The Picture of Dorian Gray
“What nonsense, Dorian!” laughed his companion, and as the hare bounded
into the thicket, he fired. There were two cries heard, the cry of a
hare in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is
worse.
“Good heavens! I have hit a beater!” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey. “What an
ass the man was to get in front of the guns! Stop shooting there!” he
called out at the top of his voice. “A man is hurt.”
The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.
“Where, sir? Where is he?” he shouted. At the same time, the firing
ceased along the line.
“Here,” answered Sir Geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the thicket.
“Why on earth don’t you keep your men back? Spoiled my shooting for the
day.”
Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the
lithe swinging branches aside. In a few moments they emerged, dragging
a body after them into the sunlight. He turned away in horror. It
seemed to him that misfortune followed wherever he went. He heard Sir
Geoffrey ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of
the keeper. The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with
faces. There was the trampling of myriad feet and the low buzz of
voices. A great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the
boughs overhead.
After a few moments—that were to him, in his perturbed state, like
endless hours of pain—he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. He started
and looked round.
“Dorian,” said Lord Henry, “I had better tell them that the shooting is
stopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on.”
“I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry,” he answered bitterly. “The
whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man ...?”
He could not finish the sentence.
“I am afraid so,” rejoined Lord Henry. “He got the whole charge of shot
in his chest. He must have died almost instantaneously. Come; let us go
home.”
They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly
fifty yards without speaking. Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry and
said, with a heavy sigh, “It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen.”
“What is?” asked Lord Henry. “Oh! this accident, I suppose. My dear
fellow, it can’t be helped. It was the man’s own fault. Why did he get
in front of the guns? Besides, it is nothing to us. It is rather
awkward for Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to pepper beaters. It
makes people think that one is a wild shot. And Geoffrey is not; he
shoots very straight. But there is no use talking about the matter.”
Dorian shook his head. “It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if something
horrible were going to happen to some of us. To myself, perhaps,” he
added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of pain.
The elder man laughed. “The only horrible thing in the world is
_ennui_, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.
But we are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep
chattering about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the
subject is to be tabooed. As for omens, there is no such thing as an
omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel
for that. Besides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian? You have
everything in the world that a man can want. There is no one who would
not be delighted to change places with you.”
“There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry. Don’t
laugh like that. I am telling you the truth. The wretched peasant who
has just died is better off than I am. I have no terror of death. It is
the coming of death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to
wheel in the leaden air around me. Good heavens! don’t you see a man
moving behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?”
Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand
was pointing. “Yes,” he said, smiling, “I see the gardener waiting for
you. I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on the
table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow! You must
come and see my doctor, when we get back to town.”
Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. The
man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating
manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master. “Her
Grace told me to wait for an answer,” he murmured.
Dorian put the letter into his pocket. “Tell her Grace that I am coming
in,” he said, coldly. The man turned round and went rapidly in the
direction of the house.
“How fond women are of doing dangerous things!” laughed Lord Henry. “It
is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt
with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.”
“How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry! In the present
instance, you are quite astray. I like the duchess very much, but I
don’t love her.”
“And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you
are excellently matched.”
“You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
scandal.”
“The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty,” said Lord Henry,
lighting a cigarette.
“You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram.”
“The world goes to the altar of its own accord,” was the answer.
“I wish I could love,” cried Dorian Gray with a deep note of pathos in
his voice. “But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the
desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has
become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget. It was
silly of me to come down here at all. I think I shall send a wire to
Harvey to have the yacht got ready. On a yacht one is safe.”
“Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me what
it is? You know I would help you.”
“I can’t tell you, Harry,” he answered sadly. “And I dare say it is
only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate accident has upset me. I have a
horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me.”
“What nonsense!”
“I hope it is, but I can’t help feeling it. Ah! here is the duchess,
looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown. You see we have come back,
Duchess.”
“I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray,” she answered. “Poor Geoffrey is
terribly upset. And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare.
How curious!”
“Yes, it was very curious. I don’t know what made me say it. Some whim,
I suppose. It looked the loveliest of little live things. But I am
sorry they told you about the man. It is a hideous subject.”
“It is an annoying subject,” broke in Lord Henry. “It has no
psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on
purpose, how interesting he would be! I should like to know some one
who had committed a real murder.”
“How horrid of you, Harry!” cried the duchess. “Isn’t it, Mr. Gray?
Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint.”
Dorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled. “It is nothing,
Duchess,” he murmured; “my nerves are dreadfully out of order. That is
all. I am afraid I walked too far this morning. I didn’t hear what
Harry said. Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I think
I must go and lie down. You will excuse me, won’t you?”
They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the
conservatory on to the terrace. As the glass door closed behind Dorian,
Lord Henry turned and looked at the duchess with his slumberous eyes.
“Are you very much in love with him?” he asked.
She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. “I
wish I knew,” she said at last.
He shook his head. “Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty
that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.”
“One may lose one’s way.”
“All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.”
“What is that?”
“Disillusion.”
“It was my _début_ in life,” she sighed.
“It came to you crowned.”
“I am tired of strawberry leaves.”
“They become you.”
“Only in public.”
“You would miss them,” said Lord Henry.
“I will not part with a petal.”
“Monmouth has ears.”
“Old age is dull of hearing.”
“Has he never been jealous?”
“I wish he had been.”
He glanced about as if in search of something. “What are you looking
for?” she inquired.
“The button from your foil,” he answered. “You have dropped it.”
She laughed. “I have still the mask.”
“It makes your eyes lovelier,” was his reply.
She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet
fruit.
Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror
in every tingling fibre of his body. Life had suddenly become too
hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death of the unlucky
beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to
pre-figure death for himself also. He had nearly swooned at what Lord
Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.
At five o’clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to
pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham
at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another
night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened place. Death walked there in
the sunlight. The grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.
Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to
town to consult his doctor and asking him to entertain his guests in
his absence. As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to
the door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see
him. He frowned and bit his lip. “Send him in,” he muttered, after some
moments’ hesitation.
As soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a
drawer and spread it out before him.
“I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this
morning, Thornton?” he said, taking up a pen.
“Yes, sir,” answered the gamekeeper.
“Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people dependent on him?”
asked Dorian, looking bored. “If so, I should not like them to be left
in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary.”
“We don’t know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty of
coming to you about.”
“Don’t know who he is?” said Dorian, listlessly. “What do you mean?
Wasn’t he one of your men?”
“No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir.”
The pen dropped from Dorian Gray’s hand, and he felt as if his heart
had suddenly stopped beating. “A sailor?” he cried out. “Did you say a
sailor?”
“Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on
both arms, and that kind of thing.”
“Was there anything found on him?” said Dorian, leaning forward and
looking at the man with startled eyes. “Anything that would tell his
name?”
“Some money, sir—not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of any
kind. A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor we
think.”
Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered past him. He
clutched at it madly. “Where is the body?” he exclaimed. “Quick! I must
see it at once.”
“It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir. The folk don’t like to
have that sort of thing in their houses. They say a corpse brings bad
luck.”
“The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me. Tell one of the grooms to
bring my horse round. No. Never mind. I’ll go to the stables myself. It
will save time.”
In less than a quarter of an hour, Dorian Gray was galloping down the
long avenue as hard as he could go. The trees seemed to sweep past him
in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his
path. Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him.
He lashed her across the neck with his crop. She cleft the dusky air
like an arrow. The stones flew from her hoofs.
At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the yard.