Chapter 10
When his servaered, be looked at him steadfastly and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the s. The man was quite impassive and waited for his orders. Dorian lit a cigarette and walked over to the glass and glanced into it. He could see the refle of Victors face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility. There was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his guard.
Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-keeper that he wao see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his men round at o seemed to him that as the mahe room his eyes wandered in the dire of the s. Or was that merely his own fancy?
After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashiohread mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. He asked her for the key of the schoolroom.
"The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed. "Why, it is full of dust. I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it. It is not fit for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed."
"I dont want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key."
"Well, sir, youll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it hasnt been opened for nearly five years--not since his lordship died."
He wi the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of him. "That does not matter," he answered. "I simply want to see the place-- that is all. Give me the key."
"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the tents of her bunch with tremulously uain hands. "Here is the key. Ill have it off the bun a moment. But you dont think of living up there, sir, and you so fortable here?"
"No, no," he cried petulantly. "Thank you, Leaf. That will do."
She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail of the household. He sighed and told her to mahings as she thought best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles.
As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seveh-tury Veian work that his grandfather had found in a vent near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself-- something that would breed horrors a would never die. What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the vas. They would mar its beauty a away its grace. They would defile it and make it shameful. Ahe thing would still live on. It would be always alive.
He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henrys influence, and the still more poisonous influehat came from his own temperament. The love that he bore him--for it was really love-- had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses and that dies when the seire. It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or fetfulness could do that. But the future was iable. There were passions in