Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

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