Chapter 12

by Oscar Wilde

　　It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday,as he often remembered afterwards.He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he hadbeen dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy.At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street, a man passed him inthe mist, walking very fast and with the collar of his grey ulster turned up.He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognized him. It was Basil Hallward.A strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over him.He made no sign of recognition and went on quickly in the direction of hisown house.But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stoppingon the pavement and then hurrying after him. In a few moments,his hand was on his arm."Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I have beenwaiting for you in your library ever since nine o'clock. FinallyI took pity on your tired servant and told him to go to bed,as he let me out. I am off to Paris by the midnight train,and I particularly wanted to see you before I left.I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me.But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognize me?""In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor Square.I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel at all certainabout it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen you for ages.But I suppose you will be back soon?""No: I am going to be out of England for six months.I intend to take a studio in Paris and shut myself up till I havefinished a great picture I have in my head. However, it wasn'tabout myself I wanted to talk. Here we are at your door.Let me come in for a moment. I have something to sayto you.""I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Graylanguidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his latch-key.The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward lookedat his watch. "I have heaps of time," he answered. "The traindoesn't go till twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven.In fact, I was on my way to the club to look for you, when I met you.You see, I shan't have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on myheavy things. All I have with me is in this bag, and I can easilyget to Victoria in twenty minutes."Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionablepainter to travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! Come in,or the fog will get into the house. And mind you don'ttalk about anything serious. Nothing is serious nowadays.At least nothing should be."Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the library.There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. The lampswere lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some siphons ofsoda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table."You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave meeverything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes.He is a most hospitable creature. I like him much better thanthe Frenchman you used to have. What has become of the Frenchman,by the bye?"Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's maid,and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker. Anglomania isvery fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of the French,doesn't it? But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad servant.I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One oftenimagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted to meand seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another brandy-and-soda? Orwould you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take hock-and-seltzer myself.There is sure to be some in the next room.""Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter,taking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bagthat he had placed in the corner. "And now, my dear fellow,I want to speak to you seriously. Don't frown like that.You make it so much more difficult for me.""What is it all about?" cried Dorian in his petulant way,flinging himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not about myself.I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.""It is about yourself," answered Hallward in his grave deep voice,"and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour."Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour!" he murmured."It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sakethat I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the mostdreadful things are being said against you in London.""I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandalsabout other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me.They have not got the charm of novelty.""They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interestedin his good name. You don't want people to talk of you assomething vile and degraded. Of course, you have your position,and your wealth, and all that kind of thing. But positionand wealth are not everything. Mind you, I don't believe theserumours at all. At least, I can't believe them when I see you.Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face.It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices.There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it showsitself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids,the moulding of his hands even. Somebody--I won't mention his name,but you know him--came to me last year to have his portrait done.I had never seen him before, and had never heard anythingabout him at the time, though I have heard a good deal since.He offered an extravagant price. I refused him.There was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated.I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about him.His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure,bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth--I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see youvery seldom, and you never come down to the studio now,and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous thingsthat people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say.Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leavesthe room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so manygentlemen in London will neither go to your house or inviteyou to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley.I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come upin conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lentto the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip and saidthat you might have the most artistic tastes, but that youwere a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to know,and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with.I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked him whathe meant. He told me. He told me right out before everybody.It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide.You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton,who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You andhe were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and hisdreadful end? What about Lord Kent's only son and his career?I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street. He seemed brokenwith shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth?What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate withhim?""Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contemptin his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it.It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knowsanything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how couldhis record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth.Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery?If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me?If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper?I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moralprejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what theycall the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretendthat they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the peoplethey slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to havedistinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral,lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native landof the hypocrite.""Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question.England is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong.That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have notbeen fine. One has a right to judge of a man by the effecthe has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour,of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madnessfor pleasure. They have gone down into the depths.You led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet youcan smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind.I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason,if for none other, you should not have made his sister's namea by-word.""Take care, Basil. You go too far.""I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen.When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had evertouched her. Is there a single decent woman in London nowwho would drive with her in the park? Why, even her childrenare not allowed to live with her. Then there are other stories--stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadfulhouses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London.Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them,I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder.What about your country-house and the life that isled there? Dorian, you don't know what is said about you.I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to you.I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himselfinto an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that,and then proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you.I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you.I want you to have a clean name and a fair record.I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with.Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent.You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil.They say that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate,and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a housefor shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whetherit is so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you.I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt.Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when shewas dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was implicatedin the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that itwas absurd--that I knew you thoroughly and that you were incapableof anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you?Before I could answer that, I should have to see yoursoul.""To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofaand turning almost white from fear."Yes," answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice,"to see your soul. But only God can do that."A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man."You shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing alamp from the table. "Come: it is your own handiwork.Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the world all aboutit afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you.If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it.I know the age better than you do, though you will prateabout it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chatteredenough about corruption. Now you shall look on it faceto face."There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered.He stamped his foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner.He felt a terrible joy at the thought that some one elsewas to share his secret, and that the man who had paintedthe portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to beburdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of whathe had done."Yes," he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastlyinto his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall seethe thing that you fancy only God can see."Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried."You must not say things like that. They are horrible, and theydon't mean anything.""You think so?" He laughed again."I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your good.You know I have been always a stanch friend to you.""Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say."A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face.He paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him.After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray?If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him,how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up,and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, looking atthe burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their throbbing coresof flame."I am waiting, Basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice.He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must giveme some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you.If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end,I shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can't you see what Iam going through? My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and corrupt,and shameful."Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips."Come upstairs, Basil," he said quietly. "I keep a diary of my lifefrom day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written.I shall show it to you if you come with me.""I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missedmy train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don't ask meto read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question.""That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here.You will not have to read long."