He has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce
him to you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds me of you."
"I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes.
"But I am tired to-night, Harry. I shan't go to the club.
It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to bed early."
"Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was something
in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever
heard from it before."
"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling.
"I am a little changed already."
"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will always
be friends."
"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.
Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one.
It does harm."
"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will
soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist,
warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired.
You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use.
You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be.
As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that.
Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire
to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world
calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
That is all. But we won't discuss literature. Come round
to-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go together,
and I will take you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome.
She is a charming woman, and wants to consult you about some
tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come. Or shall we
lunch with our little duchess? She says she never sees you now.
Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be.
Her clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any case, be here at
eleven."
"Must I really come, Harry?"
"Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don't think there
have been such lilacs since the year I met you."
"Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian.
"Good night, Harry." As he reached the door, he hesitated
for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then he sighed
and went out.
CHAPTER 20
It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and did
not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home,
smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him.
He heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray."
He remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out,
or stared at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now.
Half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately
was that no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl whom
he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him.
He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him
and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly.
What a laugh she had!--just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had
been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had
everything that he had lost.
When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him.
He sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library,
and began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said
to him.
Was it really true that one could never change? He felt
a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood--
his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it.
He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with
corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been
an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy
in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own,
it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that
he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable?
Was there no hope for him?
Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had
prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days,
and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth!
All his failure had been due to that. Better for him that each sin
of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it.
There was purification in punishment. Not "Forgive us our sins"
but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a
most just God.
The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given
to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table,
and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round it as of old.
He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror
when be had first noted the change in the fatal picture,
and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield.
Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written
to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words:
"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold.
The curves of your lips rewrite history." The phrases came back
to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself.
Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on
the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel.
It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth
that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life
might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him
but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best?
A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods,
and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had
spoiled him.
It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that.
It was of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think.
James Vane was hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard.
Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory,
but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know.
The excitement, such as it was, over Basil Hallward's
disappearance would soon pass away. It was already waning.
He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death
of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind.
It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him.
Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life.
He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait that had
done everything. Basil had said things to him that were unbearable,
and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder had
been simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell,
his suicide had been his own act. He had chosen to do it.
It was nothing to him.
A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for.
Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing,
at any rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.
As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the
locked room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it had been?
Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil
passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away.
He would go and look.
He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred the door,
a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and lingered
for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing
that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if
the load had been lifted from him already.
He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was
his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from the portrait.
A cry of pain and indignation broke from him. He could see
no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning
and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite.
The thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if possible,
than before--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand
seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled.
Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made
him do his one good deed? Or the desire for a new sensation,
as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh?
Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do
things finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these?
And why was the red stain larger than it had been? It seemed
to have crept like a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers.
There was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing
had dripped--blood even on the hand that had not held
the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess?
To give himself up and be put to death? He laughed.
He felt that the idea was monstrous. Besides, even if
he did confess, who would believe him? There was no trace
of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him
had been destroyed. He himself had burned what had been
below-stairs. The world would simply say that he was mad.
They would shut him up if he persisted in his story.
... Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame,
and to make public atonement. There was a God who called
upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven.
Nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had
told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his shoulders.
The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him.
He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror,
this mirror of his soul that he was looking at.
Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more
in his renunciation than that? There had been something more.
At least he thought so. But who could tell?... No. There
had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her.
In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's
sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that
now.
But this murder--was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be
burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was
only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself--
that was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long?
Once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old.
Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night.
When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes
should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions.
Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been
like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would
destroy it.
He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward.
He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it.
It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter,
so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant.
It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.
It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings,
he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture
with it.
There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible
in its agony that the frightened servants woke and crept
out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in
the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house.
They walked on till they met a policeman and brought him back.
The man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer.
Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark.
After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico
and watched.
"Whose house is that, Constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen.
"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.
They looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered.
One of them was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.
Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad
domestics were talking in low whispers to each other.
Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing her hands. Francis was
as pale as death.
After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen
and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out.
Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force the door,
they got on the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. The windows
yielded easily--their bolts were old.
When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid
portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all
the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor
was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart.
He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage.
It was not till they had examined the rings that they
recognized who it was.
End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Dorian Gray
*Project Gutenberg's The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde*
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