道林格雷的画像

道林格雷的画像_奥斯卡·王尔德
The Preface
the preface
the artist is the creator of beautiful things.
to reveal art and conceal the artist is arts aim.
the critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
the highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.
this is a fault.
those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. for these there is hope.
they are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. books are well written, or badly written.
that is all.
the nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
the nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
the moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. no artist desires to prove anything. even things that are true can be proved.
no artist has ethical sympathies.
an ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. no artist is ever morbid. the artist can express everything.
thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
from the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.
from the point of view of feeling, the actors craft is the type.
all art is at once surface and symbol.
those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
when critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
we can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. the only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
all art is quite useless.
oscar wilde
Chapter 1
chapter 1
the studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
from the corner of the divan of persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, lord henry wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. the sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. the dim roar of london was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
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.
"it is your best work, basil, the best thing you have ever done," said lord henry languidly. "you must certainly send it next year to the grosvenor. the academy is too large and too vulgar. whenever i have gone there, there have been either so many people that i have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that i have not been able to see the people, which was worse. the grosvenor is really the only place."
"i dont think i shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at oxford. "no, i wont 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 cant exhibit it. i have put too much of myself into it."
"you dont understand me, harry," answered the artist. "of course i am not like him. i know that perfectly well. indeed, i should be sorry to look like him. you shrug your shoulders? i am telling you the truth. there is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. it is better not to be different from ones fellows. the ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. they can sit at their ease and gape at the play. if they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. they live as we all should live--undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. they neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. your rank and wealth, harry; my brains, such as they are--my art, whatever it may be worth; dorian grays good looks--we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly."
"dorian gray? is that his name?" asked lord henry, walking across the studio towards basil hallward.
"yes, that is his name. i didnt intend to tell it to you."
"but why not?"
"not at all," answered lord henry, "not at all, my dear basil. you seem to forget that i am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. i never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what i am doing. when we meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the dukes--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. my wife is very good at it--much better, in fact, than i am. she never gets confused over her dates, and i always do. but when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. i sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me."
"i hate the way you talk about your married life, harry," said basil hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "i believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. you are an extraordinary fellow. you never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. your cynicism is simply a pose."
"being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose i know," cried lord henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. the sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. in the grass, white daisies were tremulous.
after a pause, lord henry pulled out his watch. "i am afraid i must be going, basil," he murmured, "and before i go, i insist on your answering a question i put to you some time ago."
"what is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
"you know quite well."
"i do not, harry."
"well, i will tell you what it is. i want you to explain to me why you wont exhibit dorian grays picture. i want the real reason."
"i told you the real reason."
"no, you did not. you said it was because there was too much of yourself in it. now, that is childish."
"harry," said basil hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. the sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. it is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. the reason i will not exhibit this picture is that i am afraid that i have shown in it the secret of my own soul."
lord henry laughed. "and what is that?" he asked.
"i will tell you," said hallward; but an expression of perplexity came over his face.
"oh, there is really very little to tell, harry," answered the painter; "and i am afraid you will hardly understand it. perhaps you will hardly believe it."
lord henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the grass and examined it. "i am quite sure i shall understand it," he replied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered disk, "and as for believing things, i can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible."
"conscience and cowardice are really the same things, basil. conscience is the trade-name of the firm. that is all."
"i dont believe that, harry, and i dont believe you do either. however, whatever was my motive--and it may have been pride, for i used to be very proud--i certainly struggled to the door. there, of course, i stumbled against lady brandon. you are not going to run away so soon, mr. hallward? she screamed out. you know her curiously shrill voice?"
"yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said lord henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his long nervous fingers.
"i could not get rid of her. she brought me up to royalties, and people with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses. she spoke of me as her dearest friend. i had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. i believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality. suddenly i found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. we were quite close, almost touching. our eyes met again. it was reckless of me, but i asked lady brandon to introduce me to him. perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. it was simply inevitable. we would have spoken to each other without any introduction. i am sure of that. dorian told me so afterwards. he, too, felt that we were destined to know each other."
"poor lady brandon! you are hard on her, harry!" said hallward listlessly.
"my dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant. how could i admire her? but tell me, what did she say about mr. dorian gray?"
"oh, something like, charming boy--poor dear mother and i absolutely inseparable. quite forget what he does--afraid he-- doesnt do anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear mr. gray? neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once."
"laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
hallward shook his head. "you dont 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, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. "yes; horribly unjust of you. i make a great difference between people. i choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. i have not got one who is a fool. they are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. is that very vain of me? i think it is rather vain."
"i should think it was, harry. but according to your category i must be merely an acquaintance."
"my dear old basil, you are much more than an acquaintance."
"and much less than a friend. a sort of brother, i suppose?"
"oh, brothers! i dont care for brothers. my elder brother wont die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."
"harry!" exclaimed hallward, frowning.
"i dont agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more, harry, i feel sure you dont either."
lord henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "how english you are basil! that is the second time you have made that observation. if one puts forward an idea to a true englishman--always a rash thing to do--he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. the only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. however, i dont propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. i like persons better than principles, and i like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. tell me more about mr. dorian gray. how often do you see him?"
"every day. i couldnt be happy if i didnt see him every day. he is absolutely necessary to me."
"how extraordinary! i thought you would never care for anything but your art."
"he is all my art to me now," said the painter gravely. "i sometimes think, harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the worlds history. the first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. what the invention of oil-painting was to the venetians, the face of antinous was to late greek sculpture, and the face of dorian gray will some day be to me. it is not merely that i paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. of course, i have done all that. but he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. i wont tell you that i am dissatisfied with what i have done of him, or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. there is nothing that art cannot express, and i know that the work i have done, since i met dorian gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. but in some curious way--i wonder will you understand me?--his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. i see things differently, i think of them differently. i can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. a dream of form in days of thought--who is it who says that? i forget; but it is what dorian gray has been to me. the merely visible presence of this lad--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty-- his merely visible presence--ah! i wonder can you realize all that that means? unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is greek. the harmony of soul and body-- how much that is! we in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. harry! if you only knew what dorian gray is to me! you remember that landscape of mine, for which agnew offered me such a huge price but which i would not part with? it is one of the best things i have ever done. and why is it so? because, while i was painting it, dorian gray sat beside me. some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life i saw in the plain woodland the wonder i had always looked for and always missed."
"basil, this is extraordinary! i must see dorian gray."
hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. after some time he came back. "harry," he said, "dorian gray is to me simply a motive in art. you might see nothing in him. i see everything in him. he is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. he is a suggestion, as i have said, of a new manner. i find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. that is all."
"then why wont you exhibit his portrait?" asked lord henry.
"because, without intending it, i have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, i have never cared to speak to him. he knows nothing about it. he shall never know anything about it. but the world might guess it, and i will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. my heart shall never be put under their microscope. there is too much of myself in the thing, harry--too much of myself!"
"poets are not so scrupulous as you are. they know how useful passion is for publication. nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
"i hate them for it," cried hallward. "an artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. we live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. we have lost the abstract sense of beauty. some day i will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of dorian gray."
"i think you are wrong, basil, but i wont argue with you. it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. tell me, is dorian gray very fond of you?"
the painter considered for a few moments. "he likes me," he answered after a pause; "i know he likes me. of course i flatter him dreadfully. i find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that i know i shall be sorry for having said. as a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. then i feel, harry, that i have given away my whole soul to 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 summers day."
"days in summer, basil, are apt to linger," murmured lord henry. "perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. it is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. that accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. in the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. the thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. and the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. it is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value. i think you will tire first, all the same. some day you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you wont like his tone of colour, or something. you will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. the next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. it will be a great pity, for it will alter you. what you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic."
"harry, dont talk like that. as long as i live, the personality of dorian gray will dominate me. you cant feel what i feel. you change too often."
"ah, my dear basil, that is exactly why i can feel it. those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know loves tragedies." and lord henry struck a light on a dainty silver case and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. there was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. how pleasant it was in the garden! and how delightful other peoples emotions were!-- much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. ones own soul, and the passions of ones friends--those were the fascinating things in life. he pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with basil hallward. had he gone to his aunts, he would have been sure to have met lord goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor and the necessity for model lodging-houses. each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. the rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. it was charming to have escaped all that! as he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. he turned to hallward and said, "my dear fellow, i have just remembered."
"remembered what, harry?"
"where i heard the name of dorian gray."
"where was it?" asked hallward, with a slight frown.
"dont look so angry, basil. it was at my aunt, lady agathas. she told me she had discovered a wonderful young man who was going to help her in the east end, and that his name was dorian gray. i am bound to state that she never told me he was good-looking. women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not. she said that he was very earnest and had a beautiful nature. i at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. i wish i had known it was your friend."
"i am very glad you didnt, harry."
"why?"
"i dont want you to meet him."
"you dont want me to meet him?"
"no."
"you must introduce me now," cried lord henry, laughing.
the painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight. "ask mr. gray to wait, parker: i shall be in in a few moments." the man bowed and went up the walk.
then he looked at lord henry. "dorian gray is my dearest friend," he said. "he has a simple and a beautiful nature. your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. dont spoil him. dont try to influence him. your influence would be bad. the world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. dont take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him. mind, harry, i trust you." he spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will.
"what nonsense you talk!" said lord henry, smiling, and taking hallward by the arm, he almost led him into the house.
Chapter 2
chapter 2
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 schumanns "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 dont want a life-sized portrait of myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool in a wilful, petulant manner. when he caught sight of lord henry, a faint blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "i beg your pardon, basil, but i didnt 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 extending his hand. "my aunt has often spoken to me about you. you are one of her favourites, and, i am afraid, one of her victims also."
"i am in lady agathas black books at present," answered dorian with a funny look of penitence. "i promised to go to a club in whitechapel with her last tuesday, and i really forgot all about it. we were to have played a duet together--three duets, i believe. i dont 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 dont think it really matters about your not being there. the audience probably thought it was a duet. when aunt agatha sits down to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people."
"that is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered dorian, laughing.
lord henry looked at him. yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. there was something in his face that made one trust him at once. all the candour of youth was there, as well as all youths passionate purity. one felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. no wonder basil hallward worshipped him.
"you are too charming to go in for philanthropy, mr. gray--far too charming." and lord henry flung himself down on the divan and opened his cigarette-case.
the painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. he was looking worried, and when he heard lord henrys last remark, he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "harry, i want to finish this picture to-day. would you think it awfully rude of me if i asked you to go away?"
lord henry smiled and looked at dorian gray. "am i to go, mr. gray?" he asked.
"oh, please dont, lord henry. i see that basil is in one of his sulky moods, and i cant bear him when he sulks. besides, i want you to tell me why i should not go in for philanthropy."
"i dont know that i shall tell you that, mr. gray. it is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. but i certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. you dont 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. dorians whims are laws to everybody, except himself."
"basil," cried dorian gray, "if lord henry wotton goes, i shall go, too. you never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. ask him to stay. i insist upon it."
"stay, harry, to oblige dorian, and to oblige me," said hallward, gazing intently at his picture. "it is quite true, i never talk when i am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate sitters. i beg you to stay."
"but what about my man at the orleans?"
the painter laughed. "i dont think there will be any difficulty about that. sit down again, harry. and now, dorian, get up on the platform, and dont move about too much, or pay any attention to what lord henry says. he has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself."
dorian gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to lord henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. he was so unlike basil. they made a delightful contrast. and he had such a beautiful voice. after a few moments he said to him, "have you really a very bad influence, lord henry? as bad as basil says?"
"there is no such thing as a good influence, mr. gray. all influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view."
"why?"
"stop!" faltered dorian gray, "stop! you bewilder me. i dont know what to say. there is some answer to you, but i cannot find it. dont speak. let me think. or, rather, let me try not to think."
music had stirred him like that. music had troubled him many times. but music was not articulate. it was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. words! mere words! how terrible they were! how clear, and vivid, and cruel! one could not escape from them. and yet what a subtle magic there was in them! they seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. mere words! was there anything so real as words?
yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. he understood them now. life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. it seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. why had he not known it?
with his subtle smile, lord henry watched him. he knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. he felt intensely interested. he was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether dorian gray was passing through a similar experience. he had merely shot an arrow into the air. had it hit the mark? how fascinating the lad was!
"basil, i am tired of standing," cried dorian gray suddenly. "i must go out and sit in the garden. the air is stifling here."
"you know you believe it all," said lord henry, looking at him with his dreamy languorous eyes. "i will go out to the garden with you. it is horribly hot in the studio. basil, let us have something iced to drink, something with strawberries in it."
lord henry went out to the garden and found dorian gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. he came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. "you are quite right to do that," he murmured. "nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."
the lad started and drew back. he was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. there was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are suddenly awakened. his finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.
"yes," continued lord henry, "that is one of the great secrets of life-- to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. you are a wonderful creation. you know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."
"what can it matter?" cried dorian gray, laughing, as he sat down on the seat at the end of the garden.
"it should matter everything to you, mr. gray."
"why?"
"because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having."
"i dont feel that, lord henry."
dorian gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. the spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. a furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. he watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. after a time the bee flew away. he saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a tyrian convolvulus. the flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and fro.
they rose up and sauntered down the walk together. two green-and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden a thrush began to sing.
"you are glad you have met me, mr. gray," said lord henry, looking at him.
"yes, i am glad now. i wonder shall i always be glad?"
"always! that is a dreadful word. it makes me shudder when i hear it. women are so fond of using it. they spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. it is a meaningless word, too. the only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."
as they entered the studio, dorian gray put his hand upon lord henrys arm. "in that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his pose.
lord henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. the sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and then, hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance. in the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. the heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything.
after about a quarter of an hour hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at dorian gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning. "it is quite finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.
lord henry came over and examined the picture. it was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.
the lad started, as if awakened from some dream.
"is it really finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform.
"quite finished," said the painter. "and you have sat splendidly to-day. i am awfully obliged to you."
"that is entirely due to me," broke in lord henry. "isnt it, mr. gray?"
as he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. his eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. he felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.
"dont you like it?" cried hallward at last, stung a little by the lads silence, not understanding what it meant.
"of course he likes it," said lord henry. "who wouldnt 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?"
"dorians, of course," answered the painter.
"he is a very lucky fellow."
"how sad it is!" murmured dorian gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "how sad it is! i shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. but this picture will remain always young. it will never be older than this particular day of june. . . . if it were only the other way! if it were i who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! for that--for that--i would give everything! yes, there is nothing in the whole world i would not give! i would give my soul for that!"
"you would hardly care for such an arrangement, basil," cried lord henry, laughing. "it would be rather hard lines on your work."
"i should object very strongly, harry," said hallward.
dorian gray turned and looked at him. "i believe you would, basil. you like your art better than your friends. i am no more to you than a green bronze figure. hardly as much, i dare say."
the painter stared in amazement. it was so unlike dorian to speak like that. what had happened? he seemed quite angry. his face was flushed and his cheeks burning.
"yes," he continued, "i am less to you than your ivory hermes or your silver faun. you will like them always. how long will you like me? till i have my first wrinkle, i suppose. i know, now, that when one loses ones good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. your picture has taught me that. lord henry wotton is perfectly right. youth is the only thing worth having. when i find that i am growing old, i shall kill myself."
hallward turned pale and caught his hand. "dorian! dorian!" he cried, "dont talk like that. i have never had such a friend as you, and i shall never have such another. you are not jealous of material things, are you?-- you who are finer than any of them!"
"i am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. i am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. why should it keep what i must lose? every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. oh, if it were only the other way! if the picture could change, and i could be always what i am now! why did you paint it? it will mock me some day--mock me horribly!" the hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.
"this is your doing, harry," said the painter bitterly.
lord henry shrugged his shoulders. "it is the real dorian gray-- that is all."
"it is not."
"if it is not, what have i to do with it?"
"you should have gone away when i asked you," he muttered.
"i stayed when you asked me," was lord henrys answer.
dorian gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. what was he doing there? his fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. he had found it at last. he was going to rip up the canvas.
with a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. "dont, basil, dont!" he cried. "it would be murder!"
"i am glad you appreciate my work at last, dorian," said the painter coldly when he had recovered from his surprise. "i never thought you would."
"appreciate it? i am in love with it, basil. it is part of myself. i feel that."
"well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. then you can do what you like with yourself." and he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. "you will have tea, of course, dorian? and so will you, harry? or do you object to such simple pleasures?"
"if you let any one have it but me, basil, i shall never forgive you!" cried dorian gray; "and i dont 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 dont really object to being reminded that you are extremely young."
"i should have objected very strongly this morning, lord henry."
"ah! this morning! you have lived since then."
there came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray and set it down upon a small japanese table. there was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted georgian urn. two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. dorian gray went over and poured out the tea. the two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was under the covers.
"it is such a bore putting on ones dress-clothes," muttered hallward. "and, when one has them on, they are so horrid."
"yes," answered lord henry dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. it is so sombre, so depressing. sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life."
"you really must not say things like that before dorian, harry."
"before which dorian? the one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?"
"before either."
"i cant, really. i would sooner not. i have a lot of work to do."
"well, then, you and i will go alone, mr. gray."
"i should like that awfully."
the painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "i shall stay with the real dorian," he said, sadly.
"is it the real dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling across to him. "am i really like that?"
"yes; you are just like that."
"how wonderful, basil!"
"at least you are like it in appearance. but it will never alter," sighed hallward. "that is something."
"what a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed lord henry. "why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. it has nothing to do with our own will. young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say."
"dont go to the theatre to-night, dorian," said hallward. "stop and dine with me."
"i cant, basil."
"why?"
"because i have promised lord henry wotton to go with him."
"he wont like you the better for keeping your promises. he always breaks his own. i beg you not to go."
dorian gray laughed and shook his head.
"i entreat you."
the lad hesitated, and looked over at lord henry, who was watching them from the tea-table with an amused smile.
"i must go, basil," he answered.
"certainly."
"you wont forget?"
"no, of course not," cried dorian.
"and ... harry!"
"yes, basil?"
"remember what i asked you, when we were in the garden this morning."
"i have forgotten it."
"i trust you."
as the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.
Chapter 3
chapter 3
at half-past twelve next day lord henry wotton strolled from curzon street over to the albany to call on his uncle, lord fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by society as he fed the people who amused him. his father had been our ambassador at madrid when isabella was young and prim unthought of, but had retired from the diplomatic service in a capricious moment of annoyance on not being offered the embassy at paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good english of his dispatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure. the son, who had been his fathers secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months later to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. he had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, and took most of his meals at his club. he paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. in politics he was a tory, except when the tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of radicals. he was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. only england could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. his principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.
when lord henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough shooting-coat, smoking a cheroot and grumbling over the times. "well, harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? i thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five."
"pure family affection, i assure you, uncle george. i want to get something out of you."
"money, i suppose," said lord fermor, making a wry face. "well, sit down and tell me all about it. young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything."
"yes," murmured lord henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; "and when they grow older they know it. but i dont want money. it is only people who pay their bills who want that, uncle george, and i never pay mine. credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly upon it. besides, i always deal with dartmoors tradesmen, and consequently they never bother me. what i want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information."
"well, i can tell you anything that is in an english blue book, harry, although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. when i was in the diplomatic, things were much better. but i hear they let them in now by examination. what can you expect? examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. if a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."
"mr. dorian gray does not belong to blue books, uncle george," said lord henry languidly.
"mr. dorian gray? who is he?" asked lord fermor, knitting his bushy white eyebrows.
"kelsos grandson!" echoed the old gentleman. "kelsos grandson! ... of course.... i knew his mother intimately. i believe i was at her christening. she was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, margaret devereux, and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow-- a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind. certainly. i remember the whole thing as if it happened yesterday. the poor chap was killed in a duel at spa a few months after the marriage. there was an ugly story about it. they said kelso got some rascally adventurer, some belgian brute, to insult his son-in-law in public--paid him, sir, to do it, paid him-- and that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. the thing was hushed up, but, egad, kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time afterwards. he brought his daughter back with him, i was told, and she never spoke to him again. oh, yes; it was a bad business. the girl died, too, died within a year. so she left a son, did she? i had forgotten that. what sort of boy is he? if he is like his mother, he must be a good-looking chap."
"he is very good-looking," assented lord henry.
"i hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man. "he should have a pot of money waiting for him if kelso did the right thing by him. his mother had money, too. all the selby property came to her, through her grandfather. her grandfather hated kelso, thought him a mean dog. he was, too. came to madrid once when i was there. egad, i was ashamed of him. the queen used to ask me about the english noble who was always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. they made quite a story of it. i didnt dare show my face at court for a month. i hope he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies."
"i dont know," answered lord henry. "i fancy that the boy will be well off. he is not of age yet. he has selby, i know. he told me so. and . . . his mother was very beautiful?"
"margaret devereux was one of the loveliest creatures i ever saw, harry. what on earth induced her to behave as she did, i never could understand. she could have married anybody she chose. carlington was mad after her. she was romantic, though. all the women of that family were. the men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful. carlington went on his knees to her. told me so himself. she laughed at him, and there wasnt a girl in london at the time who wasnt after him. and by the way, harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your father tells me about dartmoor wanting to marry an american? aint english girls good enough for him?"
"it is rather fashionable to marry americans just now, uncle george."
"ill back english women against the world, harry," said lord fermor, striking the table with his fist.
"the betting is on the americans."
"they dont last, i am told," muttered his uncle.
"a long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a steeplechase. they take things flying. i dont think dartmoor has a chance."
"who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "has she got any?"
lord henry shook his head. "american girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as english women are at concealing their past," he said, rising to go.
"they are pork-packers, i suppose?"
"i hope so, uncle george, for dartmoors sake. i am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in america, after politics."
"is she pretty?"
"she behaves as if she was beautiful. most american women do. it is the secret of their charm."
"why cant these american women stay in their own country? they are always telling us that it is the paradise for women."
"it is. that is the reason why, like eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it," said lord henry. "good-bye, uncle george. i shall be late for lunch, if i stop any longer. thanks for giving me the information i wanted. i always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones."
"where are you lunching, harry?"
"at aunt agathas. i have asked myself and mr. gray. he is her latest protégée."
"humph! tell your aunt agatha, harry, not to bother me any more with her charity appeals. i am sick of them. why, the good woman thinks that i have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads."
"all right, uncle george, ill tell her, but it wont have any effect. philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. it is their distinguishing characteristic."
the old gentleman growled approvingly and rang the bell for his servant. lord henry passed up the low arcade into burlington street and turned his steps in the direction of berkeley square.
suddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses. he found that he had passed his aunts some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back. when he entered the somewhat sombre hall, the butler told him that they had gone in to lunch. he gave one of the footmen his hat and stick and passed into the dining-room.
"late as usual, harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.
"we are talking about poor dartmoor, lord henry," cried the duchess, nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "do you think he will really marry this fascinating young person?"
"i believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, duchess."
"how dreadful!" exclaimed lady agatha. "really, some one should interfere."
"i am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an american dry-goods store," said sir thomas burdon, looking supercilious.
"my uncle has already suggested pork-packing sir thomas."
"dry-goods! what are american dry-goods?" asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.
"american novels," answered lord henry, helping himself to some quail.
the duchess looked puzzled.
"dont mind him, my dear," whispered lady agatha. "he never means anything that he says."
"when america was discovered," said the radical member-- and he began to give some wearisome facts. like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners. the duchess sighed and exercised her privilege of interruption. "i wish to goodness it never had been discovered at all!" she exclaimed. "really, our girls have no chance nowadays. it is most unfair."
"perhaps, after all, america never has been discovered," said mr. erskine; "i myself would say that it had merely been detected."
"oh! but i have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the duchess vaguely. "i must confess that most of them are extremely pretty. and they dress well, too. they get all their dresses in paris. i wish i could afford to do the same."
"they say that when good americans die they go to paris," chuckled sir thomas, who had a large wardrobe of humours cast-off clothes.
"really! and where do bad americans go to when they die?" inquired the duchess.
"they go to america," murmured lord henry.
sir thomas frowned. "i am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against that great country," he said to lady agatha. "i have travelled all over it in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are extremely civil. i assure you that it is an education to visit it."
"but must we really see chicago in order to be educated?" asked mr. erskine plaintively. "i dont feel up to the journey."
sir thomas waved his hand. "mr. erskine of treadley has the world on his shelves. we practical men like to see things, not to read about them. the americans are an extremely interesting people. they are absolutely reasonable. i think that is their distinguishing characteristic. yes, mr. erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. i assure you there is no nonsense about the americans."
"how dreadful!" cried lord henry. "i can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. there is something unfair about its use. it is hitting below the intellect."
"i do not understand you," said sir thomas, growing rather red.
"i do, lord henry," murmured mr. erskine, with a smile.
"paradoxes are all very well in their way... ." rejoined the baronet.
"dear me!" said lady agatha, "how you men argue! i am sure i never can make out what you are talking about. oh! harry, i am quite vexed with you. why do you try to persuade our nice mr. dorian gray to give up the east end? i assure you he would be quite invaluable. they would love his playing."
"i want him to play to me," cried lord henry, smiling, and he looked down the table and caught a bright answering glance.
"but they are so unhappy in whitechapel," continued lady agatha.
"i can sympathize with everything except suffering," said lord henry, shrugging his shoulders. "i cannot sympathize with that. it is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. there is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. one should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. the less said about lifes sores, the better."
"still, the east end is a very important problem," remarked sir thomas with a grave shake of the head.
"quite so," answered the young lord. "it is the problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves."
the politician looked at him keenly. "what change do you propose, then?" he asked.
lord henry laughed. "i dont desire to change anything in england except the weather," he answered. "i am quite content with philosophic contemplation. but, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy, i would suggest that we should appeal to science to put us straight. the advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional."
"but we have such grave responsibilities," ventured mrs. vandeleur timidly.
"terribly grave," echoed lady agatha.
lord henry looked over at mr. erskine. "humanity takes itself too seriously. it is the worlds original sin. if the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different."
"a great many, i fear," she cried.
"a delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "i must put it into practice."
"a dangerous theory!" came from sir thomass tight lips. lady agatha shook her head, but could not help being amused. mr. erskine listened.
a laugh ran round the table.
he played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox. the praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow silenus for being sober. facts fled before her like frightened forest things. her white feet trod the huge press at which wise omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vats black, dripping, sloping sides. it was an extraordinary improvisation. he felt that the eyes of dorian gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination. he was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. he charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they followed his pipe, laughing. dorian gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.
"for you i would throw over anybody, duchess," said lord henry with a bow.
when lord henry had sat down again, mr. erskine moved round, and taking a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm.
"you talk books away," he said; "why dont you write one?"
"i am too fond of reading books to care to write them, mr. erskine. i should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a persian carpet and as unreal. but there is no literary public in england for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. of all people in the world the english have the least sense of the beauty of literature."
"i fear you are right," answered mr. erskine. "i myself used to have literary ambitions, but i gave them up long ago. and now, my dear young friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may i ask if you really meant all that you said to us at lunch?"
"i quite forget what i said," smiled lord henry. "was it all very bad?"
"i shall be charmed. a visit to treadley would be a great privilege. it has a perfect host, and a perfect library."
"all of you, mr. erskine?"
"forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. we are practising for an english academy of letters."
lord henry laughed and rose. "i am going to the park," he cried.
"but i thought you had promised basil hallward to go and see him," answered lord henry.
Chapter 4
大;学，生，小，说'网
chapter 4
one afternoon, a month later, dorian gray was reclining in a luxurious arm-chair, in the little library of lord henrys house in mayfair. it was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze and ceiling of raised plasterwork, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk, long-fringed persian rugs. on a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette by clodion, and beside it lay a copy of les cent nouvelles, bound for margaret of valois by clovis eve and powdered with the gilt daisies that queen had selected for her device. some large blue china jars and parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the small leaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of a summer day in london.
at last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. "how late you are, harry!" he murmured.
"i am afraid it is not harry, mr. gray," answered a shrill voice.
he glanced quickly round and rose to his feet. "i beg your pardon. i thought--"
"you thought it was my husband. it is only his wife. you must let me introduce myself. i know you quite well by your photographs. i think my husband has got seventeen of them."
"not seventeen, lady henry?"
"well, eighteen, then. and i saw you with him the other night at the opera." she laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-me-not eyes. she was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. she was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. she tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. her name was victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.
"that was at lohengrin, lady henry, i think?"
"yes; it was at dear lohengrin. i like wagners music better than anybodys. it is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says. that is a great advantage, dont you think so, mr. gray?"
the same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.
dorian smiled and shook his head: "i am afraid i dont think so, lady henry. i never talk during music--at least, during good music. if one hears bad music, it is ones duty to drown it in conversation."
"i am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said lord henry, elevating his dark, crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused smile. "so sorry i am late, dorian. i went to look after a piece of old brocade in wardour street and had to bargain for hours for it. nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
"i am afraid i must be going," exclaimed lady henry, breaking an awkward silence with her silly sudden laugh. "i have promised to drive with the duchess. good-bye, mr. gray. good-bye, harry. you are dining out, i suppose? so am i. perhaps i shall see you at lady thornburys."
"i dare say, my dear," said lord henry, shutting the door behind her as, looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain, she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni. then he lit a cigarette and flung himself down on the sofa.
"never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, dorian," he said after a few puffs.
"why, harry?"
"because they are so sentimental."
"but i like sentimental people."
"never marry at all, dorian. men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."
"i dont think i am likely to marry, harry. i am too much in love. that is one of your aphorisms. i am putting it into practice, as i do everything that you say."
"who are you in love with?" asked lord henry after a pause.
"with an actress," said dorian gray, blushing.
"you would not say so if you saw her, harry."
"who is she?"
"her name is sibyl vane."
"never heard of her."
"no one has. people will some day, however. she is a genius."
"my dear boy, no woman is a genius. women are a decorative sex. they never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals."
"harry, how can you?"
"ah! harry, your views terrify me.
"never mind that. how long have you known her?"
"about three weeks."
"i will tell you, harry, but you mustnt be unsympathetic about it. after all, it never would have happened if i had not met you. you filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. for days after i met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. as i lounged in the park, or strolled down piccadilly, i used to look at every one who passed me and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. some of them fascinated me. others filled me with terror. there was an exquisite poison in the air. i had a passion for sensations. . . . well, one evening about seven oclock, i determined to go out in search of some adventure. i felt that this grey monstrous london of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me. i fancied a thousand things. the mere danger gave me a sense of delight. i remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening when we first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. i dont know what i expected, but i went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black grassless squares. about half-past eight i passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy play-bills. a hideous jew, in the most amazing waistcoat i ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. he had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt.have a box, my lord? he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. there was something about him, harry, that amused me. he was such a monster. you will laugh at me, i know, but i really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stage-box. to the present day i cant make out why i did so; and yet if i hadnt-- my dear harry, if i hadnt--i should have missed the greatest romance of my life. i see you are laughing. it is horrid of you!"
"i am not laughing, dorian; at least i am not laughing at you. but you should not say the greatest romance of your life. you should say the first romance of your life. you will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. a grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. that is the one use of the idle classes of a country. dont be afraid. there are exquisite things in store for you. this is merely the beginning."
"do you think my nature so shallow?" cried dorian gray angrily.
"no; i think your nature so deep."
"how do you mean?"
"my dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. what they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, i call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect--simply a confession of failure. faithfulness! i must analyse it some day. the passion for property is in it. there are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. but i dont want to interrupt you. go on with your story."
"well, i found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. i looked out from behind the curtain and surveyed the house. it was a tawdry affair, all cupids and cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. the gallery and pit were 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 depressing. i began to wonder what on earth i should do when i caught sight of the play-bill. what do you think the play was, harry?"
"i should think the idiot boy, or dumb but innocent. our fathers used to like that sort of piece, i believe. the longer i live, dorian, the more keenly i feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. in art, as in politics, les grandpères ont toujours tort."
"because i have loved so many of them, dorian."
"oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces."
"dont run down dyed hair and painted faces. there is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes," said lord henry.
"i wish now i had not told you about sibyl vane."
"you could not have helped telling me, dorian. all through your life you will tell me everything you do."
dorian gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes. "harry! sibyl vane is sacred!"
"it is only the sacred things that are worth touching, dorian," said lord henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. "but why should you be annoyed? i suppose she will belong to you some day. when one is in love, one always begins by deceiving ones self, and one always ends by deceiving others. that is what the world calls a romance. you know her, at any rate, i suppose?"
"of course i know her. on the first night i was at the theatre, the horrid old jew came round to the box after the performance was over and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. i was furious with him, and told him that juliet had been dead for hundreds of years and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in verona. i think, from his blank look of amazement, that he was under the impression that i had taken too much champagne, or something."
"i am not surprised."
"then he asked me if i wrote for any of the newspapers. i told him i never even read them. he seemed terribly disappointed at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were every one of them to be bought."
"i should not wonder if he was quite right there. but, on the other hand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all expensive."
"the third night. she had been playing rosalind. i could not help going round. i had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me--at least i fancied that she had. the old jew was persistent. he seemed determined to take me behind, so i consented. it was curious my not wanting to know her, wasnt it?"
"no; i dont think so."
"my dear harry, why?"
"i will tell you some other time. now i want to know about the girl."
"sibyl? oh, she was so shy and so gentle. there is something of a child about her. her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when i told her what i thought of her performance, and she seemed quite unconscious of her power. i think we were both rather nervous. the old jew stood grinning at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making elaborate speeches about us both, while we stood looking at each other like children. he would insist on calling me my lord, so i had to assure sibyl that i was not anything of the kind. she said quite simply to me, you look more like a prince. i must call you prince charming."
"you dont understand her, harry. she regarded me merely as a person in a play. she knows nothing of life. she lives with her mother, a faded tired woman who played lady capulet in a sort of magenta dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen better days."
"i know that look. it depresses me," murmured lord henry, examining his rings.
"the jew wanted to tell me her history, but i said it did not interest me."
"you were quite right. there is always something infinitely mean about other peoples tragedies."
"sibyl is the only thing i care about. what is it to me where she came from? from her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine. every night of my life i go to see her act, and every night she is more marvellous."
"that is the reason, i suppose, that you never dine with me now. i thought you must have some curious romance on hand. you have; but it is not quite what i expected."
"my dear harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and i have been to the opera with you several times," said dorian, opening his blue eyes in wonder.
"well, i cant help going to see sibyl play," he cried, "even if it is only for a single act. i get hungry for her presence; and when i think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, i am filled with awe."
"you can dine with me to-night, dorian, cant you?"
he shook his head. "to-night she is imogen," he answered, "and to-morrow night she will be juliet."
"when is she sibyl vane?"
"never."
"i congratulate you."
"how horrid you are! she is all the great heroines of the world in one. she is more than an individual. you laugh, but i tell you she has genius. i love her, and i must make her love me. you, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm sibyl vane to love me! i want to make romeo jealous. i want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. i want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. my god, harry, how i worship her!" he was walking up and down the room as he spoke. hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. he was terribly excited.
"and what do you propose to do?" said lord henry at last.
"that would be impossible, my dear boy."
"yes, she will. she has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in her, but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is personalities, not principles, that move the age."
"well, what night shall we go?"
"let me see. to-day is tuesday. let us fix to-morrow. she plays juliet to-morrow."
"all right. the bristol at eight oclock; and i will get basil."
"not eight, harry, please. half-past six. we must be there before the curtain rises. you must see her in the first act, where she meets romeo."
"half-past six! what an hour! it will be like having a meat-tea, or reading an english novel. it must be seven. no gentleman dines before seven. shall you see basil between this and then? or shall i write to him?"
"dear basil! i have not laid eyes on him for a week. it is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame, specially designed by himself, and, though i am a little jealous of the picture for being a whole month younger than i am, i must admit that i delight in it. perhaps you had better write to him. i dont want to see him alone. he says things that annoy me. he gives me good advice."
lord henry smiled. "people are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. it is what i call the depth of generosity."
"oh, basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a philistine. since i have known you, harry, i have discovered that."
"i wonder is that really so, harry?" said dorian gray, putting some perfume on his handkerchief out of a large, gold-topped bottle that stood on the table. "it must be, if you say it. and now i am off. imogen is waiting for me. dont forget about to-morrow. good-bye."
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 could ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. as it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. experience was of no ethical value. it was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. but there was no motive power in experience. it was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. all that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.
while lord henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door, and his valet entered and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner. he got up and looked out into the street. the sunset had smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. the panes glowed like plates of heated metal. the sky above was like a faded rose. he thought of his friends young fiery-coloured life and wondered how it was all going to end.
when he arrived home, about half-past twelve oclock, he saw a telegram lying on the hall table. he opened it and found it was from dorian gray. it was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to sibyl vane.
Chapter 5
chapter 5
"mother, mother, i am so happy!" whispered the girl, burying her face in the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back turned to the shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that their dingy sitting-room contained. "i am so happy!" she repeated, "and you must be happy, too!"
mrs. vane winced and put her thin, bismuth-whitened hands on her daughters head. "happy!" she echoed, "i am only happy, sibyl, when i see you act. you must not think of anything but your acting. mr. isaacs has been very good to us, and we owe him money."
the girl looked up and pouted. "money, mother?" she cried, "what does money matter? love is more than money."
"mr. isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts and to get a proper outfit for james. you must not forget that, sibyl. fifty pounds is a very large sum. mr. isaacs has been most considerate."
"he is not a gentleman, mother, and i hate the way he talks to me," said the girl, rising to her feet and going over to the window.
"i dont know how we could manage without him," answered the elder woman querulously.
sibyl vane tossed her head and laughed. "we dont want him any more, mother. prince charming rules life for us now." then she paused. a rose shook in her blood and shadowed her cheeks. quick breath parted the petals of her lips. they trembled. some southern wind of passion swept over her and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "i love him," she said simply.
"foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-phrase flung in answer. the waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the words.
the girl laughed again. the joy of a caged bird was in her voice. her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed for a moment, as though to hide their secret. when they opened, the mist of a dream had passed across them.
then wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery. this young man might be rich. if so, marriage should be thought of. against the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. the arrows of craft shot by her. she saw the thin lips moving, and smiled.
suddenly she felt the need to speak. the wordy silence troubled her. "mother, mother," she cried, "why does he love me so much? i know why i love him. i love him because he is like what love himself should be. but what does he see in me? i am not worthy of him. and yet--why, i cannot tell--though i feel so much beneath him, i dont feel humble. i feel proud, terribly proud. mother, did you love my father as i love prince charming?"
the elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed her cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. sybil rushed to her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. "forgive me, mother. i know it pains you to talk about our father. but it only pains you because you loved him so much. dont look so sad. i am as happy to-day as you were twenty years ago. ah! let me be happy for ever!"
"my child, you are far too young to think of falling in love. besides, what do you know of this young man? you dont even know his name. the whole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when james is going away to australia, and i have so much to think of, i must say that you should have shown more consideration. however, as i said before, if he is rich . . ."
"ah! mother, mother, let me be happy!"
"you might keep some of your kisses for me, sibyl, i think," said the lad with a good-natured grumble.
"ah! but you dont like being kissed, jim," she cried. "you are a dreadful old bear." and she ran across the room and hugged him.
"my son, dont say such dreadful things," murmured mrs. vane, taking up a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. she felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. it would have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation.
"why not, mother? i mean it."
"society!" muttered the lad. "i dont want to know anything about that. i should like to make some money to take you and sibyl off the stage. i hate it."
"oh, jim!" said sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of you! but are you really going for a walk with me? that will be nice! i was afraid you were going to say good-bye to some of your friends-- to tom hardy, who gave you that hideous pipe, or ned langton, who makes fun of you for smoking it. it is very sweet of you to let me have your last afternoon. where shall we go? let us go to the park."
"i am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "only swell people go to the park."
"nonsense, jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.
he hesitated for a moment. "very well," he said at last, "but dont be too long dressing." she danced out of the door. one could hear her singing as she ran upstairs. her little feet pattered overhead.
he walked up and down the room two or three times. then he turned to the still figure in the chair. "mother, are my things ready?" he asked.
"james, you really talk very strangely. of course i watch over sibyl."
"you are speaking about things you dont understand, james. in the profession we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying attention. i myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. that was when acting was really understood. as for sibyl, i do not know at present whether her attachment is serious or not. but there is no doubt that the young man in question is a perfect gentleman. he is always most polite to me. besides, he has the appearance of being rich, and the flowers he sends are lovely."
"you dont know his name, though," said the lad harshly.
"no," answered his mother with a placid expression in her face. "he has not yet revealed his real name. i think it is quite romantic of him. he is probably a member of the aristocracy."
james vane bit his lip. "watch over sibyl, mother," he cried, "watch over her."
"my son, you distress me very much. sibyl is always under my special care. of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why she should not contract an alliance with him. i trust he is one of the aristocracy. he has all the appearance of it, i must say. it might be a most brilliant marriage for sibyl. they would make a charming couple. his good looks are really quite remarkable; everybody notices them."
the lad muttered something to himself and drummed on the window-pane with his coarse fingers. he had just turned round to say something when the door opened and sibyl ran in.
"how serious you both are!" she cried. "what is the matter?"
"nothing," he answered. "i suppose one must be serious sometimes. good-bye, mother; i will have my dinner at five oclock. everything is packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble."
"good-bye, my son," she answered with a bow of strained stateliness.
she was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, and there was something in his look that had made her feel afraid.
"kiss me, mother," said the girl. her flowerlike lips touched the withered cheek and warmed its frost.
"my child! my child!" cried mrs. vane, looking up to the ceiling in search of an imaginary gallery.
the lad listened sulkily to her and made no answer. he was heart-sick at leaving home.
yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose. inexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense of the danger of sibyls position. this young dandy who was making love to her could mean her no good. he was a gentleman, and he hated him for that, hated him through some curious race-instinct for which he could not account, and which for that reason was all the more dominant within him. he was conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his mothers nature, and in that saw infinite peril for sibyl and sibyls happiness. children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
his mother! he had something on his mind to ask of her, something that he had brooded on for many months of silence. a chance phrase that he had heard at the theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his ears one night as he waited at the stage-door, had set loose a train of horrible thoughts. he remembered it as if it had been the lash of a hunting-crop across his face. his brows knit together into a wedgelike furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his underlip.
"you are not listening to a word i am saying, jim," cried sibyl, "and i am making the most delightful plans for your future. do say something."
"what do you want me to say?"
"oh! that you will be a good boy and not forget us," she answered, smiling at him.
he shrugged his shoulders. "you are more likely to forget me than i am to forget you, sibyl."
she flushed. "what do you mean, jim?" she asked.
"you have a new friend, i hear. who is he? why have you not told me about him? he means you no good."
"stop, jim!" she exclaimed. "you must not say anything against him. i love him."
"why, you dont even know his name," answered the lad. "who is he? i have a right to know."
"he is a gentleman," said the lad sullenly.
"a prince!" she cried musically. "what more do you want?"
"he wants to enslave you."
"i shudder at the thought of being free."
"i want you to beware of him."
"to see him is to worship him; to know him is to trust him."
"sibyl, you are mad about him."
she laughed and took his arm. "you dear old jim, you talk as if you were a hundred. some day you will be in love yourself. then you will know what it is. dont look so sulky. surely you should be glad to think that, though you are going away, you leave me happier than i have ever been before. life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and difficult. but it will be different now. you are going to a new world, and i have found one. here are two chairs; let us sit down and see the smart people go by."
they took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. the tulip-beds across the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. a white dust-- tremulous cloud of orris-root it seemed--hung in the panting air. the brightly coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies.
she started to her feet. "there he is!" she cried.
"who?" said jim vane.
"prince charming," she answered, looking after the victoria.
he jumped up and seized her roughly by the arm. "show him to me. which is he? point him out. i must see him!" he exclaimed; but at that moment the duke of berwicks four-in-hand came between, and when it had left the space clear, the carriage had swept out of the park.
"he is gone," murmured sibyl sadly. "i wish you had seen him."
"i wish i had, for as sure as there is a god in heaven, if he ever does you any wrong, i shall kill him."
she looked at him in horror. he repeated his words. they cut the air like a dagger. the people round began to gape. a lady standing close to her tittered.
when they reached the achilles statue, she turned round. there was pity in her eyes that became laughter on her lips. she shook her head at him. "you are foolish, jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy, that is all. how can you say such horrible things? you dont know what you are talking about. you are simply jealous and unkind. ah! i wish you would fall in love. love makes people good, and what you said was wicked."
"i am sixteen," he answered, "and i know what i am about. mother is no help to you. she doesnt understand how to look after you. i wish now that i was not going to australia at all. i have a great mind to chuck the whole thing up. i would, if my articles hadnt been signed."
"oh, dont be so serious, jim. you are like one of the heroes of those silly melodramas mother used to be so fond of acting in. i am not going to quarrel with you. i have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect happiness. we wont quarrel. i know you would never harm any one i love, would you?"
"not as long as you love him, i suppose," was the sullen answer.
"i shall love him for ever!" she cried.
"and he?"
"for ever, too!"
"he had better."
she shrank from him. then she laughed and put her hand on his arm. he was merely a boy.
at the marble arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close to their shabby home in the euston road. it was after five oclock, and sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. jim insisted that she should do so. he said that he would sooner part with her when their mother was not present. she would be sure to make a scene, and he detested scenes of every kind.
his mother was waiting for him below. she grumbled at his unpunctuality, as he entered. he made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. the flies buzzed round the table and crawled over the stained cloth. through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of street-cabs, he could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that was left to him.
after some time, he thrust away his plate and put his head in his hands. he felt that he had a right to know. it should have been told to him before, if it was as he suspected. leaden with fear, his mother watched him. words dropped mechanically from her lips. a tattered lace handkerchief twitched in her fingers. when the clock struck six, he got up and went to the door. then he turned back and looked at her. their eyes met. in hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. it enraged him.
"mother, i have something to ask you," he said. her eyes wandered vaguely about the room. she made no answer. "tell me the truth. i have a right to know. were you married to my father?"
"no," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.
"my father was a scoundrel then!" cried the lad, clenching his fists.
she shook her head. "i knew he was not free. we loved each other very much. if he had lived, he would have made provision for us. dont speak against him, my son. he was your father, and a gentleman. indeed, he was highly connected."
an oath broke from his lips. "i dont care for myself," he exclaimed, "but dont let sibyl. . . . it is a gentleman, isnt it, who is in love with her, or says he is? highly connected, too, i suppose."
for a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. her head drooped. she wiped her eyes with shaking hands. "sibyl has a mother," she murmured; "i had none."
the lad was touched. he went towards her, and stooping down, he kissed her. "i am sorry if i have pained you by asking about my father," he said, "but i could not help it. i must go now. good-bye. dont forget that you will have only one child now to look after, and believe me that if this man wrongs my sister, i will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog. i swear it."
wＷw。xiaoshuo txt.coＭ
Chapter 6
chapter 6
i suppose you have heard the news, basil?" said lord henry that evening as hallward was shown into a little private room at the bristol where dinner had been laid for three.
"dorian gray is engaged to be married," said lord henry, watching him as he spoke.
hallward started and then frowned. "dorian engaged to be married!" he cried. "impossible!"
"it is perfectly true."
"to whom?"
"to some little actress or other."
"i cant believe it. dorian is far too sensible."
"dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear basil."
"marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, harry."
"except in america," rejoined lord henry languidly. "but i didnt 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 dorians birth, and position, and wealth. it would be absurd for him to marry so much beneath him."
"if you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, basil. he is sure to do it, then. whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."
"i hope the girl is good, harry. i dont want to see dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect."
"oh, she is better than good--she is beautiful," murmured lord henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "dorian says she is beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal appearance of other people. it has had that excellent effect, amongst others. we are to see her to-night, if that boy doesnt forget his appointment."
"are you serious?"
"quite serious, basil. i should be miserable if i thought i should ever be more serious than i am at the present moment."
"but do you approve of it, harry?" asked the painter, walking up and down the room and biting his lip. "you cant approve of it, possibly. it is some silly infatuation."
"you dont mean a single word of all that, harry; you know you dont. if dorian grays life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. you are much better than you pretend to be."
lord henry laughed. "the reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. the basis of optimism is sheer terror. we think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. we praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. i mean everything that i have said. i have the greatest contempt for optimism. as for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. if you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. as for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and women. i will certainly encourage them. they have the charm of being fashionable. but here is dorian himself. he will tell you more than i can."
"my dear harry, my dear basil, you must both congratulate me!" said the lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. "i have never been so happy. of course, it is sudden-- all really delightful things are. and yet it seems to me to be the one thing i have been looking for all my life." he was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked extraordinarily handsome.
"i hope you will always be very happy, dorian," said hallward, "but i dont quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement. you let harry know."
"there is really not much to tell," cried dorian as they took their seats at the small round table. "what happened was simply this. after i left you yesterday evening, harry, i dressed, had some dinner at that little italian restaurant in rupert street you introduced me to, and went down at eight oclock 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 boys clothes, she was perfectly wonderful. she wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawks feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. she had never seemed to me more exquisite. she had all the delicate grace of that tanagra figurine that you have in your studio, basil. her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. as for her acting--well, you shall see her to-night. she is simply a born artist. i sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. i forgot that i was in london and in the nineteenth century. i was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. after the performance was over, i went behind and spoke to her. as we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that i had never seen there before. my lips moved towards hers. we kissed each other. i cant describe to you what i felt at that moment. it seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. she trembled all over and shook like a white narcissus. then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. i feel that i should not tell you all this, but i cant help it. of course, our engagement is a dead secret. she has not even told her own mother. i dont know what my guardians will say. lord radley is sure to be furious. i dont care. i shall be of age in less than a year, and then i can do what i like. i have been right, basil, havent i, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in shakespeares 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."
"women are wonderfully practical," murmured lord henry, "much more practical than we are. in situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us."
hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "dont, 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," be 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."
"and those are ... ?" asked lord henry, helping himself to some salad.
"oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your theories about pleasure. all your theories, in fact, harry."
"pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he answered in his slow melodious voice. "but i am afraid i cannot claim my theory as my own. it belongs to nature, not to me. pleasure is natures test, her sign of approval. when we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy."
"ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried basil hallward.
"yes," echoed dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at lord henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, harry?"
"to be good is to be in harmony with ones self," he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. ones own life--that is the important thing. as for the lives of ones neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a puritan, one can flaunt ones moral views about them, but they are not ones concern. besides, individualism has really the higher aim. modern morality consists in accepting the standard of ones age. i consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality."
"but, surely, if one lives merely for ones self, harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.
"yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. i should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich."
"one has to pay in other ways but money."
"what sort of ways, basil?"
"oh! i should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in . . . well, in the consciousness of degradation."
lord henry shrugged his shoulders. "my dear fellow, mediaeval art is charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date. one can use them in fiction, of course. but then the only things that one can use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is."
"i know what pleasure is," cried dorian gray. "it is to adore some one."
"that is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying with some fruits. "being adored is a nuisance. women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. they worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them."
"i should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to us," murmured the lad gravely. "they create love in our natures. they have a right to demand it back."
"that is quite true, dorian," cried hallward.
"nothing is ever quite true," said lord henry.
"this is," interrupted dorian. "you must admit, harry, that women give to men the very gold of their lives."
"possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such very small change. that is the worry. women, as some witty frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out."
"harry, you are dreadful! i dont know why i like you so much."
w w w. xiao shuotxt. co m
Chapter 7
chapter 7
"what a place to find ones divinity in!" said lord henry.
"the same flesh and blood as ones self! oh, i hope not!" exclaimed lord henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his opera-glass.
"thanks, basil," answered dorian gray, pressing his hand. "i knew that you would understand me. harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. but here is the orchestra. it is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five minutes. then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom i am going to give all my life, to whom i have given everything that is good in me."
a quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of applause, sibyl vane stepped on to the stage. yes, she was certainly lovely to look at-- one of the loveliest creatures, lord henry thought, that he had ever seen. there was something of the fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. a faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded enthusiastic house. she stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed to tremble. basil hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud. motionless, and as one in a dream, sat dorian gray, gazing at her. lord henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, "charming! charming!"
the scene was the hall of capulets house, and romeo in his pilgrims dress had entered with mercutio and his other friends. the band, such as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. through the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, sibyl vane moved like a creature from a finer world. her body swayed, while she danced, as a plant sways in the water. the curves of her throat were the curves of a white lily. her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.
yet she was curiously listless. she showed no sign of joy when her eyes rested on romeo. the few words she had to speak--
good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
which mannerly devotion shows in this;
for saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch,
and palm to palm is holy palmers kiss--
with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly artificial manner. the voice was exquisite, but from the point of view of tone it was absolutely false. it was wrong in colour. it took away all the life from the verse. it made the passion unreal.
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 overemphasized everything that she had to say. the beautiful passage--
thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
for that which thou hast heard me speak to-night--
was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. when she leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines--
although i joy in thee,
i have no joy of this contract to-night:
it is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
ere one can say, "it lightens." sweet, good-night!
this bud of love by summers ripening breath
may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet--
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 cant 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 you both."
"dont talk like that about any one you love, dorian. love is a more wonderful thing than art."
"go away, harry," cried the lad. "i want to be alone. basil, you must go. ah! cant you see that my heart is breaking?" the hot tears came to his eyes. his lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, he leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.
"let us go, basil," said lord henry with a strange tenderness in his voice, and the two young men passed out together.
a few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose on the third act. dorian gray went back to his seat. he looked pale, and proud, and indifferent. the play dragged on, and seemed interminable. half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots and laughing. the whole thing was a fiasco. the last act was played to almost empty benches. the curtain went down on a titter and some groans.
as soon as it was over, dorian gray rushed behind the scenes into the greenroom. the girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on her face. her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. there was a radiance about her. her parted lips were smiling over some secret of their own.
when he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy came over her. "how badly i acted to-night, dorian!" she cried.
"horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement. "horribly! it was dreadful. are you ill? you have no idea what it was. you have no idea what i suffered."
the girl smiled. "dorian," she answered, lingering over his name with long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to the red petals of her mouth. "dorian, you should have understood. but you understand now, dont 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 shouldnt 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.
he flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face. "you have killed my love," he muttered.
she looked at him in wonder and laughed. he made no answer. she came across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. she knelt down and pressed his hands to her lips. he drew them away, and a shudder ran through him.
then he leaped up and went to the door. "yes," he cried, "you have killed my love. you used to stir my imagination. now you dont even stir my curiosity. you simply produce no effect. i loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. you have thrown it all away. you are shallow and stupid. my god! how mad i was to love you! what a fool i have been! you are nothing to me now. i will never see you again. i will never think of you. i will never mention your name. you dont know what you were to me, once. why, once . . . oh, i cant bear to think of it! i wish i had never laid eyes upon you! you have spoiled the romance of my life. how little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! without your art, you are nothing. i would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent. the world would have worshipped you, and you would have borne my name. what are you now? a third-rate actress with a pretty face."
the girl grew white, and trembled. she clenched her hands together, and her voice seemed to catch in her throat. "you are not serious, dorian?" she murmured. "you are acting."
"acting! i leave that to you. you do it so well," he answered bitterly.
she rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her face, came across the room to him. she put her hand upon his arm and looked into his eyes. he thrust her back. "dont 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, dont leave me!" she whispered. "i am so sorry i didnt 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. dont go away from me. i couldnt bear it. oh! dont go away from me. my brother . . . no; never mind. he didnt mean it. he was in jest. . . . but you, oh! cant you forgive me for to-night? i will work so hard and try to improve. dont 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 couldnt help it. oh, dont leave me, dont leave me." a fit of passionate sobbing choked her. she crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and dorian gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain. there is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. sibyl vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. her tears and sobs annoyed him.
"i am going," he said at last in his calm clear voice. "i dont wish to be unkind, but i cant see you again. you have disappointed me."
she wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. her little hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. he turned on his heel and left the room. in a few moments he was out of the theatre.
where he went to he hardly knew. he remembered wandering through dimly lit streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses. women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after him. drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves like monstrous apes. he had seen grotesque children huddled upon door-steps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
as the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to covent garden. the darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. the air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain. he followed into the market and watched the men unloading their waggons. a white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. he thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. they had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. a long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge, jade-green piles of vegetables. under the portico, with its grey, sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction to be over. others crowded round the swinging doors of the coffee-house in the piazza. the heavy cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings. some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. iris-necked and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.
after a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home. for a few moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent square, with its blank, close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds. the sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like silver against it. from some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising. it curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.
in the huge gilt venetian lantern, spoil of some doges barge, that hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights were still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire. he turned them out and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for himself and hung with some curious renaissance tapestries that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at selby royal. as he was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait basil hallward had painted of him. he started back as if in surprise. then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. after he had taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate. finally, he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it. in the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed. the expression looked different. one would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. it was certainly strange.
he turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. the bright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering. but the strange expression that he had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even. the quivering ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
he winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory cupids, one of lord henrys many presents to him, glanced hurriedly into its polished depths. no line like that warped his red lips. what did it mean?
he rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it again. there were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. it was not a mere fancy of his own. the thing was horribly apparent.
he threw himself into a chair and began to think. suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had said in basil hallwards studio the day the picture had been finished. yes, he remembered it perfectly. he had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. surely his wish had not been fulfilled? such things were impossible. it seemed monstrous even to think of them. and, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth.
cruelty! had he been cruel? it was the girls 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 makes men mad. the picture had not changed. it was folly to think so.
he got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front of the portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "how horrible!" he murmured to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. when he stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. the fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. he thought only of sibyl. a faint echo of his love came back to him. he repeated her name over and over again. the birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.
wＷ w.xia oshuotxＴ.Ｃom
Chapter 8
chapter 8
it was long past noon when he awoke. his valet had crept several times on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had wondered what made his young master sleep so late. finally his bell sounded, and victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile of letters, on a small tray of old sevres china, and drew back the olive-satin curtains, with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall windows.
"monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.
"what oclock is it, victor?" asked dorian gray drowsily.
"one hour and a quarter, monsieur."
after about ten minutes he got up, and throwing on an elaborate dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the onyx-paved bathroom. the cool water refreshed him after his long sleep. he seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through. a dim sense of having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but there was the unreality of a dream about it.
as soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to a light french breakfast that had been laid out for him on a small round table close to the open window. it was an exquisite day. the warm air seemed laden with spices. a bee flew in and buzzed round the blue-dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before him. he felt perfectly happy.
suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the portrait, and he started.
"too cold for monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the table. "i shut the window?"
dorian shook his head. "i am not cold," he murmured.
was it all true? had the portrait really changed? or had it been simply his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil where there had been a look of joy? surely a painted canvas could not alter? the thing was absurd. it would serve as a tale to tell basil some day. it would make him smile.
and, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! first in the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of cruelty round the warped lips. he almost dreaded his valet leaving the room. he knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the portrait. he was afraid of certainty. when the coffee and cigarettes had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to tell him to remain. as the door was closing behind him, he called him back. the man stood waiting for his orders. dorian looked at him for a moment. "i am not at home to any one, victor," he said with a sigh. the man bowed and retired.
then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down on a luxuriously cushioned couch that stood facing the screen. the screen was an old one, of gilt spanish leather, stamped and wrought with a rather florid louis-quatorze pattern. he scanned it curiously, wondering if ever before it had concealed the secret of a mans life.
should he move it aside, after all? why not let it stay there? what was the use of knowing.? if the thing was true, it was terrible. if it was not true, why trouble about it? but what if, by some fate or deadlier chance, eyes other than his spied behind and saw the horrible change? what should he do if basil hallward came and asked to look at his own picture? basil would be sure to do that. no; the thing had to be examined, and at once. anything would be better than this dreadful state of doubt.
he got up and locked both doors. at least he would be alone when he looked upon the mask of his shame. then he drew the screen aside and saw himself face to face. it was perfectly true. the portrait had altered.
as he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, he found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of almost scientific interest. that such a change should have taken place was incredible to him. and yet it was a fact. was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms that shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas and the soul that was within him? could it be that what that soul thought, they realized?--that what it dreamed, they made true? or was there some other, more terrible reason? he shuddered, and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, gazing at the picture in sickened horror.
one thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. it had made him conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to sibyl vane. it was not too late to make reparation for that. she could still be his wife. his unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that basil hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of god to us all. there were opiates for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. but here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls.
three oclock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double chime, but dorian gray did not stir. he was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering. he did not know what to do, or what to think. finally, he went over to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved, imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself of madness. he covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain. there is a luxury in self-reproach. when we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. it is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. when dorian had finished the letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.
suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard lord henrys voice outside. "my dear boy, i must see you. let me in at once. i cant bear your shutting yourself up like this."
he made no answer at first, but remained quite still. the knocking still continued and grew louder. yes, it was better to let lord henry in, and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel with him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was inevitable. he jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture, and unlocked the door.
"i am so sorry for it all, dorian," said lord henry as he entered. "but you must not think too much about it."
"do you mean about sibyl vane?" asked the lad.
"yes, of course," answered lord henry, sinking into a chair and slowly pulling off his yellow gloves. "it is dreadful, from one point of view, but it was not your fault. tell me, did you go behind and see her, after the play was over?"
"yes."
"i felt sure you had. did you make a scene with her?"
"i was brutal, harry--perfectly brutal. but it is all right now. i am not sorry for anything that has happened. it has taught me to know myself better."
"ah, dorian, i am so glad you take it in that way! i was afraid i would find you plunged in remorse and tearing that nice curly hair of yours."
"i have got through all that," said dorian, shaking his head and smiling. "i am perfectly happy now. i know what conscience is, to begin with. it is not what you told me it was. it is the divinest thing in us. dont sneer at it, harry, any more--at least not before me. i want to be good. i cant 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. dont say it. dont 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! . . . didnt 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 wouldnt like. you cut life to pieces with your epigrams."
"you know nothing then?"
"what do you mean?"
lord henry walked across the room, and sitting down by dorian gray, took both his hands in his own and held them tightly. "dorian," he said, "my letter--dont be frightened--was to tell you that sibyl vane is dead."
a cry of pain broke from the lads lips, and he leaped to his feet, tearing his hands away from lord henrys grasp. "dead! sibyl dead! it is not true! it is a horrible lie! how dare you say it?"
"it is quite true, dorian," said lord henry, gravely. "it is in all the morning papers. i wrote down to you to ask you not to see 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 ones début with a scandal. one should reserve that to give an interest to ones old age. i suppose they dont know your name at the theatre? if they dont, 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 stammered, in a stifled voice, "harry, did you say an inquest? what did you mean by that? did sibyl--? oh, harry, i cant bear it! but be quick. tell me everything at once."
"harry, harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.
"so i have murdered sibyl vane," said dorian gray, half to himself, "murdered her as surely as if i had cut her little throat with a knife. yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. the birds sing just as happily in my garden. and to-night i am to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup somewhere, i suppose, afterwards. how extraordinarily dramatic life is! if i had read all this in a book, harry, i think i would have wept over it. somehow, now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. here is the first passionate love-letter i have ever written in my life. strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl. can they feel, i wonder, those white silent people we call the dead? sibyl! can she feel, or know, or listen? oh, harry, how i loved her once! it seems years ago to me now. she was everything to me. then came that dreadful night--was it really only last night?-- when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke. she explained it all to me. it was terribly pathetic. but i was not moved a bit. i thought her shallow. suddenly something happened that made me afraid. i cant tell you what it was, but it was terrible. i said i would go back to her. i felt i had done wrong. and now she is dead. my god! my god! harry, what shall i do? you dont 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."
"i suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room and looking horribly pale. "but i thought it was my duty. it is not my fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing what was right. i remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good resolutions--that they are always made too late. mine certainly were." "good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. their origin is pure vanity. their result is absolutely nil. they give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. that is all that can be said for them. they are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account."
"you have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be entitled to give yourself that name, dorian," answered lord henry with his sweet melancholy smile.
the lad frowned. "i dont like that explanation, harry," he rejoined, "but i am glad you dont think i am heartless. i am nothing of the kind. i know i am not. and yet i must admit that this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should. it seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. it has all the terrible beauty of a greek tragedy, a tragedy in which i took a great part, but by which i have not been wounded."
"i must sow poppies in my garden," sighed dorian.
"what is that, harry?" said the lad listlessly.
"oh, the obvious consolation. taking some one elses admirer when one loses ones own. in good society that always whitewashes a woman. but really, dorian, how different sibyl vane must have been from all the women one meets! there is something to me quite beautiful about her death. i am glad i am living in a century when such wonders happen. they make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love."
"i was terribly cruel to her. you forget that."
"i am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. they have wonderfully primitive instincts. we have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. they love being dominated. i am sure you were splendid. i have never seen you really and absolutely angry, but i can fancy how delightful you looked. and, after all, you said something to me the day before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful, but that i see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key to everything."
"what was that, harry?"
"you said to me that sibyl vane represented to you all the heroines of romance--that she was desdemona one night, and ophelia the other; that if she died as juliet, she came to life as imogen."
there was a silence. the evening darkened in the room. noiselessly, and with silver feet, the shadows crept in from the garden. the colours faded wearily out of things.
after some time dorian gray looked up. "you have explained me to myself, harry," he murmured with something of a sigh of relief. "i felt all that you have said, but somehow i was afraid of it, and i could not express it to myself. how well you know me! but we will not talk again of what has happened. it has been a marvellous experience. that is all. i wonder if life has still in store for me anything as marvellous."
"life has everything in store for you, dorian. there is nothing that you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."
"but suppose, harry, i became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? what then?"
"ah, then," said lord henry, rising to go, "then, my dear dorian, you would have to fight for your victories. as it is, they are brought to you. no, you must keep your good looks. we live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. we cannot spare you. and now you had better dress and drive down to the club. we are rather late, as it is."
"i think i shall join you at the opera, harry. i feel too tired to eat anything. what is the number of your sisters box?"
"i dont feel up to it," said dorian listlessly. "but i am awfully obliged to you for all that you have said to me. you are certainly my best friend. no one has ever understood me as you have."
"we are only at the beginning of our friendship, dorian," answered lord henry, shaking him by the hand. "good-bye. i shall see you before nine-thirty, i hope. remember, patti is singing."
as he closed the door behind him, dorian gray touched the bell, and in a few minutes victor appeared with the lamps and drew the blinds down. he waited impatiently for him to go. the man seemed to take an interminable time over everything.
as soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and drew it back. no; there was no further change in the picture. it had received the news of sibyl vanes death before he had known of it himself. it was conscious of the events of life as they occurred. the vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. or was it indifferent to results? did it merely take cognizance of what passed within the soul? he wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.
poor sibyl! what a romance it had all been! she had often mimicked death on the stage. then death himself had touched her and taken her with him. how had she played that dreadful last scene? had she cursed him, as she died? no; she had died for love of him, and love would always be a sacrament to him now. she had atoned for everything by the sacrifice she had made of her life. he would not think any more of what she had made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre. when he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the worlds stage to show the supreme reality of love. a wonderful tragic figure? tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and winsome fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace. he brushed them away hastily and looked again at the picture.
for a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy that existed between him and the picture might cease. it had changed in answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer it might remain unchanged. and yet, who, that knew anything about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young, however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences it might be fraught? besides, was it really under his control? had it indeed been prayer that had produced the substitution? might there not be some curious scientific reason for it all? if thought could exercise its influence upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon dead and inorganic things? nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity? but the reason was of no importance. he would never again tempt by a prayer any terrible power. if the picture was to alter, it was to alter. that was all. why inquire too closely into it?
for there would be a real pleasure in watching it. he would be able to follow his mind into its secret places. this portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. as it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. and when winter came upon it, he would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer. when the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. not one pulse of his life would ever weaken. like the gods of the greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. what did it matter what happened to the coloured image on the canvas? he would be safe. that was everything.
he drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture, smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was already waiting for him. an hour later he was at the opera, and lord henry was leaning over his chair.
Chapter 9
chapter 9
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 cant 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 girls mother? for a moment i thought of following you there. they gave the address in the paper. somewhere in the euston road, isnt 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?"
"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 wont 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 dont want to be at the mercy of my emotions. i want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."
the lad flushed up and, going to the window, looked out for a few moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden. "i owe a great deal to harry, basil," he said at last, "more than i owe to you. you only taught me to be vain."
"well, i am punished for that, dorian--or shall be some day."
"i dont know what you mean, basil," he exclaimed, turning round. "i dont know what you want. what do you want?"
"i want the dorian gray i used to paint," said the artist sadly.
"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 dont think it was a vulgar accident? of course she killed herself."
the elder man buried his face in his hands. "how fearful," he muttered, and a shudder ran through him.
the painter felt strangely moved. the lad was infinitely dear to him, and his personality had been the great turning point in his art. he could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more. after all, his indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away. there was so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble.
"well, dorian," he said at length, with a sad smile, "i wont speak to you again about this horrible thing, after to-day. i only trust your name wont be mentioned in connection with it. the inquest is to take place this afternoon. have they summoned you?"
dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face at the mention of the word "inquest." there was something so crude and vulgar about everything of the kind. "they dont 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 sibyl, basil. i should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and some broken pathetic words."
"i can never sit to you again, basil. it is impossible!" he exclaimed, starting back.
the painter stared at him. "my dear boy, what nonsense!" he cried. "do you mean to say you dont like what i did of you? where is it? why have you pulled the screen in front of it? let me look at it. it is the best thing i have ever done. do take the screen away, dorian. it is simply disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that. i felt the room looked different as i came in."
"my servant has nothing to do with it, basil. you dont imagine i let him arrange my room for me? he settles my flowers for me sometimes-- that is all. no; i did it myself. the light was too strong on the portrait."
"too strong! surely not, my dear fellow? it is an admirable place for it. let me see it." and hallward walked towards the corner of the room.
a cry of terror broke from dorian grays lips, and he rushed between the painter and the screen. "basil," he said, looking very pale, "you must not look at it. i dont wish you to."
"not look at my own work! you are not serious. why shouldnt i look at it?" exclaimed hallward, laughing.
"if you try to look at it, basil, on my word of honour i will never speak to you again as long as i live. i am quite serious. i dont offer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any. but, remember, if you touch this screen, everything is over between us."
hallward was thunderstruck. he looked at dorian gray in absolute amazement. he had never seen him like this before. the lad was actually pallid with rage. his hands were clenched, and the pupils of his eyes were like disks of blue fire. he was trembling all over.
"dorian!"
"dont speak!"
"but what is the matter? of course i wont look at it if you dont 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 shouldnt see my own work, especially as i am going to exhibit it in paris in the autumn. i shall probably have to give it another coat of varnish before that, so i must see it some day, and why not to-day?"
"to exhibit it! you want to exhibit it?" exclaimed dorian gray, a strange sense of terror creeping over him. was the world going to be shown his secret? were people to gape at the mystery of his life? that was impossible. something--he did not know what--had to be done at once.
"yes; i dont suppose you will object to that. georges petit is going to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the rue de seze, which will open the first week in october. the portrait will only be away a month. i should think you could easily spare it for that time. in fact, you are sure to be out of town. and if you keep it always behind a screen, you cant care much about it."
dorian gray passed his hand over his forehead. there were beads of perspiration there. he felt that he was on the brink of a horrible danger. "you told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he cried. "why have you changed your mind? you people who go in for being consistent have just as many moods as others have. the only difference is that your moods are rather meaningless. you cant have forgotten that you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you to send it to any exhibition. you told harry exactly the same thing." he stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. he remembered that lord henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest, "if you want to have a strange quarter of an hour, get basil to tell you why he wont exhibit your picture. he told me why he wouldnt, and it was a revelation to me." yes, perhaps basil, too, had his secret. he would ask him and try.
the painter shuddered in spite of himself. "dorian, if i told you, you might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. i could not bear your doing either of those two things. if you wish me never to look at your picture again, i am content. i have always you to look at. if you wish the best work i have ever done to be hidden from the world, i am satisfied. your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation."
"no, basil, you must tell me," insisted dorian gray. "i think i have a right to know." his feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity had taken its place. he was determined to find out basil hallwards mystery.
"let us sit down, dorian," said the painter, looking troubled. "let us sit down. and just answer me one question. have you noticed in the picture something curious?--something that probably at first did not strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?"
"basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling hands and gazing at him with wild startled eyes.
dorian gray drew a long breath. the colour came back to his cheeks, and a smile played about his lips. the peril was over. he was safe for the time. yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter who had just made this strange confession to him, and wondered if he himself would ever be so dominated by the personality of a friend. lord henry had the charm of being very dangerous. but that was all. he was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of. would there ever be some one who would fill him with a strange idolatry? was that one of the things that life had in store?
"it is extraordinary to me, dorian," said hallward, "that you should have seen this in the portrait. did you really see it?"
"i saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed to me very curious."
"well, you dont mind my looking at the thing now?"
dorian shook his head. "you must not ask me that, basil. i could not possibly let you stand in front of that picture."
"you will some day, surely?"
"never."
"well, perhaps you are right. and now good-bye, dorian. you have been the one person in my life who has really influenced my art. whatever i have done that is good, i owe to you. ah! you dont know what it cost me to tell you all that i have told you."
"it was a very disappointing confession."
"why, what did you expect, dorian? you didnt 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 mustnt talk about worship. it is foolish. you and i are friends, basil, and we must always remain so."
"you have got harry," said the painter sadly.
"oh, harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "harry spends his days in saying what is incredible and his evenings in doing what is improbable. just the sort of life i would like to lead. but still i dont think i would go to harry if i were in trouble. i would sooner go to you, basil."
"you will sit to me again?"
"impossible!"
"pleasanter for you, i am afraid," murmured hallward regretfully. "and now good-bye. i am sorry you wont let me look at the picture once again. but that cant be helped. i quite understand what you feel about it."
as he left the room, dorian gray smiled to himself. poor basil! how little he knew of the true reason! and how strange it was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! how much that strange confession explained to him! the painters absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences-- he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. there seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.
he sighed and touched the bell. the portrait must be hidden away at all costs. he could not run such a risk of discovery again. it had been mad of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a room to which any of his friends had access.
wＷw。xiaoshuo txt.coＭ
Chapter 10
chapter 10
when his servant entered, be looked at him steadfastly and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen. the man was quite impassive and waited for his orders. dorian lit a cigarette and walked over to the glass and glanced into it. he could see the reflection of victors 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 house-keeper that he wanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his men round at once. it seemed to him that as the man left the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen. or was that merely his own fancy?
after a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands, mrs. leaf bustled into the library. he asked her for the key of the schoolroom.
"the old schoolroom, mr. dorian?" she exclaimed. "why, it is full of dust. i must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it. it is not fit for you to see, sir. it is not, indeed."
"i dont want it put straight, leaf. i only want the key."
"well, sir, youll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. why, it hasnt been opened for nearly five years--not since his lordship died."
he winced at the mention of his grandfather. he had hateful memories of him. "that does not matter," he answered. "i simply want to see the place-- that is all. give me the key."
"no, no," he cried petulantly. "thank you, leaf. that will do."
she lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of the household. he sighed and told her to manage things as she thought best. she left the room, wreathed in smiles.
as the door closed, dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round the room. his eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near bologna. yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. it had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself-- something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. what the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. they would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. they would defile it and make it shameful. and yet the thing would still live on. it would be always alive.
he shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. basil would have helped him to resist lord henrys influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. the love that he bore him--for it was really love-- had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. it was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. it was such love as michelangelo had known, and montaigne, and winckelmann, and shakespeare himself. yes, basil could have saved him. but it was too late now. the past could always be annihilated. regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. but the future was inevitable. there were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.
"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."
"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 dont want it to get scratched going upstairs."
"there will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker, beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the long brass chains by which it was suspended. "and, now, where shall we carry it to, mr. gray?"
"i will show you the way, mr. hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. or perhaps you had better go in front. i am afraid it is right at the top of the house. we will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider."
he held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and began the ascent. the elaborate character of the frame had made the picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious protests of mr. hubbard, who had the true tradesmans spirited dislike of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, dorian put his hand to it so as to help them.
"something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they reached the top landing. and he wiped his shiny forehead.
"i am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured dorian as he unlocked the door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
"bring it in, mr. hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "i am sorry i kept you so long. i was thinking of something else."
"always glad to have a rest, mr. gray," answered the frame-maker, who was still gasping for breath. "where shall we put it, sir?"
"oh, anywhere. here: this will do. i dont want to have it hung up. just lean it against the wall. thanks."
"might one look at the work of art, sir?"
when the sound of their footsteps had died away, dorian locked the door and put the key in his pocket. he felt safe now. no one would ever look upon the horrible thing. no eye but his would ever see his shame.
on reaching the library, he found that it was just after five oclock and that the tea had been already brought up. on a little table of dark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre, a present from lady radley, his guardians wife, a pretty professional invalid who had spent the preceding winter in cairo, was lying a note from lord henry, and beside it was a book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled. a copy of the third edition of the st. jamess gazette had been placed on the tea-tray. it was evident that victor had returned. he wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were leaving the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing. he would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed it already, while he had been laying the tea-things. the screen had not been set back, and a blank space was visible on the wall. perhaps some night he might find him creeping upstairs and trying to force the door of the room. it was a horrible thing to have a spy in ones house. he had heard of rich men who had been blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had read a letter, or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of crumpled lace.
he sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened lord henrys 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. jamess languidly, and looked through it. a red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. it drew attention to the following paragraph:
inquest on an actress.--an inquest was held this morning at the bell tavern, hoxton road, by mr. danby, the district coroner, on the body of sibyl vane, a young actress recently engaged at the royal theatre, holborn. a verdict of death by misadventure was returned. considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of dr. birrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased.
he frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across the room and flung the pieces away. how ugly it all was! and how horribly real ugliness made things! he felt a little annoyed with lord henry for having sent him the report. and it was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil. victor might have read it. the man knew more than enough english for that.
perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something. and, yet, what did it matter? what had dorian gray to do with sibyl vanes death? there was nothing to fear. dorian gray had not killed her.
his eye fell on the yellow book that lord henry had sent him. what was it, he wondered. he went towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal stand that had always looked to him like the work of some strange egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an arm-chair and began to turn over the leaves. after a few minutes he became absorbed. it was the strangest book that he had ever read. it seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed.
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 oclock before he reached the club, where he found lord henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.
"i am so sorry, harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault. that book you sent me so fascinated me that i forgot how the time was going."
"yes, i thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his chair.
"i didnt say i liked it, harry. i said it fascinated me. there is a great difference."
"ah, you have discovered that?" murmured lord henry. and they passed into the dining-room.
Chapter 11
chapter 11
for years, dorian gray could not free himself from the influence of this book. or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it. he procured from paris no less than nine large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control. the hero, the wonderful young parisian in whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. and, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it.
in one point he was more fortunate than the novels fantastic hero. he never knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhat grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still water which came upon the young parisian so early in his life, and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a beau that had once, apparently, been so remarkable. it was with an almost cruel joy-- and perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place--that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and the world, he had most dearly valued.
for the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated basil hallward, and many others besides him, seemed never to leave him. even those who had heard the most evil things against him-- and from time to time strange rumours about his mode of life crept through london and became the chatter of the clubs-- could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. he had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world. men who talked grossly became silent when dorian gray entered the room. there was something in the purity of his face that rebuked them. his mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished. they wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid and sensual.
often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that basil hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. the very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. he grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. he would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. he would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. he mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.
there were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the docks which, under an assumed name and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish. but moments such as these were rare. that curiosity about life which lord henry had first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with gratification. the more he knew, the more he desired to know. he had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.
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 ones 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 gipsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave, yellow-shawled tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass and charmed-- or feigned to charm--great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. the harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred him at times when schuberts grace, and chopins 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 chile, and the sonorous green jaspers that are found near cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness. he had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were shaken; the long clarin of the mexicans, into which the performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh ture of the amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that has two vibrating tongues of wood and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the yotl-bells of the aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the one that bernal diaz saw when he went with cortes into the mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a description. the fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that art, like nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the opera, either alone or with lord henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "tannh?user" and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
on one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a costume ball as anne de joyeuse, admiral of france, in a dress covered with five hundred and sixty pearls. this taste enthralled him for years, and, indeed, may be said never to have left him. he would often spend a whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that be had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver, the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed stars, flame-red cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. he loved the red gold of the sunstone, and the moonstones pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the milky opal. he procured from amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise de la vieille roche that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.
he discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. in alphonsos clericalis disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of alexander, the conqueror of emathia was said to have found in the vale of jordan snakes "with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." there was a gem in the brain of the dragon, philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition of golden letters and a scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep and slain. according to the great alchemist, pierre de boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of india made him eloquent. the cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. the garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her colour. the selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids. leonardus camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. the bezoar, that was found in the heart of the arabian deer, was a charm that could cure the plague. in the nests of arabian birds was the aspilates, that, according to democritus, kept the wearer from any danger by fire.
the king of ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand, as the ceremony of his coronation. the gates of the palace of john the priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." over the gable were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," so that the gold might shine by day and the carbuncles by night. in lodges strange romance a margarite of america, it was stated that in the chamber of the queen one could behold "all the chaste ladies of the world, inchased out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults." marco polo had seen the inhabitants of zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the mouths of the dead. a sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to king perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. when the huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it away-- procopius tells the story--nor was it ever found again, though the emperor anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it. the king of malabar had shown to a certain venetian a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god that he worshipped.
when the duke de valentinois, son of alexander vi, visited louis xii of france, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to brantome, and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light. charles of england had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and twenty-one diamonds. richard ii had a coat, valued at thirty thousand marks, which was covered with balas rubies. hall described henry viii, on his way to the tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." the favourites of james i wore ear-rings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. edward ii gave to piers gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap parsemé with pearls. henry ii wore jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients. the ducal hat of charles the rash, the last duke of burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls and studded with sapphires.
how exquisite life had once been! how gorgeous in its pomp and decoration! even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
and so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting the dainty delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates and stitched over with iridescent beetles wings; the dacca gauzes, that from their transparency are known in the east as "woven air," and "running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from java; elaborate yellow chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair blue silks and wrought with fleurs-de-lys, birds and images; veils of lacis worked in hungary point; sicilian brocades and stiff spanish velvets; georgian work, with its gilt coins, and japanese foukousas, with their green-toned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds.
he had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed he had for everything connected with the service of the church. in the long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house, he had stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of the bride of christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering that she seeks for and wounded by self-inflicted pain. he possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. the orphreys were divided into panels representing scenes from the life of the virgin, and the coronation of the virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood. this was italian work of the fifteenth century. another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. the morse bore a seraphs head in gold-thread raised work. the orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was st. sebastian. he had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of the passion and crucifixion of christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs-de-lys; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. in the mystic offices to which such things were put, there was something that quickened his imagination.
for these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne. upon the walls of the lonely locked room where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his own hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him the real degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the purple-and-gold pall as a curtain. for weeks he would not go there, would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart, his wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence. then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to dreadful places near blue gate fields, and stay there, day after day, until he was driven away. on his return he would sit in front of the her times, with that pride of individualism that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling with secret pleasure at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own.
after a few years he could not endure to be long out of england, and gave up the villa that he had shared at trouville with lord henry, as well as the little white walled-in house at algiers where they had more than once spent the winter. he hated to be separated from the picture that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid that during his absence some one might gain access to the room, in spite of the elaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.
he was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. it was true that the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness of the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn from that? he would laugh at 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?
of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice, and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about him. it was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or horror if dorian gray entered the room.
yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in ones own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. there were times when it appeared to dorian gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. he felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of subtlety. it seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own.
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 12
chapter 12
it was on the ninth of november, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.
he was walking home about eleven oclock from lord henrys, where he had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy. at the corner of grosvenor square and south audley street, a man passed him in the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of his grey ulster turned up. he had a bag in his hand. dorian recognized him. it was basil hallward. a strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over him. he made no sign of recognition and went on quickly in the direction of his own house.
but hallward had seen him. dorian heard him first stopping on the pavement and then hurrying after him. in a few moments, his hand was on his arm.
"dorian! what an extraordinary piece of luck! i have been waiting for you in your library ever since nine oclock. finally i took pity on your tired servant and told him to go to bed, as he let me out. i am off to paris by the midnight train, and i particularly wanted to see you before i left. i thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me. but i wasnt quite sure. didnt you recognize me?"
"in this fog, my dear basil? why, i cant even recognize grosvenor square. i believe my house is somewhere about here, but i dont 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?"
"i shall be charmed. but wont you miss your train?" said dorian gray languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his latch-key.
the lamplight struggled out through the fog, and hallward looked at his watch. "i have heaps of time," he answered. "the train doesnt 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 shant 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."
hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed dorian into the library. there was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. the lamps were lit, and an open dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table.
"thanks, i wont have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the corner. "and now, my dear fellow, i want to speak to you seriously. dont frown like that. you make it so much more difficult for me."
"what is it all about?" cried dorian in his petulant way, flinging himself down on the sofa. "i hope it is not about myself. i am tired of myself to-night. i should like to be somebody else."
"it is about yourself," answered hallward in his grave deep voice, "and i must say it to you. i shall only keep you half an hour."
dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. "half an hour!" he murmured.
"it is not much to ask of you, dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake that i am speaking. i think it right that you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in london."
"i dont wish to know anything about them. i love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself dont interest me. they have not got the charm of novelty."
"dorian," cried hallward, "that is not the question. england is bad enough i know, and english society is all wrong. that is the reason why i want you to be fine. you have not been fine. one has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. you have filled them with a madness for pleasure. they have gone down into the depths. you led them there. yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. and there is worse behind. i know you and harry are inseparable. surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sisters name a by-word."
"take care, basil. you go too far."
"to see my soul!" muttered dorian gray, starting up from the sofa and turning almost white from fear.
"yes," answered hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice, "to see your soul. but only god can do that."
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.
hallward started back. "this is blasphemy, dorian!" he cried. "you must not say things like that. they are horrible, and they dont mean anything."
"you think so?" he laughed again.
"i know so. as for what i said to you to-night, i said it for your good. you know i have been always a stanch friend to you."
"dont touch me. finish what you have to say."
a twisted flash of pain shot across the painters face. he paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. after all, what right had he to pry into the life of dorian gray? if he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their throbbing cores of flame.
"i am waiting, basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice.
he turned round. "what i have to say is this," he cried. "you must give me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you. if you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, i shall believe you. deny them, dorian, deny them! cant you see what i am going through? my god! dont tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and shameful."
"that shall be given to you upstairs. i could not give it here. you will not have to read long."
Chapter 13
chapter 13
he passed out of the room and began the ascent, basil hallward following close behind. they walked softly, as men do instinctively at night. the lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. a rising wind made some of the windows rattle.
when they reached the top landing, dorian set the lamp down on the floor, and taking out the key, turned it in the lock. "you insist on knowing, basil?" he asked in a low voice.
"yes."
"i am delighted," he answered, smiling. then he added, somewhat harshly, "you are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything about me. you have had more to do with my life than you think"; and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. a cold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky orange. he shuddered. "shut the door behind you," he whispered, as he placed the lamp on the table.
hallward glanced round him with a puzzled expression. the room looked as if it had not been lived in for years. a faded flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old italian cassone, and an almost empty book-case--that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. as dorian gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was covered with dust and that the carpet was in holes. a mouse ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. there was a damp odour of mildew.
"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 wont? then i must do it myself," said the young man, and he tore the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground.
it was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. he had never done that. still, it was his own picture. he knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. his own picture! what did it mean? why had it altered? he turned and looked at dorian gray with the eyes of a sick man. his mouth twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. he passed his hand across his forehead. it was dank with clammy sweat.
the young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him with that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. there was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. there was simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. he had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.
"what does this mean?" cried hallward, at last. his own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.
"years ago, when i was a boy," said dorian gray, crushing the flower in his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. one day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. in a mad moment that, even now, i dont know whether i regret or not, i made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer. . . ."
"i remember it! oh, how well i remember it! no! the thing is impossible. the room is damp. mildew has got into the canvas. the paints i used had some wretched mineral poison in them. i tell you the thing is impossible."
"ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the window and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained glass.
"you told me you had destroyed it."
"i was wrong. it has destroyed me."
"i dont believe it is my picture."
"cant you see your ideal in it?" said dorian bitterly.
"my ideal, as you call it. . ."
"as you called it."
"there was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. you were to me such an ideal as i shall never meet again. this is the face of a satyr."
"it is the face of my soul."
"christ! what a thing i must have worshipped! it has the eyes of a devil."
"each of us has heaven and hell in him, basil," cried dorian with a wild gesture of despair.
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 ones boyhood? lead us not into temptation. forgive us our sins. wash away our iniquities. let us say that together. the prayer of your pride has been answered. the prayer of your repentance will be answered also. i worshipped you too much. i am punished for it. you worshipped yourself too much. we are both punished."
dorian gray turned slowly around and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. "it is too late, basil," he faltered.
"it is never too late, dorian. let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. isnt there a verse somewhere, though your sins be as scarlet, yet i will make them as white as snow?"
"those words mean nothing to me now."
"hush! dont say that. you have done enough evil in your life. my god! dont you see that accursed thing leering at us?"
dorian gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for basil hallward came over him, as though it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear by those grinning lips. the mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. he glanced wildly around. something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced him. his eye fell on it. he knew what it was. it was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him. he moved slowly towards it, passing hallward as he did so. as soon as he got behind him, he seized it and turned round. hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. he rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the mans 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. three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively, waving grotesque, stiff-fingered hands in the air. he stabbed him twice more, but the man did not move. something began to trickle on the floor. he waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. then he threw the knife on the table, and listened.
he could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. he opened the door and went out on the landing. the house was absolutely quiet. no one was about. for a few seconds he stood bending over the balustrade and peering down into the black seething well of darkness. then he took out the key and returned to the room, locking himself in as he did so.
the thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. had it not been for the red jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that was slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man was simply asleep.
how quickly it had all been done! he felt strangely calm, and walking over to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony. the wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacocks tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. he looked down and saw the policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of his lantern on the doors of the silent houses. the crimson spot of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner and then vanished. a woman in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as she went. now and then she stopped and peered back. once, she began to sing in a hoarse voice. the policeman strolled over and said something to her. she stumbled away, laughing. a bitter blast swept across the square. the gas-lamps flickered and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their black iron branches to and fro. he shivered and went back, closing the window behind him.
having reached the door, he turned the key and opened it. he did not even glance at the murdered man. he felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. the friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due had gone out of his life. that was enough.
then he remembered the lamp. it was a rather curious one of moorish workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would be asked. he hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and took it from the table. he could not help seeing the dead thing. how still it was! how horribly white the long hands looked! it was like a dreadful wax image.
having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. the woodwork creaked and seemed to cry out as if in pain. he stopped several times and waited. no: everything was still. it was merely the sound of his own footsteps.
when he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. they must be hidden away somewhere. he unlocked a secret press that was in the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, and put them into it. he could easily burn them afterwards. then he pulled out his watch. it was twenty minutes to two.
a sudden thought struck him. he put on his fur coat and hat and went out into the hall. there he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the policeman on the pavement outside and seeing the flash of the bulls-eye reflected in the window. he waited and held his breath.
after a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, shutting the door very gently behind him. then he began ringing the bell. in about five minutes his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very drowsy.
"i am sorry to have had to wake you up, francis," he said, stepping in; "but i had forgotten my latch-key. what time is it?"
"ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and blinking.
"ten minutes past two? how horribly late! you must wake me at nine to-morrow. i have some work to do."
"all right, sir."
"did any one call this evening?"
"mr. hallward, sir. he stayed here till eleven, and then be went away to catch his train."
"oh! i am sorry i didnt see him. did he leave any message?"
"no, sir, except that he would write to you from paris, if he did not find you at the club."
"that will do, francis. dont forget to call me at nine to-morrow."
"no, sir."
the man shambled down the passage in his slippers.
dorian gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed into the library. for a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room, biting his lip and thinking. then he took down the blue book from one of the shelves and began to turn over the leaves. "alan campbell, 152, hertford street, mayfair." yes; that was the man he wanted.
Chapter 14
chapter 14
at nine oclock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of chocolate on a tray and opened the shutters. dorian was sleeping quite peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek. he looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.
the man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and as he opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though he had been lost in some delightful dream. yet he had not dreamed at all. his night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. but youth smiles without any reason. it is one of its chiefest charms.
he turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate. the mellow november sun came streaming into the room. the sky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. it was almost like a morning in may.
gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. he winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for basil hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. the dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. how horrible that was! such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.
he felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken or grow mad. there were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. but this was not one of them. it was a thing to be driven out of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might strangle one itself.
when the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, and then got up hastily and dressed himself with even more than his usual care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie and scarf-pin and changing his rings more than once. he spent a long time also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the servants at selby, and going through his correspondence. at some of the letters, he smiled. three of them bored him. one he read several times over and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his face. "that awful thing, a womans memory!" as lord henry had once said.
after he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the table, sat down and wrote two letters. one he put in his pocket, the other he handed to the valet.
"take this round to 152, hertford street, francis, and if mr. campbell is out of town, get his address."
as soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and began sketching upon a piece of paper, drawing first flowers and bits of architecture, and then human faces. suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew seemed to have a fantastic likeness to basil hallward. he frowned, and getting up, went over to the book-case and took out a volume at hazard. he was determined that he would not think about what had happened until it became absolutely necessary that he should do so.
when he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page of the book. it was gautiers emaux et camees, charpentiers 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 lavé:e," with its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune." he glanced at his own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas upon venice:
sur une gamme chromatique,
le sein de peries ruisselant,
la vénus de ladriatique
sort de leau son corps rose et blanc.
les d?mes, sur lazur des ondes
suivant la phrase au pur contour,
que soulève un soupir damour.
lesquif aborde et me dépose,
jetant son amarre au pilier,
devant une fa?ade rose,
sur le marbre dun escalier.
devant une fa?ade rose,
sur le marbre dun escalier.
the whole of venice was in those two lines. he remembered the autumn that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to mad delightful follies. there was romance in every place. but venice, like oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. basil had been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over tintoret. poor basil! what a horrible way for a man to die!
this was the man dorian gray was waiting for. every second he kept glancing at the clock. as the minutes went by he became horribly agitated. at last he got up and began to pace up and down the room, looking like a beautiful caged thing. he took long stealthy strides. his hands were curiously cold.
the suspense became unbearable. time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. he knew what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. it was useless. the brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. then, suddenly, time stopped for him. yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. he stared at it. its very horror made him stone.
at last the door opened and his servant entered. he turned glazed eyes upon him.
"mr. campbell, sir," said the man.
a sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came back to his cheeks.
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.
"i had intended never to enter your house again, gray. but you said it was a matter of life and death." his voice was hard and cold. he spoke with slow deliberation. there was a look of contempt in the steady searching gaze that he turned on dorian. he kept his hands in the pockets of his astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the gesture with which he had been greeted.
"yes: it is a matter of life and death, alan, and to more than one person. sit down."
campbell took a chair by the table, and dorian sat opposite to him. the two mens eyes met. in dorians there was infinite pity. he knew that what he was going to do was dreadful.
after a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he had sent for, "alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table. he has been dead ten hours now. dont stir, and dont 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 dont want to know anything further. whether what you have told me is true or not true doesnt concern me. i entirely decline to be mixed up in your life. keep your horrible secrets to yourself. they dont interest me any more."
"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 devils work you are up to?"
"it was suicide, alan."
"i am glad of that. but who drove him to it? you, i should fancy."
"do you still refuse to do this for me?"
"alan, it was murder. i killed him. you dont 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."
"you must have something to do with it. wait, wait a moment; listen to me. only listen, alan. all i ask of you is to perform a certain scientific experiment. you go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the horrors that you do there dont affect you. if in some hideous dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a leaden table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow through, you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject. you would not turn a hair. you would not believe that you were doing anything wrong. on the contrary, you would probably feel that you were benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind. what i want you to do is merely what you have often done before. indeed, to destroy a body must be far less horrible than what you are accustomed to work at. and, remember, it is the only piece of evidence against me. if it is discovered, i am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless you help me."
"i have no desire to help you. you forget that. i am simply indifferent to the whole thing. it has nothing to do with me."
"dont speak about those days, dorian--they are dead."
"there is no good in prolonging this scene. i absolutely refuse to do anything in the matter. it is insane of you to ask me."
"you refuse?"
"yes."
"i entreat you, alan."
"it is useless."
the same look of pity came into dorian grays eyes. then he stretched out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. he read it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table. having done this, he got up and went over to the window.
campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and opened it. as he read it, his face became ghastly pale and he fell back in his chair. a horrible sense of sickness came over him. he felt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.
after two or three minutes of terrible silence, dorian turned round and came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.
"i am so sorry for you, alan," he murmured, "but you leave me no alternative. i have a letter written already. here it is. you see the address. if you dont help me, i must send it. if you dont help me, i will send it. you know what the result will be. but you are going to help me. it is impossible for you to refuse now. i tried to spare you. you will do me the justice to admit that. you were stern, harsh, offensive. you treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me--no living man, at any rate. i bore it all. now it is for me to dictate terms."
campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.
"i cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter things.
"you must. you have no choice. dont delay."
he hesitated a moment. "is there a fire in the room upstairs?"
"yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."
"i shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory."
"no, alan, you must not leave the house. write out on a sheet of notepaper what you want and my servant will take a cab and bring the things back to you."
campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope to his assistant. dorian took the note up and read it carefully. then he rang the bell and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as soon as possible and to bring the things with him.
as the hall door shut, campbell started nervously, and having got up from the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. he was shivering with a kind of ague. for nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. a fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer.
as the chime struck one, campbell turned round, and looking at dorian gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears. there was something in the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him. "you are infamous, absolutely infamous!" he muttered.
"hush, alan. you have saved my life," said dorian.
"your life? good heavens! what a life that is! you have gone from corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. in doing what i am going to do--what you force me to do-- it is not of your life that i am thinking."
"ah, alan," murmured dorian with a sigh, "i wish you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that i have for you." he turned away as he spoke and stood looking out at the garden. campbell made no answer.
after about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously shaped iron clamps.
"shall i leave the things here, sir?" he asked campbell.
"yes," said dorian. "and i am afraid, francis, that i have another errand for you. what is the name of the man at richmond who supplies selby with orchids?"
"harden, sir."
"yes--harden. you must go down to richmond at once, see harden personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as i ordered, and to have as few white ones as possible. in fact, i dont want any white ones. it is a lovely day, francis, and richmond is a very pretty place-- otherwise i wouldnt bother you about it."
"no trouble, sir. at what time shall i be back?"
dorian looked at campbell. "how long will your experiment take, alan?" he said in a calm indifferent voice. the presence of a third person in the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.
campbell frowned and bit his lip. "it will take about five hours," he answered.
"it will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven, francis. or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. you can have the evening to yourself. i am not dining at home, so i shall not want you."
"thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room.
"now, alan, there is not a moment to be lost. how heavy this chest is! ill 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 dont think i can go in, alan," he murmured.
"it is nothing to me. i dont require you," said campbell coldly.
dorian half opened the door. as he did so, he saw the face of his portrait leering in the sunlight. on the floor in front of it the torn curtain was lying. he remembered that the night before he had forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder.
what was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? how horrible it was!--more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the silent thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.
he heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with half-closed eyes and averted head, walked quickly in, determined that he would not look even once upon the dead man. then, stooping down and taking up the gold-and-purple hanging, he flung it right over the picture.
there he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. he heard campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other things that he had required for his dreadful work. he began to wonder if he and basil hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had thought of each other.
"leave me now," said a stern voice behind him.
he turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been thrust back into the chair and that campbell was gazing into a glistening yellow face. as he was going downstairs, he heard the key being turned in the lock.
it was long after seven when campbell came back into the library. he was pale, but absolutely calm. "i have done what you asked me to do," he muttered "and now, good-bye. let us never see each other again."
"you have saved me from ruin, alan. i cannot forget that," said dorian simply.
as soon as campbell had left, he went upstairs. there was a horrible smell of nitric acid in the room. but the thing that had been sitting at the table was gone.
Chapter 15
大$学$生@小`说"网
chapter 15
that evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large button-hole of parma violets, dorian gray was ushered into lady narboroughs drawing-room by bowing servants. his forehead was throbbing with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he bent over his hostesss hand was as easy and graceful as ever. perhaps one never seems so much at ones ease as when one has to play a part. certainly no one looking at dorian gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. those finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on god and goodness. he himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.
it was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by lady narborough, who was a very clever woman with what lord henry used to describe as the remains of really remarkable ugliness. she had proved an excellent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having buried her husband properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had herself designed, and married off her daughters to some rich, rather elderly men, she devoted herself now to the pleasures of french fiction, french cookery, and french esprit when she could get it.
it was some consolation that harry was to be there, and when the door opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored.
but at dinner he could not eat anything. plate after plate went away untasted. lady narborough kept scolding him for what she called "an insult to poor adolphe, who invented the menu specially for you," and now and then lord henry looked across at him, wondering at his silence and abstracted manner. from time to time the butler filled his glass with champagne. he drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase.
"dorian," said lord henry at last, as the chaud-froid was being handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? you are quite out of sorts."
"i believe he is in love," cried lady narborough, and that he is afraid to tell me for fear i should be jealous. he is quite right. i certainly should."
"dear lady narborough," murmured dorian, smiling, "i have not been in love for a whole week--not, in fact, since madame de ferrol left town."
"how you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the old lady. "i really cannot understand it."
"it is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl, lady narborough," said lord henry. "she is the one link between us and your short frocks."
"she does not remember my short frocks at all, lord henry. but i remember her very well at vienna thirty years ago, and how décolletée she was then."
"she is still décolletée," he answered, taking an olive in his long fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an édition de luxe of a bad french novel. she is really wonderful, and full of surprises. her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. when her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief."
"how can you, harry!" cried dorian.
"it is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "but her third husband, lord henry! you dont mean to say ferrol is the fourth?"
"certainly, lady narborough."
"i dont believe a word of it."
"well, ask mr. gray. he is one of her most intimate friends."
"is it true, mr. gray?"
"she assures me so, lady narborough," said dorian. "i asked her whether, like marguerite de navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at her girdle. she told me she didnt, because none of them had had any hearts at all."
"four husbands! upon my word that is trop de zèle."
"trop daudace, i tell her," said dorian.
"oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. and what is ferrol like? i dont know him."
"the husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes," said lord henry, sipping his wine.
lady narborough hit him with her fan. "lord henry, i am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked."
"but what world says that?" asked lord henry, elevating his eyebrows. "it can only be the next world. this world and i are on excellent terms."
"everybody i know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking her head.
lord henry looked serious for some moments. "it is perfectly monstrous," he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind ones back that are absolutely and entirely true."
"isnt he incorrigible?" cried dorian, leaning forward in his chair.
"i hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "but really, if you all worship madame de ferrol in this ridiculous way, i shall have to marry again so as to be in the fashion."
"you will never marry again, lady narborough," broke in lord henry. "you were far too happy. when a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. when a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. women try their luck; men risk theirs."
"narborough wasnt perfect," cried the old lady.
"if he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," was the rejoinder. "women love us for our defects. if we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. you will never ask me to dinner again after saying this, i am afraid, lady narborough, but it is quite true."
"of course it is true, lord henry. if we women did not love you for your defects, where would you all be? not one of you would ever be married. you would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. not, however, that that would alter you much. nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men."
"fin de siècle," murmured lord henry.
"fin du globe," answered his hostess.
"i wish it were fin du globe," said dorian with a sigh. "life is a great disappointment."
"ah, my dear," cried lady narborough, putting on her gloves, "dont tell me that you have exhausted life. when a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him. lord henry is very wicked, and i sometimes wish that i had been; but you are made to be good-- you look so good. i must find you a nice wife. lord henry, dont you think that mr. gray should get married?"
"i am always telling him so, lady narborough," said lord henry with a bow.
"well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. i shall go through debrett carefully to-night and draw out a list of all the eligible young ladies."
"with their ages, lady narborough?" asked dorian.
"of course, with their ages, slightly edited. but nothing must be done in a hurry. i want it to be what the morning post calls a suitable alliance, and i want you both to be happy."
"what nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed lord henry. "a man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."
"i like men who have a future and women who have a past," he answered. "or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?"
"i fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "a thousand pardons, my dear lady ruxton," she added, "i didnt see you hadnt finished your cigarette."
"never mind, lady narborough. i smoke a great deal too much. i am going to limit myself, for the future."
"pray dont, lady ruxton," said lord henry. "moderation is a fatal thing. enough is as bad as a meal. more than enough is as good as a feast."
"now, mind you dont stay too long over your politics and scandal," cried lady narborough from the door. "if you do, we are sure to squabble upstairs."
a smile curved lord henrys lips, and he turned round and looked at dorian.
"are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "you seemed rather out of sorts at dinner."
"i am quite well, harry. i am tired. that is all."
"you were charming last night. the little duchess is quite devoted to you. she tells me she is going down to selby."
"is monmouth to be there, too?"
"oh, yes, harry."
"he bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. she is very clever, too clever for a woman. she lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. it is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. white porcelain feet, if you like. they have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. she has had experiences."
"how long has she been married?" asked dorian.
"oh, the willoughbys, lord rugby and his wife, our hostess, geoffrey clouston, the usual set. i have asked lord grotrian."
"i like him," said lord henry. "a great many people dont, but i find him charming. he atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always absolutely over-educated. he is a very modern type."
dorian glanced at him hurriedly and frowned.
"no, harry," he said at last, "i did not get home till nearly three."
"did you go to the club?"
"yes," he answered. then he bit his lip. "no, i dont mean that. i didnt go to the club. i walked about. i forget what i did. . . . how inquisitive you are, harry! you always want to know what one has been doing. i always want to forget what i have been doing. i came in at half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. i had left my latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in. if you want any corroborative evidence on the subject, you can ask him."
lord henry shrugged his shoulders. "my dear fellow, as if i cared! let us go up to the drawing-room. no sherry, thank you, mr. chapman. something has happened to you, dorian. tell me what it is. you are not yourself to-night."
yet it had to be done. he realized that, and when he had locked the door of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust basil hallwards coat and bag. a huge fire was blazing. he piled another log on it. the smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was horrible. it took him three-quarters of an hour to consume everything. at the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some algerian pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and forehead with a cool musk-scented vinegar.
suddenly he started. his eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed nervously at his underlip. between two of the windows stood a large florentine cabinet, made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and blue lapis. he watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet almost loathed. his breath quickened. a mad craving came over him. he lit a cigarette and then threw it away. his eyelids drooped till the long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. but he still watched the cabinet. at last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying, went over to it, and having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. a triangular drawer passed slowly out. his fingers moved instinctively towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. it was a small chinese box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the sides patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with round crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. he opened it. inside was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and persistent.
he hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his face. then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly hot, he drew himself up and glanced at the clock. it was twenty minutes to twelve. he put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so, and went into his bedroom.
the man shook his head. "it is too far for me," he muttered.
"here is a sovereign for you," said dorian. "you shall have another if you drive fast."
"all right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," and after his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove rapidly towards the river.
Chapter 16
chapter 16
a cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the dripping mist. the public-houses were just closing, and dim men and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. from some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. in others, drunkards brawled and screamed.
lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, dorian gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great city, and now and then he repeated to himself the words that lord henry had said to him on the first day they had met, "to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." yes, that was the secret. he had often tried it, and would try it again now. there were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.
the moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. from time to time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. the gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. once the man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile. a steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles. the sidewindows of the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.
"to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul!" how the words rang in his ears! his soul, certainly, was sick to death. was it true that the senses could cure it? innocent blood had been spilled. what could atone for that? ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. indeed, what right had basil to have spoken to him as he had done? who had made him a judge over others? he had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to be endured.
on and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each step. he thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster. the hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. his throat burned and his delicate hands twitched nervously together. he struck at the horse madly with his stick. the driver laughed and whipped up. he laughed in answer, and the man was silent.
the way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some sprawling spider. the monotony became unbearable, and as the mist thickened, he felt afraid.
then they passed by lonely brickfields. the fog was lighter here, and he could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange, fanlike tongues of fire. a dog barked as they went by, and far away in the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. the horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside and broke into a gallop.
after some time they left the clay road and rattled again over rough-paven streets. most of the windows were dark, but now and then fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind. he watched them curiously. they moved like monstrous marionettes and made gestures like live things. he hated them. a dull rage was in his heart. as they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them from an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. the driver beat at them with his whip.
it is said that passion makes one think in a circle. certainly with hideous iteration the bitten lips of dorian gray shaped and reshaped those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would still have dominated his temper. from cell to cell of his brain crept the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all mans appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for that very reason. ugliness was the one reality. the coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song. they were what he needed for forgetfulness. in three days he would be free.
suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. over the low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the black masts of ships. wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to the yards.
"somewhere about here, sir, aint it?" he asked huskily through the trap.
dorian started and peered round. "this will do," he answered, and having got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. here and there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. the light shook and splintered in the puddles. a red glare came from an outward-bound steamer that was coaling. the slimy pavement looked like a wet mackintosh.
he hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if he was being followed. in about seven or eight minutes he reached a small shabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. in one of the top-windows stood a lamp. he stopped and gave a peculiar knock.
at the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a darkened chamber. as dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium met him. he heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quivered with pleasure. when he entered, a young man with smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner.
"you here, adrian?" muttered dorian.
"where else should i be?" he answered, listlessly. "none of the chaps will speak to me now."
"i thought you had left england."
"darlington is not going to do anything. my brother paid the bill at last. george doesnt speak to me either. . . . i dont care," he added with a sigh. "as long as one has this stuff, one doesnt want friends. i think i have had too many friends."
dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. the twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. he knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new joy. they were better off than he was. he was prisoned in thought. memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away. from time to time he seemed to see the eyes of basil hallward looking at him. yet he felt he could not stay. the presence of adrian singleton troubled him. he wanted to be where no one would know who he was. he wanted to escape from himself.
"i am going on to the other place," he said after a pause.
"on the wharf?"
"yes."
"that mad-cat is sure to be there. they wont have her in this place now."
dorian shrugged his shoulders. "i am sick of women who love one. women who hate one are much more interesting. besides, the stuff is better."
"much the same."
"i dont want anything," murmured the young man.
"never mind."
adrian singleton rose up wearily and followed dorian to the bar. a half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of them. the women sidled up and began to chatter. dorian turned his back on them and said something in a low voice to adrian singleton.
a crooked smile, like a malay crease, writhed across the face of one of the women. "we are very proud to-night," she sneered.
"for gods sake dont talk to me," cried dorian, stamping his foot on the ground. "what do you want? money? here it is. dont ever talk to me again."
"its no use," sighed adrian singleton. "i dont care to go back. what does it matter? i am quite happy here."
"you will write to me if you want anything, wont you?" said dorian, after a pause.
"perhaps."
"good night, then."
"good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping his parched mouth with a handkerchief.
dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. as he drew the curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the woman who had taken his money. "there goes the devils bargain!" she hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.
"curse you!" he answered, "dont call me that."
she snapped her fingers. "prince charming is what you like to be called, aint it?" she yelled after him.
the drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly round. the sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. he rushed out as if in pursuit.
dorian gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. his meeting with adrian singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as basil hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. he bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. yet, after all, what did it matter to him? ones days were too brief to take the burden of anothers errors on ones shoulders. each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. the only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. one had to pay over and over again, indeed. in her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
there are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. they move to their terrible end as automatons move. choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. for all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. when that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.
callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for rebellion, dorian gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself suddenly seized from behind, and before be had time to defend himself, he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat.
he struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the tightening fingers away. in a second he heard the click of a revolver, and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head, and the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him.
"what do you want?" he gasped.
"keep quiet," said the man. "if you stir, i shoot you."
"you are mad. what have i done to you?"
"you wrecked the life of sibyl vane," was the answer, "and sibyl vane was my sister. she killed herself. i know it. her death is at your door. i swore i would kill you in return. for years i have sought you. i had no clue, no trace. the two people who could have described you were dead. i knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. i heard it to-night by chance. make your peace with god, for to-night you are going to die."
dorian gray grew sick with fear. "i never knew her," he stammered. "i never heard of her. you are mad."
"you had better confess your sin, for as sure as i am james vane, you are going to die." there was a horrible moment. dorian did not know what to say or do. "down on your knees!" growled the man. "i give you one minute to make your peace--no more. i go on board to-night for india, and i must do my job first. one minute. thats all."
dorians arms fell to his side. paralysed with terror, he did not know what to do. suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. "stop," he cried. "how long ago is it since your sister died? quick, tell me!"
"eighteen years," said the man. "why do you ask me? what do years matter?"
"eighteen years," laughed dorian gray, with a touch of triumph in his voice. "eighteen years! set me under the lamp and look at my face!"
james vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant. then he seized dorian gray and dragged him from the archway.
dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the unstained purity of youth. he seemed little more than a lad of twenty summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been when they had parted so many years ago. it was obvious that this was not the man who had destroyed her life.
he loosened his hold and reeled back. "my god! my god!" he cried, "and i would have murdered you!"
"forgive me, sir," muttered james vane. "i was deceived. a chance word i heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track."
"you had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into trouble," said dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down the street.
james vane stood on the pavement in horror. he was trembling from head to foot. after a little while, a black shadow that had been creeping along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him with stealthy footsteps. he felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round with a start. it was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar.
"why didnt you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face quite close to his. "i knew you were following him when you rushed out from dalys. you fool! you should have killed him. he has lots of money, and hes as bad as bad."
"he is not the man i am looking for," he answered, "and i want no mans money. i want a mans life. the man whose life i want must be nearly forty now. this one is little more than a boy. thank god, i have not got his blood upon my hands."
the woman gave a bitter laugh. "little more than a boy!" she sneered. "why, man, its nigh on eighteen years since prince charming made me what i am."
"you lie!" cried james vane.
she raised her hand up to heaven. "before god i am telling the truth," she cried.
"before god?"
"you swear this?"
"i swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "but dont give me away to him," she whined; "i am afraid of him. let me have some money for my nights lodging."
he broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street, but dorian gray had disappeared. when he looked back, the woman had vanished also.
Chapter 17
chapter 17
a week later dorian gray was sitting in the conservatory at selby royal, talking to the pretty duchess of monmouth, who with her husband, a jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. it was tea-time, and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that stood on the table lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at which the duchess was presiding. her white hands were moving daintily among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that dorian had whispered to her. lord henry was lying back in a silk-draped wicker chair, looking at them. on a peach-coloured divan sat lady narborough, pretending to listen to the dukes description of the last brazilian beetle that he had added to his collection. three young men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women. the house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to arrive on the next day.
"what are you two talking about?" said lord henry, strolling over to the table and putting his cup down. "i hope dorian has told you about my plan for rechristening everything, gladys. it is a delightful idea."
"but i dont want to be rechristened, harry," rejoined the duchess, looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "i am quite satisfied with my own name, and i am sure mr. gray should be satisfied with his."
"then what should we call you, harry?" she asked.
"his name is prince paradox," said dorian.
"i recognize him in a flash," exclaimed the duchess.
"i wont hear of it," laughed lord henry, sinking into a chair. "from a label there is no escape! i refuse the title."
"royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.
"you wish me to defend my throne, then?"
"yes.
"i give the truths of to-morrow."
"i prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.
"you disarm me, gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood.
"of your shield, harry, not of your spear."
"i never tilt against beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand.
"that is your error, harry, believe me. you value beauty far too much."
"how can you say that? i admit that i think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. but on the other hand, no one is more ready than i am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."
"ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, gladys. you, as a good tory, must not underrate them. beer, the bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our england what she is."
"you dont like your country, then?" she asked.
"i live in it."
"that you may censure it the better."
"would you have me take the verdict of europe on it?" he inquired.
"what do they say of us?"
"that tartuffe has emigrated to england and opened a shop."
"is that yours, harry?"
"i give it to you."
"i could not use it. it is too true."
"you need not be afraid. our countrymen never recognize a description."
"they are practical."
"they are more cunning than practical. when they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."
"still, we have done great things."
"great things have been thrust on us, gladys."
"we have carried their burden."
"only as far as the stock exchange."
she shook her head. "i believe in the race," she cried.
"it represents the survival of the pushing."
"it has development."
"decay fascinates me more."
"what of art?" she asked.
"it is a malady."
"love?"
"an illusion."
"religion?"
"the fashionable substitute for belief."
"you are a sceptic."
"never! scepticism is the beginning of faith."
"what are you?"
"to define is to limit."
"give me a clue."
"threads snap. you would lose your way in the labyrinth."
"you bewilder me. let us talk of some one else."
"our host is a delightful topic. years ago he was christened prince charming."
"ah! dont remind me of that," cried dorian gray.
"our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the duchess, colouring. "i believe he thinks that monmouth married me on purely scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern butterfly."
"well, i hope he wont stick pins into you, duchess," laughed dorian.
"oh! my maid does that already, mr. gray, when she is annoyed with me."
"and what does she get annoyed with you about, duchess?"
"how unreasonable of her! you should give her warning."
"i darent, mr. gray. why, she invents hats for me. you remember the one i wore at lady hilstones garden-party? you dont, but it is nice of you to pretend that you do. well, she made if out of nothing. all good hats are made out of nothing."
"like all good reputations, gladys," interrupted lord henry. "every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. to be popular one must be a mediocrity."
"not with women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. i assure you we cant bear mediocrities. we women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all."
"it seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured dorian.
"ah! then, you never really love, mr. gray," answered the duchess with mock sadness.
"my dear gladys!" cried lord henry. "how can you say that? romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. it merely intensifies it. we can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."
"even when one has been wounded by it, harry?" asked the duchess after a pause.
"especially when one has been wounded by it," answered lord henry.
the duchess turned and looked at dorian gray with a curious expression in her eyes. "what do you say to that, mr. gray?" she inquired.
dorian hesitated for a moment. then he threw his head back and laughed. "i always agree with harry, duchess."
"even when he is wrong?"
"harry is never wrong, duchess."
"and does his philosophy make you happy?"
"i have never searched for happiness. who wants happiness? i have searched for pleasure."
"and found it, mr. gray?"
"often. too often."
the duchess sighed. "i am searching for peace," she said, "and if i dont go and dress, i shall have none this evening."
"let me get you some orchids, duchess," cried dorian, starting to his feet and walking down the conservatory.
"you are flirting disgracefully with him," said lord henry to his cousin. "you had better take care. he is very fascinating."
"if he were not, there would be no battle."
"greek meets greek, then?"
"i am on the side of the trojans. they fought for a woman."
"they were defeated."
"there are worse things than capture," she answered.
"you gallop with a loose rein."
"pace gives life," was the riposte.
"i shall write it in my diary to-night."
"what?"
"that a burnt child loves the fire."
"i am not even singed. my wings are untouched."
"you use them for everything, except flight."
"courage has passed from men to women. it is a new experience for us."
"you have a rival."
"who?"
he laughed. "lady narborough," he whispered. "she perfectly adores him."
"you fill me with apprehension. the appeal to antiquity is fatal to us who are romanticists."
"romanticists! you have all the methods of science."
"men have educated us."
"but not explained you."
"describe us as a sex," was her challenge.
"sphinxes without secrets."
she looked at him, smiling. "how long mr. gray is!" she said. "let us go and help him. i have not yet told him the colour of my frock."
"ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, gladys."
"that would be a premature surrender."
"romantic art begins with its climax."
"i must keep an opportunity for retreat."
"in the parthian manner?"
"they found safety in the desert. i could not do that."
"women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had he finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory came a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. everybody started up. the duchess stood motionless in horror. and with fear in his eyes, lord henry rushed through the flapping palms to find dorian gray lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a deathlike swoon.
he was carried at once into the blue drawing-room and laid upon one of the sofas. after a short time, he came to himself and looked round with a dazed expression.
"what has happened?" he asked. "oh! i remember. am i safe here, harry?" he began to tremble.
he went to his room and dressed. there was a wild recklessness of gaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of james vane watching him.
wＷw。xiaoshuo txt.coＭ
Chapter 18
大,学生,小,说,",网
chapter 18
the next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself. the consciousness of being hunted, snared, tracked down, had begun to dominate him. if the tapestry did but tremble in the wind, he shook. the dead leaves that were blown against the leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild regrets. when he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailors face peering through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its hand upon his heart.
it was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. there was something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. but it was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had caused the change. his own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. with subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so. their strong passions must either bruise or bend. they either slay the man, or themselves die. shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. the loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude. besides, he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stricken imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity and not a little of contempt.
after breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. the crisp frost lay like salt upon the grass. the sky was an inverted cup of blue metal. a thin film of ice bordered the flat, reed-grown lake.
at the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of sir geoffrey clouston, the duchesss brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of his gun. he jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take the mare home, made his way towards his guest through the withered bracken and rough undergrowth.
"have you had good sport, geoffrey?" he asked.
"not very good, dorian. i think most of the birds have gone to the open. i dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new ground."
dorian strolled along by his side. the keen aromatic air, the brown and red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the beaters ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns that followed, fascinated him and filled him with a sense of delightful freedom. he was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the high indifference of joy.
suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front of them, with black-tipped ears erect and long hinder limbs throwing it forward, started a hare. it bolted for a thicket of alders. sir geoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the animals grace of movement that strangely charmed dorian gray, and he cried out at once, "dont shoot it, geoffrey. let it live."
"good heavens! i have hit a beater!" exclaimed sir geoffrey. "what an ass the man was to get in front of the guns! stop shooting there!" he called out at the top of his voice. "a man is hurt."
the head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.
"where, sir? where is he?" he shouted. at the same time, the firing ceased along the line.
"here," answered sir geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the thicket. "why on earth dont you keep your men back? spoiled my shooting for the day."
after a few moments--that were to him, in his perturbed state, like endless hours of pain--he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. he started and looked round.
"dorian," said lord henry, "i had better tell them that the shooting is stopped for to-day. it would not look well to go on."
"i wish it were stopped for ever, harry," he answered bitterly. "the whole thing is hideous and cruel. is the man ... ?"
he could not finish the sentence.
they walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly fifty yards without speaking. then dorian looked at lord henry and said, with a heavy sigh, "it is a bad omen, harry, a very bad omen."
"what is?" asked lord henry. "oh! this accident, i suppose. my dear fellow, it cant be helped. it was the mans own fault. why did he get in front of the guns? besides, it is nothing to us. it is rather awkward for geoffrey, of course. it does not do to pepper beaters. it makes people think that one is a wild shot. and geoffrey is not; he shoots very straight. but there is no use talking about the matter."
dorian shook his head. "it is a bad omen, harry. i feel as if something horrible were going to happen to some of us. to myself, perhaps," he added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.
the elder man laughed. "the only horrible thing in the world is ennui, dorian. that is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness. but we are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering about this thing at dinner. i must tell them that the subject is to be tabooed. as for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. destiny does not send us heralds. she is too wise or too cruel for that. besides, what on earth could happen to you, dorian? you have everything in the world that a man can want. there is no one who would not be delighted to change places with you."
dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. the man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at lord henry in a hesitating manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master. "her grace told me to wait for an answer," he murmured.
"how fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed lord henry. "it is one of the qualities in them that i admire most. a woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."
"how fond you are of saying dangerous things, harry! in the present instance, you are quite astray. i like the duchess very much, but i dont love her."
"and the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are excellently matched."
"you are talking scandal, harry, and there is never any basis for scandal."
"the basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said lord henry, lighting a cigarette.
"you would sacrifice anybody, harry, for the sake of an epigram."
"the world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer.
"safe from what, dorian? you are in some trouble. why not tell me what it is? you know i would help you."
"i cant tell you, harry," he answered sadly. "and i dare say it is only a fancy of mine. this unfortunate accident has upset me. i have a horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me."
"what nonsense!"
"i have heard all about it, mr. gray," she answered. "poor geoffrey is terribly upset. and it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare. how curious!"
"yes, it was very curious. i dont know what made me say it. some whim, i suppose. it looked the loveliest of little live things. but i am sorry they told you about the man. it is a hideous subject."
"how horrid of you, harry!" cried the duchess. "isnt it, mr. gray? harry, mr. gray is ill again. he is going to faint."
dorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled. "it is nothing, duchess," he murmured; "my nerves are dreadfully out of order. that is all. i am afraid i walked too far this morning. i didnt hear what harry said. was it very bad? you must tell me some other time. i think i must go and lie down. you will excuse me, wont you?"
they had reached the great flight of steps that led from the conservatory on to the terrace. as the glass door closed behind dorian, lord henry turned and looked at the duchess with his slumberous eyes. "are you very much in love with him?" he asked.
she did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. "i wish i knew," she said at last.
he shook his head. "knowledge would be fatal. it is the uncertainty that charms one. a mist makes things wonderful."
"one may lose ones way."
"all ways end at the same point, my dear gladys."
"what is that?"
"disillusion."
"it was my debut in life," she sighed.
"it came to you crowned."
"i am tired of strawberry leaves."
"only in public."
"you would miss them," said lord henry.
"i will not part with a petal."
"monmouth has ears."
"old age is dull of hearing."
"has he never been jealous?"
"i wish he had been."
he glanced about as if in search of something. "what are you looking for?" she inquired.
"the button from your foil," he answered. "you have dropped it."
she laughed. "i have still the mask."
"it makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.
she laughed again. her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit.
at five oclock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham at the door by eight-thirty. he was determined not to sleep another night at selby royal. it was an ill-omened place. death walked there in the sunlight. the grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.
then he wrote a note to lord henry, telling him that he was going up to town to consult his doctor and asking him to entertain his guests in his absence. as he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to the door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see him. he frowned and bit his lip. "send him in," he muttered, after some moments hesitation.
as soon as the man entered, dorian pulled his chequebook out of a drawer and spread it out before him.
"yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.
"was the poor fellow married? had he any people dependent on him?" asked dorian, looking bored. "if so, i should not like them to be left in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary."
"dont know who he is?" said dorian, listlessly. "what do you mean? wasnt he one of your men?"
"no, sir. never saw him before. seems like a sailor, sir."
the pen dropped from dorian grays hand, and he felt as if his heart had suddenly stopped beating. "a sailor?" he cried out. "did you say a sailor?"
"yes, sir. he looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on both arms, and that kind of thing."
"was there anything found on him?" said dorian, leaning forward and looking at the man with startled eyes. "anything that would tell his name?"
"some money, sir--not much, and a six-shooter. there was no name of any kind. a decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. a sort of sailor we think."
dorian started to his feet. a terrible hope fluttered past him. he clutched at it madly. "where is the body?" he exclaimed. "quick! i must see it at once."
"it is in an empty stable in the home farm, sir. the folk dont like to have that sort of thing in their houses. they say a corpse brings bad luck."
"the home farm! go there at once and meet me. tell one of the grooms to bring my horse round. no. never mind. ill go to the stables myself. it will save time."
in less than a quarter of an hour, dorian gray was galloping down the long avenue as hard as he could go. the trees seemed to sweep past him in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his path. once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him. he lashed her across the neck with his crop. she cleft the dusky air like an arrow. the stones flew from her hoofs.
at last he reached the home farm. two men were loitering in the yard. he leaped from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them. in the farthest stable a light was glimmering. something seemed to tell him that the body was there, and he hurried to the door and put his hand upon the latch.
there he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a discovery that would either make or mar his life. then he thrust the door open and entered.
on a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers. a spotted handkerchief had been placed over the face. a coarse candle, stuck in a bottle, sputtered beside it.
"take that thing off the face. i wish to see it," he said, clutching at the door-post for support.
when the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward. a cry of joy broke from his lips. the man who had been shot in the thicket was james vane.
he stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. as he rode home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.
Chapter 19
chapter 19
there is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," cried lord henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with rose-water. "you are quite perfect. pray, dont change."
dorian gray shook his head. "no, harry, i have done too many dreadful things in my life. i am not going to do any more. i began my good actions yesterday."
"where were you yesterday?"
"in the country, harry. i was staying at a little inn by myself."
"my dear boy," said lord henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. there are no temptations there. that is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. there are only two ways by which man can reach it. one is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate."
"culture and corruption," echoed dorian. "i have known something of both. it seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together. for i have a new ideal, harry. i am going to alter. i think i have altered."
"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, dont you? how long ago that seems! well, hetty was not one of our own class, of course. she was simply a girl in a village. but i really loved her. i am quite sure that i loved her. all during this wonderful may that we have been having, i used to run down and see her two or three times a week. yesterday she met me in a little orchard. the apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. we were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. suddenly i determined to leave her as flowerlike as i had found her."
"i should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, dorian," interrupted lord henry. "but i can finish your idyll for you. you gave her good advice and broke her heart. that was the beginning of your reformation."
"harry, you are horrible! you mustnt say these dreadful things. hettys heart is not broken. of course, she cried and all that. but there is no disgrace upon her. she can live, like perdita, in her garden of mint and marigold."
"and weep over a faithless florizel," said lord henry, laughing, as he leaned back in his chair. "my dear dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods. do you think this girl will ever be really content now with any one of her own rank? i suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman. well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. from a moral point of view, i cannot say that i think much of your great renunciation. even as a beginning, it is poor. besides, how do you know that hetty isnt floating at the present moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like ophelia?"
"i cant bear this, harry! you mock at everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. i am sorry i told you now. i dont 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. dont let us talk about it any more, and dont 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 basils disappearance."
"i should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said dorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly.
"my dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the british public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months. they have been very fortunate lately, however. they have had my own divorce-case and alan campbells suicide. now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist. scotland yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for paris by the midnight train on the ninth of november was poor basil, and the french police declare that basil never arrived in paris at all. i suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in san francisco. it is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at san francisco. it must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world."
"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 dont want to think about him. death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. i hate it."
"why?" said the younger man wearily.
"because," said lord henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays except that. death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. let us have our coffee in the music-room, dorian. you must play chopin to me. the man with whom my wife ran away played chopin exquisitely. poor victoria! i was very fond of her. the house is rather lonely without her. of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. but then one regrets the loss even of ones worst habits. perhaps one regrets them the most. they are such an essential part of ones personality."
dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the next room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white and black ivory of the keys. after the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, and looking over at lord henry, said, "harry, did it ever occur to you that basil was murdered?"
lord henry yawned. "basil was very popular, and always wore a waterbury watch. why should he have been murdered? he was not clever enough to have enemies. of course, he had a wonderful genius for painting. but a man can paint like velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. basil was really rather dull. he only interested me once, and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you and that you were the dominant motive of his art."
"i was very fond of basil," said dorian with a note of sadness in his voice. "but dont people say that he was murdered?"
"oh, some of the papers do. it does not seem to me to be at all probable. i know there are dreadful places in paris, but basil was not the sort of man to have gone to them. he had no curiosity. it was his chief defect."
"what would you say, harry, if i told you that i had murdered basil?" said the younger man. he watched him intently after he had spoken.
dorian heaved a sigh, and lord henry strolled across the room and began to stroke the head of a curious java parrot, a large, grey-plumaged bird with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch. as his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black, glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards and forwards.
"i forget," said dorian. "i suppose i did. but i never really liked it. i am sorry i sat for it. the memory of the thing is hateful to me. why do you talk of it? it used to remind me of those curious lines in some play--hamlet, i think--how do they run?--
like the painting of a sorrow,
a face without a heart.
yes: that is what it was like."
lord henry laughed. "if a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
dorian gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano. "like the painting of a sorrow," he repeated, "a face without a heart."
the elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "by the way, dorian," he said after a pause, "what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose--how does the quotation run?-- his own soul?"
the music jarred, and dorian gray started and stared at his friend. "why do you ask me that, harry?"
"my dear fellow," said lord henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise, "i asked you because i thought you might be able to give me an answer. that is all. i was going through the park last sunday, and close by the marble arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to some vulgar street-preacher. as i passed by, i heard the man yelling out that question to his audience. it struck me as being rather dramatic. london is very rich in curious effects of that kind. a wet sunday, an uncouth christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very good in its way, quite a suggestion. i thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not. i am afraid, however, he would not have understood me."
"dont, harry. the soul is a terrible reality. it can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. it can be poisoned, or made perfect. there is a soul in each one of us. i know it."
"do you feel quite sure of that, dorian?"
"quite sure."
"ah! then it must be an illusion. the things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. that is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance. how grave you are! dont be so serious. what have you or i to do with the superstitions of our age? no: we have given up our belief in the soul. play me something. play me a nocturne, dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. you must have some secret. i am only ten years older than you are, and i am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. you are really wonderful, dorian. you have never looked more charming than you do to-night. you remind me of the day i saw you first. you were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. you have changed, of course, but not in appearance. i wish you would tell me your secret. to get back my youth i would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. youth! there is nothing like it. its absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. the only people to whose opinions i listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. they seem in front of me. life has revealed to them her latest wonder. as for the aged, i always contradict the aged. i do it on principle. if you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely nothing. how lovely that thing you are playing is! i wonder, did chopin write it at majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes? it is marvellously romantic. what a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! dont stop. i want music to-night. it seems to me that you are the young apollo and that i am marsyas listening to you. i have sorrows, dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. the tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. i am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. ah, dorian, how happy you are! what an exquisite life you have had! you have drunk deeply of everything. you have crushed the grapes against your palate. nothing has been hidden from you. and it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. it has not marred you. you are still the same."
"i am not the same, harry."
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 dont know everything about me. i think that if you did, even you would turn from me. you laugh. dont laugh."
"i hope not," said dorian with a sad look in his eyes. "but i am tired to-night, harry. i shant go to the club. it is nearly eleven, and i want to go to bed early."
"do stay. you have never played so well as to-night. there was something in your touch that was wonderful. it had more expression than i had ever heard from it before."
"it is because i am going to be good," he answered, smiling. "i am a little changed already."
"you cannot change to me, dorian," said lord henry. "you and i will always be friends."
"yet you poisoned me with a book once. i should not forgive that. harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. it does harm."
"certainly. the park is quite lovely now. i dont think there have been such lilacs since the year i met you."
"very well. i shall be here at eleven," said dorian. "good night, harry." as he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. then he sighed and went out.
Chapter 20
chapter 20
it was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. as he strolled home, smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. he heard one of them whisper to the other, "that is dorian gray." he remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared at, or talked about. he was tired of hearing his own name now. half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that no one knew who he was. he had often told the girl whom he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. he had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly. what a laugh she had!--just like a thrush singing. and how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! she knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.
when he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. he sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began to think over some of the things that lord henry had said to him.
was it really true that one could never change? he felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood-- his rose-white boyhood, as lord henry had once called it. he knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. but was it all irretrievable? was there no hope for him?
ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth! all his failure had been due to that. better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it. there was purification in punishment. not "forgive us our sins" but "smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just god.
the curiously carved mirror that lord henry had given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed cupids laughed round it as of old. he took it up, as he had done on that night of horror when be had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: "the world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. the curves of your lips rewrite history." the phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself. then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. it was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. but for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. his beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. what was youth at best? a green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. why had he worn its livery? youth had spoiled him.
it was better not to think of the past. nothing could alter that. it was of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. james vane was hidden in a nameless grave in selby churchyard. alan campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know. the excitement, such as it was, over basil hallwards disappearance would soon pass away. it was already waning. he was perfectly safe there. nor, indeed, was it the death of basil hallward that weighed most upon his mind. it was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life. he could not forgive him that. it was the portrait that had done everything. basil had said things to him that were unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. the murder had been simply the madness of a moment. as for alan campbell, his suicide had been his own act. he had chosen to do it. it was nothing to him.
a new life! that was what he wanted. that was what he was waiting for. surely he had begun it already. he had spared one innocent thing, at any rate. he would never again tempt innocence. he would be good.
as he thought of hetty merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the locked room had changed. surely it was not still so horrible as it had been? perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil passion from the face. perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. he would go and look.
he took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. as he unbarred the door, a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and lingered for a moment about his lips. yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. he felt as if the load had been lifted from him already.
he went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. a cry of pain and indignation broke from him. he could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. the thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if possible, than before--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled. then he trembled. had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? or the desire for a new sensation, as lord henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh? or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves? or, perhaps, all these? and why was the red stain larger than it had been? it seemed to have crept like a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers. there was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had dripped--blood even on the hand that had not held the knife. confess? did it mean that he was to confess? to give himself up and be put to death? he laughed. he felt that the idea was monstrous. besides, even if he did confess, who would believe him? there was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. everything belonging to him had been destroyed. he himself had burned what had been below-stairs. the world would simply say that he was mad. they would shut him up if he persisted in his story. . . . yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and to make public atonement. there was a god who called upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. his sin? he shrugged his shoulders. the death of basil hallward seemed very little to him. he was thinking of hetty merton. for it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. vanity? curiosity? hypocrisy? had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? there had been something more. at least he thought so. but who could tell? . . . no. there had been nothing more. through vanity he had spared her. in hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. for curiositys sake he had tried the denial of self. he recognized that now.
but this murder--was it to dog him all his life? was he always to be burdened by his past? was he really to confess? never. there was only one bit of evidence left against him. the picture itself-- that was evidence. he would destroy it. why had he kept it so long? once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. of late he had felt no such pleasure. it had kept him awake at night. when he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. it had brought melancholy across his passions. its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. it had been like conscience to him. yes, it had been conscience. he would destroy it.
he looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed basil hallward. he had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. it was bright, and glistened. as it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painters work, and all that that meant. it would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free. it would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. he seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.
there was a cry heard, and a crash. the cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house. they walked on till they met a policeman and brought him back. the man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. after a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico and watched.
"whose house is that, constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.
"mr. dorian grays, sir," answered the policeman.
they looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered. one of them was sir henry ashtons uncle.
inside, in the servants part of the house, the half-clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. old mrs. leaf was crying and wringing her hands. francis was as pale as death.
after about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen and crept upstairs. they knocked, but there was no reply. they called out. everything was still. finally, after vainly trying to force the door, they got on the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. the windows yielded easily--their bolts were old.
when they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. he was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. it was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.
the end