The Pictures of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde
I can’t quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and color? I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them.”
Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and looked at him with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the large curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the canvas.
With a stifled sob he leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. “Don’t, Basil, don’t!” he cried. “It would be murder!”
“I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian,” said Hallward, coldly, when he had recovered from his surprise. “I never thought you would.”
“Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself, I feel that.”
“Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself.” And he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. “You will have tea, of course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Tea is the only simple pleasure left to us.”
“I don’t like simple pleasures,” said Lord Henry. “And I don’t like scenes, except on the stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all: though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn’t really want it, and I do.”
“If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I will never forgive you!” cried Dorian Gray. “And I don’t allow people to call me a silly boy.”
“You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it existed.”
“And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don’t really mind being called a boy.”
“I should have minded very much this morning, Lord Henry.”
“Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.”
There came a knock to the door, and the butler entered with the tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured the tea out. The two men sauntered languidly to the table, and examined what was under the covers.
“Let us go to the theatre tonight,” said Lord Henry. “There is sure to be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at White’s, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire and say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have the surprise of candor.”
“It is such a bore putting on one’s dress-clothes,” muttered Hallward. “And, when one has them on, they are so horrid.”
“Yes,” answered Lord Henry, dreamily, “the costume of our day is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only color-element left in modern life.”
“You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.”
“Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?”
“Before either.”
“I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,” said the lad.
“Then you shall come; and you will come too, Basil, won’t you?”
“I can’t, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.”
“Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.”
“I should like that awfully.”
Basil Hallward bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. “I will stay with the real Dorian,” he said, sadly.
“Is it the real Dorian?” cried the original of the portrait, running across to him. “Am I really like that?”
“Yes; you are just like that.”
“How wonderful, Basil!”
“At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,” said Hallward. “That is something.”
“What a fuss people make about fidelity!” murmured Lord Henry.
“And, after all, it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. It is either an unfortunate accident, or an unpleasant result of temperament. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”
“Don’t go to the theatre tonight, Dorian,” said Hallward. “Stop and dine with me.”
“I can’t, really.”
“Why?”
“Because I have promised Lord Henry to go with him.”
“He won’t like you better for keeping your promises. He always breaks his own. I beg you not to go.”
Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.
“I entreat you.”
The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from the tea-table with an amused smile.
“I must go, Basil,” he answered.
“Very well,” said Hallward; and he walked over and laid his cup down on the tray. “It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had better lose no time. Good-by, Harry; good-by, Dorian. Come and see me soon. Come tomorrow.”
“Certainly.”
“You won’t forget?”
“No, of course not.”
“And . . . Harry!”
“Yes, Basil?”
“Remember what I asked you, when in the garden this morning.”
“I have forgotten it.”
“I trust you.”
“I wish I could trust myself,” said Lord Henry, laughing. —“Come, Mr. Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place.—Good-by, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon.”
As the door closed behind them, Hallward flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.
CHAPTER III
One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry’s house in Curzon Street. It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-colored frieze and ceiling of raised plaster-work, and its brick-dust felt carpet strewn with long-fringed silk Persian rugs. On a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of “Les Cent Nouvelles,” bound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve, and powdered with the gilt daisies that the queen had selected for her device. Some large blue china jars, filled with parrot-tulips, were ranged on the mantel-shelf, and through the small leaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-colored light of a summer’s day in London.
Lord Henry had not come in yet. He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the lad was looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages of an elaborately-illustrated edition of “Manon Lescaut” that he had found in one of the bookcases. The formal monotonous