Latest / Literary Legends - Best Classic Fiction / Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Chapters one to three. Chapter one, Story of the Door.
- 0:10Speaker 1: Mister Utterson, the Lawyer was a man of rugged countenance
- 0:14Speaker 1: that was never lighted by a smile, cold, scanty, and
- 0:19Speaker 1: embarrassed in discourse, backward in sentiment, lean, long, dusty, dreary,
- 0:28Speaker 1: and yet somehow lovable at friendly meetings, and when the
- 0:33Speaker 1: wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from
- 0:37Speaker 1: his eye, something indeed, which never found its way into
- 0:42Speaker 1: his talk, but which spoke not only in the silent
- 0:46Speaker 1: symbols of the after dinner face, but more often and
- 0:50Speaker 1: loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere
- 0:55Speaker 1: with himself, drank gin when he was alone to mortify
- 0:59Speaker 1: a tape for vintages, and though he enjoyed the theater, had
- 1:04Speaker 1: not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But
- 1:08Speaker 1: he had an approved tolerance for others, sometimes wandering almost
- 1:14Speaker 1: with envy at the high pressure of spirits involved in
- 1:17Speaker 1: their misdeeds, and in any extremity, inclined to help rather
- 1:23Speaker 1: than to reprove I incline to Cain's heresy, he used
- 1:29Speaker 1: to say, quaintly, I let my brother go to the
- 1:32Speaker 1: devil in his own way. In this character, It was
- 1:37Speaker 1: frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and
- 1:42Speaker 1: the last good influence in the lives of down going men.
- 1:47Speaker 1: And to such as these, so long as they came
- 1:50Speaker 1: about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change
- 1:53Speaker 1: in his demeanor. No doubt, the feat was easy to
- 1:58Speaker 1: mister Otterson, for he was on demonstrative at the best,
- 2:02Speaker 1: and even his friendships seemed to be founded in a
- 2:05Speaker 1: similar catholicity of good nature. It is the mark of
- 2:10Speaker 1: a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready made
- 2:13Speaker 1: from the hands of opportunity, and that was the lawyer's way.
- 2:19Speaker 1: His friends were those of his own blood, or those
- 2:22Speaker 1: whom he had known the longest. His affections, like Ivy,
- 2:26Speaker 1: were the growth of time. They implied no aptness in
- 2:30Speaker 1: the object. Hence, no doubt the bond that united him
- 2:35Speaker 1: to mister Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well known
- 2:39Speaker 1: man about town. It was a not to crack for
- 2:43Speaker 1: many what these two could see in each other, or
- 2:46Speaker 1: what subject they could find in common. It was reported
- 2:50Speaker 1: by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks that
- 2:53Speaker 1: they said nothing looked singularly dull, and would hail with
- 2:58Speaker 1: obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that
- 3:02Speaker 1: the two men put the greatest store by these excursions,
- 3:06Speaker 1: counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not
- 3:10Speaker 1: only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the
- 3:14Speaker 1: cause of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted. It
- 3:20Speaker 1: chanced on one of these rambles that their way led
- 3:23Speaker 1: them down a by street in a busy quarter of London.
- 3:27Speaker 1: The street was small and what is called quiet, but
- 3:31Speaker 1: it drove a thriving trade on the week days. The
- 3:35Speaker 1: inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously
- 3:39Speaker 1: hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus
- 3:43Speaker 1: of their gains in coquetry, so that the shop fronts
- 3:46Speaker 1: stood along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like
- 3:50Speaker 1: rows of smiling saleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it veiled
- 3:55Speaker 1: its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage,
- 4:00Speaker 1: the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighborhood,
- 4:04Speaker 1: like a fire in a forest, and with its freshly
- 4:08Speaker 1: painted shutters, well polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety
- 4:13Speaker 1: of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.
- 4:20Speaker 1: Two doors from one corner on the left hand, going east,
- 4:24Speaker 1: the line was broken by the entry of a court,
- 4:27Speaker 1: and just at that point a certain sinister block of
- 4:31Speaker 1: building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was
- 4:36Speaker 1: two stories high, showed no window, nothing but a door
- 4:40Speaker 1: on the lower story, and a blind forehead of discolored
- 4:44Speaker 1: wall on the upper, and bore in every feature the
- 4:48Speaker 1: marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was
- 4:53Speaker 1: equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and disdained.
- 4:59Speaker 1: Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on the panels.
- 5:04Speaker 1: Children kept shop upon the steps. The schoolboy had tried
- 5:08Speaker 1: his knife on the moldings, and for close on a
- 5:12Speaker 1: generation no one had appeared to drive away these random
- 5:15Speaker 1: visitors or to repair their ravages. Mister Enfield and the
- 5:21Speaker 1: lawyer were on the other side of the by street,
- 5:25Speaker 1: But when they came abreast of the entry, the former
- 5:28Speaker 1: lifted up his cane and pointed, did you ever remark
- 5:32Speaker 1: that door? He asked, And when his companion had replied
- 5:37Speaker 1: in the affirmative, it is connected in my mind, added he,
- 5:42Speaker 1: with a very odd story. Indeed, said mister Utterson, with
- 5:47Speaker 1: a slight change of voice, and what was that? Well,
- 5:53Speaker 1: it was this way, returned, mister Enfield. I was coming
- 5:57Speaker 1: home from some place at the end of the world,
- 5:59Speaker 1: about the three o'clock of a black winter morning, and
- 6:03Speaker 1: my way lay through a part of town where there
- 6:05Speaker 1: was literally nothing to be seen but lamps, street after street,
- 6:10Speaker 1: and all the folks asleep, street after street, all lighted
- 6:15Speaker 1: up as if for a procession, and all as empty
- 6:18Speaker 1: as a church. Till at last I got into that
- 6:21Speaker 1: state of mind when a man listens and listens and
- 6:25Speaker 1: begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All
- 6:29Speaker 1: at once I saw two figures, one a little man
- 6:32Speaker 1: who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and
- 6:36Speaker 1: the other a girl of maybe eight or ten, who
- 6:40Speaker 1: was running as hard as she was able down across street. Well, sir,
- 6:45Speaker 1: the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner,
- 6:49Speaker 1: and then came the horrible part of the thing, For
- 6:53Speaker 1: the man trampled calmly over the girl's body and left
- 6:57Speaker 1: her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear,
- 7:01Speaker 1: but it was hellish to see. It wasn't like a man,
- 7:05Speaker 1: It was like some damned juggernaut. I gave a view Hallo,
- 7:11Speaker 1: took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him
- 7:14Speaker 1: back to where there was already quite a group about
- 7:17Speaker 1: the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and made no resistance,
- 7:23Speaker 1: but gave me one look so ugly that it brought
- 7:26Speaker 1: out the sweat on me, like running the people who
- 7:30Speaker 1: turned out with a girl's own family, and pretty soon
- 7:33Speaker 1: the doctor for whom she had been sent put in
- 7:36Speaker 1: his appearance. Well, the child was not much the worse,
- 7:40Speaker 1: more frightened, according to the saw Bones, And there, you
- 7:44Speaker 1: might have supposed, would be an end to it. But
- 7:47Speaker 1: there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing
- 7:52Speaker 1: to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child's family,
- 7:57Speaker 1: which was only natural. But the doctor case was what
- 8:00Speaker 1: struck me. He was the usual cut and dry apocethary,
- 8:05Speaker 1: of no particular age and color, with a strong Edinburgh accent,
- 8:09Speaker 1: and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he
- 8:14Speaker 1: was like the rest of us. Every time he looked
- 8:16Speaker 1: at my prisoner, I saw that saw bones turn sick
- 8:20Speaker 1: and white with the desire to kill him. I knew
- 8:24Speaker 1: what was in his mind, just as he knew what
- 8:27Speaker 1: was in mine, and killing being out of the question,
- 8:30Speaker 1: we did the next best. We told the man we
- 8:34Speaker 1: could and would make such a scandal out of this
- 8:37Speaker 1: as should make his name stink from one end of
- 8:40Speaker 1: London to the other. If he had any friends or
- 8:43Speaker 1: any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And
- 8:47Speaker 1: all the time as we were pitching it in red hot,
- 8:51Speaker 1: we were keeping the women off him as best we could,
- 8:54Speaker 1: for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw
- 8:58Speaker 1: a circle of such hateful face, and there was the
- 9:01Speaker 1: man in the middle with a kind of black sneering coolness.
- 9:06Speaker 1: Frightened too, I could see that. But carrying it off, sir,
- 9:10Speaker 1: really like Satan. If you choose to make capital out
- 9:15Speaker 1: of this accident, said he. I'm naturally helpless, no gentleman,
- 9:20Speaker 1: but wishes to avoid a scene, says he name your figure. Well,
- 9:26Speaker 1: we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the
- 9:28Speaker 1: child's family. He would have clearly liked to stick out,
- 9:33Speaker 1: but there was something about the lot of us that
- 9:35Speaker 1: meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing
- 9:40Speaker 1: was to get the money. And where do you think
- 9:42Speaker 1: he carried us? But to that place with the door
- 9:46Speaker 1: whipped out, a key went in and presently came back
- 9:49Speaker 1: with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a
- 9:52Speaker 1: check for the balance at coots drawn payable to bearer,
- 9:56Speaker 1: and signed with a name that I can't mention, though
- 10:00Speaker 1: it's one of the points of my story, but it
- 10:03Speaker 1: was a name at least very well known and often printed.
- 10:07Speaker 1: The figure was stiff, but the signature was good for
- 10:10Speaker 1: more than that, if it was only genuine. I took
- 10:14Speaker 1: the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the
- 10:17Speaker 1: whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not
- 10:21Speaker 1: in real life walk into a cellar door at four
- 10:24Speaker 1: in the morning and come out of it with another
- 10:26Speaker 1: man's check for close upon a hundred pounds. But he
- 10:30Speaker 1: was quite easy and sneering. Set your mind at rest,
- 10:35Speaker 1: says he. I will stay with you till the banks open,
- 10:38Speaker 1: and cash the check myself. So we all set off,
- 10:42Speaker 1: the doctor and the child's father, and our friend and myself,
- 10:47Speaker 1: and passed the rest of the night in my chambers.
- 10:50Speaker 1: The next day, when we had breakfasted, went in a
- 10:54Speaker 1: body to the bank. I gave in the check myself,
- 10:58Speaker 1: and said I had every reason to believe it was
- 11:00Speaker 1: a forgery, not a bit of it. The check was genuine.
- 11:06Speaker 1: Tut tut, said mister Utterson. I see you feel as
- 11:10Speaker 1: I do, said mister Enfield. Yes, it's a bad story.
- 11:14Speaker 1: For my man was a fellow that nobody could have
- 11:17Speaker 1: to do with, a really damnable man. And the person
- 11:21Speaker 1: that drew the check is the very pink of the
- 11:23Speaker 1: proprieties celebrated too. And what makes it worse one of
- 11:28Speaker 1: your fellows who do what they call good blackmail. I
- 11:32Speaker 1: suppose an honest man paying through the nose for some
- 11:36Speaker 1: of the capers of his youth. Black mail house is
- 11:40Speaker 1: what I call that place with the door. In consequence,
- 11:44Speaker 1: though even that, you know, is far from explaining all
- 11:47Speaker 1: he added, and with the words fell into a vein
- 11:50Speaker 1: of musing. From this, he was recalled by mister Utterson,
- 11:55Speaker 1: asking rather suddenly, and you don't know if the drawer
- 11:59Speaker 1: of the check there a likely place, isn't it, returned
- 12:03Speaker 1: mister Renfield. But I happen to have noticed his address.
- 12:06Speaker 1: He lives in some square or other, and you never
- 12:10Speaker 1: asked about the place with the door, said mister Utterson. No, sir,
- 12:15Speaker 1: I had a delicacy. Was the reply. I feel very
- 12:19Speaker 1: strongly about putting questions. It partakes too much of the
- 12:23Speaker 1: style of the day of judgment. You start a question,
- 12:26Speaker 1: and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on
- 12:30Speaker 1: the top of a hill, and away the stone goes,
- 12:33Speaker 1: starting others, and presently some bland old bird, the last
- 12:38Speaker 1: you would have thought of, is knocked on the head
- 12:40Speaker 1: in his own back garden, and the family have to
- 12:43Speaker 1: change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule
- 12:47Speaker 1: of mine. The more it looks like Queer Street, the
- 12:49Speaker 1: less I ask. A very good rule too, said the lawyer.
- 12:55Speaker 1: But I have studied the place for myself, continued mister Enfield.
- 13:00Speaker 1: It seems scarcely a house. There is no other door,
- 13:03Speaker 1: and nobody goes in or out of that one, but
- 13:06Speaker 1: once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure.
- 13:10Speaker 1: There are three windows looking on the court on the
- 13:13Speaker 1: first floor, none below. The windows are always shut, but
- 13:17Speaker 1: they're clean. And then there is a chimney which is
- 13:21Speaker 1: generally smoking, so somebody must live there. And yet it's
- 13:26Speaker 1: not so sure, for the buildings are so packed together
- 13:29Speaker 1: about that court that it's hard to say where one
- 13:32Speaker 1: ends and another begins. The pair walked on again for
- 13:37Speaker 1: a while in silence, and then Enfield said, mister Utterson,
- 13:42Speaker 1: that's a good rule of yours. Yes, I think it
- 13:45Speaker 1: is returned Enfield. And for all of that, continued the lawyer.
- 13:51Speaker 1: There's one point I want to ask. I want to
- 13:53Speaker 1: ask the name of that man who walked over the child, well,
- 13:59Speaker 1: said mister n Ffie. I can't see what harm it
- 14:01Speaker 1: would do. It was a man by the name of Hyde,
- 14:06Speaker 1: hum said mister Ruttereson. What sort of a man is he?
- 14:10Speaker 1: To see? He is not easy to describe. There is
- 14:15Speaker 1: something wrong with his appearance, something displeasing, something downright detestable.
- 14:22Speaker 1: I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet
- 14:26Speaker 1: I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere. He
- 14:31Speaker 1: gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I can't specify
- 14:35Speaker 1: the point. He's an extraordinary looking man, and yet I
- 14:39Speaker 1: really can name nothing out of the way. No, Sir,
- 14:43Speaker 1: I can make no hand of it. I can't describe him,
- 14:46Speaker 1: and it's not for want of memory, for I declare
- 14:49Speaker 1: I can see him this moment. Mister Uttereson again walked
- 14:54Speaker 1: some way in silence, and obviously under a weight of consideration.
- 15:00Speaker 1: You are sure he used a key, he inquired at last,
- 15:04Speaker 1: My dear sir, began Enfield, surprised out of himself. Yes,
- 15:09Speaker 1: I know, said Utterson. I know it must seem strange.
- 15:13Speaker 1: The fact is, if I do not ask you the
- 15:15Speaker 1: name of the other party, it is because I know
- 15:18Speaker 1: it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home.
- 15:23Speaker 1: If you have been in exact in any point, you
- 15:26Speaker 1: had better correct it. I think you might have warned me,
- 15:31Speaker 1: returned the other with a touch of sullenness. But I've
- 15:35Speaker 1: been pedantically exact, as you call it. The fellow had
- 15:39Speaker 1: a key, and what's more, he has it still. I
- 15:43Speaker 1: saw him use it not a week ago. Mister Utterson
- 15:47Speaker 1: sighed deeply, but said never a word, and the young
- 15:52Speaker 1: man presently resumed. Here is another lesson to say nothing,
- 15:57Speaker 1: said he. I'm ashamed of my long time hung Let
- 16:01Speaker 1: us make a bargain never to refer to this again.
- 16:05Speaker 1: With all my heart, said the lawyer, I shake hands
- 16:09Speaker 1: on that, Richard. Chapter two, Search for Mister Hyde. That evening,
- 16:20Speaker 1: mister Utterson came home to his bachelor house in Somber
- 16:24Speaker 1: Spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was
- 16:28Speaker 1: his custom of a Sunday, when his meal was over,
- 16:32Speaker 1: to sit close by the fire a volume of some
- 16:35Speaker 1: dry divinity on his reading desk until the clock of
- 16:39Speaker 1: the neighboring church rang out the hour of twelve, when
- 16:42Speaker 1: he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night, however,
- 16:48Speaker 1: as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took
- 16:51Speaker 1: up a candle and went into his business room. There
- 16:56Speaker 1: he opened his safe, took from the most private part
- 16:59Speaker 1: of it a document endorsed on the envelope as doctor
- 17:03Speaker 1: Jeckyll's will, and sat down with a clouded brow to
- 17:08Speaker 1: study its contents. The will was holograph for mister Utterson,
- 17:14Speaker 1: though he took charge of it now that it was made,
- 17:17Speaker 1: had refused to lend the least assistance in the making
- 17:20Speaker 1: of it. It provided not only that in the case
- 17:25Speaker 1: of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M, D, D, C,
- 17:28Speaker 1: L L L, D, F R, S, et cetera, all
- 17:32Speaker 1: his possessions were to pass into the hands of his
- 17:35Speaker 1: friend and benefactor Edward Hyde, but that in case of
- 17:40Speaker 1: doctor Jeckyll's disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding
- 17:46Speaker 1: three calendar months, the said Edward Hyde should step into
- 17:51Speaker 1: the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay, and free
- 17:56Speaker 1: from any burden or obligation beyond the payment of a
- 18:00Speaker 1: few small sums to the members of the doctor's household.
- 18:05Speaker 1: This document had long been the lawyer's eye saw. It
- 18:09Speaker 1: offended him, both as a lawyer and as a lover
- 18:12Speaker 1: of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom
- 18:15Speaker 1: the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his
- 18:20Speaker 1: ignorance of mister Hyde that had swelled his indignation. Now
- 18:26Speaker 1: by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was
- 18:30Speaker 1: already bad enough when the name was but a name
- 18:32Speaker 1: of which he could learn no more. It was worse
- 18:35Speaker 1: when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes.
- 18:40Speaker 1: And out of the shifting in substantial mists that had
- 18:44Speaker 1: so baffled his eye, there leapt up the sudden, definite
- 18:48Speaker 1: presentment of a fiend. I thought it was madness, he said,
- 18:54Speaker 1: as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, And
- 18:58Speaker 1: now I begin to fear it disgrace. With that, he
- 19:03Speaker 1: blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set
- 19:07Speaker 1: forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine,
- 19:12Speaker 1: where his friend, the great Doctor Lanion had his house,
- 19:16Speaker 1: and received his crowding patience. If any one knows it
- 19:20Speaker 1: will be Lanion, he had thought, the solemn butler knew
- 19:25Speaker 1: and welcomed him. He was subjected to no stage of delay,
- 19:30Speaker 1: but ushered direct from the door to the dining room,
- 19:32Speaker 1: where Doctor Lanion sat alone over his wine. He was
- 19:36Speaker 1: a hearty, healthy, dapper, red faced gentleman, with a shock
- 19:41Speaker 1: of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner.
- 19:46Speaker 1: At sight of mister Otterson, he sprang up from his
- 19:49Speaker 1: chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as
- 19:53Speaker 1: was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to
- 19:56Speaker 1: the eye, but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these
- 20:01Speaker 1: two were old friends, old mates both at school and college,
- 20:05Speaker 1: both thorough respectors of themselves and of each other. And
- 20:10Speaker 1: what does not always follow men who thoroughly enjoyed each
- 20:14Speaker 1: other's company. After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led
- 20:19Speaker 1: up to the subject which so disagreeably preoccupied his mind.
- 20:24Speaker 1: I suppose Lanion, he said, you and I must be
- 20:27Speaker 1: the two oldest friends that Henry Jeckyll, has I wish
- 20:32Speaker 1: the friends were younger, chuckled doctor Lanion. But I suppose
- 20:37Speaker 1: we are, and what of that? I see little of
- 20:40Speaker 1: him now, indeed, said Utterson, I thought you had a
- 20:44Speaker 1: bond of common interest we had, was the reply. But
- 20:50Speaker 1: it is more than ten years since Henry Jackyll became
- 20:53Speaker 1: too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong
- 20:57Speaker 1: in the mind, and though of course I continued to
- 21:00Speaker 1: take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as
- 21:03Speaker 1: they say, I see and have seen devilish little of
- 21:06Speaker 1: the man. Such unscientific balderdash, added the doctor, flushing Suddenly
- 21:12Speaker 1: Purple would have estranged Damon and Pytheas this little spirit
- 21:17Speaker 1: of temper was somewhat of relief to mister Utterson. They
- 21:21Speaker 1: have only differed on some point of science, he thought,
- 21:25Speaker 1: And being a man of no scientific passions except in
- 21:29Speaker 1: the matter of conveyancing, he even added, it is nothing
- 21:33Speaker 1: worse than that. He gave his friend a few seconds
- 21:36Speaker 1: to recover his composure and then approach the question he
- 21:40Speaker 1: had come to put. Did you ever come across a
- 21:44Speaker 1: protege of his? One hide? He asked, Hide, repeated Lanyon, No,
- 21:52Speaker 1: never heard of him since my time. That was the
- 21:56Speaker 1: amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him
- 21:59Speaker 1: to the great dark bed, on which he tossed to
- 22:02Speaker 1: and fro until the small hours of the morning began
- 22:06Speaker 1: to grow large. It was a night of little ease
- 22:10Speaker 1: to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and besieged
- 22:15Speaker 1: by questions. Six o'clock struck on the bells of the
- 22:21Speaker 1: church that was so conveniently near to mister Rottereson's dwelling,
- 22:25Speaker 1: And still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it
- 22:29Speaker 1: had touched him on the intellectual side alone, But now
- 22:33Speaker 1: his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved. And as
- 22:39Speaker 1: he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the
- 22:42Speaker 1: night and the curtained room, mister Enfield's tail went by
- 22:46Speaker 1: before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He
- 22:51Speaker 1: would be aware of the great field of lamps of
- 22:53Speaker 1: a nocturnal city, Then of the figure of a man
- 22:57Speaker 1: walking swiftly, of a child running from the doctors, And
- 23:03Speaker 1: then these met, and that human juggernaut trod the child
- 23:07Speaker 1: down and passed on, regardless of her screams. Or else
- 23:12Speaker 1: he would see a room in a rich house where
- 23:14Speaker 1: his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams.
- 23:19Speaker 1: And then the door of that room would be opened,
- 23:22Speaker 1: the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled,
- 23:26Speaker 1: and lo there would stand by his side, a figure
- 23:29Speaker 1: to whom power was given, and even at that dead
- 23:33Speaker 1: hour he must rise and do its bidding. The figure
- 23:37Speaker 1: in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night, and
- 23:41Speaker 1: if at any time he dozed over, it was but
- 23:44Speaker 1: to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or
- 23:49Speaker 1: move the more swiftly, and still the more swiftly, even
- 23:52Speaker 1: to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamp lighted city, and
- 23:57Speaker 1: at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming.
- 24:02Speaker 1: And still the figure had no face by which he
- 24:05Speaker 1: might know it even in his dreams. It had no face,
- 24:09Speaker 1: or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes.
- 24:13Speaker 1: And thus it was that there sprang up and grew
- 24:15Speaker 1: apace in the lawyer's mind, a singularly strong, almost an
- 24:20Speaker 1: inordinate curiosity to behold the features of the real mister Hide.
- 24:27Speaker 1: If he could but once set his eyes on him,
- 24:30Speaker 1: he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll away altogether,
- 24:34Speaker 1: as was the habit of mysterious things. When well examined,
- 24:39Speaker 1: he might see a reason for his friend's strange preference
- 24:42Speaker 1: or bondage, call it which you please, and even for
- 24:46Speaker 1: the startling clauses of the will. And at least it
- 24:49Speaker 1: would be a face worth seeing, the face of a
- 24:52Speaker 1: man who was without bowels of mercy, a face which
- 24:57Speaker 1: had but to show itself, to raise up in the
- 25:00Speaker 1: the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.
- 25:07Speaker 1: From that time forward, mister Utterson began to haunt the
- 25:11Speaker 1: door in the by street of shops in the morning
- 25:14Speaker 1: before office hours, at noon, when business was plenty and
- 25:18Speaker 1: time scarce, at night, under the face of the fog
- 25:23Speaker 1: city moon, by all lights, and at all hours of
- 25:26Speaker 1: solitude or concourse. The lawyer was to be found on
- 25:30Speaker 1: his chosen post if he be missed a hide he
- 25:35Speaker 1: had thought I shall be missed to seek, And at
- 25:40Speaker 1: last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine, dry night,
- 25:45Speaker 1: frost in the air, the streets as clean as a
- 25:48Speaker 1: ballroom floor, the lamps unshaken by any wind, drawing a
- 25:54Speaker 1: regular pattern of light and shadow. By ten o'clock when
- 25:58Speaker 1: the shops were closed. The by street was very solitary, and,
- 26:03Speaker 1: in spite of the low growl of London, from all around,
- 26:07Speaker 1: very silent. Small sounds carried far. Domestic sounds out of
- 26:14Speaker 1: the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway,
- 26:18Speaker 1: and the rumor of the approach of any passenger preceded
- 26:21Speaker 1: him by a long time. Mister Otterson had been some
- 26:26Speaker 1: minutes at his post when he was aware of an
- 26:29Speaker 1: odd light footstep drawing near. In the course of his
- 26:34Speaker 1: nightly patrols, he had long grown accustomed to the quaint
- 26:38Speaker 1: effect with which the footfalls of a single person, while
- 26:42Speaker 1: he is still a great way off, suddenly sprung out
- 26:45Speaker 1: distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city.
- 26:50Speaker 1: Yet his attention had never before been so sharply and
- 26:53Speaker 1: decisively arrested, and it was with a strong superstitious prevision
- 26:58Speaker 1: of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.
- 27:04Speaker 1: The steps drew swiftly nearer and swelled out suddenly louder
- 27:09Speaker 1: as they turned the end of the street. The lawyer,
- 27:13Speaker 1: looking forth from the entry, could soon see what manner
- 27:17Speaker 1: of man he had to deal with. He was small
- 27:21Speaker 1: and very plainly dressed, and the look of him, even
- 27:25Speaker 1: at that distance, went somehow strongly against the watcher's inclination.
- 27:31Speaker 1: But he made straight for the door, crossing the roadway
- 27:34Speaker 1: to save time, and as he came he drew a
- 27:36Speaker 1: key from his pocket, like one approaching home. Mister Uttereson
- 27:42Speaker 1: stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed.
- 27:46Speaker 1: Mister Hyde. I think mister Hyde shrank back with a
- 27:50Speaker 1: hissing intake of the breath, but his fear was only momentary,
- 27:55Speaker 1: and though he did not look the lawyer in the face,
- 27:57Speaker 1: he answered cooldy enough, that is my name. What do
- 28:02Speaker 1: you want? I see you are going in, returned the lawyer.
- 28:06Speaker 1: I am an old friend of doctor Jekyll's, mister Utterson,
- 28:09Speaker 1: of Gaunt Street. You must have heard my name, and
- 28:13Speaker 1: meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me.
- 28:17Speaker 1: You will not find doctor Jekyll. He is from home,
- 28:20Speaker 1: replied mister Hyde, blowing in the key, and then suddenly,
- 28:25Speaker 1: but still without looking up, how do you know me?
- 28:29Speaker 1: He asked? On your side, said mister Utterson, Will you
- 28:33Speaker 1: do me a favor with pleasure? Replied the other, What
- 28:37Speaker 1: shall it be? Will you let me see your face,
- 28:41Speaker 1: said the lawyer. Mister Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then,
- 28:46Speaker 1: as if upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an
- 28:50Speaker 1: air of defiance, and the pair stared at each other
- 28:53Speaker 1: pretty fixedly for a few seconds. Now I shall know
- 28:58Speaker 1: you again, said mister Utterson. It may be useful, yes,
- 29:03Speaker 1: returned mister Hyde. It is as well we have met,
- 29:07Speaker 1: and a propos you should have my address, and he
- 29:10Speaker 1: gave a number of a street in Soho. Good God,
- 29:14Speaker 1: thought mister Routtereson. Can he too have been thinking of
- 29:17Speaker 1: the will, But he kept his feelings to himself and
- 29:22Speaker 1: only grunted an acknowledgment of the address. And now said
- 29:27Speaker 1: the other, how do you know me by description? Was
- 29:32Speaker 1: the reply? Whose description we have common friends, said mister Routtereson.
- 29:38Speaker 1: Common friends, uttered mister Hyde a little hoarsely. Who are
- 29:42Speaker 1: they Jekyll, for instance? Said the lawyer. He never told you,
- 29:48Speaker 1: cried mister Hyde, with a flush of anger. I did
- 29:50Speaker 1: not think you would have lied. Come, said mister Utterson.
- 29:54Speaker 1: That is not fitting language. The other snarled aloud with
- 29:58Speaker 1: a savage laugh, and the next moment, with extraordinary quickness,
- 30:03Speaker 1: he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house.
- 30:09Speaker 1: The lawyer stood awhile when mister Hyde had left him
- 30:12Speaker 1: the picture of disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount
- 30:17Speaker 1: the street, pausing every step or two and putting his
- 30:21Speaker 1: hand to his brow, like a man in mental perplexity.
- 30:26Speaker 1: The problem he was thus debating as he walked was
- 30:29Speaker 1: one of a class that is rarely solved. Mister Hyde
- 30:33Speaker 1: was pale and dwarfish. He gave an impression of deformity
- 30:38Speaker 1: without any nameable malformation. He had a displeasing smile. He
- 30:44Speaker 1: had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of
- 30:47Speaker 1: murderous mixture of timidity and boldness. And he spoke with
- 30:51Speaker 1: a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice. All these were
- 30:56Speaker 1: points against him, but not all of these together that
- 31:00Speaker 1: could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing, and fear with
- 31:05Speaker 1: which mister Utterson regarded him. There must be something else,
- 31:10Speaker 1: said the perplexed gentleman. There is something more, if I
- 31:14Speaker 1: could find a name for it, God bless me. The
- 31:17Speaker 1: man seems hardly human, something troglodittic, shall we say, or
- 31:24Speaker 1: can it be? The old story of doctor fell or
- 31:27Speaker 1: is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that
- 31:29Speaker 1: thus transpires through and transfigures its clay continent? The last
- 31:36Speaker 1: I think for oh, my poor old Harry Jekyl. If
- 31:40Speaker 1: ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is
- 31:44Speaker 1: on that of your new friend. Round the corner from
- 31:49Speaker 1: the by street, there was a square of ancient, handsome houses,
- 31:54Speaker 1: now for the most part decayed from their high estate,
- 31:57Speaker 1: and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and
- 32:00Speaker 1: conditions of men, mapping, gravers, architects, shady lawyers, and the
- 32:06Speaker 1: agents of obscure enterprises. One house, however, second from the corner,
- 32:13Speaker 1: was still occupied entire and at the door of this
- 32:16Speaker 1: which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though
- 32:20Speaker 1: it was now plunged in darkness except for the fan light,
- 32:23Speaker 1: mister Rotterson stopped and knocked. A well dressed elderly servant
- 32:29Speaker 1: opened the door. Is doctor Jekyll at home? Paul asked
- 32:34Speaker 1: the lawyer. I will see, mister Utterson, said Paul, admitting
- 32:40Speaker 1: the visitor as he spoke into a large, low roofed,
- 32:43Speaker 1: comfortable hall paved with flags, warmed after the fashion of
- 32:48Speaker 1: a country house. By a bright open fire and furnished
- 32:52Speaker 1: with costly cabinets of oak. Will you wait here by
- 32:56Speaker 1: the fire, sir? Or shall I give you a light
- 32:58Speaker 1: in the dining room? Here? Thank you, said the lawyer,
- 33:02Speaker 1: and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender.
- 33:07Speaker 1: This hall, in which he was now left alone, was
- 33:10Speaker 1: a pet fancy of his friend, the doctor's, and Otterson
- 33:14Speaker 1: himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest
- 33:17Speaker 1: room in London. But to night there was a shodder
- 33:20Speaker 1: in his blood. The face of Hyde sat heavy in
- 33:24Speaker 1: his memory. He felt what was rare with him, a
- 33:28Speaker 1: nausea and distaste of life, And in the gloom of
- 33:32Speaker 1: his spirits he seemed to read a menace in the
- 33:36Speaker 1: flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets, and the
- 33:40Speaker 1: uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was
- 33:44Speaker 1: ashamed of his relief when Paul presently returned to announce
- 33:49Speaker 1: that doctor Jekyll was gone out. I saw mister Hyde
- 33:53Speaker 1: go in by the old dissecting room door, Paul, he said,
- 33:57Speaker 1: is that right when doctor Jeckyll is from home? Quite right,
- 34:01Speaker 1: mister Utterson, Sir, replied the servant, mister Hyde has a key.
- 34:07Speaker 1: Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust
- 34:09Speaker 1: in that young man. Paul resumed the other musingly, Yes, sir,
- 34:14Speaker 1: he do, indeed, said Paul. We all have orders to
- 34:17Speaker 1: obey him. I do not think I ever met mister Hyde,
- 34:22Speaker 1: asked Uttereson. Oh dear, No, sir, he never dines here,
- 34:26Speaker 1: replied the butler. Indeed, we see very little of him
- 34:29Speaker 1: on this side of the house. He mostly comes and
- 34:32Speaker 1: goes by the laboratory. Well, good night, Paul, Good night,
- 34:37Speaker 1: mister Utterson. And the lawyer set out homeward with a
- 34:42Speaker 1: very heavy heart. Poor Harry Jekyll, he thought, my mind
- 34:47Speaker 1: misgives me. He is in deep waters. He was wild
- 34:51Speaker 1: when he was young, a long while ago, to be sure.
- 34:55Speaker 1: But in the law of God there is no statute
- 34:57Speaker 1: of limitations. It must be that the ghost of some
- 35:02Speaker 1: old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace, punishment coming
- 35:09Speaker 1: pede Claudo years after memory has forgotten, and self love
- 35:13Speaker 1: condoned the fault. And the lawyer, scared by the thought,
- 35:19Speaker 1: brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the
- 35:22Speaker 1: corners of memory, lest by chance, some jack in the
- 35:26Speaker 1: box of an old iniquity should leap to light. There
- 35:31Speaker 1: his past was fairly blameless. Few men could read the
- 35:34Speaker 1: rolls of their life with less apprehension. Yet he was
- 35:38Speaker 1: humbled to the dust by the many ill things he
- 35:41Speaker 1: had done, and raised up again into a sober and
- 35:45Speaker 1: fearful gratitude by the many that he had come so
- 35:48Speaker 1: near to doing yet avoided. And then by a return
- 35:53Speaker 1: on his former subject. He conceived a spark of hope.
- 35:58Speaker 1: This mister Hyde, if he were studdied, thought he must
- 36:03Speaker 1: have secrets of his own, black secrets, by the look
- 36:06Speaker 1: of him, secrets compared to which poor Jeckyal's worst would
- 36:10Speaker 1: be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It
- 36:15Speaker 1: turns me cold to think of this creature stealing like
- 36:18Speaker 1: a thief to Harry's bedside. Poor Harry, What a wakening,
- 36:23Speaker 1: and the danger of it. For if this hide suspects
- 36:27Speaker 1: the existence of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Aye,
- 36:32Speaker 1: I must put my shoulder to the wheel, if Jeckyl
- 36:35Speaker 1: will but let me, he added, if Jeckyl will only
- 36:40Speaker 1: let me. For once more he saw before his mind's eye,
- 36:45Speaker 1: as clear as a transparency, the strange clauses of the will.
- 36:53Speaker 1: Chapter three, Doctor Jeckyll was quite at ease. A fortnight later,
- 37:01Speaker 1: by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of his
- 37:05Speaker 1: pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent,
- 37:10Speaker 1: reputable men, and all judges of good wine, and mister
- 37:14Speaker 1: Utterson so contrived that he remained behind after the others
- 37:18Speaker 1: had departed. This was no new arrangement, but a thing
- 37:23Speaker 1: that had befallen many scores of times where Utterson was liked.
- 37:28Speaker 1: He was liked well. Hosts loved to detail the dry lawyer.
- 37:33Speaker 1: When the light hearted and the loose tongued had already
- 37:36Speaker 1: their foot on the threshold. They liked to sit awhile
- 37:40Speaker 1: in his unobtrusive company, practicing for solitude, sobering their minds
- 37:46Speaker 1: in the man's rich silence after the expense and strain
- 37:50Speaker 1: of gaiety. To this rule, doctor Jekyll was no exception,
- 37:55Speaker 1: And as he now sat on the opposite side of
- 37:57Speaker 1: the fire, a large, well made, smooth faced man of fifty,
- 38:03Speaker 1: with something of a slyish caste, perhaps, but every mark
- 38:06Speaker 1: of capacity and kindness you could see by his looks
- 38:09Speaker 1: that he cherished mister Utterson a sincere and warm affection.
- 38:16Speaker 1: I've been wanting to speak to you, Jackal began the latter,
- 38:20Speaker 1: You know that will of yours. A close observer might
- 38:24Speaker 1: have gathered that the topic was distasteful, but the doctor
- 38:28Speaker 1: carried it off gaily. My poor Utterson, he said, you
- 38:32Speaker 1: are unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a
- 38:35Speaker 1: man so distressed as you were by my will, unless
- 38:39Speaker 1: it were that hide bound pedant Lanyon at what he
- 38:42Speaker 1: called my scientific heressies. Oh, I know he's a good fellow.
- 38:47Speaker 1: You needn't frown, an excellent fellow, and I always mean
- 38:51Speaker 1: to see more of him. But a hide bound pedant
- 38:54Speaker 1: for all that, an ignorant, blatant pedant. I was never
- 38:59Speaker 1: more disappointed in any man than Lanyon. You know I
- 39:03Speaker 1: never approved of it, pursued Utterson, ruthlessly, disregarding the fresh
- 39:09Speaker 1: topic my will. Yes, certainly I know that, said the doctor.
- 39:13Speaker 1: A trifle sharply. You told me so, well, I tell
- 39:17Speaker 1: you so again, continued the lawyer. I have been learning
- 39:21Speaker 1: something of young hide. The large handsome face of doctor
- 39:26Speaker 1: Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came
- 39:30Speaker 1: a blackness about his eyes. I do not care to
- 39:34Speaker 1: hear more, said he. This is a matter I thought
- 39:37Speaker 1: we had agreed to stop. What I heard was abominable,
- 39:42Speaker 1: said Utterson. It can make no change. You do not
- 39:46Speaker 1: understand my position, returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency
- 39:51Speaker 1: of manner. I am painfully situated, Utterson. My position is
- 39:55Speaker 1: a very strange, a very strange one. It is one
- 40:00Speaker 1: of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking, Jekyl,
- 40:05Speaker 1: said Utterson. You know me, I'm a man to be trusted.
- 40:09Speaker 1: Make a clean breast of this in confidence, and I
- 40:12Speaker 1: make no doubt I can get you out of it.
- 40:15Speaker 1: My good Utterson, said the doctor. This is very good
- 40:18Speaker 1: of you, This is downright good of you, and I
- 40:21Speaker 1: cannot find words to thank you in I believe you fully.
- 40:25Speaker 1: I would trust you before any man alive, ay before myself,
- 40:29Speaker 1: if I could make the choice. But indeed, it isn't
- 40:33Speaker 1: what you fancy. It is not so bad as that.
- 40:36Speaker 1: And just to put your good heart at rest, I
- 40:39Speaker 1: will tell you one thing. The moment I choose I
- 40:43Speaker 1: can be rid of mister Hyde. I give you my
- 40:47Speaker 1: hand upon that, and I thank you again and again.
- 40:51Speaker 1: And I will just add one little word, Utterson, that
- 40:54Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll take in good part. This is a
- 40:58Speaker 1: private matter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.
- 41:04Speaker 1: Utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire. I have
- 41:08Speaker 1: no doubt you are perfectly right, he said, at last,
- 41:11Speaker 1: getting to his feet. Well, but since we have touched
- 41:15Speaker 1: upon the business and for the last time, I hope,
- 41:18Speaker 1: continued the doctor. There is one point I should like
- 41:22Speaker 1: you to understand. I have really a very great interest
- 41:26Speaker 1: in poor Hide. I know you have seen him. He
- 41:29Speaker 1: told me so, and I fear he was rude. But
- 41:33Speaker 1: I do sincerely take a great, a very great interest
- 41:36Speaker 1: in that young man. And if I am taken away, Utterson,
- 41:41Speaker 1: I wish you to promise me that you will bear
- 41:43Speaker 1: with him and get his rights for him. I think
- 41:47Speaker 1: you would if you knew all, and it would be
- 41:50Speaker 1: a weight off my mind if you would promise. I
- 41:54Speaker 1: can't promise that I shall ever like him, said the lawyer.
- 41:58Speaker 1: I don't ask that, pleaded Jekyl, laying his hand upon
- 42:02Speaker 1: the other's arm. I ask only for justice. I only
- 42:06Speaker 1: ask you to help him for my sake. When I
- 42:09Speaker 1: am no longer here, Utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh. Well,
- 42:17Speaker 1: he said, I promise the end of Chapter three, Chapters
- 42:25Speaker 1: four to seven, chapter four, the Koru murder case. Nearly
- 42:35Speaker 1: a year later, in the month of October eighteen something,
- 42:40Speaker 1: London was startled by a crime of singular ferocity, and
- 42:45Speaker 1: rendered all the more notable by the high position of
- 42:48Speaker 1: the victim. The details were few and startling. A maid
- 42:55Speaker 1: servant living alone in a house not far from the river,
- 42:58Speaker 1: had gone upstairs to bed about eleven. Although a fog
- 43:03Speaker 1: rolled over the city in the small hours, the early
- 43:07Speaker 1: part of the night was cloudless, and the lane which
- 43:11Speaker 1: the maid's window overlooked was brilliantly lit by the full moon.
- 43:16Speaker 1: It seems she was romantically given, for she sat down
- 43:20Speaker 1: upon her box, which stood immediately under the window, and
- 43:25Speaker 1: fell into a dream of musing. Never, she used to say,
- 43:30Speaker 1: with streaming tears when she narrated the experience, never had
- 43:35Speaker 1: she felt more at peace with all men, or thought
- 43:38Speaker 1: more kindly of the world. And as she so sat,
- 43:43Speaker 1: she became aware of an aged and beautiful gentleman with
- 43:47Speaker 1: white hair, drawing near along the lane, and advancing to
- 43:52Speaker 1: meet him, another and very small gentleman, to whom at
- 43:56Speaker 1: first she paid less attention. When they had come within speech,
- 44:01Speaker 1: which was just under the maid's eyes, the older man
- 44:05Speaker 1: bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner
- 44:08Speaker 1: of politeness. It did not seem as if the subject
- 44:12Speaker 1: of his address were of great importance. Indeed, from his pointing,
- 44:17Speaker 1: it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way.
- 44:22Speaker 1: But the moon shone on his face as he spoke,
- 44:25Speaker 1: and the girl was pleased to watch it. It seemed
- 44:29Speaker 1: to breathe such an innocent and old world kindness of disposition,
- 44:34Speaker 1: yet with something high too, as of a well founded
- 44:37Speaker 1: self content. Presently, her eye wandered to the other, and
- 44:43Speaker 1: she was surprised to recognize in him a certain mister Hyde,
- 44:48Speaker 1: who had once visited her master, and for whom she
- 44:51Speaker 1: had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a
- 44:56Speaker 1: heavy cane with which he was trifling, But he answered
- 45:00Speaker 1: never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill
- 45:03Speaker 1: contained impatience. Then all of a sudden he broke out
- 45:08Speaker 1: in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot,
- 45:12Speaker 1: brandishing the cane, and carrying on, as the maid described it,
- 45:16Speaker 1: like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back,
- 45:21Speaker 1: with the air of one very much surprised and a
- 45:23Speaker 1: trifle hurt, And at that mister hyde broke out of
- 45:27Speaker 1: all bounds and clubbed him to the earth, and next moment,
- 45:33Speaker 1: with apelike fury, he was trampling his victim under foot
- 45:37Speaker 1: and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the
- 45:41Speaker 1: bones were audibly shattered, and the body jumped upon the roadway.
- 45:47Speaker 1: At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.
- 45:53Speaker 1: It was two o'clock when she came to herself and
- 45:56Speaker 1: called for the police. The murderer was gone long ago,
- 46:00Speaker 1: but there lay his victim in the middle of the lane,
- 46:04Speaker 1: incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been done,
- 46:09Speaker 1: although it was of some rare and very tough and
- 46:12Speaker 1: heavy wood, had broken in the middle under the stress
- 46:16Speaker 1: of this insensate cruelty, and one splintered half had rolled
- 46:21Speaker 1: in the neighboring gutter. The other, without doubt, had been
- 46:25Speaker 1: carried away by the murderer. A purse and a gold
- 46:30Speaker 1: watch were found upon the victim, but no cards or papers,
- 46:35Speaker 1: except a sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been
- 46:39Speaker 1: probably carrying to the post, and which bore the name
- 46:42Speaker 1: and address of mister Utterson. This was brought to the
- 46:47Speaker 1: lawyer the next morning, before he was out of bed,
- 46:51Speaker 1: and he had no sooner seen it and been told
- 46:54Speaker 1: the circumstances than he shot out a solemn lip. I
- 46:58Speaker 1: shall say nothing till I have seen the body, said he.
- 47:02Speaker 1: This may be very serious. Have the kindness to wait
- 47:05Speaker 1: while I dress. And with the same grave countenance, he
- 47:11Speaker 1: hurried through his breakfast and drove to the police station,
- 47:15Speaker 1: whither the body had been carried. As soon as he
- 47:18Speaker 1: came into the cell, he nodded, yes, said he I
- 47:22Speaker 1: recognize him. I am sorry to say that this is
- 47:26Speaker 1: Sir Danver's carew good God, sir, exclaimed the officer. Is
- 47:32Speaker 1: it possible? And the next moment is I lighted up
- 47:35Speaker 1: with professional ambition. This will make a deal of noise,
- 47:39Speaker 1: he said, And perhaps you can help us to the man.
- 47:43Speaker 1: And he briefly narrated what the maid had seen and
- 47:47Speaker 1: showed the broken stick. Mister Utterson had already quailed at
- 47:52Speaker 1: the name of hide, but when the stick was laid
- 47:55Speaker 1: before him he could doubt no longer broken and battered
- 47:59Speaker 1: as it was. He recognized it for one that he
- 48:02Speaker 1: had himself presented many years before to Henry Jekyll. Is
- 48:09Speaker 1: this mister Hyde, a person of small stature, he inquired.
- 48:13Speaker 1: Particularly small and particularly wicked looking, is what the maid
- 48:17Speaker 1: calls him, said the officer, mister Utterson reflected, and then
- 48:23Speaker 1: raising his head, if you will come with me in
- 48:26Speaker 1: my cab, he said, I think I can take you
- 48:29Speaker 1: to his house. It was by this time about nine
- 48:33Speaker 1: in the morning, and the first fog of the season.
- 48:37Speaker 1: A great chocolate colored paul lowered over Heaven. But the
- 48:41Speaker 1: wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors, so
- 48:47Speaker 1: that as the cab crawled from street to street, mister
- 48:50Speaker 1: Rotterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight.
- 48:55Speaker 1: For here it would be dark like the back end
- 48:58Speaker 1: of evening, and there would be a glow of a rich,
- 49:02Speaker 1: lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration. And here,
- 49:07Speaker 1: for a moment the fog would be quite broken up,
- 49:11Speaker 1: and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between
- 49:14Speaker 1: the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under
- 49:20Speaker 1: these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways and slatternly passengers,
- 49:26Speaker 1: and its lamps which had never been extinguished or had
- 49:30Speaker 1: been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness
- 49:35Speaker 1: seemed in the lawyer's eyes like a district of some
- 49:39Speaker 1: city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides,
- 49:44Speaker 1: were of the gloomiest dye, and when he glanced at
- 49:47Speaker 1: the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some
- 49:51Speaker 1: touch of that terror of the law and the law's officers,
- 49:55Speaker 1: which may at times assail the most honest. As the
- 50:00Speaker 1: cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted
- 50:04Speaker 1: a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace,
- 50:08Speaker 1: a low French eating house, a shop for the retail
- 50:12Speaker 1: of penny numbers and topenny salads, many ragged children huddled
- 50:17Speaker 1: in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities
- 50:21Speaker 1: passing out key in hand to have a morning glass.
- 50:26Speaker 1: And the next moment the fog settled down again upon
- 50:28Speaker 1: that part as brown as omber, and cut him off
- 50:32Speaker 1: from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry
- 50:37Speaker 1: Jekyll's favourite, of a man who was heir to a
- 50:41Speaker 1: quarter of a million sterling. An ivory faced and silvery
- 50:47Speaker 1: haired old woman opened the door. She had an evil
- 50:51Speaker 1: face smoothed by hypocrisy, but her manners were excellent, Yes,
- 50:58Speaker 1: she said, this was mister Hyde's, but he was not
- 51:01Speaker 1: at home. He had been in that night very late,
- 51:04Speaker 1: but had gone away again in less than an hour.
- 51:07Speaker 1: There was nothing strange in that his habits were very irregular,
- 51:11Speaker 1: and he was often absent. For instance, it was nearly
- 51:14Speaker 1: two months since she had seen him till yesterday. Very well, then,
- 51:20Speaker 1: we wished to see his rooms, said the lawyer, And
- 51:24Speaker 1: when the woman began to declare it was impossible. I
- 51:27Speaker 1: had better tell you who this person is, he added,
- 51:30Speaker 1: This is Inspector Newcommon of Scotland. Yard. A flash of
- 51:35Speaker 1: odious joy appeared upon the woman's face. Ah, said she
- 51:39Speaker 1: he's in trouble. What has he done? Mister Otterson and
- 51:44Speaker 1: the Inspector exchanged glances. He don't seem a very popular character,
- 51:49Speaker 1: observed the latter. And now, my good woman, just let
- 51:53Speaker 1: me and this gentleman have a look about us. In
- 51:57Speaker 1: the whole extent of the house, which but for the
- 51:59Speaker 1: old woman, remained otherwise empty, mister Hyde had only used
- 52:04Speaker 1: a couple of rooms, but these were furnished with luxury
- 52:08Speaker 1: and good taste. A closet was filled with wine, the
- 52:12Speaker 1: plate was of silver, the knapery excellent. A good picture
- 52:17Speaker 1: hung upon the walls, a gift, as Utterson supposed, from
- 52:21Speaker 1: Henry Jekyl, who was much of a connoisseur, and the
- 52:26Speaker 1: carpets were of many plies and agreeable in color. At
- 52:30Speaker 1: this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having
- 52:34Speaker 1: been recently and hurriedly ransacked. Clothes lay about the floor
- 52:39Speaker 1: with their pockets inside out. Lockfast drawers stood open, and
- 52:45Speaker 1: on the hearth there lay a pile of gray ashes,
- 52:48Speaker 1: as though many papers had been burned from these embers.
- 52:53Speaker 1: The inspector disinterred the butt end of a green check book,
- 52:58Speaker 1: which had resisted the action of the fire. The other
- 53:02Speaker 1: half of the stick was found behind the door, and
- 53:05Speaker 1: as this clinched his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted.
- 53:11Speaker 1: A visit to the bank, where several thousand pounds were
- 53:14Speaker 1: found to be lying to the murderer's credit, completed his gratification.
- 53:20Speaker 1: You may depend on it, sir, he told mister Rotterson,
- 53:24Speaker 1: I have him in my hand. He must have lost
- 53:27Speaker 1: his head, or he would never have left the stick,
- 53:29Speaker 1: or above all, burned the check book. Why money's life
- 53:34Speaker 1: to the man. We have nothing to do but wait
- 53:37Speaker 1: for him at the bank and get out the handbills.
- 53:41Speaker 1: This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment, for
- 53:45Speaker 1: mister Hyde had numbered few familiars. Even the master of
- 53:49Speaker 1: the servant maid had only seen him twice. His family
- 53:53Speaker 1: could nowhere be traced, he had never been photographed, and
- 53:58Speaker 1: the few who could describe differed widely, as common observers will.
- 54:04Speaker 1: Only on one point were they agreed, and that was
- 54:08Speaker 1: the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive
- 54:13Speaker 1: impressed his beholders. Chapter five, Incident of the Letter. It
- 54:24Speaker 1: was late in the afternoon when mister Utterson found his
- 54:27Speaker 1: way to doctor Jekyll's door, where he was at once
- 54:31Speaker 1: admitted by Paul and carried down by the kitchen offices
- 54:35Speaker 1: and across a yard which had once been a garden,
- 54:38Speaker 1: to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory
- 54:42Speaker 1: or the dissecting rooms. The doctor had bought the house
- 54:46Speaker 1: from the airs of a celebrated surgeon, and his own tastes,
- 54:50Speaker 1: being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the destination of
- 54:55Speaker 1: the block at the bottom of the garden. It was
- 54:58Speaker 1: the first time that the lawyer had been received in
- 55:01Speaker 1: that part of his friend's quarters, and he eyed the dingy,
- 55:05Speaker 1: windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful
- 55:11Speaker 1: sense of strangeness as he crossed the theater, once crowded
- 55:15Speaker 1: with eager students, and now lying gaunt and silent, the
- 55:20Speaker 1: tables laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates
- 55:25Speaker 1: and littered with packing straw, and the light falling dimly
- 55:29Speaker 1: through the foggy cupola. At the further end a flight
- 55:34Speaker 1: of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize,
- 55:38Speaker 1: and through this mister Utterson was at last received into
- 55:41Speaker 1: the doctor's cabinet. It was a large room, fitted round
- 55:46Speaker 1: with glass presses, furnished, among other things, with a cheval
- 55:50Speaker 1: glass and a business table, and looking out upon the
- 55:55Speaker 1: court by three dusty windows barred with iron. The fire
- 56:00Speaker 1: burned in the grate. A lamp was set lighted on
- 56:03Speaker 1: the chimney shelf. For even in the houses, the fog
- 56:07Speaker 1: began to lie thickly, and there, close up to the
- 56:11Speaker 1: warmth sat Doctor Jekyll, looking deadly sick. He did not
- 56:17Speaker 1: rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold
- 56:20Speaker 1: hand and bade him welcome in a changed voice, And
- 56:25Speaker 1: now said mister Otterson, as soon as Paul had left them.
- 56:30Speaker 1: You have heard the news, the doctor shuddered. They were
- 56:35Speaker 1: crying it in the square, he said, I heard them
- 56:38Speaker 1: in my dining room. One word, said the lawyer. Carew
- 56:44Speaker 1: was my client. But so are you, and I want
- 56:47Speaker 1: to know what I am doing. You have not been
- 56:49Speaker 1: mad enough to hide this fellow Otterson. I swear to God,
- 56:54Speaker 1: cried the doctor. I swear to God I will never
- 56:58Speaker 1: set eyes on him again. I bind my honor toy
- 57:01Speaker 1: that I am done with him in this world. It
- 57:04Speaker 1: is all at an end. And indeed he does not
- 57:07Speaker 1: want my help. You do not know him as I do.
- 57:12Speaker 1: He is safe. He is quite safe, mark my words.
- 57:16Speaker 1: He will never more be heard of. The lawyer listened gloomily.
- 57:22Speaker 1: He did not like his friend's feverish manner. You seem
- 57:26Speaker 1: pretty sure of him, he said, And for your sake,
- 57:30Speaker 1: I hope you may be right. If it came to
- 57:33Speaker 1: a trial, your name might appear. I am quite sure
- 57:38Speaker 1: of him, replied Jekyll. I have grounds for certainty that
- 57:41Speaker 1: I cannot share with any one. But there is one
- 57:45Speaker 1: thing of which you may advise me. I have. I
- 57:48Speaker 1: have received a letter, and I am at a loss
- 57:52Speaker 1: whether I should show it to the police. I should
- 57:55Speaker 1: like to leave it in your hands, Utterson, you would
- 57:58Speaker 1: judge wisely. I am sure I have so great a
- 58:00Speaker 1: trust in you. You fear I suppose that it might
- 58:05Speaker 1: lead to his detection, asked the lawyer. No, said the other.
- 58:09Speaker 1: I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hide.
- 58:13Speaker 1: I am quite done with him. I was thinking of
- 58:16Speaker 1: my own character, which this hateful business has rather exposed.
- 58:22Speaker 1: Otterson ruminated a while. He was surprised at his friend's selfishness,
- 58:27Speaker 1: and yet relieved by it. Well said he at last
- 58:32Speaker 1: let me see the letter. The letter was written in
- 58:36Speaker 1: an old upright hand, and signed Edward Hyde, and it
- 58:41Speaker 1: signified briefly enough that the writer's benefactor, doctor Jekyll, whom
- 58:47Speaker 1: he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities,
- 58:52Speaker 1: need labor under no alarm for his safety, as he
- 58:55Speaker 1: had means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence.
- 59:00Speaker 1: The lawyer liked this letter well enough. It put a
- 59:04Speaker 1: better color on the intimacy than he had looked for,
- 59:07Speaker 1: and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions.
- 59:13Speaker 1: Have you the envelope? He asked, I burned it, replied Jekyll,
- 59:18Speaker 1: before I thought what I was about. But it bore
- 59:20Speaker 1: no postmark. The note was handed in. Shall I keep
- 59:25Speaker 1: this and sleep upon it? Asked Utterson, I wish you
- 59:29Speaker 1: to judge for me entirely was the reply. I have
- 59:32Speaker 1: lost confidence in myself. Well I shall consider, returned the lawyer.
- 59:39Speaker 1: And now one word more. It was Hyde who dictated
- 59:43Speaker 1: the terms in your will. About that disappearance, the doctor
- 59:48Speaker 1: seemed seized with a qualm of faintness. He shot his
- 59:51Speaker 1: mouth tight and nodded. I knew it, said Utterson. He
- 59:56Speaker 1: meant to murder you. You have had a fine escape.
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: I have had what is far more to the purpose,
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: returned the doctor solemnly, I have had a lesson, O God, Utterson,
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: what a lesson I have had? And he covered his
- 1:00:12Speaker 1: face for a moment with his hands. On his way out,
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Paul.
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: By the bye said he there was a letter handed
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: in to day. What was the messenger like? But Paul
- 1:00:27Speaker 1: was positive nothing had come except by post, and only circulars.
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: By that, he added, this news sent off the visitor,
- 1:00:37Speaker 1: with his fears renewed plainly the letter had come by
- 1:00:41Speaker 1: the laboratory door. Possibly indeed it had been written in
- 1:00:45Speaker 1: the cabinet, and if that were so, it must be
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: differently judged and handled with the more caution. The newsboys
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: as he went were crying themselves hoarse along the footway
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: special edition, shocking murder of an MP. That was the
- 1:01:06Speaker 1: funeral oration of one friend and client. And he could
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: not help a certain apprehension lest the good name of
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: another should be sucked down in the eddy of the scandal.
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: It was at least a ticklish decision that he had
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: to make, and self reliant as he was by habit,
- 1:01:26Speaker 1: he began to cherish a longing for advice. It was
- 1:01:30Speaker 1: not to be had directly, but perhaps he thought it
- 1:01:34Speaker 1: might be fished for presently. After he sat on one
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: side of his own hearth, with mister Guest his head
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: clerk upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular
- 1:01:52Speaker 1: old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations
- 1:01:56Speaker 1: of his house. The fog still slept on the wing
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles.
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: And through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds,
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: the procession of the town's life was still rolling in
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: through the great arteries with a sound as of a
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: mighty wind. But the room was gay with firelight in
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: the bottle. The acids were long ago resolved. The imperial
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: dye had softened with time as the color grows richer
- 1:02:29Speaker 1: in stained windows, and the glow of hot autumn afternoons
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: on hillside vineyards was ready to be set free and
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly, the lawyer melted.
- 1:02:44Speaker 1: There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: than mister Guest, and he was not always sure that
- 1:02:51Speaker 1: he kept as many as he meant. Guests had often
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: been on business to the doctors. He knew Paul, he
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: could scare have failed to hear of mister Hyde's familiarity
- 1:03:03Speaker 1: about the house. He might draw conclusions. Was it not
- 1:03:07Speaker 1: as well, then that he should see a letter which
- 1:03:10Speaker 1: put that mystery to writs? And above all, since Guest,
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: being a great student and critic of handwriting, would consider
- 1:03:18Speaker 1: the step natural and obliging. The clerk, besides, was a
- 1:03:24Speaker 1: man of counsel, he would scarce read so strange a
- 1:03:27Speaker 1: document without dropping a remark, and by that remark mister
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: Utterson might shape his future course. This is a sad business,
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: about sir Danvers, he said, yes, sir, indeed it has
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: elicited a great deal of public feeling, returned Guest. The man,
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: of course, was mad. I should like to hear your
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: views on that, replied Utterson. I have a document here
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: in his handwriting. It is between us ourselves. For I
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: scarce knew what to do about it. It is an
- 1:04:04Speaker 1: ugly business at the best, but there it is quite
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: in your way, a murderer's autograph. Guest's eyes brightened, and
- 1:04:13Speaker 1: he sat down at once and studied it with passion. No, sir,
- 1:04:18Speaker 1: he said, not mad, but it is an odd hand
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: and by all accounts, a very odd writer, added the lawyer.
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: Just then the servant entered with a note. Is that
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: from doctor Jackyll, Sir, inquired the clerk. I thought, I
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: knew the writing anything private, mister Utterson, only an invitation
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: to dinner. Why do you want to see it? One moment?
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: I thank you, sir, and the clerk laid the two
- 1:04:48Speaker 1: sheets of paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. Thank you, sir,
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: he said, at last, returning both it's a very interesting
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: autograp There was a pause during which mister Utterson struggled
- 1:05:05Speaker 1: with himself. Why did you compare them, guest, he inquired. Suddenly, Well, Sir,
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: returned the clerk, there's a rather singular resemblance. The two
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: hands are in many points identical, only differently sloped. Rather quaint,
- 1:05:25Speaker 1: said Utterson. It is as you say, rather quaint, returned Guest.
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: I wouldn't speak of this note, you know, said the master. No, sir,
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: said the clerk. I understand, but no sooner was mister
- 1:05:41Speaker 1: Uttereson alone that night than he locked the note into
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: his safe, where it reposed from that time forward what
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: he thought Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer, and his
- 1:05:56Speaker 1: blood ran cold in his veins. Chapter six remarkable incident
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: of doctor Lanyon. Time ran on. Thousands of pounds were
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: offered in reward for the death of Sir Danvers was
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: resented as a public injury, But mister Hyde had disappeared
- 1:06:20Speaker 1: out of the ken of the police, as though he
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: had never existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed,
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: and all disreputable tales came out of the man's cruelty,
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: at once so callous and violent, of his vile life,
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: of his strange associates, of the hatred that seems to
- 1:06:42Speaker 1: have surrounded his career, but of his present whereabouts not
- 1:06:47Speaker 1: a whisper from the time he had left the house
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: in Soho on the morning of the murder, he was
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: simply blotted out, And gradually, as time drew on, Missus
- 1:07:00Speaker 1: Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm,
- 1:07:04Speaker 1: and to grow more at quiet with himself. The death
- 1:07:08Speaker 1: of Sir Danvers was, to his way of thinking, more
- 1:07:12Speaker 1: than paid for by the disappearance of mister Hyde. Now
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: began for Doctor Jekyl. He came out of his seclusion,
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar
- 1:07:29Speaker 1: guest and entertainer, And whilst he had always been known
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion.
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: He was busy, he was much in the open air.
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: He did good. His face seemed to open and brighten,
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: as if with an inward consciousness of service. And for
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: more than two months the doctor was at peace. On
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: the eighth of January Otterson had dined at the doctor's
- 1:07:59Speaker 1: with a small party. Lanion had been there, and the
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: face of the host had looked from one to the other,
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends.
- 1:08:11Speaker 1: On the twelfth, and again on the fourteenth, the door
- 1:08:14Speaker 1: was shut against the lawyer. The doctor was confined to
- 1:08:19Speaker 1: the house, Paul said, and saw no one. On the
- 1:08:24Speaker 1: fifteenth he tried again, and was again refused. And having
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: now been used for the last two months to see
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: in guest to dine with him, and the sixth he
- 1:08:44Speaker 1: betook himself to doctor Lanion's. There at least he was
- 1:08:48Speaker 1: not denied admittance, But when he came in, he was
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: shocked at the change which had taken place in the
- 1:08:54Speaker 1: doctor's appearance. He had his death warrant written legibly upon
- 1:08:59Speaker 1: him face. The rosy man had grown pale, his flesh
- 1:09:05Speaker 1: had fallen away. He was visibly balder and older. And
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: yet it was not so much these tokens of a
- 1:09:13Speaker 1: swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice as a
- 1:09:18Speaker 1: look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed
- 1:09:21Speaker 1: to testify to some deep seated terror of the mind.
- 1:09:26Speaker 1: It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death, and
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: yet that was what Otterson was tempted to suspect. Yes,
- 1:09:34Speaker 1: he thought, he is a doctor. He must know his
- 1:09:36Speaker 1: own state, and that his days are counted, and the
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: knowledge is more than he can bear. And yet, when
- 1:09:44Speaker 1: Otterson remarked on his ill looks, it was with an
- 1:09:48Speaker 1: air of great firmness that Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.
- 1:09:54Speaker 1: I have had a shock, he said, and I shall
- 1:09:57Speaker 1: never recover. It is a question of weeks. Well. Life
- 1:10:03Speaker 1: has been pleasant. I liked it, yes, sir, I used
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all,
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: we should be more glad to get away. Jekyl is ill, too,
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: observed Utterson. Have you seen him? But Lanion's face changed
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: and he held up a trembling hand. I wish to
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: see or hear no more of doctor Jekyll, he said,
- 1:10:29Speaker 1: in a loud, unsteady voice. I am quite done with
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: that person, and I beg that you will spare me
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: any allusion to one whom I regard as dead. Tut tut,
- 1:10:40Speaker 1: said mister Utterson, and then, after a considerable pause, can't
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: I do anything? He inquired, We are three very old friends, Lanion,
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: we shall not live to make others. Nothing can be done,
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: returned Lanion, ask himself. He will not see me, said
- 1:11:00Speaker 1: the doctor. I'm not surprised at that was the reply.
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: Some day, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: come to learn the right and wrong of this. I
- 1:11:10Speaker 1: cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: sit and talk with me of other things, for God's sake,
- 1:11:16Speaker 1: stay and do so. But if you cannot keep clear
- 1:11:19Speaker 1: of this accursed topic, then in God's name, go, for
- 1:11:24Speaker 1: I cannot bear it. As soon as he got home,
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: Otterson sat down and wrote to Jekyl, complaining of his
- 1:11:33Speaker 1: exclusion from the house and asking the cause of this
- 1:11:36Speaker 1: unhappy break with Lanyon, and the next day brought him
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: a long answer, often very pathetically worded and sometimes darkly
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: mysterious in drift, the quarrel with Lanyon was incurable. I
- 1:11:53Speaker 1: do not blame our old friend, Jekyl wrote, but I
- 1:11:56Speaker 1: share his view that we must never meet. I mean,
- 1:12:00Speaker 1: from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion. You
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: must not be surprised nor must you doubt my friendship.
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: If my door is often shut even to you, you
- 1:12:11Speaker 1: must suffer me to go my own dark way. I
- 1:12:15Speaker 1: have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that
- 1:12:18Speaker 1: I cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners,
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: I am the chief of sufferers. Also, I could not
- 1:12:26Speaker 1: think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: terrors so unmanning. And you can do but one thing, Utterson,
- 1:12:35Speaker 1: to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence.
- 1:12:41Speaker 1: Utterson was amazed. The dark influence of hide had been withdrawn.
- 1:12:46Speaker 1: The doctor had returned to his old tasks and amateurs.
- 1:12:51Speaker 1: A week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise
- 1:12:54Speaker 1: of a cheerful and an honored age. And now in
- 1:12:58Speaker 1: a moment, friendship and peace of mind, and the whole
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and unprepared
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: a change pointed to madness. But in view of Lanion's
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: A week afterwards, doctor Lanion took to his bed, and
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: in something less than a fortnight he was dead. The
- 1:13:27Speaker 1: night after the funeral at which he had been sadly affected,
- 1:13:31Speaker 1: Otterson locked the door of his business room, and, sitting
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: there by the light of a melancholy candle, drew out
- 1:13:39Speaker 1: and set before him an envelope addressed by the hand
- 1:13:43Speaker 1: and sealed with the seal of his dear friend private
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: for the hands of J. G. Utterson alone, and in
- 1:13:52Speaker 1: case of his predecease, to be destroyed unread. So it
- 1:13:58Speaker 1: was emphatically superscribed, and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents.
- 1:14:04Speaker 1: I have buried one friend to day he thought, what
- 1:14:08Speaker 1: if this should cost me another? And then he condemned
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: the fear as a disloyalty, and broke the seal. Within
- 1:14:17Speaker 1: there was another enclosure, likewise sealed and marked upon the
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: cover as not to be opened till the death or
- 1:14:26Speaker 1: disappearance of doctor Henry Jekyl. Otterson could not trust his eyes. Yes,
- 1:14:33Speaker 1: it was disappearance here again, as in the mad will,
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: which he had long ago restored to its author, Here
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: again were the idea of a disappearance, and the name
- 1:14:45Speaker 1: of Henry Jekyl bracketed. But in the will that idea
- 1:14:50Speaker 1: had sprung from the sinister suggestion of the man hide.
- 1:14:54Speaker 1: It was set there with a purpose all too plain,
- 1:14:57Speaker 1: and horrible written by the hand of Lanyon. What could
- 1:15:01Speaker 1: it mean? A great curiosity came on the trustee to
- 1:15:06Speaker 1: disregard the prohibition and dive at once to the bottom
- 1:15:10Speaker 1: of these mysteries. But professional honor and faith to his
- 1:15:14Speaker 1: dead friend were stringent obligations, and the packet slept in
- 1:15:20Speaker 1: the inmost corner of his private safe. It is one
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it, And it
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: may be doubted if from that day forth Otterson desired
- 1:15:35Speaker 1: the society of his surviving friend with the same eagerness.
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: He thought of him kindly, but his thoughts were disquieted
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: and fearful. He went to call, indeed, but he was
- 1:15:49Speaker 1: perhaps relieved to be denied admittance. Perhaps in his heart
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: he preferred to speak with Paul upon the doorstep and
- 1:15:58Speaker 1: surrounded by the air and sound of the open city,
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: rather than to be admitted into that house of voluntary
- 1:16:05Speaker 1: bondage and to sit and speak with its inscrutable recluse.
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: Paul had indeed no very pleasant news to communicate. The doctor,
- 1:16:16Speaker 1: it appeared, now more than ever, confined himself to the
- 1:16:20Speaker 1: cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even sleep.
- 1:16:25Speaker 1: He was out of spirits. He had grown very silent.
- 1:16:30Speaker 1: He did not read. It seemed as if he had
- 1:16:33Speaker 1: something on his mind. Utterson became so used to the
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: unvarying character of these reports that he fell off little
- 1:16:42Speaker 1: by little in the frequency of his visits. Chapter seven
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: incident at the window. It chanced on Sunday, when mister
- 1:16:58Speaker 1: Utterson was on his usual walk with mister Enfield, that
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: their way lay once again through the by street, and
- 1:17:05Speaker 1: that when they came in front of the door, both
- 1:17:08Speaker 1: stopped to gaze at it. Well, said Enfield, that story
- 1:17:13Speaker 1: is at an end. At least we shall never see
- 1:17:15Speaker 1: more of mister Hyde. I hope not, said Utterson. Did
- 1:17:20Speaker 1: I ever tell you that I once saw him and
- 1:17:23Speaker 1: shared your feeling of repulsion? It was impossible to do
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: the one without the other, returned Enfield. And by the way,
- 1:17:31Speaker 1: what an ass you must have thought me not to
- 1:17:34Speaker 1: know that this was a back way to Dr Jeckylls.
- 1:17:37Speaker 1: It was partly your own fault that I found out,
- 1:17:40Speaker 1: even when I did so. You found it out, did you,
- 1:17:44Speaker 1: said Utterson? But if that be so, we may step
- 1:17:48Speaker 1: into the court and take a look at the windows.
- 1:17:51Speaker 1: To tell you the truth. I am uneasy about poor Jekyl,
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: and even outside I feel as if the presence of
- 1:17:58Speaker 1: a friend might do him good. The court was very
- 1:18:02Speaker 1: cool and a little damp, and full of premature twilight,
- 1:18:07Speaker 1: although the sky high up overhead was still bright with sunset.
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: The middle one of the three windows was half way open,
- 1:18:17Speaker 1: and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an
- 1:18:20Speaker 1: infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner. Utterson saw
- 1:18:26Speaker 1: doctor Jeckyll. What Jeckyll, he cried, I trust you are better.
- 1:18:32Speaker 1: I am very low, Utterson replied the doctor, drearily, very low.
- 1:18:39Speaker 1: It will not last long. Thank god you stayed too
- 1:18:43Speaker 1: much indoors, said the lawyer. You should be out whipping
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: up the circulation like mister Enfield and me. This is
- 1:18:50Speaker 1: my cousin, mister Enfield, doctor Jeckyll, Come now, get your
- 1:18:54Speaker 1: hat and take a quick turn with us. You are
- 1:18:58Speaker 1: very good, sighed the other. I should like to very much,
- 1:19:02Speaker 1: But no, no, no, it is quite impossible. I dare not,
- 1:19:06Speaker 1: but indeed utters and I am very glad to see you.
- 1:19:09Speaker 1: This is really a great pleasure. I would ask you
- 1:19:13Speaker 1: and mister Enfield up, but the place is really not fit.
- 1:19:17Speaker 1: Why then, said the lawyer, good naturedly. The best thing
- 1:19:20Speaker 1: we can do is to stay down here and speak
- 1:19:23Speaker 1: with you from where we are. That is just what
- 1:19:26Speaker 1: I was about to venture to propose, returned the doctor
- 1:19:30Speaker 1: with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered before
- 1:19:34Speaker 1: the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded
- 1:19:38Speaker 1: by an expression of such abject terror and despair as
- 1:19:44Speaker 1: froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below. They
- 1:19:48Speaker 1: saw it but for a glimpse, for the window was
- 1:19:51Speaker 1: instantly thrust down. But that glimpse had been sufficient, and
- 1:19:55Speaker 1: they turned and left the court without a word, in
- 1:20:00Speaker 1: silence too. They traversed the by street, and it was
- 1:20:03Speaker 1: not until they had come into a neighboring thoroughfare, where,
- 1:20:07Speaker 1: even upon a Sunday, there were still some stirrings of
- 1:20:10Speaker 1: life that mister Utterson at last turned and looked at
- 1:20:14Speaker 1: his companion. They were both pale, and there was an
- 1:20:19Speaker 1: answering horror in their eyes. God forgive us, God forgive us,
- 1:20:25Speaker 1: said mister Utterson. But mister Enfield only nodded his head
- 1:20:30Speaker 1: very seriously and walked on once more in silence. End
- 1:20:37Speaker 1: of chapter seven. Chapters eight and nine. Chapter eight the
- 1:20:43Speaker 1: last night. Mister Utterson was sitting by his fireside one
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: evening after dinner, when he was surprised to receive a
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: visit from Paul. Bless me, Paul, what brings you here?
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: He cried, and then, taking a second look at him,
- 1:21:02Speaker 1: what ails you? He added? Is the doctor ill? Mister
- 1:21:07Speaker 1: Utterson said the man. There is something wrong. Take a seat,
- 1:21:12Speaker 1: and here is a glass of wine for you, said
- 1:21:14Speaker 1: the lawyer. Now take your time and tell me plainly
- 1:21:18Speaker 1: what you want. You know the doctor's ways, sir, replied Paul,
- 1:21:23Speaker 1: And how he shuts himself up. Well, he's shot up
- 1:21:27Speaker 1: again in the cabinet. And I don't like it, Sir.
- 1:21:31Speaker 1: I wish I may die if I like it. Mister Utterson, Sir,
- 1:21:35Speaker 1: I'm afraid now, my good man, said the lawyer. Be explicit.
- 1:21:41Speaker 1: What are you afraid of? I've been afraid for about
- 1:21:45Speaker 1: a week, returned Paul doggedly, disregarding the question. And I
- 1:21:50Speaker 1: can bear it no more. The man's appearance amply bore
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: out his words. His manner was altered for the worse,
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: and except for the moment when he had first announced
- 1:22:01Speaker 1: his terror, he had not once looked the lawyer in
- 1:22:04Speaker 1: the face. Even now he sat with the glass of
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: wine untasted on his knee and his eyes directed to
- 1:22:12Speaker 1: a corner of the floor. I can bear it no more,
- 1:22:16Speaker 1: he repeated, Come, said the lawyer. I see you have
- 1:22:20Speaker 1: some good reason, Paul. I see there is something seriously amiss.
- 1:22:25Speaker 1: Try to tell me what it is. I think there's
- 1:22:29Speaker 1: been foul play, said Paul hoarsely. Foul play, cried the lawyer,
- 1:22:35Speaker 1: a good deal frightened and rather inclined to be irritated
- 1:22:39Speaker 1: in consequence, What foul play? What does the man mean?
- 1:22:45Speaker 1: I daren't say, sir, was the answer. But will you
- 1:22:49Speaker 1: come along with me and see for yourself? Mister Utterson's
- 1:22:53Speaker 1: only answer was to rise and get his hat and greatcoat.
- 1:22:57Speaker 1: But he observed with wonder the greatness of the relief
- 1:23:01Speaker 1: that appeared upon the butler's face, and perhaps with no
- 1:23:04Speaker 1: less that the wine was still untasted when he set
- 1:23:08Speaker 1: it down. To follow It was a wild, cold, seasonable
- 1:23:14Speaker 1: night of March, with a pale moon lying on her
- 1:23:17Speaker 1: back as though the wind had tilted her, and a
- 1:23:21Speaker 1: flying rack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The
- 1:23:26Speaker 1: wind made talking difficult and flecked the blood into the face.
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers. Besides,
- 1:23:37Speaker 1: for mister Utterson thought he had never seen that part
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: of London so deserted. He could have wished it otherwise.
- 1:23:44Speaker 1: Never in his life had he been conscious of so
- 1:23:47Speaker 1: sharp a wish to see and touch his fellow creatures.
- 1:23:52Speaker 1: For struggle as he might, there was borne in upon
- 1:23:55Speaker 1: his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity. The square, when
- 1:24:01Speaker 1: they got there, was all full of wind and dust,
- 1:24:05Speaker 1: and the thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves
- 1:24:08Speaker 1: against the railing Paul, who had kept all the way
- 1:24:12Speaker 1: apace or two a head, now pulled up in the
- 1:24:15Speaker 1: middle of the pavement, and, in spite of the biting weather,
- 1:24:20Speaker 1: took off his hat and mopped his brow with the
- 1:24:23Speaker 1: red pocket handkerchief. But for all the hurry of his coming,
- 1:24:28Speaker 1: these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped away,
- 1:24:32Speaker 1: but the moisture of some strangling anguish. For his face
- 1:24:36Speaker 1: was white, and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken. Well, sir,
- 1:24:43Speaker 1: he said, here we are, and God grant there be
- 1:24:46Speaker 1: nothing wrong. Amen, Paul, said the lawyer. Thereupon the servant
- 1:24:53Speaker 1: knocked in a very guarded manner. The door was opened
- 1:24:57Speaker 1: on the chain, and a voice asked from within, is
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: that you Paul? It's all right, said Paul, opened the
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: door the hall. When they entered, it was brightly lighted up.
- 1:25:11Speaker 1: The fire was built high, and about the hearth. The
- 1:25:14Speaker 1: whole of the servants, men and women, stood huddled together
- 1:25:17Speaker 1: like a flock of sheep. At the sight of mister Utterson,
- 1:25:22Speaker 1: the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering, and the cook, crying out,
- 1:25:27Speaker 1: bless God, it's mister Utterson, ran forward as if to
- 1:25:31Speaker 1: take him in her arms. What what are you all here,
- 1:25:36Speaker 1: said the lawyer. Peevishly, very irregular, very unseemly. Your master
- 1:25:42Speaker 1: would be far from pleased. They're all afraid, said Paul.
- 1:25:48Speaker 1: Blank silence followed, no one protesting. Only the maid lifted
- 1:25:53Speaker 1: up her voice and now wept loudly. Hold your tongue,
- 1:25:57Speaker 1: Paul said to her, with a ferocity of an accent
- 1:26:00Speaker 1: that testified to his own jangled nerves. And indeed, when
- 1:26:05Speaker 1: the girl had so suddenly raised the note of her lamentation,
- 1:26:09Speaker 1: they had all started and turned towards the inner door
- 1:26:13Speaker 1: with faces of dreadful expectation, and now continued the butler,
- 1:26:20Speaker 1: addressing the knife boy, reach me a candle and we'll
- 1:26:24Speaker 1: get this through hands at once. And then he begged
- 1:26:28Speaker 1: mister Utterson to follow him, and led the way to
- 1:26:31Speaker 1: the back garden. Now, Sir said he you come as
- 1:26:36Speaker 1: gently as you can. I want you to hear, and
- 1:26:40Speaker 1: I don't want you to be heard and see here, sir,
- 1:26:44Speaker 1: if by any chance he was to ask you in,
- 1:26:47Speaker 1: don't go. Mister Utterson's nerves at this unlooked for termination
- 1:26:55Speaker 1: gave a jerk that nearly threw him from his balance,
- 1:26:58Speaker 1: but he recollected his curry bridge and followed the butler
- 1:27:01Speaker 1: into the laboratory building and through the surgical theater with
- 1:27:06Speaker 1: its lumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of
- 1:27:09Speaker 1: the stair. Here Paul motioned him to stand on one
- 1:27:14Speaker 1: side and listen, while he himself, setting down the candle
- 1:27:19Speaker 1: and making a great and obvious call on his resolution,
- 1:27:23Speaker 1: mounted the steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand
- 1:27:28Speaker 1: on the red baize of the cabinet door. Mister Rotterson, Sir,
- 1:27:33Speaker 1: asking to see you, he called, and even as he
- 1:27:37Speaker 1: did so, once more violently signed to the lawyer to
- 1:27:41Speaker 1: give ear. A voice answered from within. Tell him I
- 1:27:47Speaker 1: cannot see any one, it answered, complainingly. Thank you, sir,
- 1:27:53Speaker 1: said Paul, with a note of something like triumph in
- 1:27:56Speaker 1: his voice, and taking up his candle head mister Utterson
- 1:28:00Speaker 1: back across the yard and into the great kitchen, where
- 1:28:04Speaker 1: the fire was out and the beatles were leaping on
- 1:28:07Speaker 1: the floor. Sir, he said, looking mister Utterson in the eyes,
- 1:28:13Speaker 1: was that my master's voice? It seems much changed, replied
- 1:28:19Speaker 1: the lawyer, very pale, but giving look for look changed. Well, yes,
- 1:28:26Speaker 1: I think so, said the butler. Have I been twenty
- 1:28:30Speaker 1: years in this man's house to be deceived about his voice? No, Sir,
- 1:28:35Speaker 1: Master's made away with. He was made away with eight
- 1:28:39Speaker 1: days ago when we heard him cry out upon the
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: name of God. And who's in there instead of him?
- 1:28:46Speaker 1: And why it stays there is a thing that cries
- 1:28:49Speaker 1: to heaven, mister Utterson, This is a very strange tale, Paul,
- 1:28:56Speaker 1: This is rather a wild tale, my man, said mister
- 1:28:59Speaker 1: u Utterson, biting his finger. Suppose it were as you suppose,
- 1:29:05Speaker 1: supposing doctor Jekyll to have been well murdered, what could
- 1:29:11Speaker 1: induce the murderer to stay that won't hold water. It
- 1:29:15Speaker 1: doesn't commend itself to reason. Well, mister Utterson, you are
- 1:29:20Speaker 1: a hard man to satisfy. But I'll do it yet,
- 1:29:24Speaker 1: said Paul. All this last week, you must know him
- 1:29:29Speaker 1: or it, or whatever it is that lives in that
- 1:29:32Speaker 1: cabinet has been crying night and day for some sort
- 1:29:36Speaker 1: of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. It
- 1:29:40Speaker 1: was sometimes his way, the master's, that is, to write
- 1:29:44Speaker 1: his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it
- 1:29:46Speaker 1: on the stair. We've had nothing else this week back,
- 1:29:51Speaker 1: nothing but papers and a closed door, and the very
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: meals left there to be smuggled in when no one
- 1:29:57Speaker 1: was looking. Well, sir, Every day, ay and twice and
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: thrice in the same day. There have been orders and complaints,
- 1:30:07Speaker 1: and I've been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists
- 1:30:10Speaker 1: in town. Every time I brought the stuff back there
- 1:30:13Speaker 1: would be another paper telling me to return it because
- 1:30:16Speaker 1: it was not pure, and another order to a different firm.
- 1:30:21Speaker 1: This drug is wanted, bitter bad, sir. Whatever for have
- 1:30:26Speaker 1: you any of these papers, asked mister Utterson. Paul felt
- 1:30:31Speaker 1: in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note which
- 1:30:35Speaker 1: the lawyer, bending nearer to the candle, carefully examined its contents.
- 1:30:41Speaker 1: Ran Thus Dr Jekyl presents his compliments to Messrs More.
- 1:30:47Speaker 1: He assures them that their last sample is impure and
- 1:30:51Speaker 1: quite useless for his present purpose. In the year eighteen something,
- 1:30:57Speaker 1: Dr J purchased a somewhat largey from Messrs m. He
- 1:31:02Speaker 1: now begs them to search with the most sedulous care,
- 1:31:06Speaker 1: and should any of the same quality be left to
- 1:31:09Speaker 1: forward it to him at once, expense is no consideration.
- 1:31:13Speaker 1: The importance of this to Doctor J can hardly be exaggerated.
- 1:31:19Speaker 1: So far the letter had run composedly enough, but here,
- 1:31:23Speaker 1: with a sudden splotter of the pen, the writer's emotion
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: had broken loose. For God's sake, he had added, find
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: me some of the old This is a strange note,
- 1:31:36Speaker 1: said mister Utterson, and then sharply, how do you come
- 1:31:40Speaker 1: to have it open? The man at Maw's was made angry, sir,
- 1:31:45Speaker 1: and he threw it back to me like so much dirt.
- 1:31:48Speaker 1: Returned Paul, this is unquestionably the doctor's hand, do you know,
- 1:31:54Speaker 1: resumed the lawyer. I thought it looked like it, said
- 1:31:58Speaker 1: the servant rather sulkily, And then with another voice, but
- 1:32:02Speaker 1: what matters. Hand of right, he said, I've seen him,
- 1:32:07Speaker 1: seen him, repeated mister Ruttereson. Well that's it, said Paul.
- 1:32:13Speaker 1: It was this way. I came suddenly into the theater
- 1:32:17Speaker 1: from the garden. It seems he'd slipped out to look
- 1:32:20Speaker 1: for this drug or whatever it is for The cabinet
- 1:32:23Speaker 1: door was open, and there he was at the far
- 1:32:27Speaker 1: end of the room, digging among the crates. He looked
- 1:32:31Speaker 1: up when I came in, gave a kind of cry,
- 1:32:34Speaker 1: and whipped up stairs into the cabinet. It was but
- 1:32:37Speaker 1: for one minute that I saw him, But the hare
- 1:32:40Speaker 1: stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was
- 1:32:45Speaker 1: my master, why had he a mask upon his face?
- 1:32:49Speaker 1: If it was my master, why did he cry out
- 1:32:53Speaker 1: like a rat and run from me? I have served
- 1:32:56Speaker 1: him long enough. And then the man paused and passed
- 1:33:01Speaker 1: his hand over his face. These are all very strange circumstances,
- 1:33:07Speaker 1: said mister Utterson. But I think I begin to see daylight.
- 1:33:12Speaker 1: Your master, Paul is plainly seized with one of those
- 1:33:15Speaker 1: maladies that both torture and transform the sufferer. Hence for aught,
- 1:33:21Speaker 1: I know, the alteration of his voice, hence the mask,
- 1:33:26Speaker 1: and his avoidance of his friends, hence his eagerness to
- 1:33:30Speaker 1: find this drug by means of which the poor soul
- 1:33:33Speaker 1: retains some hope of ultimate recovery. God grants that he
- 1:33:37Speaker 1: be not deceived. There is my explanation. It is sad enough, Paul,
- 1:33:43Speaker 1: I am appalling to consider, but it is plain and natural,
- 1:33:48Speaker 1: hangs together well and delivers us from all exorbitant alarms. Sir,
- 1:33:55Speaker 1: said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor.
- 1:34:00Speaker 1: That thing was not my master, and there's the truth.
- 1:34:05Speaker 1: My master here, He looked around him and began to whisper.
- 1:34:10Speaker 1: Is a tall, fine build of a man, and this
- 1:34:14Speaker 1: was more of a dwarf. Utterson attempted to protest. Oh, Sir,
- 1:34:19Speaker 1: cried Paul. Do you think I do not know my
- 1:34:21Speaker 1: master after twenty years? Do you think I do not
- 1:34:25Speaker 1: know where his head comes to in the cabinet door
- 1:34:28Speaker 1: where I saw him every morning of my life? No, Sir,
- 1:34:32Speaker 1: that thing in the mask was never Dr Jekyll. God
- 1:34:36Speaker 1: knows what it was, but it was never Dr Jekyl.
- 1:34:40Speaker 1: And it is the belief of my heart that there
- 1:34:43Speaker 1: was murder done. Paul replied the lawyer. If you say that,
- 1:34:50Speaker 1: it will become my duty to make certain much as
- 1:34:54Speaker 1: I desire to spare your master's feelings, much as I
- 1:34:58Speaker 1: am puzzled by this note, which seems to prove him
- 1:35:01Speaker 1: to be still alive, I shall consider it my duty
- 1:35:04Speaker 1: to break in that door. Ah, mister Utterson, that's talking,
- 1:35:10Speaker 1: cried the butler. And now comes the second question, resumed Utterson.
- 1:35:16Speaker 1: Who is going to do it? Why you and me? Sir?
- 1:35:21Speaker 1: Was the undaunted reply. That is very well, said, returned
- 1:35:24Speaker 1: the lawyer. And whatever comes of it, I shall make
- 1:35:28Speaker 1: it my business to see you are no loser. There
- 1:35:32Speaker 1: is an axe in the theater, continued Paul, and you
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: might take the kitchen poker for yourself. The lawyer took
- 1:35:40Speaker 1: that rude but weighty instrument into his hand and balanced it.
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: Do you know, Paul, he said, looking up, that you
- 1:35:48Speaker 1: and I are about to place ourselves in a position
- 1:35:51Speaker 1: of some peril. You may say so, sir. Indeed, returned
- 1:35:56Speaker 1: the butler. It is well then that we should be, Frank,
- 1:36:00Speaker 1: said the other. We both think more than we have said.
- 1:36:04Speaker 1: Let us make a clean breast. This masked figure that
- 1:36:08Speaker 1: you saw, did you recognize it well? Sir? It went
- 1:36:13Speaker 1: so quick, and the creature was so doubled up that
- 1:36:16Speaker 1: I could hardly swear to that was the answer. But
- 1:36:19Speaker 1: if you mean, was it mister Hyde, why yes, I
- 1:36:23Speaker 1: think it was. You see, it was much of the
- 1:36:26Speaker 1: same bigness, and it had the same quick light way
- 1:36:30Speaker 1: with it. And then who else could have got in
- 1:36:33Speaker 1: by the laboratory door. You've not forgot, sir, that at
- 1:36:36Speaker 1: the time of the murder he still had the key
- 1:36:39Speaker 1: with him. But that's not all I don't know, mister Utterson.
- 1:36:43Speaker 1: If you ever met this mister Hyde, yes, said the lawyer,
- 1:36:48Speaker 1: I once spoke with him, then you must know as
- 1:36:51Speaker 1: well as the rest of us, that there was something
- 1:36:53Speaker 1: queer about that gentleman, something that gave a man a turn.
- 1:36:57Speaker 1: I don't know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond
- 1:37:00Speaker 1: this that you felt it in your marrow, kind of
- 1:37:04Speaker 1: cold and thin. I own I felt something of what
- 1:37:08Speaker 1: you describe, said mister Utterson. Quite so, sir, returned Paul. Well,
- 1:37:15Speaker 1: when that masked thing like a monkey jumped from among
- 1:37:18Speaker 1: the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it went down
- 1:37:22Speaker 1: my spine like ice. Oh I know it's not evidence,
- 1:37:25Speaker 1: mister Utterson. I'm book learned enough for that but a
- 1:37:29Speaker 1: man has his feelings, and I give you my Bible word.
- 1:37:33Speaker 1: It was mister Hyde. Aye aye, said the lawyer. My
- 1:37:38Speaker 1: fears inclined to the same point. Evil, I fear founded,
- 1:37:43Speaker 1: evil was sure to come of that conviction. Ay, truly,
- 1:37:48Speaker 1: I believe you. I believe poor Harry is killed, and
- 1:37:52Speaker 1: I believe his murderer, for what purpose God alone can tell,
- 1:37:57Speaker 1: is still lurking in his victim's room. Well, let our
- 1:38:01Speaker 1: name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw. The footmen came at the summons,
- 1:38:08Speaker 1: very white and nervous. Pull yourself together, Bradshaw, said the lawyer.
- 1:38:13Speaker 1: This suspense, I know, is telling upon all of you,
- 1:38:16Speaker 1: But it is now our intention to make an end
- 1:38:19Speaker 1: of it. Paul here and I are going to force
- 1:38:22Speaker 1: our way into the cabinet. If all is well, my
- 1:38:26Speaker 1: shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame. Meanwhile, lest
- 1:38:30Speaker 1: anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to
- 1:38:35Speaker 1: escape by the back, you and the boy must go
- 1:38:38Speaker 1: round the corner with a pair of good sticks and
- 1:38:41Speaker 1: take your post at the laboratory door. We give you
- 1:38:44Speaker 1: ten minutes to get to your stations. As Bradshaw left,
- 1:38:49Speaker 1: the lawyer looked at his watch and Now, paul let
- 1:38:53Speaker 1: us get to ours, he said, and taking the poker
- 1:38:57Speaker 1: under his arm, he led the way into the yard.
- 1:39:00Speaker 1: The scud had banked over the moon, and it was
- 1:39:04Speaker 1: now quite dark. The wind, which only broke in puffs
- 1:39:08Speaker 1: and drafts into that deep well of building, tossed the
- 1:39:12Speaker 1: light of the candle to and fro about their steps,
- 1:39:16Speaker 1: until they came into the shelter of the theater, where
- 1:39:19Speaker 1: they sat down silently to wait. London honed solemnly all around,
- 1:39:26Speaker 1: but nearer at hand. The stillness was only broken by
- 1:39:30Speaker 1: the sound of a footfall, moving to and fro along
- 1:39:33Speaker 1: the cabinet floor. So it will walk all day, sir,
- 1:39:39Speaker 1: whispered paul Ay, and the better part of the night.
- 1:39:43Speaker 1: Only when a new sample comes from the chemist. There's
- 1:39:46Speaker 1: a bit of a break. Ah. It's an ill conscience
- 1:39:50Speaker 1: that's such an enemy to rest. Ah, Sir, there's blood
- 1:39:54Speaker 1: foully shed in every step of it. But hark again
- 1:39:58Speaker 1: a little closer. Put your heart into your ears, mister Utterson,
- 1:40:02Speaker 1: and tell me is that the doctor's foot. The steps
- 1:40:08Speaker 1: fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing. For all
- 1:40:12Speaker 1: they went so slowly. It was different, indeed, from the
- 1:40:16Speaker 1: heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyl, Utterson sighed. Is there
- 1:40:22Speaker 1: never anything else? He asked. Paul nodded once, he said,
- 1:40:27Speaker 1: Once I heard it weeping, weeping? How's that? Said the lawyer,
- 1:40:33Speaker 1: conscious of a sudden chill of horror. Weeping like a
- 1:40:37Speaker 1: woman or a lost soul, said the butler. I came
- 1:40:41Speaker 1: away with that upon my heart. That I could have
- 1:40:44Speaker 1: wept too. But now the ten minutes drew to an end.
- 1:40:49Speaker 1: Paul disinterred the axe from under a sack of packing straw.
- 1:40:54Speaker 1: The candle was set upon the nearest table to light
- 1:40:57Speaker 1: them to the attack, and they drew near, with bated breath,
- 1:41:01Speaker 1: to where that patient foot was still going up and down,
- 1:41:04Speaker 1: up and down in the quiet of the night. Jekyl
- 1:41:09Speaker 1: cried Utterson, with a loud voice. I demand to see you.
- 1:41:14Speaker 1: He paused a moment, but there came no reply. I
- 1:41:17Speaker 1: give you fair warning. Our suspicions are aroused, and I
- 1:41:21Speaker 1: must and shall see you, he resumed. If not by
- 1:41:26Speaker 1: fair means, then by foul. If not of your consent,
- 1:41:30Speaker 1: then by brute force, Utterson said, the voice, for God's sake,
- 1:41:37Speaker 1: have mercy. Ah, that's not Jekyl's voice, it's hide cried Utterson.
- 1:41:43Speaker 1: Down with the door Paul. Paul swung the axe over
- 1:41:47Speaker 1: his shoulder. The blow shook the building, and the red
- 1:41:50Speaker 1: baized door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal
- 1:41:55Speaker 1: screech as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet,
- 1:41:59Speaker 1: up where the axe again and again, the panels crashed,
- 1:42:03Speaker 1: and the flame bounded. Four times the blow fell, but
- 1:42:07Speaker 1: the wood was tough, and the fittings were of excellent workmanship,
- 1:42:11Speaker 1: and it was not until the fifth that the lock
- 1:42:14Speaker 1: burst insunder, and the wreck of the door fell inwards
- 1:42:17Speaker 1: on the carpet. The besiegers, appalled by their own riot
- 1:42:23Speaker 1: and the stillness that had succeeded, stood back a little
- 1:42:27Speaker 1: and peered in. There lay the cabinet before their eyes,
- 1:42:31Speaker 1: in the quiet lamp light, a good fire glowing and
- 1:42:35Speaker 1: chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain,
- 1:42:41Speaker 1: A drawer or two open papers neatly set forth on
- 1:42:44Speaker 1: the business table, and nearer the fire, the things laid
- 1:42:48Speaker 1: out for tea the quietest room, you would have said,
- 1:42:53Speaker 1: and but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the
- 1:42:57Speaker 1: most commonplace that night in London. Right in the midst
- 1:43:02Speaker 1: there lay the body of a man, sorely contorted and
- 1:43:06Speaker 1: still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on
- 1:43:11Speaker 1: its back, and beheld the face of Edward Hyde. He
- 1:43:16Speaker 1: was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes
- 1:43:19Speaker 1: of the doctor's bigness. The cords of his face still
- 1:43:23Speaker 1: moved with the semblance of life, but life was quite gone.
- 1:43:29Speaker 1: And by the crushed file in the hand and the
- 1:43:32Speaker 1: strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Uttersur
- 1:43:36Speaker 1: knew that he was looking on the body of a
- 1:43:38Speaker 1: self destroyer. We have come too late, he said sternly.
- 1:43:43Speaker 1: Whether to save or punish hide is gone to his account,
- 1:43:48Speaker 1: and it only remains for us to find the body
- 1:43:50Speaker 1: of your master. The far greater proportion of the building
- 1:43:56Speaker 1: was occupied by the theater, which filled almost the whole
- 1:44:00Speaker 1: ground story and was lighted from above, and by the cabinet,
- 1:44:05Speaker 1: which formed an upper story at one end and looked
- 1:44:08Speaker 1: upon the court. A corridor joined the theater to the
- 1:44:12Speaker 1: door on the by street, and with this the cabinet,
- 1:44:16Speaker 1: communicated separately by a second flight of stairs. There were
- 1:44:21Speaker 1: besides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar. All
- 1:44:26Speaker 1: these they now thoroughly examined each closet needed but a glance,
- 1:44:32Speaker 1: for all were empty, and all, by the dust that
- 1:44:35Speaker 1: fell from their doors, had stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed,
- 1:44:41Speaker 1: was filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times
- 1:44:45Speaker 1: of the surgeon who was Jackal's predecessor. But even as
- 1:44:49Speaker 1: they opened the door, they were advertised of the uselessness
- 1:44:52Speaker 1: of further search by the fall of a perfect mat
- 1:44:56Speaker 1: of cobweb, which had for years sealed up the the entrance.
- 1:45:02Speaker 1: Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.
- 1:45:08Speaker 1: Paul stamped on the flags of the corridor. He must
- 1:45:12Speaker 1: be buried here, he said, hearkening to the sound, or
- 1:45:16Speaker 1: he may have fled, said Utterson, and he turned to
- 1:45:20Speaker 1: examine the door in the by street. It was locked,
- 1:45:24Speaker 1: and lying near by on the flags, they found the
- 1:45:27Speaker 1: key already stained with rust. This does not look use,
- 1:45:32Speaker 1: observed the lawyer. Use, echoed Paul, do you not see, sir,
- 1:45:37Speaker 1: It is broken, much as if a man had stamped
- 1:45:40Speaker 1: on it, a continued Utterson. And the fractures, too are rusty.
- 1:45:47Speaker 1: The two men looked at each other with a scare.
- 1:45:50Speaker 1: This is beyond me, Paul, said the lawyer let us
- 1:45:54Speaker 1: go back to the cabinet. They mounted the stair in silence, and,
- 1:46:00Speaker 1: still with an occasional awe struck glance at the dead body,
- 1:46:05Speaker 1: proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet.
- 1:46:10Speaker 1: At one table, there were traces of chemical work, various
- 1:46:14Speaker 1: measured heaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers,
- 1:46:19Speaker 1: as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man
- 1:46:22Speaker 1: had been prevented. That is the same drug that I
- 1:46:26Speaker 1: was always bringing him, said Paul, And even as he
- 1:46:30Speaker 1: spoke the kettle with the startling noise boiled over. This
- 1:46:35Speaker 1: brought them to the fireside, where the easy chair was
- 1:46:38Speaker 1: drawn cozily up, and the tea things stood ready to
- 1:46:42Speaker 1: the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cop There
- 1:46:46Speaker 1: were several books on a shelf. One lay beside the
- 1:46:50Speaker 1: tea things, open, and Otterson was amazed to find it
- 1:46:54Speaker 1: a copy of a pious work for which Jekyl had
- 1:46:57Speaker 1: several times expressed a great esteem, annotated in his own
- 1:47:02Speaker 1: hand with startling blasphemies. Next, in the course of their
- 1:47:08Speaker 1: review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval glass,
- 1:47:12Speaker 1: into whose depth they looked with an involuntary horror, but
- 1:47:17Speaker 1: it was so turned as to show them nothing but
- 1:47:20Speaker 1: the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire, sparkling
- 1:47:24Speaker 1: in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses,
- 1:47:29Speaker 1: and their own pale and fearful countenances, stooping to look
- 1:47:33Speaker 1: in this glass. Has seen some strange things, Sir, whispered Paul.
- 1:47:40Speaker 1: And surely none stranger than itself, echoed the lawyer in
- 1:47:45Speaker 1: the same tones. For what did Jekyl? He caught himself
- 1:47:50Speaker 1: up at the word with a start, and then conquering
- 1:47:53Speaker 1: the weakness. What could Jekyl want with it? He said?
- 1:47:58Speaker 1: You may say that, said Paul. Next they turned to
- 1:48:03Speaker 1: the business table on the desk. Among the neat array
- 1:48:07Speaker 1: of papers, a large envelope was uppermost and bore in
- 1:48:11Speaker 1: the doctor's hand the name of mister Utterson. The lawyer
- 1:48:16Speaker 1: unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The
- 1:48:20Speaker 1: first was a will drawn in the same eccentric terms
- 1:48:24Speaker 1: as the one which he had returned six months before,
- 1:48:28Speaker 1: to serve as a testament in case of death and
- 1:48:32Speaker 1: as a deed of gift in case of disappearance, but
- 1:48:36Speaker 1: in place of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer,
- 1:48:39Speaker 1: with indescribable amazement, read the name of Gabriel John Utterson.
- 1:48:46Speaker 1: He looked at Paul, and then back at the paper,
- 1:48:49Speaker 1: and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon
- 1:48:53Speaker 1: the carpet. My head goes round, he said. He has
- 1:48:59Speaker 1: been all the days in possession. He had no cause
- 1:49:03Speaker 1: to like me. He must have raged to see himself displaced,
- 1:49:07Speaker 1: And he has not destroyed this document. He caught up
- 1:49:12Speaker 1: the next paper. It was a brief note in the
- 1:49:15Speaker 1: doctor's hand and dated at the top. Oh, Paul, the
- 1:49:19Speaker 1: lawyer cried, He was alive, and here this day he
- 1:49:23Speaker 1: cannot have been disposed of in so short a space.
- 1:49:27Speaker 1: He must be still alive. He must have fled, And
- 1:49:31Speaker 1: then why fled? And how? And in that case can
- 1:49:36Speaker 1: we venture to declare this suicide? Oh, we must be careful.
- 1:49:41Speaker 1: I foresee that we may yet involve your master in
- 1:49:44Speaker 1: some dire catastrophe. Why don't you read it, sir, said Paul,
- 1:49:51Speaker 1: because I fear, replied the lawyer. Solemnly, God grant that
- 1:49:55Speaker 1: I have no cause for it. And with that he
- 1:49:59Speaker 1: brought the pa to his eyes and read as follows,
- 1:50:04Speaker 1: my dear Utterson, when this shall fall into your hands,
- 1:50:08Speaker 1: I shall have disappeared under what circumstances. I have not
- 1:50:13Speaker 1: the penetration to foresee. But my instinct and all the
- 1:50:17Speaker 1: circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end
- 1:50:22Speaker 1: is sure and must be early. Go then, and first
- 1:50:26Speaker 1: read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to
- 1:50:29Speaker 1: place in your hands. And if you care to hear more,
- 1:50:34Speaker 1: turn to the confession of your unworthy and unhappy friend,
- 1:50:39Speaker 1: Henry Jekyll. There was a third enclosure, asked Uttereson Here, sir,
- 1:50:47Speaker 1: said Paul, and gave into his hands a considerable packet,
- 1:50:51Speaker 1: sealed in several places. The lawyer put it into his pocket.
- 1:50:57Speaker 1: I would say nothing of this paper. If your master
- 1:51:00Speaker 1: has fled or is dead, we may at least save
- 1:51:04Speaker 1: his credit. It is now ten. I must go home
- 1:51:08Speaker 1: and read these documents in quiet. But I shall be
- 1:51:11Speaker 1: back before midnight, when we shall send for the police.
- 1:51:16Speaker 1: They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them,
- 1:51:20Speaker 1: and Utterson, once more, leaving the servants gathered about the
- 1:51:24Speaker 1: fire in the hall, trudged back to his office to
- 1:51:28Speaker 1: read the two narratives in which this mystery was now
- 1:51:32Speaker 1: to be explained Chapter nine, Doctor Lanyon's Narrative. On the
- 1:51:44Speaker 1: ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by
- 1:51:49Speaker 1: the evening delivery a registered envelope addressed in the hand
- 1:51:53Speaker 1: of my colleague and old school companion, Henry Jekyl. I
- 1:51:58Speaker 1: was a good deal surprise by this, for we were,
- 1:52:01Speaker 1: by no means in the habit of correspondence. I had
- 1:52:05Speaker 1: seen the man, dined with him, indeed the night before,
- 1:52:09Speaker 1: and I could imagine nothing in our intercourse that should
- 1:52:13Speaker 1: justify the formality of registration. The contents increased my wonder,
- 1:52:20Speaker 1: for this is how the letter ran tenth of December
- 1:52:26Speaker 1: eighteen something. Dear Lanion, you are one of my oldest friends,
- 1:52:34Speaker 1: and although we may have differed at times on scientific questions,
- 1:52:38Speaker 1: I cannot remember, at least on my side, any break
- 1:52:42Speaker 1: in our affection. There was never a day when if
- 1:52:47Speaker 1: you had said to me Jackal, my life, my honor,
- 1:52:50Speaker 1: my reason depend on you. I would not have sacrificed
- 1:52:54Speaker 1: my fortune or my left hand to help you. Lanion.
- 1:53:00Speaker 1: My life, my honor, my reason are all at your mercy.
- 1:53:07Speaker 1: If you fail me to night, I am lost. You
- 1:53:12Speaker 1: might suppose after this preface that I am going to
- 1:53:14Speaker 1: ask you for something dishonorable to grant judge for yourself.
- 1:53:21Speaker 1: I want you to postpone all other engagements for to night, ay,
- 1:53:26Speaker 1: even if you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor,
- 1:53:30Speaker 1: to take a cab unless your carriage should be actually
- 1:53:33Speaker 1: at the door, and with this letter in your hand
- 1:53:37Speaker 1: for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Paul, my
- 1:53:42Speaker 1: butler has his orders. You will find him waiting your
- 1:53:46Speaker 1: arrival with a locksmith. The door of my cabinet is
- 1:53:50Speaker 1: then to be forced, and you are to go in alone,
- 1:53:54Speaker 1: to open the glazed press letter E on the left hand,
- 1:53:59Speaker 1: breaking the lock if it be shot, and to draw
- 1:54:02Speaker 1: out with all its contents as they stand, the fourth
- 1:54:07Speaker 1: draw from the top, or which is the same thing,
- 1:54:10Speaker 1: the third from the bottom. In my extreme distress of mind,
- 1:54:15Speaker 1: I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you. But even
- 1:54:19Speaker 1: if I am in error, you may know the right
- 1:54:21Speaker 1: draw by its contents. Some powders, a file and a
- 1:54:27Speaker 1: paper book. The draw I beg of you to carry
- 1:54:30Speaker 1: back with you to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.
- 1:54:36Speaker 1: This is the first part of the service. Now for
- 1:54:40Speaker 1: the second you should be back if you set out
- 1:54:44Speaker 1: at once on the receipt of this long before midnight.
- 1:54:48Speaker 1: But I will leave you that amount of margin, not
- 1:54:51Speaker 1: only in the fear of one of those obstacles that
- 1:54:54Speaker 1: can neither be prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour
- 1:54:58Speaker 1: when your servants are in bed is to be preferred
- 1:55:02Speaker 1: for what will then remain to do At midnight? Then
- 1:55:06Speaker 1: I will have to ask you to be alone in
- 1:55:09Speaker 1: your consulting room, to admit with your own hand into
- 1:55:13Speaker 1: the house a man who will present himself in my name,
- 1:55:17Speaker 1: and to place in his hands the draw that you
- 1:55:20Speaker 1: will have brought with you from my cabinet. Then you
- 1:55:24Speaker 1: will have played your part and earned my gratitude completely.
- 1:55:30Speaker 1: Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you
- 1:55:35Speaker 1: will have understood that these arrangements are of capital importance,
- 1:55:41Speaker 1: and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic
- 1:55:44Speaker 1: as they must appear, you might have charged your conscience
- 1:55:48Speaker 1: with my death or the shipwreck of my reason. Confident
- 1:55:54Speaker 1: as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal,
- 1:55:57Speaker 1: my heart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare
- 1:56:01Speaker 1: thought of such a possibility. Think of me at this hour,
- 1:56:06Speaker 1: in a strange place, laboring under a blackness of distress
- 1:56:10Speaker 1: that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that
- 1:56:15Speaker 1: if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will
- 1:56:19Speaker 1: roll away like a story that is told. Serve me,
- 1:56:24Speaker 1: my dear Lanion, and save your friend H. J. P. S.
- 1:56:31Speaker 1: I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror
- 1:56:34Speaker 1: struck my soul. It is possible that the post office
- 1:56:38Speaker 1: may fail me and this letter not come into your
- 1:56:41Speaker 1: hands until tomorrow morning. In that case, dear Lanion, do
- 1:56:45Speaker 1: my errand when it shall be most convenient for you
- 1:56:48Speaker 1: in the course of the day, and once more expect
- 1:56:52Speaker 1: my messenger at midnight. It may then already be too late.
- 1:56:57Speaker 1: And if that night passes without event, you will know
- 1:57:01Speaker 1: that you have seen the last of Henry Jekyl. Upon
- 1:57:06Speaker 1: the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague
- 1:57:10Speaker 1: was insane, But till that was proved beyond the possibility
- 1:57:14Speaker 1: of doubt, I felt bound to do as he requested.
- 1:57:18Speaker 1: The less I understood of this farrago, the less I
- 1:57:22Speaker 1: was in a position to judge of its importance, and
- 1:57:25Speaker 1: an appeal so worded could not be set aside without
- 1:57:29Speaker 1: a grave responsibility. I rose accordingly from table, got into
- 1:57:35Speaker 1: a hansom, and drove straight to Jekyll's house. The butler
- 1:57:40Speaker 1: was awaiting my arrival. He had received by the same
- 1:57:43Speaker 1: post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had
- 1:57:48Speaker 1: sent at once for the locksmith and a carpenter. The
- 1:57:52Speaker 1: tradesmen came while we were yet speaking, and we moved
- 1:57:56Speaker 1: in a body to old Doctor Denman's surgical theater, from which,
- 1:58:01Speaker 1: as you are doubtless aware, Jeckyll's private cabinet is most
- 1:58:05Speaker 1: conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the lock excellent.
- 1:58:11Speaker 1: The carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and have
- 1:58:15Speaker 1: to do much damage if force were to be used,
- 1:58:18Speaker 1: and the locksmith was near despair. But this last was
- 1:58:22Speaker 1: a handy fellow, and after two hours work the door
- 1:58:26Speaker 1: stood open. The press marked e was unlocked, and I
- 1:58:30Speaker 1: took out the drawer, had it filled up with straw
- 1:58:34Speaker 1: and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to
- 1:58:37Speaker 1: Cavendish Square. Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The
- 1:58:43Speaker 1: powders were neatly enough made up, but not with the
- 1:58:47Speaker 1: nicety of the dispensing chemist, so that it was plain
- 1:58:51Speaker 1: they were of Jeckyll's private manufacture, and when I opened
- 1:58:55Speaker 1: one of the wrappers, I found what seemed to me
- 1:58:58Speaker 1: a simple crystal line salt of a white color. The
- 1:59:03Speaker 1: file to which I next turned my attention might have
- 1:59:06Speaker 1: been about half full of a blood red liquor, which
- 1:59:10Speaker 1: was highly pungent to the sense of smell, and seemed
- 1:59:14Speaker 1: to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At
- 1:59:20Speaker 1: the other ingredients I could make no guess. The book
- 1:59:24Speaker 1: was an ordinary version book, and contained little but a
- 1:59:28Speaker 1: series of dates. These covered a period of many years,
- 1:59:33Speaker 1: but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago,
- 1:59:37Speaker 1: and quite abruptly. Here and there a brief remark was
- 1:59:42Speaker 1: appended to a date, usually no more than a single
- 1:59:46Speaker 1: word double, occurring perhaps six times in a total of
- 1:59:50Speaker 1: several hundred entries, and once very early in the list,
- 1:59:55Speaker 1: and followed by several marks of exclamation total failure. All this,
- 2:00:02Speaker 1: though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was definite.
- 2:00:07Speaker 1: There were a file of some tincture, a paper of
- 2:00:10Speaker 1: some salt, and the record of a series of experiments
- 2:00:14Speaker 1: that had led, like too many of Jekyl's investigations, to
- 2:00:19Speaker 1: no end. Of practical usefulness. How could the presence of
- 2:00:24Speaker 1: these articles in my house affect either the honor, the sanity,
- 2:00:29Speaker 1: or the life of my flighty colleague. If his messenger
- 2:00:33Speaker 1: could go to one place, why could he not go
- 2:00:36Speaker 1: to another? And, even granting some impediment, why was this
- 2:00:41Speaker 1: gentleman to be received by me in secret? The more
- 2:00:45Speaker 1: I reflected, the more convinced I grew that I was
- 2:00:49Speaker 1: dealing with a case of cerebral disease. And though I
- 2:00:53Speaker 1: dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver
- 2:00:57Speaker 1: that I might be found in some posture of self defense.
- 2:01:03Speaker 1: Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London Ere. The
- 2:01:07Speaker 1: knocker sounded very gently on the door. I went myself
- 2:01:11Speaker 1: at the summons and found a small man crouching against
- 2:01:16Speaker 1: the pillars of the portico. Are you come from, doctor Jekyll?
- 2:01:21Speaker 1: I asked. He told me yes by a constrained gesture,
- 2:01:26Speaker 1: and when I had bidden him enter, he did not
- 2:01:28Speaker 1: obey me. Without a searching backward glance into the darkness
- 2:01:32Speaker 1: of the square, there was a policeman not far off,
- 2:01:36Speaker 1: advancing with his bulls. I open, and at the sight
- 2:01:41Speaker 1: I thought my visitors started and made greater haste. These
- 2:01:46Speaker 1: particulars struck me, I confess disagreeably, And as I followed
- 2:01:51Speaker 1: him into the bright light of the consulting room, I
- 2:01:54Speaker 1: kept my hand ready on my weapon. Here at last
- 2:01:59Speaker 1: I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had
- 2:02:02Speaker 1: never set eyes on him before, so much was certain.
- 2:02:07Speaker 1: He was small, As I have said, I was struck
- 2:02:10Speaker 1: besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his
- 2:02:14Speaker 1: remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility
- 2:02:20Speaker 1: of constitution, And last, but not least, with the odd
- 2:02:26Speaker 1: subjective disturbance caused by his neighborhood. This bore some resemblance
- 2:02:32Speaker 1: to incipient rigor, and was accompanied by a marked sinking
- 2:02:37Speaker 1: of the pulse. At the time I set it down
- 2:02:41Speaker 1: to some idiosyncratic personal distaste and merely wondered at the
- 2:02:47Speaker 1: acuteness of the symptoms. But I have since had reason
- 2:02:51Speaker 1: to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the
- 2:02:54Speaker 1: nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge
- 2:02:58Speaker 1: than the principle of hatred. This person, who had thus
- 2:03:04Speaker 1: from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me
- 2:03:08Speaker 1: what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity was
- 2:03:13Speaker 1: dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary
- 2:03:15Speaker 1: person laughable. His clothes, that is to say, although they
- 2:03:20Speaker 1: were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large
- 2:03:25Speaker 1: for him in every measurement, the trousers hanging on his
- 2:03:29Speaker 1: legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground,
- 2:03:33Speaker 1: the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the
- 2:03:37Speaker 1: collar sprawling wide over his shoulders. Strange to relate this
- 2:03:43Speaker 1: ludicrous accouterment was far from moving me to laughter, Rather,
- 2:03:48Speaker 1: as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very
- 2:03:52Speaker 1: essence of the creature that now faced me, something seizing, surprising,
- 2:03:58Speaker 1: and revolting. This fresh disparity seemed but to fit in
- 2:04:02Speaker 1: with and to reinforce it, so that to my interest
- 2:04:07Speaker 1: in the man's nature and character, there was added a
- 2:04:10Speaker 1: curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune, and
- 2:04:15Speaker 1: status in the world. These observations, though they have taken
- 2:04:22Speaker 1: so great a space to be set down, were yet
- 2:04:25Speaker 1: the work of a few seconds. My visitor was indeed
- 2:04:29Speaker 1: on fire with somber excitement. Have you got it? He cried,
- 2:04:35Speaker 1: have you got it? And so lively was his impatience
- 2:04:39Speaker 1: that he even laid his hand upon my arm and
- 2:04:42Speaker 1: sought to shake me. I put him back, conscious at
- 2:04:46Speaker 1: his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood. Come, sir,
- 2:04:50Speaker 1: said I, ye, forget that I have not yet the
- 2:04:53Speaker 1: pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please. And
- 2:04:58Speaker 1: I showed him an exam and sat down myself in
- 2:05:02Speaker 1: my customary seat, and with as fair an imitation of
- 2:05:06Speaker 1: my ordinary manner to a patient as the lateness of
- 2:05:10Speaker 1: the house, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror
- 2:05:14Speaker 1: I had of my visitor would suffer me to muster.
- 2:05:19Speaker 1: I beg your pardon, Doctor Lanyon, he replied civilly enough.
- 2:05:24Speaker 1: What you say is very well founded, and my impatience
- 2:05:28Speaker 1: has shown its heels to my politeness. I come here
- 2:05:32Speaker 1: at the instance of your colleague, doctor Henry Jackal, on
- 2:05:35Speaker 1: a piece of business of some moment, and I understood.
- 2:05:40Speaker 1: He paused and put his hand to his throat, and
- 2:05:43Speaker 1: I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that
- 2:05:47Speaker 1: he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria. I
- 2:05:51Speaker 1: understood a draw. But here I took pity on my
- 2:05:56Speaker 1: visitor's suspense, and some perhaps on my own growing curiosity.
- 2:06:02Speaker 1: There it is, sir, said I, pointing to the drawer,
- 2:06:05Speaker 1: where it lay on the floor behind a table and
- 2:06:08Speaker 1: still covered with the sheet. He sprang to it, and
- 2:06:13Speaker 1: then paused and laid his hand upon his heart. I
- 2:06:17Speaker 1: could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of
- 2:06:21Speaker 1: his jaws, and his face was so ghastly to see that.
- 2:06:25Speaker 1: I grew alarmed, both for his life and reason. Compose yourself,
- 2:06:32Speaker 1: said I. He turned a dreadful smile to me, and,
- 2:06:38Speaker 1: as if with the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet.
- 2:06:43Speaker 1: At sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob
- 2:06:47Speaker 1: of such immense relief that I sat petrified, And the
- 2:06:52Speaker 1: next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well
- 2:06:55Speaker 1: under control, have you a graduated glass, he asked. I
- 2:07:02Speaker 1: rose from my place with something of an effort, and
- 2:07:05Speaker 1: gave him what he asked. He thanked me with a
- 2:07:09Speaker 1: smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture,
- 2:07:14Speaker 1: and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was
- 2:07:18Speaker 1: at first of a reddish hue, began in proportion as
- 2:07:22Speaker 1: the crystals melted, to brighten in color, to efferesse audibly,
- 2:07:29Speaker 1: and to throw off small fumes of vapor. Suddenly, and
- 2:07:34Speaker 1: at the same moment, the ebullition ceased, and the compound
- 2:07:39Speaker 1: changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly
- 2:07:44Speaker 1: to a watery green. My visitor, who had watched those
- 2:07:48Speaker 1: metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass
- 2:07:54Speaker 1: upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me
- 2:07:58Speaker 1: with an air of scrutiny, And now said he to
- 2:08:03Speaker 1: settle what remains? Will you be wise? Will you be guided?
- 2:08:09Speaker 1: Will you suffer me to take this glass in my
- 2:08:12Speaker 1: hand and to go forth from your house without further parley?
- 2:08:17Speaker 1: Or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you?
- 2:08:21Speaker 1: Think before you answer, For it shall be done as
- 2:08:24Speaker 1: you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as
- 2:08:28Speaker 1: you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the
- 2:08:34Speaker 1: sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress
- 2:08:38Speaker 1: may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul.
- 2:08:42Speaker 1: Or if you shall so prefer to choose, a new
- 2:08:46Speaker 1: province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power
- 2:08:51Speaker 1: shall be laid open to you here in this room,
- 2:08:56Speaker 1: upon this instant, and your sights shall be blessed. Did
- 2:09:00Speaker 1: by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan, Sir,
- 2:09:07Speaker 1: said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from
- 2:09:10Speaker 1: truly possessing. You speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not
- 2:09:16Speaker 1: wonder that I hear you with no very strong impression
- 2:09:19Speaker 1: of belief. But I have gone too far in the
- 2:09:23Speaker 1: way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end.
- 2:09:30Speaker 1: It is well, replied my visitor Lanyon. You remember your vows.
- 2:09:37Speaker 1: What follows is under the seal of our profession. And
- 2:09:42Speaker 1: now you who have so long been bound to the
- 2:09:45Speaker 1: most narrow and material views, you who have denied the
- 2:09:50Speaker 1: virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors. Behold.
- 2:10:01Speaker 1: He put the glass to his lips and drank at
- 2:10:04Speaker 1: one gulp. A cry followed. He reeled, staggered, clutched at
- 2:10:12Speaker 1: the table, and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping
- 2:10:17Speaker 1: with open mouth. And as I looked, there came my
- 2:10:22Speaker 1: thought a change. He seemed to swell. His face became
- 2:10:27Speaker 1: suddenly black, and the features seemed to melt and alter.
- 2:10:33Speaker 1: And the next moment I had sprung to my feet
- 2:10:36Speaker 1: and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to
- 2:10:40Speaker 1: shield me from that prodigy. My mind submerged in terror.
- 2:10:46Speaker 1: Oh God, I screamed, and Oh God, again and again,
- 2:10:51Speaker 1: For there before my eyes, pale and shaken, and half fainting,
- 2:10:58Speaker 1: and groping before him with his hands, like a man
- 2:11:01Speaker 1: restored from death, there stood Henry Jekyll. What he told
- 2:11:09Speaker 1: me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind
- 2:11:14Speaker 1: to set on paper. I saw what I saw. I
- 2:11:19Speaker 1: heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it.
- 2:11:26Speaker 1: And yet now, when that sight is faded from my eyes,
- 2:11:30Speaker 1: I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer.
- 2:11:36Speaker 1: My life is shaken to its roots. Sleep has left me.
- 2:11:42Speaker 1: The deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of
- 2:11:46Speaker 1: the day and night. I feel that my days are numbered,
- 2:11:50Speaker 1: and that I must die. And yet I shall die incredulous.
- 2:11:56Speaker 1: As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me,
- 2:12:00Speaker 1: even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory
- 2:12:05Speaker 1: dwell on it without a start of horror. I will
- 2:12:10Speaker 1: say but one thing, Utterson, and that if you can
- 2:12:14Speaker 1: bring your mind to credit, it will be more than enough.
- 2:12:18Speaker 1: The creature who crept into my house that night was
- 2:12:23Speaker 1: on Jekyl's own confession, known by the name of hide,
- 2:12:29Speaker 1: and hunted for in every corner of the land as
- 2:12:33Speaker 1: the murderer of carw end of Chapter nine, Chapter ten,
- 2:12:44Speaker 1: Henry Jekyl's full statement of the case. I was born
- 2:12:51Speaker 1: in the year eighteen something to a large fortune, endowed
- 2:12:57Speaker 1: besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond
- 2:13:03Speaker 1: of the respect of the wise and good among my
- 2:13:06Speaker 1: fellow men, and thus as might have been supposed, with
- 2:13:11Speaker 1: every guarantee of an honorable and distinguished future. And indeed
- 2:13:17Speaker 1: the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety
- 2:13:21Speaker 1: of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many,
- 2:13:26Speaker 1: but such as I found it hard to reconcile with
- 2:13:29Speaker 1: my imperious desire to carry my head high and wear
- 2:13:34Speaker 1: a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence
- 2:13:39Speaker 1: it came about that I concealed my pleasures, and that
- 2:13:44Speaker 1: when I reached years of reflection and began to look
- 2:13:47Speaker 1: round me and take stock of my progress and position
- 2:13:51Speaker 1: in the world, I stood already committed to a profound
- 2:13:55Speaker 1: duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned
- 2:14:01Speaker 1: such irregularities as I was guilty of. But from the
- 2:14:05Speaker 1: high views that I had set before me. I regarded
- 2:14:09Speaker 1: and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame.
- 2:14:14Speaker 1: It was thus, rather the exacting nature of my aspirations
- 2:14:19Speaker 1: than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me
- 2:14:23Speaker 1: what I was, and with even a deeper trench than
- 2:14:27Speaker 1: in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces
- 2:14:31Speaker 1: of good and evil which divide and compound man's dual nature.
- 2:14:39Speaker 1: In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and
- 2:14:43Speaker 1: inveterately on that hard law of life which lies at
- 2:14:47Speaker 1: the root of religion and is one of the most
- 2:14:51Speaker 1: plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double dealer,
- 2:14:57Speaker 1: I was in no sense a hypocrite. Both sides of
- 2:15:01Speaker 1: me were in dead earnest. I was no more myself
- 2:15:05Speaker 1: when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame than
- 2:15:09Speaker 1: when I labored in the eye of day at the
- 2:15:12Speaker 1: furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.
- 2:15:18Speaker 1: And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies,
- 2:15:22Speaker 1: which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted
- 2:15:28Speaker 1: and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the
- 2:15:31Speaker 1: perennial war among my members with every day, and from
- 2:15:36Speaker 1: both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual,
- 2:15:41Speaker 1: I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth by whose
- 2:15:45Speaker 1: partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck,
- 2:15:50Speaker 1: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I
- 2:15:56Speaker 1: say two, because the state of my own knowledge does
- 2:16:00Speaker 1: not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will
- 2:16:05Speaker 1: outstrip me on the same lines, and I hazard the
- 2:16:09Speaker 1: guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere
- 2:16:12Speaker 1: polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part,
- 2:16:21Speaker 1: from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction,
- 2:16:26Speaker 1: and in one direction only. It was on the moral side,
- 2:16:31Speaker 1: and in my own person, that I learned to recognize
- 2:16:35Speaker 1: the thorough and primitive duality of man. I saw that
- 2:16:40Speaker 1: of the two natures that contended in the field of
- 2:16:43Speaker 1: my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to
- 2:16:47Speaker 1: be either, it was only because I was radically both,
- 2:16:52Speaker 1: And from an early date, even before the course of
- 2:16:55Speaker 1: my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked
- 2:16:59Speaker 1: possible mobility of such a miracle, I had learned to
- 2:17:03Speaker 1: dwell with pleasure as a beloved day dream on the
- 2:17:08Speaker 1: thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I
- 2:17:13Speaker 1: told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life
- 2:17:18Speaker 1: would be relieved of all that was unbearable. The unjust
- 2:17:23Speaker 1: might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse
- 2:17:28Speaker 1: of his more upright twin. And the just could walk
- 2:17:32Speaker 1: steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good
- 2:17:37Speaker 1: things in which he found pleasure, and no longer exposed
- 2:17:41Speaker 1: to disgrace and penitence by the hands of his extraneous evil.
- 2:17:48Speaker 1: It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous fagots
- 2:17:53Speaker 1: were thus bound together, that in the agonized womb of consciousness,
- 2:17:58Speaker 1: these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How then, were
- 2:18:05Speaker 1: they disconnected? I was so far in my reflections, when,
- 2:18:11Speaker 1: as I have said, a side light began to shine
- 2:18:15Speaker 1: upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive,
- 2:18:20Speaker 1: more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the
- 2:18:24Speaker 1: trembling immateriality, the mist like transience of this seemingly so
- 2:18:30Speaker 1: solid body in which we walk. Attired certain agents I
- 2:18:36Speaker 1: have found to have the power to shake and to
- 2:18:39Speaker 1: pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might
- 2:18:43Speaker 1: toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons,
- 2:18:48Speaker 1: I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of
- 2:18:52Speaker 1: my confession. First because I have been made to learn
- 2:18:57Speaker 1: that the doom and burden of our life is bound
- 2:19:01Speaker 1: forever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made
- 2:19:05Speaker 1: to cast it off, it but returns upon us with
- 2:19:09Speaker 1: more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Secondly, because, as my
- 2:19:15Speaker 1: narrative will make alas too evident, my discoveries were incomplete
- 2:19:22Speaker 1: enough then that I not only recognized my natural body
- 2:19:26Speaker 1: for the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the
- 2:19:29Speaker 1: powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound
- 2:19:33Speaker 1: a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from
- 2:19:37Speaker 1: their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted nonetheless
- 2:19:44Speaker 1: natural to me because they were the expression and bore
- 2:19:48Speaker 1: the stamp of lower elements in my soul. I hesitated
- 2:19:54Speaker 1: long before I put this theory to the test of practice.
- 2:19:59Speaker 1: I knew well that I risked death for any drug
- 2:20:03Speaker 1: that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of
- 2:20:07Speaker 1: identity might by the least scruple of an overdose or,
- 2:20:11Speaker 1: at the least in opportunity, in the moment of exhibition,
- 2:20:15Speaker 1: utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to
- 2:20:20Speaker 1: it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so
- 2:20:24Speaker 1: singular and profound, at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.
- 2:20:31Speaker 1: I had long since prepared my tincture. I purchased at
- 2:20:35Speaker 1: once from a firm of wholesale chemists a large quantity
- 2:20:39Speaker 1: of a particular salt, which I knew from my experiments
- 2:20:43Speaker 1: to be the last ingredient required. And late one accursed night,
- 2:20:49Speaker 1: I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together
- 2:20:54Speaker 1: in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with
- 2:20:59Speaker 1: a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion. The
- 2:21:05Speaker 1: most racking pangs succeeded, a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea,
- 2:21:13Speaker 1: and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded
- 2:21:16Speaker 1: at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies
- 2:21:21Speaker 1: began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as
- 2:21:25Speaker 1: if out of a great sickness. There was something strange
- 2:21:30Speaker 1: in my sensations, something indescribably new, and from its very novelty,
- 2:21:37Speaker 1: incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body. Within
- 2:21:45Speaker 1: I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of
- 2:21:49Speaker 1: disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy,
- 2:21:54Speaker 1: a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but
- 2:21:58Speaker 1: not an innocent frit freedom of the soul. I knew
- 2:22:02Speaker 1: myself at the first breath of this new life to
- 2:22:06Speaker 1: be more wicked, tenfold, more wicked, sold a slave to
- 2:22:11Speaker 1: my original sin. And the thought in that moment braced
- 2:22:17Speaker 1: and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands,
- 2:22:22Speaker 1: exulting in the freshness of these sensations, and in the
- 2:22:27Speaker 1: act I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.
- 2:22:34Speaker 1: There was no mirror at that date in my room.
- 2:22:37Speaker 1: That which stands beside me as I write was brought
- 2:22:40Speaker 1: there later on, and for the very purpose of these transformations.
- 2:22:46Speaker 1: The night, however, was far gone into the morning. The morning,
- 2:22:50Speaker 1: black as it was, was nearly ripe for the conception
- 2:22:53Speaker 1: of the day. The inmates of my house were locked
- 2:22:57Speaker 1: in the most rigorous hours of slumber, and I determined,
- 2:23:01Speaker 1: flushed as I was, with hope and triumph, to venture
- 2:23:05Speaker 1: in my new shape as far as to my bedroom.
- 2:23:09Speaker 1: I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me,
- 2:23:14Speaker 1: I could have thought with wonder the first creature of
- 2:23:17Speaker 1: that sort that thereon sleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them.
- 2:23:22Speaker 1: I stole through the corridors a stranger in my own house,
- 2:23:27Speaker 1: and coming to my room I saw for the first
- 2:23:31Speaker 1: time the appearance of Edward Hyde. I must here speak
- 2:23:36Speaker 1: by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but
- 2:23:41Speaker 1: that which I supposed to be most probable. The evil
- 2:23:46Speaker 1: side of my nature to which I had now transferred
- 2:23:49Speaker 1: the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than
- 2:23:55Speaker 1: the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the
- 2:23:59Speaker 1: course of my life, which had been, after all nine
- 2:24:02Speaker 1: tenths a life of effort, virtue, and control, it had
- 2:24:06Speaker 1: been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence
- 2:24:12Speaker 1: I think it came about that Edward Hyde was so
- 2:24:15Speaker 1: much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyl. Even as
- 2:24:21Speaker 1: good shone upon the countenance of the one evil was
- 2:24:25Speaker 1: written broadly and plainly on the face of the other evil,
- 2:24:30Speaker 1: besides which I must still believe to be the lethal
- 2:24:34Speaker 1: side of man, had left on that body an imprint
- 2:24:38Speaker 1: of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon
- 2:24:43Speaker 1: that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of
- 2:24:46Speaker 1: no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This too
- 2:24:53Speaker 1: was myself. It seemed natural and human in my eyes.
- 2:24:59Speaker 1: It bore a light ivelier image of the spirit. It
- 2:25:02Speaker 1: seemed more express and single than the imperfect and divided
- 2:25:07Speaker 1: countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine, And
- 2:25:12Speaker 1: in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed
- 2:25:17Speaker 1: that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hide, none
- 2:25:21Speaker 1: could come near to me at first without a visible
- 2:25:23Speaker 1: misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was
- 2:25:29Speaker 1: because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled
- 2:25:33Speaker 1: out of good and evil, and Edward Hide, alone in
- 2:25:37Speaker 1: the ranks of mankind, was pure evil. I lingered, but
- 2:25:44Speaker 1: a moment at the mirror, the second and conclusive experiment
- 2:25:48Speaker 1: had yet to be attempted. It yet remained to be
- 2:25:52Speaker 1: seen if I had lost my identity beyond redemption, and
- 2:25:57Speaker 1: must flee before daylight from a house that was no
- 2:26:00Speaker 1: longer mine. And hurrying back to my cabinet, I once
- 2:26:05Speaker 1: more prepared and drank the cop once more suffered the
- 2:26:09Speaker 1: pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more with
- 2:26:14Speaker 1: the character, the stature, and the face of Henry Jekyl.
- 2:26:21Speaker 1: That night I had come to the fatal crossroads. Had
- 2:26:25Speaker 1: I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had
- 2:26:29Speaker 1: I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous
- 2:26:33Speaker 1: or pious aspirations? All must have been otherwise? And from
- 2:26:39Speaker 1: these agonies of death and birth I had come forth
- 2:26:42Speaker 1: an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no
- 2:26:48Speaker 1: discriminating action. It was neither diabolical nor divine. It but
- 2:26:54Speaker 1: shook the doors of the prison house of my disposition,
- 2:26:58Speaker 1: and like the captive of Philippi, that which stood within
- 2:27:03Speaker 1: ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered, my evil,
- 2:27:09Speaker 1: kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize
- 2:27:13Speaker 1: the occasion. And the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence,
- 2:27:21Speaker 1: although I had now two characters, as well as two appearances,
- 2:27:25Speaker 1: one was wholly evil, and the other was still the
- 2:27:29Speaker 1: old Henry Jekyl, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and
- 2:27:35Speaker 1: improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was
- 2:27:41Speaker 1: thus wholly toward the worse, even At that time I
- 2:27:47Speaker 1: had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness of
- 2:27:50Speaker 1: a life of study. I would still be merely disposed
- 2:27:55Speaker 1: at times, and as my pleasures were, to say the least, undignified.
- 2:28:00Speaker 1: And I was not only well known and highly considered,
- 2:28:04Speaker 1: but growing towards the elderly man. This incoherency of my
- 2:28:08Speaker 1: life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this
- 2:28:13Speaker 1: side that my new power tempted me until I fell
- 2:28:16Speaker 1: in slavery. I had but to drink the coup, to
- 2:28:21Speaker 1: doff at once the body of the noted professor, and
- 2:28:25Speaker 1: to assume like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde.
- 2:28:29Speaker 1: I smiled at the notion. It seemed to me at
- 2:28:32Speaker 1: the time to be humorous, and I made my preparations
- 2:28:36Speaker 1: with the most studious care. I took and furnished that
- 2:28:40Speaker 1: house in Soho to which Hide was tracked by the
- 2:28:43Speaker 1: police and engaged as housekeeper, a creature whom I well
- 2:28:47Speaker 1: knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other side,
- 2:28:53Speaker 1: I announced to my servants that a mister Hyde, whom
- 2:28:56Speaker 1: I described, was to have full liberty and about my
- 2:29:01Speaker 1: house in the square, and to parry mishaps I even
- 2:29:05Speaker 1: called and made myself a familiar object in my second character.
- 2:29:11Speaker 1: I next drew up that will to which you so
- 2:29:15Speaker 1: much objected, so that if anything befell me in the
- 2:29:18Speaker 1: person of doctor Jekyll, I could enter on that of
- 2:29:22Speaker 1: Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss, And thus fortified, as I supposed,
- 2:29:28Speaker 1: on every side, I began to profit by the strange
- 2:29:33Speaker 1: immunities of my position. Men have before hired bravos to
- 2:29:40Speaker 1: transact their crimes while their own person and reputation sat
- 2:29:45Speaker 1: under shelter. I was the first that ever did so
- 2:29:49Speaker 1: for his pleasures. I was the first that could thus
- 2:29:54Speaker 1: plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability,
- 2:29:59Speaker 1: and in a moment, like a school boy, strip off
- 2:30:02Speaker 1: these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty.
- 2:30:08Speaker 1: But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete.
- 2:30:14Speaker 1: Think of it, I did not even exist. Let me
- 2:30:17Speaker 1: but escape into my laboratory door. Give me but a
- 2:30:21Speaker 1: second or two to mix and swallow the draft that
- 2:30:24Speaker 1: I had always standing ready. And whatever he had done,
- 2:30:29Speaker 1: Edward Hide would pass away like the stain of breath
- 2:30:32Speaker 1: upon a mirror, and there in his stead, quietly at home,
- 2:30:37Speaker 1: trimming the midnight lamp in his study. A man who
- 2:30:41Speaker 1: could afford to laugh at suspicion would be Henry Jekyll.
- 2:30:47Speaker 1: The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my
- 2:30:50Speaker 1: disguise were, as I have said, undignified. I would scarce
- 2:30:56Speaker 1: use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward
- 2:30:59Speaker 1: High they soon began to turn towards the monstrous. When
- 2:31:05Speaker 1: I would come back from these excursions, I was often
- 2:31:08Speaker 1: plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity.
- 2:31:14Speaker 1: This familiar that I called out of my own soul
- 2:31:17Speaker 1: and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was
- 2:31:22Speaker 1: a being inherently malign and villainous. His every act and
- 2:31:27Speaker 1: thought centered on self drinking pleasure with bestial avidity, from
- 2:31:34Speaker 1: any degree of torture to another, relentless, like a man
- 2:31:38Speaker 1: of stone. Henry Jekyl stood at times aghast before the
- 2:31:44Speaker 1: acts of Edward Hyde. But the situation was apart from
- 2:31:48Speaker 1: ordinary laws and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It
- 2:31:54Speaker 1: was hide, after all, and hide alone that was guilty.
- 2:31:59Speaker 1: Jekyl was no worse. He woke again to his good qualities,
- 2:32:03Speaker 1: seemingly unimpaired. He would even make haste where it was
- 2:32:07Speaker 1: possible to undo the evil done by Hide, and thus
- 2:32:12Speaker 1: his conscience slumbered into the details of the infamy at
- 2:32:18Speaker 1: which I thus connived. For even now I can scarce
- 2:32:22Speaker 1: grant that I committed it, I have no design of entering.
- 2:32:27Speaker 1: I mean, but to point out the warnings and the
- 2:32:30Speaker 1: successive steps with which my chastisement approached. I met with
- 2:32:35Speaker 1: one accident, which, as it brought on no consequence, I
- 2:32:39Speaker 1: shall no more than mention an act of cruelty to
- 2:32:43Speaker 1: a child aroused against me the anger of a passer
- 2:32:46Speaker 1: by whom I recognized the other day, in the person
- 2:32:50Speaker 1: of your kinsman. The doctor, and the child's family joined him.
- 2:32:56Speaker 1: There were moments when I feared for my life, and
- 2:32:59Speaker 1: at length asked, in order to pacify their too just resentment,
- 2:33:04Speaker 1: Edward Hide had to bring them to the door and
- 2:33:07Speaker 1: pay them in a check drawn in the name of
- 2:33:10Speaker 1: Henry Jekyl. But this danger was easily eliminated from the
- 2:33:15Speaker 1: future by opening an account at another bank in the
- 2:33:19Speaker 1: name of Edward Hide himself. And when by sloping my
- 2:33:23Speaker 1: own hand backward I had supplied my double with a signature,
- 2:33:28Speaker 1: I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate. Some
- 2:33:34Speaker 1: two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had
- 2:33:38Speaker 1: been out for one of my adventures, had returned at
- 2:33:41Speaker 1: a late hour, and woke the next day in bed
- 2:33:45Speaker 1: with somewhat odd sensations. It was in Vain. I looked
- 2:33:50Speaker 1: about me in Vain, I saw the decent furniture and
- 2:33:54Speaker 1: tall proportions of my room in the square in Vain,
- 2:33:59Speaker 1: that I recognized the pattern of the bed curtains and
- 2:34:02Speaker 1: the design of the mahogany frame. Something still kept insisting
- 2:34:07Speaker 1: that I was not where I was, that I had
- 2:34:10Speaker 1: not awakened where I seemed to be, but in the
- 2:34:14Speaker 1: little room in Soho, where I was accustomed to sleep,
- 2:34:17Speaker 1: in the body of Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself,
- 2:34:22Speaker 1: and in my psychological way, began lazily to inquire into
- 2:34:27Speaker 1: the elements of this illusion. Occasionally, even as I did so,
- 2:34:32Speaker 1: dropping back in a comfortable morning doze, I was still
- 2:34:37Speaker 1: so engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments,
- 2:34:41Speaker 1: my eye fell upon my hand. Now, the hand of
- 2:34:45Speaker 1: Henry Jekyl, as you have often remarked, was professional in
- 2:34:50Speaker 1: shape and size. It was large, firm, white and comely.
- 2:34:56Speaker 1: But the hand which I now saw clearly enough, in
- 2:34:59Speaker 1: the yellow light of a mid London morning, Lying half
- 2:35:03Speaker 1: shot on the bedclothes, was lean, cordid, mockly of a
- 2:35:09Speaker 1: dusky pallor, and thickly shaded with a smart growth of hair.
- 2:35:15Speaker 1: It was the hand of Edward Hide. I must have
- 2:35:19Speaker 1: stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as
- 2:35:22Speaker 1: I was in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror
- 2:35:26Speaker 1: woke up in my breast, as sudden and startling as
- 2:35:29Speaker 1: the crash of cymbals, and bounding from my bed, I
- 2:35:33Speaker 1: rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes,
- 2:35:37Speaker 1: my blood was changing into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes,
- 2:35:43Speaker 1: I had gone to bed Henry Jekyl. I had awakened
- 2:35:47Speaker 1: Edward Hide. How was this to be explained? I asked myself,
- 2:35:53Speaker 1: And then, with another bound of horror, how was it
- 2:35:57Speaker 1: to be remedied? It was well on in the morning,
- 2:36:01Speaker 1: the servants were up, all my drugs were in the cabinet.
- 2:36:05Speaker 1: A long journey down two pairs of stairs, through the
- 2:36:10Speaker 1: back passage, across the open court, and through the anatomical theater,
- 2:36:15Speaker 1: from where I was then standing horror struck. It might
- 2:36:19Speaker 1: indeed be possible to cover my face. But of what
- 2:36:23Speaker 1: use was that when I was unable to conceal the
- 2:36:25Speaker 1: alteration of my stature, And then, with an overpowering sweetness
- 2:36:31Speaker 1: of relief, it came back upon my mind that the
- 2:36:34Speaker 1: servants were already used to the coming and going of
- 2:36:38Speaker 1: my second self. I had soon dressed, as well as
- 2:36:42Speaker 1: I was able in clothes of my own size, had
- 2:36:46Speaker 1: soon passed through the house where Bradshaw stared and drew
- 2:36:51Speaker 1: back at seeing mister Hyde at such an hour and
- 2:36:54Speaker 1: in such a strange array, And ten minutes later Dr
- 2:36:59Speaker 1: Jekyll had returned to his old shape and was sitting
- 2:37:03Speaker 1: down with a darkened brow to make a feint of breakfasting.
- 2:37:10Speaker 1: Small indeed was my appetite, this inexplicable incident, this reversal
- 2:37:16Speaker 1: of my previous experience, seemed like the Babylonian finger on
- 2:37:21Speaker 1: the wall to be spelling out the letters of my judgment.
- 2:37:25Speaker 1: And I began to reflect more seriously than ever before
- 2:37:29Speaker 1: on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That
- 2:37:35Speaker 1: part of me which I had the power of projecting,
- 2:37:38Speaker 1: had lately been much exercised and nourished. It had seemed
- 2:37:42Speaker 1: to me, of late, as though the body of Edward
- 2:37:45Speaker 1: Hyde had grown in stature, as though when I wore
- 2:37:49Speaker 1: that form, I were conscious of a more generous tide
- 2:37:53Speaker 1: of blood, And I began to spy a danger that
- 2:37:57Speaker 1: if this were much prolonged, the ballots of my nature
- 2:38:01Speaker 1: might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited,
- 2:38:07Speaker 1: and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine. The
- 2:38:13Speaker 1: power of the drug had not always equally displayed. Once,
- 2:38:18Speaker 1: very early in my career it had totally failed me.
- 2:38:22Speaker 1: Since then I had been obliged, on more than one
- 2:38:24Speaker 1: occasion to double, and once with infinite risk of death,
- 2:38:29Speaker 1: to treble the amount, and these rare uncertainties had cast
- 2:38:35Speaker 1: hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and
- 2:38:41Speaker 1: in the light of that morning's accident, I was led
- 2:38:44Speaker 1: to remark that whereas in the beginning the difficulty had
- 2:38:48Speaker 1: been to throw off the body of Jekyl, it had
- 2:38:51Speaker 1: of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side.
- 2:38:58Speaker 1: All things therefore seen to point to this that I
- 2:39:02Speaker 1: was slowly losing hold of my original and better self,
- 2:39:07Speaker 1: and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse. Between
- 2:39:15Speaker 1: these two I now felt I had to choose. My
- 2:39:20Speaker 1: two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties
- 2:39:24Speaker 1: were most unequally shared between them. Jekyl, who was composite,
- 2:39:30Speaker 1: now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto,
- 2:39:36Speaker 1: projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hide.
- 2:39:41Speaker 1: But Hyde was indifferent to Jekyl, or but remembered him
- 2:39:45Speaker 1: as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he
- 2:39:49Speaker 1: conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyl had more than a father's interest,
- 2:39:56Speaker 1: Hide had more than a son's indifference. To cast in
- 2:40:01Speaker 1: my lot with Jekyl was to die to those appetites
- 2:40:04Speaker 1: which I had long secretly indulged, and had of late
- 2:40:08Speaker 1: begune to pamper. To cast it in with Hide was
- 2:40:13Speaker 1: to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to
- 2:40:17Speaker 1: become at a blow and forever despised and friendless. The
- 2:40:24Speaker 1: bargain might appear unequal, but there was still another consideration
- 2:40:29Speaker 1: in the scales. For while Jekyl would suffer smartingly in
- 2:40:33Speaker 1: the fires of abstinence, Hide would be not even conscious
- 2:40:38Speaker 1: of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances
- 2:40:43Speaker 1: were the terms of this debate are as old and
- 2:40:47Speaker 1: commonplace as man. Much the same inducement and alarms cast
- 2:40:53Speaker 1: the die for any tempted and trembling sinner, And it
- 2:40:58Speaker 1: fell out with me, as it falls with so vast
- 2:41:01Speaker 1: a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part,
- 2:41:06Speaker 1: and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it. Yes,
- 2:41:12Speaker 1: I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends
- 2:41:18Speaker 1: and cherishing honest hopes, and bade a resolute farewell to
- 2:41:22Speaker 1: the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping pulses,
- 2:41:28Speaker 1: and secret pleasures that I had enjoyed in the disguise
- 2:41:32Speaker 1: of hide. I made this choice, perhaps with some unconscious reservation,
- 2:41:39Speaker 1: for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor
- 2:41:42Speaker 1: destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready
- 2:41:46Speaker 1: in my cabinet. For two months. However, I was true
- 2:41:51Speaker 1: to my determination. For two months I led a life
- 2:41:55Speaker 1: of such severity as I had never before attained to,
- 2:41:59Speaker 1: and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. But time
- 2:42:05Speaker 1: began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm.
- 2:42:10Speaker 1: The praises of conscience began to grow into a thing.
- 2:42:14Speaker 1: Of course, I began to be tortured with throes and
- 2:42:18Speaker 1: longings as of hide, struggling after freedom, and at last,
- 2:42:24Speaker 1: in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded
- 2:42:29Speaker 1: and swallowed the transforming draft. I do not suppose that
- 2:42:36Speaker 1: when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he
- 2:42:40Speaker 1: is once out of five hundred times affected by the
- 2:42:44Speaker 1: dangers that he runs through his brutish physical insensibility. Neither
- 2:42:50Speaker 1: had I, long as I had considered my position, made
- 2:42:53Speaker 1: enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness
- 2:42:59Speaker 1: to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde.
- 2:43:05Speaker 1: Yet it was by these that I was punished. My
- 2:43:09Speaker 1: devil had been long caged. He came out roaring. I
- 2:43:14Speaker 1: was conscious even when I took the draft of a
- 2:43:18Speaker 1: more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill. It must
- 2:43:23Speaker 1: have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my soul,
- 2:43:26Speaker 1: that tempest of impatience with which I listened to the
- 2:43:30Speaker 1: civilities of my unhappy victim. I declare, at least before God,
- 2:43:36Speaker 1: no man, morally saying, could have been guilty of that
- 2:43:39Speaker 1: crime upon so pitiful a provocation, and that I struck
- 2:43:45Speaker 1: in no more reasonable spirit than that in which a
- 2:43:48Speaker 1: sick child may break a plaything. But I had voluntarily
- 2:43:52Speaker 1: stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which even
- 2:43:57Speaker 1: the worst of us continues to walk with some degree
- 2:44:01Speaker 1: of steadiness among temptations, and in my case, to be tempted,
- 2:44:07Speaker 1: however slightly, was to fall. Instantly, the spirit of hell
- 2:44:13Speaker 1: awoke in me, and raged with a transport of glee,
- 2:44:18Speaker 1: I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow.
- 2:44:24Speaker 1: And it was not till weariness had begun to succeed
- 2:44:28Speaker 1: that I was suddenly in the top fit of my delirium,
- 2:44:32Speaker 1: struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.
- 2:44:37Speaker 1: A mist dispersed, I saw my life to be forfeit,
- 2:44:42Speaker 1: and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once
- 2:44:45Speaker 1: glorying and trembling. My lust of evil gratified and stimulated
- 2:44:52Speaker 1: my love of life. Screwed to the topmost peg, I
- 2:44:57Speaker 1: ran to the house in soho, and to make assurance,
- 2:45:00Speaker 1: doubly sure destroyed my papers. Thence I set out through
- 2:45:06Speaker 1: the lamp lit streets in the same divided ecstasy of mind,
- 2:45:11Speaker 1: gloating on my crime, lightheadedly devising others in the future,
- 2:45:16Speaker 1: and yet still hastening, and still hearkening in my wake
- 2:45:20Speaker 1: for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a song
- 2:45:25Speaker 1: upon his lips as he compounded the draft, and as
- 2:45:28Speaker 1: he drank it pledged the dead man. The pangs of
- 2:45:33Speaker 1: transformation had not done tearing him before Henry Jekyl, with
- 2:45:38Speaker 1: streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees,
- 2:45:44Speaker 1: and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of
- 2:45:49Speaker 1: self indulgence was rent from hand to foot. I saw
- 2:45:53Speaker 1: my life as a whole. I followed it up from
- 2:45:56Speaker 1: the days of childhood, when I had walked with my
- 2:45:59Speaker 1: father's hand, and through the self denying toils of my
- 2:46:03Speaker 1: professional life, to arrive again and again with the same
- 2:46:08Speaker 1: sense of unreality. At the damned horrors of the evening.
- 2:46:13Speaker 1: I could have screamed aloud. I sought with tears and
- 2:46:17Speaker 1: prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and
- 2:46:21Speaker 1: sounds with which my memory swarmed against me. And still
- 2:46:27Speaker 1: between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared
- 2:46:32Speaker 1: into my soul, as the acuteness of this remorse began
- 2:46:37Speaker 1: to die away. It was succeeded by a sense of joy.
- 2:46:42Speaker 1: The problem of my conduct was solved. Hide was thenceforth impossible,
- 2:46:48Speaker 1: whether I would or not. I was now confined to
- 2:46:52Speaker 1: the better part of my existence, And oh how I
- 2:46:56Speaker 1: rejoiced to think it. With what willing humility I embraced
- 2:47:01Speaker 1: anew the restrictions of natural life, with what sincere renunciation.
- 2:47:08Speaker 1: I locked the door by which I had so often gone,
- 2:47:11Speaker 1: and come and ground the key under my heel. The
- 2:47:17Speaker 1: next day came the news that the murder had been overlooked,
- 2:47:22Speaker 1: that the guilt of Hide was patent to the world,
- 2:47:26Speaker 1: and that the victim was a man high in public estimation.
- 2:47:31Speaker 1: It was not only a crime, it had been a
- 2:47:33Speaker 1: tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it.
- 2:47:38Speaker 1: I think I was glad to have my better impulses
- 2:47:42Speaker 1: thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold,
- 2:47:47Speaker 1: Jekyl was now my city of refuge. Let but Hide
- 2:47:52Speaker 1: peep out an instant, and the hands of all men
- 2:47:55Speaker 1: would be raised to take and slay him. I resolved
- 2:48:01Speaker 1: in my future conduct to redeem the past. And I
- 2:48:05Speaker 1: can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of
- 2:48:08Speaker 1: some good. You know yourself, how earnestly, in the last
- 2:48:12Speaker 1: months of last year I labored to relieve suffering. You
- 2:48:18Speaker 1: know that much was done for others, and that the
- 2:48:21Speaker 1: days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I
- 2:48:26Speaker 1: truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and innocent life.
- 2:48:32Speaker 1: I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely.
- 2:48:36Speaker 1: But I was still cursed with my duality of purpose.
- 2:48:40Speaker 1: And as the first edge of my penitence wore off,
- 2:48:44Speaker 1: the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently
- 2:48:49Speaker 1: chained down, began to growl for license. Not that I
- 2:48:55Speaker 1: dreamed of resuscitating hide, the bare idea of that would
- 2:48:59Speaker 1: startle me to frey. No, it was in my own
- 2:49:02Speaker 1: person that I was once more tempted to trifle with
- 2:49:06Speaker 1: my conscience. And it was as an ordinary secret sinner
- 2:49:11Speaker 1: that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation.
- 2:49:17Speaker 1: There comes an end to all things. The most capacious
- 2:49:22Speaker 1: measure is filled at last, And this brief condescension to
- 2:49:27Speaker 1: my evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul. And
- 2:49:33Speaker 1: yet I was not alarmed. The fall seemed natural, like
- 2:49:37Speaker 1: a return to the old days before I had made
- 2:49:40Speaker 1: my discovery. It was a fine, clear January day, wet
- 2:49:46Speaker 1: under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead,
- 2:49:51Speaker 1: and the Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and
- 2:49:55Speaker 1: sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on
- 2:49:59Speaker 1: a bench, the animal within me, licking the chops of memory,
- 2:50:05Speaker 1: the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but
- 2:50:11Speaker 1: not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I
- 2:50:15Speaker 1: was like my neighbors. And then I smiled, comparing myself
- 2:50:20Speaker 1: with other men, comparing my active good will with the
- 2:50:24Speaker 1: lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment
- 2:50:29Speaker 1: of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a
- 2:50:34Speaker 1: horrid nausea, and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away
- 2:50:41Speaker 1: and left me faint. And then, as in its turn,
- 2:50:45Speaker 1: the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a
- 2:50:49Speaker 1: change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness,
- 2:50:54Speaker 1: a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation.
- 2:51:00Speaker 1: I looked down, my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs,
- 2:51:07Speaker 1: the hand that lay on my knee was cordid and hairy.
- 2:51:11Speaker 1: I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I
- 2:51:16Speaker 1: had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved the
- 2:51:21Speaker 1: cloth laying for me on the dining room at home.
- 2:51:25Speaker 1: And now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted houseless,
- 2:51:31Speaker 1: a known murderer, thrall to the gallows. My reason wavered,
- 2:51:39Speaker 1: but it did not fail me utterly. I have more
- 2:51:42Speaker 1: than once observed that in my second character, my faculties
- 2:51:47Speaker 1: seemed sharpened to a point, and my spirits more tensely elastic.
- 2:51:53Speaker 1: Thus it came about that where Jekyl perhaps might have succumbed,
- 2:51:58Speaker 1: Hide rose to the importance of the moment. My drugs
- 2:52:02Speaker 1: were in one of the presses of my cabinet. How
- 2:52:05Speaker 1: was I to reach them? That was the problem that
- 2:52:09Speaker 1: crushing my temples in my hands. I set myself to
- 2:52:13Speaker 1: solve the laboratory door I had closed. If I sought
- 2:52:19Speaker 1: to enter by the house, my own servants would consign
- 2:52:23Speaker 1: me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand,
- 2:52:27Speaker 1: and thought of Lanion. How was he to be reached?
- 2:52:32Speaker 1: How persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets,
- 2:52:37Speaker 1: how was I to make my way into his presence,
- 2:52:40Speaker 1: And how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail
- 2:52:46Speaker 1: on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague,
- 2:52:50Speaker 1: Dr Jekyl. Then I remembered that of my original character,
- 2:52:56Speaker 1: one part remained to me I could write my own hand.
- 2:53:01Speaker 1: And once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way
- 2:53:05Speaker 1: that I must follow became lighted up from end to end.
- 2:53:11Speaker 1: Thereupon I arranged my clothes as best I could, and,
- 2:53:16Speaker 1: sommoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street,
- 2:53:21Speaker 1: the name of which I chanced to remember at my appearance,
- 2:53:26Speaker 1: which was indeed comical enough. However tragic a fate these
- 2:53:30Speaker 1: garments covered. The driver could not conceal his mirth. I
- 2:53:36Speaker 1: gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury,
- 2:53:40Speaker 1: and the smile withered from his face, happily for him,
- 2:53:45Speaker 1: yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I
- 2:53:48Speaker 1: had certainly dragged him from his perch at the inn.
- 2:53:53Speaker 1: As I entered, I looked about me with so black
- 2:53:56Speaker 1: a countenance as to make the attendants tremble. Not a
- 2:54:01Speaker 1: look did they exchange in my presence, but obsequiously took
- 2:54:05Speaker 1: my orders, led me to a private room, and brought
- 2:54:09Speaker 1: me wherewithal to write Hide in danger of his life
- 2:54:15Speaker 1: was a creature new to me, shaken with inordinate anger,
- 2:54:20Speaker 1: strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain.
- 2:54:26Speaker 1: Yet the creature was astute, mastered his fury with a
- 2:54:30Speaker 1: great effort of the will, composed his two important letters,
- 2:54:35Speaker 1: one to Lanyon and one to Paul, and that he
- 2:54:38Speaker 1: might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them
- 2:54:42Speaker 1: out with directions that they should be registered. Thenceforward he
- 2:54:48Speaker 1: sat all day over the fire in the private room,
- 2:54:52Speaker 1: gnawing his nails. There he dined, sitting alone with his fears,
- 2:54:58Speaker 1: the waiter visibly quailing before his eye. And thence, when
- 2:55:03Speaker 1: the night was fully come, he set forth in the
- 2:55:06Speaker 1: corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and
- 2:55:10Speaker 1: fro about the streets of the city. He I say,
- 2:55:15Speaker 1: I cannot say I that child of Hell had nothing human,
- 2:55:20Speaker 1: nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when
- 2:55:24Speaker 1: at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious,
- 2:55:28Speaker 1: he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in
- 2:55:32Speaker 1: his misfitting clothes. An object marked out for observation into
- 2:55:38Speaker 1: the midst of the nocturnal passengers. These two base passions
- 2:55:43Speaker 1: raged within him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted
- 2:55:48Speaker 1: by his fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the less
- 2:55:54Speaker 1: frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight.
- 2:56:01Speaker 1: Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think a
- 2:56:04Speaker 1: box of lights. He smote her in the face, and
- 2:56:08Speaker 1: she fled. When I came to myself at Lanion's the
- 2:56:13Speaker 1: horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat. I
- 2:56:18Speaker 1: do not know. It was at least but a drop
- 2:56:20Speaker 1: in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked
- 2:56:23Speaker 1: back upon these hours. A change had come over me.
- 2:56:28Speaker 1: It was no longer the fear of the gallows. It
- 2:56:31Speaker 1: was the horror of being hide that racked me. I
- 2:56:36Speaker 1: received Lanion's condemnation partly in a dream. It was partly
- 2:56:41Speaker 1: in a dream that I came home to my own
- 2:56:44Speaker 1: house and got into bed. I slept, after the prostration
- 2:56:49Speaker 1: of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber, which
- 2:56:54Speaker 1: not even the nightmares that wrong me could avail to break.
- 2:56:59Speaker 1: I awoke in the morning, shaken, weakened, but refreshed, I
- 2:57:04Speaker 1: still hated and feared the thought of the brute that
- 2:57:07Speaker 1: slept within me, and I had not, of course forgotten
- 2:57:11Speaker 1: the appalling dangers of the day before. But I was
- 2:57:15Speaker 1: once more at home in my own house and close
- 2:57:19Speaker 1: to my drugs, and gratitude for my escape shone so
- 2:57:24Speaker 1: strong in my soul that it almost rivaled the brightness
- 2:57:28Speaker 1: of hope. I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast,
- 2:57:35Speaker 1: drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I
- 2:57:38Speaker 1: was seized again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the change,
- 2:57:45Speaker 1: and I had but the time to gain the shelter
- 2:57:47Speaker 1: of my cabinet before I was once again raging and
- 2:57:51Speaker 1: freezing with the passions of hide. It took on this
- 2:57:56Speaker 1: occasion a double dose to recall me to myself, and
- 2:58:00Speaker 1: alas six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in
- 2:58:05Speaker 1: the fire, the pangs returned and the drug had to
- 2:58:09Speaker 1: be readministered in short From that day forth, it seemed
- 2:58:15Speaker 1: only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only
- 2:58:19Speaker 1: under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was
- 2:58:22Speaker 1: able to wear the countenance of Jekyl at all hours
- 2:58:27Speaker 1: of the day and night, I would be taken with
- 2:58:30Speaker 1: the premonitory shudder. Above all, if I slept or even
- 2:58:34Speaker 1: dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always
- 2:58:38Speaker 1: as Hide that I awakened under the strain of this
- 2:58:42Speaker 1: continually impending doom, and by the sleeplessness to which I
- 2:58:47Speaker 1: now condemned myself, I even beyond what I had thought
- 2:58:51Speaker 1: possible to man. I became in my own person a
- 2:58:56Speaker 1: creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly, weak both
- 2:59:02Speaker 1: in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought,
- 2:59:07Speaker 1: the horror of my other self. But when I slept,
- 2:59:12Speaker 1: or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I
- 2:59:16Speaker 1: would leap, almost without transition, For the pangs of transformation
- 2:59:21Speaker 1: grew daily less marked into the possession of a fancy
- 2:59:25Speaker 1: brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds,
- 2:59:31Speaker 1: and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain
- 2:59:34Speaker 1: the raging energies of life. The powers of Hide seemed
- 2:59:40Speaker 1: to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyl, and certainly
- 2:59:45Speaker 1: the hate that now divided them was equal on each
- 2:59:48Speaker 1: side with Jeckyl. It was a thing of vital instinct.
- 2:59:53Speaker 1: He had now seen the full deformity of that creature
- 2:59:57Speaker 1: that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness,
- 3:00:02Speaker 1: and was coer with him to death and beyond these
- 3:00:06Speaker 1: links of community, which in themselves made the most poignant
- 3:00:10Speaker 1: part of his distress. He thought of hide for all
- 3:00:15Speaker 1: his energies of life, as of something not only hellish
- 3:00:19Speaker 1: but inorganic. This was the shocking thing that the slime
- 3:00:25Speaker 1: of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices, that
- 3:00:30Speaker 1: the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned, that what was dead
- 3:00:36Speaker 1: and had no shape would usurp the offices of life.
- 3:00:41Speaker 1: And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him,
- 3:00:46Speaker 1: closer than a wife, closer than an eye, lay caged
- 3:00:51Speaker 1: in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt
- 3:00:54Speaker 1: its struggle to be borne, and at every hour of
- 3:00:58Speaker 1: weakness and in the confevidence of slumber prevailed against him
- 3:01:03Speaker 1: and deposed him out of life. The hatred of hide,
- 3:01:08Speaker 1: for Jekyl was of a different order. His terror of
- 3:01:13Speaker 1: the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide and
- 3:01:19Speaker 1: return to his subordinate station of a part instead of
- 3:01:24Speaker 1: a person. But he loathed the necessity. He loathed the
- 3:01:30Speaker 1: despondency into which Jekyl was now fallen, and he resented
- 3:01:34Speaker 1: the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the
- 3:01:40Speaker 1: apelike tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my
- 3:01:44Speaker 1: own hand, blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning
- 3:01:48Speaker 1: the letters, and destroying the portrait of my father. And indeed,
- 3:01:53Speaker 1: had it not been for his fear of death, he
- 3:01:56Speaker 1: would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve
- 3:02:00Speaker 1: me in the ruin. But his love of life is wonderful.
- 3:02:05Speaker 1: I go further, I who sicken and freeze at the
- 3:02:08Speaker 1: mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and
- 3:02:13Speaker 1: passion of this attachment, and when I know how he
- 3:02:17Speaker 1: fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I
- 3:02:21Speaker 1: find it in my heart to pity him. It is useless,
- 3:02:27Speaker 1: and the time awfully fails me to prolong this description.
- 3:02:33Speaker 1: No one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice.
- 3:02:39Speaker 1: And yet even to these habit brought no not alleviation,
- 3:02:44Speaker 1: but a certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair.
- 3:02:51Speaker 1: And my punishment might have gone on for years but
- 3:02:54Speaker 1: for the last calamity which has now fallen and which
- 3:02:58Speaker 1: has finally severed me from my own face and nature.
- 3:03:03Speaker 1: My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed
- 3:03:07Speaker 1: since the date of the first experiment, began to run low.
- 3:03:12Speaker 1: I sent out for a fresh supply and mixed the draft.
- 3:03:17Speaker 1: The ebullition followed, and the first change of color, not
- 3:03:22Speaker 1: the second. I drank it, and it was without efficacy.
- 3:03:27Speaker 1: You will learn from Paul how I have had London ransacked.
- 3:03:31Speaker 1: It was in vain, and I am now persuaded that
- 3:03:35Speaker 1: my first supply was impure, and that it was that
- 3:03:39Speaker 1: unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draft. About a
- 3:03:46Speaker 1: week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement
- 3:03:51Speaker 1: under the influence of the last of the old powders.
- 3:03:55Speaker 1: This then, is the last time, short of a miracle,
- 3:04:00Speaker 1: that Henry Jackal can think his own thoughts or see
- 3:04:04Speaker 1: his own face now, how sadly altered in the glass.
- 3:04:10Speaker 1: Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing
- 3:04:13Speaker 1: to an end. For if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction,
- 3:04:19Speaker 1: it has been by a combination of great prudence and
- 3:04:22Speaker 1: great good luck. Should the throes of change take me
- 3:04:27Speaker 1: in the act of writing, it hide will tear it
- 3:04:30Speaker 1: in pieces. But if some time shall have elapsed after
- 3:04:35Speaker 1: I have laid it, by his wonderful selfishness and circumscription
- 3:04:40Speaker 1: to the moment, will probably save it once again from
- 3:04:44Speaker 1: the action of his ape like spite. And indeed the
- 3:04:49Speaker 1: doom that is closing on us both has already changed
- 3:04:53Speaker 1: and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I
- 3:04:57Speaker 1: shall again and for ever re endere that hated personality,
- 3:05:03Speaker 1: I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in
- 3:05:06Speaker 1: my chair, or continue with the most strained and fear
- 3:05:11Speaker 1: struck ecstasy of listening to pace up and down this room,
- 3:05:16Speaker 1: my last earthly refuge, and give ear to every sound
- 3:05:21Speaker 1: of menace? Will hide die upon the scaffold, or will
- 3:05:27Speaker 1: he find the courage to release himself at the last moment?
- 3:05:32Speaker 1: God knows I am careless. This is my true hour
- 3:05:37Speaker 1: of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here, then,
- 3:05:46Speaker 1: as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal
- 3:05:50Speaker 1: up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy
- 3:05:55Speaker 1: Henry Jekyl to an end. End of the strange case
- 3:06:04Speaker 1: of Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde