Chapter 12
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Chapter 12It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday, as he o?en remembered afterwards.
He was walking home about eleven oclock from Lord Henrys, where he had been dining, and was ed in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy. At the er 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 reized him. It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not at, came over him. He made no sign nition a on quickly in the dire 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 araordinary piece of luck! I have been waiting for you in your library ever sinine oclock. 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 wao see you before I left. I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me. But I wasnt quite sure. Didnt ynize me?"
"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I t even reize Grosvenor Square. I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I dont feel at all certain about it. I am sorry yoing away, as I have not seen you fes. But I suppose you will be back soon?"
"No: I am going to be out of England for six months. I io take a studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have finished a great picture I have in my head. However, it wasnt about myself I wao talk. Here we are at your door. Let me e in for a moment. I have something to say to you."
"I shall be charmed. But wont you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray languidly as he passed up the steps and opehe 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 trai 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 shant have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things. All I have with me is in this bag, and I easily get to Victoria iy minutes."
Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable paio travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! e in, or the fog will get into the house. And mind you dont 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 opeh. 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 Fren you used to have. What has bee of the Fren, by the bye?"
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radleys 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, doesnt it? But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad servant. I never liked him, but I had nothing to plain about. Oen imagihings 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 hod-seltzer? I always take hod-seltzer myself. There is sure to be some in the room."
"Thanks, I wont have anything more," said the paiaking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the er. "And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously. Dont 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 <var></var>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 dont wish to know anything about them. I love sdals about other people, but sdals about myself dont i me. They have not got the charm of y."
"They must i you, Dorian. Every gentleman is ied in his good name. You dont eople 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 ah are not everything. Mind you, I dont believe these rumours at ..all. At least, I t believe them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a mans face. It ot be cealed. 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 woion 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 aravagant price. I refused him. There was something in the shape of his fihat 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, i face, and your marvellous untroubled youth-- I t believe anything against you. A I see you very seldom, and you never e 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 dont know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you e? Why is it that so malemen in London will her 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 happeo e up in versation, in e 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 youhere was that wretched boy in the Guards who itted 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 Sion and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kents only son and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. Jamess 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 pt in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room wheer 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 ? You ask me about Henry Ashton and youh. Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kents silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? If Adrian Sion writes his friends name across a bill, am I his keeper? I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their <u></u>moral prejudices over their gross diables, 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 try, it is enough for a man to have distin and brains for every on too wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you fet that we are iive 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, a you smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason, if for her, you should not have made his sisters 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 sdal had ever touched her. Is there a single det woman in London noould drive with her in the park? Why, even her childre allowed to live with her. Thehere 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? they be true? When I first heard them, I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. What about your try-house and the life that is led there? Dorian, you dont know what is said about you. I wont tell you that I dont want to preach to you. I remember Harry saying ohat 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 name and a fair record. I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with. Dont shrug your shoulders like that. Dont be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be food, not for evil. They say that you corrupt every oh whom you bee intimate, and that it is quite suffit for you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow after. I dont 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. Lloucester 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 fession I ever read. I told him that it was absurd--that I knew you thhly and that you were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I could ahat, 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 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. "e: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldnt you look at it? You 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. e, 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 i manner. He felt a terrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret, and that the man who had paihe portrait that was the in 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 tinued, ing closer to him and looking steadfastly into his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fanly God see."
Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried. "You must not say things like that. They are horrible, and they dont mean anything."
"You think so?" He laughed again.
"I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for yood. You know I have been always a stanch friend to you."
"Dont touch me. Finish what you have to say."
A twisted flash of pain shot across the painters 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 doithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Theraightened 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 ao 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, Doriahem! t you see what I am going through? My God! dont tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, and shameful."
Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of pt in his lips. "e 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 e with me."
"I shall e with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed my train. That makes no matter. I go to-morrow. But dont ask me to read anything to-night. All I want is a plain ao my question."
"That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will not have to read long."
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