*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE ***

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE

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 downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came
about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.

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 weekdays. 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 storeys high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower
storey and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore
in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The
door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered
and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on
the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried
his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had
appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their
ravages.

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 few halloa,
took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where
there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was
perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly
that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The people who had
turned out were the girl’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 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 cheque myself,
and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of
it. The cheque was genuine.”

“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. Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man
paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail
House is what I call the place with the door, in consequence. Though
even that, you know, is far from explaining all,” 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 the 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.”

“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.”

“Hm,” 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 down-right detestable. I
never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be
deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I
couldn’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.”

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 greatcoat, and set forth in
the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his
friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding
patients. “If anyone 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 preoccupied his mind.

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