Chapter 19There is no use your tellihat yoing to be good," cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl filled with rose-water. "You are quite perfect. Pray, dont ge."Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have dooo many dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good as yesterday.""Where were you yesterday?""In the try, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself.""My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody be good in the try. There are ations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. try people have no opportunity of beiher, so they stagnate.""Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I have altered.""You have not yet told me what yood a was. Or did you say you had done more than one?" asked his panion as he spilled into his pte a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries and, through a perforated, shell-shaped spoon, snowed white sugar upon them."I tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to any one else. I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you uand what I mean. She was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, dont you? How long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own css, of course. She was simply a girl in a vilge. But I really loved her. I am quite sure that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week. Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was ughing. We were to have gone away together this m at dawn. Suddenly I determio leave her as flowerlike as I had found her.""I should think the y of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. "But I finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advid broke her heart. That was the beginning of your reformation.""Harry, you are horrible! You mustnt say these dreadful things. Hettys heart is not broken. Of course, she cried and all that. But there is no disgrace upon her. She live, like Perdita, in her garden of mint and marigold.""And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, ughing, as he leaned ba his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really tent now with any one of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day th carter rinning ploughman. Well, the fact of havi you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view, I ot say that I think much of yreat renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isnt floating at the present moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?""I t bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I dont care what you say to me. I know I was right in ag as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode past the farm this m, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine. Do us talk about it any more, and dont try to persuade me that the first good a I have done for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin. I want to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for days.""The people are still discussing poor Basils disappearance.""I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said Dorian, p himself out some wine and frowning slightly."My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more thaopic every three months. They have been very fortuely, however. They have had my own divorce-case and An Campbells suicide. Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist. Sd Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November oor Basil, and the French police decre that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fht we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attras of the world.""What do you think has happeo Basil?" asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light and w how it was that he could discuss the matter so calmly."I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I dont want to think about him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it.""Why?" said the younger man wearily."Because," said Lord Henry, passih his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one survive everything nowadays except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the eenth tury that one ot expin away. Let us have our coffee in the musi, Dorian. You must py Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran ayed Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her. Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then rets the loss even of ones worst habits. Perhaps rets them the most. They are su essential part of ones personality."Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the room, sat down to the piano a his fingers stray across the white and bck ivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought iopped, and looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it ever occur to you that Basil was murdered?"Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popur, and always wore a Waterbury watch. Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to have enemies. Of course, he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a man paint like Vesquez a be as dull as possible. Basil was really rather dull. He only ied me once, and that was wheold me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you and that you were the dominant motive of his art.""I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian with a note of sadness in his voice. "But dont people say that he was murdered?""Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all probable. I know there are dreadful pces in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to have goo them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect.""What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?" said the younger mached him ily after he had spoken."I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesnt suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. It is not in you, Dorian, to it a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I dont bme them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of pr extraordinary sensations.""A method of pr sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who has onitted a murder could possibly do the same crime again? Dont tell me that.""Oh! anything bees a pleasure if one does it too often," cried Lord Henry, ughing. "That is one of the most importas of life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one ot talk about after dinner. But let us pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had e to such a really romantid as you suggest, but I t. I dare say he fell into the Seine off an omnibus and that the ductor hushed up the sdal. Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I see him lying now on his bader those dull-green waters, with the heavy barges floating over him and long weeds catg in his hair. Do you know, I dont think he would have done much mood work. During the st ten years his painting had gone off very much."Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and began to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a rge, grey-plumaged bird with pink crest and tail, that was bang itself upon a bamboo perch. As his pointed fiouched it, it dropped the white scurf of kled lids over bck, gsslike eyes and began to sway backwards and forwards."Yes," he tiurning round and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off. It seemed to me to have lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you? I suppose he bored you. If so, he never fave you. Its a habit bores have. By the way, what has bee of that wonderful portrait he did of you? I dont think I have ever seen it since he fi. Oh! I remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby, and that it had got misid or stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity! it was really a masterpiece. I remember I wao buy it. I wish I had now. It beloo Basils best period. Sihen, his work was that ixture of bad painting and good iions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist. Did you advertise for it? You should.""I fet," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked it. I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me. Why do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some py--Hamlet, I think--how do they run?--Like the painting of a sorrow,A face without a heart.Yes: that is what it was like."Lord Henry ughed. "If a mas life artistically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.Dorian Gray shook his head and strue soft chords on the piano. "Like the painting of a sorrow," he repeated, "a face without a heart."The elder man y bad looked at him with half-closed eyes. "By the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose--how does the quotation run?-- his own soul?"The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend. "Why do you ask me that, Harry?""My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise, "I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an ahat is all. I was going through the park st Sunday, and close by the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that question to his audie struck me as being rather dramatic. London is very ri curious effects of that kind. A wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a matosh, a ring of sickly white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrels, and a wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very good in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not have uood me.""Dont, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in eae of us. I know it.""Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?""Quite sure.""Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely certain about are rue. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance. How grave you are! Dont be so serious. What have you or I to do with the superstitions of e? No: we have given up our belief in the soul. Py me something. Py me a noe, Dorian, and, as you py, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have ged, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. Its absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much youhan myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her test wonder. As for the aged, I always tradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed ihing, and knew absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are pying is! I wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the vil and the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is that there is o left to us that is not imitative! Dont stop. I want music to-night. It seems to me that you are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own siy. Ah, Dorian, hoy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your pate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same.""I am not the same, Harry.""Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be. Dont spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type. Dont make yourself inplete. You are quite fwless now. You need not shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, dont deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or iion. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a ce tone of colour in a room or a m sky, a particur perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a fottehat you had e across again, a ce from a pieusic that you had ceased to py-- I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagihem for us. There are moments when the odour of lis bnc passes suddenly ae, and I have to live the stra month of my life ain. I wish I could ge pces with you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the age is searg for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so gd that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sos."Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair. "Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to have the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant things to me. You dont know everything about me. I think that if you did, even you would turn from me. You ugh. Dont ugh.""Why have you stopped pying, Dorian? Go bad give me the noe ain. Look at that great, honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you py she will e closer to the earth. You wont? Let us go to the club, then. It has been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is some o Whites who wants immeo know you--young Lord Poole, Bourhs eldest son. He has already copied your ies, and has begged me to introduce him to you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds me of you.""I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes. "But I am tired to-night, Harry. I shant go to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to bed early.""Do stay. You have never pyed so well as to-night. There was something in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever heard from it before.""It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling. "I am a little ged already.""You ot ge to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will always be friends.""Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not five that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any o does harm.""My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about like the verted, and the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon a. It annihites the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all. But we wont discuss literature. e round to-morrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and wants to sult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you e. Or shall we lunch with our little duchess? She says she never sees you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gdys? I thought you would be. Her clever tos on ones nerves. Well, in any case, be here at eleven.""Must I really e, Harry?""Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I dont think there have been such lics sihe year I met you.""Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good night, Harry." As he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then he sighed a out.