{"id":156,"date":"2024-08-25T02:07:05","date_gmt":"2024-08-25T02:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=156"},"modified":"2024-08-25T02:07:05","modified_gmt":"2024-08-25T02:07:05","slug":"the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-by-robert-louis-stevenson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=156","title":{"rendered":"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/scottish-literature-quiz\">Robert Louis Stevenson<\/a> was first published in 1886.  It follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London-based legal practitioner who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and a murderous criminal named Edward Hyde.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson<\/h2>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"__youtube_prefs__ epyt-facade no-lazyload\"><button class=\"epyt-facade-play\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson<\/h3>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">STORY OF THE DOOR<\/h2>\n<p>Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. \u201cI incline to Cain\u2019s heresy,\u201d he used to say quaintly: \u201cI let my brother go to the devil in his own way.\u201d In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.<\/p>\n<p>No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer\u2019s way. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.<\/p>\n<p>It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the weekdays. The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus of their grains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.<\/p>\n<p>Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two storeys high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower storey and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but when they came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up his cane and pointed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you ever remark that door?\u201d he asked; and when his companion had replied in the affirmative, \u201cIt is connected in my mind,\u201d added he, \u201cwith a very odd story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIndeed?\u201d said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice, \u201cand what was that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, it was this way,\u201d returned Mr. Enfield: \u201cI was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o\u2019clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street and all the folks asleep\u2014street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church\u2014till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child\u2019s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn\u2019t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a few halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The people who had turned out were the girl\u2019s own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent put in his appearance. Well, the child was not much the worse, more frightened, according to the sawbones; and there you might have supposed would be an end to it. But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child\u2019s family, which was only natural. But the doctor\u2019s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut and dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh accent and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this as should make his name stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we were pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we could for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black sneering coolness\u2014frightened too, I could see that\u2014but carrying it off, sir, really like Satan. \u2018If you choose to make capital out of this accident,\u2019 said he, \u2018I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but wishes to avoid a scene,\u2019 says he. \u2018Name your figure.\u2019 Well, we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the child\u2019s family; he would have clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of us that meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with the door?\u2014whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts\u2019s, drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can\u2019t mention, though it\u2019s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well known and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the signature was good for more than that if it was only genuine. I took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out with another man\u2019s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and sneering. \u2018Set your mind at rest,\u2019 says he, \u2018I will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.\u2019 So we all set off, the doctor, and the child\u2019s father, and our friend and myself, and passed the rest of the night in my chambers; and next day, when we had breakfasted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the cheque myself, and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of it. The cheque was genuine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTut-tut!\u201d said Mr. Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see you feel as I do,\u201d said Mr. Enfield. \u201cYes, it\u2019s a bad story. For my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fellows who do what they call good. Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I call the place with the door, in consequence. Though even that, you know, is far from explaining all,\u201d he added, and with the words fell into a vein of musing.<\/p>\n<p>From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather suddenly: \u201cAnd you don\u2019t know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA likely place, isn\u2019t it?\u201d returned Mr. Enfield. \u201cBut I happen to have noticed his address; he lives in some square or other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you never asked about the\u2014place with the door?\u201d said Mr. Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, sir; I had a delicacy,\u201d was the reply. \u201cI feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it\u2019s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA very good rule, too,\u201d said the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I have studied the place for myself,\u201d continued Mr. Enfield. \u201cIt seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure. There are three windows looking on the court on the first floor; none below; the windows are always shut but they\u2019re clean. And then there is a chimney which is generally smoking; so somebody must live there. And yet it\u2019s not so sure; for the buildings are so packed together about the court, that it\u2019s hard to say where one ends and another begins.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then \u201cEnfield,\u201d said Mr. Utterson, \u201cthat\u2019s a good rule of yours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, I think it is,\u201d returned Enfield.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut for all that,\u201d continued the lawyer, \u201cthere\u2019s one point I want to ask. I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell,\u201d said Mr. Enfield, \u201cI can\u2019t see what harm it would do. It was a man of the name of Hyde.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHm,\u201d said Mr. Utterson. \u201cWhat sort of a man is he to see?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn\u2019t specify the point. He\u2019s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can\u2019t describe him. And it\u2019s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a weight of consideration. \u201cYou are sure he used a key?\u201d he inquired at last.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy dear sir\u2026\u201d began Enfield, surprised out of himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, I know,\u201d said Utterson; \u201cI know it must seem strange. The fact is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it is because I know it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home. If you have been inexact in any point you had better correct it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think you might have warned me,\u201d returned the other with a touch of sullenness. \u201cBut I have been pedantically exact, as you call it. The fellow had a key; and what\u2019s more, he has it still. I saw him use it not a week ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man presently resumed. \u201cHere is another lesson to say nothing,\u201d said he. \u201cI am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to refer to this again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith all my heart,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cI shake hands on that, Richard.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE<\/h2>\n<p>That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll\u2019s Will and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his \u201cfriend and benefactor Edward Hyde,\u201d but that in case of Dr. Jekyll\u2019s \u201cdisappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months,\u201d the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll\u2019s shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor\u2019s household. This document had long been the lawyer\u2019s eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought it was madness,\u201d he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, \u201cand now I begin to fear it is disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. \u201cIf anyone knows, it will be Lanyon,\u201d he had thought.<\/p>\n<p>The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage of delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, both thorough respectors of themselves and of each other, and what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed each other\u2019s company.<\/p>\n<p>After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so disagreeably preoccupied his mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose, Lanyon,\u201d said he, \u201cyou and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish the friends were younger,\u201d chuckled Dr. Lanyon. \u201cBut I suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIndeed?\u201d said Utterson. \u201cI thought you had a bond of common interest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had,\u201d was the reply. \u201cBut it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake\u2019s sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash,\u201d added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, \u201cwould have estranged Damon and Pythias.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Utterson. \u201cThey have only differed on some point of science,\u201d he thought; and being a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of conveyancing), he even added: \u201cIt is nothing worse than that!\u201d He gave his friend a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached the question he had come to put. \u201cDid you ever come across a\u00a0<em>prot\u00e9g\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0of his\u2014one Hyde?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHyde?\u201d repeated Lanyon. \u201cNo. Never heard of him. Since my time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of the morning began to grow large. It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and besieged by questions.<\/p>\n<p>Six o\u2019clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr. Utterson\u2019s dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield\u2019s tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor\u2019s; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. The figure in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming. And still the figure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer\u2019s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious things when well examined. He might see a reason for his friend\u2019s strange preference or bondage (call it which you please) and even for the startling clause of the will. At least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.<\/p>\n<p>From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf he be Mr. Hyde,\u201d he had thought, \u201cI shall be Mr. Seek.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. By ten o\u2019clock, when the shops were closed, the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low growl of London from all round, very silent. Small sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway; and the rumour of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time. Mr. Utterson had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd light footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had long grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of a single person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city. Yet his attention had never before been so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitious prevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.<\/p>\n<p>The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they turned the end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could soon see what manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and very plainly dressed and the look of him, even at that distance, went somehow strongly against the watcher\u2019s inclination. But he made straight for the door, crossing the roadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket like one approaching home.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed. \u201cMr. Hyde, I think?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear was only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answered coolly enough: \u201cThat is my name. What do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see you are going in,\u201d returned the lawyer. \u201cI am an old friend of Dr. Jekyll\u2019s\u2014Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street\u2014you must have heard of my name; and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home,\u201d replied Mr. Hyde, blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, \u201cHow did you know me?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn your side,\u201d said Mr. Utterson \u201cwill you do me a favour?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith pleasure,\u201d replied the other. \u201cWhat shall it be?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWill you let me see your face?\u201d asked the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. \u201cNow I shall know you again,\u201d said Mr. Utterson. \u201cIt may be useful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d returned Mr. Hyde, \u201cIt is as well we have met; and\u00a0<em>\u00e0 propos<\/em>, you should have my address.\u201d And he gave a number of a street in Soho.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood God!\u201d thought Mr. Utterson, \u201ccan he, too, have been thinking of the will?\u201d But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in acknowledgment of the address.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd now,\u201d said the other, \u201chow did you know me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy description,\u201d was the reply.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhose description?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have common friends,\u201d said Mr. Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCommon friends,\u201d echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. \u201cWho are they?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJekyll, for instance,\u201d said the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe never told you,\u201d cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger. \u201cI did not think you would have lied.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome,\u201d said Mr. Utterson, \u201cthat is not fitting language.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house.<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. The problem he was thus debating as he walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. \u201cThere must be something else,\u201d said the perplexed gentleman. \u201cThere\u00a0<em>is<\/em>\u00a0something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan\u2019s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men; map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers and the agents of obscure enterprises. One house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fanlight, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly servant opened the door.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?\u201d asked the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will see, Mr. Utterson,\u201d said Poole, admitting the visitor, as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall paved with flags, warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire, and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. \u201cWill you wait here by the fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the dining-room?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere, thank you,\u201d said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor\u2019s; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London. But tonight there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room, Poole,\u201d he said. \u201cIs that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cQuite right, Mr. Utterson, sir,\u201d replied the servant. \u201cMr. Hyde has a key.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man, Poole,\u201d resumed the other musingly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, sir, he does indeed,\u201d said Poole. \u201cWe have all orders to obey him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?\u201d asked Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cO, dear no, sir. He never\u00a0<em>dines<\/em>\u00a0here,\u201d replied the butler. \u201cIndeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the laboratory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, good-night, Poole.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood-night, Mr. Utterson.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. \u201cPoor Harry Jekyll,\u201d he thought, \u201cmy mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming,\u00a0<em>pede claudo<\/em>, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault.\u201d And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, least by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there. His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing yet avoided. And then by a return on his former subject, he conceived a spark of hope. \u201cThis Master Hyde, if he were studied,\u201d thought he, \u201cmust have secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll\u2019s worst would be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to think of this creature stealing like a thief to Harry\u2019s bedside; poor Harry, what a wakening! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my shoulders to the wheel\u2014if Jekyll will but let me,\u201d he added, \u201cif Jekyll will only let me.\u201d For once more he saw before his mind\u2019s eye, as clear as transparency, the strange clauses of the will.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE<\/h2>\n<p>A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent, reputable men and all judges of good wine; and Mr. Utterson so contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed. This was no new arrangement, but a thing that had befallen many scores of times. Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit a while in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man\u2019s rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. To this rule, Dr. Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite side of the fire\u2014a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness\u2014you could see by his looks that he cherished for Mr. Utterson a sincere and warm affection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll,\u201d began the latter. \u201cYou know that will of yours?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A close observer might have gathered that the topic was distasteful; but the doctor carried it off gaily. \u201cMy poor Utterson,\u201d said he, \u201cyou are unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a man so distressed as you were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what he called my scientific heresies. O, I know he\u2019s a good fellow\u2014you needn\u2019t frown\u2014an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant. I was never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know I never approved of it,\u201d pursued Utterson, ruthlessly disregarding the fresh topic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy will? Yes, certainly, I know that,\u201d said the doctor, a trifle sharply. \u201cYou have told me so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I tell you so again,\u201d continued the lawyer. \u201cI have been learning something of young Hyde.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes. \u201cI do not care to hear more,\u201d said he. \u201cThis is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I heard was abominable,\u201d said Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt can make no change. You do not understand my position,\u201d returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. \u201cI am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange\u2014a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJekyll,\u201d said Utterson, \u201cyou know me: I am a man to be trusted. Make a clean breast of this in confidence; and I make no doubt I can get you out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy good Utterson,\u201d said the doctor, \u201cthis is very good of you, this is downright good of you, and I cannot find words to thank you in. I believe you fully; I would trust you before any man alive, ay, before myself, if I could make the choice; but indeed it isn\u2019t what you fancy; it is not as bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I will tell you one thing: the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde. I give you my hand upon that; and I thank you again and again; and I will just add one little word, Utterson, that I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll take in good part: this is a private matter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have no doubt you are perfectly right,\u201d he said at last, getting to his feet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, but since we have touched upon this business, and for the last time I hope,\u201d continued the doctor, \u201cthere is one point I should like you to understand. I have really a very great interest in poor Hyde. I know you have seen him; he told me so; and I fear he was rude. But I do sincerely take a great, a very great interest in that young man; and if I am taken away, Utterson, I wish you to promise me that you will bear with him and get his rights for him. I think you would, if you knew all; and it would be a weight off my mind if you would promise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t pretend that I shall ever like him,\u201d said the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t ask that,\u201d pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand upon the other\u2019s arm; \u201cI only ask for justice; I only ask you to help him for my sake, when I am no longer here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh. \u201cWell,\u201d said he, \u201cI promise.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">THE CAREW MURDER CASE<\/h2>\n<p>Nearly a year later, in the month of October, 18\u2014, London was startled by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by the high position of the victim. The details were few and startling. A maid servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone upstairs to bed about eleven. Although a fog rolled over the city in the small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless, and the lane, which the maid\u2019s window overlooked, was brilliantly lit by the full moon. It seems she was romantically given, for she sat down upon her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a dream of musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that experience), never had she felt more at peace with all men or thought more kindly of the world. And as she so sat she became aware of an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near along the lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small gentleman, to whom at first she paid less attention. When they had come within speech (which was just under the maid\u2019s eyes) the older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness. It did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.<\/p>\n<p>It was two o\u2019clock when she came to herself and called for the police. The murderer was gone long ago; but there lay his victim in the middle of the lane, incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been done, although it was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the middle under the stress of this insensate cruelty; and one splintered half had rolled in the neighbouring gutter\u2014the other, without doubt, had been carried away by the murderer. A purse and gold watch were found upon the victim: but no cards or papers, except a sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been probably carrying to the post, and which bore the name and address of Mr. Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>This was brought to the lawyer the next morning, before he was out of bed; and he had no sooner seen it and been told the circumstances, than he shot out a solemn lip. \u201cI shall say nothing till I have seen the body,\u201d said he; \u201cthis may be very serious. Have the kindness to wait while I dress.\u201d And with the same grave countenance he hurried through his breakfast and drove to the police station, whither the body had been carried. As soon as he came into the cell, he nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d said he, \u201cI recognise him. I am sorry to say that this is Sir Danvers Carew.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood God, sir,\u201d exclaimed the officer, \u201cis it possible?\u201d And the next moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition. \u201cThis will make a deal of noise,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd perhaps you can help us to the man.\u201d And he briefly narrated what the maid had seen, and showed the broken stick.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and battered as it was, he recognised it for one that he had himself presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs this Mr. Hyde a person of small stature?\u201d he inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cParticularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid calls him,\u201d said the officer.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Utterson reflected; and then, raising his head, \u201cIf you will come with me in my cab,\u201d he said, \u201cI think I can take you to his house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer\u2019s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law\u2019s officers, which may at times assail the most honest.<\/p>\n<p>As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry Jekyll\u2019s favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a million sterling.<\/p>\n<p>An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy: but her manners were excellent. Yes, she said, this was Mr. Hyde\u2019s, but he was not at home; he had been in that night very late, but he had gone away again in less than an hour; there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery well, then, we wish to see his rooms,\u201d said the lawyer; and when the woman began to declare it was impossible, \u201cI had better tell you who this person is,\u201d he added. \u201cThis is Inspector Newcomen of Scotland Yard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman\u2019s face. \u201cAh!\u201d said she, \u201che is in trouble! What has he done?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Utterson and the inspector exchanged glances. \u201cHe don\u2019t seem a very popular character,\u201d observed the latter. \u201cAnd now, my good woman, just let me and this gentleman have a look about us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the whole extent of the house, which but for the old woman remained otherwise empty, Mr. Hyde had only used a couple of rooms; but these were furnished with luxury and good taste. A closet was filled with wine; the plate was of silver, the napery elegant; a good picture hung upon the walls, a gift (as Utterson supposed) from Henry Jekyll, who was much of a connoisseur; and the carpets were of many plies and agreeable in colour. At this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their pockets inside out; lock-fast drawers stood open; and on the hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many papers had been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt end of a green cheque book, which had resisted the action of the fire; the other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to the bank, where several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the murderer\u2019s credit, completed his gratification.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou may depend upon it, sir,\u201d he told Mr. Utterson: \u201cI have him in my hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick or, above all, burned the cheque book. Why, money\u2019s life to the man. We have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the handbills.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde had numbered few familiars\u2014even the master of the servant maid had only seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">INCIDENT OF THE LETTER<\/h2>\n<p>It was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Utterson found his way to Dr. Jekyll\u2019s door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden, to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or dissecting rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of the garden. It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend\u2019s quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize; and through this, Mr. Utterson was at last received into the doctor\u2019s cabinet. It was a large room fitted round with glass presses, furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass and a business table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred with iron. The fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deathly sick. He did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him welcome in a changed voice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd now,\u201d said Mr. Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them, \u201cyou have heard the news?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The doctor shuddered. \u201cThey were crying it in the square,\u201d he said. \u201cI heard them in my dining-room.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne word,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cCarew was my client, but so are you, and I want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide this fellow?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUtterson, I swear to God,\u201d cried the doctor, \u201cI swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend\u2019s feverish manner. \u201cYou seem pretty sure of him,\u201d said he; \u201cand for your sake, I hope you may be right. If it came to a trial, your name might appear.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am quite sure of him,\u201d replied Jekyll; \u201cI have grounds for certainty that I cannot share with any one. But there is one thing on which you may advise me. I have\u2014I have received a letter; and I am at a loss whether I should show it to the police. I should like to leave it in your hands, Utterson; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so great a trust in you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?\u201d asked the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d said the other. \u201cI cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, which this hateful business has rather exposed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Utterson ruminated awhile; he was surprised at his friend\u2019s selfishness, and yet relieved by it. \u201cWell,\u201d said he, at last, \u201clet me see the letter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed \u201cEdward Hyde\u201d: and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer\u2019s benefactor, Dr. Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked this letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he had looked for; and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you the envelope?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI burned it,\u201d replied Jekyll, \u201cbefore I thought what I was about. But it bore no postmark. The note was handed in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShall I keep this and sleep upon it?\u201d asked Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish you to judge for me entirely,\u201d was the reply. \u201cI have lost confidence in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I shall consider,\u201d returned the lawyer. \u201cAnd now one word more: it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that disappearance?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness; he shut his mouth tight and nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew it,\u201d said Utterson. \u201cHe meant to murder you. You had a fine escape.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have had what is far more to the purpose,\u201d returned the doctor solemnly: \u201cI have had a lesson\u2014O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have had!\u201d And he covered his face for a moment with his hands.<\/p>\n<p>On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole. \u201cBy the bye,\u201d said he, \u201cthere was a letter handed in to-day: what was the messenger like?\u201d But Poole was positive nothing had come except by post; \u201cand only circulars by that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had been written in the cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently judged, and handled with the more caution. The newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves hoarse along the footways: \u201cSpecial edition. Shocking murder of an M.P.\u201d That was the funeral oration of one friend and client; and he could not help a certain apprehension lest the good name of another should be sucked down in the eddy of the scandal. It was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make; and self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing for advice. It was not to be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, it might be fished for.<\/p>\n<p>Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest, his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house. The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town\u2019s life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room was gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant. Guest had often been on business to the doctor\u2019s; he knew Poole; he could scarce have failed to hear of Mr. Hyde\u2019s familiarity about the house; he might draw conclusions: was it not as well, then, that he should see a letter which put that mystery to right? and above all since Guest, being a great student and critic of handwriting, would consider the step natural and obliging? The clerk, besides, was a man of counsel; he could scarce read so strange a document without dropping a remark; and by that remark Mr. Utterson might shape his future course.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a sad business about Sir Danvers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, sir, indeed. It has elicited a great deal of public feeling,\u201d returned Guest. \u201cThe man, of course, was mad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI should like to hear your views on that,\u201d replied Utterson. \u201cI have a document here in his handwriting; it is between ourselves, for I scarce know what to do about it; it is an ugly business at the best. But there it is; quite in your way: a murderer\u2019s autograph.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Guest\u2019s eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it with passion. \u201cNo sir,\u201d he said: \u201cnot mad; but it is an odd hand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd by all accounts a very odd writer,\u201d added the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>Just then the servant entered with a note.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs that from Dr. Jekyll, sir?\u201d inquired the clerk. \u201cI thought I knew the writing. Anything private, Mr. Utterson?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnly an invitation to dinner. Why? Do you want to see it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne moment. I thank you, sir;\u201d and the clerk laid the two sheets of paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. \u201cThank you, sir,\u201d he said at last, returning both; \u201cit\u2019s a very interesting autograph.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was a pause, during which Mr. Utterson struggled with himself. \u201cWhy did you compare them, Guest?\u201d he inquired suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, sir,\u201d returned the clerk, \u201cthere\u2019s a rather singular resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: only differently sloped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRather quaint,\u201d said Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is, as you say, rather quaint,\u201d returned Guest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wouldn\u2019t speak of this note, you know,\u201d said the master.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, sir,\u201d said the clerk. \u201cI understand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But no sooner was Mr. Utterson alone that night, than he locked the note into his safe, where it reposed from that time forward. \u201cWhat!\u201d he thought. \u201cHenry Jekyll forge for a murderer!\u201d And his blood ran cold in his veins.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON<\/h2>\n<p>Time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the death of Sir Danvers was resented as a public injury; but Mr. Hyde had disappeared out of the ken of the police as though he had never existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable: tales came out of the man\u2019s cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of his vile life, of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed to have surrounded his career; but of his present whereabouts, not a whisper. From the time he had left the house in Soho on the morning of the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time drew on, Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to grow more at quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde. Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the doctor was at peace.<\/p>\n<p>On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor\u2019s with a small party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one to the other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the lawyer. \u201cThe doctor was confined to the house,\u201d Poole said, \u201cand saw no one.\u201d On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him; and the sixth he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor\u2019s appearance. He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer\u2019s notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind. It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death; and yet that was what Utterson was tempted to suspect. \u201cYes,\u201d he thought; \u201che is a doctor, he must know his own state and that his days are counted; and the knowledge is more than he can bear.\u201d And yet when Utterson remarked on his ill looks, it was with an air of great firmness that Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have had a shock,\u201d he said, \u201cand I shall never recover. It is a question of weeks. Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it; yes, sir, I used to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJekyll is ill, too,\u201d observed Utterson. \u201cHave you seen him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Lanyon\u2019s face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. \u201cI wish to see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll,\u201d he said in a loud, unsteady voice. \u201cI am quite done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTut, tut!\u201d said Mr. Utterson; and then after a considerable pause, \u201cCan\u2019t I do anything?\u201d he inquired. \u201cWe are three very old friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to make others.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNothing can be done,\u201d returned Lanyon; \u201cask himself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe will not see me,\u201d said the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am not surprised at that,\u201d was the reply. \u201cSome day, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can sit and talk with me of other things, for God\u2019s sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot keep clear of this accursed topic, then in God\u2019s name, go, for I cannot bear it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and wrote to Jekyll, complaining of his exclusion from the house, and asking the cause of this unhappy break with Lanyon; and the next day brought him a long answer, often very pathetically worded, and sometimes darkly mysterious in drift. The quarrel with Lanyon was incurable. \u201cI do not blame our old friend,\u201d Jekyll wrote, \u201cbut I share his view that we must never meet. I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence.\u201d Utterson was amazed; the dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age; and now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and unprepared a change pointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon\u2019s manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.<\/p>\n<p>A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something less than a fortnight he was dead. The night after the funeral, at which he had been sadly affected, Utterson locked the door of his business room, and sitting there by the light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set before him an envelope addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend. \u201cPRIVATE: for the hands of G. J. Utterson ALONE, and in case of his predecease\u00a0<em>to be destroyed unread<\/em>,\u201d so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents. \u201cI have buried one friend to-day,\u201d he thought: \u201cwhat if this should cost me another?\u201d And then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and broke the seal. Within there was another enclosure, likewise sealed, and marked upon the cover as \u201cnot to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll.\u201d Utterson could not trust his eyes. Yes, it was disappearance; here again, as in the mad will which he had long ago restored to its author, here again were the idea of a disappearance and the name of Henry Jekyll bracketted. But in the will, that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion of the man Hyde; it was set there with a purpose all too plain and horrible. Written by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean? A great curiosity came on the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to the bottom of these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his dead friend were stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost corner of his private safe.<\/p>\n<p>It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may be doubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired the society of his surviving friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly; but his thoughts were disquieted and fearful. He went to call indeed; but he was perhaps relieved to be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak with Poole upon the doorstep and surrounded by the air and sounds of the open city, rather than to be admitted into that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak with its inscrutable recluse. Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news to communicate. The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined himself to the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even sleep; he was out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not read; it seemed as if he had something on his mind. Utterson became so used to the unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off little by little in the frequency of his visits.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW<\/h2>\n<p>It chanced on Sunday, when Mr. Utterson was on his usual walk with Mr. Enfield, that their way lay once again through the by-street; and that when they came in front of the door, both stopped to gaze on it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell,\u201d said Enfield, \u201cthat story\u2019s at an end at least. We shall never see more of Mr. Hyde.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope not,\u201d said Utterson. \u201cDid I ever tell you that I once saw him, and shared your feeling of repulsion?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was impossible to do the one without the other,\u201d returned Enfield. \u201cAnd by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not to know that this was a back way to Dr. Jekyll\u2019s! It was partly your own fault that I found it out, even when I did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo you found it out, did you?\u201d said Utterson. \u201cBut if that be so, we may step into the court and take a look at the windows. To tell you the truth, I am uneasy about poor Jekyll; and even outside, I feel as if the presence of a friend might do him good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The court was very cool and a little damp, and full of premature twilight, although the sky, high up overhead, was still bright with sunset. The middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat! Jekyll!\u201d he cried. \u201cI trust you are better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am very low, Utterson,\u201d replied the doctor drearily, \u201cvery low. It will not last long, thank God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou stay too much indoors,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cYou should be out, whipping up the circulation like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is my cousin\u2014Mr. Enfield\u2014Dr. Jekyll.) Come now; get your hat and take a quick turn with us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou are very good,\u201d sighed the other. \u201cI should like to very much; but no, no, no, it is quite impossible; I dare not. But indeed, Utterson, I am very glad to see you; this is really a great pleasure; I would ask you and Mr. Enfield up, but the place is really not fit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy, then,\u201d said the lawyer, good-naturedly, \u201cthe best thing we can do is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is just what I was about to venture to propose,\u201d returned the doctor with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below. They saw it but for a glimpse for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and left the court without a word. In silence, too, they traversed the by-street; and it was not until they had come into a neighbouring thoroughfare, where even upon a Sunday there were still some stirrings of life, that Mr. Utterson at last turned and looked at his companion. They were both pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod forgive us, God forgive us,\u201d said Mr. Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once more in silence.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">THE LAST NIGHT<\/h2>\n<p>Mr. Utterson was sitting by his fireside one evening after dinner, when he was surprised to receive a visit from Poole.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBless me, Poole, what brings you here?\u201d he cried; and then taking a second look at him, \u201cWhat ails you?\u201d he added; \u201cis the doctor ill?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr. Utterson,\u201d said the man, \u201cthere is something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTake a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cNow, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know the doctor\u2019s ways, sir,\u201d replied Poole, \u201cand how he shuts himself up. Well, he\u2019s shut up again in the cabinet; and I don\u2019t like it, sir\u2014I wish I may die if I like it. Mr. Utterson, sir, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, my good man,\u201d said the lawyer, \u201cbe explicit. What are you afraid of?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been afraid for about a week,\u201d returned Poole, doggedly disregarding the question, \u201cand I can bear it no more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The man\u2019s appearance amply bore out his words; his manner was altered for the worse; and except for the moment when he had first announced his terror, he had not once looked the lawyer in the face. Even now, he sat with the glass of wine untasted on his knee, and his eyes directed to a corner of the floor. \u201cI can bear it no more,\u201d he repeated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome,\u201d said the lawyer, \u201cI see you have some good reason, Poole; I see there is something seriously amiss. Try to tell me what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there\u2019s been foul play,\u201d said Poole, hoarsely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFoul play!\u201d cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and rather inclined to be irritated in consequence. \u201cWhat foul play! What does the man mean?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI daren\u2019t say, sir,\u201d was the answer; \u201cbut will you come along with me and see for yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Utterson\u2019s only answer was to rise and get his hat and greatcoat; but he observed with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared upon the butler\u2019s face, and perhaps with no less, that the wine was still untasted when he set it down to follow.<\/p>\n<p>It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of London so deserted. He could have wished it otherwise; never in his life had he been conscious of so sharp a wish to see and touch his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he might, there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity. The square, when they got there, was full of wind and dust, and the thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing. Poole, who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in the middle of the pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took off his hat and mopped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief. But for all the hurry of his coming, these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped away, but the moisture of some strangling anguish; for his face was white and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, sir,\u201d he said, \u201chere we are, and God grant there be nothing wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmen, Poole,\u201d said the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was opened on the chain; and a voice asked from within, \u201cIs that you, Poole?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s all right,\u201d said Poole. \u201cOpen the door.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the fire was built high; and about the hearth the whole of the servants, men and women, stood huddled together like a flock of sheep. At the sight of Mr. Utterson, the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the cook, crying out \u201cBless God! it\u2019s Mr. Utterson,\u201d ran forward as if to take him in her arms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat, what? Are you all here?\u201d said the lawyer peevishly. \u201cVery irregular, very unseemly; your master would be far from pleased.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re all afraid,\u201d said Poole.<\/p>\n<p>Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid lifted her voice and now wept loudly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHold your tongue!\u201d Poole said to her, with a ferocity of accent that testified to his own jangled nerves; and indeed, when the girl had so suddenly raised the note of her lamentation, they had all started and turned towards the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation. \u201cAnd now,\u201d continued the butler, addressing the knife-boy, \u201creach me a candle, and we\u2019ll get this through hands at once.\u201d And then he begged Mr. Utterson to follow him, and led the way to the back garden.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, sir,\u201d said he, \u201cyou come as gently as you can. I want you to hear, and I don\u2019t want you to be heard. And see here, sir, if by any chance he was to ask you in, don\u2019t go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Utterson\u2019s nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, gave a jerk that nearly threw him from his balance; but he recollected his courage and followed the butler into the laboratory building through the surgical theatre, with its lumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of the stair. Here Poole motioned him to stand on one side and listen; while he himself, setting down the candle and making a great and obvious call on his resolution, mounted the steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on the red baize of the cabinet door.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you,\u201d he called; and even as he did so, once more violently signed to the lawyer to give ear.<\/p>\n<p>A voice answered from within: \u201cTell him I cannot see anyone,\u201d it said complainingly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you, sir,\u201d said Poole, with a note of something like triumph in his voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr. Utterson back across the yard and into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and the beetles were leaping on the floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir,\u201d he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, \u201cWas that my master\u2019s voice?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt seems much changed,\u201d replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look for look.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChanged? Well, yes, I think so,\u201d said the butler. \u201cHave I been twenty years in this man\u2019s house, to be deceived about his voice? No, sir; master\u2019s made away with; he was made away with eight days ago, when we heard him cry out upon the name of God; and\u00a0<em>who\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0in there instead of him, and\u00a0<em>why<\/em>\u00a0it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr. Utterson!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale my man,\u201d said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger. \u201cSuppose it were as you suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been\u2014well, murdered, what could induce the murderer to stay? That won\u2019t hold water; it doesn\u2019t commend itself to reason.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I\u2019ll do it yet,\u201d said Poole. \u201cAll this last week (you must know) him, or it, whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. It was sometimes his way\u2014the master\u2019s, that is\u2014to write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair. We\u2019ve had nothing else this week back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very meals left there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking. Well, sir, every day, ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been orders and complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town. Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another order to a different firm. This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir, whatever for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you any of these papers?\u201d asked Mr. Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which the lawyer, bending nearer to the candle, carefully examined. Its contents ran thus: \u201cDr. Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs. Maw. He assures them that their last sample is impure and quite useless for his present purpose. In the year 18\u2014, Dr. J. purchased a somewhat large quantity from Messrs. M. He now begs them to search with most sedulous care, and should any of the same quality be left, forward it to him at once. Expense is no consideration. The importance of this to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated.\u201d So far the letter had run composedly enough, but here with a sudden splutter of the pen, the writer\u2019s emotion had broken loose. \u201cFor God\u2019s sake,\u201d he added, \u201cfind me some of the old.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a strange note,\u201d said Mr. Utterson; and then sharply, \u201cHow do you come to have it open?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe man at Maw\u2019s was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to me like so much dirt,\u201d returned Poole.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is unquestionably the doctor\u2019s hand, do you know?\u201d resumed the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought it looked like it,\u201d said the servant rather sulkily; and then, with another voice, \u201cBut what matters hand of write?\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen him!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeen him?\u201d repeated Mr. Utterson. \u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s it!\u201d said Poole. \u201cIt was this way. I came suddenly into the theatre from the garden. It seems he had slipped out to look for this drug or whatever it is; for the cabinet door was open, and there he was at the far end of the room digging among the crates. He looked up when I came in, gave a kind of cry, and whipped upstairs into the cabinet. It was but for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face? If it was my master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me? I have served him long enough. And then\u2026\u201d The man paused and passed his hand over his face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are all very strange circumstances,\u201d said Mr. Utterson, \u201cbut I think I begin to see daylight. Your master, Poole, is plainly seized with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for aught I know, the alteration of his voice; hence the mask and the avoidance of his friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means of which the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate recovery\u2014God grant that he be not deceived! There is my explanation; it is sad enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but it is plain and natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all exorbitant alarms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir,\u201d said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor, \u201cthat thing was not my master, and there\u2019s the truth. My master\u201d\u2014here he looked round him and began to whisper\u2014\u201cis a tall, fine build of a man, and this was more of a dwarf.\u201d Utterson attempted to protest. \u201cO, sir,\u201d cried Poole, \u201cdo you think I do not know my master after twenty years? Do you think I do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where I saw him every morning of my life? No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr. Jekyll\u2014God knows what it was, but it was never Dr. Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was murder done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPoole,\u201d replied the lawyer, \u201cif you say that, it will become my duty to make certain. Much as I desire to spare your master\u2019s feelings, much as I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove him to be still alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in that door.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAh, Mr. Utterson, that\u2019s talking!\u201d cried the butler.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd now comes the second question,\u201d resumed Utterson: \u201cWho is going to do it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy, you and me, sir,\u201d was the undaunted reply.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s very well said,\u201d returned the lawyer; \u201cand whatever comes of it, I shall make it my business to see you are no loser.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is an axe in the theatre,\u201d continued Poole; \u201cand you might take the kitchen poker for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his hand, and balanced it. \u201cDo you know, Poole,\u201d he said, looking up, \u201cthat you and I are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou may say so, sir, indeed,\u201d returned the butler.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is well, then that we should be frank,\u201d said the other. \u201cWe both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. This masked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that I could hardly swear to that,\u201d was the answer. \u201cBut if you mean, was it Mr. Hyde?\u2014why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the same bigness; and it had the same quick, light way with it; and then who else could have got in by the laboratory door? You have not forgot, sir, that at the time of the murder he had still the key with him? But that\u2019s not all. I don\u2019t know, Mr. Utterson, if you ever met this Mr. Hyde?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d said the lawyer, \u201cI once spoke with him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen you must know as well as the rest of us that there was something queer about that gentleman\u2014something that gave a man a turn\u2014I don\u2019t know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt in your marrow kind of cold and thin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI own I felt something of what you describe,\u201d said Mr. Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cQuite so, sir,\u201d returned Poole. \u201cWell, when that masked thing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it went down my spine like ice. O, I know it\u2019s not evidence, Mr. Utterson; I\u2019m book-learned enough for that; but a man has his feelings, and I give you my bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAy, ay,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cMy fears incline to the same point. Evil, I fear, founded\u2014evil was sure to come\u2014of that connection. Ay truly, I believe you; I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer (for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim\u2019s room. Well, let our name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The footman came at the summons, very white and nervous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPull yourself together, Bradshaw,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cThis suspense, I know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention to make an end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into the cabinet. If all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame. Meanwhile, lest anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to escape by the back, you and the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks and take your post at the laboratory door. We give you ten minutes to get to your stations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. \u201cAnd now, Poole, let us get to ours,\u201d he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the way into the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it was now quite dark. The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that deep well of building, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait. London hummed solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, the stillness was only broken by the sounds of a footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it will walk all day, sir,\u201d whispered Poole; \u201cay, and the better part of the night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist, there\u2019s a bit of a break. Ah, it\u2019s an ill conscience that\u2019s such an enemy to rest! Ah, sir, there\u2019s blood foully shed in every step of it! But hark again, a little closer\u2014put your heart in your ears, Mr. Utterson, and tell me, is that the doctor\u2019s foot?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they went so slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyll. Utterson sighed. \u201cIs there never anything else?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p>Poole nodded. \u201cOnce,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce I heard it weeping!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWeeping? how that?\u201d said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of horror.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWeeping like a woman or a lost soul,\u201d said the butler. \u201cI came away with that upon my heart, that I could have wept too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole disinterred the axe from under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest table to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated breath to where that patient foot was still going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJekyll,\u201d cried Utterson, with a loud voice, \u201cI demand to see you.\u201d He paused a moment, but there came no reply. \u201cI give you fair warning, our suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,\u201d he resumed; \u201cif not by fair means, then by foul\u2014if not of your consent, then by brute force!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUtterson,\u201d said the voice, \u201cfor God\u2019s sake, have mercy!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAh, that\u2019s not Jekyll\u2019s voice\u2014it\u2019s Hyde\u2019s!\u201d cried Utterson. \u201cDown with the door, Poole!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and the red baize door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal screech, as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up went the axe again, and again the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four times the blow fell; but the wood was tough and the fittings were of excellent workmanship; and it was not until the fifth, that the lock burst and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet.<\/p>\n<p>The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had succeeded, stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer or two open, papers neatly set forth on the business table, and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea; the quietest room, you would have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the most commonplace that night in London.<\/p>\n<p>Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and beheld the face of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the doctor\u2019s bigness; the cords of his face still moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone; and by the crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a self-destroyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have come too late,\u201d he said sternly, \u201cwhether to save or punish. Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the body of your master.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre, which filled almost the whole ground storey and was lighted from above, and by the cabinet, which formed an upper storey at one end and looked upon the court. A corridor joined the theatre to the door on the by-street; and with this the cabinet communicated separately by a second flight of stairs. There were besides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar. All these they now thoroughly examined. Each closet needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell from their doors, had stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed, was filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon who was Jekyll\u2019s predecessor; but even as they opened the door they were advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance. Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.<\/p>\n<p>Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. \u201cHe must be buried here,\u201d he said, hearkening to the sound.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOr he may have fled,\u201d said Utterson, and he turned to examine the door in the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they found the key, already stained with rust.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis does not look like use,\u201d observed the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUse!\u201d echoed Poole. \u201cDo you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a man had stamped on it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAy,\u201d continued Utterson, \u201cand the fractures, too, are rusty.\u201d The two men looked at each other with a scare. \u201cThis is beyond me, Poole,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cLet us go back to the cabinet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional awestruck glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet. At one table, there were traces of chemical work, various measured heaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man had been prevented.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is the same drug that I was always bringing him,\u201d said Poole; and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over.<\/p>\n<p>This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up, and the tea things stood ready to the sitter\u2019s elbow, the very sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand with startling blasphemies.<\/p>\n<p>Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval-glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis glass has seen some strange things, sir,\u201d whispered Poole.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd surely none stranger than itself,\u201d echoed the lawyer in the same tones. \u201cFor what did Jekyll\u201d\u2014he caught himself up at the word with a start, and then conquering the weakness\u2014\u201cwhat could Jekyll want with it?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou may say that!\u201d said Poole.<\/p>\n<p>Next they turned to the business table. On the desk, among the neat array of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor\u2019s hand, the name of Mr. Utterson. The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of death and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but in place of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement read the name of Gabriel John Utterson. He looked at Poole, and then back at the paper, and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy head goes round,\u201d he said. \u201cHe has been all these days in possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor\u2019s hand and dated at the top. \u201cO Poole!\u201d the lawyer cried, \u201che was alive and here this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space; he must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we venture to declare this suicide? O, we must be careful. I foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy don\u2019t you read it, sir?\u201d asked Poole.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause I fear,\u201d replied the lawyer solemnly. \u201cGod grant I have no cause for it!\u201d And with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy dear Utterson,\u2014When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour unworthy and unhappy friend,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHENRY JEKYLL.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was a third enclosure?\u201d asked Utterson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere, sir,\u201d said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet sealed in several places.<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer put it in his pocket. \u201cI would say nothing of this paper. If your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is now ten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and Utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged back to his office to read the two narratives in which this mystery was now to be explained.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">DR. LANYON\u2019S NARRATIVE<\/h2>\n<p>On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague and old school companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised by this; for we were by no means in the habit of correspondence; I had seen the man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and I could imagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify formality of registration. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c10<em>th December<\/em>, 18\u2014.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDear Lanyon,\u2014You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day when, if you had said to me, \u2018Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason, depend upon you,\u2019 I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me to-night, I am lost. You might suppose, after this preface, that I am going to ask you for something dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night\u2014ay, even if you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless your carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in your hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be forced; and you are to go in alone; to open the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand, breaking the lock if it be shut; and to draw out,\u00a0<em>with all its contents as they stand<\/em>, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the third from the bottom. In my extreme distress of mind, I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, you may know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a phial and a paper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is the first part of the service: now for the second. You should be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to be preferred for what will then remain to do. At midnight, then, I have to ask you to be alone in your consulting room, to admit with your own hand into the house a man who will present himself in my name, and to place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from my cabinet. Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitude completely. Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you will have understood that these arrangements are of capital importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they must appear, you might have charged your conscience with my death or the shipwreck of my reason.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConfident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility. Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told. Serve me, my dear Lanyon and save<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour friend,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cH.J.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cP.S.\u2014I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my soul. It is possible that the post-office may fail me, and this letter not come into your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case, dear Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in the course of the day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight. It may then already be too late; and if that night passes without event, you will know that you have seen the last of Henry Jekyll.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane; but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do as he requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance; and an appeal so worded could not be set aside without a grave responsibility. I rose accordingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to Jekyll\u2019s house. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received by the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman\u2019s surgical theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll\u2019s private cabinet is most conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith was near despair. But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hour\u2019s work, the door stood open. The press marked E was unlocked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to Cavendish Square.<\/p>\n<p>Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that it was plain they were of Jekyll\u2019s private manufacture; and when I opened one of the wrappers I found what seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been about half full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version book and contained little but a series of dates. These covered a period of many years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and quite abruptly. Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date, usually no more than a single word: \u201cdouble\u201d occurring perhaps six times in a total of several hundred entries; and once very early in the list and followed by several marks of exclamation, \u201ctotal failure!!!\u201d All this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was definite. Here were a phial of some salt, and the record of a series of experiments that had led (like too many of Jekyll\u2019s investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. How could the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could go to one place, why could he not go to another? And even granting some impediment, why was this gentleman to be received by me in secret? The more I reflected the more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral disease; and though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver, that I might be found in some posture of self-defence.<\/p>\n<p>Twelve o\u2019clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded very gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a small man crouching against the pillars of the portico.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you come from Dr. Jekyll?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>He told me \u201cyes\u201d by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into the darkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing with his bull\u2019s eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor started and made greater haste.<\/p>\n<p>These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed him into the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my hand ready on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution, and\u2014last but not least\u2014with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.<\/p>\n<p>This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable; his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement\u2014the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me\u2014something seizing, surprising and revolting\u2014this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in the man\u2019s nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world.<\/p>\n<p>These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on fire with sombre excitement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you got it?\u201d he cried. \u201cHave you got it?\u201d And so lively was his impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me.<\/p>\n<p>I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood. \u201cCome, sir,\u201d said I. \u201cYou forget that I have not yet the pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please.\u201d And I showed him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer me to muster.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,\u201d he replied civilly enough. \u201cWhat you say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood\u2026\u201d He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria\u2014\u201cI understood, a drawer\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But here I took pity on my visitor\u2019s suspense, and some perhaps on my own growing curiosity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere it is, sir,\u201d said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.<\/p>\n<p>He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart; I could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCompose yourself,\u201d said I.<\/p>\n<p>He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, \u201cHave you a graduated glass?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p>I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he asked.<\/p>\n<p>He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd now,\u201d said he, \u201cto settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir,\u201d said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly possessing, \u201cyou speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is well,\u201d replied my visitor. \u201cLanyon, you remember your vows: what follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors\u2014behold!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change\u2014he seemed to swell\u2014his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter\u2014and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cO God!\u201d I screamed, and \u201cO God!\u201d again and again; for there before my eyes\u2014pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death\u2014there stood Henry Jekyll!<\/p>\n<p>What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was, on Jekyll\u2019s own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.<\/p>\n<p>HASTIE LANYON.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">HENRY JEKYLL\u2019S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE<\/h2>\n<p>I was born in the year 18\u2014 to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man\u2019s dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together\u2014that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated?<\/p>\n<p>I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mistlike transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man\u2019s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete. Enough then, that I not only recognised my natural body from the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp of lower elements in my soul.<\/p>\n<p>I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.<\/p>\n<p>The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.<\/p>\n<p>There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of these transformations. The night however, was far gone into the morning\u2014the morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for the conception of the day\u2014the inmates of my house were locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber; and I determined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.<\/p>\n<p>I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine tenths a life of effort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.<\/p>\n<p>I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the stature and the face of Henry Jekyll.<\/p>\n<p>That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prisonhouse of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.<\/p>\n<p>Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing towards the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humourous; and I made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as a housekeeper a creature whom I knew well to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar object, in my second character. I next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of my position.<\/p>\n<p>Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think of it\u2014I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory door, give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had always standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.<\/p>\n<p>The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered.<\/p>\n<p>Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now I can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design of entering; I mean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with which my chastisement approached. I met with one accident which, as it brought on no consequence, I shall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a child aroused against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised the other day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and the child\u2019s family joined him; there were moments when I feared for my life; and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn in the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily eliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bank in the name of Edward Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own hand backward, I had supplied my double with a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.<\/p>\n<p>Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about me; in vain I saw the decent furniture and tall proportions of my room in the square; in vain that I recognised the pattern of the bed curtains and the design of the mahogany frame; something still kept insisting that I was not where I was, that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but in the little room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the body of Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and in my psychological way, began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion, occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a comfortable morning doze. I was still so engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size; it was large, firm, white and comely. But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.<\/p>\n<p>I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself; and then, with another bound of terror\u2014how was it to be remedied? It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugs were in the cabinet\u2014a long journey down two pairs of stairs, through the back passage, across the open court and through the anatomical theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. It might indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that, when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And then with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind that the servants were already used to the coming and going of my second self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was able, in clothes of my own size: had soon passed through the house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde at such an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later, Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down, with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.<\/p>\n<p>Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That part of me which I had the power of projecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as though the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though (when I wore that form) I were conscious of a more generous tide of blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this were much prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine. The power of the drug had not been always equally displayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed me; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to double, and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in the light of that morning\u2019s accident, I was led to remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side. All things therefore seemed to point to this; that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.<\/p>\n<p>Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father\u2019s interest; Hyde had more than a son\u2019s indifference. To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was true to my determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.<\/p>\n<p>I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God, no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so pitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. But I had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was to fall.<\/p>\n<p>Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to the topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot. I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father\u2019s hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul. As the acuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy. The problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforth impossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to the better part of my existence; and O, how I rejoiced to think of it! with what willing humility I embraced anew the restrictions of natural life! with what sincere renunciation I locked the door by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key under my heel!<\/p>\n<p>The next day, came the news that the murder had not been overlooked, that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him.<\/p>\n<p>I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how earnestly, in the last months of the last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person that I was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation.<\/p>\n<p>There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had made my discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the Regent\u2019s Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safe of all men\u2019s respect, wealthy, beloved\u2014the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.<\/p>\n<p>My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more than once observed that in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my own hand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted up from end to end.<\/p>\n<p>Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of which I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which was indeed comical enough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face\u2014happily for him\u2014yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with directions that they should be registered. Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say\u2014I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the less frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled.<\/p>\n<p>When I came to myself at Lanyon\u2019s, the horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon\u2019s condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home, in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.<\/p>\n<p>I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to myself; and alas! six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self. But when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But his love of life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.<\/p>\n<p>It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought\u2014no, not alleviation\u2014but a certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face and nature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.<\/p>\n<p>About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under the influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Best Robert Louis Stevenson Books to Read<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4415LTR\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/49JQWGe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3UmAYxz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3vTwepN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><br \/>\nClick on the image to buy a copy<\/p>\n<p>If you enjoyed The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/the-body-snatcher-by-robert-louis-stevenson\">The Body-Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Narrated by David Barnes,  courtesy of Libravox<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson was first published in 1886. It follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London-based legal practitioner who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and a murderous criminal named Edward Hyde. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}