Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was infinitely dear to him, and his personality had been the great turning-point in his art. He could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more. After all, his indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away. There was so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble.

‘Well, Dorian,’ he said, at length, with a sad smile, ‘I won’t speak to you again about this horrible thing, after to-day. I only trust your name won’t be mentioned in connection with it. The inquest is to take place this afternoon. Have they summoned you?’

Dorian shook his head and a look of annoyance passed over his face at the mention of the word ‘inquest.’ There was something so crude and vulgar about everything of the kind. ‘They don’t know my name,’ he answered.

‘But surely she did?’

‘Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned to any one. She told me once that they were all rather curious to learn who I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince Charming. It was pretty of her. You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and some broken pathetic words.’

‘I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you. But you must come and sit to me yourself again. I can’t get on without you.’

‘I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!’ he exclaimed, starting back.

The painter stared at him. ‘My dear boy, what nonsense!’ he cried. ‘Do you mean to say you don’t like what I did of you? Where is it? Why have you pulled the screen in front of it! Let me look at it. It is the best thing I have ever done. Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply disgraceful of your servant hiding mv work like that. I felt the room looked different as I came in.’

‘My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You don’t imagine I let him arrange my room for me? He settles my flowers for me sometimes – that is all. No, I did it myself. The light was too strong on the portrait.’

‘Too strong! Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an admirable place for it. Let me see it.’ And Hall ward walked towards the corner of the room.

A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray’s lips, and he rushed between the painter and the screen. ‘Basil,’ he said, looking very pale, ‘you must not look at it. I don’t wish you to.’

‘Not look at my own work! You are not serious. Why shouldn’t I look at it?’ exclaimed Hallward, laughing.

‘If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will never speak to you again as long as I live. I am quite serious. I don’t offer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any. But, remember, if you touch this screen, everything is over between us.’

Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at Dorian Gray in absolute amazement. He had never seen him like this before. The lad was actually pallid with rage. His hands were clenched, and the pupils of his eyes were like disks of blue fire. He was trembling all over.

‘Dorian!’

‘Don’t speak!’

‘But what is the matter? Of course I won’t look at it if you don’t want me to,’ he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel, and going over towards the window. ‘But, really, it seems rather absurd that I shouldn’t see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in Paris in the autumn. I shall probably have to give it another coat of varnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?’

‘To exhibit it! You want to exhibit it?’ exclaimed Dorian Gray, a strange sense of terror creeping over him. Was the world going to be shown his secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his life? That was impossible. Something – he did not know what – had to be done at once.

‘Yes; I don’t suppose you will object to that. George Petit is going to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de Sèze, which will open the first week in October. The portrait will only be away a month. I should think you could easily spare it for that time. In fact, you are sure to be out of town. And if you keep it always behind a screen, you can’t care much about it.’

Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead. There were beads of perspiration there. He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible danger. ‘You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it,’ he cried. ‘Why have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being consistent have just as many moods as others have. The only difference is that your moods are rather meaningless. You can’t have forgotten that you assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you to send it to any exhibition. You told Harry exactly the same thing.’ He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. He remembered that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest, ‘If you want to have a strange quarter of an hour, get Basil to tell you why he won’t exhibit your picture. He told me why he wouldn’t, and it was a revelation to me.’ Yes, perhaps, Basil, too, had his secret. He would ask him and try.

‘Basil,’ he said, coming over quite close, and looking him straight in the face, ‘we have each of us a secret. Let me know yours and I shall tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing to exhibit my picture?’

The painter shuddered in spite of himself. ‘Dorian, if I told you, you might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. I could not bear you doing either of those two things. If you wish me never to look at your picture again, I am content. I have always you to look at. If you wish the best work I have ever done to be hidden from the world. I am satisfied. Your friendship is dearer to me than any frame or reputation.’

‘No, Basil, you must tell me,’ insisted Dorian Gray. ‘I think I have a right to know.’ His feeling of terror had passed away, and curiosity had taken its place. He was determined to find out Basil Hallward’s mystery.

‘Let us sit down, Dorian,’ said the painter, looking troubled. ‘Let us sit down. And just answer me one question. Have you noticed in the picture something curious? – something that probably at first did not strike you, but that revealed itself to you suddenly?’

‘Basil!’ cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling hands, and gazing at him with wild, startled eyes.

‘I see you did. Don’t speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say. Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away from me you were still present in my art…Of course I never let you know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not have understood it. I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I had seen perfection face to face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes – too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them. Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew more and more absorbed in you. Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour, and as Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and polished boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the prow of Adrian’s barge, gazing across the green turbid Nile. You had leant over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water’s silent silver the marvel of your own face. And it had all been what art should be, unconscious, ideal, and remote. One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own time. Whether it was the Realism of the method, or the mere wonder of your own personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it, every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid that others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, that I had told too much, that I had put too much of myself into it. Then it was that I resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a little annoyed; but then you did not realise all that it meant to me. Harry, to whom I talked about it, laughed at me. But I did not mind that. When the picture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was right…Well, after a few days the thing left my studio, and as soon as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence it seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking, and that I could paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour – that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him. And so when I got this offer from Paris I determined to make your portrait the principal thing in my exhibition. It never occurred to me that you would refuse. I see now that you were right. The picture cannot be shown. You must not be angry with me, Dorian, for what I have told you. As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped.’

Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The colour came back to his cheeks, and a smile played about his lips. The peril was over. He was safe for the time. Yet he could not help feeling infinite pity for the painter who had just made this strange confession to him, and wondered if he himself would ever be so dominated by the personality of a friend. Lord Henry had the charm of being very dangerous. But that was all. He was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of. Would there ever be some one who would fill him with a strange idolatry? Was that one of the things that life had in store?

‘It is extraordinary to me, Dorian,’ said Hallward, ‘that you should have seen this in the portrait. Did you really see it?’

‘I saw something in it,’ he answered, ‘something that seemed to me very curious.’

‘Well, you don’t mind my looking at the thing now?’

Dorian shook his head. ‘You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not possibly let you stand in front of that picture.’

‘You will some day, surely?’

‘Never.’

‘Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye, Dorian. You have been the one person in my life who has really influenced my art. Whatever I have done that is good, I owe to you. Ah! you don’t know what it cost me to tell you all that I have told you.’

‘My dear Basil,’ said Dorian, ‘what have you told me? Simply that you felt that you admired me too much. That is not even a compliment.’

‘It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one’s worship into words.’

‘It was a very disappointing confession.’

‘Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn’t see anything else in the picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?’

‘No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn’t talk about worship. It is foolish. You and I are friends, Basil, and we must always remain so.’

‘You have got Harry,’ said the painter, sadly.

‘Oh, Harry!’ cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. ‘Harry spends his days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I don’t think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. I would sooner go to you, Basil.’

‘You will sit to me again?’

‘Impossible!’

‘You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man came across two ideal things. Few come across one.’

‘I can’t explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again. There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own. I will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant.’

‘Pleasanter for you, I am afraid,’ murmured Hallward, regretfully. ‘And now good-bye. I am sorry you won’t let me look at the picture once again. But that can’t be helped. I quite understand what you feel about it.’

As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil! How little he knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange confession explained to him! The painter’s absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences – he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.

He sighed, and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away at all costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again. It had been mad of him to have allowed the thing to remain, even for an hour, in a room to which any of his friends had access.

10

WHEN his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly, and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite impassive, and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette, and walked over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of Victor’s face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his guard.

Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper that he wanted to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room his eyes wandered in the direction of the screen. Or was that merely his own fancy?

After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He asked her for the key of the schoolroom.

‘The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why, it is full of dust. I must get it arranged, and put straight before you go into it. It is not fit for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed.’

‘I don’t want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key.’

‘Well, sir, you’ll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it hasn’t been opened for nearly five years, not since his lordship died.’

He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of him. ‘That does not matter,’ he answered. ‘I simply want to see the place – that is all. Give me the key.’

‘And here is the key, sir,’ said the old lady, going over the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. ‘Here is the key. I’ll have it off the bunch in a moment. But you don’t think of living up there, sir, and you so comfortable here?’

‘No, no,’ he cried, petulantly. ‘Thank you, Leaf. That will do.’

She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of the household. He sighed, and told her to manage things as she thought best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles.

As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket, and looked round the room. His eye fell on a large purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself – something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. They would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive.

He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that he bore him – for it was really love – had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.

He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. Was the face on the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was unchanged; and yet his loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lips – they all were there. It was simply the expression that had altered. That was horrible in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, how shallow Basil’s reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been! – how shallow, and of what little account! His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgment. A look of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the picture. As he did so, a knock came to the door. He passed out as his servant entered.

‘The persons are here, Monsieur.’

He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must not be allowed to know where the picture was being taken to. There was something sly about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the writing-table he scribbled a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him round something to read, and reminding him that they were to meet at eight-fifteen that evening.

‘Wait for an answer,’ he said, handing it to him, ‘and show the men in here.’

In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard himself, the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in with a somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid, redwhiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists who dealt with him. As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for people to come to him. But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian Gray. There was something about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was a pleasure even to see him.

‘What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?’ he said, rubbing his fat freckled hands. ‘I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in person. I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale. Old Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited for a religious subject, Mr. Gray.’

‘I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr. Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame – though I don’t go in much at present for religious art – but to-day I only want a picture carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so I thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of your men.’

‘No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to you. Which is the work of art, sir?’

‘This,’ replied Dorian, moving the screen back. ‘Can you move it, covering and all, just as it is? I don’t want it to get scratched going upstairs.’

‘There will be no difficulty, sir,’ said the genial frame-maker, beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the long brass chains by which it was suspended. ‘And, now, where shall we carry it to, Mr. Gray?’

‘I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top of the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider.’

He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and began the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman’s spirited dislike of seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so to help them.

‘Something of a load to carry, sir,’ gasped the little man, when they reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.

‘I am afraid it is rather heavy,’ murmured Dorian, as he unlocked the door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.

He had not entered the place for more than four years – not, indeed, since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large, well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last Lord Kelso, for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange likeness to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian to have but little changed. There was the huge Italian cassone, with its fantastically-painted panels and its tarnished gilt mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the satinwood bookcase filled with his dog-eared school-books. On the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry, where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all! Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store for him!

But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as this. He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his youth – that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer, after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame. Some love might, come across his life, and purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in flesh – those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward’s masterpiece.

No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow’s-feet would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it.

‘Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please,’ he said, wearily, turning round. ‘I am sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else.’

‘Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray,’ answered the framemaker, who was still gasping for breath. ‘Where shall we put it, sir?’

‘Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don’t want to have it hung up. Just lean it against the wall. Thanks.’