The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
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Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray
13 chapter version
Author: Oscar Wilde
Posting Date: February 9, 2013 [EBook #4078]
Release Date: May, 2003
First Posted: November 12, 2001
Last Updated: January 29, 2005
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ***
Produced by Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
by
Oscar Wilde
1890, 13-CHAPTER VERSION
CONTENTS
Chapter I: 3-12
Chapter II: 12-22
Chapter III: 22-32
Chapter IV: 32-36
Chapter V: 36-43
Chapter VI: 43-52
Chapter VII: 52-58
Chapter VIII: 58-64
Chapter IX: 65-77
Chapter X: 77-81
Chapter XI: 81-86
Chapter XII: 86-93
Chapter XIII: 94-100
CHAPTER I
[3] The studio was filled with the rich odor 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 saddle-bags on which he was
lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton
could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored
blossoms of the 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 who, in 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 black-crocketed spires
of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more
oppressive, and 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 he 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
[4] 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. The Grosvenor is
the only place."
"I don't think I will 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 his long legs out on the divan and shook with
laughter.
"Yes, I knew you would laugh; 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 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 an
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 consequently 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 a brainless, beautiful thing, 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. 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 [5] 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 quietly 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 fame, whatever it may
be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks,--we will all suffer for what the
gods have given us, suffer terribly."
"Dorian Gray? is that his name?" said 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 any one. It seems like surrendering a part of them. You know
how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life
wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if
one only hides it. When I leave town I never tell my people where I am
going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I
dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into
one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"
"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, laying his hand upon his shoulder;
"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
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, shaking his hand off, and 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 for a time they did not speak.
After a long 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?" asked Basil Hallward, keeping his eyes fixed on the
ground.
"You know quite well."
"I do not, Harry."
[6] "Well, I will tell you what it is."
"Please don't."
"I must. 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 colored canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit
this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown with it the secret
of my own soul."
Lord Harry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.
"I will tell you," said Hallward; and an expression of perplexity came
over his face.
"I am all expectation, Basil," murmured his companion, looking at him.
"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the young
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 I can believe anything, provided that it is 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 in the grass, and a long thin
dragon-fly floated by on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if
he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and he wondered what was
coming.
"Well, this is incredible," repeated Hallward, rather
bitterly,--"incredible to me at times. I don't know what it means.
The story is simply this. Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady
Brandon's. You know we poor painters have to show ourselves in society
from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages.
With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody,
even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. Well,
after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge
overdressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I suddenly became
conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way round,
and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that
I was growing pale. A curious instinct of terror came over me. I knew
that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was
so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole
nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external
influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am
by nature. My father destined me for the army. I insisted on [7]
going to Oxford. Then he made me enter my name at the Middle Temple.
Before I had eaten half a dozen dinners I gave up the Bar, and
announced my intention of becoming a painter. 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 knew that if I spoke to Dorian I would become
absolutely devoted to him, and that I ought not to speak to him. I
grew afraid, and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that
made me do so: it was 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. 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 shrill horrid 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 ladies with gigantic tiaras
and hooked noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only
met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I
believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at
least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the
nineteenth-century standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself
face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely
stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again.
It was mad of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him.
Perhaps it was not so mad, 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? I know
she goes in for giving a rapid précis of all her guests. I remember
her bringing me up to a most 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, something like 'Sir Humpty Dumpty--you know--Afghan
frontier--Russian intrigues: very successful man--wife killed by an
elephant--quite inconsolable--wants to marry a beautiful American
widow--everybody does nowadays--hates Mr. Gladstone--but very much
interested in beetles: ask him what he thinks of Schouvaloff.' I
simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But poor 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. But what did she say about Mr.
Dorian Gray?"
[8] "Oh, she murmured, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I quite
inseparable--engaged to be married to the same man--I mean married on
the same day--how very silly of me! Quite forget what he does--afraid
he--doesn't do anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin,
dear Mr. Gray?' We could neither of us help laughing, and we became
friends at once."
"Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best
ending for one," said Lord Henry, plucking another daisy.
Hallward buried his face in his hands. "You don't understand what
friendship is, Harry," he murmured,--"or what enmity is, for that
matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to
every one."
"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back,
and looking up at the little clouds that were drifting across the
hollowed turquoise of the summer sky, like ravelled skeins of glossy
white silk. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference
between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my
acquaintances for their characters, and my enemies for their brains. A
man can't 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!"
"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my
relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that we can't stand other
people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathize with
the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of
the upper classes. They feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and
immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of
us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor
Southwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite
magnificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the lower
orders live correctly."
"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is
more, Harry, I don't believe you do either."
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his
patent-leather boot with a tasselled malacca cane. "How English you
are, Basil! If one puts forward an idea to a real 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 one's self. 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 [9]
will not be colored 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. Tell
me more about Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?"
"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. Of
course sometimes it is only for a few minutes. But a few minutes with
somebody one worships mean a great deal."
"But you don't really worship him?"
"I do."
"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but
your painting,--your art, I should say. Art sounds better, doesn't it?"
"He is all my art to me now. I sometimes think, Harry, that there are
only two eras of any importance in the history of the world. 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, model from him.
Of course I have done all that. He has stood as Paris in dainty armor,
and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boar-spear. Crowned
with heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow of Adrian's barge,
looking into the green, turbid Nile. He has leaned over the still pool
of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the
wonder of his own beauty. But he is much more to me than that. 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 re-create life in a way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream
of form in days of thought,'--who is it who says that? I forget; but
it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of
this lad,--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is
really over twenty,--his merely visible presence,--ah! I wonder can
you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the
lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in itself 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
bestial, an ideality that is void. Harry! 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."
"Basil, this is quite wonderful! I must see Dorian Gray." Hallward
got up from the seat, and walked up and down the [10] garden. After
some time he came back. "You don't understand, Harry," he said.
"Dorian Gray is merely to me a motive in art. He is never more present
in my work than when no image of him is there. He is simply a
suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I see him in the curves
of certain lines, in the loveliness and the subtleties of certain
colors. That is all."
"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?"
"Because I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of
course, I have never dared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it.
He will 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. 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. If I live, 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?"
Hallward 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. I give myself away. As a rule,
he is charming to me, and we walk home together from the club arm in
arm, or sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then,
however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight
in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole
soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his
coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a
summer's day."
"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger. 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, and
everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first,
all the same. Some day you will look at Gray, and he will seem to you
to be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of color, 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 [11] perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a
great pity, for it will alter you. The worst of having a romance 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 pleasures 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
self-satisfied air, as if he had summed up life in a phrase. There was
a rustle of chirruping sparrows in 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 thought with pleasure of 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 meet Lord Goodbody there, and the
whole conversation would have been about the housing of the poor, and
the necessity for model lodging-houses. 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's, 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, horridly
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."
"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into
the garden.
"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.
Basil Hallward turned to the servant, who stood blinking in the
sunlight. "Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I will 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 for me. 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 [12] away from me the one
person that makes life absolutely lovely to me, and that gives to my
art whatever wonder or charm it possesses. 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
[...12] 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 colored his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "I beg your
pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had any one with you."
"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 shaking him by the hand. "My aunt has
often spoken to me about you. You are one of her favorites, 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 her 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 candor 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. He was made to be
worshipped.
"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.
Hallward had been busy mixing his colors and getting his brushes ready.
He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last [13] 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. But I certainly
will not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don't
really mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked your
sitters to have some one to chat to."
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-by, 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 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?"
Hallward 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
exception of myself."
Dorian 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 Hallward. 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 some one else's music, an
actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is
self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly,--that is what
each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.
They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes
to one's [14] 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 Hallward, 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 his life out 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 mediaevalism, and return to the
Hellenic ideal,--to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal,
it may be. But the bravest man among 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!" murmured 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
impulses were at work within him, and 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 yet 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 a new
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! [15] 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-colored to him. It
seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known
it?
Lord Henry watched him, with his sad smile. 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,
which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he
wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through the same 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 come 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 I don't think I believe anything he has told me."
"You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with his
dreamy, heavy-lidded eyes. "I will go out to the garden with you. It
is horridly 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.
[16] "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 creature. 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-colored 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 then had never
altered him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life who
seemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery. And, yet, what was
there to be afraid of? He was not a school-boy, 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 let yourself become sunburnt. It would be very unbecoming to you."
"What does it matter?" cried Dorian, 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 now 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 one 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. 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 really to
live. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you
will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left [17] 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.
"Realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your
days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure,
or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar,
which are the 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, what you really might be. There was so much about 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 golden 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 have 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 did not dare 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 fretted purple 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 it 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 Hallward appeared at the door of the studio, and made frantic
signs for them to come in. They turned to each other, and smiled.
"I am waiting," cried Hallward. "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 end 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?"
[18] "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 forever. 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 upon 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 Hallward stepped back now and
then to look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams that
streamed through the open door-way 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 smiling. "It is quite
finished," he cried, at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in
thin 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.--"Mr. Gray,
come 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 Hallward. "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 recognized himself for the first time. He stood there
motionless, and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking
to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his
own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before.
Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely the
charming exaggerations of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed
at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had
come Lord Henry, 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 colorless, 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 ignoble, hideous,
and uncouth.
[19] As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck like a knife
across him, and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His
eyes deepened into amethyst, and a mist of tears came across them. 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, and 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."
"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 horrid, and
dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be
older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other
way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that
were to grow old! For this--for this--I would give everything! Yes,
there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!"
"You would hardly care for that arrangement, Basil," cried Lord Henry,
laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on you."
"I should object very strongly, Harry."
Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil. You
like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a
green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say."
Hallward stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like
that. What had happened? He seemed almost 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 is perfectly right. Youth
is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I
will 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?"
"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 was 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 if he was praying.
"This is your doing, Harry," said Hallward, bitterly.
[20] "My doing?"
"Yes, yours, and you know it."
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray,--that
is all," he answered.
"It is not."
"If it is not, what have I to do with it?"
"You should have gone away when I asked you."
"I stayed when you asked me."
"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 color? I will
not let it come across our three lives and mar them."
Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and looked at him
with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, as he walked over to the deal
painting-table that was set beneath the large 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 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 he 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 Hallward,
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? Tea is the only simple
pleasure left to us."
"I don't like simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "And 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 do."
"If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I will 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 mind being called a boy."
"I should have minded very much this morning, Lord Henry."
"Ah! this morning! You have lived since then."
There came a knock to the door, and the butler entered with the
tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a [21]
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 the tea out. 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 and 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 the surprise of candor."
"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 our day is
detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only
color-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."
Basil Hallward bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the
picture. "I will stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly.
"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, running
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,"
said Hallward. "That is something."
"What a fuss people make about fidelity!" murmured Lord Henry.
"And, after all, it is purely a question for physiology. It has
nothing to do with our own will. It is either an unfortunate accident,
or an unpleasant result of temperament. 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, really."
"Why?"
"Because I have promised Lord Henry to go with him."
"He won't like you 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.
[22] "I must go, Basil," he answered.
"Very well," said Hallward; and he walked over and laid his cup down on
the tray. "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had
better lose no time. Good-by, Harry; good-by, Dorian. Come and see me
soon. Come to-morrow."
"Certainly."
"You won't forget?"
"No, of course not."
"And . . . Harry!"
"Yes, Basil?"
"Remember what I asked you, when 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-by, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon."
As the door closed behind them, Hallward flung himself down on a sofa,
and a look of pain came into his face.
CHAPTER III
[...22] One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a
luxurious arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in
Curzon Street. It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high
panelled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-colored frieze and
ceiling of raised plaster-work, and its brick-dust felt carpet strewn
with long-fringed silk 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 the queen had selected for her device. Some large blue
china jars, filled with parrot-tulips, were ranged on the mantel-shelf,
and through the small leaded panes of the window streamed the
apricot-colored light of a summer's day in London.
Lord Henry had not come in yet. 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 light step outside, and the door opened. "How late
you are, Harry!" he murmured.
"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," said a woman's 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 twenty-seven of them."
[23] "Not twenty-seven, Lady Henry?"
"Well, twenty-six, 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 always 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
any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time,
without 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 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 by conversation."
"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray? 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. I don't know what it is about them. Perhaps it is
that they are foreigners. They all are, aren'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
views. No; I think our views 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, after an awkward
silence, with her silly sudden laugh. "I have promised to drive with
the duchess.--Good-by, Mr. Gray.--Good-by, Harry. You are dining out,
I suppose? So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady Thornbury's."
"I dare say, my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her,
as she flitted out of the room, looking like a bird-of-paradise that
had been out in the rain, and leaving a faint odor of patchouli behind
her. Then he shook hands with Dorian Gray, lit a cigarette, and flung
himself down on the sofa.
[24] "Never marry a woman with straw-colored 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, Harry. I am too much in love.
That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do
everything you say."
"Whom are you in love with?" said Lord Henry, looking at him with a
curious smile.
"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather common-place
début," he murmured.
"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. They represent
the triumph of matter over mind, just as we men represent the triumph
of mind over morals. There are only two kinds of women, the plain and
the colored. 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 to look young. Our grandmothers
painted in order to try to talk brilliantly. Rouge and esprit used to
go together. That has all gone out 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?"
"About three weeks. Not so much. About two weeks and two days."
"How 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.
"One evening about seven o'clock I determined to go out in search of
some adventure. I felt that this gray, monstrous London of ours, with
its myriads of people, its splendid sinners, and its sordid sins, as
[25] you once said, 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 night when we first dined together, about
the search for beauty being the poisonous 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 a little third-rate 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. ''Ave a box,
my lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an act
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 would 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. 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, people who only love once in their lives are really
shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I
call either the lethargy of custom or the lack of imagination.
Faithlessness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the
intellectual life,--simply a confession of failure. 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 behind the
curtain, and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids
and cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. The gallery and pit
were fairly full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty,
and there was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the
dress-circle. Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there
was a terrible consumption of nuts going on."
"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British Drama."
"Just like, I should fancy, and very horrid. 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 grand pères ont
toujours tort."
[26] "This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was 'Romeo and
Juliet.' I must admit 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 Jew 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 familiar terms with the pit. They were as grotesque as the
scenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a pantomime of fifty
years ago. 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 one 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! 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."
[27] "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 confide 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,--tell me,
what are your 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 be yours 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 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 bring 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 thought I
had taken too much champagne, or something."
"I am not surprised."
"I was not surprised either. 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 all to be bought."
"I believe he was quite right there. But, on the other hand, most of
them are not at all expensive."
"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means. By this time the
lights were being put out in the theatre, and I had to go. He wanted
me to try some cigars which he strongly recommended. I declined. The
next night, of course, I arrived at the theatre again. When he saw me
he made me a low bow, and assured me that I was a 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 three
bankruptcies were entirely due to the poet, whom he insisted on calling
'The Bard.' He seemed to think it a distinction."
"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian,--a great distinction. 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 bring me behind, so I consented. It was curious
my not wanting to know her, wasn't it?"
[28] "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 door-way 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.'"
"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 who looks as if she had seen
better days."
"I know that look. It always depresses me."
"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. I go to see her act every night of my life, and every
night she is more marvellous."
"That is the reason, I suppose, that you will 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."
"You always come dreadfully late."
"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play, even if it is only for an
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
tomorrow 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 [29] 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 won't be able to refuse
to recognize 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 will have to pay him something, of
course. When all that is settled, I will take a West-End theatre and
bring her out properly. She will make the world as mad as she has made
me."
"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.
However, just as you wish. 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, designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of it 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."
Lord Henry smiled. "He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are
very fond of giving away what they need most themselves."
"You don't mean to say that Basil has got any passion or any romance in
him?"
"I don't know whether he has any passion, but he certainly has
romance," said Lord Henry, with an amused look in his eyes. "Has he
never let you know that?"
"Never. I must ask him about it. I am rather surprised to hear it. He
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 [30]
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 give everything to their art, and consequently are perfectly
uninteresting in themselves. A great poet, a really great poet, is the
most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely
fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they
look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets
makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot
write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."
"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 so. And now I must be
off. Imogen is waiting for me. Don't forget about to-morrow.
Good-by."
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 science, but the ordinary subject-matter
of 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.
There was nothing else of any value, compared to it. 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, or 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 colored life of the intellect,--to
observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they
became one, 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 [31] 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 psychical impulse began?
How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists!
And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various
schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the
body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of
spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter
was a mystery also.
He began to wonder whether we should 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 we gave to
our mistakes. Men had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning,
had claimed for it a certain moral 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 boy himself to be remote from
sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the
passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most
strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we
were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were
experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.
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 [32]
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 Dorian Gray's young fiery-colored 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.
It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl Vane.
CHAPTER IV
[...32] "I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry on
the following evening, as Hallward was shown into a little private room
at the Bristol where dinner had been laid for three.
"No, Harry," answered Hallward, giving his hat and coat to the bowing
waiter. "What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope? They don't
interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons
worth painting; though many of them would be the better for a little
whitewashing."
"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, watching him
as he spoke.
Hallward turned perfectly pale, and a curious look flashed for a moment
into his eyes, and then passed away, leaving them dull. "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," said
Hallward, smiling.
"Except in America. 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 him to 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 more 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. [33]
Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal
appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, among
others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his
appointment."
"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked Hallward, walking up and down
the room, and biting his lip. "You can't approve of it, really. 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 the personality chooses to do is
absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a
beautiful girl who acts Shakespeare, 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 colorless. They
lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that
marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it
many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They
become more highly organized. Besides, every experience is of value,
and, whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an
experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife,
passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become
fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful study."
"You don't mean 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
neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. 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. And 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. 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
boy, 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 [34]
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 had some dinner at that curious
little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street, you introduced me to, and
went down afterwards 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 dress she was
perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-colored 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 will 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 a look into her eyes
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-colored 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 to 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."
[35] Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't, Harry. You have
annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring misery
upon any one. His nature is too fine for that."
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 without a heart. I cannot understand how any one can wish
to shame what he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I wish 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. And 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."
"You will always like me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "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 you
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 Dorian Gray, lighting his
cigarette from a fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had
placed on the table. "Let us go down to the theatre. When you see
Sibyl 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 sad look in his
eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid that there
is no such thing, for me at any rate. 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.
Hallward 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 moments,
they all passed down-stairs. 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. [36] He felt that
Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the
past. His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring streets became
blurred to him. When the cab drew up at the doors of the theatre, it
seemed to him that he had grown years older.
CHAPTER V
[...36] 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 assured
him that he was proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius
and gone bankrupt over Shakespeare. 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 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 painted girls who sat by 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 people here, with their coarse faces and
brutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage. They
sit silently and watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to
do. She makes them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them,
and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."
"Oh, I hope not!" murmured Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants
of the gallery through his opera-glass.
"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said Hallward. "I understand
what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Any one you love must be
marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must be fine
and noble. To spiritualize one's age,--that is something worth doing.
If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if
she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been
sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend
them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all
your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is
quite right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. God
made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete."
"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I [37] 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.
Dorian Gray sat motionless, gazing on her, like a man in a dream. Lord
Henry peered through his opera-glass, 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 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, as she danced, as a
plant sways in the water. The curves of her throat were like 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 lines 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 color. It took away
all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.
Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. 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-emphasized 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,--
[38] was declaimed with the painful precision of a school-girl 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 if they conveyed no meaning to her. It was not
nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she seemed 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 apologize to both of you."
"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted
Hallward. "We will come some other night."
"I wish she was 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. To-night she is merely a commonplace, mediocre actress."
"Don't talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a more
wonderful thing than art."
"They are both simply forms of imitation," murmured 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?"
"Please go away, Harry," cried the lad. "I really want to be
alone.--Basil, you don't mind my asking you to go? Ah! can't you see
that my heart is breaking?" The hot tears came to his eyes. His [39]
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.
As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the
greenroom. The girl was standing alone there, 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 lips,--"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, not what
I wanted to say. You had brought me something higher, something of
which all art is but a reflection. You have made me understand what
love really is. My love! my love! I am sick [40] 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. Suddenly it dawned on my soul
what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them
hissing, and I smiled. What should they know of love? 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 all means? 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 stroked his hair with her little fingers. 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 wonderful, because you had genius and intellect, because you
realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the
shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and
stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been!
You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never
think of you. I will never mention your name. You don't know what you
were to me, once. Why, once . . . . Oh, I can't bear to think of it!
I wish I had never laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of
my life. How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!
What are you without your art? Nothing. I would have made you famous,
splendid, magnificent. The world would have worshipped you, and you
would have belonged to me. What are you now? A third-rate actress with
a pretty face."
The girl grew white, and trembled. She clinched 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. Can't you
forgive me for to-night? I will work so hard, and try to [41] 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
passions 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 to him. 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 with gaunt black-shadowed archways and evil-looking
houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after
him. Drunkards had reeled by cursing, and chattering to themselves
like monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon
door-steps, and had heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
When the dawn was just breaking he found himself at Covent Garden. 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 wagons. A
white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him,
wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat
them listlessly. They had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness
of the moon had entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates
of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of
him, threading their way through the huge jade-green piles of
vegetables. Under the portico, with its gray sun-bleached pillars,
loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction
to be over. After some time he hailed a hansom and drove home. The
sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like
silver against it. As he was passing through the library towards the
door of his bedroom, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward had
painted of him. He started back in surprise, and then went over to it
and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the
cream-colored silk blinds, the face seemed 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 curious.
He turned round, and, walking to the window, drew the blinds up. The
bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows [42] 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, that Lord Henry had given him, he glanced hurriedly into it.
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 prayer had not been
answered? 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, aeon upon aeon of
torture. His life was well worth hers. She had marred him for a
moment, if he had wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better
suited to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They
only thought of their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely
to have some one with whom they could have scenes. Lord Henry had told
him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were. Why should he trouble
about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to him now.
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 [43] 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 gray. 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 the grass, he drew a deep breath. The fresh morning air
seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of Sibyl
Vane. 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 VI
[...43] It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept
several times into the room on tiptoe to see if he was stirring, and
had wondered what made his young master sleep so late. Finally his
bell sounded, and Victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile
of letters, on a small tray of old 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, sleepily.
"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 [44] rather
heavy bill, for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set, that he had
not yet had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely
old-fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when
only unnecessary things are absolutely necessary to us; and there were
several very courteously worded communications from Jermyn Street
money-lenders offering to advance any sum of money at a moment's notice
and at the most reasonable rates of interest.
After about ten minutes he got up, and, throwing on an elaborate
dressing-gown, passed into the onyx-paved bath-room. 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 an 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, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, that stood in front
of 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 in 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 mad desire to tell
him to remain. As the door closed behind him he called him back. The
man stood waiting for his orders. Dorian looked at him for a moment.
"I am not at home to any one, Victor," he said, with a sigh. The man
bowed and retired.
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 it had ever before 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, other eyes 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? He would be sure to do that. No; the [45] 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 color 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 was 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 half-past four, but he 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 Gray 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 Dorian, 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, my dear boy," said Lord Henry, coming in.
"But you must not think about it too much."
[46] "Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked Dorian.
"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair, and slowly
pulling his gloves off. "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 your nice hair."
"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."
Lord Henry walked across the room, and, sitting down by Dorian Gray,
took both his hands in his, 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 rose 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!"
"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in all
the morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see any one
till I came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must
not be mixed up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in
Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never
make one's début with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an
interest to one's old age. I don't suppose they know your name at the
theatre. If they don't, it is all right. Did any one see you going
round to her room? That is an important point."
Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror.
Finally he murmured, in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an
inquest? What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl--? Oh, [47] 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. As she was leaving the theatre with her
mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had forgotten
something up-stairs. 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. 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 certainly as if I had cut her little throat
with a knife. And 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. Then
something happened that made me afraid. I can't tell you what it was,
but it was awful. 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, 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 [48] pay for.
I say nothing about the social mistake, 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 simply a useless attempt 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 us. That is all that
can be said for them."
"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 in your life 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 great tragedy, a tragedy in which I took 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 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 has artistic elements of beauty
crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole
thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find
that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or
rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the
spectacle enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that has
really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you. I wish
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 color of life, but one should never
remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
[49] "Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore nothing but
violets all through one season, as 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 poppies. 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 to have their 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 colors. 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
was 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. There is really no end to the consolations
that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not mentioned the most
important one of all."
"What is that, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, listlessly.
"Oh, the obvious one. Taking some one else's admirer when one loses
one's own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman. But
really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the
women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her
death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen.
They make one believe in the reality of the things that shallow,
fashionable people play with, such as romance, passion, and love."
"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."
"I believe that women appreciate 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
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 explains everything."
[50] "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," murmured 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 colors
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 gray, 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, wearily. "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-by. 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, [51]
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 about 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, and at last Death himself had touched her, and
brought her with him. How had she played that dreadful 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, that horrible night at the
theatre. When he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic
figure to show Love had been a great reality. A wonderful tragic
figure? Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her child-like look
and winsome fanciful ways and shy tremulous grace. He wiped 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 came 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 hideous 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 the 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 [52]
influence upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an
influence upon dead and inorganic things? Nay, without thought or
conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in
unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom, in secret
love or strange affinity? But the reason was of no importance. He
would never again tempt by a prayer any terrible power. If the picture
was to alter, it was to alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely
into it?
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
colored 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 VII
[...52] 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
heart-broken I am about the whole thing. I know what you must suffer.
But where were you? Did you go down and see the girl's mother? For a
moment I thought of following you there. They gave the address in the
paper. Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn't it? But I was afraid of
intruding upon a sorrow that I could not lighten. Poor woman! What a
state she must be in! And her only child, too! What did she say about
it all?"
"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian, 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 [53] talk
about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression, as
Harry says, that gives reality to things. 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 used to come down to my studio,
day after day, 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 on the green,
flickering garden for a few moments. "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 know."
"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 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 [54] 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 a 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 Marlowe together, the young man who used to say
that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life. I
love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades,
green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings,
luxury, pomp,--there is much to be got from all these. But the
artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still
more to me. To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says,
is to escape the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my
talking to you like this. You have not realized how I have developed.
I was a school-boy 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."
Hallward felt strangely moved. Rugged and straightforward as he was,
there was something in his nature that was purely feminine in its
tenderness. 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 [55] 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 any one. She told me once that they were all rather curious to
learn who I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince
Charming. It was pretty of her. You must do me a drawing of her,
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 will never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!" he
exclaimed, starting back.
Hallward 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 painted. Do take that screen away, Dorian.
It is simply horrid 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! Impossible, 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
Hallward 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 honor 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
absolutely pallid with rage. His hands were clinched, 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 [56] 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. Georges Petit is going
to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de
Sèze, which will open the first week in October. The portrait will
only be away a month. I should think you could easily spare it for
that time. In fact, you are sure to be out of town. And if you hide
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
said. "Why have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being
consistent have just as many moods as others. 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 an interesting 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 will
tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my
picture?"
Hallward 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," murmured 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 Hallward, looking pale and pained. "Let
us sit down. I will sit in the shadow, and you shall sit in the
sunlight. Our lives are like that. Just answer me one question. Have
you noticed in the picture something that you did not like?--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.
It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of
feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never
loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as [57] Harry
says, a really 'grande passion' is the privilege of those who have
nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country.
Well, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most
extraordinary influence over me. I quite admit that I adored you
madly, extravagantly, absurdly. I was jealous of every one to whom you
spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I
was with you. When I was away from you, you were still present in my
art. It was all wrong and foolish. It is all wrong and foolish still.
Of course I never let you know anything about this. It would have been
impossible. You would not have understood it; I did not understand it
myself. One day I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you. It
was to have been my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece. But, as I
worked at it, every flake and film of color seemed to me to reveal my
secret. I grew afraid that the world would know of my idolatry. I
felt, Dorian, that I had told too much. Then it was that I resolved
never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a little annoyed;
but then you did not realize all that it meant to me. Harry, to whom I
talked about it, laughed at me. But I did not mind that. When the
picture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was right.
Well, after a few days the portrait 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 said 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 more abstract than we fancy. Form and color tell us
of form and color,--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 must not 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 color 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 young
man who had just made this strange confession to him. He wondered if
he would ever be so dominated by the personality of a friend. Lord
Harry had the charm of being very dangerous. But that was all. He was
too clever and too cynical to be really fond of. Would there ever be
some one who would fill him with a strange idolatry? Was that one of
the things that life had in store?
"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward, "that you should
have seen this in the picture. Did you really see it?"
"Of course I did."
"Well, you don't mind my looking at it 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?"
[58] "Never."
"Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-by, Dorian. You have been
the one person in my life of whom I have been really fond. I don't
suppose I shall often see you again. You don't know what it cost me to
tell you all that I have told you."
"My dear Basil," cried Dorian, "what have you told me? Simply that you
felt that you liked me too much. That is not even a compliment."
"It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession."
"A very disappointing one."
"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 not meeting me again, or anything of that kind. You and I
are friends, Basil, and we must always remain so."
"You have got Harry," said Hallward, 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 was in trouble. I would sooner
go to you, Basil."
"But you won't sit to me again?"
"Impossible!"
"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man comes
across two ideal things. Few come across one."
"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again. 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-by. 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! Basil's absurd fits of
jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious
reticences,--he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There was
something tragic in a friendship so colored 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 the thing remain, even for an hour, in a room
to which any of his friends had access.
CHAPTER VIII
[...58] 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,
[59] 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's and ask him to
send two of his men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man
left the room he peered in the direction of the screen. Or was that
only his fancy?
After a few moments, Mrs. Leaf, a dear old lady in a black silk dress,
with a photograph of the late Mr. Leaf framed in a large gold brooch at
her neck, and old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands,
bustled into the room.
"Well, Master Dorian," she said, "what can I do for you? I beg your
pardon, sir,"--here came a courtesy,--"I shouldn't call you Master
Dorian any more. But, Lord bless you, sir, I have known you since you
were a baby, and many's the trick you've played on poor old Leaf. Not
that you were not always a good boy, sir; but boys will be boys, Master
Dorian, and jam is a temptation to the young, isn't it, sir?"
He laughed. "You must always call me Master Dorian, Leaf. I will be
very angry with you if you don't. And I assure you I am quite as fond
of jam now as I used to be. Only when I am asked out to tea I am never
offered any. I want you to give me the key of the room at the top of
the house."
"The old school-room, Master Dorian? Why, it's full of dust. I must
get it arranged and put straight before you go into it. It's not fit
for you to see, Master Dorian. It is not, indeed."
"I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key."
"Well, Master Dorian, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you goes into
it. Why, it hasn't been opened for nearly five years,--not since his
lordship died."
He winced at the mention of his dead uncle's name. He had hateful
memories of him. "That does not matter, Leaf," he replied. "All I
want is the key."
"And here is the key, Master Dorian," said the old lady, after going
over the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. "Here
is the key. I'll have it off the ring in a moment. But you don't
think of living up there, Master Dorian, and you so comfortable here?"
"No, Leaf, I don't. I merely want to see the place, and perhaps store
something in it,--that is all. Thank you, Leaf. I hope your
rheumatism is better; and mind you send me up jam for breakfast."
Mrs. Leaf shook her head. "Them foreigners doesn't understand jam,
Master Dorian. They calls it 'compot.' But I'll bring it to you
myself some morning, if you lets me."
"That will be very kind of you, Leaf," he answered, looking at the key;
and, having made him an elaborate courtesy, the old lady left the room,
her face wreathed in smiles. She had a strong objection to the French
valet. It was a poor thing, she felt, for any one to be born a
foreigner.
[60] 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 uncle 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 something noble and
intellectual in it. 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. Ashton
himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in
with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Ashton was a
florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was
considerably [61] 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
favor 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 honor 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 picture, Mr. Gray."
"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
Ashton. I will certainly drop in and look at the frame,--though I
don't go in much 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 up-stairs."
"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. Ashton, 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. Ashton, who had a true tradesman's 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.
"A terrible load to carry," 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
Sherard for the use of the little nephew whom, being himself childless,
and perhaps for other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep
at a distance. It did not appear to Dorian to have much 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 was the satinwood bookcase filled with
his dog-eared school-books. On the wall behind it was hanging the same
[62] 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 recalled it all! Every
moment of his lonely childhood came back to him, as he looked round.
He remembered the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed
horrible to him that it was here that 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. The thing upon the canvas was growing old,
hour by hour, and week by week. Even if it escaped the hideousness of
sin, 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
uncle 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. Ashton, 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. Ashton," 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 won'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. Ashton tramped down-stairs, followed by the assistant,
who glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough,
uncomely face. He had never seen any one so marvellous.
When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked [63] the
door, and put the key in his pocket. He felt safe now. No one would
ever look on 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 incrusted with nacre, a present from his
guardian's wife, Lady Radley, 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 replaced, and the blank space
on the wall was visible. Perhaps some night he might find him creeping
up-stairs 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 bit 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. He read 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 slightly, and, tearing the paper in two, went across the
room and flung the pieces into a gilt basket. 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 account. 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-colored octagonal
stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some [64] strange
Egyptian bees who wrought in silver, and took the volume up. He 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 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 realize in the nineteenth century all the
passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through
which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere
artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The
style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid
and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical
expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work
of some of the finest artists of the French school of Décadents. There
were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as evil in color.
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 mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions
of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odor 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 revery, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of
the falling day and the 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 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 what the
time was."
"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, if you have discovered that, you have discovered a great deal,"
murmured Lord Henry, with his curious smile. "Come, let us go in to
dinner. It is dreadfully late, and I am afraid the champagne will be
too much iced."
CHAPTER IX
[65] For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the memory 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
five large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in
different colors, 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 temperament and the scientific temperament 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 book'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-emphasized, account of the sorrow and
despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world,
he had most valued.
He, at any rate, had no cause to fear that. The boyish 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 rumors about his mode of life crept
through London and became the chatter of the clubs) could not believe
anything to his dishonor 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 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
sensuous.
He himself, 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, would creep
up-stairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never
left him, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil
Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on
the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him
from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to
quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his
own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.
He would examine with minute care, and often with a monstrous and
terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead
or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, [66] 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 that, many years before, 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 realization of a type of which they had often
dreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of
the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and
perfect manner of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to belong
to 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 he affected
from time to time, 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" had once 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 [67] the conduct
of a cane. He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would
have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles and find in the
spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.
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 ourselves, and that we are conscious
of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence. But it
appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never
been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely
because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill
them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new
spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the
dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through
History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been
surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful
rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose
origin was fear, and whose result was a degradation infinitely more
terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance,
they had sought to escape, Nature in her wonderful irony driving the
anchorite out to herd 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 re-create 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 one 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 revery. Gradually white fingers creep through the
curtains, and they appear to tremble. Black fantastic 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. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by
degrees the forms and colors 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
have left them, and beside them [68] lies the half-read 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 re-fashioned anew
for our pleasure in the darkness, a world in which things would have
fresh shapes and colors, 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 among 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 color and satisfied his
intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that
is not incompatible with a real ardor of temperament, and that indeed,
according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.
It was rumored of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic
communion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction
for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the
sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb
rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity
of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it
sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble
pavement, and with the priest, in his stiff flowered cope, slowly and
with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, and raising
aloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer
that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis,"
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 tarnished
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 [69] 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
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,
of aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that
sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to
be able to expel melancholy from the soul.
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, or turbaned
Indians, crouching upon scarlet mats, blew through long pipes of reed
or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and
horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's
beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell
unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world
the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of
dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact
with Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them. He had
the mysterious 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
stones 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 turé of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who
sit all day long in trees, and that can be heard, it is said, at a
distance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that [70] 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 that great work of art a
presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
On another 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. He would often spend a whole day
settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that he had
collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by
lamplight, the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the
pistachio-colored 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 color, 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 he was said to have
found snakes in the vale of Jordan "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 color. 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,
as the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John the
Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned [71] 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 Margarite were seen "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 watched
the inhabitants of Zipangu place a rose-colored pearl in the mouth 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 his 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 a Venetian a rosary
of one 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 rubies that threw out a great
light. Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with three
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 favorites of James I. wore
ear-rings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. Edward II. gave to Piers
Gaveston a suit of red-gold armor studded with jacinths, and 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 set with twelve rubies and fifty-two great pearls. The
ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race,
was studded with sapphires and hung with pear-shaped pearls.
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 frescos 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 gone to? Where was the great crocus-colored
robe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked
for Athena? Where the huge velarium that Nero had stretched across the
Colosseum at Rome, on which were represented the starry sky, and Apollo
driving a chariot drawn by [72] white gilt-reined steeds? He longed to
see the curious table-napkins wrought for Elagabalus, 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, a 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 under it.
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-threat 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 had 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- [73] 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 colored 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 colored 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-colored 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 these
things were put there was something that quickened his imagination.
For these things, 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 had draped the purple-and-gold pall in
front of it 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 pleasure 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 rebellion 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 he had more
than once spent his winter. He hated to be separated from the picture
that was such a part of his life, and he was also afraid that during
his absence some one might gain access to the room, in spite of the
elaborate bolts and 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 any one who tried to taunt him. He had
not painted it. What was it to him how vile and full of shame it
looked? Even if he told them, would they believe it?
Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great [74] 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 splendor 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 blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and social
position fully entitled him to become a member, and on one occasion,
when he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room of the Carlton,
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 said 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 if 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 called them) that were circulated about
him. It was remarked, however, that those who had been most intimate
with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Of all his friends, or
so-called friends, Lord Henry Wotton was the only one who remained
loyal to 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 lent him, in the eyes of many, his
strange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain element of
security. Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to
believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and
charming. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance
than morals, and the highest respectability is of less value in its
opinion 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 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 charming. Is insincerity such a [75]
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 that 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 armor piled at his feet. What had
this man's legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanna of Naples bequeathed
him some inheritance of sin and shame? Were his own actions merely the
dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize? Here, from the
fading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl
stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand,
and her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. On
a table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There were large
green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He knew her life, and
the strange stories that were told about her lovers. Had he something
of her temperament in him? Those oval heavy-lidded eyes seemed to look
curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his powdered hair
and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was saturnine and
swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain.
Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were so
overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth
century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the
second Lord Sherard, 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!
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
[76] were times when it seemed 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
wonder. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had
been his own.
The hero of the dangerous novel that had so influenced his life had
himself had this curious fancy. In a chapter of the book 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 taedium vitae, that comes on those
to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear emerald at
the red shambles of the Circus, and then, in a litter of pearl and
purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the Street of
Pomegranates to a House of Gold, and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he
passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with colors, 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
chapter immediately following, in which the hero describes the curious
tapestries that he had had woven for him from Gustave Moreau's designs,
and on which 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; 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 her 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 [77] 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 honor 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 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 realize his conception of the beautiful.
CHAPTER X
[...77] It was on the 7th of November, the eve of his own thirty-second
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 gray ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. He recognized
him. It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he
could not account, came over him. He made no sign of recognition, and
went on slowly, in the direction of his own house.
But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping, 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 ever since nine o'clock in your library. 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 wanted particularly to see
you before I left. I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as
you passed me. But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognize me?"
"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor
Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel
at all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not
seen you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?"
"No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend [78] 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 table.
"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me
everything I wanted, including your best 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 Ashton'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 Hallward, 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.
[79] "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 about you in
London,--things that I could hardly repeat to you."
"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 rumors 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 of secret vices. There are
no such things as secret vices. 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 Cawdor. 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. Cawdor 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 fateful 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
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? Dorian, Dorian, your reputation is infamous. I
know you and Harry are great friends. I say nothing about that now,
but [80] surely you need not have made his sister's name a by-word.
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 said that, and then broke his word. I do want to preach to you.
I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I
want you to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid
of the dreadful people you associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders
like that. Don't be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence.
Let it be for good, not for evil. They say that you corrupt every one
whom you become intimate with, and that it is quite sufficient for you
to enter a house, for shame of some kind to follow after you. 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 infinite 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'd 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 some one else was to share his secret,
and that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of
all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the
hideous memory of what he had done.
"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him, and looking steadfastly into
his stern eyes, "I will show you my soul. You shall see the thing that
you fancy only God can see."
[81] 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 devoted to you."
"Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say."
A twisted flash of pain shot across Hallward'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 rumored 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 will 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 infamous!"
Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. "Come
up-stairs, 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
will show it to you if you come with me."
"I will 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 will be given to you up-stairs. I could not give it here. You
won't have to read long. Don't keep me waiting."
CHAPTER XI
[...81] He passed out of the room, and began the ascent, Basil Hallward
following close behind. They walked softly, as men instinctively do 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 murmured, smiling. Then he added, somewhat
bitterly, "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
said, as he placed the lamp on the table.
[82] 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 odor 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 Hallward's lips as he saw in the
dim light the hideous thing on the canvas leering 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 marred that
marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and
some scarlet on the sensual lips. The sodden eyes had kept something
of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet passed
entirely away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it
was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize 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 from fire to sluggish ice in a moment. 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 is on the faces of those who are absorbed
in a play when a 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 the 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, "you met me, devoted
yourself to me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good
looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained
to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that
revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that [83] I
don't know, even now, 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. The 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 romance in it?" said Dorian, bitterly.
"My romance, as you call it . . ."
"As you called it."
"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. This is the face of a
satyr."
"It is the face of my soul."
"God! what a thing I must have worshipped! This 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 murmured.
"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we can
remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins be
as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow'?"
[84] "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. The mad passions
of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was
seated at the table, more than he had ever loathed anything in his
whole life. 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 moved 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 some one choking
with blood. The outstretched arms shot up convulsively three times,
waving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him once
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 quite
quiet. No one was stirring.
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
slowly widened 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 a bull's-eye 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 ragged shawl was
creeping round 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 as if in pain. He shivered, and went back,
closing the window behind him.
He passed to the door, turned the key, and opened it. He did not even
glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the whole thing
was not to realize the situation. The friend who had painted [85] the
fatal portrait, the 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. Perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would
be asked. He turned back, and took it from the table. How still the
man was! How horribly white the long hands looked! He was like a
dreadful wax image.
He locked the door behind him, and crept quietly down-stairs. The
wood-work 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, 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.
Evidence? 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, 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 outside on the pavement, and seeing the flash of the
lantern reflected in the window. He waited, holding his breath.
After a few moments he opened the front door, and slipped out, shutting
it very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In about
ten 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?"
"Five minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock
and yawning.
"Five minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine
to-morrow. I have some work to do."
"All right, sir."
"Did any one 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."
[86] "That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine tomorrow."
"No, sir."
The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.
Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the yellow marble table, and
passed into the library. He walked up and down the room for a quarter
of an hour, biting his lip, and thinking. Then he took the Blue Book
down 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 XII
[...86] 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 having 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 on his elbow, began to drink his
chocolate. The mellow November sun was streaming into the room. The
sky was bright blue, 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.
He passed his hand across his forehead, and then got up hastily, and
dressed himself with even more than his usual attention, giving a good
deal of care to the selection of his necktie and scarf-pin, and
changing his rings more than once.
He spent a long time over breakfast, tasting the various dishes,
talking to his valet about some new liveries that he was thinking of
[87] getting made for the servants at Selby, and going through his
correspondence. Over 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.
When he had drunk his coffee, he sat down at the table, 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 flowers, and bits of architecture, first, and
then faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew seemed
to have an extraordinary 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, till
it became absolutely necessary to do so.
When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page
of the book. It was Gautier's "Emaux 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, and passed on, till he came to those lovely verses
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, lying 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 color 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 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.
[88] 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 delightful fantastic follies. There was romance in every place.
But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and
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 book 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; 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; and 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 [89]
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
of any passionate character, 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 that Dorian Gray was waiting for, pacing up and down
the room, glancing every moment at the clock, and becoming horribly
agitated as the minutes went by. At last the door opened, and his
servant entered.
"Mr. Alan Campbell, sir."
A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the color came back
to his cheeks.
"Ask him to come in at once, Francis."
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 appeared not to have noticed the
gesture with which he had been greeted.
"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 the man
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 a scientist. You know
about chemistry, and things of that kind. You have made experiments.
What you have got to do is to destroy the [90] thing that is
up-stairs,--to destroy it so that not a vestige will be left of it.
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 a 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, you are certain to
be arrested, without my stirring in the matter. Nobody ever commits a
murder without doing something stupid. But I will have nothing to do
with it."
"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, 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 simply what you have
often done before. Indeed, to destroy a body must be 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."
[91] "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. 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 up-stairs 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 refuse absolutely to do
anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me."
"You refuse absolutely?"
"Yes."
The same look of pity came into Dorian'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, 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. 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 mantel-piece 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, and 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."
[92] He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the room up-stairs?"
he murmured.
"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."
"I will have to go home and get some things from the laboratory."
"No, Alan, you need not leave the house. Write on a sheet of
note-paper what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring the
things back to you."
Campbell wrote 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.
When the hall door shut, Campbell started, and, having got up from the
chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with a sort 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 around, 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 mahogany chest of chemicals, with a small electric
battery set on top of it. He placed it on the table, and went out
again, returning 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.
[93] "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 the
portrait grinning in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the
torn curtain was lying. He remembered that the night before, for the
first time in his life, he had forgotten to hide it, when he crept out
of the room.
But 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 opened the door a little wider, and walked quickly in, with
half-closed eyes and averted head, 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 over the picture.
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 Campbell.
He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been
thrust back into the chair and was sitting up in it, with Campbell
gazing into the glistening yellow face. As he was going downstairs he
heard the key being turned in the lock.
It was long after seven o'clock 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-by. 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 up-stairs. There was a horrible
smell of chemicals in the room. But the thing that had been sitting at
the table was gone.
CHAPTER XIII
[94] "There is no good telling me you are going to be good, Dorian,"
cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl
filled with rose-water. "You are quite perfect. Pray don't change."
Dorian 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 uncivilized. There are only two
ways, as you know, of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured,
the other is by being corrupt. Country-people have no opportunity of
being either, so they stagnate."
"Culture and corruption," murmured Dorian. "I have known something of
both. It seems to me curious 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 told me yet what your good action was. Or did you say
you had done more than one?"
"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to any one
else. I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I
mean. She was quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I
think it was that which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl,
don't you? How long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our
own class, of course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I really
loved her. I am quite sure that I loved her. All during this
wonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and see her
two or three times a week. Yesterday she met me in a little orchard.
The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was
laughing. We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn.
Suddenly I determined to leave her as 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 idyl 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."
"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing. "My
dear Dorian, you have the most curious boyish moods. Do you think this
girl will ever be really contented now with any one of her own rank? I
suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning
ploughman. Well, 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 really don't think much of your great renunciation. [95] Even as
a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't
floating at the present moment in some mill-pond, with 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 me 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 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 gray ulster
who left Victoria by the midnight train on the 7th 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 will be told that he has
been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but every one who
disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a
delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world."
"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. 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."
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
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 had no enemies, and always wore a Waterbury
watch. Why should he be 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, [96] and that was when
he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you."
"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian, with a sad look in his eyes.
"But don't people say that he was murdered?"
"Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to be 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.
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 bald, 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 whose opinions I listen to now with any respect are
people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has
revealed to them her last 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 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 marvelously 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. But it has all been to you no more than the
sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still 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 color in a room or a morning
sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings
strange 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 [97] own
senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odor of
heliotrope passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest
year 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 have been 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 play the nocturne
over again. Look at that great honey-colored 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 the club who wants immensely to know you,--young
Lord Poole, Bournmouth'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 touch of pathos in his voice. "But I
am tired to-night, Harry. I won'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."
"Don't change, Dorian; at any rate, don't change to me. We must 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 moralize. You will soon be
going about 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. Come round
tomorrow. I am going to ride at eleven, and we might go together. The
Park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been such lilacs
since the year I met you."
"Very well. I will 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.
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 [98]
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 told the girl whom he had made
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 told him 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?
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. 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 up-stairs. As he unlocked
the door, a smile of joy flitted across his young face and [99]
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, unless 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.
Had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? Or
the desire of 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?
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, who would believe him, even if he did confess? 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 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.
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?
And this murder,--was it to dog him all his life? Was he never to get
rid of the past? Was he really to confess? No. 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? It had given him
pleasure once 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 [100] 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. He seized it, and
stabbed the canvas with it, ripping the thing right up from top to
bottom.
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. The house was all dark, except for a light in
one of the top windows. After a time, he went away, and stood in the
portico of the next house 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 up-stairs. 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: the 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 recognized who it was.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
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