“So you found it out, did you? 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.”
The court was very cool and damp, full of premature twilight, though the sky high overhead was still bright with sunset. The middle window was half open; sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of mien like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.
“What! Jekyll! I trust you are better.”
“I am very low, Utterson, very low. It will not last long, thank God.”
“You stay too much indoors. Come now; get your hat and take a quick turn with us.”
“You are very good; 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.”
“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; and they turned and left the court without a word.
In silence 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 Utterson at last turned and looked at his companion. They were both pale; there was an answering horror in their eyes.
“God forgive us, God forgive us,” said 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? What ails you? Is the doctor ill?”
“Mr. Utterson, there is something wrong.”
“Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you. Now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want.”
“You know the doctor’s ways, sir, 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, 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.”
Part 7
Late one winter night in London, Dr. Hastie Lanyon sat alone in his study, restless and unwell. A ring at the door announced a visitor—a small, dwarfish figure whose clothes, though cut from rich and sober fabric, hung grotesquely about his diminished frame. There was something about the man that stirred not laughter but a chill of curiosity and revulsion in Lanyon’s breast, as if the creature before him were somehow misbegotten, sprung from some unnatural source. Whatever his origin, his manner was that of a man in desperate extremity.
“Have you got it?” the stranger cried, his voice raw with impatience, and he dared to lay a hand upon Lanyon’s arm in his urgency. Lanyon recoiled at the icy sensation that passed through his blood at the touch. With what composure he could muster, he invited the visitor to sit and explain his business. The stranger begged pardon for his incivility and explained that he came at the instance of their mutual colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a matter of grave moment. He had come for a drawer—a drawer that Jekyll had sent ahead by trusted messenger.
Lanyon pointed to where the drawer lay on the floor behind a table, still covered with a sheet. The visitor sprang toward it, then paused, his face turning ghastly pale, his teeth grinding in convulsive spasms. At last, with the air of a man resigned to despair, he snatched away the covering. Upon seeing the contents—powders and a small vial of reddish tincture—he uttered one great sob of relief that left Lanyon petrified.
With a steady hand and a terrible smile, the visitor asked for a graduated glass. He measured a few minims of the red tincture, added one of the powders, and watched as the mixture shifted through strange metamorphoses: brightening, effervescing, throwing off small fumes, then settling into a dark purple, and finally fading to a watery green. He set down the glass and turned his scrutiny upon Lanyon.
“And now,” he said, “will you be wise? Will you suffer me to take this glass and go forth from your house? Or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? As you decide, so shall it be—either you remain as you were, or a new province of knowledge shall be opened to you here, in this room, upon the instant.”
Lanyon, affecting a coolness he did not feel, answered that he had come too far in the way of inexplicable services to turn back now. The visitor replied that he must remember his vows as a physician, that what followed was under the seal of their profession, and that he who had so long denied the virtue of transcendental medicine should now behold.
He raised the glass to his lips and drank it at a single gulp.
A cry tore from his throat. He reeled, clutched the table, his eyes starting from his head, his mouth gaping in agony. And as Lanyon watched in mounting horror, the man seemed to swell; his face blackened; the features seemed to melt, to alter, to flow one into another like wax before a flame. Lanyon leaped back against the wall, arms raised in futile defense, his mind drowning in terror. And then, where the dwarfish creature had stood, there rose trembling, pale, and half-fainting, his hands groping before him like a man restored from death—the figure of Henry Jekyll.
What Jekyll told him in the next hour, Lanyon could not bring himself to set down on paper. The sight faded, the words faded, and his soul sickened at the memory. Sleep had left him forever. The deadliest terror sat by him at all hours, and he felt his days were numbered. He would die incredulous. He would say only one thing to his friend Utterson: the creature who had crept into his house that night was, on Jekyll’s own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.
And with that, Dr. Hastie Lanyon laid down his pen, for his confession was finished and his death close at hand.
What follows is Henry Jekyll’s own full and astonishing statement of the case, written in his own hand.
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