The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (2024)

STORY OF THE DOOR

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was neverlighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward insentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendlymeetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently humanbeaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into histalk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinnerface, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere withhimself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; andthough he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twentyyears. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almostwith envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and inany extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline toCain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother goto the devil in his own way.” In this character, it was frequently hisfortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence inthe lives of downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came abouthis chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.

No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at thebest, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity ofgood-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circleready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s 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 inthe 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 formany, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could findin common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks,that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with obviousrelief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greateststore by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and notonly set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business,that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.

It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street ina busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is called quiet, but itdrove a thriving trade on the weekdays. The inhabitants were all doing well, itseemed and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplusof their grains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along thatthoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Evenon Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty ofpassage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like afire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses,and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased theeye of the passenger.

Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east the line was broken bythe entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block ofbuilding 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 foreheadof discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks ofprolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bellnor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess andstruck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboyhad tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one hadappeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.

Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but whenthey came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up his cane and pointed.

“Did you ever remark that door?” he asked; and when his companionhad replied in the affirmative, “It is connected in my mind,” addedhe, “with a very odd story.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice,“and what was that?”

“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield: “I was cominghome from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of ablack winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there wasliterally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street and all the folksasleep—street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and allas empty as a church—till at last I got into that state of mind when aman listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All atonce, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at agood walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hardas she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one anothernaturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing;for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screamingon the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. Itwasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a fewhalloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to wherethere was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectlycool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought outthe sweat on me like running. The people who had turned out were thegirl’s own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had beensent put in his appearance. Well, the child was not much the worse, morefrightened, according to the sawbones; and there you might have supposed wouldbe an end to it. But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathingto my gentleman at first sight. So had the child’s family, which was onlynatural. But the doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cutand dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburghaccent and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest ofus; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that sawbones turn sick andwhite with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knewwhat 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 shouldmake his name stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friendsor any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as wewere pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we couldfor 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 sneeringcoolness—frightened too, I could see that—but carrying it off, sir,really like Satan. ‘If you choose to make capital out of thisaccident,’ said he, ‘I am naturally helpless. No gentleman butwishes to avoid a scene,’ says he. ‘Name your figure.’ Well,we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the child’s family; he wouldhave clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of usthat meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get themoney; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with thedoor?—whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the matterof ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts’s, drawnpayable to bearer and signed with a name that I can’t mention, thoughit’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very wellknown and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the signature was good formore than that if it was only genuine. I took the liberty of pointing out to mygentleman 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 withanother man’s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quiteeasy and sneering. ‘Set your mind at rest,’ says he, ‘I willstay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’ So we allset off, the doctor, and the child’s father, and our friend and myself,and passed the rest of the night in my chambers; and next day, when we hadbreakfasted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the cheque myself, and saidI had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of it. The cheque wasgenuine.”

“Tut-tut!” said Mr. Utterson.

“I see you feel as I do,” said Mr. Enfield. “Yes, it’sa bad story. For my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, areally damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink ofthe proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fellowswho do what they call good. Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man paying throughthe nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I callthe place with the door, in consequence. Though even that, you know, is farfrom explaining all,” he added, and with the words fell into a vein ofmusing.

From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather suddenly: “Andyou don’t know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?”

“A likely place, isn’t it?” returned Mr. Enfield. “ButI happen to have noticed his address; he lives in some square or other.”

“And you never asked about the—place with the door?” said Mr.Utterson.

“No, sir; I had a delicacy,” was the reply. “I feel verystrongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the dayof judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. Yousit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; andpresently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knockedon the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. Nosir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less Iask.”

“A very good rule, too,” said the lawyer.

“But I have studied the place for myself,” continued Mr. Enfield.“It seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in orout 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’re clean. And then there is achimney which is generally smoking; so somebody must live there. And yetit’s not so sure; for the buildings are so packed together about thecourt, that it’s hard to say where one ends and another begins.”

The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then“Enfield,” said Mr. Utterson, “that’s a good rule ofyours.”

“Yes, I think it is,” returned Enfield.

“But for all that,” continued the lawyer, “there’s onepoint I want to ask. I want to ask the name of that man who walked over thechild.”

“Well,” said Mr. Enfield, “I can’t see what harm itwould do. It was a man of the name of Hyde.”

“Hm,” said Mr. Utterson. “What sort of a man is he tosee?”

“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with hisappearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never sawa 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’t specify thepoint. He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can namenothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’tdescribe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see himthis moment.”

Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a weight ofconsideration. “You are sure he used a key?” he inquired at last.

“My dear sir...” began Enfield, surprised out of himself.

“Yes, I know,” said Utterson; “I know it must seem strange.The fact is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it is because Iknow it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home. If you have beeninexact in any point you had better correct it.”

“I think you might have warned me,” returned the other with a touchof sullenness. “But I have been pedantically exact, as you call it. Thefellow had a key; and what’s more, he has it still. I saw him use it nota week ago.”

Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man presentlyresumed. “Here is another lesson to say nothing,” said he. “Iam ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to refer to thisagain.”

“With all my heart,” said the lawyer. “I shake hands on that,Richard.”

SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE

That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits andsat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when thismeal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on hisreading desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour oftwelve, 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 hisbusiness room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of ita document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll’s Will and sat downwith 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 lendthe least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case ofthe decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all hispossessions were to pass into the hands of his “friend and benefactorEdward Hyde,” but that in case of Dr. Jekyll’s “disappearanceor unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months,”the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoeswithout further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond thepayment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor’s household.This document had long been the lawyer’s eyesore. It offended him both asa lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom thefanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde thathad swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. Itwas already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn nomore. 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.

“I thought it was madness,” he said, as he replaced the obnoxiouspaper in the safe, “and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.”

With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in thedirection of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, thegreat Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. “Ifanyone knows, it will be Lanyon,” he had thought.

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 aloneover his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with ashock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sightof 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 matesboth at school and college, both thorough respectors of themselves and of eachother, and what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed eachother’s company.

After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which sodisagreeably preoccupied his mind.

“I suppose, Lanyon,” said he, “you and I must be the twooldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?”

“I wish the friends were younger,” chuckled Dr. Lanyon. “ButI suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now.”

“Indeed?” said Utterson. “I thought you had a bond of commoninterest.”

“We had,” was the reply. “But it is more than ten years sinceHenry 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’ssake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Suchunscientific balderdash,” added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple,“would have estranged Damon and Pythias.”

This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Utterson.“They have only differed on some point of science,” he thought; andbeing a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of conveyancing),he even added: “It is nothing worse than that!” He gave his frienda few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached the question he hadcome to put. “Did you ever come across a protégé of his—oneHyde?” he asked.

“Hyde?” repeated Lanyon. “No. Never heard of him. Since mytime.”

That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to thegreat, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of themorning began to grow large. It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind,toiling in mere darkness and besieged by questions.

Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so convenientlynear to Mr. Utterson’s dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem.Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now hisimagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed inthe gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield’stale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would be awareof the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a manwalking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor’s; and thenthese met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed onregardless of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, wherehis friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door ofthat room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeperrecalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power wasgiven, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. The figurein these two phases haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozedover, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, ormove the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, throughwider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and at every street corner crush a childand leave her screaming. And still the figure had no face by which he mightknow it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and meltedbefore his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in thelawyer’s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity tobehold 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 wasthe habit of mysterious things when well examined. He might see a reason forhis friend’s strange preference or bondage (call it which you please) andeven for the startling clause of the will. At least it would be a face worthseeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had butto show itself to raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, aspirit of enduring hatred.

From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-streetof shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plentyand time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lightsand at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on hischosen post.

“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr.Seek.”

And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in theair; 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’clock, when theshops were closed, the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the lowgrowl of London from all round, very silent. Small sounds carried far; domesticsounds 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 oddlight footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had longgrown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of a singleperson, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out distinct fromthe vast hum and clatter of the city. Yet his attention had never before beenso sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitiousprevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.

The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they turnedthe end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could soon seewhat manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and very plainly dressedand the look of him, even at that distance, went somehow strongly against thewatcher’s inclination. But he made straight for the door, crossing theroadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket like oneapproaching home.

Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed.“Mr. Hyde, I think?”

Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear was onlymomentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answeredcoolly enough: “That is my name. What do you want?”

“I see you are going in,” returned the lawyer. “I am an oldfriend of Dr. Jekyll’s—Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street—you musthave heard of my name; and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you mightadmit me.”

“You will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home,” replied Mr. Hyde,blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, “Howdid you know me?” he asked.

“On your side,” said Mr. Utterson “will you do me afavour?”

“With pleasure,” replied the other. “What shall it be?”

“Will you let me see your face?” asked the lawyer.

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 prettyfixedly for a few seconds. “Now I shall know you again,” said Mr.Utterson. “It may be useful.”

“Yes,” returned Mr. Hyde, “It is as well we have met; andà propos, you should have my address.” And he gave a number of astreet in Soho.

“Good God!” thought Mr. Utterson, “can he, too, have beenthinking of the will?” But he kept his feelings to himself and onlygrunted in acknowledgment of the address.

“And now,” said the other, “how did you know me?”

“By description,” was the reply.

“Whose description?”

“We have common friends,” said Mr. Utterson.

“Common friends,” echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. “Whoare they?”

“Jekyll, for instance,” said the lawyer.

“He never told you,” cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger.“I did not think you would have lied.”

“Come,” said Mr. Utterson, “that is not fittinglanguage.”

The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, withextraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into thehouse.

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 puttinghis hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. The problem he was thusdebating as he walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde waspale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameablemalformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyerwith a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with ahusky, 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. “There must besomething else,” said the perplexed gentleman. “There issomething more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seemshardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old storyof Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpiresthrough, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O mypoor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, itis on that of your new friend.”

Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient, handsomehouses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and let in flatsand chambers to all sorts and conditions of men; map-engravers, architects,shady lawyers and the agents of obscure enterprises. One house, however, secondfrom the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which worea great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness exceptfor the fanlight, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderlyservant opened the door.

“Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?” asked the lawyer.

“I will see, Mr. Utterson,” said Poole, admitting the visitor, ashe 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 furnishedwith costly cabinets of oak. “Will you wait here by the fire, sir? orshall I give you a light in the dining-room?”

“Here, thank you,” said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned onthe tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy ofhis friend the doctor’s; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it asthe 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) anausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to reada menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and theuneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, whenPoole presently returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.

“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room, Poole,” he said.“Is that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?”

“Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir,” replied the servant. “Mr.Hyde has a key.”

“Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man,Poole,” resumed the other musingly.

“Yes, sir, he does indeed,” said Poole. “We have all ordersto obey him.”

“I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?” asked Utterson.

“O, dear no, sir. He never dines here,” replied the butler.“Indeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostlycomes and goes by the laboratory.”

“Well, good-night, Poole.”

“Good-night, Mr. Utterson.”

And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. “Poor HarryJekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! Hewas 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 oldsin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, pedeclaudo, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned thefault.” And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his ownpast, groping in all the corners of memory, least by chance someJack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there. His past wasfairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with lessapprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he haddone, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many he hadcome so near to doing yet avoided. And then by a return on his former subject,he conceived a spark of hope. “This Master Hyde, if he werestudied,” thought he, “must have secrets of his own; black secrets,by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst wouldbe like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to thinkof this creature stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside; poor Harry,what a wakening! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existenceof the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my shoulders tothe wheel—if Jekyll will but let me,” he added, “if Jekyllwill only let me.” For once more he saw before his mind’s eye, asclear as transparency, the strange clauses of the will.

DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE

A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of hispleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent, reputablemen and all judges of good wine; and Mr. Utterson so contrived that he remainedbehind after the others had departed. This was no new arrangement, but a thingthat had befallen many scores of times. Where Utterson was liked, he was likedwell. Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted andloose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit awhile in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their mindsin the man’s rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. To thisrule, Dr. Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite side ofthe fire—a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something ofa slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness—you couldsee by his looks that he cherished for Mr. Utterson a sincere and warmaffection.

“I have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll,” began the latter.“You know that will of yours?”

A close observer might have gathered that the topic was distasteful; but thedoctor carried it off gaily. “My poor Utterson,” said he,“you are unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a man so distressed asyou were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what hecalled my scientific heresies. O, I know he’s a good fellow—youneedn’t frown—an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more ofhim; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant. I wasnever more disappointed in any man than Lanyon.”

“You know I never approved of it,” pursued Utterson, ruthlesslydisregarding the fresh topic.

“My will? Yes, certainly, I know that,” said the doctor, a triflesharply. “You have told me so.”

“Well, I tell you so again,” continued the lawyer. “I havebeen learning something of young Hyde.”

The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and therecame a blackness about his eyes. “I do not care to hear more,” saidhe. “This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop.”

“What I heard was abominable,” said Utterson.

“It can make no change. You do not understand my position,”returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. “I ampainfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange—a verystrange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended bytalking.”

“Jekyll,” said Utterson, “you know me: I am a man to betrusted. Make a clean breast of this in confidence; and I make no doubt I canget you out of it.”

“My good Utterson,” said the doctor, “this is very good ofyou, this is downright good of you, and I cannot find words to thank you in. Ibelieve you fully; I would trust you before any man alive, ay, before myself,if I could make the choice; but indeed it isn’t what you fancy; it is notas bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I will tell you onething: the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde. I give you my hand uponthat; and I thank you again and again; and I will just add one little word,Utterson, that I’m sure you’ll take in good part: this is a privatematter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.”

Utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire.

“I have no doubt you are perfectly right,” he said at last, gettingto his feet.

“Well, but since we have touched upon this business, and for the lasttime I hope,” continued the doctor, “there is one point I shouldlike you to understand. I have really a very great interest in poor Hyde. Iknow you have seen him; he told me so; and I fear he was rude. But I dosincerely take a great, a very great interest in that young man; and if I amtaken away, Utterson, I wish you to promise me that you will bear with him andget his rights for him. I think you would, if you knew all; and it would be aweight off my mind if you would promise.”

“I can’t pretend that I shall ever like him,” said thelawyer.

“I don’t ask that,” pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand upon theother’s arm; “I only ask for justice; I only ask you to help himfor my sake, when I am no longer here.”

Utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh. “Well,” said he, “Ipromise.”

THE CAREW MURDER CASE

Nearly a year later, in the month of October, 18—, London was startled bya crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by the highposition of the victim. The details were few and startling. A maid servantliving alone in a house not far from the river, had gone upstairs to bed abouteleven. Although a fog rolled over the city in the small hours, the early partof the night was cloudless, and the lane, which the maid’s windowoverlooked, was brilliantly lit by the full moon. It seems she was romanticallygiven, 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 allmen or thought more kindly of the world. And as she so sat she became aware ofan aged beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near along the lane; andadvancing to meet him, another and very small gentleman, to whom at first shepaid less attention. When they had come within speech (which was just under themaid’s eyes) the older man bowed and accosted the other with a verypretty manner of politeness. It did not seem as if the subject of his addresswere of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared asif 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 andold-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of awell-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she wassurprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited hermaster and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavycane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed tolisten with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke outin a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, andcarrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took astep back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and atthat Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And nextmoment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailingdown a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and thebody jumped upon the roadway. At the horror of these sights and sounds, themaid fainted.

It was two o’clock 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 thelane, incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been done, althoughit was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the middleunder the stress of this insensate cruelty; and one splintered half had rolledin the neighbouring gutter—the other, without doubt, had been carriedaway by the murderer. A purse and gold watch were found upon the victim: but nocards or papers, except a sealed and stamped envelope, which he had beenprobably carrying to the post, and which bore the name and address of Mr.Utterson.

This was brought to the lawyer the next morning, before he was out of bed; andhe had no sooner seen it and been told the circumstances, than he shot out asolemn lip. “I shall say nothing till I have seen the body,” saidhe; “this may be very serious. Have the kindness to wait while Idress.” And with the same grave countenance he hurried through hisbreakfast and drove to the police station, whither the body had been carried.As soon as he came into the cell, he nodded.

“Yes,” said he, “I recognise him. I am sorry to say that thisis Sir Danvers Carew.”

“Good God, sir,” exclaimed the officer, “is itpossible?” And the next moment his eye lighted up with professionalambition. “This will make a deal of noise,” he said. “Andperhaps you can help us to the man.” And he briefly narrated what themaid had seen, and showed the broken stick.

Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the stick waslaid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and battered as it was, herecognised it for one that he had himself presented many years before to HenryJekyll.

“Is this Mr. Hyde a person of small stature?” he inquired.

“Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maidcalls him,” said the officer.

Mr. Utterson reflected; and then, raising his head, “If you will comewith me in my cab,” he said, “I think I can take you to hishouse.”

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 wascontinually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cabcrawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number ofdegrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end ofevening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light ofsome strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quitebroken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirlingwreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, withits muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never beenextinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion ofdarkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in anightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; andwhen he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touchof that terror of the law and the law’s officers, which may at timesassail the most honest.

As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little andshowed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating house, a shop forthe retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddledin 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 downagain upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardlysurroundings. This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite; of a man whowas heir to a quarter of a million sterling.

An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an evilface, smoothed by hypocrisy: but her manners were excellent. Yes, she said,this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in that nightvery late, but he had gone away again in less than an hour; there was nothingstrange in that; his habits were very irregular, and he was often absent; forinstance, it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yesterday.

“Very well, then, we wish to see his rooms,” said the lawyer; andwhen the woman began to declare it was impossible, “I had better tell youwho this person is,” he added. “This is Inspector Newcomen ofScotland Yard.”

A flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman’s face. “Ah!”said she, “he is in trouble! What has he done?”

Mr. Utterson and the inspector exchanged glances. “He don’t seem avery popular character,” observed the latter. “And now, my goodwoman, just let me and this gentleman have a look about us.”

In the whole extent of the house, which but for the old woman remainedotherwise empty, Mr. Hyde had only used a couple of rooms; but these werefurnished with luxury and good taste. A closet was filled with wine; the platewas 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; andthe carpets were of many plies and agreeable in colour. At this moment,however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedlyransacked; 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 inspectordisinterred the butt end of a green cheque book, which had resisted the actionof the fire; the other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as thisclinched his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to thebank, where several thousand pounds were found to be lying to themurderer’s credit, completed his gratification.

“You may depend upon it, sir,” he told Mr. Utterson: “I havehim in my hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left thestick or, above all, burned the cheque book. Why, money’s life to theman. We have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out thehandbills.”

This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde hadnumbered few familiars—even the master of the servant maid had only seenhim 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 ofunexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders.

INCIDENT OF THE LETTER

It was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Utterson found his way to Dr.Jekyll’s door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried downby the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden, to thebuilding which was indifferently known as the laboratory or dissecting rooms.The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and hisown tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the destinationof the block at the bottom of the garden. It was the first time that the lawyerhad been received in that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed thedingy, windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distastefulsense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eagerstudents and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemicalapparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw, andthe light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the further end, a flightof stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize; and through this, Mr.Utterson was at last received into the doctor’s cabinet. It was a largeroom fitted round with glass presses, furnished, among other things, with acheval-glass and a business table, and looking out upon the court by threedusty windows barred with iron. The fire burned in the grate; a lamp was setlighted on the chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to liethickly; and there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deathlysick. He did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and badehim welcome in a changed voice.

“And now,” said Mr. Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them,“you have heard the news?”

The doctor shuddered. “They were crying it in the square,” he said.“I heard them in my dining-room.”

“One word,” said the lawyer. “Carew was my client, but so areyou, and I want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hidethis fellow?”

“Utterson, I swear to God,” cried the doctor, “I swear to GodI will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done withhim 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, hewill never more be heard of.”

The lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend’s feverishmanner. “You seem pretty sure of him,” said he; “and for yoursake, I hope you may be right. If it came to a trial, your name mightappear.”

“I am quite sure of him,” replied Jekyll; “I have grounds forcertainty that I cannot share with any one. But there is one thing on which youmay advise me. I have—I have received a letter; and I am at a losswhether I should show it to the police. I should like to leave it in yourhands, Utterson; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so great a trust inyou.”

“You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?” askedthe lawyer.

“No,” said the other. “I cannot say that I care what becomesof Hyde; I am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, whichthis hateful business has rather exposed.”

Utterson ruminated awhile; he was surprised at his friend’s selfishness,and yet relieved by it. “Well,” said he, at last, “let me seethe letter.”

The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed “EdwardHyde”: and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer’sbenefactor, Dr. Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousandgenerosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had means ofescape on which he placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked this letter wellenough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he had looked for; and heblamed himself for some of his past suspicions.

“Have you the envelope?” he asked.

“I burned it,” replied Jekyll, “before I thought what I wasabout. But it bore no postmark. The note was handed in.”

“Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?” asked Utterson.

“I wish you to judge for me entirely,” was the reply. “I havelost confidence in myself.”

“Well, I shall consider,” returned the lawyer. “And now oneword more: it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about thatdisappearance?”

The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness; he shut his mouth tight andnodded.

“I knew it,” said Utterson. “He meant to murder you. You hada fine escape.”

“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctorsolemnly: “I have had a lesson—O God, Utterson, what a lesson Ihave had!” And he covered his face for a moment with his hands.

On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole. “Bythe bye,” said he, “there was a letter handed in to-day: what wasthe messenger like?” But Poole was positive nothing had come except bypost; “and only circulars by that,” he added.

This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the letter hadcome by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had been written in thecabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently judged, and handled withthe more caution. The newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves hoarse alongthe footways: “Special edition. Shocking murder of an M.P.” Thatwas the funeral oration of one friend and client; and he could not help acertain apprehension lest the good name of another should be sucked down in theeddy 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.

Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest, his headclerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely calculated distance fromthe fire, a bottle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in thefoundations of his house. The fog still slept on the wing above the drownedcity, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle andsmother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life wasstill 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 agoresolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richerin stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillsidevineyards, 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 secretsthan 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’s; he knew Poole; he couldscarce have failed to hear of Mr. Hyde’s familiarity about the house; hemight draw conclusions: was it not as well, then, that he should see a letterwhich put that mystery to right? and above all since Guest, being a greatstudent and critic of handwriting, would consider the step natural andobliging? The clerk, besides, was a man of counsel; he could scarce read sostrange a document without dropping a remark; and by that remark Mr. Uttersonmight shape his future course.

“This is a sad business about Sir Danvers,” he said.

“Yes, sir, indeed. It has elicited a great deal of public feeling,”returned Guest. “The man, of course, was mad.”

“I should like to hear your views on that,” replied Utterson.“I have a document here in his handwriting; it is between ourselves, forI scarce know what to do about it; it is an ugly business at the best. Butthere it is; quite in your way: a murderer’s autograph.”

Guest’s eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it withpassion. “No sir,” he said: “not mad; but it is an oddhand.”

“And by all accounts a very odd writer,” added the lawyer.

Just then the servant entered with a note.

“Is that from Dr. Jekyll, sir?” inquired the clerk. “Ithought I knew the writing. Anything private, Mr. Utterson?”

“Only an invitation to dinner. Why? Do you want to see it?”

“One moment. I thank you, sir;” and the clerk laid the two sheetsof paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. “Thank you,sir,” he said at last, returning both; “it’s a veryinteresting autograph.”

There was a pause, during which Mr. Utterson struggled with himself. “Whydid you compare them, Guest?” he inquired suddenly.

“Well, sir,” returned the clerk, “there’s a rathersingular resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: onlydifferently sloped.”

“Rather quaint,” said Utterson.

“It is, as you say, rather quaint,” returned Guest.

“I wouldn’t speak of this note, you know,” said the master.

“No, sir,” said the clerk. “I understand.”

But no sooner was Mr. Utterson alone that night, than he locked the note intohis safe, where it reposed from that time forward. “What!” hethought. “Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer!” And his blood rancold in his veins.

INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON

Time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the death of SirDanvers was resented as a public injury; but Mr. Hyde had disappeared out ofthe ken of the police as though he had never existed. Much of his past wasunearthed, indeed, and all disreputable: tales came out of the man’scruelty, at once so callous and violent; of his vile life, of his strangeassociates, of the hatred that seemed to have surrounded his career; but of hispresent whereabouts, not a whisper. From the time he had left the house in Sohoon the morning of the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as timedrew on, Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and togrow more at quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way ofthinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde. Now that thatevil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came outof his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more theirfamiliar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known forcharities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he wasmuch in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as ifwith an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months, thedoctor was at peace.

On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor’s with a smallparty; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one tothe other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends. On the12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the lawyer. “Thedoctor was confined to the house,” Poole said, “and saw noone.” On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having nowbeen used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found thisreturn of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had in Guestto dine with him; and the sixth he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon’s.

There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he wasshocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor’s appearance.He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grownpale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet itwas not so much these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested thelawyer’s notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemedto testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind. It was unlikely that thedoctor should fear death; and yet that was what Utterson was tempted tosuspect. “Yes,” he thought; “he is a doctor, he must know hisown state and that his days are counted; and the knowledge is more than he canbear.” And yet when Utterson remarked on his ill looks, it was with anair of great firmness that Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.

“I have had a shock,” he said, “and I shall never recover. Itis a question of weeks. Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it; yes, sir, Iused to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad toget away.”

“Jekyll is ill, too,” observed Utterson. “Have you seenhim?”

But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. “I wishto see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll,” he said in a loud, unsteady voice.“I am quite done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me anyallusion to one whom I regard as dead.”

“Tut, tut!” said Mr. Utterson; and then after a considerable pause,“Can’t I do anything?” he inquired. “We are three veryold friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to make others.”

“Nothing can be done,” returned Lanyon; “ask himself.”

“He will not see me,” said the lawyer.

“I am not surprised at that,” was the reply. “Some day,Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong ofthis. I cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can sit and talk with meof other things, for God’s sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot keepclear of this accursed topic, then in God’s name, go, for I cannot bearit.”

As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and wrote to Jekyll, complaining ofhis exclusion from the house, and asking the cause of this unhappy break withLanyon; and the next day brought him a long answer, often very patheticallyworded, and sometimes darkly mysterious in drift. The quarrel with Lanyon wasincurable. “I do not blame our old friend,” Jekyll wrote,“but I share his view that we must never meet. I mean from henceforth tolead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubtmy friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. You must suffer me to gomy own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that Icannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. Icould not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors sounmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, andthat is to respect my silence.” Utterson was amazed; the dark influenceof Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his old tasks andamities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerfuland an honoured age; and now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, andthe whole tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and unprepared a changepointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon’s manner and words, there mustlie for it some deeper ground.

A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something less than afortnight he was dead. The night after the funeral, at which he had been sadlyaffected, Utterson locked the door of his business room, and sitting there bythe light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set before him an envelopeaddressed by the hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend.“PRIVATE: for the hands of G. J. Utterson ALONE, and in case of hispredecease to be destroyed unread,” so it was emphaticallysuperscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents. “I haveburied one friend to-day,” he thought: “what if this should cost meanother?” And then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and broke theseal. Within there was another enclosure, likewise sealed, and marked upon thecover as “not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. HenryJekyll.” 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 Jekyllbracketted. But in the will, that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestionof 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 onthe trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to the bottom ofthese mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his dead friend werestringent obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost corner of his privatesafe.

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may bedoubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired the society of his survivingfriend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly; but his thoughts weredisquieted and fearful. He went to call indeed; but he was perhaps relieved tobe denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak with Pooleupon the doorstep and surrounded by the air and sounds of the open city, ratherthan to be admitted into that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speakwith its inscrutable recluse. Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news tocommunicate. The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined himself tothe cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even sleep; he wasout of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not read; it seemed as if hehad something on his mind. Utterson became so used to the unvarying characterof these reports, that he fell off little by little in the frequency of hisvisits.

INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW

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 infront of the door, both stopped to gaze on it.

“Well,” said Enfield, “that story’s at an end at least.We shall never see more of Mr. Hyde.”

“I hope not,” said Utterson. “Did I ever tell you that I oncesaw him, and shared your feeling of repulsion?”

“It was impossible to do the one without the other,” returnedEnfield. “And by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not toknow that this was a back way to Dr. Jekyll’s! It was partly your ownfault that I found it out, even when I did.”

“So you found it out, did you?” said Utterson. “But if thatbe so, we may step into the court and take a look at the windows. To tell youthe truth, I am uneasy about poor Jekyll; and even outside, I feel as if thepresence of a friend might do him good.”

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 middleone of the three windows was half-way open; and sitting close beside it, takingthe air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner,Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.

“What! Jekyll!” he cried. “I trust you are better.”

“I am very low, Utterson,” replied the doctor drearily, “verylow. It will not last long, thank God.”

“You stay too much indoors,” said the lawyer. “You should beout, whipping up the circulation like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is mycousin—Mr. Enfield—Dr. Jekyll.) Come now; get your hat and take aquick turn with us.”

“You are very good,” sighed the other. “I should like to verymuch; 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 andMr. Enfield up, but the place is really not fit.”

“Why, then,” said the lawyer, good-naturedly, “the best thingwe can do is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are.”

“That is just what I was about to venture to propose,” returned thedoctor with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile wasstruck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror anddespair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below. They saw it butfor a glimpse for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse hadbeen 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 aneighbouring thoroughfare, where even upon a Sunday there were still somestirrings of life, that Mr. Utterson at last turned and looked at hiscompanion. They were both pale; and there was an answering horror in theireyes.

“God forgive us, God forgive us,” said Mr. Utterson.

But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once more insilence.

THE LAST NIGHT

Mr. Utterson was sitting by his fireside one evening after dinner, when he wassurprised to receive a visit from Poole.

“Bless me, Poole, what brings you here?” he cried; and then takinga second look at him, “What ails you?” he added; “is thedoctor ill?”

“Mr. Utterson,” said the man, “there is somethingwrong.”

“Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you,” said thelawyer. “Now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want.”

“You know the doctor’s ways, sir,” replied Poole, “andhow he shuts himself up. Well, he’s shut up again in the cabinet; and Idon’t like it, sir—I wish I may die if I like it. Mr. Utterson,sir, I’m afraid.”

“Now, my good man,” said the lawyer, “be explicit. What areyou afraid of?”

“I’ve been afraid for about a week,” returned Poole, doggedlydisregarding the question, “and I can bear it no more.”

The man’s appearance amply bore out his words; his manner was altered forthe worse; and except for the moment when he had first announced his terror, hehad not once looked the lawyer in the face. Even now, he sat with the glass ofwine untasted on his knee, and his eyes directed to a corner of the floor.“I can bear it no more,” he repeated.

“Come,” said the lawyer, “I see you have some good reason,Poole; I see there is something seriously amiss. Try to tell me what itis.”

“I think there’s been foul play,” said Poole, hoarsely.

“Foul play!” cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and ratherinclined to be irritated in consequence. “What foul play! What does theman mean?”

“I daren’t say, sir,” was the answer; “but will youcome along with me and see for yourself?”

Mr. Utterson’s only answer was to rise and get his hat and greatcoat; buthe observed with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared upon thebutler’s face, and perhaps with no less, that the wine was still untastedwhen he set it down to follow.

It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on herback as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most diaphanousand lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood intothe 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 sodeserted. He could have wished it otherwise; never in his life had he beenconscious of so sharp a wish to see and touch his fellow-creatures; forstruggle as he might, there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipationof calamity. The square, when they got there, was full of wind and dust, andthe 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 ofthe pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took off his hat and moppedhis 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 ofsome strangling anguish; for his face was white and his voice, when he spoke,harsh and broken.

“Well, sir,” he said, “here we are, and God grant there benothing wrong.”

“Amen, Poole,” said the lawyer.

Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was opened onthe chain; and a voice asked from within, “Is that you, Poole?”

“It’s all right,” said Poole. “Open the door.”

The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the fire was builthigh; and about the hearth the whole of the servants, men and women, stoodhuddled together like a flock of sheep. At the sight of Mr. Utterson, thehousemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the cook, crying out“Bless God! it’s Mr. Utterson,” ran forward as if to take himin her arms.

“What, what? Are you all here?” said the lawyer peevishly.“Very irregular, very unseemly; your master would be far frompleased.”

“They’re all afraid,” said Poole.

Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid lifted her voice andnow wept loudly.

“Hold your tongue!” Poole said to her, with a ferocity of accentthat testified to his own jangled nerves; and indeed, when the girl had sosuddenly raised the note of her lamentation, they had all started and turnedtowards the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation. “Andnow,” continued the butler, addressing the knife-boy, “reach me acandle, and we’ll get this through hands at once.” And then hebegged Mr. Utterson to follow him, and led the way to the back garden.

“Now, sir,” said he, “you come as gently as you can. I wantyou to hear, and I don’t want you to be heard. And see here, sir, if byany chance he was to ask you in, don’t go.”

Mr. Utterson’s nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, gave a jerk thatnearly threw him from his balance; but he recollected his courage and followedthe butler into the laboratory building through the surgical theatre, with itslumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of the stair. Here Poole motioned himto stand on one side and listen; while he himself, setting down the candle andmaking a great and obvious call on his resolution, mounted the steps andknocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on the red baize of the cabinet door.

“Mr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you,” he called; and even as hedid so, once more violently signed to the lawyer to give ear.

A voice answered from within: “Tell him I cannot see anyone,” itsaid complainingly.

“Thank you, sir,” said Poole, with a note of something like triumphin his voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr. Utterson back across theyard and into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and the beetles wereleaping on the floor.

“Sir,” he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, “Was thatmy master’s voice?”

“It seems much changed,” replied the lawyer, very pale, but givinglook for look.

“Changed? Well, yes, I think so,” said the butler. “Have Ibeen twenty years in this man’s house, to be deceived about his voice?No, sir; master’s made away with; he was made away with eight days ago,when we heard him cry out upon the name of God; and who’s in thereinstead of him, and why it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven,Mr. Utterson!”

“This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale myman,” said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger. “Suppose it were as yousuppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been—well, murdered, what couldinduce the murderer to stay? That won’t hold water; it doesn’tcommend itself to reason.”

“Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I’ll do ityet,” said Poole. “All this last week (you must know) him, or it,whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and day forsome sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. It was sometimes hisway—the master’s, that is—to write his orders on a sheet ofpaper and throw it on the stair. We’ve had nothing else this week back;nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very meals left there to besmuggled in when nobody was looking. Well, sir, every day, ay, and twice andthrice in the same day, there have been orders and complaints, and I have beensent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town. Every time I brought thestuff back, there would be another paper telling me to return it, because itwas not pure, and another order to a different firm. This drug is wanted bitterbad, sir, whatever for.”

“Have you any of these papers?” asked Mr. Utterson.

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:“Dr. Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs. Maw. He assures them thattheir last sample is impure and quite useless for his present purpose. In theyear 18—, Dr. J. purchased a somewhat large quantity from Messrs. M. Henow begs them to search with most sedulous care, and should any of the samequality be left, forward it to him at once. Expense is no consideration. Theimportance of this to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated.” So far theletter had run composedly enough, but here with a sudden splutter of the pen,the writer’s emotion had broken loose. “For God’ssake,” he added, “find me some of the old.”

“This is a strange note,” said Mr. Utterson; and then sharply,“How do you come to have it open?”

“The man at Maw’s was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to melike so much dirt,” returned Poole.

“This is unquestionably the doctor’s hand, do you know?”resumed the lawyer.

“I thought it looked like it,” said the servant rather sulkily; andthen, with another voice, “But what matters hand of write?” hesaid. “I’ve seen him!”

“Seen him?” repeated Mr. Utterson. “Well?”

“That’s it!” said Poole. “It was this way. I camesuddenly into the theatre from the garden. It seems he had slipped out to lookfor this drug or whatever it is; for the cabinet door was open, and there hewas at the far end of the room digging among the crates. He looked up when Icame in, gave a kind of cry, and whipped upstairs into the cabinet. It was butfor 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 mymaster, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me? I have served him longenough. And then...” The man paused and passed his hand over his face.

“These are all very strange circumstances,” said Mr. Utterson,“but I think I begin to see daylight. Your master, Poole, is plainlyseized 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 theavoidance of his friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means ofwhich the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate recovery—God grant thathe be not deceived! There is my explanation; it is sad enough, Poole, ay, andappalling to consider; but it is plain and natural, hangs well together, anddelivers us from all exorbitant alarms.”

“Sir,” said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor,“that thing was not my master, and there’s the truth. Mymaster”—here he looked round him and began towhisper—“is a tall, fine build of a man, and this was more of adwarf.” Utterson attempted to protest. “O, sir,” cried Poole,“do you think I do not know my master after twenty years? Do you think Ido not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where I saw him everymorning of my life? No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr.Jekyll—God knows what it was, but it was never Dr. Jekyll; and it is thebelief of my heart that there was murder done.”

“Poole,” replied the lawyer, “if you say that, it will becomemy duty to make certain. Much as I desire to spare your master’sfeelings, much as I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove him to bestill alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in that door.”

“Ah, Mr. Utterson, that’s talking!” cried the butler.

“And now comes the second question,” resumed Utterson: “Whois going to do it?”

“Why, you and me, sir,” was the undaunted reply.

“That’s very well said,” returned the lawyer; “andwhatever comes of it, I shall make it my business to see you are noloser.”

“There is an axe in the theatre,” continued Poole; “and youmight take the kitchen poker for yourself.”

The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his hand, and balancedit. “Do you know, Poole,” he said, looking up, “that you andI are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?”

“You may say so, sir, indeed,” returned the butler.

“It is well, then that we should be frank,” said the other.“We both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. Thismasked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?”

“Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that Icould hardly swear to that,” was the answer. “But if you mean, wasit Mr. Hyde?—why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the samebigness; and it had the same quick, light way with it; and then who else couldhave got in by the laboratory door? You have not forgot, sir, that at the timeof the murder he had still the key with him? But that’s not all. Idon’t know, Mr. Utterson, if you ever met this Mr. Hyde?”

“Yes,” said the lawyer, “I once spoke with him.”

“Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was somethingqueer about that gentleman—something that gave a man a turn—Idon’t know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt in yourmarrow kind of cold and thin.”

“I own I felt something of what you describe,” said Mr. Utterson.

“Quite so, sir,” returned Poole. “Well, when that maskedthing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into thecabinet, it went down my spine like ice. O, I know it’s not evidence, Mr.Utterson; I’m book-learned enough for that; but a man has his feelings,and I give you my bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!”

“Ay, ay,” said the lawyer. “My fears incline to the samepoint. Evil, I fear, founded—evil was sure to come—of thatconnection. Ay truly, I believe you; I believe poor Harry is killed; and Ibelieve his murderer (for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking inhis victim’s room. Well, let our name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw.”

The footman came at the summons, very white and nervous.

“Pull yourself together, Bradshaw,” said the lawyer. “Thissuspense, I know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention tomake an end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into thecabinet. If all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame.Meanwhile, lest anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek toescape by the back, you and the boy must go round the corner with a pair ofgood sticks and take your post at the laboratory door. We give you ten minutesto get to your stations.”

As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. “And now, Poole, let usget to ours,” he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the wayinto 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 ofbuilding, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, untilthey came into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently towait. London hummed solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, the stillness wasonly broken by the sounds of a footfall moving to and fro along the cabinetfloor.

“So it will walk all day, sir,” whispered Poole; “ay, and thebetter part of the night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist,there’s a bit of a break. Ah, it’s an ill conscience that’ssuch an enemy to rest! Ah, sir, there’s blood foully shed in every stepof it! But hark again, a little closer—put your heart in your ears, Mr.Utterson, and tell me, is that the doctor’s foot?”

The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they went soslowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyll.Utterson sighed. “Is there never anything else?” he asked.

Poole nodded. “Once,” he said. “Once I heard itweeping!”

“Weeping? how that?” said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chillof horror.

“Weeping like a woman or a lost soul,” said the butler. “Icame away with that upon my heart, that I could have wept too.”

But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole disinterred the axe from under astack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest table to light themto the attack; and they drew near with bated breath to where that patient footwas still going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night.

“Jekyll,” cried Utterson, with a loud voice, “I demand to seeyou.” He paused a moment, but there came no reply. “I give you fairwarning, our suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” heresumed; “if not by fair means, then by foul—if not of yourconsent, then by brute force!”

“Utterson,” said the voice, “for God’s sake, havemercy!”

“Ah, that’s not Jekyll’s voice—it’sHyde’s!” cried Utterson. “Down with the door, Poole!”

Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and the redbaize door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal screech, as of mereanimal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up went the axe again, and again thepanels crashed and the frame bounded; four times the blow fell; but the woodwas tough and the fittings were of excellent workmanship; and it was not untilthe fifth, that the lock burst and the wreck of the door fell inwards on thecarpet.

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 inthe quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and chattering on the hearth, thekettle singing its thin strain, a drawer or two open, papers neatly set forthon the business table, and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea; thequietest room, you would have said, and, but for the glazed presses full ofchemicals, the most commonplace that night in London.

Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and stilltwitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and beheld the faceof Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of thedoctor’s bigness; the cords of his face still moved with a semblance oflife, but life was quite gone; and by the crushed phial in the hand and thestrong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Utterson knew that he waslooking on the body of a self-destroyer.

“We have come too late,” he said sternly, “whether to save orpunish. Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find thebody of your master.”

The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre, whichfilled almost the whole ground storey and was lighted from above, and by thecabinet, which formed an upper storey at one end and looked upon the court. Acorridor joined the theatre to the door on the by-street; and with this thecabinet communicated separately by a second flight of stairs. There werebesides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar. All these they now thoroughlyexamined. Each closet needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by thedust 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 whowas Jekyll’s predecessor; but even as they opened the door they wereadvertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a perfect matof cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance. Nowhere was there anytrace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.

Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. “He must be buriedhere,” he said, hearkening to the sound.

“Or he may have fled,” said Utterson, and he turned to examine thedoor in the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, theyfound the key, already stained with rust.

“This does not look like use,” observed the lawyer.

“Use!” echoed Poole. “Do you not see, sir, it is broken? muchas if a man had stamped on it.”

“Ay,” continued Utterson, “and the fractures, too, arerusty.” The two men looked at each other with a scare. “This isbeyond me, Poole,” said the lawyer. “Let us go back to thecabinet.”

They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional awestruckglance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents ofthe cabinet. At one table, there were traces of chemical work, various measuredheaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for anexperiment in which the unhappy man had been prevented.

“That is the same drug that I was always bringing him,” said Poole;and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over.

This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up,and the tea things stood ready to the sitter’s elbow, the very sugar inthe cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea thingsopen, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for whichJekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own handwith startling blasphemies.

Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to thecheval-glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. But itwas 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 thepresses, and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in.

“This glass has seen some strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.

“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in thesame tones. “For what did Jekyll”—he caught himself up at theword with a start, and then conquering the weakness—“what couldJekyll want with it?” he said.

“You may say that!” said Poole.

Next they turned to the business table. On the desk, among the neat array ofpapers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor’s hand,the name of Mr. Utterson. The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fellto the floor. The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as theone which he had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case ofdeath and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but in place of the nameof Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement read the name ofGabriel John Utterson. He looked at Poole, and then back at the paper, and lastof all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet.

“My head goes round,” he said. “He has been all these days inpossession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see himselfdisplaced; and he has not destroyed this document.”

He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor’s hand anddated at the top. “O Poole!” the lawyer cried, “he was aliveand here this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space; he mustbe still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? and in thatcase, can we venture to declare this suicide? O, we must be careful. I foreseethat we may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe.”

“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole.

“My dear Utterson,—When this shall fall into your hands, I shallhave disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration toforesee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situationtell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and first read thenarrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your hands; and if you careto hear more, turn to the confession of

“Your unworthy and unhappy friend,

“HENRY JEKYLL.”

“There was a third enclosure?” asked Utterson.

“Here, sir,” said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerablepacket sealed in several places.

The lawyer put it in his pocket. “I would say nothing of this paper. Ifyour master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is nowten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall be backbefore midnight, when we shall send for the police.”

They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and Utterson, oncemore leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged back tohis office to read the two narratives in which this mystery was now to beexplained.

DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE

On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening deliverya registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague and old schoolcompanion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised by this; for we were by nomeans 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 thatshould justify formality of registration. The contents increased my wonder; forthis is how the letter ran:

“10th December, 18—.

“Dear Lanyon,—You are one of my oldest friends; and although we mayhave differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least onmy side, any break in our affection. There was never a day when, if you hadsaid to me, ‘Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason, depend uponyou,’ I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon, mylife, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me to-night, Iam lost. You might suppose, after this preface, that I am going to ask you forsomething dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.

“I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night—ay, evenif you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless yourcarriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in your hand forconsultation, 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 cabinetis 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,with all its contents as they stand, the fourth drawer from the top or(which is the same thing) the third from the bottom. In my extreme distress ofmind, I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, youmay know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a phial and a paperbook. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to Cavendish Squareexactly as it stands.

“That is the first part of the service: now for the second. You should beback, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before midnight; butI will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the fear of one of thoseobstacles that can neither be prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour whenyour servants are in bed is to be preferred for what will then remain to do. Atmidnight, then, I have to ask you to be alone in your consulting room, to admitwith 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 frommy cabinet. Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitudecompletely. Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, youwill have understood that these arrangements are of capital importance; andthat by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they must appear, you mighthave charged your conscience with my death or the shipwreck of my reason.

“Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heartsinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility. Think ofme at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of distressthat no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will butpunctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told.Serve me, my dear Lanyon and save

“Your friend,

“H.J.

Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane; but tillthat was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do as herequested. The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a positionto judge of its importance; and an appeal so worded could not be set asidewithout a grave responsibility. I rose accordingly from table, got into ahansom, and drove straight to Jekyll’s house. The butler was awaiting myarrival; he had received by the same post as mine a registered letter ofinstruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. Thetradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr.Denman’s surgical theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware)Jekyll’s private cabinet is most conveniently entered. The door was verystrong, the lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great troubleand have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith wasnear despair. But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hour’swork, the door stood open. The press marked E was unlocked; and I took out thedrawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and returned with itto Cavendish Square.

Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly enough madeup, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that it was plainthey were of Jekyll’s private manufacture; and when I opened one of thewrappers 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 fullof a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell andseemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the otheringredients I could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version book andcontained 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 asingle word: “double” occurring perhaps six times in a total ofseveral hundred entries; and once very early in the list and followed byseveral marks of exclamation, “total failure!!!” All this, thoughit whetted my curiosity, told me little that was definite. Here were a phial ofsome salt, and the record of a series of experiments that had led (like toomany of Jekyll’s investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. Howcould the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour, thesanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could go to oneplace, why could he not go to another? And even granting some impediment, whywas this gentleman to be received by me in secret? The more I reflected themore convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral disease; andthough I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver, that I mightbe found in some posture of self-defence.

Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker soundedvery gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a small mancrouching against the pillars of the portico.

“Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?” I asked.

He told me “yes” by a constrained gesture; and when I had biddenhim enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into thedarkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing with hisbull’s eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor started and madegreater haste.

These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed himinto the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my hand ready on myweapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had never seteyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as I have said; I wasstruck besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkablecombination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility ofconstitution, and—last but not least—with the odd, subjectivedisturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance toincipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. At thetime, I set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merelywondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since had reason tobelieve the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on somenobler hinge than the principle of hatred.

This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in mewhat I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashionthat 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 himin every measurement—the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up tokeep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and thecollar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrousaccoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was somethingabnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now facedme—something seizing, surprising and revolting—this fresh disparityseemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in theman’s nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his origin,his life, his fortune and status in the world.

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 sombreexcitement.

“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” And solively was his impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought toshake me.

I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood.“Come, sir,” said I. “You forget that I have not yet thepleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please.” And I showedhim an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair animitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, thenature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would sufferme to muster.

“I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,” he replied civilly enough.“What you say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heelsto my politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. HenryJekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood...” Hepaused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of hiscollected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of thehysteria—“I understood, a drawer...”

But here I took pity on my visitor’s suspense, and some perhaps on my owngrowing curiosity.

“There it is, sir,” said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay onthe floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.

He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart; I couldhear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face wasso ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.

“Compose yourself,” said I.

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 ofsuch immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next moment, in a voice thatwas already fairly well under control, “Have you a graduatedglass?” he asked.

I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he asked.

He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tinctureand 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, toeffervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at thesame 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 watchedthese 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.

“And now,” said he, “to settle what remains. Will you bewise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand andto go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed ofcuriosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall bedone as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, andneither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man inmortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if youshall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fameand power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; andyour sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief ofSatan.”

“Sir,” said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from trulypossessing, “you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that Ihear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too far inthe way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end.”

“It is well,” replied my visitor. “Lanyon, you remember yourvows: what follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who haveso long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have deniedthe virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided yoursuperiors—behold!”

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, achange—he seemed to swell—his face became suddenly black and thefeatures seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had sprung to myfeet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to shield me from thatprodigy, my mind submerged in terror.

“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; forthere before my eyes—pale and shaken, and half fainting, and gropingbefore him with his hands, like a man restored from death—there stoodHenry Jekyll!

What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I sawwhat I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now whenthat sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannotanswer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terrorsits by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my days arenumbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous. As for themoral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, Icannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say butone thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will bemore than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was, onJekyll’s own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for inevery corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.

HASTIE LANYON.

HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE

I was born in the year 18— to a large fortune, endowed besides withexcellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of thewise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, withevery guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worstof my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has madethe happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with myimperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly gravecountenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed mypleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look roundme and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood alreadycommitted to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazonedsuch irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had setbefore me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It wasthus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particulardegradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deepertrench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good andill which divide and compound man’s dual nature. In this case, I wasdriven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which liesat 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 sidesof me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraintand plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at thefurtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chancedthat the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards themystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on thisconsciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every day, and fromboth sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drewsteadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed tosuch 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. Otherswill follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guessthat man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious,incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of mylife, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was onthe moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thoroughand primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended inthe field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, itwas only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before thecourse of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most nakedpossibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as abeloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each,I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relievedof all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from theaspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walksteadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which hefound his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by thehands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that theseincongruous faggots were thus bound together—that in the agonised womb ofconsciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, thenwere they dissociated?

I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side light began toshine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive moredeeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, themistlike 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 fleshlyvestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two goodreasons, 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 lifeis bound for ever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made tocast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awfulpressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, mydiscoveries were incomplete. Enough then, that I not only recognised my naturalbody from the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up myspirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should bedethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted,none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore thestamp of lower elements in my soul.

I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew wellthat I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook thevery fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at theleast inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out thatimmaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change. But the temptation of adiscovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. Ihad long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm ofwholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from myexperiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, Icompounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, andwhen the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off thepotion.

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and ahorror 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 ofa great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, somethingindescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger,lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, acurrent of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, asolution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom ofthe soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be morewicked, 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 suddenlyaware that I had lost in stature.

There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside me as Iwrite, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of thesetransformations. The night however, was far gone into the morning—themorning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for the conception of theday—the inmates of my house were locked in the most rigorous hours ofslumber; and I determined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to venturein my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the yard, wherein theconstellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with wonder, thefirst creature of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosedto them; I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and comingto my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.

I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but that whichI suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, to which I had nowtransferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than thegood 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 muchless exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came aboutthat 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 broadlyand plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believeto be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity anddecay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was consciousof no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemednatural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemedmore express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had beenhitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I haveobserved that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near tome at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, wasbecause 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.

I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive experiment hadyet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had lost my identitybeyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a house that was no longermine; 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 withthe character, the stature and the face of Henry Jekyll.

That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached my discoveryin a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire ofgenerous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from theseagonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. Thedrug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it butshook the doors of the prisonhouse of my disposition; and like the captives ofPhilippi, 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; andthe thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now twocharacters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other wasstill the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation andimprovement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus whollytoward the worse.

Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of a life ofstudy. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (tosay the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and highlyconsidered, but growing towards the elderly man, this incoherency of my lifewas daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new power temptedme until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once thebody of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of EdwardHyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humourous; andI made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished thathouse in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as ahousekeeper a creature whom I knew well to be silent and unscrupulous. On theother side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) wasto have full liberty and power about my house in the square; and to parrymishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar object, in my secondcharacter. I next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so that ifanything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of EdwardHyde without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, on every side,I began to profit by the strange immunities of my position.

Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own personand reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for hispleasures. I was the first that could plod in the public eye with a load ofgenial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off theselendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in myimpenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think of it—I did not evenexist! Let me but escape into my laboratory door, give me but a second or twoto mix and swallow the draught that I had always standing ready; and whateverhe had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon amirror; and there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp inhis study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.

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 theseexcursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicariousdepravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth aloneto do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; hisevery act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidityfrom any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. HenryJekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situationwas 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 makehaste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus hisconscience slumbered.

Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now I canscarce grant that I committed it) I have no design of entering; I mean but topoint out the warnings and the successive steps with which my chastisementapproached. I met with one accident which, as it brought on no consequence, Ishall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a child aroused against me theanger of a passer-by, whom I recognised the other day in the person of yourkinsman; the doctor and the child’s family joined him; there were momentswhen I feared for my life; and at last, in order to pacify their too justresentment, Edward Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a chequedrawn in the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily eliminated fromthe future, by opening an account at another bank in the name of Edward Hydehimself; and when, by sloping my own hand backward, I had supplied my doublewith a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.

Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for one of myadventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next day in bed withsomewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about me; in vain I saw thedecent furniture and tall proportions of my room in the square; in vain that Irecognised the pattern of the bed curtains and the design of the mahoganyframe; something still kept insisting that I was not where I was, that I hadnot wakened where I seemed to be, but in the little room in Soho where I wasaccustomed to sleep in the body of Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and in mypsychological 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 fellupon my hand. Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) wasprofessional in shape and size; it was large, firm, white and comely. But thehand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-Londonmorning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of adusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand ofEdward Hyde.

I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in the merestupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden and startlingas the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed I rushed to the mirror. Atthe sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitelythin 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 ofterror—how was it to be remedied? It was well on in the morning; theservants were up; all my drugs were in the cabinet—a long journey downtwo pairs of stairs, through the back passage, across the open court andthrough 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 Iwas unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And then with anoverpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind that the servantswere already used to the coming and going of my second self. I had soondressed, as well as I was able, in clothes of my own size: had soon passedthrough the house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde atsuch an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later, Dr. Jekyll hadreturned to his own shape and was sitting down, with a darkened brow, to make afeint of breakfasting.

Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal of myprevious experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the wall, to bespelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriouslythan ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. Thatpart of me which I had the power of projecting, had lately been much exercisedand nourished; it had seemed to me of late as though the body of Edward Hydehad grown in stature, as though (when I wore that form) I were conscious of amore generous tide of blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this weremuch prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, thepower of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde becomeirrevocably 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 beenobliged on more than one occasion to double, and once, with infinite risk ofdeath, to treble the amount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto thesole shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in the light of thatmorning’s 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 lategradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side. All thingstherefore seemed to point to this; that I was slowly losing hold of my originaland better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.

Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory incommon, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. Jekyll(who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with agreedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; butHyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain banditremembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had morethan a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference.To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had longsecretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, wasto die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow andforever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but therewas still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffersmartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of allthat he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debateare as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms castthe die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as itfalls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part andwas found wanting in the strength to keep to it.

Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends andcherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, thecomparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, thatI had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with someunconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyedthe clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. For twomonths, however, I was true to my determination; for two months, I led a lifeof such severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed thecompensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to obliteratethe freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thingof course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hydestruggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I onceagain compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.

I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, heis once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs throughhis brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered myposition, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility andinsensate 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 cameout roaring. I was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a moreunbridled, 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 thecivilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God, no manmorally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so pitiful aprovocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in whicha sick child may break a plaything. But I had voluntarily stripped myself ofall those balancing instincts by which even the worst of us continues to walkwith some degree of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to betempted, however slightly, was to fall.

Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of glee, Imauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was nottill weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of mydelirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mistdispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of theseexcesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified andstimulated, my love of life screwed to the topmost peg. I ran to the house inSoho, and (to make assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set outthrough the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating onmy crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still hasteningand still hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a songupon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged thedead man. The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before HenryJekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon hisknees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rentfrom head to foot. I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days ofchildhood, when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through theself-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with thesame sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could havescreamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd ofhideous 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 theacuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense ofjoy. 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 embracedanew the restrictions of natural life! with what sincere renunciation I lockedthe door by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key under myheel!

The next day, came the news that the murder had not been overlooked, that theguilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high inpublic estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly. I thinkI was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my better impulses thusbuttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my cityof refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all men would beraised to take and slay him.

I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honestythat my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how earnestly, inthe last months of the last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you knowthat much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happilyfor myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and innocentlife; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was stillcursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence woreoff, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began togrowl for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea ofthat would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person that I was oncemore tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary secretsinner that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation.

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 mysoul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to theold days before I had made my discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wetunder foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and theRegent’s Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with springodours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops ofmemory; 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 activegood-will with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment ofthat vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the mostdeadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in itsturn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of mythoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds ofobligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; thehand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. Amoment before I had been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy,beloved—the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I wasthe common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall tothe gallows.

My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more than onceobserved that in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a pointand my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that, where Jekyllperhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. Mydrugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I to reach them? Thatwas 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 ownservants would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, andthought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that Iescaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? andhow should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famousphysician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I rememberedthat of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my ownhand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must followbecame lighted up from end to end.

Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a passinghansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of which I chanced toremember. At my appearance (which was indeed comical enough, however tragic afate these garments covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I gnashedmy teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from hisface—happily for him—yet more happily for myself, for in anotherinstant I had certainly dragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, Ilooked about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; nota look did they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, ledme to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger ofhis life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to thepitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; masteredhis 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 oftheir being posted, sent them out with directions that they should beregistered. Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room,gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waitervisibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, heset forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about thestreets of the city. He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell hadnothing 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 andventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object marked out forobservation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two basepassions 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 spoketo him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and shefled.

When I came to myself at Lanyon’s, the horror of my old friend perhapsaffected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea tothe abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A change had comeover me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of beingHyde that racked me. I received Lanyon’s condemnation partly in a dream;it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. Islept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumberwhich not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke inthe morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared thethought of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgottenthe appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home, in my ownhouse and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone so strong in mysoul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.

I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinking the chillof the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those indescribablesensations that heralded the change; and I had but the time to gain the shelterof my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions ofHyde. 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, andthe drug had to be re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemedonly by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediatestimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. Atall 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 asHyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually impending doom andby the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what Ihad thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten upand emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupiedby one thought: the horror of my other self. But when I slept, or when thevirtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (forthe pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of afancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds,and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies oflife. 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. WithJekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity ofthat creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, andwas co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which inthemselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought of Hyde, forall his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic. Thiswas the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries andvoices; 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 thatinsurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; laycaged 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, prevailedagainst him, and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was ofa different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to committemporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of aperson; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into whichJekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himselfregarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my ownhand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroyingthe 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. Buthis love of life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze at the merethought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, andwhen I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in myheart to pity him.

It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; noone has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these,habit brought—no, not alleviation—but a certain callousness ofsoul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone onfor years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which hasfinally severed me from my own face and nature. My provision of the salt, whichhad never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to runlow. I sent out for a fresh supply and mixed the draught; the ebullitionfollowed, and the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it waswithout 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, andthat it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.

About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under theinfluence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last time, shortof 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 mywriting to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it hasbeen by a combination of great prudence and great good luck. Should the throesof change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but ifsome time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishnessand circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from theaction of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us bothhas already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall againand forever reindue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shudderingand weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fearstruckecstasy 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 willhe find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I amcareless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns anotherthan myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up myconfession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.

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