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 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?”

“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 _protégé_

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 clauses

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 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 _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 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 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 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. Ah, 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, 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 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. Ah, 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

transparency, the strange clauses of the will.