The Picture of Dorian Gray | Page 6

I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole
soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You know
yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. I have always been my own master;
had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then--but I don't know how to explain
it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my
life. I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite
sorrows. I grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do
so: it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape."
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the
trade-name of the firm. That is all."
"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either. However, whatever was my
motive--and it may have been pride, for I used to be very proud--I certainly struggled to
the door. There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not going to run
away so soon, Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?"
"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to
bits with his long nervous fingers.
"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, and people with stars and
garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses. She spoke of me as her
dearest friend. I had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me.
I believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been
chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of
immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose personality
had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It
was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not
so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to each other
without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too, felt
that we were destined to know each other."
"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked his companion.
"I know she goes in for giving a rapid precis of all her guests. I remember her bringing

me up to a truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and
ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly
audible to everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I like to find
out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats
his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them
except what one wants to know."
"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward listlessly.
"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant.
How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"
"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely inseparable.
Quite forget what he does--afraid he-- doesn't do anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is
it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?' Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at
once."
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for
one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is, Harry," he
murmured--"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are
indifferent to every one."
"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back and looking up at the
little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the
hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great
difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances
for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too
careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of
some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me?
I think it is rather vain."
"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be merely