The Picture of Dorian Gray
Adrian Singleton writes his friend’s name across a bill, am I his
keeper? I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air
their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper
about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try
and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with
the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to
have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead
themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land
of the hypocrite.”
“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 sister’s name a by-word.”
“Take care, Basil. You go too far.”
“I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. When you met Lady
Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a
single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the park?
Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are
other stories—stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of
dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in
London. Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, I
laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What about your
country-house and the life that is led there? Dorian, you don’t know
what is said about you. I won’t tell you that I don’t want to preach to
you. I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself
into an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, and
then proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you. I want
you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you. I want you
to have a clean name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the
dreadful people you associate with. Don’t shrug your shoulders like
that. Don’t be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it
be for good, not for evil. They say that you corrupt every one with
whom you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to
enter a house for shame of some kind to follow after. I don’t know
whether it is so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you. I am
told things that it seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester was one
of my greatest friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife
had written to him when she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone.
Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I
told him that it was absurd—that I knew you thoroughly, and that you
were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know
you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”
“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.”
A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. “You
shall see it yourself, to-night!” he cried, seizing a lamp from the
table. “Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn’t you look at it?
You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody
would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the
better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate
about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough
about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face.”
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.
“Yes,” he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly into
his stern eyes, “I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that
you fancy only God can see.”
Hallward started back. “This is blasphemy, Dorian!” he cried. “You must
not say things like that. They are horrible, and they don’t 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.”
“Don’t touch me. Finish what you have to say.”
A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter’s 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! Can’t you see what I
am going through? My God! don’t tell me that you are bad, and corrupt,
and shameful.”
Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. “Come
upstairs, Basil,” he said quietly. “I keep a diary of my life from day
to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall
show it to you if you come with me.”
“I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my
train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don’t ask me to
read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question.”
“That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You
will not have to read long.”
CHAPTER XIII.
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 won’t? Then I must do it myself,” said the young man, and he tore
the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground.
An exclamation of horror broke from the painter’s lips as he saw in the
dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was
something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing.
Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray’s own face that he was looking at! The
horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous
beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet
on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the
loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely
passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it
was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own
brushwork, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous,
yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the
picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long
letters of bright vermilion.
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 don’t 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 don’t believe it is my picture.”
“Can’t 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.
Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. “My God! If it
is true,” he exclaimed, “and this is what you have done with your life,
why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy you