course I did.”
“Well, you don’t mind my looking at it now?”
Dorian shook his head. “You must not ask me that, Basil. I could not possibly let you stand in front of that picture.”
“You will some day, surely?”
“Never.”
“Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-by, Dorian. You have been the one person in my life of whom I have been really fond. I don’t suppose I shall often see you again. You don’t know what it cost me to tell you all that I have told you.”
“My dear Basil,” cried Dorian, “what have you told me? Simply that you felt that you liked me too much. That is not even a compliment.”
“It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession.”
“A very disappointing one.”
“Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn’t see anything else in the picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?”
“No: there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? But you mustn’t talk about not meeting me again, or anything of that kind. You and I are friends, Basil, and we must always remain so.”
“You have got Harry,” said Hallward, sadly.
“Oh, Harry!” cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. “Harry spends his days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. But still I don’t think I would go to Harry if I was in trouble. I would sooner go to you, Basil.”
“But you won’t sit to me again?”
“Impossible!”
“You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man comes across two ideal things. Few come across one.”
“I can’t explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.
I will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant.”
“Pleasanter for you, I am afraid,” murmured Hallward, regretfully. “And now good-by. I am sorry you won’t let me look at the picture once again. But that can’t be helped. I quite understand what you feel about it.”
As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil! how little he knew of the true reason! And how strange it was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend! How much that strange confession explained to him! Basil’s absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences, — he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance.
He sighed, and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away at all costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again. It had been mad of him to have the thing remain, even for an hour, in a room to which any of his friends had access.
CHAPTER VIII
When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly, and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen. The man was quite impassive, and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette, and walked over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of Victor’s face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his guard.
Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper that he wanted to see her, and then to go to the framemaker’s and ask him to send two of his men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room he peered in the direction of the screen. Or was that only his fancy?
After a few moments, Mrs. Leaf, a dear old lady in a black silk dress, with a photograph of the late Mr. Leaf framed in a large gold brooch at her neck, and old-fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands, bustled into the room.
“Well, Master Dorian,” she said, “what can I do for you? I beg your pardon, sir,” — here came a courtesy, — “I shouldn’t call you Master Dorian any more. But, Lord bless you, sir, I have known you since you were a baby, and many’s the trick you’ve played on poor old Leaf. Not that you were not always a good boy, sir; but boys will be boys, Master Dorian, and jam is a temptation to the young, isn’t it, sir?”
He laughed. “You must always call me Master Dorian, Leaf. I will be very angry with you if you don’t. And I assure you I am quite as fond of jam now as I used to be. Only when I am asked out to tea I am never offered any. I want you to give me the key of the room at the top of the house.”
“The old schoolroom, Master Dorian? Why, it’s full of dust. I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it. It’s not fit for you to see, Master Dorian. It is not, indeed.”
“I don’t want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key.”
“Well, Master Dorian, you’ll be covered with cobwebs if you goes into it. Why, it hasn’t been opened for nearly five years, — not since his lordship died.”
He winced at the mention of his dead uncle’s name. He had hateful memories of him. “That does not matter, Leaf,” he replied. “All I want is the key.”
“And here is the key, Master Dorian,” said the old lady, after going over the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. “Here is the key. I’ll have it off the ring in a moment. But you don’t think of living up there, Master Dorian, and you so comfortable here?”
“No, Leaf, I don’t. I merely want to see the place, and perhaps store something in it, — that is all. Thank you, Leaf. I hope your rheumatism is better; and mind you send me up jam for breakfast.”
Mrs. Leaf shook her head. “Them foreigners doesn’t understand jam, Master Dorian. They calls it ‘compot.’ But I’ll bring it to you myself some morning, if you lets me.”
“That will be very kind of you, Leaf,” he answered, looking at the key; and, having made him an elaborate courtesy, the old lady left the room, her face wreathed in smiles. She had a strong objection to the French valet. It was a poor thing, she felt, for any one to be born a foreigner.
As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket, and looked round the room. His eye fell on a large purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century Venetian work that his uncle had found in a convent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself, — something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. They would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive.
He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that he bore him — for it was really love — had something noble and intellectual in it. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.
He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that covered it, and, holding it in his hands,