The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde
By Robert Louis Stevenson
Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case
Part 16
I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say
with
honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know
yourself how
earnestly, in the last months of the last year, I laboured to
relieve
suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the
days
passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say
that I
wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that
I
daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my
duality
of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the
lower
side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to
growl
for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare
idea of
that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person that
I
was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as
an ordinary secret sinner that I at last fell before the assaults
of
temptation.
There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is
filled
at last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed
the
balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed
natural,
like a return to the old days before I had made my discovery. It
was a
fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had
melted, but
cloudless overhead; and the Regent's Park was full of winter
chirrupings
and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the
animal
within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little
drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to
begin.
After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I
smiled,
comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will
with
the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that
vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and
the most
deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then
as
in its turn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in
the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of
danger,
a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes
hung
formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was
corded
and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been
safe
of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved--the cloth laying for me in
the
dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind,
hunted,
houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.
My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more
than once
observed that in my second character, my faculties seemed
sharpened to
a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about
that,
where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the
importance
of the moment. My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet;
how
was I to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my
temples in
my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed.
If
I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me
to the
gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon.
How
was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped
capture in
the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? and how
should
I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous
physician
to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered
that
of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write
my own
hand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I
must
follow became lighted up from end to end.
Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a
passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of
which I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which was indeed
comical
enough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver
could
not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of
devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face--happily for
him--yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I had
certainly
dragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked
about me
with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a
look
did they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders,
led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write.
Hyde
in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with
inordinate
anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet
the
creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the
will;
composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to
Poole; and
that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent
them
out with directions that they should be registered. Thenceforward,
he
sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails;
there
he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly
quailing
before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set
forth
in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the
streets of the city. He, I say--I cannot say, I. That child of
Hell had
nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when
at
last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged
the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes,
an
object marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnal
passengers, these two base passions raged within him like a
tempest.
He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself,
skulking
through the less frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes
that
still divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to him,
offering, I
think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled.
When I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend
perhaps
affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in
the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these
hours. A
change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows,
it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received
Lanyon's
condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I
came
home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the
prostration
of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even
the
nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the
morning
shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the
thought
of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course
forgotten the
appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home,
in my
own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone
so
strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.
I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast,
drinking
the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with
those
indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but
the
time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again
raging
and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a
double dose to recall me to myself; and alas! six hours after, as
I sat
looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to
be
re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a
great
effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation
of the
drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all
hours of
the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory shudder;
above
all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was
always
as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually
impending
doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay,
even
beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own
person, a
creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in
body and
mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other
self.
But when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I
would
leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew
daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with
images
of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that
seemed
not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The
powers of
Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And
certainly
the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With
Jekyll, it
was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity
of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of
consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these
links
of community, which in themselves made the most poignant part of
his distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as
of
something not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking
thing;
that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that
the
amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and
had
no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that
that
insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than
an eye;
lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it
struggle
to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence
of
slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life. The
hatred
of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. His terror of the
gallows
drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to
his
subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed
the
necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now
fallen,
and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded.
Hence
the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own
hand
blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and
destroying
the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his
fear of
death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve
me in
the ruin. But his love of me is wonderful; I go further: I, who
sicken
and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection
and
passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power
to cut
him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.
It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this
description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that
suffice;
and yet even to these, habit brought--no, not alleviation--but a
certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair;
and my
punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity
which
has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face
and
nature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed
since the
date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a
fresh
supply and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the
first
change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without
efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London
ransacked;
it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply was
impure,
and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the
draught.
About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement
under the
influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last
time,
short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts
or see
his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I
delay
too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has
hitherto
escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great
prudence
and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the
act of
writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall
have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness
and
circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again
from the
action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing
on us
both has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now,
when
I shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know
how I
shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with
the most
strained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down
this
room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of
menace.
Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to
release
himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my
true
hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself.
Here
then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession,
I
bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.
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