by Oscar Wilde
“I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply indifferent to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me.”
“Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just before you came I almost fainted with terror. No! don’t think of that. Look at the matter purely from the scientific point of view. You don’t inquire where the dead things on which you experiment come from. Don’t inquire now. I have told you too much as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were friends once, Alan.”
“Don’t speak about those days, Dorian; they are dead.”
“The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. He is sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan! If you don’t come to my assistance I am ruined. Why, they will hang me, Alan! Don’t you understand? They will hang me for what I have done.”
“There is no good in prolonging this scene. I refuse absolutely to do anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me.”
“You refuse absolutely?”
“Yes.”
The same look of pity came into Dorian’s eyes, then he stretched out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. He read it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table. Having done this, he got up, and went over to the window.
Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and opened it. As he read it, his face became ghastly pale, and he fell back in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.
After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round, and came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.
“I am so sorry, Alan,” he murmured, “but you leave me no alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is. You see the address. If you don’t help me, I must send it. You know what the result will be. But you are going to help me. It is impossible for you to refuse now. I tried to spare you. You will do me the justice to admit that. You were stern, harsh, offensive. You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me, no living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to dictate terms.”
Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him.
“Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You know what they are. The thing is quite simple. Come, don’t work yourself into this fever. The thing has to be done. Face it, and do it.”
A groan broke from Campbell’s lips, and he shivered all over. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his forehead, and as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already come upon him. The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him.
“Come, Alan, you must decide at once.”
He hesitated a moment. “Is there a fire in the room upstairs?” he murmured.
“Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos.”
“I will have to go home and get some things from the laboratory.”
“No, Alan, you need not leave the house. Write on a sheet of notepaper what you want, and my servant will take a cab, and bring the things back to you.”
Campbell wrote a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope to his assistant. Dorian took the note up and read it carefully. Then he rang the bell, and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as soon as possible, and to bring the things with him.
When the hall door shut, Campbell started, and, having got up from the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with a sort of ague. For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer.
As the chime struck one, Campbell turned around, and, looking at Dorian Gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears. There was something in the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him. “You are infamous, absolutely infamous!” he muttered.
“Hush, Alan; you have saved my life,” said Dorian.
“Your life? Good Heavens! what a life that is! You have gone from corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. In doing what I am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not of your life that I am thinking.”
“Ah, Alan,” murmured Dorian, with a sigh, “I wish you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that I have for you.” He turned away, as he spoke, and stood looking out at the garden. Campbell made no answer.
After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant entered, carrying a mahogany chest of chemicals, with a small electric battery set on top of it. He placed it on the table, and went out again, returning with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously-shaped iron clamps.
“Shall I leave the things here, Sir?” he asked Campbell.
“Yes,” said Dorian. “And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another errand for you. What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies Selby with orchids?”
“Harden, Sir.”
“Yes, Harden. You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered, and to have as few white ones as possible. In fact, I don’t want any white ones. It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty place, otherwise I wouldn’t bother you about it.”
“No trouble, Sir. At what time shall I be back?”
Dorian looked at Campbell. “How long will your experiment take, Alan?” he said, in a calm, indifferent voice. The presence of a third person in the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.
Campbell frowned, and bit his lip. “It will take about five hours,” he answered.
“It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven, Francis. Or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. You can have the evening to yourself. I am not dining at home, so I shall not want you.”
“Thank you, Sir,” said the man, leaving the room.
“Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How heavy this chest is! I’ll take it for you. You bring the other things.” He spoke rapidly, and in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. They left the room together.
When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned it in the lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his eyes. He shuddered. “I don’t think I can go in, Alan,” he murmured.
“It is nothing to me. I don’t require you,” said Campbell, coldly.
Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of the portrait grinning in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the torn curtain was lying. He remembered that, the night before, for the first time in his life, he had forgotten to hide it, when he crept out of the room.
But what was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it was!—more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than the silent thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.
He opened the door a little wider, and walked quickly in, with half-closed eyes and averted head, determined that he would not look even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down, and taking up the gold-and-purple hanging, he flung it over the picture.
He stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. He heard Campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other things that he had required for his dreadful work. He began to wonder if he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had thought of each other.
“Leave me now,” said Campbell.
He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had been thrust back into the chair and was sitting up in i
t, with Campbell gazing into the glistening yellow face. As he was going downstairs he heard the key being turned in the lock.
It was long after seven o’clock when Campbell came back into the library. He was pale, but absolutely calm. “I have done what you asked me to do,” he muttered. “And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other again.”
“You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that,” said Dorian, simply.
As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs. There was a horrible smell of chemicals in the room. But the thing that had been sitting at the table was gone.
13
“There is no good telling me you are going to be good, Dorian,” cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with rose-water. “You are quite perfect. Pray don’t change.”
Dorian shook his head. “No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful 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 out of town are so uncivilized. There are only two ways, as you know, of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt. Country-people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.”
“Culture and corruption,” murmured Dorian. “I have known something of both. It seems to me curious now that they should ever be found together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I have altered.”
“You have not told me yet what your good action was. Or did you say you had done more than one?”
“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 Sybil Vane. I think it was that which first attracted me to her. You remember Sybil, 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 we have been having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week. Finally she promised to come with me to town. I had taken a house for her, and arranged everything. Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I said to myself ‘I won’t ruin this girl. I won’t bring her to shame.’ And I determined to leave her as flowerlike as I had found her.”
“I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian,” interrupted Lord Henry. “But I can finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advice, and 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 her life is not spoiled. There is no disgrace on it. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden.”
“And weep over a faithless Florizel,” said Lord Henry, laughing. “My dear Dorian, you have the most curious boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now with any one of her own rank? I suppose she will be married someday to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman. Well, having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. Upon the other hand, had she become your mistress, she would have lived in the society of charming and cultured men. You would have educated her, taught her how to dress, how to talk, how to move. You would have made her perfect, and she would have been extremely happy. After a time, no doubt, you would have grown tired of her. She would have made a scene. You would have made a settlement. Then a new career would have begun for her. From a moral point of view I really don’t think much of your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn’t floating at the present moment in some mill-pond, with water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?”
“I can’t bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest 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 acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jessamine. Don’t let me talk about it any more, and don’t try to persuade me 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 Club for 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 public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate lately, however. They have had 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 ulster who left Victoria by the midnight train on the seventh of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we will be 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 attractions of the next world.”
“What do you think has happened to Basil?” asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it was 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 think about him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it. One can survive everything nowadays except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot 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 played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! She was desperately in love with you at one time, Dorian. It used to amuse me to watch her paying you compliments. You were so charmingly indifferent. Do you know, I really miss her? She never bored me. She was so delightfully improbable in everything that she did. I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her.”
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 notes. After the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, and, looking over at Lord Henry, said, “Harry, did it ever occur to you that Basil was murdered?”
Lord Henry yawned. “Basil had no enemies, and always wore a Waterbury watch. Why should he be murdered? He was not clever enough to have enemies. Of course he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a man can paint 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 wild adoration for you.”
“I was very fond of Basil,” said Dorian, with a sad look in his eyes. “But don’t people say that he was murdered?”
“Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to be probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect. 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 than you are, and I am wrinkled, and bald, and yellow. You are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than 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, o
f course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people whose opinions I listen to now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her last 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 and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is! I wonder did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa, and the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is marvelously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! Don’t stop. I want music to-night. It seems to me that you are 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 one is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. But it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same.
