第81章

It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and did not even put his silk scarf round his throat.As he strolled home, smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him.He heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." He remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared at, or talked about.He was tired of hearing his own name now.Half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that no one knew who he was.He had often told the girl whom he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him.He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly.What a laugh she had!--just like a thrush singing.

And how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.

When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him.

He sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him.

Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood-- his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it.He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame.

But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?

Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to that.Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it.There was purification in punishment.Not "Forgive us our sins"but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just God.

The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round it as of old.He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror when be had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield.Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold.The curves of your lips rewrite history." The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself.

Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel.It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for.But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain.His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery.What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.

It was better not to think of the past.Nothing could alter that.

It was of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think.James Vane was hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard.Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know.The excitement, such as it was, over Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away.It was already waning.He was perfectly safe there.Nor, indeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind.It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him.Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life.

He could not forgive him that.It was the portrait that had done everything.

Basil had said things to him that were unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience.The murder had been simply the madness of a moment.

As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had been his own act.He had chosen to do it.It was nothing to him.

A new life! That was what he wanted.That was what he was waiting for.Surely he had begun it already.He had spared one innocent thing, at any rate.He would never again tempt innocence.He would be good.

As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the locked room had changed.Surely it was not still so horrible as it had been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil passion from the face.Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away.He would go and look.

He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs.As he unbarred the door, a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face and lingered for a moment about his lips.Yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him.