleep. God was
very good, and would watch over him. She would pray for him, too, and in a few
years he would come back quite rich and happy.
</p>
<p>
The lad listened sulkily to her and made no answer. He was heart-sick at
leaving home.
</p>
<p>
Yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose. Inexperienced though
he was, he had still a strong sense of the danger of Sibyl’s position.
This young dandy who was making love to her could mean her no good. He was a
gentleman, and he hated him for that, hated him through some curious
race-instinct for which he could not account, and which for that reason was all
the more dominant within him. He was conscious also of the shallowness and
vanity of his mother’s nature, and in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl
and Sibyl’s happiness. Children begin by loving their parents; as they
grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
</p>
<p>
His mother! He had something on his mind to ask of her, something that he had
brooded on for many months of silence. A chance phrase that he had heard at the
theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his ears one night as he waited at
the stage-door, had set loose a train of horrible thoughts. He remembered it as
if it had been the lash of a hunting-crop across his face. His brows knit
together into a wedge-like furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his
underlip.
</p>
<p>
“You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim,” cried Sibyl,
“and I am making the most delightful plans for your future. Do say
something.”
</p>
<p>
“What do you want me to say?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh! that you will be a good boy and not forget us,” she answered,
smiling at him.
</p>
<p>
He shrugged his shoulders. “You are more likely to forget me than I am to
forget you, Sibyl.”
</p>
<p>
She flushed. “What do you mean, Jim?” she asked.
</p>
<p>
“You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why have you not told me about
him? He means you no good.”
</p>
<p>
“Stop, Jim!” she exclaimed. “You must not say anything
against him. I love him.”
</p>
<p>
“Why, you don’t even know his name,” answered the lad.
“Who is he? I have a right to know.”
</p>
<p>
“He is called Prince Charming. Don’t you like the name? Oh! you
silly boy! you should never forget it. If you only saw him, you would think him
the most wonderful person in the world. Some day you will meet him—when
you come back from Australia. You will like him so much. Everybody likes him,
and I ... love him. I wish you could come to the theatre to-night. He is going
to be there, and I am to play Juliet. Oh! how I shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to
be in love and play Juliet! To have him sitting there! To play for his delight!
I am afraid I may frighten the company, frighten or enthrall them. To be in
love is to surpass one’s self. Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting
‘genius’ to his loafers at the bar. He has preached me as a dogma;
to-night he will announce me as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his
only, Prince Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I am poor
beside him. Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door,
love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want rewriting. They were made
in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time for me, I think, a very dance of
blossoms in blue skies.”
</p>
<p>
“He is a gentleman,” said the lad sullenly.
</p>
<p>
“A prince!” she cried musically. “What more do you
want?”
</p>
<p>
“He wants to enslave you.”
</p>
<p>
“I shudder at the thought of being free.”
</p>
<p>
“I want you to beware of him.”
</p>
<p>
“To see him is to worship him; to know him is to trust him.”
</p>
<p>
“Sibyl, you are mad about him.”
</p>
<p>
She laughed and took his arm. “You dear old Jim, you talk as if you were
a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself. Then you will know what it
is. Don’t look so sulky. Surely you should be glad to think that, though
you are going away, you leave me happier than I have ever been before. Life has
been hard for us both, terribly hard and difficult. But it will be different
now. You are going to a new world, and I have found one. Here are two chairs;
let us sit down and see the smart people go by.”
</p>
<p>
They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulip-beds across the
road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust—tremulous cloud of
orris-root it seemed—hung in the panting air. The brightly coloured
parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies.
</p>
<p>
She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects. He spoke slowly
and with effort. They passed words to each other as players at a game pass
counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could not communicate her joy. A faint
smile curving that sullen mouth was all the echo she could win. After some time
she became silent. Suddenly she caught a glimpse of golden hair and laughing
lips, and in an open carriage with two ladies Dorian Gray drove past.
</p>
<p>
She started to her feet. “There he is!” she cried.
</p>
<p>
“Who?” said Jim Vane.
</p>
<p>
“Prince Charming,” she answered, looking after the victoria.
</p>
<p>
He jumped up and seized her roughly by the arm. “Show him to me. Which is
he? Point him out. I must see him!” he exclaimed; but at that moment the
Duke of Berwick’s four-in-hand came between, and when it had left the
space clear, the carriage had swept out of the park.
</p>
<p>
“He is gone,” murmured Sibyl sadly. “I wish you had seen
him.”
</p>
<p>
“I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does
you any wrong, I shall kill him.”
</p>
<p>
She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words. They cut the air like a
dagger. The people round began to gape. A lady standing close to her tittered.
</p>
<p>
“Come away, Jim; come away,” she whispered. He followed her
doggedly as she passed through the crowd. He felt glad at what he had said.
</p>
<p>
When they reached the Achilles Statue, she turned round. There was pity in her
eyes that became laughter on her lips. She shook her head at him. “You
are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy, that is all. How can you
say such horrible things? You don’t know what you are talking about. You
are simply jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish you would fall in love. Love makes
people good, and what you said was wicked.”
</p>
<p>
“I am sixteen,” he answered, “and I know what I am about.
Mother is no help to you. She doesn’t understand how to look after you. I
wish now that I was not going to Australia at all. I have a great mind to chuck
the whole thing up. I would, if my articles hadn’t been signed.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, don’t be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of
those silly melodramas Mother used to be so fond of acting in. I am not going
to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect happiness.
We won’t quarrel. I know you would never harm any one I love, would
you?”
</p>
<p>
“Not as long as you love him, I suppose,” was the sullen answer.
</p>
<p>
“I shall love him for ever!” she cried.
</p>
<p>
“And he?”
</p>
<p>
“For ever, too!”
</p>
<p>
“He had better.”
</p>
<p>
She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put her hand on his arm. He was
merely a boy.
</p>
<p>
At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close to their
shabby home in the Euston Road. It was after five o’clock, and Sibyl had
to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. Jim insisted that she should
do so. He said that he would sooner part with her when their mother was not
present. She would be sure to make a scene, and he detested scenes of every
kind.
</p>
<p>
In Sybil’s own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad’s
heart, and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him,
had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck, and her
fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and kissed her with real
affection. There were tears in his eyes as he went downstairs.
</p>
<p>
His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his unpunctuality, as he
entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. The flies buzzed
round the table and crawled over the stained cloth. Through the rumble of
omnibuses, and the clatter of street-cabs, he could hear the droning voice
devouring each minute that was left to him.
</p>
<p>
After some time, he thrust away his plate and put his head in his hands. He
felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to him before, if it
was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother watched him. Words dropped
mechanically from her lips. A tattered lace handkerchief twitched in her
fingers. When the clock struck six, he got up and went to the door. Then he
turned back and looked at her. Their eyes met. In hers he saw a wild appeal for
mercy. It enraged him.
</p>
<p>
“Mother, I have something to ask you,” he said. Her eyes wandered
vaguely about the room. She made no answer. “Tell me the truth. I have a
right to know. Were you married to my father?”
</p>
<p>
She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment, the
moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded, had come at
last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed, in some measure it was a
disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question called for a
direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up to. It was crude. It
reminded her of a bad rehearsal.
</p>
<p>
“No,” she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.
</p>
<p>
“My father was a scoundrel then!” cried the lad, clenching his
fists.
</p>
<p>
She shook her head. “I knew he was not free. We loved each other very
much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us. Don’t speak
against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman. Indeed, he was highly
connected.”
</p>
<p>
An oath broke from his lips. “I don’t care for myself,” he
exclaimed, “but don’t let Sibyl.... It is a gentleman, isn’t
it, who is in love with her, or says he is? Highly connected, too, I
suppose.”
</p>
<p>
For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. Her head
drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands. “Sibyl has a
mother,” she murmured; “I had none.”
</p>
<p>
The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down, he kissed her.
“I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about my father,” he
said, “but I could not help it. I must go now. Good-bye. Don’t
forget that you will have only one child now to look after, and believe me that
if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him down, and
kill him like a dog. I swear it.”
</p>
<p>
The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture that accompanied
it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem more vivid to her. She was
familiar with the atmosphere. She breathed more freely, and for the first time
for many months she really admired her son. She would have liked to have
continued the scene on the same emotional scale, but he cut her short. Trunks
had to be carried down and mufflers looked for. The lodging-house drudge
bustled in and out. There was the bargaining with the cabman. The moment was
lost in vulgar details. It was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that
she waved the tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove
away. She was conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted. She consoled
herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her life would be, now that she
had only one child to look after. She remembered the phrase. It had pleased
her. Of the threat she said nothing. It was vividly and dramatically expressed.
She felt that they would all laugh at it some day.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
<p>
“I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?” said Lord Henry that
evening as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol where
dinner had been laid for three.
</p>
<p>
“No, Harry,” answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the
bowing waiter. “What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope! They
don’t interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House of
Commons worth painting, though many of them would be the better for a little
whitewashing.”
</p>
<p>
“Dorian Gray is engaged to be married,” said Lord Henry, watching
him as he spoke.
</p>
<p>
Hallward started and then frowned. “Dorian engaged to be married!”
he cried. “Impossible!”
</p>
<p>
“It is perfectly true.”
</p>
<p>
“To whom?”
</p>
<p>
“To some little actress or other.”
</p>
<p>
“I can’t believe it. Dorian is far too sensible.”
</p>
<p>
“Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear
Basil.”
</p>
<p>
“Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“Except in America,” rejoined Lord Henry languidly. “But I
didn’t say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is
a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have
no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I never
was engaged.”
</p>
<p>
“But think of Dorian’s birth, and position, and wealth. It would be
absurd for him to marry so much beneath him.”
</p>
<p>
“If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is
sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is
always from the noblest motives.”
</p>
<p>
“I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don’t want to see Dorian tied to
some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, she is better than good—she is beautiful,” murmured Lord
Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. “Dorian says she
is beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your
portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal appearance of
other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst others. We are to see
her to-night, if that boy doesn’t forget his appointment.”
</p>
<p>
“Are you serious?”
</p>
<p>
“Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I should ever
be more serious than I am at the present moment.”
</p>
<p>
“But do you approve of it, Harry?” asked the painter, walking up
and down the room and biting his lip. “You can’t approve of it,
possibly. It is some silly infatuation.”
</p>
<p>
“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd
attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral
prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never
interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me,
whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful
to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful girl who acts Juliet, and
proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded Messalina, he would be none the
less interesting. You know I am not a champion of marriage. The real drawback
to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are
colourless. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that
marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many
other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly
organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy, the object of
man’s existence. Besides, every experience is of value, and whatever one
may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I hope that Dorian
Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and
then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful
study.”
</p>
<p>
“You don’t mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you
don’t. If Dorian Gray’s life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier
than yourself. You are much better than you pretend to be.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry laughed. “The reason we all like to think so well of others is
that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We
think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession
of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker
that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in
the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I
have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is
spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have
merely to reform it. As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there
are other and more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly
encourage them. They have the charm of being fashionable. But here is Dorian
himself. He will tell you more than I can.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!” said
the lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings and shaking
each of his friends by the hand in turn. “I have never been so happy. Of
course, it is sudden—all really delightful things are. And yet it seems
to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my life.” He was
flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked extraordinarily handsome.
</p>
<p>
“I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian,” said Hallward,
“but I don’t quite forgive you for not having let me know of your
engagement. You let Harry know.”
</p>
<p>
“And I don’t forgive you for being late for dinner,” broke in
Lord Henry, putting his hand on the lad’s shoulder and smiling as he
spoke. “Come, let us sit down and try what the new <i>chef</i> here is
like, and then you will tell us how it all came about.”
</p>
<p>
“There is really not much to tell,” cried Dorian as they took their
seats at the small round table. “What happened was simply this. After I
left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that little
Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and went down at
eight o’clock to the theatre. Sibyl was playing Rosalind. Of course, the
scenery was dreadful and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl! You should have seen
her! When she came on in her boy’s clothes, she was perfectly wonderful.
She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim, brown,
cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk’s feather
caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had never seemed
to me more exquisite. She had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine
that you have in your studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like
dark leaves round a pale rose. As for her acting—well, you shall see her
to-night. She is simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely
enthralled. I forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. I was
away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the performance
was over, I went behind and spoke to her. As we were sitting together, suddenly
there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen there before. My lips
moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can’t describe to you what I
felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one
perfect point of rose-coloured joy. She trembled all over and shook like a
white narcissus. Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I
feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can’t help it. Of course,
our engagement is a dead secret. She has not even told her own mother. I
don’t know what my guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious.
I don’t care. I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do
what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of
poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare
taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of
Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right,” said Hallward slowly.
</p>
<p>
“Have you seen her to-day?” asked Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray shook his head. “I left her in the forest of Arden; I shall
find her in an orchard in Verona.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. “At what
particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? And what did she
say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did
not make any formal proposal. I told her that I loved her, and she said she was
not worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole world is nothing to me
compared with her.”
</p>
<p>
“Women are wonderfully practical,” murmured Lord Henry, “much
more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say
anything about marriage, and they always remind us.”
</p>
<p>
Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. “Don’t, Harry. You have
annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon any
one. His nature is too fine for that.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry looked across the table. “Dorian is never annoyed with
me,” he answered. “I asked the question for the best reason
possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any
question—simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women
who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, in
middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. “You are quite incorrigible,
Harry; but I don’t mind. It is impossible to be angry with you. When you
see Sibyl Vane, you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a
beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot understand how any one can wish to
shame the thing he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a pedestal
of gold and to see the world worship the woman who is mine. What is marriage?
An irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don’t mock. It is an
irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me faithful, her belief
makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. I
become different from what you have known me to be. I am changed, and the mere
touch of Sibyl Vane’s hand makes me forget you and all your wrong,
fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.”
</p>
<p>
“And those are ...?” asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some
salad.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories
about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about,” he
answered in his slow melodious voice. “But I am afraid I cannot claim my
theory as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature’s
test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we
are good, we are not always happy.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! but what do you mean by good?” cried Basil Hallward.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord
Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the centre
of the table, “what do you mean by good, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self,” he replied,
touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers.
“Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One’s own
life—that is the important thing. As for the lives of one’s
neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one’s
moral views about them, but they are not one’s concern. Besides,
individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting
the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to
accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.”
</p>
<p>
“But, surely, if one lives merely for one’s self, Harry, one pays a
terrible price for doing so?” suggested the painter.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the
real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial.
Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.”
</p>
<p>
“One has to pay in other ways but money.”
</p>
<p>
“What sort of ways, Basil?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in ... well, in the
consciousness of degradation.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “My dear fellow, mediæval art is
charming, but mediæval emotions are out of date. One can use them in fiction,
of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction are the things
that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a
pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.”
</p>
<p>
“I know what pleasure is,” cried Dorian Gray. “It is to adore
some one.”
</p>
<p>
“That is certainly better than being adored,” he answered, toying
with some fruits. “Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as
humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do
something for them.”
</p>
<p>
“I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to
us,” murmured the lad gravely. “They create love in our natures.
They have a right to demand it back.”
</p>
<p>
“That is quite true, Dorian,” cried Hallward.
</p>
<p>
“Nothing is ever quite true,” said Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“This is,” interrupted Dorian. “You must admit, Harry, that
women give to men the very gold of their lives.”
</p>
<p>
“Possibly,” he sighed, “but they invariably want it back in
such very small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty Frenchman once
put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us
from carrying them out.”
</p>
<p>
“Harry, you are dreadful! I don’t know why I like you so
much.”
</p>
<p>
“You will always like me, Dorian,” he replied. “Will you have
some coffee, you fellows? Waiter, bring coffee, and <i>fine-champagne</i>, and
some cigarettes. No, don’t mind the cigarettes—I have some. Basil,
I can’t allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette
is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one
unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of
me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to
commit.”
</p>
<p>
“What nonsense you talk, Harry!” cried the lad, taking a light from
a fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.
“Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will
have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you have
never known.”
</p>
<p>
“I have known everything,” said Lord Henry, with a tired look in
his eyes, “but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid, however,
that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful girl
may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Let us go.
Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but there is only room for
two in the brougham. You must follow us in a hansom.”
</p>
<p>
They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. The painter
was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could not bear this
marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than many other things that
might have happened. After a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. He drove
off by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the
little brougham in front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt
that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past.
Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring
streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it
seemed to him that he had grown years older.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
<p>
For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat Jew
manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an oily
tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of pompous humility,
waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top of his voice. Dorian Gray
loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he had come to look for Miranda and
had been met by Caliban. Lord Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him. At
least he declared he did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring
him that he was proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone
bankrupt over a poet. Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the
pit. The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a
monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery had
taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side. They talked
to each other across the theatre and shared their oranges with the tawdry girls
who sat beside them. Some women were laughing in the pit. Their voices were
horribly shrill and discordant. The sound of the popping of corks came from the
bar.
</p>
<p>
“What a place to find one’s divinity in!” said Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“Yes!” answered Dorian Gray. “It was here I found her, and
she is divine beyond all living things. When she acts, you will forget
everything. These common rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal
gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently
and watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do. She makes them as
responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them, and one feels that they are of
the same flesh and blood as one’s self.”
</p>
<p>
“The same flesh and blood as one’s self! Oh, I hope not!”
exclaimed Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his
opera-glass.
</p>
<p>
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Dorian,” said the painter.
“I understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Any one you love
must be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must be fine
and noble. To spiritualize one’s age—that is something worth doing.
If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can
create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if
she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that
are not their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration
of the world. This marriage is quite right. I did not think so at first, but I
admit it now. The gods made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been
incomplete.”
</p>
<p>
“Thanks, Basil,” answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. “I
knew that you would understand me. Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But
here is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five
minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am going
to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good in me.”
</p>
<p>
A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of applause,
Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly lovely to look
at—one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought, that he had ever
seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. A
faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to her
cheeks as she glanced at the crowded enthusiastic house. She stepped back a few
paces and her lips seemed to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and
began to applaud. Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at
her. Lord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, “Charming!
charming!”
</p>
<p>
The scene was the hall of Capulet’s house, and Romeo in his
pilgrim’s dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The
band, such as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began.
Through the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a
creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a plant
sways in the water. The curves of her throat were the curves of a white lily.
Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.
</p>
<p>
Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes rested
on Romeo. The few words she had to speak—
</p>
<p class="poem">
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,<br >
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;<br >
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,<br >
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss—
</p>
<p class="noindent">
with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly artificial
manner. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view of tone it was
absolutely false. It was wrong in colour. It took away all the life from the
verse. It made the passion unreal.
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious. Neither of
his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them to be absolutely
incompetent. They were horribly disappointed.
</p>
<p>
Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of the
second act. They waited for that. If she failed there, there was nothing in
her.
</p>
<p>
She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That could not be denied.
But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse as she went on.
Her gestures became absurdly artificial. She overemphasized everything that she
had to say. The beautiful passage—
</p>
<p class="poem">
Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,<br >
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek<br >
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night—
</p>
<p class="noindent">
was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been taught to
recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she leaned over the
balcony and came to those wonderful lines—
</p>
<p class="poem">
Although I joy in thee,<br >
I have no joy of this contract to-night:<br >
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;<br >
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be<br >
Ere one can say, “It lightens.” Sweet, good-night!<br >
This bud of love by summer’s ripening breath<br >
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet—
</p>
<p class="noindent">
she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was not
nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely
self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.
</p>
<p>
Even the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their interest
in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to whistle. The
Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the dress-circle, stamped and
swore with rage. The only person unmoved was the girl herself.
</p>
<p>
When the second act was over, there came a storm of hisses, and Lord Henry got
up from his chair and put on his coat. “She is quite beautiful,
Dorian,” he said, “but she can’t act. Let us go.”
</p>
<p>
“I am going to see the play through,” answered the lad, in a hard
bitter voice. “I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an evening,
Harry. I apologize to you both.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill,” interrupted
Hallward. “We will come some other night.”
</p>
<p>
“I wish she were ill,” he rejoined. “But she seems to me to
be simply callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a
great artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace mediocre actress.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a
more wonderful thing than art.”
</p>
<p>
“They are both simply forms of imitation,” remarked Lord Henry.
“But do let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not
good for one’s morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don’t suppose
you will want your wife to act, so what does it matter if she plays Juliet like
a wooden doll? She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life as she
does about acting, she will be a delightful experience. There are only two
kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely
everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. Good heavens, my dear boy,
don’t look so tragic! The secret of remaining young is never to have an
emotion that is unbecoming. Come to the club with Basil and myself. We will
smoke cigarettes and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What
more can you want?”
</p>
<p>
“Go away, Harry,” cried the lad. “I want to be alone. Basil,
you must go. Ah! can’t you see that my heart is breaking?” The hot
tears came to his eyes. His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box,
he leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.
</p>
<p>
“Let us go, Basil,” said Lord Henry with a strange tenderness in
his voice, and the two young men passed out together.
</p>
<p>
A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose on the
third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale, and proud, and
indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable. Half of the audience
went out, tramping in heavy boots and laughing. The whole thing was a
<i>fiasco</i>. The last act was played to almost empty benches. The curtain
went down on a titter and some groans.
</p>
<p>
As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the
greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on her
face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a radiance about her.
Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of their own.
</p>
<p>
When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy came over
her. “How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!” she cried.
</p>
<p>
“Horribly!” he answered, gazing at her in amazement.
“Horribly! It was dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was.
You have no idea what I suffered.”
</p>
<p>
The girl smiled. “Dorian,” she answered, lingering over his name
with long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to the
red petals of her mouth. “Dorian, you should have understood. But you
understand now, don’t you?”
</p>
<p>
“Understand what?” he asked, angrily.
</p>
<p>
“Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never
act well again.”
</p>
<p>
He shrugged his shoulders. “You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill you
shouldn’t act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends were bored. I was
bored.”
</p>
<p>
She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. An ecstasy of
happiness dominated her.
</p>
<p>
“Dorian, Dorian,” she cried, “before I knew you, acting was
the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought
that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The joy of
Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in
everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The
painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them
real. You came—oh, my beautiful love!—and you freed my soul from
prison. You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in
my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty
pageant in which I had always played. To-night, for the first time, I became
conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight
in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had
to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say. You had
brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection.
You had made me understand what love really is. My love! My love! Prince
Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You are more to me than
all art can ever be. What have I to do with the puppets of a play? When I came
on to-night, I could not understand how it was that everything had gone from
me. I thought that I was going to be wonderful. I found that I could do
nothing. Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was
exquisite to me. I heard them hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of
love such as ours? Take me away, Dorian—take me away with you, where we
can be quite alone. I hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not
feel, but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you
understand now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would be
profanation for me to play at being in love. You have made me see that.”
</p>
<p>
He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face. “You have
killed my love,” he muttered.
</p>
<p>
She looked at him in wonder and laughed. He made no answer. She came across to
him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. She knelt down and pressed
his hands to her lips. He drew them away, and a shudder ran through him.
</p>
<p>
Then he leaped up and went to the door. “Yes,” he cried, “you
have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even
stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were
marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the
dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You
have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! how mad I was to
love you! What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me now. I will never see
you again. I will never think of you. I will never mention your name. You
don’t know what you were to me, once. Why, once ... Oh, I can’t
bear to think of it! I wish I had never laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled
the romance of my life. How little you can know of love, if you say it mars
your art! Without your art, you are nothing. I would have made you famous,
splendid, magnificent. The world would have worshipped you, and you would have
borne my name. What are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty
face.”
</p>
<p>
The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together, and her
voice seemed to catch in her throat. “You are not serious, Dorian?”
she murmured. “You are acting.”
</p>
<p>
“Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well,” he answered
bitterly.
</p>
<p>
She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her face,
came across the room to him. She put her hand upon his arm and looked into his
eyes. He thrust her back. “Don’t touch me!” he cried.
</p>
<p>
A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay there like
a trampled flower. “Dorian, Dorian, don’t leave me!” she
whispered. “I am so sorry I didn’t act well. I was thinking of you
all the time. But I will try—indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly
across me, my love for you. I think I should never have known it if you had not
kissed me—if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love.
Don’t go away from me. I couldn’t bear it. Oh! don’t go away
from me. My brother ... No; never mind. He didn’t mean it. He was in
jest.... But you, oh! can’t you forgive me for to-night? I will work so
hard and try to improve. Don’t be cruel to me, because I love you better
than anything in the world. After all, it is only once that I have not pleased
you. But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an
artist. It was foolish of me, and yet I couldn’t help it. Oh, don’t
leave me, don’t leave me.” A fit of passionate sobbing choked her.
She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his
beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite
disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom
one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic.
Her tears and sobs annoyed him.
</p>
<p>
“I am going,” he said at last in his calm clear voice. “I
don’t wish to be unkind, but I can’t see you again. You have
disappointed me.”
</p>
<p>
She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little hands
stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. He turned on his
heel and left the room. In a few moments he was out of the theatre.
</p>
<p>
Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimly lit
streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses. Women
with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after him. Drunkards had
reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves like monstrous apes. He had
seen grotesque children huddled upon door-steps, and heard shrieks and oaths
from gloomy courts.
</p>
<p>
As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent Garden. The
darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a
perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the
polished empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and
their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain. He followed into the
market and watched the men unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter
offered him some cherries. He thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept
any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked at
midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long line of
boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in
front of him, threading their way through the huge, jade-green piles of
vegetables. Under the portico, with its grey, sun-bleached pillars, loitered a
troop of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction to be over. Others
crowded round the swinging doors of the coffee-house in the piazza. The heavy
cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and
trappings. Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks.
Iris-necked and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.
</p>
<p>
After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home. For a few moments he
loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent square, with its blank,
close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds. The sky was pure opal now, and
the roofs of the houses glistened like silver against it. From some chimney
opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising. It curled, a violet riband, through
the nacre-coloured air.
</p>
<p>
In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge’s barge, that hung
from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights were still
burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame they seemed,
rimmed with white fire. He turned them out and, having thrown his hat and cape
on the table, passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom, a
large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for
luxury, he had just had decorated for himself and hung with some curious
Renaissance tapestries that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at
Selby Royal. As he was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the
portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise.
Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. After he had taken
the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate. Finally, he came back,
went over to the picture, and examined it. In the dim arrested light that
struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to
be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that
there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly strange.
</p>
<p>
He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. The bright dawn
flooded the room and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they
lay shuddering. But the strange expression that he had noticed in the face of
the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even. The quivering
ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as
if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
</p>
<p>
He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory Cupids,
one of Lord Henry’s many presents to him, glanced hurriedly into its
polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips. What did it mean?
</p>
<p>
He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it again. There
were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual painting, and yet
there was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. It was not a mere
fancy of his own. The thing was horribly apparent.
</p>
<p>
He threw himself into a chair and began to think. Suddenly there flashed across
his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward’s studio the day the picture
had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish
that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own
beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his
passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of
suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and
loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been
fulfilled? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of
them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in
the mouth.
</p>
<p>
Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl’s fault, not his. He had
dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he had
thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been shallow and
unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over him, as he thought
of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little child. He remembered with what
callousness he had watched her. Why had he been made like that? Why had such a
soul been given to him? But he had suffered also. During the three terrible
hours that the play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon
of torture. His life was well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, if
he had wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow
than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions.
When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have
scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were. Why
should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to him now.
</p>
<p>
But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life,
and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach
him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again?
</p>
<p>
No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. The horrible
night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly there had fallen
upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men mad. The picture had not
changed. It was folly to think so.
</p>
<p>
Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile.
Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. A
sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself,
came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. Its gold would
wither into grey. Its red and white roses would die. For every sin that he
committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. But he would not sin.
The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of
conscience. He would resist temptation. He would not see Lord Henry any
more—would not, at any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories
that in Basil Hallward’s garden had first stirred within him the passion
for impossible things. He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry
her, try to love her again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have
suffered more than he had. Poor child! He had been selfish and cruel to her.
The fascination that she had exercised over him would return. They would be
happy together. His life with her would be beautiful and pure.
</p>
<p>
He got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front of the
portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. “How horrible!” he
murmured to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. When he
stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. The fresh morning air
seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of Sibyl. A faint
echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her name over and over again.
The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the
flowers about her.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
<p>
It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept several times on
tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered what made his
young master sleep so late. Finally his bell sounded, and Victor came in softly
with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on a small tray of old Sevres china,
and drew back the olive-satin curtains, with their shimmering blue lining, that
hung in front of the three tall windows.
</p>
<p>
“Monsieur has well slept this morning,” he said, smiling.
</p>
<p>
“What o’clock is it, Victor?” asked Dorian Gray drowsily.
</p>
<p>
“One hour and a quarter, Monsieur.”
</p>
<p>
How late it was! He sat up, and having sipped some tea, turned over his
letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought by hand that
morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside. The others he opened
listlessly. They contained the usual collection of cards, invitations to
dinner, tickets for private views, programmes of charity concerts, and the like
that are showered on fashionable young men every morning during the season.
There was a rather heavy bill for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set that
he had not yet had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely
old-fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when
unnecessary things are our only necessities; and there were several very
courteously worded communications from Jermyn Street money-lenders offering to
advance any sum of money at a moment’s notice and at the most reasonable
rates of interest.
</p>
<p>
After about ten minutes he got up, and throwing on an elaborate dressing-gown
of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the onyx-paved bathroom. The
cool water refreshed him after his long sleep. He seemed to have forgotten all
that he had gone through. A dim sense of having taken part in some strange
tragedy came to him once or twice, but there was the unreality of a dream about
it.
</p>
<p>
As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a light
French breakfast that had been laid out for him on a small round table close to
the open window. It was an exquisite day. The warm air seemed laden with
spices. A bee flew in and buzzed round the blue-dragon bowl that, filled with
sulphur-yellow roses, stood before him. He felt perfectly happy.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the
portrait, and he started.
</p>
<p>
“Too cold for Monsieur?” asked his valet, putting an omelette on
the table. “I shut the window?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian shook his head. “I am not cold,” he murmured.
</p>
<p>
Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? Or had it been simply his own
imagination that had made him see a look of evil where there had been a look of
joy? Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing was absurd. It would
serve as a tale to tell Basil some day. It would make him smile.
</p>
<p>
And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! First in the dim
twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of cruelty round
the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving the room. He knew that
when he was alone he would have to examine the portrait. He was afraid of
certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes had been brought and the man turned
to go, he felt a wild desire to tell him to remain. As the door was closing
behind him, he called him back. The man stood waiting for his orders. Dorian
looked at him for a moment. “I am not at home to any one, Victor,”
he said with a sigh. The man bowed and retired.
</p>
<p>
Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on a
luxuriously cushioned couch that stood facing the screen. The screen was an old
one, of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a rather florid
Louis-Quatorze pattern. He scanned it curiously, wondering if ever before it
had concealed the secret of a man’s life.
</p>
<p>
Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it stay there? What was the use
of knowing? If the thing was true, it was terrible. If it was not true, why
trouble about it? But what if, by some fate or deadlier chance, eyes other than
his spied behind and saw the horrible change? What should he do if Basil
Hallward came and asked to look at his own picture? Basil would be sure to do
that. No; the thing had to be examined, and at once. Anything would be better
than this dreadful state of doubt.
</p>
<p>
He got up and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when he looked upon
the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside and saw himself face to
face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had altered.
</p>
<p>
As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he found
himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost scientific
interest. That such a change should have taken place was incredible to him. And
yet it was a fact. Was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms
that shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas and the soul that was
within him? Could it be that what that soul thought, they realized?—that
what it dreamed, they made true? Or was there some other, more terrible reason?
He shuddered, and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing
at the picture in sickened horror.
</p>
<p>
One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. It had made him conscious
how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane. It was not too late to make
reparation for that. She could still be his wife. His unreal and selfish love
would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler
passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a
guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and
conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all. There were opiates for
remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible
symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men
brought upon their souls.
</p>
<p>
Three o’clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double chime,
but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of
life and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine
labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering. He did not know what to
do, or what to think. Finally, he went over to the table and wrote a passionate
letter to the girl he had loved, imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself
of madness. He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder
words of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we
feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the
priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt
that he had been forgiven.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry’s voice
outside. “My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at once. I can’t
bear your shutting yourself up like this.”
</p>
<p>
He made no answer at first, but remained quite still. The knocking still
continued and grew louder. Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry in, and to
explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel with him if it
became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was inevitable. He jumped up,
drew the screen hastily across the picture, and unlocked the door.
</p>
<p>
“I am so sorry for it all, Dorian,” said Lord Henry as he entered.
“But you must not think too much about it.”
</p>
<p>
“Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?” asked the lad.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, of course,” answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair and
slowly pulling off his yellow gloves. “It is dreadful, from one point of
view, but it was not your fault. Tell me, did you go behind and see her, after
the play was over?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes.”
</p>
<p>
“I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?”
</p>
<p>
“I was brutal, Harry—perfectly brutal. But it is all right now. I
am not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know myself
better.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I was afraid I would
find you plunged in remorse and tearing that nice curly hair of yours.”
</p>
<p>
“I have got through all that,” said Dorian, shaking his head and
smiling. “I am perfectly happy now. I know what conscience is, to begin
with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us.
Don’t sneer at it, Harry, any more—at least not before me. I want
to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”
</p>
<p>
“A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you on
it. But how are you going to begin?”
</p>
<p>
“By marrying Sibyl Vane.”
</p>
<p>
“Marrying Sibyl Vane!” cried Lord Henry, standing up and looking at
him in perplexed amazement. “But, my dear Dorian—”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say. Something dreadful about
marriage. Don’t say it. Don’t ever say things of that kind to me
again. Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. I am not going to break my word
to her. She is to be my wife.”
</p>
<p>
“Your wife! Dorian! ... Didn’t you get my letter? I wrote to you
this morning, and sent the note down by my own man.”
</p>
<p>
“Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry. I was
afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn’t like. You cut life
to pieces with your epigrams.”
</p>
<p>
“You know nothing then?”
</p>
<p>
“What do you mean?”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry walked across the room, and sitting down by Dorian Gray, took both
his hands in his own and held them tightly. “Dorian,” he said,
“my letter—don’t be frightened—was to tell you that
Sibyl Vane is dead.”
</p>
<p>
A cry of pain broke from the lad’s lips, and he leaped to his feet,
tearing his hands away from Lord Henry’s grasp. “Dead! Sibyl dead!
It is not true! It is a horrible lie! How dare you say it?”
</p>
<p>
“It is quite true, Dorian,” said Lord Henry, gravely. “It is
in all the morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see any one
till I came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not be
mixed up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris. But in London
people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never make one’s <i>début</i>
with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one’s old
age. I suppose they don’t know your name at the theatre? If they
don’t, it is all right. Did any one see you going round to her room? That
is an important point.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror. Finally he
stammered, in a stifled voice, “Harry, did you say an inquest? What did
you mean by that? Did Sibyl—? Oh, Harry, I can’t bear it! But be
quick. Tell me everything at once.”
</p>
<p>
“I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be put in
that way to the public. It seems that as she was leaving the theatre with her
mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had forgotten something
upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she did not come down again. They
ultimately found her lying dead on the floor of her dressing-room. She had
swallowed something by mistake, some dreadful thing they use at theatres. I
don’t know what it was, but it had either prussic acid or white lead in
it. I should fancy it was prussic acid, as she seems to have died
instantaneously.”
</p>
<p>
“Harry, Harry, it is terrible!” cried the lad.
</p>
<p>
“Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed
up in it. I see by <i>The Standard</i> that she was seventeen. I should have
thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and seemed
to know so little about acting. Dorian, you mustn’t let this thing get on
your nerves. You must come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look in at
the opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be there. You can come to my
sister’s box. She has got some smart women with her.”
</p>
<p>
“So I have murdered Sibyl Vane,” said Dorian Gray, half to himself,
“murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife.
Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily
in my garden. And to-night I am to dine with you, and then go on to the opera,
and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How extraordinarily dramatic life is!
If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have wept over it.
Somehow, now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too
wonderful for tears. Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever
written in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have
been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent
people we call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen? Oh, Harry,
how I loved her once! It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me.
Then came that dreadful night—was it really only last night?—when
she played so badly, and my heart almost broke. She explained it all to me. It
was terribly pathetic. But I was not moved a bit. I thought her shallow.
Suddenly something happened that made me afraid. I can’t tell you what it
was, but it was terrible. I said I would go back to her. I felt I had done
wrong. And now she is dead. My God! My God! Harry, what shall I do? You
don’t know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to keep me straight.
She would have done that for me. She had no right to kill herself. It was
selfish of her.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Dorian,” answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his
case and producing a gold-latten matchbox, “the only way a woman can ever
reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest
in life. If you had married this girl, you would have been wretched. Of course,
you would have treated her kindly. One can always be kind to people about whom
one cares nothing. But she would have soon found out that you were absolutely
indifferent to her. And when a woman finds that out about her husband, she
either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other
woman’s husband has to pay for. I say nothing about the social mistake,
which would have been abject—which, of course, I would not have
allowed—but I assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been
an absolute failure.”
</p>
<p>
“I suppose it would,” muttered the lad, walking up and down the
room and looking horribly pale. “But I thought it was my duty. It is not
my fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was right. I
remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good
resolutions—that they are always made too late. Mine certainly
were.”
</p>
<p>
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.
Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely <i>nil</i>. They give
us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain
charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them. They are simply
cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
</p>
<p>
“Harry,” cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside
him, “why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to? I
don’t think I am heartless. Do you?”
</p>
<p>
“You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be
entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian,” answered Lord Henry with
his sweet melancholy smile.
</p>
<p>
The lad frowned. “I don’t like that explanation, Harry,” he
rejoined, “but I am glad you don’t think I am heartless. I am
nothing of the kind. I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that
has happened does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like
a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a
Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not
been wounded.”
</p>
<p>
“It is an interesting question,” said Lord Henry, who found an
exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad’s unconscious egotism, “an
extremely interesting question. I fancy that the true explanation is this: It
often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic
manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence,
their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just
as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and
we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic
elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the
whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find
that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we
are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls
us. In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Some one has
killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience.
It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life. The people who
have adored me—there have not been very many, but there have been
some—have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care
for them, or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when
I meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman!
What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual stagnation it
reveals! One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember
its details. Details are always vulgar.”
</p>
<p>
“I must sow poppies in my garden,” sighed Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“There is no necessity,” rejoined his companion. “Life has
always poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore
nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for
a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did die. I forget what
killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me.
That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.
Well—would you believe it?—a week ago, at Lady Hampshire’s, I
found myself seated at dinner next the lady in question, and she insisted on
going over the whole thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the
future. I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. She dragged it out again
and assured me that I had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she ate an
enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she
showed! The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know
when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the
interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If they
were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every
tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they
have no sense of art. You are more fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian,
that not one of the women I have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane
did for you. Ordinary women always console themselves. Some of them do it by
going in for sentimental colours. Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever
her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It
always means that they have a history. Others find a great consolation in
suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. They flaunt their
conjugal felicity in one’s face, as if it were the most fascinating of
sins. Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation,
a woman once told me, and I can quite understand it. Besides, nothing makes one
so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us
all. Yes; there is really no end to the consolations that women find in modern
life. Indeed, I have not mentioned the most important one.”
</p>
<p>
“What is that, Harry?” said the lad listlessly.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking some one else’s admirer when
one loses one’s own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman. But
really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the women one
meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her death. I am glad I am
living in a century when such wonders happen. They make one believe in the
reality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and
love.”
</p>
<p>
“I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that.”
</p>
<p>
“I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than
anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated
them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love
being dominated. I am sure you were splendid. I have never seen you really and
absolutely angry, but I can fancy how delightful you looked. And, after all,
you said something to me the day before yesterday that seemed to me at the time
to be merely fanciful, but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the
key to everything.”
</p>
<p>
“What was that, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of
romance—that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that if
she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen.”
</p>
<p>
“She will never come to life again now,” muttered the lad, burying
his face in his hands.
</p>
<p>
“No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you
must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange
lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from Webster,
or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has never
really died. To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted
through Shakespeare’s plays and left them lovelier for its presence, a
reed through which Shakespeare’s music sounded richer and more full of
joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and
so she passed away. Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head
because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of
Brabantio died. But don’t waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less
real than they are.”
</p>
<p>
There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. Noiselessly, and with
silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden. The colours faded wearily
out of things.
</p>
<p>
After some time Dorian Gray looked up. “You have explained me to myself,
Harry,” he murmured with something of a sigh of relief. “I felt all
that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, and I could not express it
to myself. How well you know me! But we will not talk again of what has
happened. It has been a marvellous experience. That is all. I wonder if life
has still in store for me anything as marvellous.”
</p>
<p>
“Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that you,
with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do.”
</p>
<p>
“But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What
then?”
</p>
<p>
“Ah, then,” said Lord Henry, rising to go, “then, my dear
Dorian, you would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought
to you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too
much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot spare you.
And now you had better dress and drive down to the club. We are rather late, as
it is.”
</p>
<p>
“I think I shall join you at the opera, Harry. I feel too tired to eat
anything. What is the number of your sister’s box?”
</p>
<p>
“Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier. You will see her name
on the door. But I am sorry you won’t come and dine.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t feel up to it,” said Dorian listlessly. “But I
am awfully obliged to you for all that you have said to me. You are certainly
my best friend. No one has ever understood me as you have.”
</p>
<p>
“We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian,” answered
Lord Henry, shaking him by the hand. “Good-bye. I shall see you before
nine-thirty, I hope. Remember, Patti is singing.”
</p>
<p>
As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, and in a few
minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down. He waited
impatiently for him to go. The man seemed to take an interminable time over
everything.
</p>
<p>
As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and drew it back. No; there was
no further change in the picture. It had received the news of Sibyl
Vane’s death before he had known of it himself. It was conscious of the
events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines
of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk
the poison, whatever it was. Or was it indifferent to results? Did it merely
take cognizance of what passed within the soul? He wondered, and hoped that
some day he would see the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering
as he hoped it.
</p>
<p>
Poor Sibyl! What a romance it had all been! She had often mimicked death on the
stage. Then Death himself had touched her and taken her with him. How had she
played that dreadful last scene? Had she cursed him, as she died? No; she had
died for love of him, and love would always be a sacrament to him now. She had
atoned for everything by the sacrifice she had made of her life. He would not
think any more of what she had made him go through, on that horrible night at
the theatre. When he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure
sent on to the world’s stage to show the supreme reality of love. A
wonderful tragic figure? Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike
look, and winsome fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace. He brushed them away
hastily and looked again at the picture.
</p>
<p>
He felt that the time had really come for making his choice. Or had his choice
already been made? Yes, life had decided that for him—life, and his own
infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures
subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins—he was to have all these
things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all.
</p>
<p>
A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that was in
store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish mockery of Narcissus, he
had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly
at him. Morning after morning he had sat before the portrait wondering at its
beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times. Was it to alter
now with every mood to which he yielded? Was it to become a monstrous and
loathsome thing, to be hidden away in a locked room, to be shut out from the
sunlight that had so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its
hair? The pity of it! the pity of it!
</p>
<p>
For a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that existed
between him and the picture might cease. It had changed in answer to a prayer;
perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain unchanged. And yet, who, that
knew anything about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young,
however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences it
might be fraught? Besides, was it really under his control? Had it indeed been
prayer that had produced the substitution? Might there not be some curious
scientific reason for it all? If thought could exercise its influence upon a
living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon dead and
inorganic things? Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things
external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom
calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity? But the reason was of no
importance. He would never again tempt by a prayer any terrible power. If the
picture was to alter, it was to alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely
into it?
</p>
<p>
For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to follow
his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him the most magical
of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him
his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he would still be standing where
spring trembles on the verge of summer. When the blood crept from its face, and
left behind a pallid mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour
of boyhood. Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of
his life would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong,
and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the coloured image
on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.
</p>
<p>
He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture, smiling
as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was already waiting
for him. An hour later he was at the opera, and Lord Henry was leaning over his
chair.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
<p>
As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown into the
room.
</p>
<p>
“I am so glad I have found you, Dorian,” he said gravely. “I
called last night, and they told me you were at the opera. Of course, I knew
that was impossible. But I wish you had left word where you had really gone to.
I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy might be followed by
another. I think you might have telegraphed for me when you heard of it first.
I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of <i>The Globe</i> that I
picked up at the club. I came here at once and was miserable at not finding
you. I can’t tell you how heart-broken I am about the whole thing. I know
what you must suffer. But where were you? Did you go down and see the
girl’s mother? For a moment I thought of following you there. They gave
the address in the paper. Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn’t it? But I
was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow that I could not lighten. Poor woman!
What a state she must be in! And her only child, too! What did she say about it
all?”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Basil, how do I know?” murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some
pale-yellow wine from a delicate, gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass and
looking dreadfully bored. “I was at the opera. You should have come on
there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry’s sister, for the first time. We were
in her box. She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang divinely. Don’t
talk about horrid subjects. If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has
never happened. It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives reality to
things. I may mention that she was not the woman’s only child. There is a
son, a charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on the stage. He is a sailor,
or something. And now, tell me about yourself and what you are painting.”
</p>
<p>
“You went to the opera?” said Hallward, speaking very slowly and
with a strained touch of pain in his voice. “You went to the opera while
Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging? You can talk to me of other
women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before the girl you loved
has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are horrors in store
for that little white body of hers!”
</p>
<p>
“Stop, Basil! I won’t hear it!” cried Dorian, leaping to his
feet. “You must not tell me about things. What is done is done. What is
past is past.”
</p>
<p>
“You call yesterday the past?”
</p>
<p>
“What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow
people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of
himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t
want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and
to dominate them.”
</p>
<p>
“Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed you completely. You look
exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come down to my
studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple, natural, and affectionate
then. You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world. Now, I
don’t know what has come over you. You talk as if you had no heart, no
pity in you. It is all Harry’s influence. I see that.”
</p>
<p>
The lad flushed up and, going to the window, looked out for a few moments on
the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden. “I owe a great deal to Harry,
Basil,” he said at last, “more than I owe to you. You only taught
me to be vain.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, I am punished for that, Dorian—or shall be some day.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t know what you mean, Basil,” he exclaimed, turning
round. “I don’t know what you want. What do you want?”
</p>
<p>
“I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint,” said the artist sadly.
</p>
<p>
“Basil,” said the lad, going over to him and putting his hand on
his shoulder, “you have come too late. Yesterday, when I heard that Sibyl
Vane had killed herself—”
</p>
<p>
“Killed herself! Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?” cried
Hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.
</p>
<p>
“My dear Basil! Surely you don’t think it was a vulgar accident? Of
course she killed herself.”
</p>
<p>
The elder man buried his face in his hands. “How fearful,” he
muttered, and a shudder ran through him.
</p>
<p>
“No,” said Dorian Gray, “there is nothing fearful about it.
It is one of the great romantic tragedies of the age. As a rule, people who act
lead the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives, or
something tedious. You know what I mean—middle-class virtue and all that
kind of thing. How different Sibyl was! She lived her finest tragedy. She was
always a heroine. The last night she played—the night you saw
her—she acted badly because she had known the reality of love. When she
knew its unreality, she died, as Juliet might have died. She passed again into
the sphere of art. There is something of the martyr about her. Her death has
all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty. But, as I was
saying, you must not think I have not suffered. If you had come in yesterday at
a particular moment—about half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to
six—you would have found me in tears. Even Harry, who was here, who
brought me the news, in fact, had no idea what I was going through. I suffered
immensely. Then it passed away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except
sentimentalists. And you are awfully unjust, Basil. You come down here to
console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious.
How like a sympathetic person! You remind me of a story Harry told me about a
certain philanthropist who spent twenty years of his life in trying to get some
grievance redressed, or some unjust law altered—I forget exactly what it
was. Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment. He had
absolutely nothing to do, almost died of <i>ennui</i>, and became a confirmed
misanthrope. And besides, my dear old Basil, if you really want to console me,
teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to see it from a proper
artistic point of view. Was it not Gautier who used to write about <i>la
consolation des arts</i>? I remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in
your studio one day and chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not like
that young man you told me of when we were down at Marlow together, the young
man who used to say that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of
life. I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades,
green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury,
pomp—there is much to be got from all these. But the artistic temperament
that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more to me. To become the
spectator of one’s own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of
life. I know you are surprised at my talking to you like this. You have not
realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man
now. I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must
not like me less. I am changed, but you must always be my friend. Of course, I
am very fond of Harry. But I know that you are better than he is. You are not
stronger—you are too much afraid of life—but you are better. And
how happy we used to be together! Don’t leave me, Basil, and don’t
quarrel with me. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said.”
</p>
<p>
The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was infinitely dear to him, and his
personality had been the great turning point in his art. He could not bear the
idea of reproaching him any more. After all, his indifference was probably
merely a mood that would pass away. There was so much in him that was good, so
much in him that was noble.
</p>
<p>
“Well, Dorian,” he said at length, with a sad smile, “I
won’t speak to you again about this horrible thing, after to-day. I only
trust your name won’t be mentioned in connection with it. The inquest is
to take place this afternoon. Have they summoned you?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face at the
mention of the word “inquest.” There was something so crude and
vulgar about everything of the kind. “They don’t know my
name,” he answered.
</p>
<p>
“But surely she did?”
</p>
<p>
“Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned to
any one. She told me once that they were all rather curious to learn who I was,
and that she invariably told them my name was Prince Charming. It was pretty of
her. You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should like to have something
more of her than the memory of a few kisses and some broken pathetic
words.”
</p>
<p>
“I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you. But you
must come and sit to me yourself again. I can’t get on without
you.”
</p>
<p>
“I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!” he
exclaimed, starting back.
</p>
<p>
The painter stared at him. “My dear boy, what nonsense!” he cried.
“Do you mean to say you don’t like what I did of you? Where is it?
Why have you pulled the screen in front of it? Let me look at it. It is the
best thing I have ever done. Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply
disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that. I felt the room looked
different as I came in.”
</p>
<p>
“My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You don’t imagine I
let him arrange my room for me? He settles my flowers for me
sometimes—that is all. No; I did it myself. The light was too strong on
the portrait.”
</p>
<p>
“Too strong! Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an admirable place for it.
Let me see it.” And Hallward walked towards the corner of the room.
</p>
<p>
A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray’s lips, and he rushed between the
painter and the screen. “Basil,” he said, looking very pale,
“you must not look at it. I don’t wish you to.”
</p>
<p>
“Not look at my own work! You are not serious. Why shouldn’t I look
at it?” exclaimed Hallward, laughing.
</p>
<p>
“If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will never speak
to you again as long as I live. I am quite serious. I don’t offer any
explanation, and you are not to ask for any. But, remember, if you touch this
screen, everything is over between us.”
</p>
<p>
Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute amazement. He
had never seen him like this before. The lad was actually pallid with rage. His
hands were clenched, and the pupils of his eyes were like disks of blue fire.
He was trembling all over.
</p>
<p>
“Dorian!”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t speak!”
</p>
<p>
“But what is the matter? Of course I won’t look at it if you
don’t want me to,” he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel and
going over towards the window. “But, really, it seems rather absurd that
I shouldn’t see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in
Paris in the autumn. I shall probably have to give it another coat of varnish
before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?”
</p>
<p>
“To exhibit it! You want to exhibit it?” exclaimed Dorian Gray, a
strange sense of terror creeping over him. Was the world going to be shown his
secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his life? That was impossible.
Something—he did not know what—had to be done at once.
</p>
<p>
“Yes; I don’t suppose you will object to that. Georges Petit is
going to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de
Sèze, which will open the first week in October. The portrait will only be away
a month. I should think you could easily spare it for that time. In fact, you
are sure to be out of town. And if you keep it always behind a screen, you
can’t care much about it.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead. There were beads of perspiration
there. He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible danger. “You told
me a month ago that you would never exhibit it,” he cried. “Why
have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being consistent have just
as many moods as others have. The only difference is that your moods are rather
meaningless. You can’t have forgotten that you assured me most solemnly
that nothing in the world would induce you to send it to any exhibition. You
told Harry exactly the same thing.” He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of
light came into his eyes. He remembered that Lord Henry had said to him once,
half seriously and half in jest, “If you want to have a strange quarter
of an hour, get Basil to tell you why he won’t exhibit your picture. He
told me why he wouldn’t, and it was a revelation to me.” Yes,
perhaps Basil, too, had his secret. He would ask him and try.
</p>
<p>
“Basil,” he said, coming over quite close and looking him straight
in the face, “we have each of us a secret. Let me know yours, and I shall
tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my picture?”
</p>
<p>
The painter shuddered in spite of himself. “Dorian, if I told you, you
might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. I could
not bear your doing either of those two things. If you wish me never to look at
your picture again, I am content. I have always you to look at. If you wish the
best work I have ever done to be hidden from the world, I am satisfied. Your
friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation.”
</p>
<p>
“No, Basil, you must tell me,” insisted Dorian Gray. “I think
I have a right to know.” His feeling of terror had passed away, and
curiosity had taken its place. He was determined to find out Basil
Hallward’s mystery.
</p>
<p>
“Let us sit down, Dorian,” said the painter, looking troubled.
“Let us sit down. And just answer me one question. Have you noticed in
the picture something curious?—something that probably at first did not
strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?”
</p>
<p>
“Basil!” cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with
trembling hands and gazing at him with wild startled eyes.
</p>
<p>
“I see you did. Don’t speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say.
Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary
influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you. You became
to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us
artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one
to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I
was with you. When you were away from me, you were still present in my art....
Of course, I never let you know anything about this. It would have been
impossible. You would not have understood it. I hardly understood it myself. I
only knew that I had seen perfection face to face, and that the world had
become wonderful to my eyes—too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad
worships there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of
keeping them.... Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew more and more absorbed in
you. Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour,
and as Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and polished boar-spear. Crowned with
heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of Adrian’s barge, gazing
across the green turbid Nile. You had leaned over the still pool of some Greek
woodland and seen in the water’s silent silver the marvel of your own
face. And it had all been what art should be—unconscious, ideal, and
remote. One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to paint a
wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume of dead ages,
but in your own dress and in your own time. Whether it was the realism of the
method, or the mere wonder of your own personality, thus directly presented to
me without mist or veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it,
every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid
that others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, that I had told too
much, that I had put too much of myself into it. Then it was that I resolved
never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a little annoyed; but then
you did not realize all that it meant to me. Harry, to whom I talked about it,
laughed at me. But I did not mind that. When the picture was finished, and I
sat alone with it, I felt that I was right.... Well, after a few days the thing
left my studio, and as soon as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of
its presence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I had
seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking and that I
could paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that
the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.
Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and
colour—that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far
more completely than it ever reveals him. And so when I got this offer from
Paris, I determined to make your portrait the principal thing in my exhibition.
It never occurred to me that you would refuse. I see now that you were right.
The picture cannot be shown. You must not be angry with me, Dorian, for what I
have told you. As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The colour came back to his cheeks, and a smile
played about his lips. The peril was over. He was safe for the time. Yet he
could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter who had just made this
strange confession to him, and wondered if he himself would ever be so
dominated by the personality of a friend. Lord Henry had the charm of being
very dangerous. But that was all. He was too clever and too cynical to be
really fond of. Would there ever be some one who would fill him with a strange
idolatry? Was that one of the things that life had in store?
</p>
<p>
“It is extraordinary to me, Dorian,” said Hallward, “that you
should have seen this in the portrait. Did you really see it?”
</p>
<p>
“I saw something in it,” he answered, “something that seemed
to me very curious.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, you don’t mind my looking at the thing now?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian shook his head. “You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not
possibly let you stand in front of that picture.”
</p>
<p>
“You will some day, surely?”
</p>
<p>
“Never.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye, Dorian. You have been the
one person in my life who has really influenced my art. Whatever I have done
that is good, I owe to you. Ah! you don’t know what it cost me to tell
you all that I have told you.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Basil,” said Dorian, “what have you told me? Simply
that you felt that you admired me too much. That is not even a
compliment.”
</p>
<p>
“It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I
have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never
put one’s worship into words.”
</p>
<p>
“It was a very disappointing confession.”
</p>
<p>
“Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn’t see anything else in
the picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?”
</p>
<p>
“No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn’t
talk about worship. It is foolish. You and I are friends, Basil, and we must
always remain so.”
</p>
<p>
“You have got Harry,” said the painter sadly.
</p>
<p>
“Oh, Harry!” cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. “Harry
spends his days in saying what is incredible and his evenings in doing what is
improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I don’t
think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. I would sooner go to you,
Basil.”
</p>
<p>
“You will sit to me again?”
</p>
<p>
“Impossible!”
</p>
<p>
“You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man comes across
two ideal things. Few come across one.”
</p>
<p>
“I can’t explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you
again. There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own. I
will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant.”
</p>
<p>
“Pleasanter for you, I am afraid,” murmured Hallward regretfully.
“And now good-bye. I am sorry you won’t let me look at the picture
once again. But that can’t be helped. I quite understand what you feel
about it.”
</p>
<p>
As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil! How little he
knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead of having been
forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in
wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange confession explained
to him! The painter’s absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his
extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences—he understood them all
now, and he felt sorry. There seemed to him to be something tragic in a
friendship so coloured by romance.
</p>
<p>
He sighed and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away at all costs.
He could not run such a risk of discovery again. It had been mad of him to have
allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a room to which any of his
friends had access.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
<p>
When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly and wondered if he had
thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite impassive and waited
for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette and walked over to the glass and glanced
into it. He could see the reflection of Victor’s face perfectly. It was
like a placid mask of servility. There was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet
he thought it best to be on his guard.
</p>
<p>
Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-keeper that he wanted to
see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his men
round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room his eyes wandered
in the direction of the screen. Or was that merely his own fancy?
</p>
<p>
After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread mittens
on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He asked her for the
key of the schoolroom.
</p>
<p>
“The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?” she exclaimed. “Why, it is
full of dust. I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it. It
is not fit for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, sir, you’ll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why,
it hasn’t been opened for nearly five years—not since his lordship
died.”
</p>
<p>
He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of him.
“That does not matter,” he answered. “I simply want to see
the place—that is all. Give me the key.”
</p>
<p>
“And here is the key, sir,” said the old lady, going over the
contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. “Here is the key.
I’ll have it off the bunch in a moment. But you don’t think of
living up there, sir, and you so comfortable here?”
</p>
<p>
“No, no,” he cried petulantly. “Thank you, Leaf. That will
do.”
</p>
<p>
She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of the
household. He sighed and told her to manage things as she thought best. She
left the room, wreathed in smiles.
</p>
<p>
As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round the room.
His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a
splendid piece of late seventeenth-century Venetian work that his grandfather
had found in a convent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful
thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to
hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of
death itself—something that would breed horrors and yet would never die.
What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the
canvas. They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They would defile it
and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always
alive.
</p>
<p>
He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil the true
reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him
to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and the still more poisonous influences
that came from his own temperament. The love that he bore him—for it was
really love—had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was
not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses and that
dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and
Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have
saved him. But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated.
Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that
would make the shadow of their evil real.
</p>
<p>
He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered it,
and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. Was the face on the
canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was unchanged, and yet his
loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red
lips—they all were there. It was simply the expression that had altered.
That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw in it of censure or
rebuke, how shallow Basil’s reproaches about Sibyl Vane had
been!—how shallow, and of what little account! His own soul was looking
out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgement. A look of pain came
across him, and he flung the rich pall over the picture. As he did so, a knock
came to the door. He passed out as his servant entered.
</p>
<p>
“The persons are here, Monsieur.”
</p>
<p>
He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must not be allowed to know
where the picture was being taken to. There was something sly about him, and he
had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the writing-table he
scribbled a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him round something to read
and reminding him that they were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening.
</p>
<p>
“Wait for an answer,” he said, handing it to him, “and show
the men in here.”
</p>
<p>
In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard himself, the
celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in with a somewhat
rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid, red-whiskered little
man, whose admiration for art was considerably tempered by the inveterate
impecuniosity of most of the artists who dealt with him. As a rule, he never
left his shop. He waited for people to come to him. But he always made an
exception in favour of Dorian Gray. There was something about Dorian that
charmed everybody. It was a pleasure even to see him.
</p>
<p>
“What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?” he said, rubbing his fat
freckled hands. “I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round
in person. I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale.
Old Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited for a religious
subject, Mr. Gray.”
</p>
<p>
“I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame—though I
don’t go in much at present for religious art—but to-day I only
want a picture carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so I
thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men.”
</p>
<p>
“No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to you.
Which is the work of art, sir?”
</p>
<p>
“This,” replied Dorian, moving the screen back. “Can you move
it, covering and all, just as it is? I don’t want it to get scratched
going upstairs.”
</p>
<p>
“There will be no difficulty, sir,” said the genial frame-maker,
beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the long
brass chains by which it was suspended. “And, now, where shall we carry
it to, Mr. Gray?”
</p>
<p>
“I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or
perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top of the
house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider.”
</p>
<p>
He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and began the
ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the picture extremely
bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious protests of Mr. Hubbard,
who had the true tradesman’s spirited dislike of seeing a gentleman doing
anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as to help them.
</p>
<p>
“Something of a load to carry, sir,” gasped the little man when
they reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.
</p>
<p>
“I am afraid it is rather heavy,” murmured Dorian as he unlocked
the door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret
of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
</p>
<p>
He had not entered the place for more than four years—not, indeed, since
he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then as a study
when he grew somewhat older. It was a large, well-proportioned room, which had
been specially built by the last Lord Kelso for the use of the little grandson
whom, for his strange likeness to his mother, and also for other reasons, he
had always hated and desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian to
have but little changed. There was the huge Italian <i>cassone</i>, with its
fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which he had
so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood book-case filled with his
dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged
Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden,
while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted
wrists. How well he remembered it all! Every moment of his lonely childhood
came back to him as he looked round. He recalled the stainless purity of his
boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait
was to be hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all
that was in store for him!
</p>
<p>
But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as this.
He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple pall, the
face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean. What did it
matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see it. Why should he watch
the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his youth—that was enough.
And, besides, might not his nature grow finer, after all? There was no reason
that the future should be so full of shame. Some love might come across his
life, and purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already
stirring in spirit and in flesh—those curious unpictured sins whose very
mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel
look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show
to the world Basil Hallward’s masterpiece.
</p>
<p>
No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the
canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but the
hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become hollow or
flaccid. Yellow crow’s feet would creep round the fading eyes and make
them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or
droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. There would be
the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he
remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood. The
picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it.
</p>
<p>
“Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please,” he said, wearily, turning
round. “I am sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something
else.”
</p>
<p>
“Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray,” answered the frame-maker,
who was still gasping for breath. “Where shall we put it, sir?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don’t want to have it hung up.
Just lean it against the wall. Thanks.”
</p>
<p>
“Might one look at the work of art, sir?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian started. “It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard,” he said,
keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready to leap upon him and fling him to the
ground if he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed the secret of
his life. “I shan’t trouble you any more now. I am much obliged for
your kindness in coming round.”
</p>
<p>
“Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you,
sir.” And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who
glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough uncomely face. He
had never seen any one so marvellous.
</p>
<p>
When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the door and put
the key in his pocket. He felt safe now. No one would ever look upon the
horrible thing. No eye but his would ever see his shame.
</p>
<p>
On reaching the library, he found that it was just after five o’clock and
that the tea had been already brought up. On a little table of dark perfumed
wood thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from Lady Radley, his
guardian’s wife, a pretty professional invalid, who had spent the
preceding winter in Cairo, was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside it was
a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled. A
copy of the third edition of <i>The St. James’s Gazette</i> had been
placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had returned. He wondered if
he had met the men in the hall as they were leaving the house and had wormed
out of them what they had been doing. He would be sure to miss the
picture—had no doubt missed it already, while he had been laying the
tea-things. The screen had not been set back, and a blank space was visible on
the wall. Perhaps some night he might find him creeping upstairs and trying to
force the door of the room. It was a horrible thing to have a spy in
one’s house. He had heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all their
lives by some servant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or
picked up a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower
or a shred of crumpled lace.
</p>
<p>
He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry’s
note. It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and a book
that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at eight-fifteen. He
opened <i>The St. James’s</i> languidly, and looked through it. A red
pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention to the
following paragraph:
</p>
<p class="letter">
I<small>NQUEST ON AN</small> A<small>CTRESS</small>.—An inquest was held
this morning at the Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District
Coroner, on the body of Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the
Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict of death by misadventure was returned.
Considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who was
greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of Dr.
Birrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased.
</p>
<p>
He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across the room and flung the
pieces away. How ugly it all was! And how horribly real ugliness made things!
He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for having sent him the report. And it
was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil. Victor might
have read it. The man knew more than enough English for that.
</p>
<p>
Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something. And, yet, what did
it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane’s death? There was
nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her.
</p>
<p>
His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he
wondered. He went towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal stand that had
always looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought
in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an arm-chair and began
to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the
strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite
raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were
passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were
suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually
revealed.
</p>
<p>
It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed,
simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life
trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of
thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it
were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever
passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have
unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still
call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style,
vivid and obscure at once, full of <i>argot</i> and of archaisms, of technical
expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some
of the finest artists of the French school of <i>Symbolistes</i>. There were in
it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour. The life of the
senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at
times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediæval saint
or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The
heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the
brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music,
so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated,
produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form
of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day
and creeping shadows.
</p>
<p>
Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed through
the windows. He read on by its wan light till he could read no more. Then,
after his valet had reminded him several times of the lateness of the hour, he
got up, and going into the next room, placed the book on the little Florentine
table that always stood at his bedside and began to dress for dinner.
</p>
<p>
It was almost nine o’clock before he reached the club, where he found
Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.
</p>
<p>
“I am so sorry, Harry,” he cried, “but really it is entirely
your fault. That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time
was going.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I thought you would like it,” replied his host, rising from
his chair.
</p>
<p>
“I didn’t say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is
a great difference.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah, you have discovered that?” murmured Lord Henry. And they
passed into the dining-room.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
<p>
For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free
himself from it. He procured from Paris no less than nine large-paper copies of
the first edition, and had them bound in different colours, so that they might
suit his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over which he
seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control. The hero, the wonderful
young Parisian in whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so
strangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And,
indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life,
written before he had lived it.
</p>
<p>
In one point he was more fortunate than the novel’s fantastic hero. He
never knew—never, indeed, had any cause to know—that somewhat
grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still water which
came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was occasioned by the
sudden decay of a beau that had once, apparently, been so remarkable. It was
with an almost cruel joy—and perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in
every pleasure, cruelty has its place—that he used to read the latter
part of the book, with its really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account
of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and the
world, he had most dearly valued.
</p>
<p>
For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many others
besides him, seemed never to leave him. Even those who had heard the most evil
things against him—and from time to time strange rumours about his mode
of life crept through London and became the chatter of the clubs—could
not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. He had always the look
of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world. Men who talked grossly
became silent when Dorian Gray entered the room. There was something in the
purity of his face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall to
them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished. They wondered how one
so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that
was at once sordid and sensual.
</p>
<p>
Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged absences
that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were his friends, or
thought that they were so, he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room,
open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror,
in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, looking now at
the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that
laughed back at him from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast
used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his
own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He
would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible
delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around
the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the
signs of sin or the signs of age. He would place his white hands beside the
coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body
and the failing limbs.
</p>
<p>
There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own
delicately scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed
tavern near the docks which, under an assumed name and in disguise, it was his
habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul with
a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish. But
moments such as these were rare. That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had
first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend,
seemed to increase with gratification. The more he knew, the more he desired to
know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.
</p>
<p>
Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society. Once
or twice every month during the winter, and on each Wednesday evening while the
season lasted, he would throw open to the world his beautiful house and have
the most celebrated musicians of the day to charm his guests with the wonders
of their art. His little dinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always
assisted him, were noted as much for the careful selection and placing of those
invited, as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with
its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths,
and antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many, especially among
the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray the true
realization of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a
type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar with all
the grace and distinction and perfect manner of a citizen of the world. To them
he seemed to be of the company of those whom Dante describes as having sought
to “make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty.” Like
Gautier, he was one for whom “the visible world existed.”
</p>
<p>
And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts,
and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation. Fashion, by which
what is really fantastic becomes for a moment universal, and dandyism, which,
in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had,
of course, their fascination for him. His mode of dressing, and the particular
styles that from time to time he affected, had their marked influence on the
young exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied
him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of
his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.
</p>
<p>
For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost
immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a subtle
pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the London of his own
day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the Satyricon once had been,
yet in his inmost heart he desired to be something more than a mere <i>arbiter
elegantiarum</i>, to be consulted on the wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of
a necktie, or the conduct of a cane. He sought to elaborate some new scheme of
life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and
find in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.
</p>
<p>
The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men
feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem
stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less
highly organized forms of existence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the
true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained
savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into
submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements
of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the
dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through history, he
was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such
little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of
self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a
degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which,
in their ignorance, they had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony,
driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and
giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.
</p>
<p>
Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to
recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is
having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the
intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that
would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim,
indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or
bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the
vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach
man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a
moment.
</p>
<p>
There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after
one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of
those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the
brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that
vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its
enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those
whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white
fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black
fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch
there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound
of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down
from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to
wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave.
Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and
colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the
world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The
flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the
half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn
at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read
too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night
comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had
left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the
continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a
wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world
that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in
which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other
secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive,
at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even
of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.
</p>
<p>
It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray to be
the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life; and in his search for
sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and possess that element
of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain
modes of thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself
to their subtle influences, and then, having, as it were, caught their colour
and satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious
indifference that is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and
that, indeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition
of it.
</p>
<p>
It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic
communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for
him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the
antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of
the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal
pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down
on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered
dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle,
or raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer
that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the “<i>panis
cælestis</i>,” the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the
Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast
for his sins. The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and
scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle
fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black
confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to
men and women whispering through the worn grating the true story of their
lives.
</p>
<p>
But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by
any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which
to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night, or for a few
hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail.
Mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and
the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a
season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the
<i>Darwinismus</i> movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in tracing
the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some
white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute
dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy,
normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life
seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly
conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from
action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have
their spiritual mysteries to reveal.
</p>
<p>
And so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their manufacture,
distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums from the East. He saw
that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous
life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there
was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred
one’s passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and
in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination;
and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate
the several influences of sweet-smelling roots and scented, pollen-laden
flowers; of aromatic balms and of dark and fragrant woods; of spikenard, that
sickens; of hovenia, that makes men mad; and of aloes, that are said to be able
to expel melancholy from the soul.
</p>
<p>
At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long latticed
room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he
used to give curious concerts in which mad gipsies tore wild music from little
zithers, or grave, yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of
monstrous lutes, while grinning Negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums
and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes
of reed or brass and charmed—or feigned to charm—great hooded
snakes and horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert’s grace, and
Chopin’s beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven
himself, fell unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the
world the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of
dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact with
Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the mysterious
<i>juruparis</i> of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not allowed to look
at and that even youths may not see till they have been subjected to fasting
and scourging, and the earthen jars of the Peruvians that have the shrill cries
of birds, and flutes of human bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chile,
and the sonorous green jaspers that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note
of singular sweetness. He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled
when they were shaken; the long <i>clarin</i> of the Mexicans, into which the
performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh
<i>ture</i> of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all
day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three
leagues; the <i>teponaztli</i>, that has two vibrating tongues of wood and is
beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from the milky
juice of plants; the <i>yotl</i>-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters
like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great
serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the
Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a
description. The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and
he felt a curious delight in the thought that art, like Nature, has her
monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. Yet, after some
time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the opera, either alone
or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to “Tannhauser” and
seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy
of his own soul.
</p>
<p>
On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a costume ball
as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered with five hundred and
sixty pearls. This taste enthralled him for years, and, indeed, may be said
never to have left him. He would often spend a whole day settling and
resettling in their cases the various stones that he had collected, such as the
olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its
wirelike line of silver, the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and
wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed
stars, flame-red cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with
their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He loved the red gold of the
sunstone, and the moonstone’s pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of
the milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary size
and richness of colour, and had a turquoise <i>de la vieille roche</i> that was
the envy of all the connoisseurs.
</p>
<p>
He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso’s
Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in
the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of Emathia was said to have
found in the vale of Jordan snakes “with collars of real emeralds growing
on their backs.” There was a gem in the brain of the dragon, Philostratus
told us, and “by the exhibition of golden letters and a scarlet
robe” the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep and slain.
According to the great alchemist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond rendered a
man invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent. The cornelian appeased
anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes
of wine. The garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of
her colour. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that
discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids. Leonardus
Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly killed toad,
that was a certain antidote against poison. The bezoar, that was found in the
heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm that could cure the plague. In the nests
of Arabian birds was the aspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the
wearer from any danger by fire.
</p>
<p>
The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand, as the
ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John the Priest were
“made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake inwrought, so that no
man might bring poison within.” Over the gable were “two golden
apples, in which were two carbuncles,” so that the gold might shine by
day and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge’s strange romance ‘A
Margarite of America’, it was stated that in the chamber of the queen one
could behold “all the chaste ladies of the world, inchased out of silver,
looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene
emeraults.” Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place
rose-coloured pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been
enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain
the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. When the Huns lured the
king into the great pit, he flung it away—Procopius tells the
story—nor was it ever found again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered
five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it. The King of Malabar had shown to a
certain Venetian a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god
that he worshipped.
</p>
<p>
When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI., visited Louis XII. of
France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome, and his
cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light. Charles of England
had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and twenty-one diamonds. Richard
II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand marks, which was covered with balas
rubies. Hall described Henry VIII., on his way to the Tower previous to his
coronation, as wearing “a jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered
with diamonds and other rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of
large balasses.” The favourites of James I wore ear-rings of emeralds set
in gold filigrane. Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour
studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a
skull-cap <i>parsemé</i> with pearls. Henry II. wore jewelled gloves reaching
to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two great
orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his
race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls and studded with sapphires.
</p>
<p>
How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and decoration! Even
to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
</p>
<p>
Then he turned his attention to embroideries and to the tapestries that
performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the northern nations of
Europe. As he investigated the subject—and he always had an extraordinary
faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in whatever he took
up—he was almost saddened by the reflection of the ruin that time brought
on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any rate, had escaped that. Summer
followed summer, and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died many times, and
nights of horror repeated the story of their shame, but he was unchanged. No
winter marred his face or stained his flowerlike bloom. How different it was
with material things! Where had they passed to? Where was the great
crocus-coloured robe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had
been worked by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena? Where the huge velarium
that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple
on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by
white, gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins wrought
for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands
that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, with
its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation
of the Bishop of Pontus and were figured with “lions, panthers, bears,
dogs, forests, rocks, hunters—all, in fact, that a painter can copy from
nature”; and the coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves
of which were embroidered the verses of a song beginning “<i>Madame, je
suis tout joyeux</i>,” the musical accompaniment of the words being
wrought in gold thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed
with four pearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was decorated with “thirteen
hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
king’s arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings were
similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked in
gold.” Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed made for her of black
velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask, with
leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed
along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room hung with
rows of the queen’s devices in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver.
Louis XIV. had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment.
The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade
embroidered in turquoises with verses from the Koran. Its supports were of
silver gilt, beautifully chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled
medallions. It had been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the
standard of Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.
</p>
<p>
And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite specimens
that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting the dainty Delhi
muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates and stitched over with
iridescent beetles’ wings; the Dacca gauzes, that from their transparency
are known in the East as “woven air,” and “running
water,” and “evening dew”; strange figured cloths from Java;
elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair blue
silks and wrought with <i>fleurs-de-lis</i>, birds and images; veils of
<i>lacis</i> worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish
velvets; Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese <i>Foukousas</i>,
with their green-toned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds.
</p>
<p>
He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed he had
for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the long cedar
chests that lined the west gallery of his house, he had stored away many rare
and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of the Bride of Christ,
who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid
macerated body that is worn by the suffering that she seeks for and wounded by
self-inflicted pain. He possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and
gold-thread damask, figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set
in six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine-apple
device wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels
representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the
Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work of
the fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with
heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white
blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured
crystals. The morse bore a seraph’s head in gold-thread raised work. The
orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with
medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had
chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and
yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of the
Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and
other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with
tulips and dolphins and <i>fleurs-de-lis</i>; altar frontals of crimson velvet
and blue linen; and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic
offices to which such things were put, there was something that quickened his
imagination.
</p>
<p>
For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were
to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a
season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be
borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked room where he had spent so much of
his boyhood, he had hung with his own hands the terrible portrait whose
changing features showed him the real degradation of his life, and in front of
it had draped the purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. For weeks he would not go
there, would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart,
his wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence. Then,
suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to dreadful
places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day, until he was
driven away. On his return he would sit in front of the picture, sometimes
loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times, with that pride of
individualism that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling with secret
pleasure at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have
been his own.
</p>
<p>
After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and gave up
the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as well as the
little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more than once spent the
winter. He hated to be separated from the picture that was such a part of his
life, and was also afraid that during his absence some one might gain access to
the room, in spite of the elaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon
the door.
</p>
<p>
He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. It was true that the
portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness of the face, its
marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn from that? He would laugh
at any one who tried to taunt him. He had not painted it. What was it to him
how vile and full of shame it looked? Even if he told them, would they believe
it?
</p>
<p>
Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great house in
Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank who
were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton luxury and
gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, he would suddenly leave his guests and
rush back to town to see that the door had not been tampered with and that the
picture was still there. What if it should be stolen? The mere thought made him
cold with horror. Surely the world would know his secret then. Perhaps the
world already suspected it.
</p>
<p>
For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him. He was
very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and social
position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was said that on one
occasion, when he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room of the
Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in a marked manner
and went out. Curious stories became current about him after he had passed his
twenty-fifth year. It was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign
sailors in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted
with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. His
extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear again in
society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer,
or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they were determined to
discover his secret.
</p>
<p>
Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice, and in
the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his charming boyish
smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth that seemed never to
leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies, for so they
termed them, that were circulated about him. It was remarked, however, that
some of those who had been most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to
shun him. Women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all
social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with
shame or horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.
</p>
<p>
Yet these whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of many his strange and
dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain element of security.
Society—civilized society, at least—is never very ready to believe
anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels
instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its
opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession
of a good <i>chef</i>. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told
that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in
his private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold
<i>entrées</i>, as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject,
and there is possibly a good deal to be said for his view. For the canons of
good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is
absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well
as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play
with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us. Is insincerity
such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can
multiply our personalities.
</p>
<p>
Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray’s opinion. He used to wonder at the
shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing simple,
permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being with myriad
lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within
itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was
tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll through the
gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country house and look at the various
portraits of those whose blood flowed in his veins. Here was Philip Herbert,
described by Francis Osborne, in his Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth
and King James, as one who was “caressed by the Court for his handsome
face, which kept him not long company.” Was it young Herbert’s life
that he sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body
till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that
had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil
Hallward’s studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed his life? Here,
in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and
wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver-and-black armour piled
at his feet. What had this man’s legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanna
of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and shame? Were his own
actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize? Here,
from the fading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood,
pearl stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand, and
her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. On a table by
her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There were large green rosettes upon her
little pointed shoes. He knew her life, and the strange stories that were told
about her lovers. Had he something of her temperament in him? These oval,
heavy-lidded eyes seemed to look curiously at him. What of George Willoughby,
with his powdered hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was
saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain.
Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were so overladen
with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth century, and the friend,
in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the second Lord Beckenham, the companion
of the Prince Regent in his wildest days, and one of the witnesses at the
secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his
chestnut curls and insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world
had looked upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House. The
star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of
his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood, also, stirred within
him. How curious it all seemed! And his mother with her Lady Hamilton face and
her moist, wine-dashed lips—he knew what he had got from her. He had got
from her his beauty, and his passion for the beauty of others. She laughed at
him in her loose Bacchante dress. There were vine leaves in her hair. The
purple spilled from the cup she was holding. The carnations of the painting had
withered, but the eyes were still wonderful in their depth and brilliancy of
colour. They seemed to follow him wherever he went.
</p>
<p>
Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one’s own race, nearer
perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence
of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were times when it appeared
to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life,
not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had
created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt
that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed
across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of
subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his
own.
</p>
<p>
The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had himself
known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how, crowned with
laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as Tiberius, in a garden
at Capri, reading the shameful books of Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks
strutted round him and the flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and,
as Caligula, had caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and
supped in an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had
wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round with
haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his days, and
sick with that ennui, that terrible <i>tædium vitæ</i>, that comes on those
to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear emerald at the red
shambles of the circus and then, in a litter of pearl and purple drawn by
silver-shod mules, been carried through the Street of Pomegranates to a House
of Gold and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus,
had painted his face with colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and
brought the Moon from Carthage and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.
</p>
<p>
Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the two
chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious tapestries or
cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and beautiful forms of those
whom vice and blood and weariness had made monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of
Milan, who slew his wife and painted her lips with a scarlet poison that her
lover might suck death from the dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the
Venetian, known as Paul the Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the
title of Formosus, and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was
bought at the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to
chase living men and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot who
had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding beside him
and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young
Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of Sixtus IV., whose beauty
was equalled only by his debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a
pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded
a boy that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose
melancholy could be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion
for red blood, as other men have for red wine—the son of the Fiend, as
was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him
for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of Innocent
and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish
doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta and the lord of Rimini, whose
effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena
with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d’Este in a cup of emerald, and
in honour of a shameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship;
Charles VI., who had so wildly adored his brother’s wife that a leper had
warned him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his brain had
sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with
the images of love and death and madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and
jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with
his bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that, as
he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not
choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him.
</p>
<p>
There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and they
troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew of strange manners of
poisoning—poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered
glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian
Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil
simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the
beautiful.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
<p>
It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday, as
he often remembered afterwards.
</p>
<p>
He was walking home about eleven o’clock from Lord Henry’s, where
he had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and
foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street, a man passed
him in the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of his grey ulster
turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognized him. It was Basil
Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over
him. He made no sign of recognition and went on quickly in the direction of his
own house.
</p>
<p>
But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping on the pavement and
then hurrying after him. In a few moments, his hand was on his arm.
</p>
<p>
“Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I have been waiting for you
in your library ever since nine o’clock. Finally I took pity on your
tired servant and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. I am off to Paris by
the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see you before I left. I
thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me. But I
wasn’t quite sure. Didn’t you recognize me?”
</p>
<p>
“In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can’t even recognize Grosvenor
Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don’t feel at
all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen you for
ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?”
</p>
<p>
“No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend to take a
studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have finished a great picture I have
in my head. However, it wasn’t about myself I wanted to talk. Here we are
at your door. Let me come in for a moment. I have something to say to
you.”
</p>
<p>
“I shall be charmed. But won’t you miss your train?” said
Dorian Gray languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his
latch-key.
</p>
<p>
The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his watch.
“I have heaps of time,” he answered. “The train doesn’t
go till twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to
the club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I shan’t have any
delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things. All I have with me is
in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian looked at him and smiled. “What a way for a fashionable painter to
travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get into the
house. And mind you don’t talk about anything serious. Nothing is serious
nowadays. At least nothing should be.”
</p>
<p>
Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the library.
There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. The lamps were
lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some siphons of
soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table.
</p>
<p>
“You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me
everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is a most
hospitable creature. I like him much better than the Frenchman you used to
have. What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. “I believe he married Lady Radley’s
maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.
<i>Anglomanie</i> is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of
the French, doesn’t it? But—do you know?—he was not at all a
bad servant. I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One often
imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted to me and
seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another brandy-and-soda? Or would
you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take hock-and-seltzer myself. There is sure
to be some in the next room.”
</p>
<p>
“Thanks, I won’t have anything more,” said the painter,
taking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in
the corner. “And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.
Don’t frown like that. You make it so much more difficult for me.”
</p>
<p>
“What is it all about?” cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging
himself down on the sofa. “I hope it is not about myself. I am tired of
myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.”
</p>
<p>
“It is about yourself,” answered Hallward in his grave deep voice,
“and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. “Half an hour!” he murmured.
</p>
<p>
“It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own
sake that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the most
dreadful things are being said against you in London.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about
other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not
got the charm of novelty.”
</p>
<p>
“They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested in his
good name. You don’t want people to talk of you as something vile and
degraded. Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all that kind
of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind you, I don’t
believe these rumours at all. At least, I can’t believe them when I see
you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be
concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If
a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop
of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even. Somebody—I won’t
mention his name, but you know him—came to me last year to have his
portrait done. I had never seen him before, and had never heard anything about
him at the time, though I have heard a good deal since. He offered an
extravagant price. I refused him. There was something in the shape of his
fingers that I hated. I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about
him. His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent
face, and your marvellous untroubled youth—I can’t believe anything
against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the
studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things
that people are whispering about you, I don’t know what to say. Why is
it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when
you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to
your house or invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley. I
met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up in conversation, in
connection with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the Dudley.
Staveley curled his lip and said that you might have the most artistic tastes,
but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and
whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I
was a friend of yours, and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me
right out before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to
young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. You
were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England
with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton
and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s only son and his career? I
met his father yesterday in St. James’s Street. He seemed broken with
shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he
got now? What gentleman would associate with him?”
</p>
<p>
“Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know
nothing,” said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite
contempt in his voice. “You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter
it. It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could his
record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did I teach the
one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent’s silly son takes
his wife from the streets, what is that to me? If Adrian Singleton writes his
friend’s name across a bill, am I his keeper? I know how people chatter
in England. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross
dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their
betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on
intimate terms with the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for
a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against
him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead
themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the
hypocrite.”
</p>
<p>
“Dorian,” cried Hallward, “that is not the question. England
is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why
I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge of a
man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of
honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness for
pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. Yes: you led
them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse
behind. I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for
none other, you should not have made his sister’s name a by-word.”
</p>
<p>
“Take care, Basil. You go too far.”
</p>
<p>
“I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady
Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a single
decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the park? Why, even her
children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are other
stories—stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful
houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London. Are they true?
Can they be true? When I first heard them, I laughed. I hear them now, and they
make me shudder. What about your country-house and the life that is led there?
Dorian, you don’t know what is said about you. I won’t tell you
that I don’t want to preach to you. I remember Harry saying once that
every man who turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began
by saying that, and then proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to
you. I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want
you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the
dreadful people you associate with. Don’t shrug your shoulders like that.
Don’t be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for
good, not for evil. They say that you corrupt every one with whom you become
intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of
some kind to follow after. I don’t know whether it is so or not. How
should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it seems impossible
to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford. He showed
me a letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in her
villa at Mentone. Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I
ever read. I told him that it was absurd—that I knew you thoroughly, and
that you were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know
you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”
</p>
<p>
“To see my soul!” muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa
and turning almost white from fear.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his
voice, “to see your soul. But only God can do that.”
</p>
<p>
A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. “You
shall see it yourself, to-night!” he cried, seizing a lamp from the
table. “Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn’t you look at
it? You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would
believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it.
I know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so tediously.
Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall
look on it face to face.”
</p>
<p>
There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered. He stamped his foot
upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner. He felt a terrible joy at the
thought that some one else was to share his secret, and that the man who had
painted the portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened
for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what he had done.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly
into his stern eyes, “I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing
that you fancy only God can see.”
</p>
<p>
Hallward started back. “This is blasphemy, Dorian!” he cried.
“You must not say things like that. They are horrible, and they
don’t mean anything.”
</p>
<p>
“You think so?” He laughed again.
</p>
<p>
“I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your good.
You know I have been always a stanch friend to you.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t touch me. Finish what you have to say.”
</p>
<p>
A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter’s face. He paused for a
moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right had he
to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of what was
rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened
himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, looking at the
burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their throbbing cores of flame.
</p>
<p>
“I am waiting, Basil,” said the young man in a hard clear voice.
</p>
<p>
He turned round. “What I have to say is this,” he cried. “You
must give me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you.
If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, I shall
believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can’t you see what I am going
through? My God! don’t tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and
shameful.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. “Come
upstairs, Basil,” he said quietly. “I keep a diary of my life from
day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall show
it to you if you come with me.”
</p>
<p>
“I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my
train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don’t ask me to read
anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question.”
</p>
<p>
“That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will
not have to read long.”
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
<p>
He passed out of the room and began the ascent, Basil Hallward following close
behind. They walked softly, as men do instinctively at night. The lamp cast
fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A rising wind made some of the
windows rattle.
</p>
<p>
When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the floor, and
taking out the key, turned it in the lock. “You insist on knowing,
Basil?” he asked in a low voice.
</p>
<p>
“Yes.”
</p>
<p>
“I am delighted,” he answered, smiling. Then he added, somewhat
harshly, “You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know
everything about me. You have had more to do with my life than you
think”; and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A cold
current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of
murky orange. He shuddered. “Shut the door behind you,” he
whispered, as he placed the lamp on the table.
</p>
<p>
Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled expression. The room looked as if it
had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture,
an old Italian <i>cassone</i>, and an almost empty book-case—that was all
that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was
lighting a half-burned candle that was standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that
the whole place was covered with dust and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse
ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew.
</p>
<p>
“So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that
curtain back, and you will see mine.”
</p>
<p>
The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. “You are mad, Dorian, or playing
a part,” muttered Hallward, frowning.
</p>
<p>
“You won’t? Then I must do it myself,” said the young man,
and he tore the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground.
</p>
<p>
An exclamation of horror broke from the painter’s lips as he saw in the
dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was something
in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! it
was Dorian Gray’s own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever
it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There was still
some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The
sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble
curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from
plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to
recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design. The idea was
monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the
picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of
bright vermilion.
</p>
<p>
It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. He had never done that.
Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had
changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own picture! What did it
mean? Why had it altered? He turned and looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of
a sick man. His mouth twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to
articulate. He passed his hand across his forehead. It was dank with clammy
sweat.
</p>
<p>
The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with that
strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a
play when some great artist is acting. There was neither real sorrow in it nor
real joy. There was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker
of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was
smelling it, or pretending to do so.
</p>
<p>
“What does this mean?” cried Hallward, at last. His own voice
sounded shrill and curious in his ears.
</p>
<p>
“Years ago, when I was a boy,” said Dorian Gray, crushing the
flower in his hand, “you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain
of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained
to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to
me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment that, even now, I don’t know
whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a
prayer....”
</p>
<p>
“I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is impossible.
The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had some
wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah, what is impossible?” murmured the young man, going over to the
window and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.
</p>
<p>
“You told me you had destroyed it.”
</p>
<p>
“I was wrong. It has destroyed me.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t believe it is my picture.”
</p>
<p>
“Can’t you see your ideal in it?” said Dorian bitterly.
</p>
<p>
“My ideal, as you call it...”
</p>
<p>
“As you called it.”
</p>
<p>
“There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an
ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr.”
</p>
<p>
“It is the face of my soul.”
</p>
<p>
“Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a
devil.”
</p>
<p>
“Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil,” cried Dorian with a
wild gesture of despair.
</p>
<p>
Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. “My God! If it is
true,” he exclaimed, “and this is what you have done with your
life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you to
be!” He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. The
surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was from
within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange
quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing
away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.
</p>
<p>
His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor and lay there
sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he flung himself into
the rickety chair that was standing by the table and buried his face in his
hands.
</p>
<p>
“Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!” There was
no answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window. “Pray,
Dorian, pray,” he murmured. “What is it that one was taught to say
in one’s boyhood? ‘Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our
sins. Wash away our iniquities.’ Let us say that together. The prayer of
your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered
also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself
too much. We are both punished.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes.
“It is too late, Basil,” he faltered.
</p>
<p>
“It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot
remember a prayer. Isn’t there a verse somewhere, ‘Though your sins
be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow’?”
</p>
<p>
“Those words mean nothing to me now.”
</p>
<p>
“Hush! Don’t say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My
God! Don’t you see that accursed thing leering at us?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of
hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had been suggested to him
by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear by those grinning lips. The
mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who
was seated at the table, more than in his whole life he had ever loathed
anything. He glanced wildly around. Something glimmered on the top of the
painted chest that faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a
knife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had
forgotten to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward
as he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it and turned round.
Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at him and
dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the
man’s head down on the table and stabbing again and again.
</p>
<p>
There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of some one choking with
blood. Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively, waving
grotesque, stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him twice more, but the
man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor. He waited for a
moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw the knife on the table, and
listened.
</p>
<p>
He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He opened
the door and went out on the landing. The house was absolutely quiet. No one
was about. For a few seconds he stood bending over the balustrade and peering
down into the black seething well of darkness. Then he took out the key and
returned to the room, locking himself in as he did so.
</p>
<p>
The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with bowed
head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not been for the red
jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that was slowly widening on
the table, one would have said that the man was simply asleep.
</p>
<p>
How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and walking over to
the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony. The wind had blown the
fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock’s tail, starred with
myriads of golden eyes. He looked down and saw the policeman going his rounds
and flashing the long beam of his lantern on the doors of the silent houses.
The crimson spot of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner and then vanished.
A woman in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering
as she went. Now and then she stopped and peered back. Once, she began to sing
in a hoarse voice. The policeman strolled over and said something to her. She
stumbled away, laughing. A bitter blast swept across the square. The gas-lamps
flickered and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their black iron
branches to and fro. He shivered and went back, closing the window behind him.
</p>
<p>
Having reached the door, he turned the key and opened it. He did not even
glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the whole thing was not
to realize the situation. The friend who had painted the fatal portrait to
which all his misery had been due had gone out of his life. That was enough.
</p>
<p>
Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of Moorish
workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel, and
studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and
questions would be asked. He hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and
took it from the table. He could not help seeing the dead thing. How still it
was! How horribly white the long hands looked! It was like a dreadful wax
image.
</p>
<p>
Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. The woodwork
creaked and seemed to cry out as if in pain. He stopped several times and
waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the sound of his own footsteps.
</p>
<p>
When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. They must
be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that was in the
wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, and put them
into it. He could easily burn them afterwards. Then he pulled out his watch. It
was twenty minutes to two.
</p>
<p>
He sat down and began to think. Every year—every month, almost—men
were strangled in England for what he had done. There had been a madness of
murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the earth.... And yet,
what evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left the house at
eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants were at Selby
Royal. His valet had gone to bed.... Paris! Yes. It was to Paris that Basil had
gone, and by the midnight train, as he had intended. With his curious reserved
habits, it would be months before any suspicions would be roused. Months!
Everything could be destroyed long before then.
</p>
<p>
A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat and went out into
the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the policeman on the
pavement outside and seeing the flash of the bull’s-eye reflected in the
window. He waited and held his breath.
</p>
<p>
After a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, shutting the door
very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In about five minutes
his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very drowsy.
</p>
<p>
“I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,” he said, stepping
in; “but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?”
</p>
<p>
“Ten minutes past two, sir,” answered the man, looking at the clock
and blinking.
</p>
<p>
“Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine
to-morrow. I have some work to do.”
</p>
<p>
“All right, sir.”
</p>
<p>
“Did any one call this evening?”
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to
catch his train.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh! I am sorry I didn’t see him. Did he leave any message?”
</p>
<p>
“No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not
find you at the club.”
</p>
<p>
“That will do, Francis. Don’t forget to call me at nine
to-morrow.”
</p>
<p>
“No, sir.”
</p>
<p>
The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed into the library.
For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room, biting his lip and
thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one of the shelves and began to
turn over the leaves. “Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street,
Mayfair.” Yes; that was the man he wanted.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
<p>
At nine o’clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of
chocolate on a tray and opened the shutters. Dorian was sleeping quite
peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek. He
looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.
</p>
<p>
The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he opened
his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had been lost in
some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed at all. His night had been
untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. But youth smiles without any
reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.
</p>
<p>
He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate. The
mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky was bright, and there
was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like a morning in May.
</p>
<p>
Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained
feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible
distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a
moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made
him kill him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with
passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now.
How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the
day.
</p>
<p>
He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken or grow
mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing
of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and
gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they
brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. But this was not one of them. It
was a thing to be driven out of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be
strangled lest it might strangle one itself.
</p>
<p>
When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and then got
up hastily and dressed himself with even more than his usual care, giving a
good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and scarf-pin and changing
his rings more than once. He spent a long time also over breakfast, tasting the
various dishes, talking to his valet about some new liveries that he was
thinking of getting made for the servants at Selby, and going through his
correspondence. At some of the letters, he smiled. Three of them bored him. One
he read several times over and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in
his face. “That awful thing, a woman’s memory!” as Lord Henry
had once said.
</p>
<p>
After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly with a
napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the table, sat down
and wrote two letters. One he put in his pocket, the other he handed to the
valet.
</p>
<p>
“Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell is
out of town, get his address.”
</p>
<p>
As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and began sketching upon a piece of
paper, drawing first flowers and bits of architecture, and then human faces.
Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew seemed to have a fantastic
likeness to Basil Hallward. He frowned, and getting up, went over to the
book-case and took out a volume at hazard. He was determined that he would not
think about what had happened until it became absolutely necessary that he
should do so.
</p>
<p>
When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page of the
book. It was Gautier’s “Émaux et Camées”, Charpentier’s
Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was of
citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted
pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over
the pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the cold
yellow hand “<i>du supplice encore mal lavée</i>,” with its downy
red hairs and its “<i>doigts de faune</i>.” He glanced at his own
white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on,
till he came to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:
</p>
<p class="poem">
Sur une gamme chromatique,<br >
Le sein de perles ruisselant,<br >
La Vénus de l’Adriatique<br >
Sort de l’eau son corps rose et blanc.<br >
<br >
Les dômes, sur l’azur des ondes<br >
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,<br >
S’enflent comme des gorges rondes<br >
Que soulève un soupir d’amour.<br >
<br >
L’esquif aborde et me dépose,<br >
Jetant son amarre au pilier,<br >
Devant une façade rose,<br >
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.
</p>
<p>
How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floating down the
green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black gondola with
silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to him like those
straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one pushes out to the Lido.
The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of the
opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the tall honeycombed Campanile,
or stalk, with such stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades.
Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over to himself:
</p>
<p class="poem">
“Devant une façade rose,<br >
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered the autumn that he
had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to mad delightful
follies. There was romance in every place. But Venice, like Oxford, had kept
the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was
everything, or almost everything. Basil had been with him part of the time, and
had gone wild over Tintoret. Poor Basil! What a horrible way for a man to die!
</p>
<p>
He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget. He read of the
swallows that fly in and out of the little <i>café</i> at Smyrna where the
Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned merchants smoke their
long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of the Obelisk in
the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless
exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-covered Nile, where there are
Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises, and white vultures with gilded claws, and
crocodiles with small beryl eyes that crawl over the green steaming mud; he
began to brood over those verses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble,
tell of that curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the
“<i>monstre charmant</i>” that couches in the porphyry-room of the
Louvre. But after a time the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a
horrible fit of terror came over him. What if Alan Campbell should be out of
England? Days would elapse before he could come back. Perhaps he might refuse
to come. What could he do then? Every moment was of vital importance.
</p>
<p>
They had been great friends once, five years before—almost inseparable,
indeed. Then the intimacy had come suddenly to an end. When they met in society
now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled: Alan Campbell never did.
</p>
<p>
He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real appreciation of the
visible arts, and whatever little sense of the beauty of poetry he possessed he
had gained entirely from Dorian. His dominant intellectual passion was for
science. At Cambridge he had spent a great deal of his time working in the
laboratory, and had taken a good class in the Natural Science Tripos of his
year. Indeed, he was still devoted to the study of chemistry, and had a
laboratory of his own in which he used to shut himself up all day long, greatly
to the annoyance of his mother, who had set her heart on his standing for
Parliament and had a vague idea that a chemist was a person who made up
prescriptions. He was an excellent musician, however, as well, and played both
the violin and the piano better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music that
had first brought him and Dorian Gray together—music and that indefinable
attraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he
wished—and, indeed, exercised often without being conscious of it. They
had met at Lady Berkshire’s the night that Rubinstein played there, and
after that used to be always seen together at the opera and wherever good music
was going on. For eighteen months their intimacy lasted. Campbell was always
either at Selby Royal or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to many others, Dorian
Gray was the type of everything that is wonderful and fascinating in life.
Whether or not a quarrel had taken place between them no one ever knew. But
suddenly people remarked that they scarcely spoke when they met and that
Campbell seemed always to go away early from any party at which Dorian Gray was
present. He had changed, too—was strangely melancholy at times, appeared
almost to dislike hearing music, and would never himself play, giving as his
excuse, when he was called upon, that he was so absorbed in science that he had
no time left in which to practise. And this was certainly true. Every day he
seemed to become more interested in biology, and his name appeared once or
twice in some of the scientific reviews in connection with certain curious
experiments.
</p>
<p>
This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every second he kept glancing at
the clock. As the minutes went by he became horribly agitated. At last he got
up and began to pace up and down the room, looking like a beautiful caged
thing. He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold.
</p>
<p>
The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of
lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of
some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting for him there; saw it,
indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he
would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into
their cave. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened,
and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a
living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned
through moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes: that blind,
slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead,
raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and
showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him stone.
</p>
<p>
At last the door opened and his servant entered. He turned glazed eyes upon
him.
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Campbell, sir,” said the man.
</p>
<p>
A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back to his
cheeks.
</p>
<p>
“Ask him to come in at once, Francis.” He felt that he was himself
again. His mood of cowardice had passed away.
</p>
<p>
The man bowed and retired. In a few moments, Alan Campbell walked in, looking
very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his coal-black hair
and dark eyebrows.
</p>
<p>
“Alan! This is kind of you. I thank you for coming.”
</p>
<p>
“I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you said it
was a matter of life and death.” His voice was hard and cold. He spoke
with slow deliberation. There was a look of contempt in the steady searching
gaze that he turned on Dorian. He kept his hands in the pockets of his
Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the gesture with which he had
been greeted.
</p>
<p>
“Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one
person. Sit down.”
</p>
<p>
Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. The two
men’s eyes met. In Dorian’s there was infinite pity. He knew that
what he was going to do was dreadful.
</p>
<p>
After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very quietly,
but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he had sent for,
“Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room to which nobody
but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table. He has been dead ten
hours now. Don’t stir, and don’t look at me like that. Who the man
is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do not concern you. What you
have to do is this—”
</p>
<p>
“Stop, Gray. I don’t want to know anything further. Whether what
you have told me is true or not true doesn’t concern me. I entirely
decline to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself.
They don’t interest me any more.”
</p>
<p>
“Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest
you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can’t help myself. You are
the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the matter. I
have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You know about chemistry and things
of that kind. You have made experiments. What you have got to do is to destroy
the thing that is upstairs—to destroy it so that not a vestige of it will
be left. Nobody saw this person come into the house. Indeed, at the present
moment he is supposed to be in Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he
is missed, there must be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change
him, and everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may
scatter in the air.”
</p>
<p>
“You are mad, Dorian.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian.”
</p>
<p>
“You are mad, I tell you—mad to imagine that I would raise a finger
to help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. I will have nothing to do
with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going to peril my
reputation for you? What is it to me what devil’s work you are up
to?”
</p>
<p>
“It was suicide, Alan.”
</p>
<p>
“I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy.”
</p>
<p>
“Do you still refuse to do this for me?”
</p>
<p>
“Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I
don’t care what shame comes on you. You deserve it all. I should not be
sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me, of all men
in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? I should have thought you knew
more about people’s characters. Your friend Lord Henry Wotton can’t
have taught you much about psychology, whatever else he has taught you. Nothing
will induce me to stir a step to help you. You have come to the wrong man. Go
to some of your friends. Don’t come to me.”
</p>
<p>
“Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don’t know what he had made
me suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or the
marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended it, the result
was the same.”
</p>
<p>
“Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shall not
inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, without my stirring in the
matter, you are certain to be arrested. Nobody ever commits a crime without
doing something stupid. But I will have nothing to do with it.”
</p>
<p>
“You must have something to do with it. Wait, wait a moment; listen to
me. Only listen, Alan. All I ask of you is to perform a certain scientific
experiment. You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the horrors that you do
there don’t affect you. If in some hideous dissecting-room or fetid
laboratory you found this man lying on a leaden table with red gutters scooped
out in it for the blood to flow through, you would simply look upon him as an
admirable subject. You would not turn a hair. You would not believe that you
were doing anything wrong. On the contrary, you would probably feel that you
were benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the
world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind. What I
want you to do is merely what you have often done before. Indeed, to destroy a
body must be far less horrible than what you are accustomed to work at. And,
remember, it is the only piece of evidence against me. If it is discovered, I
am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless you help me.”
</p>
<p>
“I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply indifferent
to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me.”
</p>
<p>
“Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just before you came
I almost fainted with terror. You may know terror yourself some day. No!
don’t think of that. Look at the matter purely from the scientific point
of view. You don’t inquire where the dead things on which you experiment
come from. Don’t inquire now. I have told you too much as it is. But I
beg of you to do this. We were friends once, Alan.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t speak about those days, Dorian—they are dead.”
</p>
<p>
“The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. He is
sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan! If you
don’t come to my assistance, I am ruined. Why, they will hang me, Alan!
Don’t you understand? They will hang me for what I have done.”
</p>
<p>
“There is no good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse to do
anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me.”
</p>
<p>
“You refuse?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes.”
</p>
<p>
“I entreat you, Alan.”
</p>
<p>
“It is useless.”
</p>
<p>
The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray’s eyes. Then he stretched out
his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. He read it over
twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table. Having done this,
he got up and went over to the window.
</p>
<p>
Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and opened it.
As he read it, his face became ghastly pale and he fell back in his chair. A
horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if his heart was beating
itself to death in some empty hollow.
</p>
<p>
After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round and came
and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.
</p>
<p>
“I am so sorry for you, Alan,” he murmured, “but you leave me
no alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is. You see the
address. If you don’t help me, I must send it. If you don’t help
me, I will send it. You know what the result will be. But you are going to help
me. It is impossible for you to refuse now. I tried to spare you. You will do
me the justice to admit that. You were stern, harsh, offensive. You treated me
as no man has ever dared to treat me—no living man, at any rate. I bore
it all. Now it is for me to dictate terms.”
</p>
<p>
Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You know what they are. The
thing is quite simple. Come, don’t work yourself into this fever. The
thing has to be done. Face it, and do it.”
</p>
<p>
A groan broke from Campbell’s lips and he shivered all over. The ticking
of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing time into separate
atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be borne. He felt as if an
iron ring was being slowly tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace
with which he was threatened had already come upon him. The hand upon his
shoulder weighed like a hand of lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to crush
him.
</p>
<p>
“Come, Alan, you must decide at once.”
</p>
<p>
“I cannot do it,” he said, mechanically, as though words could
alter things.
</p>
<p>
“You must. You have no choice. Don’t delay.”
</p>
<p>
He hesitated a moment. “Is there a fire in the room upstairs?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos.”
</p>
<p>
“I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory.”
</p>
<p>
“No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out on a sheet of
notepaper what you want and my servant will take a cab and bring the things
back to you.”
</p>
<p>
Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope to his
assistant. Dorian took the note up and read it carefully. Then he rang the bell
and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as soon as possible and to
bring the things with him.
</p>
<p>
As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and having got up from the
chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with a kind of ague.
For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly buzzed noisily about
the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer.
</p>
<p>
As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and looking at Dorian Gray, saw
that his eyes were filled with tears. There was something in the purity and
refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him. “You are infamous,
absolutely infamous!” he muttered.
</p>
<p>
“Hush, Alan. You have saved my life,” said Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“Your life? Good heavens! what a life that is! You have gone from
corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. In doing what I
am going to do—what you force me to do—it is not of your life that
I am thinking.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah, Alan,” murmured Dorian with a sigh, “I wish you had a
thousandth part of the pity for me that I have for you.” He turned away
as he spoke and stood looking out at the garden. Campbell made no answer.
</p>
<p>
After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant entered,
carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and
platinum wire and two rather curiously shaped iron clamps.
</p>
<p>
“Shall I leave the things here, sir?” he asked Campbell.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” said Dorian. “And I am afraid, Francis, that I have
another errand for you. What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies
Selby with orchids?”
</p>
<p>
“Harden, sir.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes—Harden. You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden
personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered, and to
have as few white ones as possible. In fact, I don’t want any white ones.
It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty
place—otherwise I wouldn’t bother you about it.”
</p>
<p>
“No trouble, sir. At what time shall I be back?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian looked at Campbell. “How long will your experiment take,
Alan?” he said in a calm indifferent voice. The presence of a third
person in the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.
</p>
<p>
Campbell frowned and bit his lip. “It will take about five hours,”
he answered.
</p>
<p>
“It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven,
Francis. Or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. You can have the
evening to yourself. I am not dining at home, so I shall not want you.”
</p>
<p>
“Thank you, sir,” said the man, leaving the room.
</p>
<p>
“Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How heavy this chest is!
I’ll take it for you. You bring the other things.” He spoke rapidly
and in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. They left the
room together.
</p>
<p>
When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned it in the
lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his eyes. He shuddered.
“I don’t think I can go in, Alan,” he murmured.
</p>
<p>
“It is nothing to me. I don’t require you,” said Campbell
coldly.
</p>
<p>
Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of his portrait
leering in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the torn curtain was
lying. He remembered that the night before he had forgotten, for the first time
in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and was about to rush forward, when he
drew back with a shudder.
</p>
<p>
What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the
hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it was!—more
horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the silent thing that he knew
was stretched across the table, the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on
the spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but was still there, as
he had left it.
</p>
<p>
He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with half-closed
eyes and averted head, walked quickly in, determined that he would not look
even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down and taking up the
gold-and-purple hanging, he flung it right over the picture.
</p>
<p>
There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed themselves
on the intricacies of the pattern before him. He heard Campbell bringing in the
heavy chest, and the irons, and the other things that he had required for his
dreadful work. He began to wonder if he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and,
if so, what they had thought of each other.
</p>
<p>
“Leave me now,” said a stern voice behind him.
</p>
<p>
He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been thrust
back into the chair and that Campbell was gazing into a glistening yellow face.
As he was going downstairs, he heard the key being turned in the lock.
</p>
<p>
It was long after seven when Campbell came back into the library. He was pale,
but absolutely calm. “I have done what you asked me to do,” he
muttered. “And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other again.”
</p>
<p>
“You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that,” said
Dorian simply.
</p>
<p>
As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs. There was a horrible smell of
nitric acid in the room. But the thing that had been sitting at the table was
gone.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
<p>
That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large
button-hole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady
Narborough’s drawing-room by bowing servants. His forehead was throbbing
with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he bent
over his hostess’s hand was as easy and graceful as ever. Perhaps one
never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part.
Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he
had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those
finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those
smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He himself could not help
wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the
terrible pleasure of a double life.
</p>
<p>
It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, who was a
very clever woman with what Lord Henry used to describe as the remains of
really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an excellent wife to one of our most
tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband properly in a marble
mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and married off her daughters to
some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted herself now to the pleasures of
French fiction, French cookery, and French <i>esprit</i> when she could get it.
</p>
<p>
Dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him that she was
extremely glad she had not met him in early life. “I know, my dear, I
should have fallen madly in love with you,” she used to say, “and
thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most fortunate that
you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our bonnets were so unbecoming,
and the mills were so occupied in trying to raise the wind, that I never had
even a flirtation with anybody. However, that was all Narborough’s fault.
He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a
husband who never sees anything.”
</p>
<p>
Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she explained to
Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married daughters had come up
quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters worse, had actually
brought her husband with her. “I think it is most unkind of her, my
dear,” she whispered. “Of course I go and stay with them every
summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman like me must have fresh
air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them up. You don’t know what an
existence they lead down there. It is pure unadulterated country life. They get
up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they
have so little to think about. There has not been a scandal in the
neighbourhood since the time of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall
asleep after dinner. You shan’t sit next either of them. You shall sit by
me and amuse me.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian murmured a graceful compliment and looked round the room. Yes: it was
certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen before, and the
others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those middle-aged mediocrities so
common in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by
their friends; Lady Ruxton, an overdressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked
nose, who was always trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly
plain that to her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything
against her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp and
Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess’s daughter, a dowdy
dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are
never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked, white-whiskered creature who,
like so many of his class, was under the impression that inordinate joviality
can atone for an entire lack of ideas.
</p>
<p>
He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the great
ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped
mantelshelf, exclaimed: “How horrid of Henry Wotton to be so late! I sent
round to him this morning on chance and he promised faithfully not to
disappoint me.”
</p>
<p>
It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door opened
and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some insincere apology, he
ceased to feel bored.
</p>
<p>
But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went away untasted.
Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called “an insult to poor
Adolphe, who invented the <i>menu</i> specially for you,” and now and
then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence and abstracted
manner. From time to time the butler filled his glass with champagne. He drank
eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase.
</p>
<p>
“Dorian,” said Lord Henry at last, as the <i>chaud-froid</i> was
being handed round, “what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite
out of sorts.”
</p>
<p>
“I believe he is in love,” cried Lady Narborough, “and that
he is afraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. I
certainly should.”
</p>
<p>
“Dear Lady Narborough,” murmured Dorian, smiling, “I have not
been in love for a whole week—not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left
town.”
</p>
<p>
“How you men can fall in love with that woman!” exclaimed the old
lady. “I really cannot understand it.”
</p>
<p>
“It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl, Lady
Narborough,” said Lord Henry. “She is the one link between us and
your short frocks.”
</p>
<p>
“She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I remember
her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how <i>décolletée</i> she was
then.”
</p>
<p>
“She is still <i>décolletée</i>,” he answered, taking an olive in
his long fingers; “and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
<i>édition de luxe</i> of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full
of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her
third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.”
</p>
<p>
“How can you, Harry!” cried Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“It is a most romantic explanation,” laughed the hostess.
“But her third husband, Lord Henry! You don’t mean to say Ferrol is
the fourth?”
</p>
<p>
“Certainly, Lady Narborough.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends.”
</p>
<p>
“Is it true, Mr. Gray?”
</p>
<p>
“She assures me so, Lady Narborough,” said Dorian. “I asked
her whether, like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung
at her girdle. She told me she didn’t, because none of them had had any
hearts at all.”
</p>
<p>
“Four husbands! Upon my word that is <i>trop de zêle</i>.”
</p>
<p>
“<i>Trop d’audace</i>, I tell her,” said Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol
like? I don’t know him.”
</p>
<p>
“The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal
classes,” said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.
</p>
<p>
Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. “Lord Henry, I am not at all
surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked.”
</p>
<p>
“But what world says that?” asked Lord Henry, elevating his
eyebrows. “It can only be the next world. This world and I are on
excellent terms.”
</p>
<p>
“Everybody I know says you are very wicked,” cried the old lady,
shaking her head.
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. “It is perfectly
monstrous,” he said, at last, “the way people go about nowadays
saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and
entirely true.”
</p>
<p>
“Isn’t he incorrigible?” cried Dorian, leaning forward in his
chair.
</p>
<p>
“I hope so,” said his hostess, laughing. “But really, if you
all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry
again so as to be in the fashion.”
</p>
<p>
“You will never marry again, Lady Narborough,” broke in Lord Henry.
“You were far too happy. When a woman marries again, it is because she
detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored
his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”
</p>
<p>
“Narborough wasn’t perfect,” cried the old lady.
</p>
<p>
“If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady,” was
the rejoinder. “Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them,
they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You will never ask me to
dinner again after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough, but it is quite
true.”
</p>
<p>
“Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for your
defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be married. You
would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that would alter
you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the
bachelors like married men.”
</p>
<p>
“<i>Fin de siêcle</i>,” murmured Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“<i>Fin du globe</i>,” answered his hostess.
</p>
<p>
“I wish it were <i>fin du globe</i>,” said Dorian with a sigh.
“Life is a great disappointment.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah, my dear,” cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves,
“don’t tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that
one knows that life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I
sometimes wish that I had been; but you are made to be good—you look so
good. I must find you a nice wife. Lord Henry, don’t you think that Mr.
Gray should get married?”
</p>
<p>
“I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough,” said Lord Henry with
a bow.
</p>
<p>
“Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. I shall go through
Debrett carefully to-night and draw out a list of all the eligible young
ladies.”
</p>
<p>
“With their ages, Lady Narborough?” asked Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done in
a hurry. I want it to be what <i>The Morning Post</i> calls a suitable
alliance, and I want you both to be happy.”
</p>
<p>
“What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!” exclaimed Lord
Henry. “A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love
her.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! what a cynic you are!” cried the old lady, pushing back her
chair and nodding to Lady Ruxton. “You must come and dine with me soon
again. You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew
prescribes for me. You must tell me what people you would like to meet, though.
I want it to be a delightful gathering.”
</p>
<p>
“I like men who have a future and women who have a past,” he
answered. “Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?”
</p>
<p>
“I fear so,” she said, laughing, as she stood up. “A thousand
pardons, my dear Lady Ruxton,” she added, “I didn’t see you
hadn’t finished your cigarette.”
</p>
<p>
“Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I am going
to limit myself, for the future.”
</p>
<p>
“Pray don’t, Lady Ruxton,” said Lord Henry. “Moderation
is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a
feast.”
</p>
<p>
Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. “You must come and explain that to
me some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory,” she
murmured, as she swept out of the room.
</p>
<p>
“Now, mind you don’t stay too long over your politics and
scandal,” cried Lady Narborough from the door. “If you do, we are
sure to squabble upstairs.”
</p>
<p>
The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot of the table and
came up to the top. Dorian Gray changed his seat and went and sat by Lord
Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the situation in the
House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The word
<i>doctrinaire</i>—word full of terror to the British
mind—reappeared from time to time between his explosions. An alliterative
prefix served as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the
pinnacles of thought. The inherited stupidity of the race—sound English
common sense he jovially termed it—was shown to be the proper bulwark for
society.
</p>
<p>
A smile curved Lord Henry’s lips, and he turned round and looked at
Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“Are you better, my dear fellow?” he asked. “You seemed
rather out of sorts at dinner.”
</p>
<p>
“I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all.”
</p>
<p>
“You were charming last night. The little duchess is quite devoted to
you. She tells me she is going down to Selby.”
</p>
<p>
“She has promised to come on the twentieth.”
</p>
<p>
“Is Monmouth to be there, too?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, yes, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very
clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It
is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very
pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They
have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has
had experiences.”
</p>
<p>
“How long has she been married?” asked Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, it is
ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity, with time
thrown in. Who else is coming?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey
Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian.”
</p>
<p>
“I like him,” said Lord Henry. “A great many people
don’t, but I find him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat
overdressed by being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern
type.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go
to Monte Carlo with his father.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! what a nuisance people’s people are! Try and make him come. By
the way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. You left before eleven.
What did you do afterwards? Did you go straight home?”
</p>
<p>
Dorian glanced at him hurriedly and frowned.
</p>
<p>
“No, Harry,” he said at last, “I did not get home till nearly
three.”
</p>
<p>
“Did you go to the club?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” he answered. Then he bit his lip. “No, I don’t
mean that. I didn’t go to the club. I walked about. I forget what I
did.... How inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to know what one has
been doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. I came in at
half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my latch-key at
home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any corroborative evidence
on the subject, you can ask him.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “My dear fellow, as if I cared! Let us
go up to the drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman. Something has
happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not yourself
to-night.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall
come round and see you to-morrow, or next day. Make my excuses to Lady
Narborough. I shan’t go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go home.”
</p>
<p>
“All right, Dorian. I dare say I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. The
duchess is coming.”
</p>
<p>
“I will try to be there, Harry,” he said, leaving the room. As he
drove back to his own house, he was conscious that the sense of terror he
thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry’s casual
questioning had made him lose his nerve for the moment, and he wanted his nerve
still. Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He winced. He hated the
idea of even touching them.
</p>
<p>
Yet it had to be done. He realized that, and when he had locked the door of his
library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust Basil
Hallward’s coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled another log on
it. The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was horrible. It took
him three-quarters of an hour to consume everything. At the end he felt faint
and sick, and having lit some Algerian pastilles in a pierced copper brazier,
he bathed his hands and forehead with a cool musk-scented vinegar.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed nervously at
his underlip. Between two of the windows stood a large Florentine cabinet, made
out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and blue lapis. He watched it as though it
were a thing that could fascinate and make afraid, as though it held something
that he longed for and yet almost loathed. His breath quickened. A mad craving
came over him. He lit a cigarette and then threw it away. His eyelids drooped
till the long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still watched the
cabinet. At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying, went over
to it, and having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. A triangular drawer
passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively towards it, dipped in, and
closed on something. It was a small Chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer,
elaborately wrought, the sides patterned with curved waves, and the silken
cords hung with round crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. He
opened it. Inside was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy
and persistent.
</p>
<p>
He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his face.
Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly hot, he drew
himself up and glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes to twelve. He put
the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so, and went into his
bedroom.
</p>
<p>
As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray, dressed
commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept quietly out of his
house. In Bond Street he found a hansom with a good horse. He hailed it and in
a low voice gave the driver an address.
</p>
<p>
The man shook his head. “It is too far for me,” he muttered.
</p>
<p>
“Here is a sovereign for you,” said Dorian. “You shall have
another if you drive fast.”
</p>
<p>
“All right, sir,” answered the man, “you will be there in an
hour,” and after his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove
rapidly towards the river.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
<p>
A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the
dripping mist. The public-houses were just closing, and dim men and women were
clustering in broken groups round their doors. From some of the bars came the
sound of horrible laughter. In others, drunkards brawled and screamed.
</p>
<p>
Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, Dorian Gray
watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and now and then
he repeated to himself the words that Lord Henry had said to him on the first
day they had met, “To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the
senses by means of the soul.” Yes, that was the secret. He had often
tried it, and would try it again now. There were opium dens where one could buy
oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the
madness of sins that were new.
</p>
<p>
The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time a huge
misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. The gas-lamps grew
fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. Once the man lost his way and
had to drive back half a mile. A steam rose from the horse as it splashed up
the puddles. The sidewindows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel
mist.
</p>
<p>
“To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the
soul!” How the words rang in his ears! His soul, certainly, was sick to
death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had been
spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no atonement; but
though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was
determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush
the adder that had stung one. Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to
him as he had done? Who had made him a judge over others? He had said things
that were dreadful, horrible, not to be endured.
</p>
<p>
On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each step. He
thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster. The hideous hunger
for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat burned and his delicate hands
twitched nervously together. He struck at the horse madly with his stick. The
driver laughed and whipped up. He laughed in answer, and the man was silent.
</p>
<p>
The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some
sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and as the mist thickened, he
felt afraid.
</p>
<p>
Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he could
see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange, fanlike tongues of
fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness some wandering
sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside and broke
into a gallop.
</p>
<p>
After some time they left the clay road and rattled again over rough-paven
streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were
silhouetted against some lamplit blind. He watched them curiously. They moved
like monstrous marionettes and made gestures like live things. He hated them. A
dull rage was in his heart. As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something
at them from an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred
yards. The driver beat at them with his whip.
</p>
<p>
It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with hideous
iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words
that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in them the full expression,
as it were, of his mood, and justified, by intellectual approval, passions that
without such justification would still have dominated his temper. From cell to
cell of his brain crept the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most
terrible of all man’s appetites, quickened into force each trembling
nerve and fibre. Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made
things real, became dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one
reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered
life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense
actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy
shadows of song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness. In three days he
would be free.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. Over the low
roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black masts of ships.
Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards.
</p>
<p>
“Somewhere about here, sir, ain’t it?” he asked huskily
through the trap.
</p>
<p>
Dorian started and peered round. “This will do,” he answered, and
having got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had promised him,
he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and there a lantern
gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The light shook and splintered
in the puddles. A red glare came from an outward-bound steamer that was
coaling. The slimy pavement looked like a wet mackintosh.
</p>
<p>
He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he was
being followed. In about seven or eight minutes he reached a small shabby house
that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. In one of the top-windows stood
a lamp. He stopped and gave a peculiar knock.
</p>
<p>
After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain being unhooked.
The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a word to the squat
misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow as he passed. At the end
of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty
wind which had followed him in from the street. He dragged it aside and entered
a long low room which looked as if it had once been a third-rate
dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown
mirrors that faced them, were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of
ribbed tin backed them, making quivering disks of light. The floor was covered
with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained with
dark rings of spilled liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a little charcoal
stove, playing with bone counters and showing their white teeth as they
chattered. In one corner, with his head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled
over a table, and by the tawdrily painted bar that ran across one complete side
stood two haggard women, mocking an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his
coat with an expression of disgust. “He thinks he’s got red ants on
him,” laughed one of them, as Dorian passed by. The man looked at her in
terror and began to whimper.
</p>
<p>
At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a darkened
chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium
met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quivered with pleasure. When
he entered, a young man with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp
lighting a long thin pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner.
</p>
<p>
“You here, Adrian?” muttered Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“Where else should I be?” he answered, listlessly. “None of
the chaps will speak to me now.”
</p>
<p>
“I thought you had left England.”
</p>
<p>
“Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at
last. George doesn’t speak to me either.... I don’t care,” he
added with a sigh. “As long as one has this stuff, one doesn’t want
friends. I think I have had too many friends.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such
fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping
mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He knew in what strange
heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret
of some new joy. They were better off than he was. He was prisoned in thought.
Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away. From time to time he
seemed to see the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could
not stay. The presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where
no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.
</p>
<p>
“I am going on to the other place,” he said after a pause.
</p>
<p>
“On the wharf?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes.”
</p>
<p>
“That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won’t have her in this
place now.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. “I am sick of women who love one. Women
who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better.”
</p>
<p>
“Much the same.”
</p>
<p>
“I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have
something.”
</p>
<p>
“I don’t want anything,” murmured the young man.
</p>
<p>
“Never mind.”
</p>
<p>
Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar. A half-caste,
in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous greeting as he thrust
a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of them. The women sidled up and
began to chatter. Dorian turned his back on them and said something in a low
voice to Adrian Singleton.
</p>
<p>
A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of the
women. “We are very proud to-night,” she sneered.
</p>
<p>
“For God’s sake don’t talk to me,” cried Dorian,
stamping his foot on the ground. “What do you want? Money? Here it is.
Don’t ever talk to me again.”
</p>
<p>
Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman’s sodden eyes, then
flickered out and left them dull and glazed. She tossed her head and raked the
coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion watched her enviously.
</p>
<p>
“It’s no use,” sighed Adrian Singleton. “I don’t
care to go back. What does it matter? I am quite happy here.”
</p>
<p>
“You will write to me if you want anything, won’t you?” said
Dorian, after a pause.
</p>
<p>
“Perhaps.”
</p>
<p>
“Good night, then.”
</p>
<p>
“Good night,” answered the young man, passing up the steps and
wiping his parched mouth with a handkerchief.
</p>
<p>
Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he drew the
curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the woman who had
taken his money. “There goes the devil’s bargain!” she
hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.
</p>
<p>
“Curse you!” he answered, “don’t call me that.”
</p>
<p>
She snapped her fingers. “Prince Charming is what you like to be called,
ain’t it?” she yelled after him.
</p>
<p>
The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly round. The
sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He rushed out as if in
pursuit.
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His meeting with
Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of that
young life was really to be laid at his door, as Basil Hallward had said to him
with such infamy of insult. He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew
sad. Yet, after all, what did it matter to him? One’s days were too brief
to take the burden of another’s errors on one’s shoulders. Each man
lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one
had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again,
indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
</p>
<p>
There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what
the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as
every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and
women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their
terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is
either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its
fascination and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not
of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning
star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.
</p>
<p>
Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for
rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but as he
darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a short cut to
the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself suddenly seized from
behind, and before he had time to defend himself, he was thrust back against
the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat.
</p>
<p>
He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the tightening
fingers away. In a second he heard the click of a revolver, and saw the gleam
of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head, and the dusky form of a
short, thick-set man facing him.
</p>
<p>
“What do you want?” he gasped.
</p>
<p>
“Keep quiet,” said the man. “If you stir, I shoot you.”
</p>
<p>
“You are mad. What have I done to you?”
</p>
<p>
“You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane,” was the answer, “and
Sibyl Vane was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your
door. I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you. I had no
clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you were dead. I knew
nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. I heard it to-night by
chance. Make your peace with God, for to-night you are going to die.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. “I never knew her,” he stammered.
“I never heard of her. You are mad.”
</p>
<p>
“You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you are
going to die.” There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not know what to
say or do. “Down on your knees!” growled the man. “I give you
one minute to make your peace—no more. I go on board to-night for India,
and I must do my job first. One minute. That’s all.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian’s arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know
what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. “Stop,”
he cried. “How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell
me!”
</p>
<p>
“Eighteen years,” said the man. “Why do you ask me? What do
years matter?”
</p>
<p>
“Eighteen years,” laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in
his voice. “Eighteen years! Set me under the lamp and look at my
face!”
</p>
<p>
James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant. Then he
seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.
</p>
<p>
Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him the
hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face of the man
he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the unstained purity of
youth. He seemed little more than a lad of twenty summers, hardly older, if
older indeed at all, than his sister had been when they had parted so many
years ago. It was obvious that this was not the man who had destroyed her life.
</p>
<p>
He loosened his hold and reeled back. “My God! my God!” he cried,
“and I would have murdered you!”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray drew a long breath. “You have been on the brink of committing
a terrible crime, my man,” he said, looking at him sternly. “Let
this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own hands.”
</p>
<p>
“Forgive me, sir,” muttered James Vane. “I was deceived. A
chance word I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track.”
</p>
<p>
“You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into
trouble,” said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down the
street.
</p>
<p>
James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head to foot.
After a little while, a black shadow that had been creeping along the dripping
wall moved out into the light and came close to him with stealthy footsteps. He
felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round with a start. It was one of the
women who had been drinking at the bar.
</p>
<p>
“Why didn’t you kill him?” she hissed out, putting haggard
face quite close to his. “I knew you were following him when you rushed
out from Daly’s. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of
money, and he’s as bad as bad.”
</p>
<p>
“He is not the man I am looking for,” he answered, “and I
want no man’s money. I want a man’s life. The man whose life I want
must be nearly forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have
not got his blood upon my hands.”
</p>
<p>
The woman gave a bitter laugh. “Little more than a boy!” she
sneered. “Why, man, it’s nigh on eighteen years since Prince
Charming made me what I am.”
</p>
<p>
“You lie!” cried James Vane.
</p>
<p>
She raised her hand up to heaven. “Before God I am telling the
truth,” she cried.
</p>
<p>
“Before God?”
</p>
<p>
“Strike me dumb if it ain’t so. He is the worst one that comes
here. They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It’s
nigh on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn’t changed much since
then. I have, though,” she added, with a sickly leer.
</p>
<p>
“You swear this?”
</p>
<p>
“I swear it,” came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. “But
don’t give me away to him,” she whined; “I am afraid of him.
Let me have some money for my night’s lodging.”
</p>
<p>
He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street, but
Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had vanished also.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
<p>
A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby Royal,
talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband, a
jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time, and the
mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that stood on the table lit up the
delicate china and hammered silver of the service at which the duchess was
presiding. Her white hands were moving daintily among the cups, and her full
red lips were smiling at something that Dorian had whispered to her. Lord Henry
was lying back in a silk-draped wicker chair, looking at them. On a
peach-coloured divan sat Lady Narborough, pretending to listen to the
duke’s description of the last Brazilian beetle that he had added to his
collection. Three young men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes
to some of the women. The house-party consisted of twelve people, and there
were more expected to arrive on the next day.
</p>
<p>
“What are you two talking about?” said Lord Henry, strolling over
to the table and putting his cup down. “I hope Dorian has told you about
my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea.”
</p>
<p>
“But I don’t want to be rechristened, Harry,” rejoined the
duchess, looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. “I am quite satisfied
with my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are
both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an orchid, for
my button-hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as effective as the seven
deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one of the gardeners what it was
called. He told me it was a fine specimen of <i>Robinsoniana</i>, or something
dreadful of that kind. It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of
giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with
actions. My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism
in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to
use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.”
</p>
<p>
“Then what should we call you, Harry?” she asked.
</p>
<p>
“His name is Prince Paradox,” said Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“I recognize him in a flash,” exclaimed the duchess.
</p>
<p>
“I won’t hear of it,” laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a
chair. “From a label there is no escape! I refuse the title.”
</p>
<p>
“Royalties may not abdicate,” fell as a warning from pretty lips.
</p>
<p>
“You wish me to defend my throne, then?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes.”
</p>
<p>
“I give the truths of to-morrow.”
</p>
<p>
“I prefer the mistakes of to-day,” she answered.
</p>
<p>
“You disarm me, Gladys,” he cried, catching the wilfulness of her
mood.
</p>
<p>
“Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear.”
</p>
<p>
“I never tilt against beauty,” he said, with a wave of his hand.
</p>
<p>
“That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too
much.”
</p>
<p>
“How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be
beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I
am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
</p>
<p>
“Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?” cried the
duchess. “What becomes of your simile about the orchid?”
</p>
<p>
“Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good
Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues
have made our England what she is.”
</p>
<p>
“You don’t like your country, then?” she asked.
</p>
<p>
“I live in it.”
</p>
<p>
“That you may censure it the better.”
</p>
<p>
“Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?” he inquired.
</p>
<p>
“What do they say of us?”
</p>
<p>
“That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop.”
</p>
<p>
“Is that yours, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“I give it to you.”
</p>
<p>
“I could not use it. It is too true.”
</p>
<p>
“You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognize a
description.”
</p>
<p>
“They are practical.”
</p>
<p>
“They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger,
they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.”
</p>
<p>
“Still, we have done great things.”
</p>
<p>
“Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys.”
</p>
<p>
“We have carried their burden.”
</p>
<p>
“Only as far as the Stock Exchange.”
</p>
<p>
She shook her head. “I believe in the race,” she cried.
</p>
<p>
“It represents the survival of the pushing.”
</p>
<p>
“It has development.”
</p>
<p>
“Decay fascinates me more.”
</p>
<p>
“What of art?” she asked.
</p>
<p>
“It is a malady.”
</p>
<p>
“Love?”
</p>
<p>
“An illusion.”
</p>
<p>
“Religion?”
</p>
<p>
“The fashionable substitute for belief.”
</p>
<p>
“You are a sceptic.”
</p>
<p>
“Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith.”
</p>
<p>
“What are you?”
</p>
<p>
“To define is to limit.”
</p>
<p>
“Give me a clue.”
</p>
<p>
“Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth.”
</p>
<p>
“You bewilder me. Let us talk of some one else.”
</p>
<p>
“Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened Prince
Charming.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! don’t remind me of that,” cried Dorian Gray.
</p>
<p>
“Our host is rather horrid this evening,” answered the duchess,
colouring. “I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely
scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern
butterfly.”
</p>
<p>
“Well, I hope he won’t stick pins into you, Duchess,” laughed
Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with
me.”
</p>
<p>
“And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?”
</p>
<p>
“For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you. Usually because I
come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that I must be dressed by half-past
eight.”
</p>
<p>
“How unreasonable of her! You should give her warning.”
</p>
<p>
“I daren’t, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. You remember
the one I wore at Lady Hilstone’s garden-party? You don’t, but it
is nice of you to pretend that you do. Well, she made it out of nothing. All
good hats are made out of nothing.”
</p>
<p>
“Like all good reputations, Gladys,” interrupted Lord Henry.
“Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one
must be a mediocrity.”
</p>
<p>
“Not with women,” said the duchess, shaking her head; “and
women rule the world. I assure you we can’t bear mediocrities. We women,
as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if
you ever love at all.”
</p>
<p>
“It seems to me that we never do anything else,” murmured Dorian.
</p>
<p>
“Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray,” answered the duchess
with mock sadness.
</p>
<p>
“My dear Gladys!” cried Lord Henry. “How can you say that?
Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.
Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.
Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely
intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the
secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
</p>
<p>
“Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?” asked the duchess
after a pause.
</p>
<p>
“Especially when one has been wounded by it,” answered Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
The duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious expression in her
eyes. “What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?” she inquired.
</p>
<p>
Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed.
“I always agree with Harry, Duchess.”
</p>
<p>
“Even when he is wrong?”
</p>
<p>
“Harry is never wrong, Duchess.”
</p>
<p>
“And does his philosophy make you happy?”
</p>
<p>
“I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have
searched for pleasure.”
</p>
<p>
“And found it, Mr. Gray?”
</p>
<p>
“Often. Too often.”
</p>
<p>
The duchess sighed. “I am searching for peace,” she said,
“and if I don’t go and dress, I shall have none this
evening.”
</p>
<p>
“Let me get you some orchids, Duchess,” cried Dorian, starting to
his feet and walking down the conservatory.
</p>
<p>
“You are flirting disgracefully with him,” said Lord Henry to his
cousin. “You had better take care. He is very fascinating.”
</p>
<p>
“If he were not, there would be no battle.”
</p>
<p>
“Greek meets Greek, then?”
</p>
<p>
“I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman.”
</p>
<p>
“They were defeated.”
</p>
<p>
“There are worse things than capture,” she answered.
</p>
<p>
“You gallop with a loose rein.”
</p>
<p>
“Pace gives life,” was the <i>riposte</i>.
</p>
<p>
“I shall write it in my diary to-night.”
</p>
<p>
“What?”
</p>
<p>
“That a burnt child loves the fire.”
</p>
<p>
“I am not even singed. My wings are untouched.”
</p>
<p>
“You use them for everything, except flight.”
</p>
<p>
“Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for
us.”
</p>
<p>
“You have a rival.”
</p>
<p>
“Who?”
</p>
<p>
He laughed. “Lady Narborough,” he whispered. “She perfectly
adores him.”
</p>
<p>
“You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to antiquity is fatal to us
who are romanticists.”
</p>
<p>
“Romanticists! You have all the methods of science.”
</p>
<p>
“Men have educated us.”
</p>
<p>
“But not explained you.”
</p>
<p>
“Describe us as a sex,” was her challenge.
</p>
<p>
“Sphinxes without secrets.”
</p>
<p>
She looked at him, smiling. “How long Mr. Gray is!” she said.
“Let us go and help him. I have not yet told him the colour of my
frock.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys.”
</p>
<p>
“That would be a premature surrender.”
</p>
<p>
“Romantic art begins with its climax.”
</p>
<p>
“I must keep an opportunity for retreat.”
</p>
<p>
“In the Parthian manner?”
</p>
<p>
“They found safety in the desert. I could not do that.”
</p>
<p>
“Women are not always allowed a choice,” he answered, but hardly
had he finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came a
stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. Everybody started
up. The duchess stood motionless in horror. And with fear in his eyes, Lord
Henry rushed through the flapping palms to find Dorian Gray lying face
downwards on the tiled floor in a deathlike swoon.
</p>
<p>
He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room and laid upon one of the
sofas. After a short time, he came to himself and looked round with a dazed
expression.
</p>
<p>
“What has happened?” he asked. “Oh! I remember. Am I safe
here, Harry?” He began to tremble.
</p>
<p>
“My dear Dorian,” answered Lord Henry, “you merely fainted.
That was all. You must have overtired yourself. You had better not come down to
dinner. I will take your place.”
</p>
<p>
“No, I will come down,” he said, struggling to his feet. “I
would rather come down. I must not be alone.”
</p>
<p>
He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of gaiety in his
manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror ran through him
when he remembered that, pressed against the window of the conservatory, like a
white handkerchief, he had seen the face of James Vane watching him.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
<p>
The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the time in
his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life
itself. The consciousness of being hunted, snared, tracked down, had begun to
dominate him. If the tapestry did but tremble in the wind, he shook. The dead
leaves that were blown against the leaded panes seemed to him like his own
wasted resolutions and wild regrets. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the
sailor’s face peering through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed
once more to lay its hand upon his heart.
</p>
<p>
But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of the
night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him. Actual life was
chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the
imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination
that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the
wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the
strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger
been prowling round the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the
keepers. Had any foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, the gardeners would
have reported it. Yes, it had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vane’s brother had
not come back to kill him. He had sailed away in his ship to founder in some
winter sea. From him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did not know who
he was, could not know who he was. The mask of youth had saved him.
</p>
<p>
And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think that
conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form, and
make them move before one! What sort of life would his be if, day and night,
shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from
secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with
icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the thought crept through his brain, he grew
pale with terror, and the air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. Oh!
in what a wild hour of madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere
memory of the scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him
with added horror. Out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in
scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six
o’clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will break.
</p>
<p>
It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. There was something
in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that seemed to bring him
back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But it was not merely the physical
conditions of environment that had caused the change. His own nature had
revolted against the excess of anguish that had sought to maim and mar the
perfection of its calm. With subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is
always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay
the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The
loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude. Besides,
he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stricken
imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity and not a
little of contempt.
</p>
<p>
After breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden and then
drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The crisp frost lay like salt
upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of blue metal. A thin film of ice
bordered the flat, reed-grown lake.
</p>
<p>
At the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey Clouston, the
duchess’s brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of his gun. He jumped
from the cart, and having told the groom to take the mare home, made his way
towards his guest through the withered bracken and rough undergrowth.
</p>
<p>
“Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
“Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds have gone to the open.
I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new ground.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen aromatic air, the brown and red
lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters ringing out
from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns that followed, fascinated
him and filled him with a sense of delightful freedom. He was dominated by the
carelessness of happiness, by the high indifference of joy.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front of them,
with black-tipped ears erect and long hinder limbs throwing it forward, started
a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders. Sir Geoffrey put his gun to his
shoulder, but there was something in the animal’s grace of movement that
strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he cried out at once, “Don’t
shoot it, Geoffrey. Let it live.”
</p>
<p>
“What nonsense, Dorian!” laughed his companion, and as the hare
bounded into the thicket, he fired. There were two cries heard, the cry of a
hare in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is worse.
</p>
<p>
“Good heavens! I have hit a beater!” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey.
“What an ass the man was to get in front of the guns! Stop shooting
there!” he called out at the top of his voice. “A man is
hurt.”
</p>
<p>
The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.
</p>
<p>
“Where, sir? Where is he?” he shouted. At the same time, the firing
ceased along the line.
</p>
<p>
“Here,” answered Sir Geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the
thicket. “Why on earth don’t you keep your men back? Spoiled my
shooting for the day.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the lithe
swinging branches aside. In a few moments they emerged, dragging a body after
them into the sunlight. He turned away in horror. It seemed to him that
misfortune followed wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey ask if the man was
really dead, and the affirmative answer of the keeper. The wood seemed to him
to have become suddenly alive with faces. There was the trampling of myriad
feet and the low buzz of voices. A great copper-breasted pheasant came beating
through the boughs overhead.
</p>
<p>
After a few moments—that were to him, in his perturbed state, like
endless hours of pain—he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. He started and
looked round.
</p>
<p>
“Dorian,” said Lord Henry, “I had better tell them that the
shooting is stopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on.”
</p>
<p>
“I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry,” he answered bitterly.
“The whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man ...?”
</p>
<p>
He could not finish the sentence.
</p>
<p>
“I am afraid so,” rejoined Lord Henry. “He got the whole
charge of shot in his chest. He must have died almost instantaneously. Come;
let us go home.”
</p>
<p>
They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly fifty yards
without speaking. Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry and said, with a heavy sigh,
“It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen.”
</p>
<p>
“What is?” asked Lord Henry. “Oh! this accident, I suppose.
My dear fellow, it can’t be helped. It was the man’s own fault. Why
did he get in front of the guns? Besides, it is nothing to us. It is rather
awkward for Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to pepper beaters. It makes
people think that one is a wild shot. And Geoffrey is not; he shoots very
straight. But there is no use talking about the matter.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian shook his head. “It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if something
horrible were going to happen to some of us. To myself, perhaps,” he
added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.
</p>
<p>
The elder man laughed. “The only horrible thing in the world is
<i>ennui</i>, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.
But we are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering
about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the subject is to be tabooed.
As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us
heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that. Besides, what on earth could
happen to you, Dorian? You have everything in the world that a man can want.
There is no one who would not be delighted to change places with you.”
</p>
<p>
“There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry. Don’t
laugh like that. I am telling you the truth. The wretched peasant who has just
died is better off than I am. I have no terror of death. It is the coming of
death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in the leaden air
around me. Good heavens! don’t you see a man moving behind the trees
there, watching me, waiting for me?”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand was
pointing. “Yes,” he said, smiling, “I see the gardener
waiting for you. I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on
the table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow! You must come
and see my doctor, when we get back to town.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. The man
touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating manner, and
then produced a letter, which he handed to his master. “Her Grace told me
to wait for an answer,” he murmured.
</p>
<p>
Dorian put the letter into his pocket. “Tell her Grace that I am coming
in,” he said, coldly. The man turned round and went rapidly in the
direction of the house.
</p>
<p>
“How fond women are of doing dangerous things!” laughed Lord Henry.
“It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will
flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.”
</p>
<p>
“How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry! In the present
instance, you are quite astray. I like the duchess very much, but I don’t
love her.”
</p>
<p>
“And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are
excellently matched.”
</p>
<p>
“You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
scandal.”
</p>
<p>
“The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty,” said Lord
Henry, lighting a cigarette.
</p>
<p>
“You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram.”
</p>
<p>
“The world goes to the altar of its own accord,” was the answer.
</p>
<p>
“I wish I could love,” cried Dorian Gray with a deep note of pathos
in his voice. “But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the
desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has become a
burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget. It was silly of me to
come down here at all. I think I shall send a wire to Harvey to have the yacht
got ready. On a yacht one is safe.”
</p>
<p>
“Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me what it
is? You know I would help you.”
</p>
<p>
“I can’t tell you, Harry,” he answered sadly. “And I
dare say it is only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate accident has upset me. I
have a horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to
me.”
</p>
<p>
“What nonsense!”
</p>
<p>
“I hope it is, but I can’t help feeling it. Ah! here is the
duchess, looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown. You see we have come back,
Duchess.”
</p>
<p>
“I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray,” she answered. “Poor
Geoffrey is terribly upset. And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the
hare. How curious!”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, it was very curious. I don’t know what made me say it. Some
whim, I suppose. It looked the loveliest of little live things. But I am sorry
they told you about the man. It is a hideous subject.”
</p>
<p>
“It is an annoying subject,” broke in Lord Henry. “It has no
psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on purpose, how
interesting he would be! I should like to know some one who had committed a
real murder.”
</p>
<p>
“How horrid of you, Harry!” cried the duchess. “Isn’t
it, Mr. Gray? Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled. “It is nothing,
Duchess,” he murmured; “my nerves are dreadfully out of order. That
is all. I am afraid I walked too far this morning. I didn’t hear what
Harry said. Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I think I must
go and lie down. You will excuse me, won’t you?”
</p>
<p>
They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the conservatory on to
the terrace. As the glass door closed behind Dorian, Lord Henry turned and
looked at the duchess with his slumberous eyes. “Are you very much in
love with him?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. “I
wish I knew,” she said at last.
</p>
<p>
He shook his head. “Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that
charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.”
</p>
<p>
“One may lose one’s way.”
</p>
<p>
“All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.”
</p>
<p>
“What is that?”
</p>
<p>
“Disillusion.”
</p>
<p>
“It was my <i>début</i> in life,” she sighed.
</p>
<p>
“It came to you crowned.”
</p>
<p>
“I am tired of strawberry leaves.”
</p>
<p>
“They become you.”
</p>
<p>
“Only in public.”
</p>
<p>
“You would miss them,” said Lord Henry.
</p>
<p>
“I will not part with a petal.”
</p>
<p>
“Monmouth has ears.”
</p>
<p>
“Old age is dull of hearing.”
</p>
<p>
“Has he never been jealous?”
</p>
<p>
“I wish he had been.”
</p>
<p>
He glanced about as if in search of something. “What are you looking
for?” she inquired.
</p>
<p>
“The button from your foil,” he answered. “You have dropped
it.”
</p>
<p>
She laughed. “I have still the mask.”
</p>
<p>
“It makes your eyes lovelier,” was his reply.
</p>
<p>
She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit.
</p>
<p>
Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror in
every tingling fibre of his body. Life had suddenly become too hideous a burden
for him to bear. The dreadful death of the unlucky beater, shot in the thicket
like a wild animal, had seemed to him to pre-figure death for himself also. He
had nearly swooned at what Lord Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical
jesting.
</p>
<p>
At five o’clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to
pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham at the
door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another night at Selby
Royal. It was an ill-omened place. Death walked there in the sunlight. The
grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.
</p>
<p>
Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to town to
consult his doctor and asking him to entertain his guests in his absence. As he
was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to the door, and his valet
informed him that the head-keeper wished to see him. He frowned and bit his
lip. “Send him in,” he muttered, after some moments’
hesitation.
</p>
<p>
As soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a drawer and
spread it out before him.
</p>
<p>
“I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this morning,
Thornton?” he said, taking up a pen.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir,” answered the gamekeeper.
</p>
<p>
“Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people dependent on him?”
asked Dorian, looking bored. “If so, I should not like them to be left in
want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary.”
</p>
<p>
“We don’t know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty of
coming to you about.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t know who he is?” said Dorian, listlessly. “What
do you mean? Wasn’t he one of your men?”
</p>
<p>
“No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir.”
</p>
<p>
The pen dropped from Dorian Gray’s hand, and he felt as if his heart had
suddenly stopped beating. “A sailor?” he cried out. “Did you
say a sailor?”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on both
arms, and that kind of thing.”
</p>
<p>
“Was there anything found on him?” said Dorian, leaning forward and
looking at the man with startled eyes. “Anything that would tell his
name?”
</p>
<p>
“Some money, sir—not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of
any kind. A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor we
think.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered past him. He clutched at
it madly. “Where is the body?” he exclaimed. “Quick! I must
see it at once.”
</p>
<p>
“It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir. The folk don’t
like to have that sort of thing in their houses. They say a corpse brings bad
luck.”
</p>
<p>
“The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me. Tell one of the grooms to
bring my horse round. No. Never mind. I’ll go to the stables myself. It
will save time.”
</p>
<p>
In less than a quarter of an hour, Dorian Gray was galloping down the long
avenue as hard as he could go. The trees seemed to sweep past him in spectral
procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his path. Once the mare
swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him. He lashed her across the
neck with his crop. She cleft the dusky air like an arrow. The stones flew from
her hoofs.
</p>
<p>
At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the yard. He leaped
from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them. In the farthest stable a
light was glimmering. Something seemed to tell him that the body was there, and
he hurried to the door and put his hand upon the latch.
</p>
<p>
There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a discovery
that would either make or mar his life. Then he thrust the door open and
entered.
</p>
<p>
On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man dressed
in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers. A spotted handkerchief had been
placed over the face. A coarse candle, stuck in a bottle, sputtered beside it.
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not be the hand to take the
handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants to come to him.
</p>
<p>
“Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it,” he said,
clutching at the door-post for support.
</p>
<p>
When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward. A cry of joy broke from
his lips. The man who had been shot in the thicket was James Vane.
</p>
<p>
He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. As he rode home, his
eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
<p>
“There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good,”
cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with
rose-water. “You are quite perfect. Pray, don’t change.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray shook his head. “No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful
things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good actions
yesterday.”
</p>
<p>
“Where were you yesterday?”
</p>
<p>
“In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear boy,” said Lord Henry, smiling, “anybody can be good
in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people
who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any
means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can
reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people
have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.”
</p>
<p>
“Culture and corruption,” echoed Dorian. “I have known
something of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found
together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I have
altered.”
</p>
<p>
“You have not yet told me what your good action was. Or did you say you
had done more than one?” asked his companion as he spilled into his plate
a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries and, through a perforated,
shell-shaped spoon, snowed white sugar upon them.
</p>
<p>
“I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to any one else. I
spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean. She was quite
beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that which first
attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don’t you? How long ago that
seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of course. She was simply a
girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure that I loved her.
All during this wonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and
see her two or three times a week. Yesterday she met me in a little orchard.
The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We
were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to
leave her as flowerlike as I had found her.”
</p>
<p>
“I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill
of real pleasure, Dorian,” interrupted Lord Henry. “But I can
finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advice and broke her heart. That
was the beginning of your reformation.”
</p>
<p>
“Harry, you are horrible! You mustn’t say these dreadful things.
Hetty’s heart is not broken. Of course, she cried and all that. But there
is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and
marigold.”
</p>
<p>
“And weep over a faithless Florizel,” said Lord Henry, laughing, as
he leaned back in his chair. “My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously
boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really content now with any
one of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter
or a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will
teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. From a moral point
of view, I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation. Even as a
beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn’t floating
at the present moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round
her, like Ophelia?”
</p>
<p>
“I can’t bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest
the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I don’t care what
you say to me. I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode
past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of
jasmine. Don’t let us talk about it any more, and don’t try to
persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first little
bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin. I want to be
better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about yourself. What is
going on in town? I have not been to the club for days.”
</p>
<p>
“The people are still discussing poor Basil’s disappearance.”
</p>
<p>
“I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time,”
said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly.
</p>
<p>
“My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the
British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than
one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate lately, however.
They have had my own divorce-case and Alan Campbell’s suicide. Now they
have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist. Scotland Yard still insists
that the man in the grey ulster who left for Paris by the midnight train on the
ninth of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil
never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told
that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but every one who
disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city,
and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
</p>
<p>
“What do you think has happened to Basil?” asked Dorian, holding up
his Burgundy against the light and wondering how it was that he could discuss
the matter so calmly.
</p>
<p>
“I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is
no business of mine. If he is dead, I don’t want to think about him.
Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it.”
</p>
<p>
“Why?” said the younger man wearily.
</p>
<p>
“Because,” said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt
trellis of an open vinaigrette box, “one can survive everything nowadays
except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth
century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our coffee in the music-room,
Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played
Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather
lonely without her. Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But
then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets
them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s
personality.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the next room,
sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white and black
ivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, and
looking over at Lord Henry, said, “Harry, did it ever occur to you that
Basil was murdered?”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry yawned. “Basil was very popular, and always wore a Waterbury
watch. Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to have
enemies. Of course, he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a man can paint
like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. Basil was really rather dull. He
only interested me once, and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a
wild adoration for you and that you were the dominant motive of his art.”
</p>
<p>
“I was very fond of Basil,” said Dorian with a note of sadness in
his voice. “But don’t people say that he was murdered?”
</p>
<p>
“Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all probable.
I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to
have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect.”
</p>
<p>
“What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered
Basil?” said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had
spoken.
</p>
<p>
“I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that
doesn’t suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. It
is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by
saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower
orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that
crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary
sensations.”
</p>
<p>
“A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who has
once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? Don’t
tell me that.”
</p>
<p>
“Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often,” cried
Lord Henry, laughing. “That is one of the most important secrets of life.
I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do
anything that one cannot talk about after dinner. But let us pass from poor
Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such a really romantic end as
you suggest, but I can’t. I dare say he fell into the Seine off an
omnibus and that the conductor hushed up the scandal. Yes: I should fancy that
was his end. I see him lying now on his back under those dull-green waters,
with the heavy barges floating over him and long weeds catching in his hair. Do
you know, I don’t think he would have done much more good work. During
the last ten years his painting had gone off very much.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began to
stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large, grey-plumaged bird with pink
crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch. As his pointed
fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black,
glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards and forwards.
</p>
<p>
“Yes,” he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief out
of his pocket; “his painting had quite gone off. It seemed to me to have
lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great
friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you? I suppose
he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It’s a habit bores have. By
the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you? I
don’t think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I remember your
telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby, and that it had got
mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity! it was really
a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it. I wish I had now. It belonged to
Basil’s best period. Since then, his work was that curious mixture of bad
painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a
representative British artist. Did you advertise for it? You should.”
</p>
<p>
“I forget,” said Dorian. “I suppose I did. But I never really
liked it. I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me.
Why do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some
play—Hamlet, I think—how do they run?—
</p>
<p class="poem">
“Like the painting of a sorrow,<br >
A face without a heart.”
</p>
<p class="noindent">
Yes: that is what it was like.”
</p>
<p>
Lord Henry laughed. “If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his
heart,” he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
</p>
<p>
Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano.
“‘Like the painting of a sorrow,’” he repeated,
“‘a face without a heart.’”
</p>
<p>
The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. “By the
way, Dorian,” he said after a pause, “‘what does it profit a
man if he gain the whole world and lose—how does the quotation
run?—his own soul’?”
</p>
<p>
The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend. “Why
do you ask me that, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“My dear fellow,” said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in
surprise, “I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an
answer. That is all. I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by the
Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to
some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that
question to his audience. It struck me as being rather dramatic. London is very
rich in curious effects of that kind. A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a
mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping
umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical
lips—it was really very good in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of
telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid,
however, he would not have understood me.”
</p>
<p>
“Don’t, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought,
and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a
soul in each one of us. I know it.”
</p>
<p>
“Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?”
</p>
<p>
“Quite sure.”
</p>
<p>
“Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely certain
about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.
How grave you are! Don’t be so serious. What have you or I to do with the
superstitions of our age? No: we have given up our belief in the soul. Play me
something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low
voice, how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten
years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are
really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do
to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky,
very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in
appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would
do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be
respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It’s absurd to talk of the
ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any
respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has
revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the
aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that
happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when
people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely nothing.
How lovely that thing you are playing is! I wonder, did Chopin write it at
Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa and the salt spray dashing
against the panes? It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that
there is one art left to us that is not imitative! Don’t stop. I want
music to-night. It seems to me that you are the young Apollo and that I am
Marsyas listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know
nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is
young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you
are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything.
You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from
you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not
marred you. You are still the same.”
</p>
<p>
“I am not the same, Harry.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be.
Don’t spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type.
Don’t make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not
shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don’t deceive
yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of
nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and
passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong.
But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume
that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a
forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music
that you had ceased to play—I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like
these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own
senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of <i>lilas
blanc</i> passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of
my life over again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world
has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always will
worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is
afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never
carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of
yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are
your sonnets.”
</p>
<p>
Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair. “Yes,
life has been exquisite,” he murmured, “but I am not going to have
the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things to me. You
don’t know everything about me. I think that if you did, even you would
turn from me. You laugh. Don’t laugh.”
</p>
<p>
“Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne
over again. Look at that great, honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky
air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will come closer
to the earth. You won’t? Let us go to the club, then. It has been a
charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some one at
White’s who wants immensely to know you—young Lord Poole,
Bournemouth’s eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has
begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds me
of you.”
</p>
<p>
“I hope not,” said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes. “But I
am tired to-night, Harry. I shan’t go to the club. It is nearly eleven,
and I want to go to bed early.”
</p>
<p>
“Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was something
in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever heard
from it before.”
</p>
<p>
“It is because I am going to be good,” he answered, smiling.
“I am a little changed already.”
</p>
<p>
“You cannot change to me, Dorian,” said Lord Henry. “You and
I will always be friends.”
</p>
<p>
“Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry,
promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm.”
</p>
<p>
“My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be
going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people against all
the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that.
Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be.
As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no
influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly
sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world
its own shame. That is all. But we won’t discuss literature. Come round
to-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take
you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants
to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come.
Or shall we lunch with our little duchess? She says she never sees you now.
Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be. Her clever tongue gets
on one’s nerves. Well, in any case, be here at eleven.”
</p>
<p>
“Must I really come, Harry?”
</p>
<p>
“Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don’t think there have
been such lilacs since the year I met you.”
</p>
<p>
“Very well. I shall be here at eleven,” said Dorian. “Good
night, Harry.” As he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment, as if
he had something more to say. Then he sighed and went out.
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div class="chapter">
<h2><a id="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
<p>
It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and did not
even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home, smoking his
cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. He heard one of them
whisper to the other, “That is Dorian Gray.” He remembered how
pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared at, or talked about.
He was tired of hearing his own name now. Half the charm of the little village
where he had been so often lately was that no one knew who he was. He had often
told the girl whom he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had
believed him. He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at
him and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly. What a
laugh she had!—just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in
her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had everything
that he had lost.
</p>
<p>
When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. He sent him to
bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began to think over
some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him.
</p>
<p>
Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the
unstained purity of his boyhood—his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had
once called it. He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with
corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to
others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives
that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise
that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope
for him?
</p>
<p>
Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the
portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied
splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to that. Better for
him that each sin of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it.
There was purification in punishment. Not “Forgive us our sins” but
“Smite us for our iniquities” should be the prayer of man to a most
just God.
</p>
<p>
The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many years ago
now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round it as
of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror when he had first
noted the change in the fatal picture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked
into its polished shield. Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written
to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: “The world is
changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite
history.” The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them over
and over to himself. Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on
the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty
that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for
those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been
to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an
unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its
livery? Youth had spoiled him.
</p>
<p>
It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that. It was of
himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. James Vane was hidden in
a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. Alan Campbell had shot himself one night
in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to
know. The excitement, such as it was, over Basil Hallward’s disappearance
would soon pass away. It was already waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor,
indeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It
was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the
portrait that had marred his life. He could not forgive him that. It was the
portrait that had done everything. Basil had said things to him that were
unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder had been simply
the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had been his own
act. He had chosen to do it. It was nothing to him.
</p>
<p>
A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for. Surely
he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing, at any rate. He
would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.
</p>
<p>
As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the locked
room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it had been? Perhaps
if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil passion
from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. He would go and
look.
</p>
<p>
He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred the door, a
smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and lingered for a
moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing that he had
hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if the load had been
lifted from him already.
</p>
<p>
He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and dragged
the purple hanging from the portrait. A cry of pain and indignation broke from
him. He could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning
and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was still
loathsome—more loathsome, if possible, than before—and the scarlet
dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled.
Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good
deed? Or the desire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his
mocking laugh? Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things
finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these? And why was the red stain
larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease over
the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing
had dripped—blood even on the hand that had not held the knife. Confess?
Did it mean that he was to confess? To give himself up and be put to death? He
laughed. He felt that the idea was monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess,
who would believe him? There was no trace of the murdered man anywhere.
Everything belonging to him had been destroyed. He himself had burned what had
been below-stairs. The world would simply say that he was mad. They would shut
him up if he persisted in his story.... Yet it was his duty to confess, to
suffer public shame, and to make public atonement. There was a God who called
upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that he
could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged
his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him. He was
thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul
that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing
more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he
thought so. But who could tell? ... No. There had been nothing more. Through
vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For
curiosity’s sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now.
</p>
<p>
But this murder—was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be
burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only one bit
of evidence left against him. The picture itself—that was evidence. He
would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure to
watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had
kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he had been filled with terror
lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his
passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like
conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.
</p>
<p>
He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He had
cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and
glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter’s
work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and when that was dead,
he would be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its
hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the
picture with it.
</p>
<p>
There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that
the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who
were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house.
They walked on till they met a policeman and brought him back. The man rang the
bell several times, but there was no answer. Except for a light in one of the
top windows, the house was all dark. After a time, he went away and stood in an
adjoining portico and watched.
</p>
<p>
“Whose house is that, Constable?” asked the elder of the two
gentlemen.
</p>
<p>
“Mr. Dorian Gray’s, sir,” answered the policeman.
</p>
<p>
They looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered. One of them was
Sir Henry Ashton’s uncle.
</p>
<p>
Inside, in the servants’ part of the house, the half-clad domestics were
talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing
her hands. Francis was as pale as death.
</p>
<p>
After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen
and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out.
Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force the door, they got
on the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. The windows yielded
easily—their bolts were old.
</p>
<p>
When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of
their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite
youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a
knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was
not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.
</p>
<p class="center">
THE END
</p>
</div><!--end chapter-->
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 174 ***</div>
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