道林.格雷的画像 英文版 The Picture of Dorian Gray
奥斯卡.王尔德 Oscar Wilde
CHAPTER XII
At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with acup of chocolate on a tray, and opened the shutters. Dorian wassleeping quite peacefully, lying on his right side, with one handunderneath his cheek. He looked like a boy who had been tired outwith play, or study.
The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, and ashe opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as though hehad been having some delightful dream. Yet he had not dreamed atall. His night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or ofpain. But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of itschiefest charms.
He turned round, and, leaning on his elbow, began to drink hischocolate. The mellow November sun was streaming into the room. Thesky was bright blue, and there was a genial warmth in the air. Itwas almost like a morning in May.
Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent blood-stained feet into his brain, and reconstructed themselves there withterrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he hadsuffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing forBasil Hallward, that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair,came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man wasstill sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible thatwas! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.
He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he wouldsicken or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more inthe memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratifiedthe pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect aquickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or couldever bring, to the senses. But this was not one of them. It was athing to be driven out of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to bestrangled lest it might strangle one itself.
He passed his hand across his forehead, and then got up hastily, anddressed himself with even more than his usual attention, giving agood deal of care to the selection of his necktie and scarf-pin, andchanging his rings more than once.
When he had drunk his coffee, he sat down at the table, and wrote twoletters. One he put in his pocket, the other he handed to the valet.
"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr.Campbell is out of town, get his address. "
As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette, and began sketching upona piece of paper, drawing flowers, and bits of architecture, first,and then faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drewseemed to have an extraordinary likeness to Basil Hallward. Hefrowned, and, getting up, went over to the bookcase and took out avolume at hazard. He was determined that he would not think aboutwhat had happened, till it became absolutely necessary to do so.
When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page of the book. It was Gautier's "Emaux et Camées, " Charpentier'sJapanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding wasof citron-green leather with a design of gilt trellis-work and dottedpomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As heturned over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand ofLacenaire, the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavée, " withits downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune. " He glanced at his ownwhite taper fingers, and passed on, till he came to those lovelyverses upon Venice:
Sur une gamme chromatique,Le sein de perles ruisselant,La Vénus de l'AdriatiqueSort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.
Les dômes, sur l'azur des ondesSuivant la phrase au pur contour,S'enflent comme des gorges rondesQue soulève un soupir d'amour.
L'esquif aborde et me dépose,Jetant son amarre au pilier,Devant une façade rose,Sur le marbre d'un escalier.
How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floatingdown the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, lying in ablack gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lineslooked to him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that followone as one pushes out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colorreminded him of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds thatflutter round the tall honey-combed Campanile, or stalk, with suchstately grace, through the dim arcades. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over to himself, --
Devant une façade rose,Sur le marbre d'un escalier.
The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered theautumn that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that hadstirred him to delightful fantastic follies. There was romance inevery place. But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background forromance, and background was everything, or almost everything. Basilhad been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret.Poor Basil! what a horrible way for a man to die!
He sighed, and took up the book again, and tried to forget. He readof the swallows that fly in and out of the little caf?at Smyrnawhere the Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbanedmerchants smoke their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to eachother; of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears ofgranite in its lonely sunless exile, and longs to be back by the hotlotus-covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises,and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles, with smallberyl eyes, that crawl over the green steaming mud; and of thatcurious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the"monstre charmant" that couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre.But after a time the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and ahorrible fit of terror came over him. What if Alan Campbell shouldbe out of England? Days would elapse before he could come back.Perhaps he might refuse to come. What could he do then? Everymoment was of vital importance.
They had been great friends once, five years before, --almostinseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had come suddenly to an end.When they met in society now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled:Alan Campbell never did.
He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no realappreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of thebeauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian.His dominant intellectual passion was for science. At Cambridge hehad spent a great deal of his time working in the Laboratory, and hadtaken a good class in the Natural Science tripos of his year.Indeed, he was still devoted to the study of chemistry, and had alaboratory of his own, in which he used to shut himself up all daylong, greatly to the annoyance of his mother, who had set her hearton his standing for Parliament and had a vague idea that a chemistwas a person who made up prescriptions. He was an excellentmusician, however, as well, and played both the violin and the pianobetter than most amateurs. In fact, it was music that had firstbrought him and Dorian Gray together, --music and that indefinableattraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever hewished, and indeed exercised often without being conscious of it.They had met at Lady Berkshire's the night that Rubinstein playedthere, and after that used to be always seen together at the Opera,and wherever good music was going on. For eighteen months theirintimacy lasted. Campbell was always either at Selby Royal or inGrosvenor Square. To him, as to many others, Dorian Gray was thetype of everything that is wonderful and fascinating in life.Whether or not a quarrel had taken place between them no one everknew. But suddenly people remarked that they scarcely spoke whenthey met, and that Campbell seemed always to go away early fromany party at which Dorian Gray was present. He had changed, too, --was strangely melancholy at times, appeared almost to dislike hearingmusic of any passionate character, and would never himself play,giving as his excuse, when he was called upon, that he was soabsorbed in science that he had no time left in which to practise.And this was certainly true. Every day he seemed to become moreinterested in biology, and his name appeared once or twice in some ofthe scientific reviews, in connection with certain curiousexperiments.
This was the man that Dorian Gray was waiting for, pacing up and downthe room, glancing every moment at the clock, and becoming horriblyagitated as the minutes went by. At last the door opened, and hisservant entered.
"Mr. Alan Campbell, sir. "
A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the color came backto his cheeks.
"Ask him to come in at once, Francis. "
The man bowed, and retired. In a few moments Alan Campbell walkedin, looking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensifiedby his coal-black hair and dark eyebrows.
"Alan! this is kind of you. I thank you for coming. "
"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you saidit was a matter of life and death. " His voice was hard and cold. Hespoke with slow deliberation. There was a look of contempt in thesteady searching gaze that he turned on Dorian. He kept his hands inthe pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and appeared not to have noticedthe gesture with which he had been greeted.
"It is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one person.Sit down. "
Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him.The two men's eyes met. In Dorian's there was infinite pity. Heknew that what he was going to do was dreadful.
After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, veryquietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of theman he had sent for, "Alan, in a locked room at the top of thishouse, a room to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man isseated at a table. He has been dead ten hours now. Don't stir, anddon't look at me like that. Who the man is, why he died, how hedied, are matters that do not concern you. What you have to do isthis--"
"Stop, Gray. I don't want to know anything further. Whether whatyou have told me is true or not true, doesn't concern me. I entirelydecline to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets toyourself. They don't interest me any more. "
"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have tointerest you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can't helpmyself. You are the one man who is able to save me. I am forced tobring you into the matter. I have no option. Alan, you are ascientist. You know about chemistry, and things of that kind. Youhave made experiments. What you have got to do is to destroy thething that is up-stairs, --to destroy it so that not a vestigewill be left of it. Nobody saw this person come into the house.Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in Paris. He willnot be missed for months. When he is missed, there must be no traceof him found here. You, Alan, you must change him, and everythingthat belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may scatter inthe air. "
"You are mad, Dorian. "
"Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian. "
"You are mad, I tell you, --mad to imagine that I would raise a fingerto help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. I will havenothing to do with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I amgoing to peril my reputation for you? What is it to me what devil'swork you are up to?"
"It was a suicide, Alan. "
"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy. "
"Do you still refuse to do this, for me?"
"Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it.I don't care what shame comes on you. You deserve it all. I shouldnot be sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare youask me, of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? Ishould have thought you knew more about people's characters. Yourfriend Lord Henry Wotton can't have taught you much about psychology,whatever else he has taught you. Nothing will induce me to stir astep to help you. You have come to the wrong man. Go to some ofyour friends. Don't come to me. "
"Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don't know what he had mademe suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making orthe marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intendedit, the result was the same. "
"Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shallnot inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, you arecertain to be arrested, without my stirring in the matter. Nobodyever commits a murder without doing something stupid. But I willhave nothing to do with it. "
"All I ask of you is to perform a certain scientific experiment. Yougo to hospitals and dead-houses, and the horrors that you do theredon't affect you. If in some hideous dissecting-room or fetidlaboratory you found this man lying on a leaden table with redgutters scooped out in it, you would simply look upon him as anadmirable subject. You would not turn a hair. You would not believethat you were doing anything wrong. On the contrary, you wouldprobably feel that you were benefiting the human race, or increasingthe sum of knowledge in the world, or gratifying intellectualcuriosity, or something of that kind. What I want you to do issimply what you have often done before. Indeed, to destroy a bodymust be less horrible than what you are accustomed to work at. And,remember, it is the only piece of evidence against me. If it isdiscovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless youhelp me. "
"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simplyindifferent to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me. "
"Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just beforeyou came I almost fainted with terror. No! don't think of that.Look at the matter purely from the scientific point of view. Youdon't inquire where the dead things on which you experiment comefrom. Don't inquire now. I have told you too much as it is. But Ibeg 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 up-stairs will not go away. Heis 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 willhang me, Alan! Don't you understand? They will hang me for what Ihave done. "
"There is no good in prolonging this scene. I refuse absolutely todo 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 outhis hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. He readit 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, andopened it. As he read it, his face became ghastly pale, and he fellback in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. Hefelt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some emptyhollow.
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 willbe. But you are going to help me. It is impossible for you torefuse now. I tried to spare you. You will do me the justice toadmit that. You were stern, harsh, offensive. You treated me as noman has ever dared to treat me, --no living man, at any rate. I boreit all. Now it is for me to dictate terms. "
Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed throughhim.
"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 thisfever. The thing has to be done. Face it, and do it. "
A groan broke from Campbell's lips, and he shivered all over. Theticking of the clock on the mantel-piece seemed to him to be dividingtime into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible tobe borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightenedround his forehead, and as if the disgrace with which he wasthreatened had already come upon him. The hand upon his shoulderweighed like a hand of lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to crushhim.
"Come, Alan, you must decide at once. "
He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the room up-stairs?"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 note-paper what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring thethings back to you. "
Campbell wrote a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelopeto his assistant. Dorian took the note up and read it carefully.Then he rang the bell, and gave it to his valet, with orders toreturn as soon as possible, and to bring the things with him.
When the hall door shut, Campbell started, and, having got up fromthe chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering with asort of ague. For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke.A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock waslike the beat of a hammer.
As the chime struck one, Campbell turned around, and, looking atDorian Gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears. There wassomething in the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemedto 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 fromcorruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. Indoing what I am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not ofyour life that I am thinking. "
"Ah, Alan, " murmured Dorian, with a sigh, "I wish you had athousandth part of the pity for me that I have for you. " He turnedaway, as he spoke, and stood looking out at the garden. Campbellmade no answer.
After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servantentered, carrying a mahogany chest of chemicals, with a smallelectric battery set on top of it. He placed it on the table, andwent out again, returning with a long coil of steel and platinum wireand two rather curiously-shaped iron clamps.
"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked Campbell.
that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening.
"Yes, " said Dorian. "And I am afraid, Francis, that I have anothererrand for you. What is the name of the man at Richmond who suppliesSelby with orchids?"
"Harden, sir. "
"Yes, --Harden. You must go down to Richmond at once, see Hardenpersonally, 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 anywhite ones. It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a verypretty 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 athird 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-pastseven, Francis. Or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. Youcan have the evening to yourself. I am not dining at home, so Ishall 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 chestis! I'll take it for you. You bring the other things. " He spokerapidly, and in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated byhim. They left the room together.
When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turnedit in the lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into hiseyes. 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 theportrait grinning in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it thetorn curtain was lying. He remembered that the night before, for thefirst time in his life, he had forgotten to hide it, when he creptout of the room.
He opened the door a little wider, and walked quickly in, with half-closed eyes and averted head, determined that he would not look evenonce 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 fixedthemselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. He heardCampbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the otherthings that he had required for his dreadful work. He began towonder if he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what theyhad thought of each other.
"Leave me now, " said Campbell.
He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had beenthrust back into the chair and was sitting up in it, with Campbellgazing into the glistening yellow face. As he was going downstairshe heard the key being turned in the lock.
It was long after seven o'clock when Campbell came back into thelibrary. He was pale, but absolutely calm. "I have done what youasked me to do, " he muttered. "And now, good-by. Let us never seeeach other again. "
"You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that, " saidDorian, simply.
As soon as Campbell had left, he went up-stairs. There was ahorrible smell of chemicals in the room. But the thing that had beensitting at the table was gone.