The Picture of Dorian Gray
had come into the lad’s face that he had never seen there before.
“And yet,” continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with
that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of
him, and that he had even in his Eton days, “I believe that if one man
were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to
every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I
believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we
would forget all the maladies of mediævalism, and return to the
Hellenic ideal—to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it
may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The
mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial
that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse
that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body
sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of
purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure,
or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is
to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for
the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its
monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that
the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the
brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place
also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your
rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid,
thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping
dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame—”
“Stop!” faltered Dorian Gray, “stop! you bewilder me. I don’t know what
to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don’t speak.
Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think.”
For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and
eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh
influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come
really from himself. The few words that Basil’s friend had said to
him—words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in
them—had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before,
but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses.
Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But
music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another
chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they
were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them.
And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able
to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their
own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything
so real as words?
Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood.
He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It
seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known
it?
With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise
psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested.
He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced,
and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book
which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he
wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience.
He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? How
fascinating the lad was!
Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had
the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes
only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence.
“Basil, I am tired of standing,” cried Dorian Gray suddenly. “I must go
out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here.”
“My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can’t think of
anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And
I have caught the effect I wanted—the half-parted lips and the bright
look in the eyes. I don’t know what Harry has been saying to you, but
he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose
he has been paying you compliments. You mustn’t believe a word that he
says.”
“He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the
reason that I don’t believe anything he has told me.”
“You know you believe it all,” said Lord Henry, looking at him with his
dreamy languorous eyes. “I will go out to the garden with you. It is
horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink,
something with strawberries in it.”
“Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will
tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I
will join you later on. Don’t keep Dorian too long. I have never been
in better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my
masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands.”
Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his
face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their
perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand
upon his shoulder. “You are quite right to do that,” he murmured.
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the
senses but the soul.”
The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had
tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There
was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they are
suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some
hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.
“Yes,” continued Lord Henry, “that is one of the great secrets of
life—to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means
of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think
you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking
the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic,
olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was
something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His
cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved,
as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own.
But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been
left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil
Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered
him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life who seemed to
have disclosed to him life’s mystery. And, yet, what was there to be
afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be
frightened.
“Let us go and sit in the shade,” said Lord Henry. “Parker has brought
out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you will be
quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must
not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming.”
“What can it matter?” cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on
the seat at the end of the garden.
“It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.”
“Why?”
“Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing
worth having.”
“I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.”
“No, you don’t feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and
ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion
branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will
feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it
always be so? ... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray.
Don’t frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius—is higher,
indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great
facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in
dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be
questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of
those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won’t
smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That
may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me,
beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not
judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not
the invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But
what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in
which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your
beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there
are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those
mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than
defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something
dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your
roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You
will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it.
Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying
to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the
ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the
false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you!
Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations.
Be afraid of nothing.... A new Hedonism—that is what our century wants.
You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing
you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season.... The moment
I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are,
of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me
that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how
tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time
that your youth will last—such a little time. The common hill-flowers
wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next
June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the
clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold
its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy
that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses
rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the
passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite
temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth!
There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”
Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell
from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for
a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe
of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in
trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make
us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we
cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays
sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the
bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian
convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to and
fro.
Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made
staccato signs for them to come in. They turned to each other and
smiled.
“I am waiting,” he cried. “Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and
you can bring your drinks.”
They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white
butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of