The Picture of Dorian Gray
by
Oscar Wilde
Part 2 out of 5
the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity,
I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life
of the intellect--simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness!
I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid
that others might pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you.
Go on with your story."
"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box,
with a vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face.
I looked out from behind the curtain and surveyed the house.
It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and cornucopias, like a
third-rate wedding-cake. The gallery and pit were fairly full,
but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there was
hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle.
Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a
terrible consumption of nuts going on."
"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British drama."
"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder
what on earth I should do when I caught sight of the play-bill.
What do you think the play was, Harry?"
"I should think 'The Idiot Boy', or 'Dumb but Innocent'.
Our fathers used to like that sort of piece, I believe.
The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever
was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art,
as in politics, les grandperes ont toujours tort."
"This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was Romeo and Juliet.
I must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare
done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested,
in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act.
There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young
Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away,
but at last the drop-scene was drawn up and the play began.
Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky
tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost
as bad. He was played by the low-comedian, who had introduced
gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit.
They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it
had come out of a country-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl,
hardly seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face,
a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were
violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose.
She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life.
You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty,
mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could
hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me.
And her voice--I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first,
with deep mellow notes that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear.
Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a
distant hautboy. In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy
that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing.
There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins.
You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of
Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close
my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different.
I don't know which to follow. Why should I not love her?
Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life.
Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind,
and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom
of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips.
I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden,
disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap.
She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king,
and given him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste of.
She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have
crushed her reedlike throat. I have seen her in every age and in
every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination.
They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them.
One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets.
One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them. They ride
in the park in the morning and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon.
They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable manner.
They are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an actress is!
Harry! why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an
actress?"
"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian."
"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces."
"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary
charm in them, sometimes," said Lord Henry.
"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane."
"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life
you will tell me everything you do."
"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things.
You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would come
and confess it to you. You would understand me."
"People like you--the wilful sunbeams of life--don't commit crimes, Dorian.
But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same. And now tell me--
reach me the matches, like a good boy--thanks--what are your actual relations
with Sibyl Vane?"
Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes.
"Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"
"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian,"
said Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice.
"But why should you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong
to you some day. When one is in love, one always begins by
deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.
That is what the world calls a romance. You know her, at any rate,
I suppose?"
"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre,
the horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over
and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her.
I was furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead
for hundreds of years and that her body was lying in a marble
tomb in Verona. I think, from his blank look of amazement,
that he was under the impression that I had taken too much champagne,
or something."
"I am not surprised."
"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers.
I told him I never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed
at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics
were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were every
one of them to be bought."
"I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other hand,
judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all expensive."
"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means,"
laughed Dorian. "By this time, however, the lights were being
put out in the theatre, and I had to go. He wanted me to try
some cigars that he strongly recommended. I declined.
The next night, of course, I arrived at the place again.
When he saw me, he made me a low bow and assured me that I
was a munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive brute,
though he had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare.
He told me once, with an air of pride, that his five bankruptcies
were entirely due to 'The Bard,' as he insisted on calling him.
He seemed to think it a distinction."
"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian--a great distinction.
Most people become bankrupt through having invested too
heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over
poetry is an honour. But when did you first speak to Miss
Sibyl Vane?"
"The third night. She had been playing Rosalind.
I could not help going round. I had thrown her some flowers,
and she had looked at me--at least I fancied that she had.
The old Jew was persistent. He seemed determined to take me behind,
so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know her,
wasn't it?"
"No; I don't think so."
"My dear Harry, why?"
"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl."
"Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy and so gentle. There is something of a
child about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I
told her what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite
unconscious of her power. I think we were both rather nervous.
The old Jew stood grinning at the doorway of the dusty greenroom,
making elaborate speeches about us both, while we stood looking at
each other like children. He would insist on calling me 'My Lord,'
so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the kind.
She said quite simply to me, 'You look more like a prince.
I must call you Prince Charming.'"
"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments."
"You don't understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a person
in a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother,
a faded tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta
dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen
better days."
"I know that look. It depresses me," murmured Lord Henry,
examining his rings.
"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest me."
"You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean
about other people's tragedies."
"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me
where she came from? From her little head to her little feet,
she is absolutely and entirely divine. Every night of my life I
go to see her act, and every night she is more marvellous."
"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now.
I thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have;
but it is not quite what I expected."
"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day,
and I have been to the opera with you several times," said Dorian,
opening his blue eyes in wonder.
"You always come dreadfully late."
"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play," he cried, "even if it is
only for a single act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think
of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body,
I am filled with awe."
"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?"
He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he answered,
"and to-morrow night she will be Juliet."
"When is she Sibyl Vane?"
"Never."
"I congratulate you."
"How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in one.
She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she
has genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know
all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me!
I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world
to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion
to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
My God, Harry, how I worship her!" He was walking up and down the room
as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was
terribly excited.
Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How different
he was now from the shy frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward's studio!
His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame.
Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his soul, and desire had come to meet
it on the way.
"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry at last.
"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act.
I have not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to
acknowledge her genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands.
She is bound to him for three years--at least for two years and eight months--
from the present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course.
When all that is settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring
her out properly. She will make the world as mad as she has
made me."
"That would be impossible, my dear boy."
"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct,
in her, but she has personality also; and you have often told me
that it is personalities, not principles, that move the age."
"Well, what night shall we go?"
"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays
Juliet to-morrow."
"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil."
"Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there
before the curtain rises. You must see her in the first act,
where she meets Romeo."
"Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, or reading
an English novel. It must be seven. No gentleman dines before seven.
Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to him?"
"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week.
It is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in
the most wonderful frame, specially designed by himself, and,
though I am a little jealous of the picture for being a whole
month younger than I am, I must admit that I delight in it.
Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't want to see him alone.
He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice."
Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of giving away what they
need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."
"Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit
of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that."
"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him
into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for
life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense.
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful
are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make,
and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of
all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.
The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look.
The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets
makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that
he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare
not realize."
"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray,
putting some perfume on his handkerchief out of a large,
gold-topped bottle that stood on the table. "It must be,
if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is waiting for me.
Don't forget about to-morrow. Good-bye."
As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began
to think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much
as Dorian Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else
caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy.
He was pleased by it. It made him a more interesting study.
He had been always enthralled by the methods of natural science,
but the ordinary subject-matter of that science had seemed to him
trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself,
as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life--that appeared
to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there
was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched
life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could
not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous
fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid
with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons
so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them.
There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them
if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great
reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one!
To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional
coloured life of the intellect--to observe where they met,
and where they separated, at what point they were in unison,
and at what point they were at discord--there was a delight in that!
What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for
any sensation.
He was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into
his brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his,
musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul
had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her.
To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made
him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till
life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect,
the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away.
Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature,
which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.
But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed
the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art,
life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture,
or painting.
Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it
was yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him,
but he was becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him.
With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to
wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end.
He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play,
whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense
of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.
Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were! There was
animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.
The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could
say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began?
How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists!
And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools!
Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body
really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit
from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a
mystery also.
He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute
a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us.
As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others.
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to
their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning,
had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character,
had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed
us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience.
It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it
really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past,
and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times,
and with joy.
It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only
method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis
of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made
to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results.
His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon
of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much
to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences,
yet it was not a simple, but rather a very complex passion.
What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood
had been transformed by the workings of the imagination,
changed into something that seemed to the lad himself to be remote
from sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous.
It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves
that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives
were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened
that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were
really experimenting on ourselves.
While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door,
and his valet entered and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner.
He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into
scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed
like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose.
He thought of his friend's young fiery-coloured life and wondered how it was
all going to end.
When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a telegram
lying on the hall table. He opened it and found it was from Dorian Gray.
It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl Vane.
CHAPTER 5
"Mother, Mother, I am so happy!" whispered the girl, burying her
face in the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who,
with back turned to the shrill intrusive light, was sitting
in the one arm-chair that their dingy sitting-room contained.
"I am so happy!" she repeated, "and you must be happy, too!"
Mrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuth-whitened hands on her
daughter's head. "Happy!" she echoed, "I am only happy, Sibyl, when I
see you act. You must not think of anything but your acting.
Mr. Isaacs has been very good to us, and we owe him money."
The girl looked up and pouted. "Money, Mother?" she cried,
"what does money matter? Love is more than money."
"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts and to get
a proper outfit for James. You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty pounds
is a very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate."
"He is not a gentleman, Mother, and I hate the way he talks to me,"
said the girl, rising to her feet and going over to the window.
"I don't know how we could manage without him," answered the elder
woman querulously.
Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. "We don't want him
any more, Mother. Prince Charming rules life for us now."
Then she paused. A rose shook in her blood and shadowed
her cheeks. Quick breath parted the petals of her lips.
They trembled. Some southern wind of passion swept over her
and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "I love him,"
she said simply.
"Foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-phrase flung in answer.
The waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to
the words.
The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice.
Her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed
for a moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened,
the mist of a dream had passed across them.
Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair,
hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose
author apes the name of common sense. She did not listen.
She was free in her prison of passion. Her prince, Prince Charming,
was with her. She had called on memory to remake him.
She had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought him back.
His kiss burned again upon her mouth. Her eyelids were warm with
his breath.
Then wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery.
This young man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of.
Against the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning.
The arrows of craft shot by her. She saw the thin lips moving,
and smiled.
Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The wordy silence troubled her.
"Mother, Mother," she cried, "why does he love me so much? I know why I
love him. I love him because he is like what love himself should be.
But what does he see in me? I am not worthy of him. And yet--why, I
cannot tell--though I feel so much beneath him, I don't feel humble.
I feel proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you love my father as I love
Prince Charming?"
The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed
her cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain.
Sybil rushed to her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her.
"Forgive me, Mother. I know it pains you to talk about our father.
But it only pains you because you loved him so much. Don't look so sad.
I am as happy to-day as you were twenty years ago. Ah! let me be happy
for ever!"
"My child, you are far too young to think of falling in love.
Besides, what do you know of this young man? You don't
even know his name. The whole thing is most inconvenient,
and really, when James is going away to Australia, and I have
so much to think of, I must say that you should have shown
more consideration. However, as I said before, if he is rich
. . ."
"Ah! Mother, Mother, let me be happy!"
Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false
theatrical gestures that so often become a mode of second
nature to a stage-player, clasped her in her arms.
At this moment, the door opened and a young lad with rough
brown hair came into the room. He was thick-set of figure,
and his hands and feet were large and somewhat clumsy in movement.
He was not so finely bred as his sister. One would hardly
have guessed the close relationship that existed between them.
Mrs. Vane fixed her eyes on him and intensified her smile.
She mentally elevated her son to the dignity of an audience.
She felt sure that the tableau was interesting.
"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think,"
said the lad with a good-natured grumble.
"Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she cried.
"You are a dreadful old bear." And she ran across the room and
hugged him.
James Vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness.
"I want you to come out with me for a walk, Sibyl.
I don't suppose I shall ever see this horrid London again.
I am sure I don't want to."
"My son, don't say such dreadful things," murmured Mrs. Vane, taking up
a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it.
She felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group.
It would have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation.
"Why not, Mother? I mean it."
"You pain me, my son. I trust you will return from Australia in a position
of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the Colonies--
nothing that I would call society--so when you have made your fortune,
you must come back and assert yourself in London."
"Society!" muttered the lad. "I don't want to know anything about that.
I should like to make some money to take you and Sibyl off the stage.
I hate it."
"Oh, Jim!" said Sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of you!
But are you really going for a walk with me? That will be nice!
I was afraid you were going to say good-bye to some of your friends--
to Tom Hardy, who gave you that hideous pipe, or Ned Langton,
who makes fun of you for smoking it. It is very sweet of you
to let me have your last afternoon. Where shall we go?
Let us go to the park."
"I am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "Only swell people go to the park."
"Nonsense, Jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.
He hesitated for a moment. "Very well," he said at last,
"but don't be too long dressing." She danced out of the door.
One could hear her singing as she ran upstairs. Her little feet
pattered overhead.
He walked up and down the room two or three times. Then he turned
to the still figure in the chair. "Mother, are my things ready?"
he asked.
"Quite ready, James," she answered, keeping her eyes on
her work. For some months past she had felt ill at ease
when she was alone with this rough stern son of hers.
Her shallow secret nature was troubled when their eyes met.
She used to wonder if he suspected anything. The silence,
for he made no other observation, became intolerable to her.
She began to complain. Women defend themselves by attacking,
just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
"I hope you will be contented, James, with your sea-faring life,"
she said. "You must remember that it is your own choice.
You might have entered a solicitor's office. Solicitors are
a very respectable class, and in the country often dine with
the best families."
"I hate offices, and I hate clerks," he replied. "But you are quite right.
I have chosen my own life. All I say is, watch over Sibyl. Don't let her
come to any harm. Mother, you must watch over her."
"James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I watch over Sibyl."
"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre and goes behind
to talk to her. Is that right? What about that?"
"You are speaking about things you don't understand, James. In the profession
we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying attention.
I myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. That was when acting
was really understood. As for Sibyl, I do not know at present whether
her attachment is serious or not. But there is no doubt that the young
man in question is a perfect gentleman. He is always most polite to me.
Besides, he has the appearance of being rich, and the flowers he sends
are lovely."
"You don't know his name, though," said the lad harshly.
"No," answered his mother with a placid expression in her face.
"He has not yet revealed his real name. I think it is quite romantic
of him. He is probably a member of the aristocracy."
James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sibyl, Mother," he cried,
"watch over her."
"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my special care.
Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why she should
not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the aristocracy.
He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be a most brilliant
marriage for Sibyl. They would make a charming couple. His good looks are
really quite remarkable; everybody notices them."
The lad muttered something to himself and drummed on the window-pane
with his coarse fingers. He had just turned round to say something
when the door opened and Sibyl ran in.
"How serious you both are!" she cried. "What is the matter?"
"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be serious sometimes.
Good-bye, Mother; I will have my dinner at five o'clock. Everything
is packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble."
"Good-bye, my son," she answered with a bow of strained stateliness.
She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her,
and there was something in his look that had made her feel afraid.
"Kiss me, Mother," said the girl. Her flowerlike lips touched the withered
cheek and warmed its frost.
"My child! my child!" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling
in search of an imaginary gallery.
"Come, Sibyl," said her brother impatiently. He hated
his mother's affectations.
They went out into the flickering, wind-blown sunlight and strolled
down the dreary Euston Road. The passersby glanced in wonder
at the sullen heavy youth who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes,
was in the company of such a graceful, refined-looking girl.
He was like a common gardener walking with a rose.
Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive
glance of some stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at,
which comes on geniuses late in life and never leaves the commonplace.
Sibyl, however, was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing.
Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips. She was thinking
of Prince Charming, and, that she might think of him all the more,
she did not talk of him, but prattled on about the ship in which
Jim was going to sail, about the gold he was certain to find,
about the wonderful heiress whose life he was to save from the wicked,
red-shirted bushrangers. For he was not to remain a sailor,
or a supercargo, or whatever he was going to be. Oh, no! A sailor's
existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship,
with the hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a black wind
blowing the masts down and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands!
He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite good-bye
to the captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before
a week was over he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold,
the largest nugget that had ever been discovered, and bring it
down to the coast in a waggon guarded by six mounted policemen.
The bushrangers were to attack them three times, and be defeated
with immense slaughter. Or, no. He was not to go to the gold-fields
at all. They were horrid places, where men got intoxicated,
and shot each other in bar-rooms, and used bad language. He was
to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one evening, as he was riding home,
he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off by a robber
on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of course,
she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would
get married, and come home, and live in an immense house in London.
Yes, there were delightful things in store for him. But he must
be very good, and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly.
She was only a year older than he was, but she knew so much more
of life. He must be sure, also, to write to her by every mail,
and to say his prayers each night before he went to sleep.
God was very good, and would watch over him. She would pray
for him, too, and in a few years he would come back quite rich and
happy.
The lad listened sulkily to her and made no answer. He was heart-sick
at leaving home.
Yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose.
Inexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense
of the danger of Sibyl's position. This young dandy who was
making love to her could mean her no good. He was a gentleman,
and he hated him for that, hated him through some curious
race-instinct for which he could not account, and which for that
reason was all the more dominant within him. He was conscious
also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother's nature,
and in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl's happiness.
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they
judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
His mother! He had something on his mind to ask of her,
something that he had brooded on for many months of silence.
A chance phrase that he had heard at the theatre, a whispered
sneer that had reached his ears one night as he waited at
the stage-door, had set loose a train of horrible thoughts.
He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a hunting-crop
across his face. His brows knit together into a wedgelike furrow,
and with a twitch of pain he bit his underlip.
"You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim," cried Sibyl,
"and I am making the most delightful plans for your future.
Do say something."
"What do you want me to say?"
"Oh! that you will be a good boy and not forget us," she answered,
smiling at him.
He shrugged his shoulders. "You are more likely to forget me than I am
to forget you, Sibyl."
She flushed. "What do you mean, Jim?" she asked.
"You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why have you not told me
about him? He means you no good."
"Stop, Jim!" she exclaimed. "You must not say anything against him.
I love him."
"Why, you don't even know his name," answered the lad. "Who is he?
I have a right to know."
"He is called Prince Charming. Don't you like the name.
Oh! you silly boy! you should never forget it. If you only saw him,
you would think him the most wonderful person in the world.
Some day you will meet him--when you come back from Australia.
You will like him so much. Everybody likes him, and I ...
love him. I wish you could come to the theatre to-night. He
is going to be there, and I am to play Juliet. Oh! how I
shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to be in love and play Juliet!
To have him sitting there! To play for his delight!
I am afraid I may frighten the company, frighten or enthrall them.
To be in love is to surpass one's self. Poor dreadful
Mr. Isaacs will be shouting 'genius' to his loafers at the bar.
He has preached me as a dogma; to-night he will announce me
as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his only,
Prince Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces.
But I am poor beside him. Poor? What does that matter?
When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.
Our proverbs want rewriting. They were made in winter, and it is
summer now; spring-time for me, I think, a very dance of blossoms
in blue skies."
"He is a gentleman," said the lad sullenly.
"A prince!" she cried musically. "What more do you want?"
"He wants to enslave you."
"I shudder at the thought of being free."
"I want you to beware of him."
"To see him is to worship him; to know him is to trust him."
"Sibyl, you are mad about him."
She laughed and took his arm. "You dear old Jim, you talk as
if you were a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself.
Then you will know what it is. Don't look so sulky.
Surely you should be glad to think that, though you are
going away, you leave me happier than I have ever been before.
Life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and difficult.
But it will be different now. You are going to a new world,
and I have found one. Here are two chairs; let us sit down and see
the smart people go by."
They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulip-beds
across the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust--
tremulous cloud of orris-root it seemed--hung in the panting air.
The brightly coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies.
She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects.
He spoke slowly and with effort. They passed words to each other
as players at a game pass counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could
not communicate her joy. A faint smile curving that sullen mouth
was all the echo she could win. After some time she became silent.
Suddenly she caught a glimpse of golden hair and laughing lips,
and in an open carriage with two ladies Dorian Gray drove past.
She started to her feet. "There he is!" she cried.
"Who?" said Jim Vane.
"Prince Charming," she answered, looking after the victoria.
He jumped up and seized her roughly by the arm. "Show him to me.
Which is he? Point him out. I must see him!" he exclaimed;
but at that moment the Duke of Berwick's four-in-hand came between,
and when it had left the space clear, the carriage had swept out of
the park.
"He is gone," murmured Sibyl sadly. "I wish you had seen him."
"I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven,
if he ever does you any wrong, I shall kill him."
She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words.
They cut the air like a dagger. The people round began to gape.
A lady standing close to her tittered.
"Come away, Jim; come away," she whispered. He followed her doggedly
as she passed through the crowd. He felt glad at what he had said.
When they reached the Achilles Statue, she turned round.
There was pity in her eyes that became laughter on her lips.
She shook her head at him. "You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish;
a bad-tempered boy, that is all. How can you say such
horrible things? You don't know what you are talking about.
You are simply jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish you would
fall in love. Love makes people good, and what you said
was wicked."
"I am sixteen," he answered, "and I know what I am about.
Mother is no help to you. She doesn't understand how to look
after you. I wish now that I was not going to Australia at all.
I have a great mind to chuck the whole thing up. I would, if my
articles hadn't been signed."
"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes
of those silly melodramas Mother used to be so fond of acting in.
I am not going to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see
him is perfect happiness. We won't quarrel. I know you would never
harm any one I love, would you?"
"Not as long as you love him, I suppose," was the sullen answer.
"I shall love him for ever!" she cried.
"And he?"
"For ever, too!"
"He had better."
She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put her hand on his arm.
He was merely a boy.
At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close
to their shabby home in the Euston Road. It was after five o'clock,
and Sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting.
Jim insisted that she should do so. He said that he would sooner
part with her when their mother was not present. She would be sure
to make a scene, and he detested scenes of every kind.
In Sybil's own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad's heart,
and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him,
had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck,
and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and kissed her with
real affection. There were tears in his eyes as he went downstairs.
His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his unpunctuality,
as he entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal.
The flies buzzed round the table and crawled over the stained cloth.
Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of street-cabs,
he could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that was left
to him.
After some time, he thrust away his plate and put his head in his hands.
He felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to him before,
if it was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother watched him.
Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A tattered lace handkerchief
twitched in her fingers. When the clock struck six, he got up and went
to the door. Then he turned back and looked at her. Their eyes met.
In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It enraged him.
"Mother, I have something to ask you," he said. Her eyes wandered
vaguely about the room. She made no answer. "Tell me the truth.
I have a right to know. Were you married to my father?"
She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment,
the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded,
had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed, in some measure it
was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question called
for a direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up to.
It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.
"No," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.
"My father was a scoundrel then!" cried the lad, clenching his fists.
She shook her head. "I knew he was not free. We loved each other
very much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us.
Don't speak against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman.
Indeed, he was highly connected."
An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for myself,"
he exclaimed, "but don't let Sibyl. . . . It is a gentleman,
isn't it, who is in love with her, or says he is?
Highly connected, too, I suppose."
For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman.
Her head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands.
"Sibyl has a mother," she murmured; "I had none."
The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down,
he kissed her. "I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about
my father," he said, "but I could not help it. I must go now.
Good-bye. Don't forget that you will have only one child now
to look after, and believe me that if this man wrongs my sister,
I will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog.
I swear it."
The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture
that accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem
more vivid to her. She was familiar with the atmosphere.
She breathed more freely, and for the first time for many months
she really admired her son. She would have liked to have continued
the scene on the same emotional scale, but he cut her short.
Trunks had to be carried down and mufflers looked for.
The lodging-house drudge bustled in and out. There was the bargaining
with the cabman. The moment was lost in vulgar details.
It was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the
tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove away.
She was conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted.
She consoled herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her
life would be, now that she had only one child to look after.
She remembered the phrase. It had pleased her. Of the threat
she said nothing. It was vividly and dramatically expressed.
She felt that they would all laugh at it some day.
CHAPTER 6
"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry
that evening as Hallward was shown into a little private room
at the Bristol where dinner had been laid for three.
"No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to
the bowing waiter. "What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope!
They don't interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House
of Commons worth painting, though many of them would be the better
for a little whitewashing."
"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry,
watching him as he spoke.
Hallward started and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be married!"
he cried. "Impossible!"
"It is perfectly true."
"To whom?"
"To some little actress or other."
"I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible."
"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then,
my dear Basil."
"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry."
"Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry languidly. "But I
didn't say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married.
There is a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of
being married, but I have no recollection at all of being engaged.
I am inclined to think that I never was engaged."
"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth.
It would be absurd for him to marry so much beneath him."
"If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is
sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing,
it is always from the noblest motives."
"I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don't want to see Dorian tied to some
vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect."
"Oh, she is better than good--she is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry,
sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "Dorian says she
is beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind.
Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal
appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect,
amongst others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget
his appointment."
"Are you serious?"
"Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I
should ever be more serious than I am at the present moment."
"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter,
walking up and down the room and biting his lip. "You can't
approve of it, possibly. It is some silly infatuation."
"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd
attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world
to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common
people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.
If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that
personality selects is absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray
falls in love with a beautiful girl who acts Juliet, and proposes
to marry her. Why not? If he wedded Messalina, he would be none
the less interesting. You know I am not a champion of marriage.
The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish.
And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality.
Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex.
They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos.
They are forced to have more than one life. They become more
highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy,
the object of man's existence. Besides, every experience
is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage,
it is certainly an experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will
make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months,
and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a
wonderful study."
"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you don't. If
Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself.
You are much better than you pretend to be."
Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to think
so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are
generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession
of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us.
We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account,
and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that
he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said.
I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life,
no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.
If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other
and more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly
encourage them. They have the charm of being fashionable.
But here is Dorian himself. He will tell you more than
I can."
"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!"
said the lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined
wings and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn.
"I have never been so happy. Of course, it is sudden--
all really delightful things are. And yet it seems to me
to be the one thing I have been looking for all my life."
He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked
extraordinarily handsome.
"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but I
don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement.
You let Harry know."
"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in Lord Henry,
putting his hand on the lad's shoulder and smiling as he spoke.
"Come, let us sit down and try what the new chef here is like, and then you
will tell us how it all came about."
"There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian as they took their
seats at the small round table. "What happened was simply this.
After I left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some
dinner at that little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you
introduced me to, and went down at eight o'clock to the theatre.
Sibyl was playing Rosalind. Of course, the scenery was dreadful
and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl! You should have seen her!
When she came on in her boy's clothes, she was perfectly wonderful.
She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves,
slim, brown, cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk's
feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red.
She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all the delicate
grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your studio, Basil.
Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose.
As for her acting--well, you shall see her to-night. She is simply
a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled.
I forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century.
I was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen.
After the performance was over, I went behind and spoke to her.
As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look
that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers.
We kissed each other. I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment.
It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect
point of rose-coloured joy. She trembled all over and shook
like a white narcissus. Then she flung herself on her knees
and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell you all this,
but I can't help it. Of course, our engagement is a dead secret.
She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my guardians
will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care.
I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like.
I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry
and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare
taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear.
I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the
mouth."
"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward slowly.
"Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry.
Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the forest of Arden;
I shall find her in an orchard in Verona."
Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner.
"At what particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian?
And what did she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it."
"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction,
and I did not make any formal proposal. I told her that I
loved her, and she said she was not worthy to be my wife.
Not worthy! Why, the whole world is nothing to me compared
with her."
"Women are wonderfully practical," murmured Lord Henry,
"much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind
we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always
remind us."
Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't, Harry.
You have annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men.
He would never bring misery upon any one. His nature is too fine
for that."
Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is never annoyed with me,"
he answered. "I asked the question for the best reason possible,
for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question--
simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who
propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course,
in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern."
Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. "You are quite
incorrigible, Harry; but I don't mind. It is impossible to be angry
with you. When you see Sibyl Vane, you will feel that the man
who could wrong her would be a beast, a beast without a heart.
I cannot understand how any one can wish to shame the thing
he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a pedestal
of gold and to see the world worship the woman who is mine.
What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that.
Ah! don't mock. It is an irrevocable vow that I want to take.
Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.
When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me.
I become different from what you have known me to be.
I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes
me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous,
delightful theories."
"And those are ... ?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad.
"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love,
your theories about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry."
"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about,"
he answered in his slow melodious voice. "But I am afraid
I cannot claim my theory as my own. It belongs to Nature,
not to me. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval.
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good,
we are not always happy."
"Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward.
"Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord
Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood
in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"
"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied,
touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers.
"Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.
One's own life--that is the important thing. As for the lives
of one's neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan,
one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not
one's concern. Besides, individualism has really the higher aim.
Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.
I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is
a form of the grossest immorality."
"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays
a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.
"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should
fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford
nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things,
are the privilege of the rich."
"One has to pay in other ways but money."
"What sort of ways, Basil?"
"Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in . . . well,
in the consciousness of degradation."
Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, mediaeval art
is charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date. One can use
them in fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can
use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact.
Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized
man ever knows what a pleasure is."
"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore some one."
"That is certainly better than being adored," he answered,
toying with some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance.
Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods.
They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something
for them."
"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to us,"
murmured the lad gravely. "They create love in our natures. They have a
right to demand it back."
"That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward.
"Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry.
"This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit, Harry, that women
give to men the very gold of their lives."
"Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such
very small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty
Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces
and always prevent us from carrying them out."
"Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I like you so much."
"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some coffee,
you fellows? Waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne, and some cigarettes.
No, don't mind the cigarettes--I have some. Basil, I can't allow you to
smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type
of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.
What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me.
I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."
"What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from
a fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.
"Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will
have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you
have never known."
"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired
look in his eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion.
I am afraid, however, that, for me at any rate, there is
no such thing. Still, your wonderful girl may thrill me.
I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Let us go.
Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but there
is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in
a hansom."
They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing.
The painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him.
He could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him
to be better than many other things that might have happened.
After a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. He drove off by himself,
as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little
brougham in front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him.
He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had
been in the past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened,
and the crowded flaring streets became blurred to his eyes.
When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown
years older.
CHAPTER 7
For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night,
and the fat Jew manager who met them at the door was
beaming from ear to ear with an oily tremulous smile.
He escorted them to their box with a sort of pompous humility,
waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top of his voice.
Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he had
come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban.
Lord Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him.
At least he declared he did, and insisted on shaking him
by the hand and assuring him that he was proud to meet a man
who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a poet.
Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit.
The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight
flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire.
The youths in the gallery had taken off their coats
and waistcoats and hung them over the side. They talked
to each other across the theatre and shared their oranges
with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women
were laughing in the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill
and discordant. The sound of the popping of corks came from
the bar.
"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.
"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine
beyond all living things. When she acts, you will forget everything.
These common rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures,
become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently
and watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do.
She makes them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them,
and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."
"The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I hope not!"
exclaimed Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery
through his opera-glass.
"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter.
"I understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl.
Any one you love must be marvellous, and any girl
who has the effect you describe must be fine and noble.
To spiritualize one's age--that is something worth doing.
If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one,
if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives
have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their
selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not
their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of
the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite right.
I did not think so at first, but I admit it now.
The gods made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have
been incomplete."
"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand.
"I knew that you would understand me. Harry is so cynical,
he terrifies me. But here is the orchestra. It is
quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five minutes.
Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I
am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything
that is good in me."
A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of applause,
Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly lovely to look at--
one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought, that he had ever seen.
There was something of the fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes.
A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to her
cheeks as she glanced at the crowded enthusiastic house. She stepped back
a few paces and her lips seemed to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet
and began to applaud. Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray,
gazing at her. Lord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring,
"Charming! charming!"
The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's
dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band,
such as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began.
Through the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl Vane
moved like a creature from a finer world. Her body swayed,
while she danced, as a plant sways in the water. The curves of her
throat were the curves of a white lily. Her hands seemed to be made
of cool ivory.
Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy
when her eyes rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak--
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss--
with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a
thoroughly artificial manner. The voice was exquisite,
but from the point of view of tone it was absolutely false.
It was wrong in colour. It took away all the life from the verse.
It made the passion unreal.
Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious.
Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them
to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disappointed.
Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene
of the second act. They waited for that. If she failed there,
there was nothing in her.
She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight.
That could not be denied. But the staginess of her acting
was unbearable, and grew worse as she went on. Her gestures
became absurdly artificial. She overemphasized everything
that she had to say. The beautiful passage--
Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night--
was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been
taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she
leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines--
Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say, "It lightens." Sweet, good-night!
This bud of love by summer's ripening breath
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet--
she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was
not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely
self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.
Even the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their
interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to
whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was
the girl herself.
When the second act was over, there came a storm of hisses,
and Lord Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat.
"She is quite beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she can't act.
Let us go."
"I am going to see the play through," answered the lad,
in a hard bitter voice. "I am awfully sorry that I have made
you waste an evening, Harry. I apologize to you both."
"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted Hallward.
"We will come some other night."
"I wish she were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me
to be simply callous and cold. She has entirely altered.
Last night she was a great artist. This evening she is merely a
commonplace mediocre actress."
"Don't talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a more
wonderful thing than art."
"They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry.
"But do let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer.
It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting.
Besides, I don't suppose you will want your wife to act,
so what does it matter if she plays Juliet like a wooden doll?
She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life
as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--
people who know absolutely everything, and people who know
absolutely nothing. Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic!
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion
that is unbecoming. Come to the club with Basil and myself.
We will smoke cigarettes and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane.
She is beautiful. What more can you want?"
"Go away, Harry," cried the lad. "I want to be alone. Basil, you must go.
Ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?" The hot tears came
to his eyes. His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box,
he leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.
"Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry with a strange tenderness in his voice,
and the two young men passed out together.
A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose
on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale,
and proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable.
Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots and laughing.
The whole thing was a fiasco. The last act was played to almost
empty benches. The curtain went down on a titter and some groans.
As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into
the greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look
of triumph on her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire.
There was a radiance about her. Her parted lips were smiling over
some secret of their own.
When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy
came over her. "How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried.
"Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement. "Horribly!
It was dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was.
You have no idea what I suffered."
The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, lingering over
his name with long-drawn music in her voice, as though it
were sweeter than honey to the red petals of her mouth.
"Dorian, you should have understood. But you understand now,
don't you?"
"Understand what?" he asked, angrily.
"Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad.
Why I shall never act well again."
He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose.
When you are ill you shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous.
My friends were bored. I was bored."
She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy.
An ecstasy of happiness dominated her.
"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one
reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought
that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other.
The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also.
I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed
to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing
but shadows, and I thought them real. You came--oh, my beautiful love!--
and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is.
To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness,
the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played.
To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous,
and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false,
that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal,
were not my words, were not what I wanted to say. You had brought me
something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection.
You had made me understand what love really is. My love! My love!
Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows.
You are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with
the puppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not understand
how it was that everything had gone from me. I thought that I was going
to be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing. Suddenly it dawned
on my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard
them hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of love such as ours?
Take me away, Dorian--take me away with you, where we can be quite alone.
I hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel,
but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian,
you understand now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would
be profanation for me to play at being in love. You have made me see
that."
He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face.
"You have killed my love," he muttered.
She looked at him in wonder and laughed. He made no answer.
She came across to him, and with her little fingers stroked
his hair. She knelt down and pressed his hands to her lips.
He drew them away, and a shudder ran through him.
Then he leaped up and went to the door. "Yes," he cried,
"you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination.
Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect.
I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius
and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great
poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art.
You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.
My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been!
You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again.
I will never think of you. I will never mention your name.
You don't know what you were to me, once. Why, once . . . Oh,
I can't bear to think of it! I wish I had never laid
eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of my life.
How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!
Without your art, you are nothing. I would have made
you famous, splendid, magnificent. The world would
have worshipped you, and you would have borne my name.
What are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty
face."
The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together,
and her voice seemed to catch in her throat. "You are not serious, Dorian?"
she murmured. "You are acting."
"Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well," he answered bitterly.
She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain
in her face, came across the room to him. She put her hand
upon his arm and looked into his eyes. He thrust her back.
"Don't touch me!" he cried.
A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet
and lay there like a trampled flower. "Dorian, Dorian,
don't leave me!" she whispered. "I am so sorry I didn't act well.
I was thinking of you all the time. But I will try--indeed, I
will try. It came so suddenly across me, my love for you.
I think I should never have known it if you had not kissed me--
if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love.
Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away
from me. My brother . . . No; never mind. He didn't mean it.
He was in jest. . . . But you, oh! can't you forgive me for
to-night? I will work so hard and try to improve. Don't be cruel
to me, because I love you better than anything in the world.
After all, it is only once that I have not pleased you.
But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown
myself more of an artist. It was foolish of me, and yet I
couldn't help it. Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me."
A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She crouched on
the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his
beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled
in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous
about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic.
Her tears and sobs annoyed him.
"I am going," he said at last in his calm clear voice.
"I don't wish to be unkind, but I can't see you again.
You have disappointed me."
She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer.
Her little hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be
seeking for him. He turned on his heel and left the room.
In a few moments he was out of the theatre.
Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimly
lit streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses.
Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after him.
Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves like
monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon door-steps, and
heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.
As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent Garden.
The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself
into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly
down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of
the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain.
He followed into the market and watched the men unloading their waggons.
A white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him,
wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat
them listlessly. They had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness
of the moon had entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates
of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him,
threading their way through the huge, jade-green piles of vegetables.
Under the portico, with its grey, sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop
of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction to be over.
Others crowded round the swinging doors of the coffee-house in the piazza.
The heavy cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones,
shaking their bells and trappings. Some of the drivers were lying asleep
on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about
picking up seeds.
After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home.
For a few moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round
at the silent square, with its blank, close-shuttered windows
and its staring blinds. The sky was pure opal now,
and the roofs of the houses glistened like silver against it.
From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising.
It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.
In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge,
that hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall
of entrance, lights were still burning from three flickering jets:
thin blue petals of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire.
He turned them out and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table,
passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom,
a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that, in his new-born
feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for himself and hung
with some curious Renaissance tapestries that had been discovered
stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning
the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil
Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise.
Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled.
After he had taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed
to hesitate. Finally, he came back, went over to the picture,
and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled
through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him
to be a little changed. The expression looked different.
One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth.
It was certainly strange.
He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind.
The bright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic
shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.
But the strange expression that he had noticed in the face of
the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even.
The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round
the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after
he had done some dreadful thing.
He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed
in ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him,
glanced hurriedly into its polished depths. No line like that
warped his red lips. What did it mean?
He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it again.
There were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual painting,
and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. It was not
a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly apparent.
He threw himself into a chair and began to think. Suddenly there flashed
across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the day
the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly.
He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young,
and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished,
and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins;
that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering
and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness
of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled?
Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them.
And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in
the mouth.
Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl's fault, not his.
He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her
because he had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him.
She had been shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling
of infinite regret came over him, as he thought of her lying
at his feet sobbing like a little child. He remembered with what
callousness he had watched her. Why had he been made like that?
Why had such a soul been given to him? But he had suffered also.
During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted,
he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture.
His life was well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment,
if he had wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better
suited to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions.
They only thought of their emotions. When they took lovers,
it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes.
Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were.
Why should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to him
now.
But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life,
and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach
him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again?
No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses.
The horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it.
Suddenly there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck
that makes men mad. The picture had not changed. It was folly to
think so.
Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile.
Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own.
A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image
of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more.
Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would die.
For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness.
But he would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would be
to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation.
He would not see Lord Henry any more--would not, at any rate,
listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallward's
garden had first stirred within him the passion for impossible things.
He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love
her again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered
more than he had. Poor child! He had been selfish and cruel to her.
The fascination that she had exercised over him would return.
They would be happy together. His life with her would be beautiful and
pure.
He got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front
of the portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "How horrible!"
he murmured to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it.
When he stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath.
The fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions.
He thought only of Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him.
He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were
singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers
about her.
CHAPTER 8
It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept
several times on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring,
and had wondered what made his young master sleep so late.
Finally his bell sounded, and Victor came in softly with a cup
of tea, and a pile of letters, on a small tray of old Sevres china,
and drew back the olive-satin curtains, with their shimmering
blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall windows.
"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.
"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray drowsily.
"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."
How late it was! He sat up, and having sipped some tea,
turned over his letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had
been brought by hand that morning. He hesitated for a moment,
and then put it aside. The others he opened listlessly.
They contained the usual collection of cards, invitations to dinner,
tickets for private views, programmes of charity concerts,
and the like that are showered on fashionable young men every
morning during the season. There was a rather heavy bill
for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set that he had not
yet had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were
extremely old-fashioned people and did not realize that we live
in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities;
and there were several very courteously worded communications
from Jermyn Street money-lenders offering to advance any sum
of money at a moment's notice and at the most reasonable rates
of interest.
After about ten minutes he got up, and throwing on an elaborate dressing-gown
of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the onyx-paved bathroom.
The cool water refreshed him after his long sleep. He seemed to have
forgotten all that he had gone through. A dim sense of having taken part
in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but there was the unreality
of a dream about it.
As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat
down to a light French breakfast that had been laid out
for him on a small round table close to the open window.
It was an exquisite day. The warm air seemed laden with spices.
A bee flew in and buzzed round the blue-dragon bowl that,
filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before him. He felt
perfectly happy.
Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front
of the portrait, and he started.
"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the table.
"I shut the window?"
Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured.
Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed?
Or had it been simply his own imagination that had made him
see a look of evil where there had been a look of joy?
Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing was absurd.
It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day. It would make
him smile.
And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing!
First in the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn,
he had seen the touch of cruelty round the warped lips.
He almost dreaded his valet leaving the room. He knew that
when he was alone he would have to examine the portrait.
He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes
had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire
to tell him to remain. As the door was closing behind him,
he called him back. The man stood waiting for his orders.
Dorian looked at him for a moment. "I am not at home
to any one, Victor," he said with a sigh. The man bowed
and retired.
Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung
himself down on a luxuriously cushioned couch that stood facing
the screen. The screen was an old one, of gilt Spanish leather,
stamped and wrought with a rather florid Louis-Quatorze pattern.
He scanned it curiously, wondering if ever before it had concealed
the secret of a man's life.
Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it stay there?
What was the use of knowing? If the thing was true,
it was terrible. If it was not true, why trouble about it?
But what if, by some fate or deadlier chance, eyes other than
his spied behind and saw the horrible change? What should he do
if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at his own picture?
Basil would be sure to do that. No; the thing had to be examined,
and at once. Anything would be better than this dreadful state
of doubt.
He got up and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when he looked
upon the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside and saw himself
face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had altered.
As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder,
he found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling
of almost scientific interest. That such a change should have
taken place was incredible to him. And yet it was a fact.
Was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms that
shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas and the soul
that was within him? Could it be that what that soul thought,
they realized?--that what it dreamed, they made true?
Or was there some other, more terrible reason? He shuddered,
and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there,
gazing at the picture in sickened horror.
One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him.
It had made him conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been
to Sibyl Vane. It was not too late to make reparation for that.
She could still be his wife. His unreal and selfish love
would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed
into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward
had painted of him would be a guide to him through life,
would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience
to others, and the fear of God to us all. There were opiates
for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep.
But here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin.
Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon
their souls.
Three o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double chime,
but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was trying to gather up the scarlet
threads of life and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way through
the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering.
He did not know what to do, or what to think. Finally, he went over
to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved,
imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself of madness. He covered
page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no
one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest,
that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that
he had been forgiven.
Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's
voice outside. "My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at once.
I can't bear your shutting yourself up like this."
He made no answer at first, but remained quite still.
The knocking still continued and grew louder. Yes, it was
better to let Lord Henry in, and to explain to him the new
life he was going to lead, to quarrel with him if it became
necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was inevitable.
He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture,
and unlocked the door.
"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry as he entered.
"But you must not think too much about it."
"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad.
"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair
and slowly pulling off his yellow gloves. "It is dreadful,
from one point of view, but it was not your fault. Tell me,
did you go behind and see her, after the play was over?"
"Yes."
"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?"
"I was brutal, Harry--perfectly brutal. But it is all right now.
I am not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know
myself better."
"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I was afraid I
would find you plunged in remorse and tearing that nice curly hair
of yours."
"I have got through all that," said Dorian, shaking his head and smiling.
"I am perfectly happy now. I know what conscience is, to begin with.
It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us.
Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more--at least not before me. I want to
be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."
"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you
on it. But how are you going to begin?"
"By marrying Sibyl Vane."
"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, standing up and looking
at him in perplexed amazement. "But, my dear Dorian--"
"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say. Something dreadful
about marriage. Don't say it. Don't ever say things of that
kind to me again. Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me.
I am not going to break my word to her. She is to be my wife."
"Your wife! Dorian! . . . Didn't you get my letter?
I wrote to you this morning, and sent the note down by my
own man."
"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry.
I was afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like.
You cut life to pieces with your epigrams."
"You know nothing then?"
"What do you mean?"
Lord Henry walked across the room, and sitting down by Dorian Gray,
took both his hands in his own and held them tightly. "Dorian," he said,
"my letter--don't be frightened--was to tell you that Sibyl Vane
is dead."
A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,
tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp. "Dead! Sibyl dead!
It is not true! It is a horrible lie! How dare you say it?"
"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in
all the morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see
any one till I came. There will have to be an inquest, of course,
and you must not be mixed up in it. Things like that make a man
fashionable in Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced.
Here, one should never make one's debut with a scandal.
One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.
I suppose they don't know your name at the theatre? If they don't,
it is all right. Did any one see you going round to her room?
That is an important point."
Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror.
Finally he stammered, in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an inquest?
What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl--? Oh, Harry, I can't bear it!
But be quick. Tell me everything at once."
"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it
must be put in that way to the public. It seems that as she
was leaving the theatre with her mother, about half-past
twelve or so, she said she had forgotten something upstairs.
They waited some time for her, but she did not come down again.
They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor of her
dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake,
some dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don't know what
it was, but it had either prussic acid or white lead in it.
I should fancy it was prussic acid, as she seems to have
died instantaneously."
"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.
"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself
mixed up in it. I see by The Standard that she was seventeen.
I should have thought she was almost younger than that.
She looked such a child, and seemed to know so little about acting.
Dorian, you mustn't let this thing get on your nerves.
You must come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look in at
the opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be there.
You can come to my sister's box. She has got some smart women
with her."
"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to himself,
"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat
with a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that.
The birds sing just as happily in my garden. And to-night I am
to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup somewhere,
I suppose, afterwards. How extraordinarily dramatic life is!
If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have
wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened actually,
and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.
Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written
in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should
have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder,
those white silent people we call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel,
or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I loved her once!
It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me.
Then came that dreadful night--was it really only last night?--
when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke.
She explained it all to me. It was terribly pathetic.
But I was not moved a bit. I thought her shallow.
Suddenly something happened that made me afraid.
I can't tell you what it was, but it was terrible.
I said I would go back to her. I felt I had done wrong.
And now she is dead. My God! My God! Harry, what shall I do?
You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing
to keep me straight. She would have done that for me.
She had no right to kill herself. It was selfish of
her."
"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette
from his case and producing a gold-latten matchbox,
"the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him
so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.
If you had married this girl, you would have been wretched.
Of course, you would have treated her kindly. One can always
be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. But she would
have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent
to her. And when a woman finds that out about her husband,
she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart
bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay for.
I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have
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