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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert LouisStevenson -1886
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
subjectwhich 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 a 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 apet 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.
