But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping, 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 ever since nine o’clock in your library. 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 wanted particularly to see you before 190 of 250
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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 lamp-light 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 191 of 250
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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 table.
‘You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian.
He gave me everything I wanted, including your best 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 Ashton’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 192 of 250
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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 Hallward, 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 about you in London,—things that I could hardly repeat to you.’
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‘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 rumors 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 of secret vices. There are no such things as secret vices. 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 194 of 250
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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 nor invite you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Cawdor. 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. Cawdor 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 fateful 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 195 of 250
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dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s only son, and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. James 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? Dorian, Dorian, your reputation is infamous. I know you and Harry are great friends. I say nothing about that now, but surely you need not have made his sister’s name a by-word. 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 said that, and then broke his word. I do want to preach to you.
I want you to lead such a life as will make the world 196 of 250
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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 whom you become intimate with, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house, for shame of some kind to follow after you. 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 infinite sorrow in his voice,—‘to see your soul. But only God can do that.’
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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’d 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 will 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.
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‘I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your good. You know I have been always devoted to you.’
‘Don’t touch me. Finish what you have to say.’
A twisted flash of pain shot across Hallward’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 rumored about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frost-like 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 will 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 infamous!’
Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. ‘Come up-stairs, Basil,’ he said, quietly. ‘I keep a diary of my life from day to day, and it never leaves the 199 of 250
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room in which it is written. I will show it to you if you come with me.’
‘I will come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my train. That makes no matter. I can go tomorrow. But don’t ask me to read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question.’
‘That will be given to you up-stairs. I could not give it here. You won’t have to read long. Don’t keep me waiting.’
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Chapter XI
He passed out of the room, and began the ascent, Basil Hallward following close behind. They walked softly, as men instinctively do 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 murmured, smiling. Then he added, somewhat bitterly, ‘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 said, 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 201 of 250
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for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost empty bookcase,—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 mantel-shelf, 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 odor 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 Hallward’s lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous thing on the canvas leering 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 marred that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual lips. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their 202 of 250
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blue, the noble curves had not yet passed entirely away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brush-work, 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 from fire to sluggish ice in a moment. 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 mantel-shelf, watching him with that strange expression that is on the faces of those who are absorbed in a play when a 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 the eyes. He had taken the 203 of 250
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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, ‘you met me, devoted yourself to 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 I don’t know, even now, 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. The 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 romance in it?’ said Dorian, bitterly.
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‘My romance, as you call it …’
‘As you called it.’
‘There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. This is the face of a satyr.’
‘It is the face of my soul.’
‘God! what a thing I must have worshipped! This 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 to be!’ He held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.
His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor, and lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he flung himself into the rickety chair 205 of 250
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that was standing by the table and buried his face in his hands.
‘Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! what an awful lesson!’ There was no answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the window.
‘Pray, Dorian, pray,’ he murmured. ‘What is it that one was taught to say in one’s boyhood? ‘Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.’
Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it.
You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.’
Dorian Gray turned slowly around, and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. ‘It is too late, Basil,’ he murmured.
‘It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we can remember a prayer. Isn’t there a verse somewhere, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow’?’
‘Those words mean nothing to me now.’
‘Hush! don’t say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God! don’t you see that accursed thing leering at us?’
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Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more than he had ever loathed anything in his whole life. He glanced wildly around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced him.
His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it, and turned round.
Hallward moved in his chair as if he was going to rise. He rushed at him, and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the table, and stabbing again and again.
There was a stifled groan, and the horrible sound of some one choking with blood. The outstretched arms shot up convulsively three times, waving grotesque stiff-fingered hands in the air. He stabbed him once more, but the man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor. He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw the knife on the table, and listened.
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He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. He opened the door, and went out on the landing. The house was quite quiet. No one was stirring.
He took out the key, and returned to the room, locking himself in as he did so.
The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not been for the red jagged tear in the neck, and the clotted black pool that slowly widened on the table, one would have said that the man was simply asleep.
How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and, walking over to the window, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock’s tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down, and saw the policeman going his rounds and flashing a bull’s-eye lantern on the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner, and then vanished. A woman in a ragged shawl was creeping round by the railings, staggering as she went. Now and then she stopped, and peered back. Once, she began to sing in a hoarse voice. The policeman strolled over and 208 of 250
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said something to her. She stumbled away, laughing. A bitter blast swept across the Square. The gas-lamps flickered, and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their black iron branches as if in pain. He shivered, and went back, closing the window behind him.
He passed to the door, turned the key, and opened it.
He did not even glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. The friend who had painted the fatal portrait, the portrait to which all his misery had been due, had gone out of his life. That was enough.
Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of Moorish workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel. Perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would be asked. He turned back, and took it from the table. How still the man was! How horribly white the long hands looked! He was like a dreadful wax image.
He locked the door behind him, and crept quietly down-stairs. The wood-work creaked, and seemed to cry out as if in pain. He stopped several times, and waited.
No: everything was still. It was merely the sound of his own footsteps.
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When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. They must be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that was in the wainscoting, and put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards.
Then he pulled out his watch. It was twenty minutes to two.
He sat down, and began to think. Every year—every month, almost— men were strangled in England for what he had done. There had been a madness of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close to the earth.
Evidence? What evidence was there against him? Basil Hallward had left the house at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to bed.
Paris! Yes. It was to Paris that Basil had gone, by the midnight train, as he had intended. With his curious reserved habits, it would be months before any suspicions would be aroused. Months? Everything could be destroyed long before then.
A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat, and went out into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread of the policeman outside on the pavement, and seeing the flash of the lantern reflected in the window. He waited, holding his breath.
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After a few moments he opened the front door, and slipped out, shutting it very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In about ten minutes his valet appeared, half dressed, and looking very drowsy.
‘I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,’ he said, stepping in; ‘but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?’
‘Five minutes past two, sir,’ answered the man, looking at the clock and yawning.
‘Five minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine to-morrow. I have some work to do.’
‘All right, sir.’
‘Did any one call this evening?’
‘Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to catch his train.’
‘Oh! I am sorry I didn’t see him. Did he leave any message?’