บทที่ บทที่ 12 · It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth

. 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

had been 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 in the 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 his own house.

But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping on 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 been waiting for

you in your library ever since nine o’clock. Finally I 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 certain about 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 have finished a great picture

I have in my head. However, it wasn’t about myself I wanted to talk.

Here we are at your door. Let me come in for a moment. I have something

to say to you.”

“I shall be charmed. But won’t you miss your train?” said Dorian Gray

languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his

latch-key.

The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his

watch. “I have heaps of time,” he answered. “The train doesn’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 my heavy things. All I have with

me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty minutes.”

Dorian looked at him and smiled. “What a way for a fashionable painter

to travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get

into the house. And mind you don’t talk 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 lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with

some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little

marqueterie table.

“You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me

everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes. He is

a most hospitable creature. I like him much better than the 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.

_Anglomanie_ is very 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

often imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted

to me and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another

brandy-and-soda? Or would 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 bag that 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

sake that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the

most dreadful things are being said against you in London.”

“I don’t wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about 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 interested in his

good name. You don’t want people to talk of you as something vile and

degraded. Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all

that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind

you, I don’t believe these rumours 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 shows itself

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 anything about 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 you very seldom, and you never come down to

the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these

hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don’t know what

to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves

the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen

in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs? You

used to be a friend of Lord Staveley. I met him at dinner last week.

Your name happened to come up in conversation, in connection with the

miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley

curled his lip and said that you might have the most artistic tastes,

but that you were 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 what he 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 and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his

dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s only son and his career? I met his

father yesterday in St. James’s Street. He seemed broken with shame and

sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he

got now? What gentleman would associate with him?”

“Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,”

said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt

in 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 knows

anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could

his 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 moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper

about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try

and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with

the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to

have distinction 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 land

of 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 not been fine. One has a right to judge

of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all

sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a

madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them

there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can 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 name a 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 ever touched her. Is there a

single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the park?

Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are

other stories—stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of

dreadful houses 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 is led 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 himself

into 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 house for shame of some kind to follow after. I don’t know

whether it 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 she was dying alone in her villa at Mentone.

Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read. I

told him that it was absurd—that I knew you thoroughly, and that you

were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know

you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”

“To see my soul!” muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and

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 a lamp from the

table. “Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn’t you look at it?

You can tell the world all about it 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 prate

about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough

about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to 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 else was to share his secret, and that

the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his

shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous

memory of what he had done.

“Yes,” he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly into

his stern eyes, “I shall show you my soul. You shall see the 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 they don’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 at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their

throbbing cores of 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 give

me 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 I

am 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 life from 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 missed my

train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don’t ask me to

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.”