The Picture of Dorian Gray
how I shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to be in love and play Juliet! To have
him sitting there! To play for his delight! I am afraid I may frighten
the company, frighten or enthrall them. To be in love is to surpass
one’s self. Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting ‘genius’ to his
loafers at the bar. He has preached me as a dogma; to-night he will
announce me as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his only,
Prince Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I am poor
beside him. Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the
door, love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want rewriting.
They were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time for me, I
think, a very dance of blossoms in blue skies.”
“He is a gentleman,” said the lad sullenly.
“A prince!” she cried musically. “What more do you want?”
“He wants to enslave you.”
“I shudder at the thought of being free.”
“I want you to beware of him.”
“To see him is to worship him; to know him is to trust him.”
“Sibyl, you are mad about him.”
She laughed and took his arm. “You dear old Jim, you talk as if you
were a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself. Then you will
know what it is. Don’t look so sulky. Surely you should be glad to
think that, though you are going away, you leave me happier than I have
ever been before. Life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and
difficult. But it will be different now. You are going to a new world,
and I have found one. Here are two chairs; let us sit down and see the
smart people go by.”
They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulip-beds across
the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust—tremulous
cloud of orris-root it seemed—hung in the panting air. The brightly
coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies.
She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects. He
spoke slowly and with effort. They passed words to each other as
players at a game pass counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could not
communicate her joy. A faint smile curving that sullen mouth was all
the echo she could win. After some time she became silent. Suddenly she
caught a glimpse of golden hair and laughing lips, and in an open
carriage with two ladies Dorian Gray drove past.
She started to her feet. “There he is!” she cried.
“Who?” said Jim Vane.
“Prince Charming,” she answered, looking after the victoria.
He jumped up and seized her roughly by the arm. “Show him to me. Which
is he? Point him out. I must see him!” he exclaimed; but at that moment
the Duke of Berwick’s four-in-hand came between, and when it had left
the space clear, the carriage had swept out of the park.
“He is gone,” murmured Sibyl sadly. “I wish you had seen him.”
“I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does
you any wrong, I shall kill him.”
She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words. They cut the air
like a dagger. The people round began to gape. A lady standing close to
her tittered.
“Come away, Jim; come away,” she whispered. He followed her doggedly as
she passed through the crowd. He felt glad at what he had said.
When they reached the Achilles Statue, she turned round. There was pity
in her eyes that became laughter on her lips. She shook her head at
him. “You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy, that
is all. How can you say such horrible things? You don’t know what you
are talking about. You are simply jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish you
would fall in love. Love makes people good, and what you said was
wicked.”
“I am sixteen,” he answered, “and I know what I am about. Mother is no
help to you. She doesn’t understand how to look after you. I wish now
that I was not going to Australia at all. I have a great mind to chuck
the whole thing up. I would, if my articles hadn’t been signed.”
“Oh, don’t be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of those
silly melodramas Mother used to be so fond of acting in. I am not going
to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is perfect
happiness. We won’t quarrel. I know you would never harm 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 o’clock, and
Sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. Jim insisted
that she should do so. He said that he would sooner part with her when
their mother was not present. She would be sure to make a scene, and he
detested scenes of every kind.
In Sybil’s own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad’s heart,
and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him,
had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck,
and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and kissed her
with real affection. There were tears in his eyes as he went
downstairs.
His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his
unpunctuality, as he entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his
meagre meal. The flies buzzed round the table and crawled over the
stained cloth. Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of
street-cabs, he could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that
was left to him.
After some time, he thrust away his plate and put his head in his
hands. He felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to
him before, if it was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother
watched him. Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A tattered lace
handkerchief twitched in her fingers. When the clock struck six, he got
up and went to the door. Then he turned back and looked at her. Their
eyes met. In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It enraged him.
“Mother, I have something to ask you,” he said. Her eyes wandered
vaguely about the room. She made no answer. “Tell me the truth. I have
a right to know. Were you married to my father?”
She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment,
the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded,
had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed, in some measure
it was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question
called for a direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up
to. It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.
“No,” she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.
“My father was a scoundrel then!” cried the lad, clenching his fists.
She shook her head. “I knew he was not free. We loved each other very
much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us. Don’t speak
against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman. Indeed, he
was highly connected.”
An oath broke from his lips. “I don’t care for myself,” he exclaimed,
“but don’t let Sibyl.... It is a gentleman, isn’t it, who is in love
with her, or says he is? Highly connected, too, I suppose.”
For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. Her
head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands. “Sibyl has a
mother,” she murmured; “I had none.”
The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down, he kissed
her. “I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about my father,” he
said, “but I could not help it. I must go now. Good-bye. Don’t forget
that you will 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.”
The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture that
accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem more vivid
to her. She was familiar with the atmosphere. She breathed more freely,
and for the first time for many months she really admired her son. She
would have liked to have continued the scene on the same emotional
scale, but he cut her short. Trunks had to be carried down and mufflers
looked for. The lodging-house drudge bustled in and out. There was the
bargaining with the cabman. The moment was lost in vulgar details. It
was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the
tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove away. She
was conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted. She consoled
herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her life would be, now
that she had only one child to look after. She remembered the phrase.
It had pleased her. Of the threat she said nothing. It was vividly and
dramatically expressed. She felt that they would all laugh at it some
day.
CHAPTER VI.
“I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?” said Lord Henry that
evening as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol
where dinner had been laid for three.
“No, Harry,” answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the bowing
waiter. “What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope! They don’t
interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons
worth painting, though many of them would be the better for a little
whitewashing.”
“Dorian Gray is engaged to be married,” said Lord Henry, watching him
as he spoke.
Hallward started and then frowned. “Dorian engaged to be married!” he
cried. “Impossible!”
“It is perfectly true.”
“To whom?”
“To some little actress or other.”
“I can’t believe it. Dorian is far too sensible.”
“Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear
Basil.”
“Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry.”
“Except in America,” rejoined Lord Henry languidly. “But I didn’t say
he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great
difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have
no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I
never was engaged.”
“But think of Dorian’s birth, and position, and wealth. It would be
absurd for him to marry so much beneath him.”
“If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is
sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it
is always from the noblest motives.”
“I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don’t want to see Dorian tied to
some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his
intellect.”
“Oh, she is better than good—she is beautiful,” murmured Lord Henry,
sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. “Dorian says she is
beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your
portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal
appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst
others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn’t forget his
appointment.”
“Are you serious?”
“Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I should ever
be more serious than I am at the present moment.”
“But do you approve of it, Harry?” asked the painter, walking up and
down the room and biting his lip. “You can’t approve of it, possibly.
It is some silly infatuation.”
“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd
attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air
our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people
say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a
personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality
selects is absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with
a beautiful girl who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why not?
If he wedded Messalina, he would be none the less interesting. You know