Chapter 19

by Oscar Wilde

　　"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good,"cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowlfilled with rose-water. "You are quite perfect. Pray, don't change."Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too manydreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more.I began my good actions yesterday.""Where were you yesterday?""In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself.""My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country.There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live outof town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means aneasy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it.One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have noopportunity of being either, so they stagnate.""Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of both.It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together.For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think Ihave altered.""You have not yet told me what your good action was.Or did you say you had done more than one?" asked his companionas he spilled into his plate a little crimson pyramid of seededstrawberries and, through a perforated, shell-shaped spoon,snowed white sugar upon them."I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to any one else.I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean.She was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it wasthat which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don't you?How long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class,of course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her.I am quite sure that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that wehave been having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week.Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept tumblingdown on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone away togetherthis morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her as flowerlike as Ihad found her.""I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given youa thrill of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry."But I can finish your idyll for you. You gave her good adviceand broke her heart. That was the beginning of your reformation.""Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things.Hetty's heart is not broken. Of course, she cried and all that.But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in hergarden of mint and marigold.""And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry,laughing, as he leaned back in his chair. "My dear Dorian,you have the most curiously boyish moods. Do you think this girlwill ever be really content now with any one of her own rank?I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carteror a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you,and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband,and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view,I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation.Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you knowthat Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in somestarlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her,like Ophelia?""I can't bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and thensuggest the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now.I don't care what you say to me. I know I was right in actingas I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode past the farm this morning,I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine.Don't let us talk about it any more, and don't try to persuademe that the first good action I have done for years,the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known,is really a sort of sin. I want to be better.I am going to be better. Tell me something about yourself.What is going on in town? I have not been to the clubfor days.""The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance.""I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time,"said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly."My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks,and the British public are really not equal to the mentalstrain of having more than one topic every three months.They have been very fortunate lately, however. They havehad my own divorce-case and Alan Campbell's suicide.Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist.Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulsterwho left for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of Novemberwas poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil neverarrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shallbe told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing,but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractionsof the next world.""What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian,holding up his Burgundy against the light and wondering how itwas that he could discuss the matter so calmly."I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself,it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I don't want to thinkabout him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me.I hate it.""Why?" said the younger man wearily."Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellisof an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays except that.Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that onecannot explain away. Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian.You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away playedChopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The houseis rather lonely without her. Of course, married life is merely a habit,a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits.Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part ofone's personality."Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the next room,sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white and blackivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he stopped,and looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it ever occur to you thatBasil was murdered?"Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popular, and alwayswore a Waterbury watch. Why should he have been murdered?He was not clever enough to have enemies. Of course,he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a man canpaint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible.Basil was really rather dull. He only interested me once,and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wildadoration for you and that you were the dominant motive ofhis art.""I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian with a note of sadness in his voice."But don't people say that he was murdered?""Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all probable.I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of manto have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect.""What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?"said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken."I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a characterthat doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarityis crime. It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder.I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure youit is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders.I don't blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy thatcrime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuringextraordinary sensations.""A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a manwho has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again?Don't tell me that.""Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often,"cried Lord Henry, laughing. "That is one of the most important secretsof life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake.One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.But let us pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he hadcome to such a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't. Idare say he fell into the Seine off an omnibus and that the conductorhushed up the scandal. Yes: I should fancy that was his end.I see him lying now on his back under those dull-green waters,with the heavy barges floating over him and long weeds catchingin his hair. Do you know, I don't think he would have done muchmore good work. During the last ten years his painting had gone offvery much."Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the roomand began to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large,grey-plumaged bird with pink crest and tail, that was balancingitself upon a bamboo perch. As his pointed fingers touched it,it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black,glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards and forwards."Yes," he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchiefout of his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off.It seemed to me to have lost something. It had lost an ideal.When you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be agreat artist. What was it separated you? I suppose he bored you.If so, he never forgave you. It's a habit bores have.By the way, what has become of that wonderful portraithe did of you? I don't think I have ever seen it sincehe finished it. Oh! I remember your telling me years agothat you had sent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaidor stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity!it was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it.I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil's best period.Since then, his work was that curious mixture of bad paintingand good intentions that always entitles a man to be calleda representative British artist. Did you advertise for it?You should.""I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked it.I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me.Why do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious linesin some play--Hamlet, I think--how do they run?--"Like the painting of a sorrow,A face without a heart."Yes: that is what it was like."Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically,his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano."'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face withouta heart.'"The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes."By the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "'what does it profita man if he gain the whole world and lose--how does the quotation run?--his own soul'?"The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend."Why do you ask me that, Harry?""My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise,"I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer.That is all. I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by theMarble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listeningto some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the man yellingout that question to his audience. It struck me as being rather dramatic.London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A wet Sunday,an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces undera broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung intothe air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very good in its way,quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that art hada soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not haveunderstood me.""Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought,and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect.There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.""Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?""Quite sure.""Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feelsabsolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatalityof faith, and the lesson of romance. How grave you are!Don't be so serious. What have you or I to do with the superstitionsof our age? No: we have given up our belief in the soul.Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play,tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth.You must have some secret. I am only ten years older thanyou are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You arereally wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charmingthan you do to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first.You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary.You have changed, of course, but not in appearance.I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youthI would do anything in the world, except take exercise,get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothinglike it. It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respectare people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me.Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged,I always contradict the aged. I do it on principle.If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday,they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820,when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knewabsolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is!I wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weepinground the villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes?It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it isthat there is one art left to us that is not imitative!Don't stop. I want music to-night. It seems to me that youare the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you.I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of.The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that oneis young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity.Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What an exquisite lifeyou have had! You have drunk deeply of everything.You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing hasbeen hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more thanthe sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still thesame.""I am not the same, Harry.""Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be.Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type.Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now.You need not shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian,don't deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention.Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-upcells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chancetone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfumethat you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it,a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again,a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play--I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imaginethem for us. There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passessuddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my lifeover again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The worldhas cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you.It always will worship you. You are the type of what the ageis searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I amso glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue,or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself!Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days areyour sonnets."Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair."Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not goingto have the same life, Harry. And you must not say theseextravagant things to me. You don't know everything about me.I think that if you did, even you would turn from me. You laugh.Don't laugh.""Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give methe nocturne over again. Look at that great, honey-coloured moonthat hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her,and if you play she will come closer to the earth. You won't?Let us go to the club, then. It has been a charming evening,and we must end it charmingly. There is some one at White's who wantsimmensely to know you--young Lord Poole, Bournemouth's eldest son.He has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introducehim to you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds me of you.""I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes."But I am tired to-night, Harry. I shan't go to the club.It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to bed early.""Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was somethingin your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had everheard from it before.""It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling."I am a little changed already.""You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will alwaysbe friends.""Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one.It does harm.""My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You willsoon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist,warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired.You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use.You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be.As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that.Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desireto act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the worldcalls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.That is all. But we won't discuss literature. Come roundto-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go together,and I will take you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome.She is a charming woman, and wants to consult you about sometapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come. Or shall welunch with our little duchess? She says she never sees you now.Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be.Her clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any case, be here ateleven.""Must I really come, Harry?""Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don't think therehave been such lilacs since the year I met you.""Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian."Good night, Harry." As he reached the door, he hesitatedfor a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then he sighedand went out.