[Illustration]









The Strange Case of

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde



by Robert Louis Stevenson









TO

KATHARINE DE MATTOS.



It’s ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind;

Still will we be the children of the heather and the wind.

Far away from home, O it’s still for you and me

That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.









Contents



 STORY OF THE DOOR

 SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE

 DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE

 THE CAREW MURDER CASE

 INCIDENT OF THE LETTER

 REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON

 INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW

 THE LAST NIGHT

 DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE

 HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE









STORY OF THE DOOR





Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was

never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse;

backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow

lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste,

something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which

never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these

silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in

the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he

was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the

theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had

an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with

envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and

in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline to

Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the

devil in his own way.” In this character, it was frequently his fortune

to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in

the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came

about his 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 the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar

catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept

his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that

was the lawyer’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 in the object. Hence, no doubt,

the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman,

the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what

these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in

common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday

walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail

with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two

men put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief

jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but

even resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them

uninterrupted.



It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a

by-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is

called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the week-days. The

inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously hoping to

do better still, and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry;

so that the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of

invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it

veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage,

the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a

fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished

brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught

and pleased the eye of the passenger.



Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east, the line was

broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point, a certain

sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It

was two stories high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower

story and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore

in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The

door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered

and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on

the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried

his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had

appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their

ravages.



Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but

when they came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up his cane and

pointed.



“Did you ever remark that door?” he asked; and when his companion had

replied in the affirmative, “It is connected in my mind,” added he,

“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 coming home from

some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black

winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was

literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street, and all

the folks asleep—street after street, all lighted up as if for a

procession and all as empty as a church—till at last I got into that

state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the

sight of a policeman. All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man

who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of

maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross

street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the

corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man

trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the

ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t

like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a view-halloa,

took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where

there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was

perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly

that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The people who had

turned out were the girl’s own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for

whom she had been sent, put in his appearance. Well, the child was not

much the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there

you might have supposed would be an end to it. But there was one

curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first

sight. So had the child’s family, which was only natural. But the

doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut-and-dry

apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh

accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the

rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones

turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his

mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the

question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make

such a scandal out of this, as should make his name stink from one end

of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we

undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we were

pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we

could, for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such

hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of

black, sneering coolness—frightened too, I could see that—but carrying

it off, sir, really like Satan. ‘If you choose to make capital out of

this accident,’ said he, ‘I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but

wishes to avoid a scene,’ says he. ‘Name your figure.’ Well, we screwed

him up to a hundred pounds for the child’s family; he would have

clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of us

that meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get

the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with

the door?— whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the

matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts’s,

drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can’t mention,

though it’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least

very well known and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the

signature was good for more than that, if it was only genuine. I took

the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole business

looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a

cellar door at four in the morning and come out of it with another

man’s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and

sneering. ‘Set your mind at rest,’ says he, ‘I will stay with you till

the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’ So we all set 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 had

breakfasted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the check myself,

and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of

it. The cheque was genuine.”



“Tut-tut,” said Mr. Utterson.



“I see you feel as I do,” said Mr. Enfield. “Yes, it’s a bad story. For

my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really

damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of

the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your

fellows who do what they call good. Black-mail, I suppose; an honest

man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth.

Black-Mail House is what I call that place with the door, in

consequence. Though even that, you know, is far from explaining all,”

he added, and with the words fell into a vein of musing.



From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather suddenly: “And

you don’t know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?”



“A likely place, isn’t it?” returned Mr. Enfield. “But I 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 very strongly about

putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of

judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit

quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others;

and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of)

is knocked on the head in his own back-garden and the family have to

change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks

like Queer Street, the less I ask.”



“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 or

out of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my

adventure. There are three windows looking on the court on the first

floor; none below; the windows are always shut but they’re clean. And

then there is a chimney which is generally smoking; so somebody must

live there. And yet it’s not so sure; for the buildings are so packed

together about that court, 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 of yours.”



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



“But for all that,” continued the lawyer, “there’s one point I want to

ask: I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child.”



“Well,” said Mr. Enfield, “I can’t see what harm it would do. It was a

man of the name of Hyde.”



“H’m,” said Mr. Utterson. “What sort of a man is he to see?”



“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his

appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I

never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be

deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I

couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary-looking man, and yet

I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand

of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare

I can see him this moment.”



Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a

weight of consideration.



“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 I

know it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home. If you have

been inexact in any point, you had better correct it.”



“I think you might have warned me,” returned the other, with a touch of

sullenness. “But I have been pedantically exact, as you call it. The

fellow had a key; and what’s more, he has it still. I saw him use it,

not a week ago.”



Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man

presently resumed. “Here is another lesson to say nothing,” said he. “I

am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to refer to

this again.”



“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 and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a

Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of

some dry divinity on his reading-desk, until the clock of the

neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go

soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night, however, as soon as the

cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his

business-room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private

part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll’s Will,

and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was

holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it

was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it;

it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll,

M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass

into the hands of his “friend and benefactor Edward Hyde,” but that in

case of Dr. Jekyll’s “disappearance or unexplained absence for any

period exceeding three calendar months,” the said Edward Hyde should

step into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoes without further delay and free

from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums

to the members of the doctor’s household. This document had long been

the lawyer’s eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover

of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the

immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had

swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge.

It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he

could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with

detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists

that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite

presentment of a fiend.



“I thought it was madness,” he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper

in the safe, “and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.”



With that he blew out his candle, put on a great-coat, and set forth in

the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his

friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding

patients. “If any one 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 alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper,

red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a

boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up

from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was

the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed

on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates both at

school and college, both thorough respecters of themselves and of each

other, and, what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed

each other’s company.



After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so

disagreeably pre-occupied his mind.



“I suppose, Lanyon,” said he “you and I must be the two oldest friends

that Henry Jekyll has?”



“I wish the friends were younger,” chuckled Dr. Lanyon. “But I suppose

we are. And what of that? I see little of him now.”



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



“We had,” was the reply. “But it is more than ten years since Henry

Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind;

and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old

sake’s sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the

man. Such unscientific 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; and

being a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of

conveyancing), he even added: “It is nothing worse than that!” He gave

his friend a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached

the question he had come to put. “Did you ever come across a protege of

his—one Hyde?” he asked.



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



That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with

him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the

small hours of the morning began to grow large. It was a night of

little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and besieged

by questions.



Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently

near 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 his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he

lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained

room, Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted

pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal

city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child

running from the doctor’s; and then these met, and that human

Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams.

Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay

asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that

room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the

sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to

whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do

its bidding. The figure in these two phases haunted the lawyer all

night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide

more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly and

still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of

lamplighted city, and at every street-corner crush a child and leave

her screaming. And still the figure had no face by which he might know

it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and

melted before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew

apace in the lawyer’s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate,

curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but

once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps

roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious things when well

examined. He might see a reason for his friend’s strange preference or

bondage (call it which you please) and even for the startling clause of

the will. At least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man

who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to

raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of

enduring hatred.



From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the

by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when

business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the

fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or

concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.



“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 the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps,

unshaken, by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow.

By ten o’clock, when the shops were closed, the by-street was very

solitary and, in spite of the low growl of London from all round, very

silent. Small sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses

were clearly audible on either side of the roadway; and the rumour of

the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time. Mr. Utterson

had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd, light

footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had

long grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of

a single person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out

distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city. Yet his attention

had never before been so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was

with a strong, superstitious prevision of success that he withdrew into

the entry of the court.



The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they

turned the end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry,

could soon see what manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and

very plainly dressed, and the look of him, even at that distance, went

somehow strongly against the watcher’s inclination. But he made

straight for the door, crossing the roadway to save time; and as he

came, he drew a key from his pocket like one approaching home.



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 only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face,

he answered coolly enough: “That is my name. What do you want?”



“I see you are going in,” returned the lawyer. “I am an old friend of

Dr. Jekyll’s—Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street—you must have heard my name;

and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit 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,

“How did you know me?” he asked.



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



“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 pretty fixedly 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; and _à propos_,

you should have my address.” And he gave a number of a street in Soho.



“Good God!” thought Mr. Utterson, “can he, too, have been thinking of

the will?” But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted 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. “Who are 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 fitting language.”



The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with

extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into

the house.



The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of

disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every

step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental

perplexity. The problem he was thus debating as he walked, was one of a

class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an

impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a

displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of

murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky,

whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against

him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown

disgust, loathing, and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him.

“There must be something else,” said the perplexed gentleman. “There is

something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man

seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be

the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul

that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The

last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s

signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”



Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient,

handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate

and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men:

map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers, and the agents of obscure

enterprises. One house, however, second from the corner, was still

occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of

wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for

the fan-light, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed,

elderly servant opened the door.



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



“I will see, Mr. Utterson,” said Poole, admitting the visitor, as he

spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall, paved with flags,

warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire,

and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. “Will you wait here by the

fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the dining room?”



“Here, thank you,” said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned on the

tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy

of his friend the doctor’s; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of

it as the pleasantest room in London. But to-night there was a shudder

in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what

was rare with him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of

his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the

firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the

shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently

returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.



“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting-room door, 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 do indeed,” said Poole. “We have all orders to 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 mostly comes

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 Harry

Jekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was

wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of

God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost

of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment

coming, _pede claudo_, years after memory has forgotten and self-love

condoned the fault.” And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded a

while on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by

chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light

there. His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of

their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by

the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and

fearful gratitude by the many that he had come 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 were studied,” thought he,

“must have secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him;

secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst would be like sunshine.

Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to think of this

creature stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside; poor Harry, what a

wakening! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence

of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my

shoulder to the wheel if Jekyll will but let me,” he added, “if Jekyll

will only let me.” For once more he saw before his mind’s eye, as clear

as a 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

his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent,

reputable men and all judges of good wine; and Mr. Utterson so

contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed. This

was no new arrangement, but a thing that had befallen many scores of

times. Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to

detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and the loose-tongued had

already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit a while in his

unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in

the man’s rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. To this

rule, Dr. Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite

side of the fire—a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with

something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and

kindness—you could see by his looks that he cherished for Mr. Utterson

a sincere and warm affection.



“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 the doctor carried it off gaily. “My poor Utterson,” said he, “you

are unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a man so distressed as

you were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at

what he called my scientific heresies. Oh, I know he’s a good

fellow—you needn’t frown—an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see

more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant

pedant. I was never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon.”



“You know I never approved of it,” pursued Utterson, ruthlessly

disregarding the fresh topic.



“My will? Yes, certainly, I know that,” said the doctor, a trifle

sharply. “You have told me so.”



“Well, I tell you so again,” continued the lawyer. “I have been

learning something of young Hyde.”



The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and

there came a blackness about his eyes. “I do not care to hear more,”

said he. “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 am painfully

situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange—a very strange one.

It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.”



“Jekyll,” said Utterson, “you know me: I am a man to be trusted. Make a

clean breast of this in confidence; and I make no doubt I can get you

out of it.”



“My good Utterson,” said the doctor, “this is very good of you, this is

downright good of you, and I cannot find words to thank you in. I

believe you fully; I would trust you before any man alive, ay, before

myself, if I could make the choice; but indeed it isn’t what you fancy;

it is not so bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I

will tell you one thing: the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.

I give you my hand upon that; and I thank you again and again; and I

will just add one little word, Utterson, that I’m sure you’ll take in

good part: this is a private matter, 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, getting to

his feet.



“Well, but since we have touched upon this business, and for the last

time I hope,” continued the doctor, “there is one point I should like

you to understand. I have really a very great interest in poor Hyde. I

know you have seen him; he told me so; and I fear he was rude. But, I

do sincerely take a great, a very great interest in that young man; and

if I am taken away, Utterson, I wish you to promise me that you will

bear with him and get his rights for him. I think you would, if you

knew all; and it would be a weight off my mind if you would promise.”



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



“I don’t ask that,” pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand upon the other’s

arm; “I only ask for justice; I only ask you to help him for my sake,

when I am no longer here.”



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









THE CAREW MURDER CASE





Nearly a year later, in the month of October, 18——, London was startled

by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by

the high position of the victim. The details were few and startling. A

maid servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone

up-stairs to bed about eleven. Although a fog rolled over the city in

the small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless, and the

lane, which the maid’s window overlooked, was brilliantly lit by the

full moon. It seems she was romantically given, for she sat down upon

her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a

dream of musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she

narrated that experience), never had she felt more at peace with all

men or thought more kindly of the world. And as she so sat she became

aware of an aged and beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near

along the lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small

gentleman, to whom at first she paid less attention. When they had come

within speech (which was just under the maid’s eyes) the older man

bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness.

It did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great

importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he

were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he

spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such

an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something

high too, as of a well-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered

to the other, and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr.

Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a

dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling;

but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an

ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a

great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and

carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman

took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle

hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to

the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his

victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the

bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. At

the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.



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 the lane, incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been

done, although it was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had

broken in the middle under the stress of this insensate cruelty; and

one splintered half had rolled in the neighbouring gutter—the other,

without doubt, had been carried away by the murderer. A purse and a

gold watch were found upon the victim: but no cards or papers, except a

sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been probably carrying to the

post, and which bore the name and address of Mr. Utterson.



This was brought to the lawyer the next morning, before he was out of

bed; and he had no sooner seen it, and been told the circumstances,

than he shot out a solemn lip. “I shall say nothing till I have seen

the body,” said he; “this may be very serious. Have the kindness to

wait while I dress.” And with the same grave countenance he hurried

through his breakfast and drove to the police station, whither the body

had been carried. As soon as he came into the cell, he nodded.



“Yes,” said he, “I recognise him. I am sorry to say that this is Sir

Danvers Carew.”



“Good God, sir,” exclaimed the officer, “is it possible?” And the next

moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition. “This will make a

deal of noise,” he said. “And perhaps you can help us to the man.” And

he briefly narrated what the maid had seen, and showed the broken

stick.



Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the

stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and

battered as it was, he recognised it for one that he had himself

presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.



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



“Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid

calls him,” said the officer.



Mr. Utterson reflected; and then, raising his head, “If you will come

with me in my cab,” he said, “I think I can take you to his house.”



It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the

season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the

wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so

that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a

marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be

dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich,

lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here,

for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of

daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal

quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy

ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been

extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful

re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district

of some city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of

the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive,

he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law’s

officers, which may at times assail the most honest.



As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a

little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French

eating-house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny

salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of

different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning

glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part,

as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings.

This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite; of a man who was heir to

a quarter of a million sterling.



An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an

evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent. Yes,

she said, this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in

that night very late, but had gone away again in less than an hour;

there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and

he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she

had seen him till yesterday.



“Very well, then, we wish to see his rooms,” said the lawyer; and when

the woman began to declare it was impossible, “I had better tell you

who this person is,” he added. “This is Inspector Newcomen of Scotland

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 a very

popular character,” observed the latter. “And now, my good woman, just

let me and this gentleman have a look about us.”



In the whole extent of the house, which but for the old woman remained

otherwise empty, Mr. Hyde had only used a couple of rooms; but these

were furnished with luxury and good taste. A closet was filled with

wine; the plate was of silver, the napery elegant; a good picture hung

upon the walls, a gift (as Utterson supposed) from Henry Jekyll, who

was much of a connoisseur; and the carpets were of many plies and

agreeable in colour. At this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark

of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the

floor, with their pockets inside out; lock-fast drawers stood open; and

on the hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many papers had

been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt-end

of a green cheque-book, which had resisted the action of the fire; the

other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched

his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to the

bank, where several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the

murderer’s credit, completed his gratification.



“You may depend upon it, sir,” he told Mr. Utterson: “I have him in my

hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick

or, above all, burned the cheque-book. Why, money’s life to the man. We

have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the

handbills.”



This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde had

numbered few familiars—even the master of the servant-maid had only

seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been

photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as

common observers will. Only on one point, were they agreed; and that

was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive

impressed his beholders.









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 down

by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden,

to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or the

dissecting-rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a

celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than

anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of

the garden. It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in

that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless

structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of

strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students

and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical

apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing

straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the

further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red

baize; and through this, Mr. Utterson was at last received into the

doctor’s cabinet. It was a large room, fitted round with glass presses,

furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass and a business

table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred

with iron. A fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the

chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and

there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deadly sick. He

did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him

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 are you, and

I want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide

this fellow?”



“Utterson, I swear to God,” cried the doctor, “I swear to God I will

never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done

with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not

want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite

safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of.”



The lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend’s feverish

manner. “You seem pretty sure of him,” said he; “and for your sake, I

hope you may be right. If it came to a trial, your name might appear.”



“I am quite sure of him,” replied Jekyll; “I have grounds for certainty

that I cannot share with any one. But there is one thing on which you

may advise me. I have—I have received a letter; and I am at a loss

whether I should show it to the police. I should like to leave it in

your hands, Utterson; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so

great a trust in you.”



“You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?” asked the

lawyer.



“No,” said the other. “I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I

am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, which this

hateful business has rather exposed.”



Utterson ruminated a while; he was surprised at his friend’s

selfishness, and yet relieved by it. “Well,” said he, at last, “let me

see the letter.”



The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed “Edward

Hyde”: and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer’s benefactor,

Dr. Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand

generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had

means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked

this letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he

had looked for; and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions.



“Have you the envelope?” he asked.



“I burned it,” replied Jekyll, “before I thought what I was about. 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 have lost

confidence in myself.”



“Well, I shall consider,” returned the lawyer. “And now one word more:

it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that

disappearance?”



The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness: he shut his mouth

tight and nodded.



“I knew it,” said Utterson. “He meant to murder you. You have had a

fine escape.”



“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctor

solemnly: “I have had a lesson—O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have

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.

“By the by,” said he, “there was a letter handed in to-day: what was

the messenger like?” But Poole was positive nothing had come except by

post; “and only circulars by that,” he added.



This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the

letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had been

written in the cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently

judged, and handled with the more caution. The newsboys, as he went,

were crying themselves hoarse along the footways: “Special edition.

Shocking murder of an M. P.” That was the funeral oration of one friend

and client; and he could not help a certain apprehension lest the good

name of another should be sucked down in the eddy of the scandal. It

was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make; and

self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing for

advice. It was not to be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, it

might be fished for.



Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest,

his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely

calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular old wine

that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house. The fog

still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps

glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these

fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was still rolling in

through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the

room was gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were long ago

resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, As the colour grows

richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on

hillside vineyards was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of

London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. There was no man from whom he

kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he was not always sure that he

kept as many as he meant. Guest had often been on business to the

doctor’s; he knew Poole; he could scarce have failed to hear of Mr.

Hyde’s familiarity about the house; he might draw conclusions: was it

not as well, then, that he should see a letter which put that mystery

to rights? and above all since Guest, being a great student and critic

of handwriting, would consider the step natural and obliging? The

clerk, besides, was a man of counsel; he would scarce read so strange a

document without dropping a remark; and by that remark Mr. Utterson

might 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, for I scarce

know what to do about it; it is an ugly business at the best. But there

it is; quite in your way a murderer’s autograph.”



Guest’s eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it with

passion. “No, sir,” he said: “not mad; but it is an odd hand.”



“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. “I thought 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 sheets of

paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. “Thank you,

sir,” he said at last, returning both; “it’s a very interesting

autograph.”



There was a pause, during which Mr. Utterson struggled with himself.

“Why did you compare them, Guest?” he inquired suddenly.



“Well, sir,” returned the clerk, “there’s a rather singular

resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: only

differently 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

into his safe, where it reposed from that time forward. “What!” he

thought. “Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer!” And his blood ran cold in

his veins.









REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON





Time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the death

of Sir Danvers was resented as a public injury; but Mr. Hyde had

disappeared out of the ken of the police as though he had never

existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable:

tales came out of the man’s cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of

his vile life, of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed to

have surrounded his career; but of his present whereabouts, not a

whisper. From the time he had left the house in Soho on the morning of

the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time drew on,

Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to

grow more at quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his

way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde.

Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for

Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his

friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and

whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less

distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air,

he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward

consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the doctor was

at peace.



On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor’s with a small

party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from

one to the other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable

friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against

the lawyer. “The doctor was confined to the house,” Poole said, “and

saw no one.” On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and

having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost

daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The

fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him; and the sixth he betook

himself to Dr. Lanyon’s.



There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he

was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor’s

appearance. He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The

rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly

balder and older; and yet it was not so much, these tokens of a swift

physical decay that arrested the lawyer’s notice, as a look in the eye

and quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror

of the mind. It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death; and yet

that was what Utterson was tempted to suspect. “Yes,” he thought; “he

is a doctor, he must know his own state and that his days are counted;

and the knowledge is more than he can bear.” And yet when Utterson

remarked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of greatness that Lanyon

declared himself a doomed man.



“I have had a shock,” he said, “and I shall never recover. It is a

question of weeks. Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it; yes, sir,

I used to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more

glad to get away.”



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



But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. “I wish to

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 any

allusion 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 very old 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 of this. I

cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can sit and talk with me

of other things, for God’s sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot keep

clear of this accursed topic, then, in God’s name, go, for I cannot

bear it.”



As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and wrote to Jekyll,

complaining of his exclusion from the house, and asking the cause of

this unhappy break with Lanyon; and the next day brought him a long

answer, often very pathetically worded, and sometimes darkly mysterious

in drift. The quarrel with Lanyon was incurable. “I do not blame our

old friend,” Jekyll wrote, “but I share his view that we must never

meet. I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you

must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is

often shut even to you. You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I

have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name. If

I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I could

not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors

so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this

destiny, and that is to respect my silence.” Utterson was amazed; the

dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to

his old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with

every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age; and now in a moment,

friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole tenor of his life were

wrecked. So great and unprepared a change pointed to madness; but in

view of Lanyon’s manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper

ground.



A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something less

than a fortnight he was dead. The night after the funeral, at which he

had been sadly affected, Utterson locked the door of his business room,

and sitting there by the light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set

before him an envelope addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal

of his dead friend. “PRIVATE: for the hands of G. J. Utterson ALONE and

in case of his predecease _to be destroyed unread_,” so it was

emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the

contents. “I have buried one friend to-day,” he thought: “what if this

should cost me another?” And then he condemned the fear as a

disloyalty, and broke the seal. Within there was another enclosure,

likewise sealed, and marked upon the cover as “not to be opened till

the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll.” Utterson could not

trust his eyes. Yes, it was disappearance; here again, as in the mad

will which he had long ago restored to its author, here again were the

idea of a disappearance and the name of Henry Jekyll bracketed. But in

the will, that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion of the man

Hyde; it was set there with a purpose all too plain and horrible.

Written by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean? A great curiosity

came on the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to

the bottom of these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his

dead friend were stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the

inmost corner of his private safe.



It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may

be doubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired the society of his

surviving friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly; but

his thoughts were disquieted and fearful. He went to call indeed; but

he was perhaps relieved to be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart,

he preferred to speak with Poole upon the doorstep and surrounded by

the air and sounds of the open city, rather than to be admitted into

that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak with its

inscrutable recluse. Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news to

communicate. The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined

himself to the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes

even sleep; he was out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not

read; it seemed as if he had something on his mind. Utterson became so

used to the unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off

little by little in the frequency of his visits.









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 in front 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 once saw him,

and shared your feeling of repulsion?”



“It was impossible to do the one without the other,” returned Enfield.

“And by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not to know that

this was a back way to Dr. Jekyll’s! It was partly your own fault that

I found it out, even when I did.”



“So you found it out, did you?” said Utterson. “But if that be so, we

may step into the court and take a look at the windows. To tell you the

truth, I am uneasy about poor Jekyll; and even outside, I feel as if

the presence of a friend might do him good.”



The court was very cool and a little damp, and full of premature

twilight, although the sky, high up overhead, was still bright with

sunset. The middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and

sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of

mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.



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



“I am very low, Utterson,” replied the doctor, drearily, “very low. It

will not last long, thank God.”



“You stay too much indoors,” said the lawyer. “You should be out,

whipping up the circulation like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is my

cousin—Mr. Enfield—Dr. Jekyll.) Come, now; get your hat and take a

quick turn with us.”



“You are very good,” sighed the other. “I should like to very much; but

no, no, no, it is quite impossible; I dare not. But indeed, Utterson, I

am very glad to see you; this is really a great pleasure; I would ask

you and Mr. Enfield up, but the place is really not fit.”



“Why then,” said the lawyer, good-naturedly, “the best thing we 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 the

doctor with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered, before the

smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such

abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen

below. They saw it but for a glimpse, for the window was instantly

thrust down; but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and

left the court without a word. In silence, too, they traversed the

by-street; and it was not until they had come into a neighbouring

thoroughfare, where even upon a Sunday there were still some stirrings

of life, that Mr. Utterson at last turned and looked at his companion.

They were both pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes.



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



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

more in silence.









THE LAST NIGHT





Mr. Utterson was sitting by his fireside one evening after dinner, when

he was surprised to receive a visit from Poole.



“Bless me, Poole, what brings you here?” he cried; and then taking a

second look at him, “What ails you?” he added; “is the doctor ill?”



“Mr. Utterson,” said the man, “there is something wrong.”



“Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you,” said the lawyer.

“Now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want.”



“You know the doctor’s ways, sir,” replied Poole, “and how he shuts

himself up. Well, he’s shut up again in the cabinet; and I don’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 are you afraid

of?”



“I’ve been afraid for about a week,” returned Poole, doggedly

disregarding the question, “and I can bear it no more.”



The man’s appearance amply bore out his words; his manner was altered

for the worse; and except for the moment when he had first announced

his terror, he had not once looked the lawyer in the face. Even now, he

sat with the glass of wine untasted on his knee, and his eyes directed

to a corner of the floor. “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 it is.”



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



“Foul play!” cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and rather

inclined to be irritated in consequence. “What foul play? What does the

man mean?”



“I daren’t say, sir,” was the answer; “but will you come along with me

and see for yourself?”



Mr. Utterson’s only answer was to rise and get his hat and great-coat;

but he observed with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared

upon the butler’s face, and perhaps with no less, that the wine was

still untasted when he set it down to follow.



It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying

on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of

the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult,

and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the

streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought

he had never seen that part of London so deserted. He could have wished

it otherwise; never in his life had he been conscious of so sharp a

wish to see and touch his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he might,

there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity.

The square, when they got there, was all full of wind and dust, and the

thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing.

Poole, who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in

the middle of the pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took

off his hat and mopped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief. But for

all the hurry of his coming, these were not the dews of exertion that

he wiped away, but the moisture of some strangling anguish; for his

face was white and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken.



“Well, sir,” he said, “here we are, and God grant there be nothing

wrong.”



“Amen, Poole,” said the lawyer.



Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was

opened on the 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

built high; and about the hearth the whole of the servants, men and

women, stood huddled together like a flock of sheep. At the sight of

Mr. Utterson, the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the

cook, crying out, “Bless God! it’s Mr. Utterson,” ran forward as if to

take him in her arms.



“What, what? Are you all here?” said the lawyer peevishly. “Very

irregular, very unseemly; your master would be far from pleased.”



“They’re all afraid,” said Poole.



Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid lifted up her

voice and now wept loudly.



“Hold your tongue!” Poole said to her, with a ferocity of accent that

testified to his own jangled nerves; and indeed, when the girl had so

suddenly raised the note of her lamentation, they had all started and

turned toward the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation. “And

now,” continued the butler, addressing the knife-boy, “reach me a

candle, and we’ll get this through hands at once.” And then he begged

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 want you to

hear, and I don’t want you to be heard. And see here, sir, if by any

chance he was to ask you in, don’t go.”



Mr. Utterson’s nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, gave a jerk

that nearly threw him from his balance; but he re-collected his courage

and followed the butler into the laboratory building and through the

surgical theatre, with its lumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of

the stair. Here Poole motioned him to stand on one side and listen;

while he himself, setting down the candle and making a great and

obvious call on his resolution, mounted the steps and knocked with a

somewhat uncertain hand on the red baize of the cabinet door.



“Mr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you,” he called; and even as he did

so, once more violently signed to the lawyer to give ear.



A voice answered from within: “Tell him I cannot see any one,” it said

complainingly.



“Thank you, sir,” said Poole, with a note of something like triumph in

his voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr. Utterson back across

the yard and into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and the

beetles were leaping on the floor.



“Sir,” he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, “was that my master’s

voice?”



“It seems much changed,” replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look

for look.



“Changed? Well, yes, I think so,” said the butler. “Have I been 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 there instead 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, my

man,” said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger. “Suppose it were as you

suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been—well, murdered, what could

induce the murderer to stay? That won’t hold water; it doesn’t commend

itself to reason.”



“Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I’ll do it

yet,” said Poole. “All this last week (you must know) him, or it, or

whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and

day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. It was

sometimes his way—the master’s, that is—to write his orders on a sheet

of paper 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 be smuggled in when nobody was looking. Well, sir, every day,

ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been orders and

complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists

in town. Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another

paper telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another

order to a different firm. This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir,

whatever for.”



“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 that their last sample is impure and quite useless for his

present purpose. In the year 18——, Dr. J. purchased a somewhat large

quantity from Messrs. M. He now begs them to search with the most

sedulous care, and should any of the same quality be left, to forward

it to him at once. Expense is no consideration. The importance of this

to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated.” So far the letter had run

composedly enough, but here with a sudden splutter of the pen, the

writer’s emotion had broken loose. “For God’s sake,” he had 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 me like

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; and

then, with another voice, “But what matters hand-of-write?” he said.

“I’ve seen him!”



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



“That’s it!” said Poole. “It was this way. I came suddenly into the

theatre from the garden. It seems he had slipped out to look for this

drug or whatever it is; for the cabinet door was open, and there he was

at the far end of the room digging among the crates. He looked up when

I came in, gave a kind of cry, and whipped up-stairs into the cabinet.

It was but for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my

head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon

his face? If it was my master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run

from me? I have served him long enough. And then…” 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 plainly seized

with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer;

hence, for aught I know, the alteration of his voice; hence the mask

and the avoidance of his friends; hence his eagerness to find this

drug, by means of which the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate

recovery—God grant that he be not deceived! There is my explanation; it

is sad enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but it is plain

and natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all exorbitant

alarms.”



“Sir,” said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor, “that

thing was not my master, and there’s the truth. My master”—here he

looked round him and began to whisper—“is a tall, fine build of a man,

and this was more of a dwarf.” Utterson attempted to protest. “O, sir,”

cried Poole, “do you think I do not know my master after twenty years?

Do you think I do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door,

where I saw him every morning of my life? No, Sir, that thing in the

mask was never Dr. Jekyll—God knows what it was, but it was never Dr.

Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was murder done.”



“Poole,” replied the lawyer, “if you say that, it will become my duty

to make certain. Much as I desire to spare your master’s feelings, much

as I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove him to be still

alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in that door.”



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



“And now comes the second question,” resumed Utterson: “Who is going to

do it?”



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



“That’s very well said,” returned the lawyer; “and whatever comes of

it, I shall make it my business to see you are no loser.”



“There is an axe in the theatre,” continued Poole; “and you might take

the kitchen poker for yourself.”



The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his hand, and

balanced it. “Do you know, Poole,” he said, looking up, “that you and I

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. This masked

figure that you saw, did you recognise it?”



“Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that

I could hardly swear to that,” was the answer. “But if you mean, was it

Mr. Hyde?—why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the same

bigness; and it had the same quick, light way with it; and then who

else could have got in by the laboratory door? You have not forgot, sir

that at the time of the murder he had still the key with him? But

that’s not all. I don’t know, Mr. Utterson, if ever you 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 something

queer about that gentleman—something that gave a man a turn—I don’t

know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt it in your

marrow 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 masked thing like a

monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it

went down my spine like ice. Oh, 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 same point. Evil, I

fear, founded—evil was sure to come—of that connection. Ay, truly, I

believe you; I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer

(for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim’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. “This suspense, I

know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention to make

an end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into the

cabinet. If all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the

blame. Meanwhile, lest anything should really be amiss, or any

malefactor seek to escape by the back, you and the boy must go round

the corner with a pair of good sticks and take your post at the

laboratory door. We give you ten minutes to get to your stations.”



As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. “And now, Poole, let

us get to ours,” he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the

way into the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it was now

quite dark. The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that

deep well of building, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about

their steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where

they sat down silently to wait. London hummed solemnly all around; but

nearer at hand, the stillness was only broken by the sounds of a

footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.



“So it will walk all day, sir,” whispered Poole; “ay, and the better

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’s such an

enemy to rest! Ah, sir, there’s blood foully shed in every step of 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 so slowly; 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 it weeping!”



“Weeping? how that?” said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of

horror.



“Weeping like a woman or a lost soul,” said the butler. “I came 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 a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest

table to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated breath

to where that patient foot was still going up and down, up and down, in

the quiet of the night.



“Jekyll,” cried Utterson, with a loud voice, “I demand to see you.” He

paused a moment, but there came no reply. “I give you fair warning, our

suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” he resumed; “if

not by fair means, then by foul! if not of your consent, then by brute

force!”



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



“Ah, that’s not Jekyll’s voice—it’s Hyde’s!” cried Utterson. “Down with

the door, Poole!”



Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and

the red baize door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal

screech, as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up went the

axe again, and again the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four

times the blow fell; but the wood was tough and the fittings were of

excellent workmanship; and it was not until the fifth, that the lock

burst in sunder and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet.



The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had

succeeded, stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet

before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and

chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer

or two open, papers neatly set forth on the business-table, and nearer

the fire, the things laid out for tea: the quietest room, you would

have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the most

commonplace that night in London.



Right in the midst there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and

still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and

beheld the face of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large

for him, clothes of the doctor’s bigness; the cords of his face still

moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone; and by the

crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung

upon the air, Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a

self-destroyer.



“We have come too late,” he said sternly, “whether to save or punish.

Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the

body of your master.”



The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre,

which filled almost the whole ground story and was lighted from above,

and by the cabinet, which formed an upper story at one end and looked

upon the court. A corridor joined the theatre to the door on the

by-street; and with this the cabinet communicated separately by a

second flight of stairs. There were besides a few dark closets and a

spacious cellar. All these they now thoroughly examined. Each closet

needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell

from their doors, had stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed, was

filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon

who was Jekyll’s predecessor; but even as they opened the door they

were advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a

perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance.

Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.



Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. “He must be buried here,”

he said, hearkening to the sound.



“Or he may have fled,” said Utterson, and he turned to examine the door

in the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they

found the key, already stained with rust.



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



“Use!” echoed Poole. “Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a

man had stamped on it.”



“Ay,” continued Utterson, “and the fractures, too, are rusty.” The two

men looked at each other with a scare. “This is beyond me, Poole,” said

the lawyer. “Let us go back to the cabinet.”



They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional

awe-struck glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to

examine the contents of the cabinet. At one table, there were traces of

chemical work, various measured heaps of some white salt being laid on

glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man had

been prevented.



“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 in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay

beside the tea-things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy

of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great

esteem, annotated, in his own hand, with startling blasphemies.



Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came

to the cheval glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary

horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow

playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along

the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fearful

countenances stooping to look in.



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



“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in the same

tones. “For what did Jekyll”—he caught himself up at the word with a

start, and then conquering the weakness—“what could Jekyll 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 of papers, a large envelope was

uppermost, and bore, in the doctor’s hand, the name of Mr. Utterson.

The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The

first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he

had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of

death and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but, in place of

the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement, read

the name of Gabriel John Utterson. He looked at Poole, and then back at

the paper, and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the

carpet.



“My head goes round,” he said. “He has been all these days in

possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see

himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document.”



He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor’s hand

and dated at the top. “O Poole!” the lawyer cried, “he was alive and

here this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space, he

must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how?

and in that case, can we venture to declare this suicide? Oh, we must

be careful. I foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire

catastrophe.”



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



“Because I fear,” replied the lawyer solemnly. “God grant I have no

cause for it!” And with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read

as follows:



“My dear Utterson,—When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have

disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to

foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless

situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and

first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your

hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of





“Your unworthy and unhappy friend,

“HENRY JEKYLL.”





“There was a third enclosure?” asked Utterson.



“Here, sir,” said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet

sealed in several places.



The lawyer put it in his pocket. “I would say nothing of this paper. If

your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is

now ten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall

be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police.”



They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and

Utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the

hall, trudged back to his office to read the two narratives in which

this mystery was now to be explained.









DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE





On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening

delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague

and old school-companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised by

this; for we were by no means in the habit of correspondence; I had

seen the man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and I could

imagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify formality of

registration. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the

letter ran:



“10th December, 18——





“Dear Lanyon,—You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may

have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at

least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day

when, if you had said to me, ‘Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason,

depend upon you,’ I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you.

Lanyon, my life, my honour my reason, are all at your mercy; if you

fail me to-night I am lost. You might suppose, after this preface, that

I am going to ask you for something dishonourable to grant. Judge for

yourself.



“I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night—ay, even if

you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless

your carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in

your hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my

butler, has his orders; you will find, him waiting your arrival with a

locksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be forced: and you are to

go in alone; to open the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand,

breaking the lock if it be shut; and to draw out, _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 of

wind, I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in

error, you may know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a

phial and a paper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you

to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.



“That is the first part of the service: now for the second. You should

be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before

midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the

fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented nor

foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to be

preferred for what will then remain to do. At midnight, then, I have to

ask you to be alone in your consulting-room, to admit with your own

hand into the house a man who will present himself in my name, and to

place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from

my cabinet. Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitude

completely. Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation,

you will have understood that these arrangements are of capital

importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they

must appear, you might have charged your conscience with my death or

the shipwreck of my reason.



“Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heart

sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility.

Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a

blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware

that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away

like a story that is told. Serve me, my dear Lanyon, and save



“Your friend,

“H. J.





“P. S. I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my

soul. It is possible that the postoffice may fail me, and this letter

not come into your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case, dear

Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in the

course of the day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight. It

may then already be too late; and if that night passes without event,

you will know that you have seen the last of Henry Jekyll.”



Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane;

but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound

to do as he requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the less

I was in a position to judge of its importance; and an appeal so worded

could not be set aside without a grave responsibility. I rose

accordingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to

Jekyll’s house. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received by

the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sent

at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we

were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman’s surgical

theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll’s private

cabinet is most conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the

lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and

have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith was

near despair. But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hours’

work, the door stood open. The press marked E was unlocked; and I took

out the drawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and

returned with it to Cavendish Square.



Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly

enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so

that it was plain they were of Jekyll’s private manufacture; and when I

opened one of the wrappers I found what seemed to me a simple

crystalline salt of a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned

my attention, might have been about half-full of a blood-red liquor,

which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to

contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients I

could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version-book and

contained little but a series of dates. These covered a period of many

years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and

quite abruptly. Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date,

usually no more than a single word: “double” occurring perhaps six

times in a total of several hundred entries; and once very early in the

list and followed by several marks of exclamation, “total failure!!!”

All this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was

definite. Here were a phial of some tincture, a paper of some salt, and

the record of a series of experiments that had led (like too many of

Jekyll’s investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. How could

the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour,

the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could

go to one place, why could he not go to another? And even granting some

impediment, why was this gentleman to be received by me in secret? The

more I reflected the more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a

case of cerebral disease: and though I dismissed my servants to bed, I

loaded an old revolver, that I might be found in some posture of

self-defence.



Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded

very gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a

small man crouching against the pillars of the portico.



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



He told me “yes” by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him

enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into the

darkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing

with his bull’s eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor

started and made greater haste.



These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed

him into the bright light of the consulting-room, I kept my hand ready

on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I

had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as

I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his

face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and

great apparent debility of constitution, and—last but not least— with

the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore

some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked

sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic,

personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the

symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much

deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the

principle of hatred.



This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance,

struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was

dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable;

his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober

fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement—the

trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the

ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar

sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous

accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was

something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature

that now faced me— something seizing, surprising, and revolting—this

fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that

to my interest in the man’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 sombre excitement.



“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” And so lively was his

impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake

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 the

pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please.” And I showed

him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as

fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness

of the hour, the nature of my pre-occupations, and the horror I had of

my visitor, would suffer me 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 heels to my

politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry

Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood…” He

paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his

collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the

hysteria—“I understood, a drawer…”



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

own growing curiosity.



“There it is, sir,” said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the

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

could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and

his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life

and reason.



“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 of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next

moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, “Have

you a graduated glass?” 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

tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first

of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to

brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes

of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and

the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to

a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a

keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned

and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.



“And now,” said he, “to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you

be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go

forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of

curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it

shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you

were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service

rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches

of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of

knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you,

here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted

by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan.”



“Sir,” said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly

possessing, “you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I

hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too

far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end.”



“It is well,” replied my visitor. “Lanyon, you remember your vows: what

follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so

long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have

denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your

superiors— 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, a change—he seemed to swell— his face became suddenly black

and the features seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had

sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to

shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.



“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there before my

eyes—pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and groping before him with

his hands, like a man restored from death— there stood Henry Jekyll!



What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on

paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at

it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if

I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots;

sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the

day and night; I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die;

and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man

unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory,

dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing,

Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be

more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was,

on Jekyll’s own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in

every 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 with

excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of

the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, as might have been

supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished

future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient

gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such

as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my

head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the

public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that

when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take

stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already

committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even

blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high

views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost

morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my

aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me

what I was and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men,

severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound

man’s dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and

inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of

religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though

so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides

of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside

restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of

day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and

suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies,

which led wholly toward the mystic and the transcendental, re-acted and

shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my

members. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the

moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth,

by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful

shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because

the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others

will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard

the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of

multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens. I, for my part,

from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in

one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person,

that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man;

I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my

consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was

only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before

the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most

naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with

pleasure, as a beloved day-dream, on the thought of the separation of

these elements. If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate

identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the

unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of

his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely

on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his

pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands

of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these

incongruous fagots were thus bound together that in the agonised womb

of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling.

How, then, were they dissociated?



I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side-light began

to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to

perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling

immateriality, the mist-like transience of this seemingly so solid body

in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to

shake and to pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might

toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not enter

deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I

have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound

for ever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it

off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful

pressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too

evident, my discoveries were incomplete. Enough, then, that I not only

recognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of certain

of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by

which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a

second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me

because they were the expression, and bore the stamp, of lower elements

in my soul.



I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I

knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled

and shook the very fortress of identity, might by the least scruple of

an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition,

utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to

change. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound, at

last overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared my

tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a

large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments,

to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I

compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the

glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of

courage, drank off the potion.



The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly

nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour

of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I

came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something

strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its

very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in

body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of

disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a

solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent

freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new

life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my

original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me

like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these

sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in

stature.



There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside

me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of

these transformations. The night, however, was far gone into the

morning—the morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for the

conception of the day—the inmates of my house were locked in the most

rigorous hours of slumber; and I determined, flushed as I was with hope

and triumph, to venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I

crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I

could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that

their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through

the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw

for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.



I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but

that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature,

to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust

and less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in

the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine-tenths a life of

effort, virtue, and control, it had been much less exercised and much

less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde

was so much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as

good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly

and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still

believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint

of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in

the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of

welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes

it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and

single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto

accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have

observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come

near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as

I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are

commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of

mankind, was pure evil.



I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive

experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had

lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a

house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, I once

more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs of

dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the

stature, and the face of Henry Jekyll.



That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached my

discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while

under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been

otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth

an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it

was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the

prison-house of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that

which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my

evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the

occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence,

although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was

wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that

incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already

learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.



Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness

of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as

my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only

well known and highly considered, but growing toward the elderly man,

this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on

this side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had

but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor,

and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the

notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humorous; and I made my

preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that

house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as

housekeeper a creature whom I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous.

On the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I

described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the

square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar

object, in my second character. I next drew up that will to which you

so much objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr.

Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss.

And thus fortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by

the strange immunities of my position.



Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own

person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did

so for his pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod in the

public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like

a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea

of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was

complete. Think of it—I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my

laboratory door, give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the

draught that I had always standing ready; and whatever he had done,

Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and

there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his

study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry

Jekyll.



The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have

said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands

of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I

would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind

of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of

my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being

inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on

self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture

to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times

aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from

ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was

Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse;

he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even

make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And

thus his conscience slumbered.



Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now I

can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design of entering; I

mean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with which

my chastisement approached. I met with one accident which, as it

brought on no consequence, I shall no more than mention. An act of

cruelty to a child aroused against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I

recognised the other day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and

the child’s family joined him; there were moments when I feared for my

life; and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward

Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn in

the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily eliminated from

the future, by opening an account at another bank in the name of Edward

Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own hand backward, I had supplied

my double with a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.



Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for

one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next

day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about

me; in vain I saw the decent furniture and tall proportions of my room

in the square; in vain that I recognised the pattern of the

bed-curtains and the design of the mahogany frame; something still kept

insisting that I was not where I was, that I had not wakened where I

seemed to be, but in the little room in Soho where I was accustomed to

sleep in the body of Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and, in my

psychological way began lazily to inquire into the elements of this

illusion, occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a

comfortable morning doze. I was still so engaged when, in one of my

more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry

Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size:

it was large, firm, white, and comely. But the hand which I now saw,

clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half

shut on the bed-clothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor

and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of

Edward Hyde.



I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in the

mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden

and startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed, I

rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was

changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed

Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained?

I asked myself, and then, with another bound of terror—how was it to be

remedied? It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my

drugs were in the cabinet—a long journey down two pairs of stairs,

through the back passage, across the open court and through the

anatomical theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. It

might indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that,

when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And then

with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind

that the servants were already used to the coming and going of my

second self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was able, in clothes of

my own size: had soon passed through the house, where Bradshaw stared

and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde at such an hour and in such a strange

array; and ten minutes later, Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape

and was sitting down, with a darkened brow, to make a feint of

breakfasting.



Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal

of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the

wall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to

reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities

of my double existence. That part of me which I had the power of

projecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished; it had seemed

to me of late as though the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature,

as though (when I wore that form) I were conscious of a more generous

tide of blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this were much

prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown,

the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward

Hyde become irrevocably mine. The power of the drug had not been always

equally displayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed

me; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to double,

and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these

rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment.

Now, however, and in the light of that morning’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 late gradually but decidedly

transferred itself to the other side. All things therefore seemed to

point to this: that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better

self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.



Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had

memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared

between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive

apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the

pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll,

or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in

which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father’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 long secretly

indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was

to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a

blow and for ever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear

unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for

while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde

would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my

circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace

as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any

tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with

so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was

found wanting in the strength to keep to it.



Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by

friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to

the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses

and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I

made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I

neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward

Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I

was true to my determination; for two months I led a life of such

severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the

compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to

obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began

to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and

longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour

of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the

transforming draught.



I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his

vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that

he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I,

long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the

complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which

were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I

was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was

conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more

furious propensity to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that

stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to

the civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God,

no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so

pitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit

than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. But I had

voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which

even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness

among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was

to fall.



Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of

glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow;

and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was

suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a

cold thrill of terror. A mist dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit;

and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and

trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life

screwed to the topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make

assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through

the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on

my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still

hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger.

Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he

drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not

done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of

gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped

hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I

saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood,

when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying

toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same

sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have

screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the

crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against

me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity

stared into my soul. As the acuteness of this remorse began to die

away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy. The problem of my conduct was

solved. Hyde was thenceforth impossible; whether I would or not, I was

now confined to the better part of my existence; and oh, how I rejoiced

to think it! with what willing humility, I embraced anew the

restrictions of natural life! with what sincere renunciation, I locked

the door by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key

under my heel!



The next day, came the news that the murder not had been overlooked,

that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was

a man high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a

tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have

my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the

scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an

instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him.



I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with

honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself

how earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve

suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days

passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I

wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I

daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my

duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the

lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to

growl for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare

idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person,

that I was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was

as an ordinary secret sinner, that I at last fell before the assaults

of temptation.



There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled

at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the

balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural,

like a return to the old days before I had made discovery. It was a

fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted,

but cloudless overhead; and the Regent’s Park was full of winter

chirrupings and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench;

the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a

little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to

begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I

smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill

with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that

vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the

most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then

as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change

in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger,

a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung

formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was

corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had

been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy, beloved—the cloth laying for

me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of

mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.



My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more than

once observed that, in my second character, my faculties seemed

sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came

about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the

importance of the moment. My drugs were in one of the presses of my

cabinet; how was I to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing

my temples in my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I

had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would

consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and

thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing

that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into

his presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor,

prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague,

Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character, one part

remained to me: I could write my own hand; and once I had conceived

that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted up from

end to end.



Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a

passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of which

I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which was indeed comical

enough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver could

not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of

devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face—happily for him—yet

more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged

him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so

black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did they

exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a

private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of

his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung

to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was

astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his

two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he

might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with

directions that they should be registered.



Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room,

gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the

waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was

fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven

to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say—I cannot say, I.

That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and

hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow

suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his

misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the

midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within

him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to

himself, skulking through the less-frequented thoroughfares, counting

the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to

him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and

she fled.



When I came to myself at Lanyon’s, the horror of my old friend perhaps

affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the

sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A

change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it

was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon’s

condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came

home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of

the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the

nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning

shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought

of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten

the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home,

in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape

shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of

hope.



I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinking the

chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those

indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the

time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging

and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a

double dose to recall me to myself; and alas! Six hours after, as I sat

looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be

re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a

great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation

of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all

hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory

shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair,

it was always as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this

continually-impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now

condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I

became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever,

languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one

thought: the horror of my other self. But when I slept, or when the

virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition

(for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the

possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling

with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to

contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have

grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now

divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of

vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature

that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and was

co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which

in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought

of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish

but inorganic. This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit

seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated

and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the

offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to

him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh,

where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every

hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against

him and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll, was of

a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to

commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a

part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the

despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the

dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks

that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the

pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of

my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would

long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But

his love of life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze

at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of

this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off

by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.



It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this

description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice;

and yet even to these, habit brought—no, not alleviation—but a certain

callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my

punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity

which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face

and nature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed

since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out

for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and

the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was

without efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London

ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply

was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy

to the draught.



About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under

the influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last

time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts

or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I

delay too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has

hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great

prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in

the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time

shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness

and Circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from

the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing

on us both, has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now,

when I shall again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I know

how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with

the most strained and fear-struck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and

down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of

menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to

release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is

my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than

myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my

confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.