CHAPTER XIII.
“There is no good1 telling me you are going to be good, Dorian2,” cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with rose-water. “You are quite perfect. Pray don’t change.”
Dorian shook his head. “No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good actions yesterday.”
“Where were you yesterday?”
“In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself.”
“My dear boy,” said Lord Henry, smiling, “anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so uncivilized. There are only two ways, as you know, of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt. Country-people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.”
“Culture and corruption,” murmured3 Dorian. “I
have known something of both. It seems to me curious4 now that they should ever
be found together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think
I have altered.”
“You have not told me yet what your good
action was. Or did you say you had done more than one?”
“I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I
could tell to any one else. I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you
understand what I mean. She was quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl
Vane. I think it was that which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl,
don’t you? How long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class,
of course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am
quite sure that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been
having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week. Yesterday she
met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair,
and she was laughing. We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn.
Suddenly I determined to leave her as flower-like as I had found her.”
“I should think the novelty of the emotion
must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian,” interrupted Lord Henry.
“But I can finish your idyl5 for you. You gave her good advice, and broke her
heart. That was the beginning of your reformation.”
“Harry, you are horrible! You mustn’t say
these dreadful things. Hetty’s heart is not broken. Of course she cried, and
all that. But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita6, in her
garden.”
“And weep over a faithless Florizel7,” said
Lord Henry, laughing. “My dear Dorian, you have the most curious8 boyish moods.
Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now with any one of her
own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a
grinning ploughman. Well, having met you9, and loved you, will teach her to
despise her husband, and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view I
really don’t10 think much of your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is
poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn’t floating at the present moment
in some mill-pond, with water-lilies round her, like Ophelia11?”
“I can’t bear this, Harry! You mock at
everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you
now. I don’t care what you say to me, I know I was right in acting as I did.
Poor Hetty! As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the
window, like a spray of jasmine. Don’t let me talk about it any more, and don’t
try to persuade me that the first good action I have done in12 years, the first
little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin. I want
to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about yourself. What
is going on in town? I have not been to the club for days.”
“The people are still discussing poor Basil’s
disappearance.”
“I should have thought they had got tired of
that by this time,” said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning
slightly.
“My dear boy, they have only been talking
about it for six weeks, and the public are really not equal to the mental
strain of having more than one topic every three months. They have been very
fortunate lately, however. They have had my own divorce-case, and Alan
Campbell’s suicide. Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an
artist. Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the gray ulster who left
Victoria13 by the midnight train on the 7th14 of November was poor Basil, and the
French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in
about a fortnight we will be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is
an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.
It must be a delightful city,
and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
“What do you think has happened to Basil?”
asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it
was that he could discuss the matter so calmly.
“I have not the slightest idea. If Basil
chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I don’t want
to think about him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it.
One can survive everything nowadays except that. Death and vulgarity are the
only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let us
have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man
with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very
fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her.”
Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table,
and, passing into the next room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers
stray across the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, and,
looking over at Lord Henry, said, “Harry, did it ever occur to you that Basil
was murdered?”
Lord Henry yawned. “Basil had no enemies16, and
always wore a Waterbury watch17.
Why should he be murdered18? 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.”
“I was very fond of Basil,” said Dorian, with
a sad look in his eyes19. “But don’t people say that he was murdered?”
“Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem
to be probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not
the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief
defect. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice,
how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years
older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and bald, and yellow. You are really
wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do to-night.
You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and
absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in appearance. I
wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in
the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There
is nothing like it. It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people whose opinions I listen to20 now with any respect are people much younger
than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her last21 wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the aged. I do in on principle. If
you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly
give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks and knew
absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is! I wonder did
Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa, and the salt
spray dashing against the panes? It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing
it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! Don’t stop. I
want music to-night. It seems to me that you are the young Apollo22, and that I
am Marsyas23 listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you
know nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is
young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you
are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything.
You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from
you. But it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not
marred you. You are still the same.
“I wonder what the rest of your life will be.
Don’t spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type. Don’t make
yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not shake your head:
you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don’t deceive yourself. Life is not governed
by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and
slowly-built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.
You may fancy yourself safe, and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of
color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved
and that brings strange24 memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you
had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to
play,—I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives
depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine
them for us. There are moments when the odor of heliotrope25 passes suddenly
across me, and I have to live the strangest year26 of my life over again.
“I wish I could change places with you,
Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped
you. It will always worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching
for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done
anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything
outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music.
Your days have been27 your sonnets.”
Dorian rose up from the piano, and passed his
hand through his hair. “Yes, Life has been exquisite,” he murmured, “but I am
not going to have the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant
things to me. You don’t know everything about me. I think that if you did, even
you would turn from me. You laugh. Don’t laugh.”
“Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go
back and play28 the nocturne over again. Look at that great honey-colored moon
that hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you
play she will come closer to the earth. You won’t? Let us go to the club, then.
It has been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some
one at the club29 who wants immensely to know you,—young Lord Poole, Bournmouth’s30
eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce
him to you. He is quite delightful, and rather reminds me of you.”
“I hope not,” said Dorian, with a touch of
pathos in his voice31. “But I am tired to-night, Harry. I won’t go to the club.
It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to bed early.”
“Do stay. You have never played so well as
to-night. There was something in your touch that was wonderful. It had more
expression than I had ever heard from it before.”
“It is because I am going to be good,” he
answered, smiling. “I am a little changed already.”
“Don’t change, Dorian; at any rate, don’t
change to me. We must always be friends.”
“Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I
should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book
to any one. It does harm.”
“My dear boy, you are really beginning to
moralize. You will soon be going about warning people against all the sins of
which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it
is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. Come round
to-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven, and we might go together. The Park is
quite lovely now. I don’t think there have been such lilacs since the year I
met you.”
“Very well. I will be here at eleven,” said
Dorian. “Good-night, Harry.” As he reached the door he hesitated for a moment,
as if he had something more to say. Then he sighed and went out.32
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 told the girl whom he had made33 love him that he was poor, and she
had believed him. He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed
at him, and told him34 that wicked people were always very old and very ugly.
What a laugh she had!—just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been
in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had
everything that he had lost.
When he reached home, he found his servant
waiting up for him. He sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in
the library, and began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had
said to him.
Was it really true that one could never
change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood,—his
rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it. He knew that he had
tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption, and given horror to his
fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a
terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own it had
been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But
was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?
It was better not to think of the past.
Nothing could alter that. It was of himself, and of his own future, that he had
to think. Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had
not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know. The excitement, such
as it was, over Basil Hallward’s disappearance would soon pass away. It was
already waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death of
Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death of his
own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his
life. He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait that had done
everything. Basil had said things to him that were unbearable, and that he had
yet borne with patience. The murder had been simply the madness of a moment. As
for Alan Campbell, his suicide had been his own act. He had chosen to do it. It
was nothing to him.
A new life! That was what he wanted. That was
what he was waiting for. Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one
innocent thing, at any rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be
good.
As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to
wonder if the portrait in the locked room had changed. Surely it was not still
so horrible as it had been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able
to expel every sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil
had already gone away. He would go and look.
He took the lamp from the table and crept
up-stairs. As he unlocked the door, a smile of joy flitted across his young
face and 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, unless35 that in
the eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of a
hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome,—more loathsome, if possible, than
before,—and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more
like blood newly spilt.
Had it been merely vanity that had made him
do his one good deed? Or the desire of a new sensation, as Lord Henry had
hinted, with his mocking laugh? Or that passion to act a part that sometimes
makes us do things finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these?
Why was the red stain larger than it had
been? It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease over the wrinkled
fingers. There was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had
dripped,—blood even on the hand that had not held the knife.
Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess?
To give himself up, and be put to death? He laughed. He felt that the idea was
monstrous. Besides, who would believe him, even if he did confess?36 There was no
trace of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him had been
destroyed. He himself had burned what had been below-stairs. The world would
simply say he was mad. They would shut him up if he persisted in his story.37
Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer
public shame, and to make public atonement. There was a God who called upon men
to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that he could do
would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his
shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him. He was
thinking of Hetty Merton.
It was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his
soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been
nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At
least he thought so. But who could he tell?
And38 this murder,—was it to dog him all his
life? Was he never to get rid of the past?39 Was he really to confess? No.40 There
was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself,—that was
evidence.
He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so
long? It had given him pleasure once41 to watch it changing and growing old. Of
late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had
been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it.
It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many
moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been
conscience. He would destroy it.
He looked round, and saw the knife that had
stabbed Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain
left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it
would kill the painter’s work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past,
and when that was dead he would be free. He seized it42, and stabbed the canvas43
with it, ripping the thing right up from top to bottom44.
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, and brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there
was no answer. The house was all dark, except for a light in one of the top
windows45. After a time, he went away, and stood in the portico of the next house46
and watched.
“Whose house is that, constable?” asked the
elder of the two gentlemen.
“Mr. Dorian Gray’s, sir,” answered the
policeman.
They looked at each other, as they walked
away, and sneered. One of them was Sir Henry Ashton’s uncle.
Inside, in the servant’s part of the house,
the half-clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs.
Leaf was crying, and wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death.
After about a quarter of an hour, he got the
coachman and one of the footmen and crept up-stairs. They knocked, but there
was no reply. They called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly
trying to force the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on to the
balcony. The windows yielded easily: the bolts were old.
When they entered, they found hanging upon
the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all
the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead
man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled,
and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized
who it was.
|
CHAPTER XIX.
“There is no use1 your telling me that you are going to be good,” cried Lord Henry, dipping his
white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with rosewater. “You are quite
perfect. Pray, don’t change.”
Dorian Gray shook his head. “No, Harry, I
have done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I
began my good actions yesterday.”
“Where were you yesterday?”
“In the country, Harry. I was staying at a
little inn by myself.”
“My dear boy,” said Lord Henry, smiling,
“anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is
the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely2 uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy things to attain to.
There are only two ways by which man can reach it.3
One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no
opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.”
“Culture and corruption,” echoed4
Dorian. “I have known something of both. It seems terrible
to me5 now that they should ever be found together. For I have a new ideal,
Harry. I am going to alter. I think have altered.”
“You have not yet told me what your good
action was. Or did you say you had done more than one?” asked his companion, as
he spilt into his plate a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries, and
through a perforated shell-shaped spoon snowed white sugar upon them.6
“I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I
could tell to any one else. I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand
what I mean. She was quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think
it was that which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don’t you? How
long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of course. She
was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure that I
loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been having, I used to
run down and see her two or three times a week. Yesterday she met me in a
little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was
laughing. We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I
determined to leave her as flower-like as I had found her.”
“I should think the novelty of the emotion
must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian,” interrupted Lord Henry.
“But I can finish your idyll7
for you. You gave her good advice, and broke her heart. That was the beginning
of your reformation.”
“Harry, you are horrible! You mustn’t say
these dreadful things. Hetty’s heart is not broken. Of course she cried, and
all that. But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita8,
in her garden of mint and marigold9.”
“And weep over a faithless Florizel10,”
said Lord Henry, laughing, as he leant back in his chair11.
“My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously12
boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now with any
one of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter
or a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you13,
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 I14
think much of your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor.
Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn’t floating at the present moment in
some star-lit15
mill-pond, with lovely16
water-lilies round her, like Ophelia17?”
“I can’t bear this, Harry! You mock at
everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you
now. I don’t care what you say to me.
I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode past the farm this
morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine. Don’t let
us talk about it any more, and don’t try to persuade me that the first good
action that I have done for18
years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a
sort of sin. I want to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something
about yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for
days.”
“The people are still discussing poor Basil’s
disappearance.”
“I should have thought they had got tired of
that by this time,” said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning
slightly.
“My dear boy, they have only been talking
about it for six weeks, and the British
public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic
every three months. They have been very fortunate lately, however. They have had
my own divorce-case, and Alan Campbell’s suicide. Now they have got the
mysterious disappearance of an artist. Scotland Yard still insists that the man
in the grey ulster who19 left for Paris20
by the midnight train on the ninth21
of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never
arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shall
be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but
everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a
delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
“What do you think has happened to Basil?”
asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it
was that he could discuss the matter so calmly.
“I have not the slightest idea. If Basil
chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I don’t want
to think about him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it.”
“Why?” said the younger man, wearily22
“Because,” said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box,23 “one can survive everything nowadays except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her. Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.24”
Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table,
and, passing into the next room, sat down at the piano and let his fingers
stray across the white and black ivory
of25 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 popular26,
and always wore a Waterbury watch27. Why should he have been murdered28?
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 art29.”
“I was very fond of Basil,” said Dorian, with
a note of sadness in his voice30.
“But don’t people say that he was murdered?”
“Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem
to me to be at all probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but
Basil was not the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was
his chief defect.”
“I would say, my dear fellow, that you were
posing for a character that doesn’t suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all
vulgarity is crime. It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if
I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs
exclusively to the lower orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I
should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of
procuring extraordinary sensations.”
“A method of procuring sensations? Do you
think, then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the
same crime again? Don’t tell me that.”
“Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does
it too often,” cried Lord Henry, laughing. “That is one of the most important
secrets of life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One
should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner. But let us
pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such a really
romantic end as you suggest; but I can’t. I dare say he fell into the Seine off
an omnibus, and that the conductor hushed up the scandal. Yes: I should fancy
that was his end. I see him lying now on his back over those dull-green waters with
the heavy barges floating over him, and long weeds catching in his hair. Do you
know, I don’t think he would have done much more good work. During the last ten
years his painting had gone off very much.”
“Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry
strolled across the room and began to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot,
a large grey-plumaged bird, with pink crest and tail,
that was balancing itself upon a bamboo perch. As his pointed fingers touched
it, it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black glass-like eyes, and
began to sway backwards and forwards.
“Yes,” he continued, turning round, and
taking his handkerchief out of his pocket; “his painting had quite gone off. It
seemed to me to have lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he
ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it
separated you? I suppose he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It’s a
habit bores have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did
of you? I don’t think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I remember
your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby, and that it had
got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity! It was
really a masterpiece. I remembered I wanted to buy it. I wish I had now. It
belonged to Basil’s best period. Since then, his work was that curious mixture
of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a
representative British artist. Did you advertise for it? You should.”
“I forget,” said Dorian. “I suppose I did.
But I never really liked it. I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing
is hateful to me. Why do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious
lines in some play—‘Hamlet,’ I think—how do they run?—
“‘Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart.’
Yes: that is what it was like.”
Lord Henry laughed. “If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart,” he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
Dorian Gray shook his head, and struck some soft chords on the piano. “‘Like the painting of a sorrow,’” he repeated, “‘a face without a heart.’”
The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. “By the way, Dorian,” he said after a long 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 stared at his friend. “Why do you ask me that, Harry?”
“My dear fellow,” said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise, “I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer. That is all. I was going through the Park last Sunday, and close by the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that question to his audience. It struck me as being rather dramatic. London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill, hysterical lips—it was really very good in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that Art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not have understood me.”
“Don’t, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.”
“Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?”
“Quite sure.”
“Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith, and the lesson of Romance. How grave you are! Don’t be so serious. What have you or I to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up our belief in the soul. Play me something.32
Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen33 now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest34 wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the aged. I do in on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is! I wonder did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa, and the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! Don’t stop. I want music to-night. It seems to me that you are the young Apollo35, and that I am Marsyas36 listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. But it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same.”
“Yes: you are the same.38 I wonder what the rest of your life will be. Don’t spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type. Don’t make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don’t deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe, and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle39 memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play—I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odor of lilas blanc40 passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month41 of my life over again. I42 wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It will always worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are43 your sonnets.”
Dorian rose up from the piano, and passed his hand through his hair. “Yes, life has been exquisite,” he murmured, “but I am not going to have the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things to me. You don’t know everything about me. I think that if you did, even you would turn from me. You laugh. Don’t laugh.”
“Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me44 the nocturne over again. Look at that great honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will come closer to the earth. You won’t? Let us go to the club, then. It has been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some one at White’s45 who wants immensely to know you—young Lord Poole, Bournemouth’s46 eldest son. He has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful, and rather reminds me of you.”
“I hope not,” said Dorian, with a sad look in his eyes47. “But I am tired to-night, Harry. I sha’n’t go to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to bed early.”
“Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was something in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever heard from it before.”
“It is because I am going to be good,” he answered, smiling. “I am a little changed already.”
“Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm.”
“My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist49, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all. But we won’t discuss literature.50 Come round to-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come. Or shall we lunch with our little Duchess? She says she never sees you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be. Her clever tongue gets on one’s nerves. Well, in any case, be there at eleven.”
“Must I really come, Harry?”
“Certainly.51 The Park is quite lovely now. I don’t think there have been such lilacs since the year I met you.”
“Very well. I shall be here at eleven,” said Dorian. “Good-night, Harry.” As he reached the door he hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then he sighed and went out.
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 to1 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 answered2 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 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?
The curiously-carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror, when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and with wild tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once, some one who had terribly loved him, had written him a mad letter, ending with those 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.3
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.4 Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know. The excitement, such as it was, over Basil Hallward’s disappearance would soon pass away. It was already waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life. He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait that had done everything. Basil had said things to him that were unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder had been simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had been his own act. He had chosen to do it. It was nothing to him.
A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for. Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing, at any rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.
As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the locked room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it had been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. He would go and look.
He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unlocked the door, a smile of joy flitted across his young 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, save5 that in the eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome—more loathsome, if possible, than before—and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilt. Then he trembled.6 Had it been merely a 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 of these? And7 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.8 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?9 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 that10 he was mad. They would shut him up if he persisted in his story. . . .11 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 the 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. For12 it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could tell? . . . No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity’s sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now.13
But14 this murder—was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past?15 Was he really to confess? Never.16 There was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself—that was evidence.17 He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure18 to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been away he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.
He looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter’s work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and when that was dead he would be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the thing19, and stabbed the picture20 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, 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.22 After a time, he went away, and stood in an adjoining portico23 and watched.
“Whose house is that, constable?” asked the elder of the two gentlemen.
“Mr. Dorian Gray’s, sir,” answered the policeman.
They looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered. One of them was Sir Henry Ashton’s uncle.
Inside, in the servant’s 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: the bolts were old.
When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.
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Chapter XIII / Chapter XIX & Chapter XX
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