The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (best free e book reader txt) 📖

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 of 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

apropos, 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 fanlight, 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 tonight there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat

heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea

and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed

to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the

polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the

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

returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.

 

“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room, Poole,” he

said. “Is that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?”

 

“Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir,” replied the servant. “Mr.

Hyde has a key.”

 

“Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that

young man, Poole,” resumed the other musingly.

 

“Yes, sir, he does indeed,” said Poole. “We have all 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 awhile on

his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, least by

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

light there. His past was fairly blameless; few men could read

the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled

to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up

again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come

so near to doing yet avoided. And then by a return on his former

subject, he conceived a spark of hope. “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

shoulders 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 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 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 stylish 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. O, 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