The Picture of Dorian Gray
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 don’t mind my looking at the thing now?”
Dorian shook his head. “You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not
possibly let you stand in front of that picture.”
“You will some day, surely?”
“Never.”
“Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye, Dorian. You have been
the one person in my life who has really influenced my art. Whatever I
have done that is good, I owe to you. Ah! you don’t know what it cost
me to tell you all that I have told you.”
“My dear Basil,” said Dorian, “what have you told me? Simply that you
felt that you admired me too much. That is not even a compliment.”
“It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I
have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one
should never put one’s worship into words.”
“It was a very disappointing confession.”
“Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn’t see anything else in the
picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?”
“No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn’t
talk about worship. It is foolish. You and I are friends, Basil, and we
must always remain so.”
“You have got Harry,” said the painter sadly.
“Oh, Harry!” cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. “Harry spends
his days in saying what is incredible and his evenings in doing what is
improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I
don’t think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. I would sooner go
to you, Basil.”
“You will sit to me again?”
“Impossible!”
“You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man comes
across two ideal things. Few come across one.”
“I can’t explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.
There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own. I
will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant.”
“Pleasanter for you, I am afraid,” murmured Hallward regretfully. “And
now good-bye. I am sorry you won’t let me look at the picture once
again. But that can’t be helped. I quite understand what you feel about
it.”
As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil! How
little he knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead
of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded,
almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that
strange confession explained to him! The painter’s absurd fits of
jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious
reticences—he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There seemed
to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.
He sighed and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away at all
costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again. It had been mad
of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a room
to which any of his friends had access.
CHAPTER X.
When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly and wondered if
he had thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite
impassive and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette and walked
over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of
Victor’s face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There
was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his
guard.
Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the 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 don’t want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key.”
“Well, sir, you’ll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it
hasn’t been opened for nearly five years—not since his lordship died.”
He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of
him. “That does not matter,” he answered. “I simply want to see the
place—that is all. Give me the key.”
“And here is the key, sir,” said the old lady, going over the contents
of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. “Here is the key. I’ll
have it off the bunch in a moment. But you don’t think of living up
there, sir, and you so comfortable here?”
“No, no,” he cried petulantly. “Thank you, Leaf. That will do.”
She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of
the household. He sighed and told her to manage things as she thought
best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles.
As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round
the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily
embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.
Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps
served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that
had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death
itself—something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What
the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on
the canvas. They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They
would defile it and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still
live on. It would be always alive.
He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil
the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would
have helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and the still more
poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that
he bore him—for it was really love—had nothing in it that was not noble
and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty
that is born of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was
such love as 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.
He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that
covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. Was
the face on the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was
unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue
eyes, and rose-red lips—they all were there. It was simply the
expression that had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared
to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil’s
reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!—how shallow, and of what little
account! His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and
calling him to judgement. A look of pain came across him, and he flung
the rich pall over the picture. As he did so, a knock came to the door.
He passed out as his servant entered.
“The persons are here, Monsieur.”
He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must not be allowed
to know where the picture was being taken to. There was something sly
about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the
writing-table he scribbled a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him
round something to read and reminding him that they were to meet at
eight-fifteen that evening.
“Wait for an answer,” he said, handing it to him, “and show the men in
here.”
In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard
himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in
with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a
florid, red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was
considerably tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the
artists who dealt with him. As a rule, he never left his shop. He
waited for people to come to him. But he always made an exception in
favour of Dorian Gray. There was something about Dorian that charmed
everybody. It was a pleasure even to see him.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?” he said, rubbing his fat freckled
hands. “I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in
person. I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a
sale. Old Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited
for a religious subject, Mr. Gray.”
“I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame—though I don’t
go in much at present for religious art—but to-day I only want a
picture carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so
I thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men.”
“No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to
you. Which is the work of art, sir?”
“This,” replied Dorian, moving the screen back. “Can you move it,
covering and all, just as it is? I don’t want it to get scratched going
upstairs.”
“There will be no difficulty, sir,” said the genial frame-maker,
beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from
the long brass chains by which it was suspended. “And, now, where shall
we carry it to, Mr. Gray?”
“I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or
perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top
of the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider.”
He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
began the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the
picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman’s spirited dislike
of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it
so as to help them.
“Something of a load to carry, sir,” gasped the little man when they
reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.
“I am afraid it is rather heavy,” murmured Dorian as he unlocked the
door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious
secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
He had not entered the place for more than four years—not, indeed,
since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then
as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large,
well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord
Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness
to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and
desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian to have but little
changed. There was the huge Italian _cassone_, with its fantastically
painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which he had so
often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood book-case filled
with his dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall behind it was hanging the
same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king and queen were playing
chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded
birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all! Every