The Picture of Dorian Gray

Chapter 10

When his servant entered, be 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 house-keeper 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 Michelangelo 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 judgement. 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,

red-whiskered 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 as 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 book-case filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks.

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 frame-maker,

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."

"Might one look at the work of art, sir?"

Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard,"

he said, keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready to leap

upon him and fling him to the ground if he dared to lift

the gorgeous hanging that concealed the secret of his life.

"I shan't trouble you any more now. I am much obliged for your

kindness in coming round."

"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you, sir."

And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who glanced

back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough uncomely face.

He had never seen any one so marvellous.

When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked

the door and put the key in his pocket. He felt safe now.

No one would ever look upon the horrible thing. No eye but his

would ever see his shame.

On reaching the library, he found that it was just after

five o'clock and that the tea had been already brought up.

On a little table of dark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre,

a present from Lady Radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty

professional invalid who had spent the preceding winter in Cairo,

was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside it was a book bound

in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled.

A copy of the third edition of The St. James's Gazette had been

placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had returned.

He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were leaving

the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.

He would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed

it already, while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen

had not been set back, and a blank space was visible on the wall.

Perhaps some night he might find him creeping upstairs and trying

to force the door of the room. It was a horrible thing to have

a spy in one's house. He had heard of rich men who had been

blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had read a letter,

or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an address,

or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of

crumpled lace.

He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's note.

It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and a book

that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at eight-fifteen. He

opened The St. James's languidly, and looked through it. A red pencil-mark on

the fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention to the following paragraph:

INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the Bell Tavern,

Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of Sibyl Vane,

a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict

of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed

for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving

of her own evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem

examination of the deceased.

He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across

the room and flung the pieces away. How ugly it all was!

And how horribly real ugliness made things! He felt a little

annoyed with Lord Henry for having sent him the report.

And it was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil.

Victor might have read it. The man knew more than enough English

for that.

Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something.

And, yet, what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do

with Sibyl Vane's death? There was nothing to fear.

Dorian Gray had not killed her.

His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him.

What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little,

pearl-coloured octagonal stand that had always looked to him

like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver,

and taking up the volume, flung himself into an arm-chair and began

to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed.

It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him

that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes,

the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him.

Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made

real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were

gradually revealed.

It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed,

simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life

trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes

of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up,

as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had

ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men

have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise

men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious

jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms,

of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes

the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes.

There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour.

The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy.

One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies

of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner.

It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its

pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle

monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements

elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from

chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him

unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.

Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green

sky gleamed through the windows. He read on by its wan light

till he could read no more. Then, after his valet had reminded

him several times of the lateness of the hour, he got up,

and going into the next room, placed the book on the little

Florentine table that always stood at his bedside and began

to dress for dinner.

It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found

Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.

"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault.

That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time

was going."

"Yes, I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his chair.

"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me.

There is a great difference."

"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry.

And they passed into the dining-room.