The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have
something.”
“I don’t want anything,” murmured the young man.
“Never mind.”
Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar. A
half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous
greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
them. The women sidled up and began to chatter. Dorian turned his back
on them and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.
A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one of
the women. “We are very proud to-night,” she sneered.
“For God’s sake don’t talk to me,” cried Dorian, stamping his foot on
the ground. “What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don’t ever talk to me
again.”
Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman’s sodden eyes, then
flickered out and left them dull and glazed. She tossed her head and
raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her companion
watched her enviously.
“It’s no use,” sighed Adrian Singleton. “I don’t care to go back. What
does it matter? I am quite happy here.”
“You will write to me if you want anything, won’t you?” said Dorian,
after a pause.
“Perhaps.”
“Good night, then.”
“Good night,” answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping
his parched mouth with a handkerchief.
Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he drew
the curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of the
woman who had taken his money. “There goes the devil’s bargain!” she
hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.
“Curse you!” he answered, “don’t call me that.”
She snapped her fingers. “Prince Charming is what you like to be
called, ain’t it?” she yelled after him.
The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly
round. The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He
rushed out as if in pursuit.
Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His
meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered
if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, as
Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit his
lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did
it matter to him? One’s days were too brief to take the burden of
another’s errors on one’s shoulders. Each man lived his own life and
paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so
often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed.
In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or
for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of
the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful
impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will.
They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken
from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all,
lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm.
For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of
disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell
from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.
Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry for
rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went, but
as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as a
short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself
suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend himself,
he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round his
throat.
He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the
tightening fingers away. In a second he heard the click of a revolver,
and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head,
and the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him.
“What do you want?” he gasped.
“Keep quiet,” said the man. “If you stir, I shoot you.”
“You are mad. What have I done to you?”
“You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane,” was the answer, “and Sibyl Vane
was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your
door. I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you.
I had no clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you
were dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you.
I heard it to-night by chance. Make your peace with God, for to-night
you are going to die.”
Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. “I never knew her,” he stammered. “I
never heard of her. You are mad.”
“You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you
are going to die.” There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not know
what to say or do. “Down on your knees!” growled the man. “I give you
one minute to make your peace—no more. I go on board to-night for
India, and I must do my job first. One minute. That’s all.”
Dorian’s arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know
what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. “Stop,” he
cried. “How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!”
“Eighteen years,” said the man. “Why do you ask me? What do years
matter?”
“Eighteen years,” laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his
voice. “Eighteen years! Set me under the lamp and look at my face!”
James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant.
Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway.
Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to show him
the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for the face
of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood, all the
unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than a lad of twenty
summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had been
when they had parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this was
not the man who had destroyed her life.
He loosened his hold and reeled back. “My God! my God!” he cried, “and
I would have murdered you!”
Dorian Gray drew a long breath. “You have been on the brink of
committing a terrible crime, my man,” he said, looking at him sternly.
“Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own
hands.”
“Forgive me, sir,” muttered James Vane. “I was deceived. A chance word
I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track.”
“You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get into
trouble,” said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down the
street.
James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head
to foot. After a little while, a black shadow that had been creeping
along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came close to him
with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked
round with a start. It was one of the women who had been drinking at
the bar.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” she hissed out, putting haggard face quite
close to his. “I knew you were following him when you rushed out from
Daly’s. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money, and
he’s as bad as bad.”
“He is not the man I am looking for,” he answered, “and I want no man’s
money. I want a man’s life. The man whose life I want must be nearly
forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not
got his blood upon my hands.”
The woman gave a bitter laugh. “Little more than a boy!” she sneered.
“Why, man, it’s nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me
what I am.”
“You lie!” cried James Vane.
She raised her hand up to heaven. “Before God I am telling the truth,”
she cried.
“Before God?”
“Strike me dumb if it ain’t so. He is the worst one that comes here.
They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It’s nigh
on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn’t changed much since then. I
have, though,” she added, with a sickly leer.
“You swear this?”
“I swear it,” came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. “But don’t give
me away to him,” she whined; “I am afraid of him. Let me have some
money for my night’s lodging.”
He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street,
but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had
vanished also.
CHAPTER XVII.
A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby
Royal, talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband,
a jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time,
and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that stood on the
table lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at
which the duchess was presiding. Her white hands were moving daintily
among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that
Dorian had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying back in a silk-draped
wicker chair, looking at them. On a peach-coloured divan sat Lady
Narborough, pretending to listen to the duke’s description of the last
Brazilian beetle that he had added to his collection. Three young men
in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women.
The house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were more
expected to arrive on the next day.
“What are you two talking about?” said Lord Henry, strolling over to
the table and putting his cup down. “I hope Dorian has told you about
my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea.”
“But I don’t want to be rechristened, Harry,” rejoined the duchess,
looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. “I am quite satisfied with
my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his.”
“My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are
both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an
orchid, for my button-hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as
effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one
of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was a fine specimen
of _Robinsoniana_, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad
truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is
with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The
man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It
is the only thing he is fit for.”
“Then what should we call you, Harry?” she asked.
“His name is Prince Paradox,” said Dorian.
“I recognize him in a flash,” exclaimed the duchess.
“I won’t hear of it,” laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. “From a
label there is no escape! I refuse the title.”
“Royalties may not abdicate,” fell as a warning from pretty lips.
“You wish me to defend my throne, then?”
“Yes.”
“I give the truths of to-morrow.”
“I prefer the mistakes of to-day,” she answered.
“You disarm me, Gladys,” he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood.
“Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear.”
“I never tilt against beauty,” he said, with a wave of his hand.
“That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much.”
“How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be
beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready
than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
“Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?” cried the duchess.
“What becomes of your simile about the orchid?”
“Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good
Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly
virtues have made our England what she is.”
“You don’t like your country, then?” she asked.
“I live in it.”