The Picture of Dorian Gray Page #7

I don't want to know them.

I love scandals about other people,

but scandals about myself

don't interest me. They lack novelty.

You must be interested

in your own reputation.

Mind you, I don't believe these rumors.

I can't believe them when I see you.

There aren't any secret vices.

Such things write themselves

across a man's face.

You, with your untroubled youth,

I find it hard

to credit anything against you.

When I hear all these hideous things

that people whisper about you,

I don't know what to say.

I absolve you from the necessity

of defending me,

if that's what's troubling you.

You can't dismiss these charges so lightly.

Why does a man like the Duke of Harwick

leave the room of a club

when you enter it?

Not because he knows anything

about my life, Basil,

but because I know everything about his.

But why are your friendships

so fatal to people?

There was that wretched boy

in the Guards who committed suicide.

What about Adrian Singleton

and Lord Wayne's son?

What gentleman will be seen

with either of them?

The wretched boy in the Guards

was so insanely in love with a woman

he felt he couldn't live without her.

Am I to blame for that?

Wayne's silly son marries a woman

no one will receive. Is that my fault?

Adrian Singleton writes

his friend's name across a bill.

Am I his keeper?

Still, one has a right to judge a man

by the effect he has on his friends.

Yours seem filled

with an insatiable madness for pleasure.

And when I think

of how fond Gladys is of you...

-What has Gladys to do with this?

-Nothing, I hope.

And nothing in the future,

if I can prevent it.

I'm told things it seems

impossible to doubt.

Lord Wallace

was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.

He showed me a letter that his wife

had written when she was dying, alone,

in her villa at Montone.

Your name was implicated

in the most terrible confession I ever read.

I told him it was absurd,

that I knew you, and that you were

incapable of anything of the kind.

"Know." Do I know you?

Before I could answer that,

I should have to see your soul.

-To see my soul?

-Yes. To see your soul.

But only God can do that.

You shall see it yourself, tonight.

Why shouldn't you look at it?

It's your own handiwork.

You can tell the world all about it

afterward if you like.

No one will believe you.

You've chatted enough about corruption.

Now, you'll look at it.

I'll show you my soul.

I can make no sense

out of what you're saying, Dorian.

I only ask you to give me some answer

to the horrible charges

that are made against you.

Tell me they aren't true

from beginning to end, and I'll believe you.

Come upstairs, Basil.

I keep a diary of my life from day to day.

It never leaves the room

in which it is written.

I'll show it to you.

I don't want to read anything. All I want

is a plain answer to my question.

You'll find that upstairs.

You won't have to read long.

You are the one man in the world who's

entitled to know everything about me.

You have had more to do with my life

than you think.

You think it's only God who sees the soul.

ln spite of the indescribable

corruption of the portrait,

Basil was still able

to recognize his painting of Dorian.

It was from within, apparently,

that the foulness and horror came.

It was as if some moral leprosy

were eating the thing away.

He could not believe

that he had made this portrait,

yet there was his own name

just as he had painted it.

This is monstrous.

It's beyond nature, beyond reason.

What does it mean?

On the day you finished this painting,

I made a wish.

Perhaps you would call it a prayer.

My wish was granted.

But you told me

you had destroyed my painting.

-I was wrong. It has destroyed me.

-It has the eyes of the devil.

Each of us has heaven and hell in him.

But if this is true, if this is

what you have done with your life,

it is far worse than anything

that's been said of you.

Do you know how to pray, Dorian?

What is it we were

taught to say in our boyhood?

"Lead us not into temptation.

Forgive us our sins.

"Wash away our iniquities."

Let us say them together.

-It's too late, Basil.

-The prayer of your pride was answered.

The prayer of your repentance

may be answered, also.

Do you think I haven't tried?

I tell you, it's no use.

lsn't there a verse somewhere?

"Though your sins be as scarlet,

yet I will make them white as snow."

Only last week, Gladys recalled the day

this painting was finished.

She remembered putting

her initial under my signature.

There it is, just as she made it.

lf she could see it now.

I can still pray, Dorian, if you can't.

Gladys must never know.

Yet sometime, somehow,

Basil might reveal his secret to her.

The one person in the world

whose good opinion

was indispensable to him.

An uncontrollable feeling of hatred

for Basil came over him,

together with a terror of the knowledge

he had given him

and the use he might make of it.

Panic seized him.

He felt like a hunted animal,

cornered, desperate.

It was as if the painting had sweated

a dew of blood.

He felt that he had struck a mortal blow,

not only at his friend but at himself.

It seemed to him unbearable

that what he had done

could never be undone.

Basil was dead.

Men were strangled in England

for what he had done.

And yet what evidence

was there against him?

Basil had left the house at 11.'oo.

No one had seen him come in again.

Most of the servants were at Selby.

His valet had gone to bed.

Paris.

It was to Paris that Basil had gone

by the midnight train as he had intended.

I'm sorry to wake you, Francis.

I forgot my latchkey.

What time is it?

-Half past twelve, sir.

-Half past twelve.

You must wake me at 9:00 in the morning.

I have some work to do.

Yes, sir.

Did anyone call this evening?

Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed till 11:00

and then he went to catch his train.

He said he was leaving for Paris.

I'm sorry I didn't see him.

Did he leave any message?

He said he would write you from Paris

if he didn't find you at your club.

-Thank you, Francis.

-Is there anything more, sir?

I'm going to write a letter.

I'd like you to deliver it

by hand early in the morning.

Mr. Allen Campbell.

You'll find the address on the envelope.

Yes, sir. Good night, sir.

ln the morning, when Allen Campbell

received his letter, he would come.

He would come at once.

Allen would help him. He was the only one

who could help him now.

But what if Allen Campbell

should be out of England?

Days would pass

before he could come back.

Perhaps he would refuse to come.

Mr. Allen Campbell, sir.

This is kind of you, Allen.

-You said it was a matter of life and death.

-Listen to this.

"I sent my soul through the invisible,

"Some letter of that after-life to spell:

And by and by my soul returned to me,

"And answered,

'I myself am heaven and hell."'

That's quite good, don't you think?

I didn't come here to discuss

the verses of Omar Khayyam.

Rate this script:5.0 / 2 votes