THE PICTURE
OF
DORIAN GRAY
BY
OSCAR WILDE
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,
HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
Paris
ON SALE AT YE OLD PARIS BOOKE SHOPPE
11 Rue de Châteaudun
Registered at Stationers' Hall and protected
under the Copyright Law Act.
First published in complete book form in 1891 by
Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co. (London),
First printed in this Edition April 1913,
Reprinted June 1913, September 1913,
June 1914, January 1916
October 1916.
See the Bibliographical Note on certain
Pirated and Mutilated
Editions of "Dorian
Gray" at the end of this present volume.
CHAPTER: I,
II,
III,
IV,
V,
VI,
VII,
VIII,
IX,
X,
XI,
XII,
XIII,
XIV,
XV,
XVI,
XVII,
XVIII,
XIX,
XX,
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE PREFACE
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.
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.
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.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral
book. Books are well written, or
badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage
of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
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.
All art is quite useless.
Oscar Wilde.
THE PICTURE OF
DORIAN GRAY
CHAPTER I
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.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags 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 flame-like 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 Tokio 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.
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
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."
"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."
Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.
"Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same."
"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."
"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."
"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord Henry, walking across the
studio towards Basil Hallward.
"Yes, that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to you."
"But why not?"
"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their
names to anyone. 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
daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into
one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"
"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."
"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."
"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.
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."
"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
"You know quite well."
"I do not, Harry."
"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."
"I told you the real reason."
"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself
in it. Now, that is childish."
"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."
Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.
"I will tell you," said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity came
over his face.
"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion, glancing at him.
"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."
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."
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.
"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 stockbroker, can gain a reputation for
being civilised. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes,
talking to huge over-dressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I
suddenly became conscious that someone was looking at me. I turned
halfway 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 someone 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."
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience
is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
"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?"
"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry,
pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers.
"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to Royalties, and people
with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladles 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 lionise 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."
"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked his
companion. "I know she goes in for giving a rapid précis 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."
"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward,
listlessly.
"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in
opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she
say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"
"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."
"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.
Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is,
Harry," he murmured—"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like
everyone; that is to say, you are indifferent to everyone."
"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."
"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be
merely an acquaintance."
"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance."
"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?"
"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die,
and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."
"Harry!" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.
"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 sympathise
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 anyone 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."
"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more,
Harry, I feel sure you don't either."
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?"
"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is
absolutely necessary to me."
"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your
art."
"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 Antinoüs
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 realise 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."
"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."
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."
"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.
"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!"
"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."
"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."
"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?"
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
someone 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."
"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 bric-à-brac 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."
"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."
"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."
"Remembered what, Harry?"
"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."
"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.
"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."
"I am very glad you didn't, Harry."
"Why?"
"I don't want you to meet him."
"You don't want me to meet him?"
"No."
"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into
the garden.
"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.
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.
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.
"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry, smiling, and, taking Hallward
by the arm, he almost led him into the house.
CHAPTER II
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."
"That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian."
"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 anyone with you."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered Dorian,
laughing.
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.
"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.
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?"
Lord Henry smiled, and looked at Dorian Gray. "Am I to go, Mr. Gray?" he
asked.
"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."
"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 someone to chat to."
Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.
Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself."
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."
"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."
"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."
"But what about my man at the Orleans?"
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."
Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek
martyr, and made a little moue 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?"
"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is
immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view."
"Why?"
"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 someone else's music, an actor of a
part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is
self-development. To realise 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——"
"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.
"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——"
"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."
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.
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?
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?
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!
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.
"Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray, suddenly. "I must go
out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here."
"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."
"He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the
reason that I don't believe anything he has told me."
"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."
"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."
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."
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.
"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."
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, flower-like 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 someone 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.
"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."
"What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on the
seat at the end of the garden.
"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray."
"Why?"
"Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing
worth having."
"I don't feel that, Lord Henry."
"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! realise 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!"
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.
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.
"I am waiting," he cried. "Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and
you can bring your drinks."
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.
"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, looking at
him.
"Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?"
"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 life-long passion is that the caprice
lasts a little longer."
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.
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.
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.
Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a
wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.
"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."
The lad started, as if awakened from some dream. "Is it really
finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform.
"Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have sat splendidly to-day.
I am awfully obliged to you."
"That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?"
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 recognised 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
exaggerations 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.
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.
"Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's
silence, not understanding what it meant.
"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."
"It is not my property, Harry."
"Whose property is it?"
"Dorian's, of course," answered the painter.
"He is a very lucky fellow."
"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!"
"You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord
Henry, laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on your work."
"I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward.
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 daresay."
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.
"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."
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!"
"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.
"This is your doing, Harry," said the painter, bitterly.
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray—that is
all."
"It is not."
"If it is not, what have I to do with it?"
"You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered.
"I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer.
"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."
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.
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!"
"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."
"Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I
feel that."
"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?"
"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."
"If you let anyone 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."
"You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it
existed."
"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."
"I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry."
"Ah! this morning! You have lived since then."
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.
"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."
"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered Hallward.
"And, when one has them on, they are so horrid."
"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."
"You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry."
"Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one
in the picture?"
"Before either."
"I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," said the
lad.
"Then you shall come; and you will come too, Basil, won't you?"
"I can't really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do."
"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray."
"I should like that awfully."
The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "I
shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly.
"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling
across to him. "Am I really like that?"
"Yes; you are just like that."
"How wonderful, Basil!"
"At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,"
sighed Hallward. "That is something."
"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."
"Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian," said Hallward. "Stop and
dine with me."
"I can't, Basil."
"Why?"
"Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him."
"He won't like you the better for keeping your promises. He always
breaks his own. I beg you not to go."
Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.
"I entreat you."
The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them
from the tea-table with an amused smile.
"I must go, Basil," he answered.
"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."
"Certainly."
"You won't forget?"
"No, of course not," cried Dorian.
"And... Harry!"
"Yes, Basil?"
"Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning."
"I have forgotten it."
"I trust you."
"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."
As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a
sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.
CHAPTER III
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 at 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 despatches,
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.
When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough
shooting coat, smoking a cheroot, and grumbling over The Times. "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."
"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get
something out of you."
"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."
"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole 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."
"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."
"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue-books, Uncle George," said Lord
Henry, languidly.
"Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy
white eyebrows.
"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."
"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."
"He is very good-looking," assented Lord Henry.
"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 to show my face at Court for a month. I hope
he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies."
"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?"
"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?"
"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George."
"I'll back English women against the world, Harry," said Lord Fermor,
striking the table with his fist.
"The betting is on the Americans."
"They don't last, I am told," muttered his uncle.
"A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a
steeplechase. They take things flying. I don't think Dartmoor has a
chance."
"Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "Has she got any?"
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.
"They are pork-packers, I suppose?"
"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told that
pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after
politics."
"Is she pretty?"
"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the
secret of their charm."
"Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are
always telling us that it is the Paradise for women."
"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."
"Where are you lunching, Harry?"
"At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her latest
protégé."
"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."
"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."
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.
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, Dryad-like 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 analysed 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.
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.
"Late as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.
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 everyone 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.
"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?"
"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess."
"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Agatha. "Really, someone should
interfere."
"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American
dry-goods store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.
"My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas."
"Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?" asked the Duchess, raising her
large hands in wonder, and accentuating the verb.
"American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail.
The Duchess looked puzzled.
"Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady Agatha. "He never means
anything that he says."
"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."
"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," said Mr.
Erskine. "I myself would say that it had merely been detected."
"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."
"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.
"Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the
Duchess.
"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry.
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."
"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" asked Mr.
Erskine, plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey."
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."
"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."
"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.
"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.
"Paradoxes are all very well in their way...." rejoined the Baronet.
"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."
"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."
"I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked
down the table and caught a bright answering glance.
"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel," continued Lady Agatha.
"I can sympathise with everything, except suffering," said Lord Henry,
shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly,
too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the
modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the
beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."
"Still, the East End is a very important problem," remarked Sir Thomas,
with a grave shake of the head.
"Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the problem of slavery, and
we try to solve it by amusing the slaves."
The politician looked at him keenly. "What change do you propose, then?"
he asked.
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."
"But we have such grave responsibilities," ventured Mrs. Vandeleur,
timidly.
"Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha.
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."
"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."
"A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked Lord Henry.
"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."
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.
"A great many, I fear," she cried.
"Then commit them over again," he said, gravely. "To get back one's
youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."
"A delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "I must put it into practice."
"A dangerous theory!" came from Sir Thomas's tight lips. Lady Agatha
shook her head, but could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.
"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."
A laugh ran round the table.
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.
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 demoralising. 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?"
"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess," said Lord Henry, with a
bow.
"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.
When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking
a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm.
"You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?"
"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 encyclopædias. Of
all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty
of literature."
"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?"
"I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry. "Was it all very bad?"
"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."
"I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. It
has a perfect host, and a perfect library."
"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 Athenæum. It is the hour when we sleep there."
"All of you, Mr. Erskine?"
"Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English
Academy of Letters."
Lord Henry laughed, and rose. "I am going to the Park," he cried.
As he was passing out of the door Dorian Gray touched him on the arm.
"Let me come with you," he murmured.
"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him,"
answered Lord Henry.
"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."
"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."
CHAPTER IV
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 plaster-work, 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 mantel-shelf, and through the small
leaded panels of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a
summer day in London.
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 bookcases. The formal monotonous ticking of the
Louis Quatorze clock annoyed him. Once or twice he thought of going
away.
At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. "How late you are,
Harry!" he murmured.
"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," answered a shrill voice.
He glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon. I
thought——"
"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."
"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?"
"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.
"That was at 'Lohengrin,' Lady Henry, I think?"
"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?"
The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her
fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.
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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I daresay, 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.
"Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian," he said, after a
few puffs.
"Why, Harry?"
"Because they are so sentimental."
"But I like sentimental people."
"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women,
because they are curious; both are disappointed."
"I don't think I am likely to marry, Henry. 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."
"Who are you in love with?" asked Lord Henry, after a pause.
"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather commonplace
début."
"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry."
"Who is she?"
"Her name is Sibyl Vane."
"Never heard of her."
"No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius."
"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."
"Harry, how can you?"
"My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing women at the 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. Rouge and esprit 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?"
"Ah! Harry, your views terrify me."
"Never mind that. How long have you known her?"
"About three weeks."
"And where did you come across her?"
"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!"
"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 grande passion 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."
"Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian Gray, angrily.
"No; I think your nature so deep."
"How do you mean?"
"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 failures. 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."
"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
fairy 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."
"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British Drama."
"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?"
"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, les grandpères ont toujours
tort."
"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 flower-like 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 hautbois. 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 reed-like 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?"
"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian."
"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces."
"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary
charm in them, sometimes," said Lord Henry.
"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane."
"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you
will tell me everything you do."
"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."
"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?"
Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
"Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"
"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?"
"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."
"I am not surprised."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
"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?"
"No; I don't think so."
"My dear Harry, why?"
"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl."
"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.'"
"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments."
"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."
"I know that look. It depresses me," murmured Lord Henry, examining his
rings.
"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest
me."
"You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean about
other people's tragedies."
"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."
"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."
"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.
"You always come dreadfully late."
"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."
"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?"
He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he answered, "and to-morrow
night she will be Juliet."
"When is she Sibyl Vane?"
"Never."
"I congratulate you."
"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.
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.
"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry, at last.
"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."
"That would be impossible, my dear boy?"
"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."
"Well, what night shall we go?"
"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays Juliet
to-morrow."
"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil."
"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."
"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?"
"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."
Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of giving away what they need
most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."
"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."
"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 realise."
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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 physical 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.
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.
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 tyrannised 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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER V
"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!"
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."
The girl looked up and pouted. "Money, mother?" she cried, "what does
money matter? Love is more than money."
"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."
"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.
"I don't know how we could manage without him," answered the elder
woman, querulously.
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.
"Foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-phrase flung in answer.
The waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the
words.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her
cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. Sibyl 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!"
"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...."
"Ah! Mother, mother, let me be happy!"
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 the smile. She mentally elevated her son to the
dignity of an audience. She felt sure that the tableau was
interesting.
"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think," said the
lad, with a good-natured grumble.
"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.
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."
"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.
"Why not, mother? I mean it."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "Only swell people go to the
Park."
"Nonsense, Jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
"James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I watch over Sibyl."
"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre, and goes behind to
talk to her. Is that right? What about that?"
"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."
"You don't know his name, though," said the lad, harshly.
"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."
James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sibyl, mother," he cried, "watch
over her."
"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."
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.
"How serious you both are!" she cried. "What is the matter?"
"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."
"Good-bye, my son," she answered, with a bow of strained stateliness.
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.
"Kiss me, mother," said the girl. Her flower-like lips touched the
withered cheek, and warmed its frost.
"My child! my child!" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in
search of an imaginary gallery.
"Come, Sibyl," said her brother, impatiently. He hated his mother's
affectations.
They went out into the flickering wind-blown sunlight, and strolled down
the dreary Euston Road. The passers-by 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.
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 super-cargo, 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.
The lad listened sulkily to her, and made no answer. He was heart-sick
at leaving home.
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.
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 under-lip.
"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."
"What do you want me to say?"
"Oh! that you will be a good boy, and not forget us," she answered,
smiling at him.
He shrugged his shoulders. "You are more likely to forget me, than I am
to forget you, Sibyl."
She flushed. "What do you mean, Jim?" she asked.
"You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why have you not told me
about him? He means you no good."
"Stop, Jim!" she exclaimed. "You must not say anything against him. I
love him."
"Why, you don't even know his name," answered the lad. "Who is he? I
have a right to know."
"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 re-writing. They
were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time for me, I think,
a very dance of blossoms in blue skies."
"He is a gentleman," said the lad, sullenly.
"A Prince!" she cried, musically. "What more do you want?"
"He wants to enslave you."
"I shudder at the thought of being free."
"I want you to beware of him."
"To see him is to worship him, to know him is to trust him."
"Sibyl, you are mad about him."
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."
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.
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.
She started to her feet. "There he is!" she cried.
"Who?" said Jim Vane.
"Prince Charming," she answered, looking after the victoria.
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.
"He is gone," murmured Sibyl, sadly. "I wish you had seen him."
"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."
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.
"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.
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."
"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."
"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 anyone I love,
would you?"
"Not as long as you love him, I suppose," was the sullen answer.
"I shall love him for ever!" she cried.
"And he?"
"For ever, too!"
"He had better."
She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put her hand on his arm. He
was merely a boy.
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.
In Sibyl'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.
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.
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.
"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?"
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.
"No," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.
"My father was a scoundrel then?" cried the lad, clenching his fists.
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."
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."
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."
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 only have 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."
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.
CHAPTER VI
"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.
"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
white-washing."
"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, watching him as
he spoke.
Hallward started, and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be married!" he
cried. "Impossible!"
"It is perfectly true."
"To whom?"
"To some little actress or other."
"I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible."
"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear
Basil."
"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry."
"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."
"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth. It would be
absurd for him to marry so much beneath him."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Are you serious?"
"Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I should ever
be more serious than I am at the present moment."
"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."
"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 organised, and to be highly organised 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 someone else.
He would be a wonderful study."
"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."
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."
"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.
"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."
"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 chef here is like, and
then you will tell us how it all came about."
"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."
"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward, slowly.
"Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry.
Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the forest of Arden, I shall
find her in an orchard in Verona."
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."
"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."
"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."
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
anyone. His nature is too fine for that."
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."
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 anyone 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."
"And those are...?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad.
"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories
about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry."
"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."
"Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward.
"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?"
"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."
"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a
terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.
"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."
"One has to pay in other ways but money."
"What sort of ways, Basil?"
"Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in... well, in the
consciousness of degradation."
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
civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilised man ever
knows what a pleasure is."
"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore someone."
"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."
"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."
"That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward.
"Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry.
"This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit, Harry, that women give
to men the very gold of their lives."
"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."
"Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I like you so much."
"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some
coffee, you fellows?—Waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne, 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."
"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."
"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."
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.
CHAPTER VII
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.
"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.
"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 spiritualises them, and one feels that
they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."
"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.
"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. "I
understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Anyone you love
must be marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must
be fine and noble. To spiritualise 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."
"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."
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!"
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.
Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes
rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak—
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss—
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.
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.
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.
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
over-emphasised everything that she had to say. The beautiful passage—
Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night—
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—
Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say, "It lightens." Sweet, good-night!
This bud of love by summer's ripening breath
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet—
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.
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.
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."
"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 apologise to you both."
"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted
Hallward. "We will come some other night."
"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."
"Don't talk like that about anyone you love, Dorian. Love is a more
wonderful thing than Art."
"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?"
"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.
"Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry, with a strange tenderness in his
voice; and the two young men passed out together.
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 fiasco. The last act was played to almost empty
benches. The curtain went down on a titter, and some groans.
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.
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.
"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."
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?"
"Understand what?" he asked, angrily.
"Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never
act well again."
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."
She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. An
ecstasy of happiness dominated her.
"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."
He flung himself down on the sofa, and turned away his face. "You have
killed my love," he muttered.
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.
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
realised 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."
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."
"Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well," he answered bitterly.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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 doorsteps,
and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
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, and 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.
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.
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
buttonhole 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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, æon upon æon 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 someone 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
CHAPTER VIII
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 softly in with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on a
small tray of old Sèvres china, and drew back the olive-satin curtains,
with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall
windows.
"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.
"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray, drowsily.
"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."
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 realise that we live in an age when unnecessary
things are our only necessities; and there were several very courteously
worded communiations 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.
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.
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.
Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the
portrait, and he started.
"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the
table. "I shut the window?"
Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured.
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.
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 anyone, Victor," he said, with a sigh. The man
bowed and retired.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry, as he entered. "But
you must not think too much about it."
"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad.
"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?"
"Yes."
"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you
on it. But how are you going to begin?"
"By marrying Sibyl Vane."
"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, standing up, and looking at him
in perplexed amazement. "But, my dear Dorian——"
"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!"
"Your wife! Dorian!... Didn't you get my letter? I wrote to you this
morning, and sent the note down, by my own man."
"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."
"You know nothing then?"
"What do you mean?"
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."
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?"
"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 anyone 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
début 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 anyone see you going round to her room?
That is an important point."
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."
"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."
"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.
"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself mixed
up in it. I see by The Standard 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific
laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil.
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."
"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?"
"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.
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."
"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? Someone
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."
"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.
"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."
"What is that, Harry?" said the lad, listlessly.
"Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking someone 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."
"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."
"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."
"What was that, Harry?"
"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."
"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad, burying his
face in his hands.
"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."
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.
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."
"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that
you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."
"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What
then?"
"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."
"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?"
"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."
"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."
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 of 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?
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.
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.
CHAPTER IX
As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown
into the room.
"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
The Globe, 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 heartbroken 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?"
"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."
"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!"
"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."
"You call yesterday the past?"
"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."
"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."
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."
"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian—or shall be some day."
"I don't know what you mean, Basil," he exclaimed, turning round. "I
don't know what you want. What do you want?"
"I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint," said the artist, sadly.
"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——"
"Killed herself! Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?" cried
Hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.
"My dear Basil! Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident? Of
course she killed herself."
The elder man buried his face in his hands. "How fearful," he muttered,
and a shudder ran through him.
"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 ennui,
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 the proper artistic point of view. Was it
not Gautier who used to write about la consolation des arts? 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 realised 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."
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.
"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?"
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.
"But surely she did?"
"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned to
anyone. 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."
"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."
"I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!" he exclaimed,
starting back.
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."
"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."
"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.
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."
"Not look at my own work! you are not serious. Why shouldn't I look at
it?" exclaimed Hallward, laughing.
"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."
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.
"Dorian!"
"Don't speak!"
"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?"
"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.
"Yes; I don't suppose you will object to that. George 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."
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.
"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?"
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."
"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.
"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?"
"Basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling
hands, and gazing at him with wild, startled eyes.
"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 everyone 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 leant 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 realise 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."
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 someone
who would fill him with a strange idolatry? Was that one of the things
that life had in store?
"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward, "that you should
have seen this in the portrait. Did you really see it?"
"I saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed to me very
curious."
"Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?"
Dorian shook his head. "You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not
possibly let you stand in front of that picture."
"You will some day, surely?"
"Never."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It was a very disappointing confession."
"Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn't see anything else in the
picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?"
"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."
"You have got Harry," said the painter, sadly.
"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."
"You will sit to me again?"
"Impossible!"
"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man came across
two ideal things. Few come across one."
"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."
"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."
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.
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.
CHAPTER X
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.
Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper 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?
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.
"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."
"I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key."
"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."
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."
"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?"
"No, no," he cried, petulantly. "Thank you, Leaf. That will do."
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.
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.
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 Michael Angelo 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.
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 judgment. 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.
"The persons are here, Monsieur."
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.
"Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in
here."
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.
"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."
"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."
"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to
you. Which is the work of art, sir?"
"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."
"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?"
"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."
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.
"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man, when they
reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.
"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.
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 cassone, with its
fantastically-painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which
he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood bookcase
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!
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.
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.
"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."
"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who
was still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?"
"Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. Just
lean it against the wall. Thanks."
"Might one look at the work of art, sir?"
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."
"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 anyone so marvellous.
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.
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 encrusted 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 The St. James's Gazette
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.
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 The St. James's languidly, and looked through
it. A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. It drew
attention to the following paragraph:—
"Inquest on an Actress.—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."
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.
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.
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.
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 realise 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 argot and of archaisms, of technical
expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterises the work of
some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. 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.
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.
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.
"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."
"Yes: I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his
chair.
"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a
great difference."
"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry. And they passed
into the dining-room.
CHAPTER XI
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.
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 beauty 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 over-emphasised, account of the sorrow and despair
of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he had
most dearly valued.
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.
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 ageing 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.
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.
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 realisation 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."
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.
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 arbiter elegantiarum, 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
spiritualising of the senses its highest realisation.
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 organised 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
symbolise. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and watch
the priest, in his stiff flowered vestment, 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 "panis cælestis," 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.
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
Darwinismus 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.
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, or
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.
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
gypsies 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 civilisations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the
mysterious juruparis 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 Chili, 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 clarin of the Mexicans, into which the performer does
not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh ture 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 teponaztli, 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 yotl-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 "Tannhäuser," and seeing in the prelude to that
great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
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
lamp-light, the cymophane with its wire-like 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 de la
vieille roche that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.
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.
The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,
at 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.
When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI., visited Louis XII.
of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantôme,
and his cap had double rows of rubles 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 earrings 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 parsemé 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.
How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and
decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
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 flower-like 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 "Madame, je suis tout
joyeux," 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 Médicis 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.
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 fleurs de lys, birds, and images; veils
of lacis worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiff
Spanish velvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and Japanese
Foukousas with their green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged
birds.
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
fleurs de lys; 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.
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.
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 someone might gain access to the room, in spite of the elaborate
bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.
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 anyone 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?
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.
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.
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.
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, civilised 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 chef. 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 entrées, 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.
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
wrist-bands, 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 realise? 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 over-laden 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.
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.
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 tædium vitæ, 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
Cæsar 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.
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
acanthus-like 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.
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
realise his conception of the beautiful.
CHAPTER XII
It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth
birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.
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 recognised 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.
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.
"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 recognise me?"
"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognise 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?"
"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."
"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.
The lamp-light 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."
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."
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.
"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?"
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's
maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.
Anglomanie 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
Dorian sighed, and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour!" he murmured.
"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."
"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."
"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 nor 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?"
"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."
"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."
"Take care, Basil. You go too far."
"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 everyone 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."
"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and
turning almost white from fear.
"Yes," answered Hallward, gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his
voice—"to see your soul. But only God can do that."
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."
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 someone 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.
"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."
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."
"You think so?" He laughed again.
"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 staunch friend to you."
"Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say."
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 fireplace, and stood
there, looking at the burning logs with their frost-like ashes and their
throbbing cores of flame.
"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man, in a hard, clear voice.
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."
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."
"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."
"That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will
not have to read long."
CHAPTER XIII
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.
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.
"Yes."
"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.
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 cassone, and an almost empty
bookcase—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 mantel-shelf, 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.
"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that
curtain back, and you will see mine."
The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are mad, Dorian, or
playing a part," muttered Hallward, frowning.
"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.
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 recognise his own brush-work,
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.
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.
The young man was leaning against the mantel-shelf, 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.
"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded
shrill and curious in his ears.
"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 the 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...."
"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."
"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the
window, and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.
"You told me you had destroyed it."
"I was wrong. It has destroyed me."
"I don't believe it is my picture."
"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian, bitterly.
"My ideal, as you call it...."
"As you called it."
"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."
"It is the face of my soul."
"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a
devil."
"Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian, with a
wild gesture of despair.
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.
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.
"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."
Dorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed
eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered.
"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'?"
"Those words mean nothing to me now."
"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?"
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.
There was a stifled groan, and the horrible sound of someone 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 realise 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 aroused. Months! Everything could be destroyed
long before then.
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.
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.
"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?"
"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and
blinking.
"Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine
to-morrow. I have some work to do."
"All right, sir."
"Did anyone call this evening?"
"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to
catch his train."
"Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?"
"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not
find you at the club."
"That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow."
"No, sir."
The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.
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.
CHAPTER XIV
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell
is out of town, get his address."
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 bookcase 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.
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 "du supplice encore mal lavée," with its downy red
hairs and its "doigts de faune." 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:—
"Sur une gamme chromatique,
Le sein de perles ruisselant,
La Vénus de l'Adriatique
Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.
"Les dômes, sur l'azur des ondes
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
Que soulève un soupir d'amour.
"L'esquif aborde et me dépose,
Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une façade rose,
Sur le marbre d'un escalier."
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
honey-combed 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:—
"Devant une façade rose,
Sur le marbre d'un escalier."
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!
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 café 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 "monstre charmant" 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
At last the door opened, and his servant entered. He turned glazed eyes
upon him.
"Mr. Campbell, sir," said the man.
A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back
to his cheeks.
"Ask him to come in at once, Francis." He felt that he was himself
again. His mood of cowardice had passed away.
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.
"Alan! this is kind of you. I thank you for coming."
"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.
"Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one
person. Sit down."
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.
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——"
"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."
"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."
"You are mad, Dorian."
"Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian."
"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?"
"It was suicide, Alan."
"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy."
"Do you still refuse to do this for me?"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Don't speak about those days, Dorian: they are dead."
"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."
"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."
"You refuse?"
"Yes."
"I entreat you, Alan."
"It is useless."
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.
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.
After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round, and
came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.
"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."
Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.
"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."
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.
"Come, Alan, you must decide at once."
"I cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter
things.
"You must. You have no choice. Don't delay."
He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the room upstairs?"
"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."
"I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory."
"No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out on a sheet of
note-paper what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring the
things back to you."
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.
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.
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.
"Hush, Alan: you have saved my life," said Dorian.
"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."
"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.
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.
"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked Campbell.
"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?"
"Harden, sir."
"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."
"No trouble, sir. At what time shall I be back?"
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.
Campbell frowned, and bit his lip. "It will take about five hours," he
answered.
"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."
"Thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room.
"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.
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.
"It is nothing to me. I don't require you," said Campbell, coldly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Leave me now," said a stern voice behind him.
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.
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."
"You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that," said Dorian,
simply.
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.
CHAPTER XV
That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large
buttonhole 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.
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 esprit when she could get it.
Dorian was one of her special 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."
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."
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
over-dressed 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.
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 mantel-shelf, 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."
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.
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 menu 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.
"Dorian," said Lord Henry, at last, as the chaud-froid was being
handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out
of sorts."
"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."
"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."
"How you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the old lady.
"I really cannot understand it."
"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."
"She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I
remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how décolletée
she was then."
"She is still décolletée," he answered, taking an olive in his long
fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
édition de luxe 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."
"How can you, Harry!" cried Dorian.
"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."
"Certainly, Lady Narborough."
"I don't believe a word of it."
"Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends."
"Is it true, Mr. Gray?"
"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."
"Four husbands! Upon my word that is trop de zèle."
"Trop d'audace, I tell her," said Dorian.
"Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol
like? I don't know him."
"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,"
said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.
Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord Henry, I am not at all
surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked."
"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."
"Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking
her head.
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."
"Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair.
"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."
"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."
"Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady.
"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."
"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."
"Fin de siècle," murmured Lord Henry.
"Fin du globe," answered his hostess.
"I wish it were fin du globe," said Dorian, with a sigh. "Life is a
great disappointment."
"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?"
"I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry, with a
bow.
"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."
"With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked Dorian.
"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done
in a hurry. I want it to be what The Morning Post calls a suitable
alliance, and I want you both to be happy."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
"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."
"Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I am going
to limit myself, for the future."
"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."
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.
"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."
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 doctrinaire—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.
A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at
Dorian.
"Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather out of
sorts at dinner."
"I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all."
"You were charming last night. The little Duchess is quite devoted to
you. She tells me she is going down to Selby."
"She has promised to come on the twentieth."
"Is Monmouth to be there too?"
"Oh, yes, Harry."
"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 makes 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."
"How long has she been married?" asked Dorian.
"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?"
"Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, Geoffrey
Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian."
"I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many people don't, but I find
him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat over-dressed, by
being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type."
"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go to
Monte Carlo with his father."
"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?"
Dorian glanced at him hurriedly, and frowned. "No, Harry," he said at
last, "I did not get home till nearly three."
"Did you go to the club?"
"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."
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."
"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."
"All right, Dorian. I daresay I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. The
Duchess is coming."
"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 nerves 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.
Yet it had to be done. He realised 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.
Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed
nervously at his under-lip. 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.
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.
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 the 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.
The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered.
"Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another if
you drive fast."
"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.
CHAPTER XVI
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.
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.
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 side-windows of the hansom
were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.
"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 spilt. 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.
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.
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.
Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, and he
could see the strange bottle-shaped kilns with their orange fan-like
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.
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 lamp-lit 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.
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.
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.
"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the
trap.
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.
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.
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 discs of light. The floor was covered with
ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained
with dark rings of spilt 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.
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.
"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.
"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps
will speak to me now."
"I thought you had left England."
"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."
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.
"I am going on to the other place," he said, after a pause.
"On the wharf?"
"Yes."
"That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place
now."
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."
"Much the same."
"I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have
something."
"I don't want anything," murmured the young man.
"Never mind."
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.
A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of
the women. "We are very proud to-night," she sneered.
"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."
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.
"It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't care to go back. What
does it matter? I am quite happy here."
"You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian,
after a pause.
"Perhaps."
"Good-night, then."
"Good-night," answered the young man, passing up the steps, and wiping
his parched mouth with a handkerchief.
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.
"Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that."
She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be called,
ain't it?" she yelled after him.
The drowsy sailor leapt 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"What do you want?" he gasped.
"Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you."
"You are mad. What have I done to you?"
"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."
Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. "I
never heard of her. You are mad."
"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."
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!"
"Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? What do years
matter?"
"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!"
James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant.
Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.
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.
He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God! my God!" he cried, "and I
would have murdered you!"
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."
"Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. A chance word I
heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track."
"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.
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.
"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting her 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."
"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."
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."
"You lie!" cried James Vane.
She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the truth,"
she cried.
"Before God?"
"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.
"You swear this?"
"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."
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.
CHAPTER XVII
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.
"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."
"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."
"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 buttonhole. 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 Robinsoniana, 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."
"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked.
"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian.
"I recognise him in a flash," exclaimed the Duchess.
"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. "From a
label there is no escape! I refuse the title."
"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.
"You wish me to defend my throne, then?"
"Yes."
"I give the truths of to-morrow."
"I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.
"You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood.
"Of your shield, Harry: not of your spear."
"I never tilt against Beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand.
"That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much."
"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."
"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the Duchess.
"What becomes of your simile about the orchid?"
"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."
"You don't like your country, then?" she asked.
"I live in it."
"That you may censure it the better."
"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired.
"What do they say of us?"
"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop."
"Is that yours, Harry?"
"I give it to you."
"I could not use it. It is too true."
"You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognise a description."
"They are practical."
"They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger,
they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."
"Still, we have done great things."
"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys."
"We have carried their burden."
"Only as far as the Stock Exchange."
She shook her head. "I believe in the race," she cried.
"It represents the survival of the pushing."
"It has development."
"Decay fascinates me more."
"What of Art?" she asked.
"It is a malady."
"Love?"
"An illusion."
"Religion?"
"The fashionable substitute for Belief."
"You are a sceptic."
"Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith."
"What are you?"
"To define is to limit."
"Give me a clue."
"Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth."
"You bewilder me. Let us talk of someone else."
"Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened Prince
Charming."
"Ah! don't remind me of that," cried Dorian Gray.
"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."
"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess," laughed Dorian.
"Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with me."
"And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?"
"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."
"How unreasonable of her! You should give her warning."
"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."
"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."
"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 someone
says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you
ever love at all."
"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured Dorian.
"Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the Duchess, with
mock sadness.
"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."
"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?" asked the Duchess, after
a pause.
"Especially when one has been wounded by it," answered Lord Henry.
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.
Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed.
"I always agree with Harry, Duchess."
"Even when he is wrong?"
"Harry is never wrong, Duchess."
"And does his philosophy make you happy?"
"I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have
searched for pleasure."
"And found it, Mr. Gray?"
"Often. Too often."
The Duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she said, "and if I
don't go and dress, I shall have none this evening."
"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to his
feet, and walking down the conservatory.
"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his
cousin. "You had better take care. He is very fascinating."
"If he were not, there would be no battle."
"Greek meets Greek, then?"
"I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman."
"They were defeated."
"There are worse things than capture," she answered.
"You gallop with a loose rein."
"Pace gives life," was the riposte.
"I shall write it in my diary to-night."
"What?"
"That a burnt child loves the fire."
"I am not even singed. My wings are untouched."
"You use them for everything, except flight."
"Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for us."
"You have a rival."
"Who?"
He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered. "She perfectly adores him."
"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to Antiquity is fatal to us
who are romanticists."
"Romanticists! You have all the methods of science."
"Men have educated us."
"But not explained you."
"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.
"Sphynxes without secrets."
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."
"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys."
"That would be a premature surrender."
"Romantic Art begins with its climax."
"I must keep an opportunity for retreat."
"In the Parthian manner?"
"They found safety in the desert. I could not do that."
"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 death-like swoon.
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.
"What has happened?" he asked. "Oh! I remember. Am I safe here, Harry?"
He began to tremble.
"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."
"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "I would rather
come down. I must not be alone."
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.
CHAPTER XVIII
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.
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
footmarks 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked.
"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."
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.
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."
"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.
"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."
The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.
"Where, sir? Where is he?" he shouted. At the same time the firing
ceased along the line.
"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."
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.
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.
"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."
"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered, bitterly. "The
whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man...?"
He could not finish the sentence.
"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."
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."
"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's 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."
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.
The elder man laughed. "The only horrible thing in the world is ennui,
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."
"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?"
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."
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
"And the Duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are
excellently matched."
"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
scandal."
"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord Henry,
lighting a cigarette.
"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."
"The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer.
"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."
"Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me what
it is? You know I would help you."
"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."
"What nonsense!"
"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."
"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!"
"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."
"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 someone who
had committed a real murder."
"How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the Duchess. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?
Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint."
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?"
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.
She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. "I
wish I knew," she said at last.
He shook his head. "Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty
that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."
"One may lose one's way."
"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."
"What is that?"
"Disillusion."
"It was my début in life," she sighed.
"It came to you crowned."
"I am tired of strawberry leaves."
"They become you."
"Only in public."
"You would miss them," said Lord Henry.
"I will not part with a petal."
"Monmouth has ears."
"Old age is dull of hearing."
"Has he never been jealous?"
"I wish he had been."
He glanced about as if in search of something. "What are you looking
for?" she inquired.
"The button from your foil," he answered. "You have dropped it."
She laughed. "I have still the mask."
"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.
She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit.
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
prefigure death for himself also. He had nearly swooned at what Lord
Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.
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.
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.
As soon as the man entered Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a drawer,
and spread it out before him.
"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this morning,
Thornton?" he said, taking up a pen.
"Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.
"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."
"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty of coming
to you about."
"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly. "What do you mean?
Wasn't he one of your men?"
"No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir."
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?"
"Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on both
arms, and that kind of thing."
"Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian, leaning forward and
looking at the man with startled eyes. "Anything that would tell his
name?"
"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."
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."
"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."
"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."
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.
At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the yard. He
leapt 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.
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.
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.
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.
"Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it," he said, clutching at
the doorpost for support.
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.
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.
CHAPTER XIX
"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're quite perfect. Pray, don't change."
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."
"Where were you yesterday?"
"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself."
"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 uncivilised. Civilisation 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."
"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."
"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 spilt into his plate
a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries, and through a
perforated shell-shaped spoon snowed white sugar upon them.
"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to anyone 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 flower-like as I had found her."
"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."
"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."
"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as he
leant back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously
boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now
with anyone 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
star-lit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?"
"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."
"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance."
"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said
Dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning slightly.
"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 everyone 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."
"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.
"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."
"Why?" said the younger man, wearily.
"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."
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?"
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."
"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?"
"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."
"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.
"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."
"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."
"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 any thing 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."
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 glass-like eyes, and began to sway backwards
and forwards.
"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."
"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?—
"'Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart.'
Yes: that is what it was like."
Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his
heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
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.'"
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'?"
The music jarred and Dorian Gray started, and stared at his friend. "Why
do you ask me that, Harry?"
"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."
"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."
"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"
"Quite sure."
"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."
"I am not the same, Harry."
"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
lilas blanc 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."
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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling, "I am a
little changed already."
"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will
always be friends."
"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."
"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralise. 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."
"Must I really come, Harry?"
"Certainly. The Park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been
such lilacs since the year I met you."
"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.
CHAPTER XX
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.
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.
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?
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 a man to a most just God.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 spilt. 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 recognised that now.
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.
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.
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.
"Whose house is that, constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.
"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.
They looked at each other, as they walked away and sneered. One of them
was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.
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.
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.
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 recognised who it was.
the end
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
PIRATED EDITIONS
Owing to the number of unauthorised editions of "THE PICTURE OF DORIAN
GRAY" issued at various times both in America and on the Continent of
Europe, it has become necessary to indicate which are the only
authorised editions of Oscar Wilde's masterpiece.
Many of the pirated editions are incomplete in that they omit the
Preface and seven additional chapters which were first published in the
London edition of 1891. In other cases certain passages have been
mutilated, and faulty spellings and misprints are numerous.
AUTHORISED EDITIONS
(I) First published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, July, 1890.
London: Ward, Lock & Co. Copyrighted in London.
Published simultaneously in America. Philadelphia: J.-B. Lippincott
Co. Copyrighted in the United States of America.
(II) A Preface to "Dorian Gray." Fortnightly Review, March 1, 1891.
London: Chapman & Hall. (All rights reserved.)
(III) With the Preface and Seven additional chapters. London, New York,
and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. (n. d.).
(Of this edition 250 copies were issued on L.P., dated 1891.)
(IV) The same. London, New York, and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Bowden. (n.
d.).
(Published 1894 or 1895.) See Stuart Mason's "Art and Morality" (page
153).
THE FOLLOWING EDITIONS
were issued by Charles Carrington, Publisher and Literary Agent, late
of 13 Faubourg Montmartre, Paris, and 10 Rue de la Tribune, Brussels
(Belgium), to whom the Copyright belongs.
(V) Small 8vo, vii 334 pages, printed on English antique wove paper,
silk-cloth boards. 500 copies, 1901.
(VI) The same, vii 327 pages, silk-cloth boards. 500 copies, 1905.
Of this edition 100 copies were issued on hand-made paper.
(VII) 4to, vi 312 pages, broad margins, claret-coloured paper wrappers,
title on label on the outside. 250 copies. Price 10s. 6d. 1908
(February).
(VIII) Cr. 8vo, uniform with Methuen's (London) complete edition of
Wilde's Works. xi 362 pages, printed on hand-made paper, white cloth,
gilt extra.
1000 copies. Price 12s. 6d. 1908 (April 16).
Of this edition 80 further copies were printed on Imperial Japanese
vellum, full vellum binding, gilt extra. Price 42s.
(IX) Illustrated edition. Containing seven fullpaged illustrations by
Paul Thirlat, engraved on Wood by Eugène Dété (both of Paris), and
artistically printed by Brendon & Son, Ltd. (of Plymouth), 4to, vi 312
pages, half parchment bound, with corners, and fleur-de-lys on side.
1908-9. Price 15s.
(X) Small edition, uniform with Messrs. Methuen's Issue of "Oscar
Wilde's Works" at same price. 12mo, xii and 352 pages. 2000 copies.
Bound in green cloth. 1910. Price 5s.
It follows from all this that, with the exception of the version in
Lippincott's Magazine only those editions are authorised to be sold in
Great Britain and her Colonies which bear the imprimatur of Ward, Lock &
Co., London, or Charles Carrington, Paris and Brussels; and that all
other editions, whether American, Continental (save Carrington's Paris
editions above specified) or otherwise, may not be sold within British
jurisdiction without infringing the Berne law of literary copyright
and incurring the disagreements that may therefrom result.
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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde | Librivox Audio Recording
