feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_17_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 18
feat_summary_id: chapter 18
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-18", "summary": "The next day, Dorian doesn't leave the house; he's terrified that his assassin will find him. He wonders if this is all a product of his imagination--could he just have hallucinated his vision of his would-be killer? Surely he's safe. However, he can't get the vision out of his head; Henry comes in that evening and finds Dorian crying. After a couple of days of sulking, Dorian feels well enough to go outside. He feels infinitely better, and looks back on his former fear with contempt. Dorian goes on a walk in the garden with the Duchess, then joins some other friends to go hunting. Dorian and the Duchess's brother, Geoffrey, stroll through the woods, looking for animals to shoot. They come upon a beautiful hare. Dorian is charmed by the creature, and tells Geoffrey not to shoot it, but he scoffs and takes aim. Geoffrey hits the hare--but also hits something else. He accidentally shoots a man hidden behind the trees. Geoffrey angrily yells at the gamekeeper; he thinks it's one of the \"beaters,\" men employed to flush birds out of the trees to be shot at. The body of the shot man is dragged out, and Dorian is distraught--he finds the whole thing to be dreadful. Henry gently walks him back to the house, and informs him on the way that the man has died. Dorian is profoundly disturbed. Henry, however, is not. He thinks it's the man's own fault for being in the line of fire, though he admits that this situation is rather awkward for Geoffrey. Dorian thinks this is a bad omen, and is certain that something bad is going to happen to someone--maybe him. Henry blows off this presentiment, and they change topics to Dorian's affair with the Duchess. However, Dorian's distress is still palpable, but he won't tell Henry what's the matter. The Duchess comes out to join them, and the three of them discuss the murdered man in the most alarming way--as though he's just an animal. Their snobbery is unbelievable. Dorian leaves his two friends and goes into the house. Henry and the Duchess continue their banter; they're pretty much equally matched in wit. Inside, Dorian is totally freaking out. He feels like death is coming for him. Thornton, the gamekeeper, comes in to see Dorian about the dead man. It turns out he wasn't a beater, after all. In fact, Thornton says, he looks more like a sailor. This really wakes Dorian up--he desperately wants to know the man's identity. He rushes out on horseback to see the body where it's being kept in a stable. The dead man is James Vane. Dorian rides back to the house, crying tears of joy--he's safe.", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the
  time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet
  indifferent to life itself.  The consciousness of being hunted, snared,
  tracked down, had begun to dominate him.  If the tapestry did but
  tremble in the wind, he shook.  The dead leaves that were blown against
  the leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild
  regrets.  When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face
  peering through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to
  lay its hand upon his heart.
  
  But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of
  the night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him.  Actual
  life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
  imagination.  It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet
  of sin.  It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
  brood.  In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor
  the good rewarded.  Success was given to the strong, failure thrust
  upon the weak.  That was all.  Besides, had any stranger been prowling
  round the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the
  keepers.  Had any foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, the
  gardeners would have reported it.  Yes, it had been merely fancy.
  Sibyl Vane's brother had not come back to kill him.  He had sailed away
  in his ship to founder in some winter sea.  From him, at any rate, he
  was safe.  Why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he
  was.  The mask of youth had saved him.
  
  And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think
  that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them
  visible form, and make them move before one!  What sort of life would
  his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from
  silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear
  as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep!
  As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and
  the air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder.  Oh! in what a
  wild hour of madness he had killed his friend!  How ghastly the mere
  memory of the scene!  He saw it all again.  Each hideous detail came
  back to him with added horror.  Out of the black cave of time, terrible
  and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin.  When Lord Henry
  came in at six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will
  break.
  
  It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out.  There was
  something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that
  seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life.  But
  it was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had
  caused the change.  His own nature had revolted against the excess of
  anguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm.
  With subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so.  Their
  strong passions must either bruise or bend.  They either slay the man,
  or themselves die.  Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on.  The
  loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.
  Besides, he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of a
  terror-stricken imagination, and looked back now on his fears with
  something of pity and not a little of contempt.
  
  After breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden
  and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The crisp
  frost lay like salt upon the grass.  The sky was an inverted cup of
  blue metal.  A thin film of ice bordered the flat, reed-grown lake.
  
  At the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey
  Clouston, the duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of
  his gun.  He jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take
  the mare home, made his way towards his guest through the withered
  bracken and rough undergrowth.
  
  "Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked.
  
  "Not very good, Dorian.  I think most of the birds have gone to the
  open.  I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new
  ground."
  
  Dorian strolled along by his side.  The keen aromatic air, the brown
  and red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the
  beaters ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns
  that followed, fascinated him and filled him with a sense of delightful
  freedom.  He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the
  high indifference of joy.
  
  Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front
  of them, with black-tipped ears erect and long hinder limbs throwing it
  forward, started a hare.  It bolted for a thicket of alders.  Sir
  Geoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the
  animal's grace of movement that strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and he
  cried out at once, "Don't shoot it, Geoffrey.  Let it live."
  
  "What nonsense, Dorian!" laughed his companion, and as the hare bounded
  into the thicket, he fired.  There were two cries heard, the cry of a
  hare in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is
  worse.
  
  "Good heavens!  I have hit a beater!" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey.  "What an
  ass the man was to get in front of the guns!  Stop shooting there!" he
  called out at the top of his voice.  "A man is hurt."
  
  The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.
  
  "Where, sir?  Where is he?" he shouted.  At the same time, the firing
  ceased along the line.
  
  "Here," answered Sir Geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the thicket.
  "Why on earth don't you keep your men back?  Spoiled my shooting for
  the day."
  
  Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump, brushing the
  lithe swinging branches aside.  In a few moments they emerged, dragging
  a body after them into the sunlight.  He turned away in horror.  It
  seemed to him that misfortune followed wherever he went.  He heard Sir
  Geoffrey ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of
  the keeper.  The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with
  faces.  There was the trampling of myriad feet and the low buzz of
  voices.  A great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through the
  boughs overhead.
  
  After a few moments--that were to him, in his perturbed state, like
  endless hours of pain--he felt a hand laid on his shoulder.  He started
  and looked round.
  
  "Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them that the shooting is
  stopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on."
  
  "I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered bitterly.  "The
  whole thing is hideous and cruel.  Is the man ...?"
  
  He could not finish the sentence.
  
  "I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry.  "He got the whole charge of
  shot in his chest.  He must have died almost instantaneously.  Come;
  let us go home."
  
  They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly
  fifty yards without speaking.  Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry and
  said, with a heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen."
  
  "What is?" asked Lord Henry.  "Oh! this accident, I suppose.  My dear
  fellow, it can't be helped.  It was the man's own fault.  Why did he
  get in front of the guns?  Besides, it is nothing to us.  It is rather
  awkward for Geoffrey, of course.  It does not do to pepper beaters.  It
  makes people think that one is a wild shot.  And Geoffrey is not; he
  shoots very straight.  But there is no use talking about the matter."
  
  Dorian shook his head.  "It is a bad omen, Harry.  I feel as if
  something horrible were going to happen to some of us.  To myself,
  perhaps," he added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of
  pain.
  
  The elder man laughed.  "The only horrible thing in the world is _ennui_,
  Dorian.  That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.  But we
  are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering
  about this thing at dinner.  I must tell them that the subject is to be
  tabooed.  As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen.  Destiny
  does not send us heralds.  She is too wise or too cruel for that.
  Besides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian?  You have
  everything in the world that a man can want.  There is no one who would
  not be delighted to change places with you."
  
  "There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry.  Don't
  laugh like that.  I am telling you the truth.  The wretched peasant who
  has just died is better off than I am.  I have no terror of death.  It
  is the coming of death that terrifies me.  Its monstrous wings seem to
  wheel in the leaden air around me.  Good heavens! don't you see a man
  moving behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?"
  
  Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand
  was pointing.  "Yes," he said, smiling, "I see the gardener waiting for
  you.  I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on
  the table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow!  You
  must come and see my doctor, when we get back to town."
  
  Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching.  The
  man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a hesitating
  manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his master.
  "Her Grace told me to wait for an answer," he murmured.
  
  Dorian put the letter into his pocket.  "Tell her Grace that I am
  coming in," he said, coldly.  The man turned round and went rapidly in
  the direction of the house.
  
  "How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord Henry.
  "It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most.  A woman will
  flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."
  
  "How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry!  In the present
  instance, you are quite astray.  I like the duchess very much, but I
  don't love her."
  
  "And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you
  are excellently matched."
  
  "You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
  scandal."
  
  "The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord Henry,
  lighting a cigarette.
  
  "You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."
  
  "The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer.
  
  "I wish I could love," cried Dorian Gray with a deep note of pathos in
  his voice.  "But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the
  desire.  I am too much concentrated on myself.  My own personality has
  become a burden to me.  I want to escape, to go away, to forget.  It
  was silly of me to come down here at all.  I think I shall send a wire
  to Harvey to have the yacht got ready.  On a yacht one is safe."
  
  "Safe from what, Dorian?  You are in some trouble.  Why not tell me
  what it is?  You know I would help you."
  
  "I can't tell you, Harry," he answered sadly.  "And I dare say it is
  only a fancy of mine.  This unfortunate accident has upset me.  I have
  a horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me."
  
  "What nonsense!"
  
  "I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it.  Ah! here is the duchess,
  looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown.  You see we have come back,
  Duchess."
  
  "I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered.  "Poor Geoffrey is
  terribly upset.  And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare.
  How curious!"
  
  "Yes, it was very curious.  I don't know what made me say it.  Some
  whim, I suppose.  It looked the loveliest of little live things.  But I
  am sorry they told you about the man.  It is a hideous subject."
  
  "It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry.  "It has no
  psychological value at all.  Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on
  purpose, how interesting he would be!  I should like to know some one
  who had committed a real murder."
  
  "How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the duchess.  "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?
  Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again.  He is going to faint."
  
  Dorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled.  "It is nothing,
  Duchess," he murmured; "my nerves are dreadfully out of order.  That is
  all.  I am afraid I walked too far this morning.  I didn't hear what
  Harry said.  Was it very bad?  You must tell me some other time.  I
  think I must go and lie down.  You will excuse me, won't you?"
  
  They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the
  conservatory on to the terrace.  As the glass door closed behind
  Dorian, Lord Henry turned and looked at the duchess with his slumberous
  eyes.  "Are you very much in love with him?" he asked.
  
  She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape.
  "I wish I knew," she said at last.
  
  He shook his head.  "Knowledge would be fatal.  It is the uncertainty
  that charms one.  A mist makes things wonderful."
  
  "One may lose one's way."
  
  "All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."
  
  "What is that?"
  
  "Disillusion."
  
  "It was my _debut_ in life," she sighed.
  
  "It came to you crowned."
  
  "I am tired of strawberry leaves."
  
  "They become you."
  
  "Only in public."
  
  "You would miss them," said Lord Henry.
  
  "I will not part with a petal."
  
  "Monmouth has ears."
  
  "Old age is dull of hearing."
  
  "Has he never been jealous?"
  
  "I wish he had been."
  
  He glanced about as if in search of something.  "What are you looking
  for?" she inquired.
  
  "The button from your foil," he answered.  "You have dropped it."
  
  She laughed.  "I have still the mask."
  
  "It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.
  
  She laughed again.  Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet
  fruit.
  
  Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror
  in every tingling fibre of his body.  Life had suddenly become too
  hideous a burden for him to bear.  The dreadful death of the unlucky
  beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to
  pre-figure death for himself also.  He had nearly swooned at what Lord
  Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.
  
  At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders to
  pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the brougham
  at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep another
  night at Selby Royal.  It was an ill-omened place.  Death walked there
  in the sunlight.  The grass of the forest had been spotted with blood.
  
  Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to
  town to consult his doctor and asking him to entertain his guests in
  his absence.  As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to
  the door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to see
  him.  He frowned and bit his lip.  "Send him in," he muttered, after
  some moments' hesitation.
  
  As soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a
  drawer and spread it out before him.
  
  "I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this
  morning, Thornton?" he said, taking up a pen.
  
  "Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.
  
  "Was the poor fellow married?  Had he any people dependent on him?"
  asked Dorian, looking bored.  "If so, I should not like them to be left
  in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary."
  
  "We don't know who he is, sir.  That is what I took the liberty of
  coming to you about."
  
  "Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly.  "What do you mean?
  Wasn't he one of your men?"
  
  "No, sir.  Never saw him before.  Seems like a sailor, sir."
  
  The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart
  had suddenly stopped beating.  "A sailor?" he cried out.  "Did you say
  a sailor?"
  
  "Yes, sir.  He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on
  both arms, and that kind of thing."
  
  "Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian, leaning forward and
  looking at the man with startled eyes.  "Anything that would tell his
  name?"
  
  "Some money, sir--not much, and a six-shooter. There was no name of any
  kind.  A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of sailor we
  think."
  
  Dorian started to his feet.  A terrible hope fluttered past him.  He
  clutched at it madly.  "Where is the body?" he exclaimed.  "Quick!  I
  must see it at once."
  
  "It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir.  The folk don't like
  to have that sort of thing in their houses.  They say a corpse brings
  bad luck."
  
  "The Home Farm!  Go there at once and meet me.  Tell one of the grooms
  to bring my horse round.  No. Never mind.  I'll go to the stables
  myself.  It will save time."
  
  In less than a quarter of an hour, Dorian Gray was galloping down the
  long avenue as hard as he could go.  The trees seemed to sweep past him
  in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his
  path.  Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly threw him.
  He lashed her across the neck with his crop.  She cleft the dusky air
  like an arrow.  The stones flew from her hoofs.
  
  At last he reached the Home Farm.  Two men were loitering in the yard.
  He leaped from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them.  In the
  farthest stable a light was glimmering.  Something seemed to tell him
  that the body was there, and he hurried to the door and put his hand
  upon the latch.
  
  There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a
  discovery that would either make or mar his life.  Then he thrust the
  door open and entered.
  
  On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a man
  dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers.  A spotted
  handkerchief had been placed over the face.  A coarse candle, stuck in
  a bottle, sputtered beside it.
  
  Dorian Gray shuddered.  He felt that his could not be the hand to take
  the handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants to
  come to him.
  
  "Take that thing off the face.  I wish to see it," he said, clutching
  at the door-post for support.
  
  When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward.  A cry of joy
  broke from his lips.  The man who had been shot in the thicket was
  James Vane.
  
  He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body.  As he rode
  home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 18
target: The next day, Dorian doesn't leave the house; he's terrified that his assassin will find him. He wonders if this is all a product of his imagination--could he just have hallucinated his vision of his would-be killer? Surely he's safe. However, he can't get the vision out of his head; Henry comes in that evening and finds Dorian crying. After a couple of days of sulking, Dorian feels well enough to go outside. He feels infinitely better, and looks back on his former fear with contempt. Dorian goes on a walk in the garden with the Duchess, then joins some other friends to go hunting. Dorian and the Duchess's brother, Geoffrey, stroll through the woods, looking for animals to shoot. They come upon a beautiful hare. Dorian is charmed by the creature, and tells Geoffrey not to shoot it, but he scoffs and takes aim. Geoffrey hits the hare--but also hits something else. He accidentally shoots a man hidden behind the trees. Geoffrey angrily yells at the gamekeeper; he thinks it's one of the "beaters," men employed to flush birds out of the trees to be shot at. The body of the shot man is dragged out, and Dorian is distraught--he finds the whole thing to be dreadful. Henry gently walks him back to the house, and informs him on the way that the man has died. Dorian is profoundly disturbed. Henry, however, is not. He thinks it's the man's own fault for being in the line of fire, though he admits that this situation is rather awkward for Geoffrey. Dorian thinks this is a bad omen, and is certain that something bad is going to happen to someone--maybe him. Henry blows off this presentiment, and they change topics to Dorian's affair with the Duchess. However, Dorian's distress is still palpable, but he won't tell Henry what's the matter. The Duchess comes out to join them, and the three of them discuss the murdered man in the most alarming way--as though he's just an animal. Their snobbery is unbelievable. Dorian leaves his two friends and goes into the house. Henry and the Duchess continue their banter; they're pretty much equally matched in wit. Inside, Dorian is totally freaking out. He feels like death is coming for him. Thornton, the gamekeeper, comes in to see Dorian about the dead man. It turns out he wasn't a beater, after all. In fact, Thornton says, he looks more like a sailor. This really wakes Dorian up--he desperately wants to know the man's identity. He rushes out on horseback to see the body where it's being kept in a stable. The dead man is James Vane. Dorian rides back to the house, crying tears of joy--he's safe.