第56章

"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 don't wish to know anything about them.I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me.They have not got the charm of novelty.""They must interest you, Dorian.Every gentleman is interested in his good name.You don't want people 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 and wealth are not everything.Mind you, I don't believe these rumours at all.At least, I can't believe them when I see you.Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face.It cannot be concealed.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--Iwon't mention 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 an extravagant price.I refused him.There was something in the shape of his fingers that 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, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth-- I can't believe anything against you.And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come 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 don't know what to say.

Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither 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 happened to come up in conversation, in connection 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 young men?

There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed 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 Singleton and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent's only son and his career? Imet his father yesterday in St.James's 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 contempt in his voice."You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter 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 clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth.Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? I know how people chatter in England.The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, 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 country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native 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, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now.

And there is worse behind.I know you and Harry are inseparable.Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should not have made his sister's name a by-word.""Take care, Basil.You go too far."