الفصل الفصل 7 · For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat

. For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat

Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with

an oily tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a sort of

pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top

of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he

had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban. Lord Henry,

upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he declared he did, and

insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring him that he was proud

to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a

poet. Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. The

heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a

monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The youths in the gallery

had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side.

They talked to each other across the theatre and shared their oranges

with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women were laughing in

the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill and discordant. The sound of

the popping of corks came from the bar.

“What a place to find one’s divinity in!” said Lord Henry.

“Yes!” answered Dorian Gray. “It was here I found her, and she is

divine beyond all living things. When she acts, you will forget

everything. These common rough people, with their coarse faces and

brutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage. They

sit silently and watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to

do. She makes them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them,

and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one’s self.”

“The same flesh and blood as one’s self! Oh, I hope not!” exclaimed

Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through his

opera-glass.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Dorian,” said the painter. “I

understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Any one you love

must be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must

be fine and noble. To spiritualize one’s age—that is something worth

doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without

one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have

been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and

lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of

all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage

is quite right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The

gods made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been

incomplete.”

“Thanks, Basil,” answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. “I knew that

you would understand me. Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But here

is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about

five minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom

I am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is

good in me.”

A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of

applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly

lovely to look at—one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,

that he had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace

and startled eyes. A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror

of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded

enthusiastic house. She stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed to

tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.

Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord

Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, “Charming! charming!”

The scene was the hall of Capulet’s house, and Romeo in his pilgrim’s

dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band, such

as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. Through

the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a

creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a

plant sways in the water. The curves of her throat were the curves of a

white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.

Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes

rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak—

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss—

with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly

artificial manner. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view

of tone it was absolutely false. It was wrong in colour. It took away

all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.

Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious.

Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them

to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disappointed.

Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of

the second act. They waited for that. If she failed there, there was

nothing in her.

She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That could not be

denied. But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse

as she went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial. She

overemphasized everything that she had to say. The beautiful passage—

Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,

Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek

For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night—

was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been

taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution. When she

leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines—

Although I joy in thee,

I have no joy of this contract to-night:

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say, “It lightens.” Sweet, good-night!

This bud of love by summer’s ripening breath

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet—

she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was

not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely

self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.

Even the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their

interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and

to whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the

dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was

the girl herself.

When the second act was over, there came a storm of hisses, and Lord

Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. “She is quite

beautiful, Dorian,” he said, “but she can’t act. Let us go.”

“I am going to see the play through,” answered the lad, in a hard

bitter voice. “I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an

evening, Harry. I apologize to you both.”

“My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill,” interrupted

Hallward. “We will come some other night.”

“I wish she were ill,” he rejoined. “But she seems to me to be simply

callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a great

artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace mediocre actress.”

“Don’t talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a more

wonderful thing than art.”

“They are both simply forms of imitation,” remarked Lord Henry. “But do

let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not good

for one’s morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don’t suppose you will

want your wife to act, so what does it matter if she plays Juliet like

a wooden doll? She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about

life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people

who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Good heavens, my dear boy, don’t look so tragic! The secret of

remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. Come to

the club with Basil and myself. We will smoke cigarettes and drink to

the beauty of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What more can you want?”

“Go away, Harry,” cried the lad. “I want to be alone. Basil, you must

go. Ah! can’t you see that my heart is breaking?” The hot tears came to

his eyes. His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, he

leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.

“Let us go, Basil,” said Lord Henry with a strange tenderness in his

voice, and the two young men passed out together.

A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose

on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale,

and proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed

interminable. Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots

and laughing. The whole thing was a _fiasco_. The last act was played

to almost empty benches. The curtain went down on a titter and some

groans.

As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into the

greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look of triumph on

her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There was a

radiance about her. Her parted lips were smiling over some secret of

their own.

When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy

came over her. “How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!” she cried.

“Horribly!” he answered, gazing at her in amazement. “Horribly! It was

dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was. You have no idea

what I suffered.”

The girl smiled. “Dorian,” she answered, lingering over his name with

long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than honey to

the red petals of her mouth. “Dorian, you should have understood. But

you understand now, don’t you?”

“Understand what?” he asked, angrily.

“Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall

never act well again.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill

you shouldn’t act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends were bored.

I was bored.”

She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. An

ecstasy of happiness dominated her.

“Dorian, Dorian,” she cried, “before I knew you, acting was the one

reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought

that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other.

The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine

also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me

seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew

nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came—oh, my beautiful

love!—and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality

really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the

hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had

always played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that

the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the

orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I

had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to

say. You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is

but a reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. My

love! My love! Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of

shadows. You are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do

with the puppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not

understand how it was that everything had gone from me. I thought that

I was going to be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing. Suddenly

it dawned on my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to

me. I heard them hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of love

such as ours? Take me away, Dorian—take me away with you, where we can

be quite alone. I hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not

feel, but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian,

Dorian, you understand now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it

would be profanation for me to play at being in love. You have made me

see that.”

He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face. “You have

killed my love,” he muttered.

She looked at him in wonder and laughed. He made no answer. She came

across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. She knelt

down and pressed his hands to her lips. He drew them away, and a

shudder ran through him.

Then he leaped up and went to the door. “Yes,” he cried, “you have

killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even

stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because

you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you

realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the

shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and

stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You

are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think

of you. I will never mention your name. You don’t know what you were to

me, once. Why, once ... Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I wish I had

never laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of my life. How

little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art! Without your

art, you are nothing. I would have made you famous, splendid,

magnificent. The world would have worshipped you, and you would have

borne my name. What are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty

face.”

The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together, and

her voice seemed to catch in her throat. “You are not serious, Dorian?”

she murmured. “You are acting.”

“Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well,” he answered bitterly.

She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in her

face, came across the room to him. She put her hand upon his arm and

looked into his eyes. He thrust her back. “Don’t touch me!” he cried.

A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay

there like a trampled flower. “Dorian, Dorian, don’t leave me!” she

whispered. “I am so sorry I didn’t act well. I was thinking of you all

the time. But I will try—indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly across

me, my love for you. I think I should never have known it if you had

not kissed me—if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love.

Don’t go away from me. I couldn’t bear it. Oh! don’t go away from me.

My brother ... No; never mind. He didn’t mean it. He was in jest....

But you, oh! can’t you forgive me for to-night? I will work so hard and

try to improve. Don’t be cruel to me, because I love you better than

anything in the world. After all, it is only once that I have not

pleased you. But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown

myself more of an artist. It was foolish of me, and yet I couldn’t help

it. Oh, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.” A fit of passionate sobbing

choked her. She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian

Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled

lips curled in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous

about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane

seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed

him.

“I am going,” he said at last in his calm clear voice. “I don’t wish to

be unkind, but I can’t see you again. You have disappointed me.”

She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little

hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. He

turned on his heel and left the room. In a few moments he was out of

the theatre.

Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimly

lit streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking

houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after

him. Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves like

monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon door-steps,

and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.

As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent Garden.

The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed

itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies

rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with

the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an

anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market and watched the men

unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter offered him some

cherries. He thanked him, wondered why he refused to accept any money

for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked at

midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long

line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red

roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge,

jade-green piles of vegetables. Under the portico, with its grey,

sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls,

waiting for the auction to be over. Others crowded round the swinging

doors of the coffee-house in the piazza. The heavy cart-horses slipped

and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings.

Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked

and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds.

After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home. For a few

moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent

square, with its blank, close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds.

The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like

silver against it. From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke

was rising. It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.

In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge’s barge, that

hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of entrance,

lights were still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals

of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned them out and,

having thrown his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library

towards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the

ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had

decorated for himself and hung with some curious Renaissance tapestries

that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As

he was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait

Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise.

Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. After he

had taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed to hesitate.

Finally, he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it. In

the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk

blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed. The expression

looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty

in the mouth. It was certainly strange.

He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. The

bright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky

corners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange expression that he

had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be

more intensified even. The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the

lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking

into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in ivory

Cupids, one of Lord Henry’s many presents to him, glanced hurriedly

into its polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips. What

did it mean?

He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it

again. There were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual

painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had

altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly

apparent.

He threw himself into a chair and began to think. Suddenly there

flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward’s studio the

day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He

had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the

portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the

face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that

the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and

thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness

of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been

fulfilled? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to

think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the

touch of cruelty in the mouth.

Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl’s fault, not his. He had

dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he

had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been

shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over

him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little

child. He remembered with what callousness he had watched her. Why had

he been made like that? Why had such a soul been given to him? But he

had suffered also. During the three terrible hours that the play had

lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. His

life was well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, if he had

wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better suited to bear

sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of

their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one

with whom they could have scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and

Lord Henry knew what women were. Why should he trouble about Sibyl

Vane? She was nothing to him now.

But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his

life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty.

Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it

again?

No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. The

horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly

there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men

mad. The picture had not changed. It was folly to think so.

Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel

smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met

his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted

image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would

alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses

would die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and

wreck its fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, changed or

unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would

resist temptation. He would not see Lord Henry any more—would not, at

any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil

Hallward’s garden had first stirred within him the passion for

impossible things. He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends,

marry her, try to love her again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She

must have suffered more than he had. Poor child! He had been selfish

and cruel to her. The fascination that she had exercised over him would

return. They would be happy together. His life with her would be

beautiful and pure.

He got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front of the

portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. “How horrible!” he murmured

to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. When he

stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. The fresh morning

air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of

Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her name

over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched

garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.