The Picture of Dorian Gray
wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round
with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his
days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible _tædium vitæ_, that comes
on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear
emerald at the red shambles of the circus and then, in a litter of
pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the
Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold and heard men cry on Nero
Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with
colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon
from Carthage and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.
Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the
two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious
tapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and
beautiful forms of those whom vice and blood and weariness had made
monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife and painted
her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from the
dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the
Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and
whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the
price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase
living men and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot
who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide
riding beside him and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto;
Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and
minion of Sixtus IV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery,
and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson
silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might
serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy
could be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion
for red blood, as other men have for red wine—the son of the Fiend, as
was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling
with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the
name of Innocent and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads
was infused by a Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of
Isotta and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the
enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave
poison to Ginevra d’Este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a
shameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles
VI., who had so wildly adored his brother’s wife that a leper had
warned him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his
brain had sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen
cards painted with the images of love and death and madness; and, in
his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto
Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page,
and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow
piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep,
and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him.
There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and
they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew of
strange manners of poisoning—poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch,
by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by
an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were
moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could
realize his conception of the beautiful.
CHAPTER XII.
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 o’clock from Lord Henry’s, where he
had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold
and foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street, a
man passed him in the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of
his 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 o’clock. 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 wasn’t quite sure. Didn’t you recognize me?”
“In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can’t even recognize Grosvenor
Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don’t feel at
all certain about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen
you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?”
“No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend to take a
studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have finished a great picture
I have in my head. However, it wasn’t about myself I wanted to talk.
Here we are at your door. Let me come in for a moment. I have something
to say to you.”
“I shall be charmed. But won’t you miss your train?” said Dorian Gray
languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his
latch-key.
The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his
watch. “I have heaps of time,” he answered. “The train doesn’t go till
twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven. In fact, I was on my way to
the club to look for you, when I met you. You see, I shan’t have any
delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things. All I have with
me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes.”
Dorian looked at him and smiled. “What a way for a fashionable painter
to travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get
into the house. And mind you don’t talk about anything serious. Nothing
is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be.”
Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the
library. There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth.
The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with
some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little
marqueterie table.
“You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me
everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is
a most hospitable creature. I like him much better than the Frenchman
you used to have. What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?”
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. “I believe he married Lady Radley’s
maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.
_Anglomanie_ is very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly
of the French, doesn’t it? But—do you know?—he was not at all a bad
servant. I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One
often imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted
to me and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another
brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take
hock-and-seltzer myself. There is sure to be some in the next room.”
“Thanks, I won’t have anything more,” said 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.
Don’t frown like that. You make it so much more difficult for me.”
“What is it all about?” cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging
himself down on the sofa. “I hope it is not about myself. I am tired of
myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.”
“It is about yourself,” answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, “and
I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour.”
Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. “Half an hour!” he murmured.
“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 don’t wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other
people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got
the charm of novelty.”
“They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested in his
good name. You don’t want people to talk of you as something vile and
degraded. Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all
that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind
you, I don’t believe these rumours at all. At least, I can’t believe
them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s
face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices.
There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself
in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of
his hands even. Somebody—I won’t mention his name, but you know
him—came to me last year to have his portrait done. I had never seen
him before, and had never heard anything about him at the time, though
I have heard a good deal since. He offered an extravagant price. I
refused him. There was something in the shape of his fingers that I
hated. I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about him.
His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent
face, and your marvellous untroubled youth—I can’t believe anything
against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to
the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these
hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don’t know what
to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves
the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen
in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs? You
used to be a friend of Lord Staveley. I met him at dinner last week.
Your name happened to come up in conversation, in connection with the
miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley
curled his lip and said that you might have the most artistic tastes,
but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to
know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with. I
reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked him what he meant.
He told me. He told me right out before everybody. It was horrible! Why
is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy
in the Guards who committed suicide. You were his great friend. There
was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England with a tarnished name.
You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his
dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s only son and his career? I met his
father yesterday in St. James’s Street. He seemed broken with shame and
sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he
got now? What gentleman would associate with him?”
“Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,”
said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt
in his voice. “You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. It
is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could
his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. Did
I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent’s
silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? If