HENRY JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE
I was born in the year 18-- to a large fortune, endowed besides withexcellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respectof the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have beensupposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguishedfuture. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaietyof disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as Ifound it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my headhigh, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public.Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when Ireached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stockof my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed toa profound duplicity of me. Many a man would have even blazoned suchirregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I hadset before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense ofshame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than anyparticular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, witheven a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me thoseprovinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature.In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on thathard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of themost plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer,I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest;I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame,than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledgeor the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the directionof my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and thetranscendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness ofthe perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sidesof my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadilynearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed tosuch a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. Isay two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond thatpoint. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines;and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a merepolity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for mypart, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one directionand in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my ownperson, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive dualityof man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of myconsciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was onlybecause I was radically both; and from an early date, even before thecourse of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most nakedpossibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, asa beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements.If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, lifewould be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go hisway, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more uprighttwin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upwardpath, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and nolonger exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneousevil. It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots werethus bound together--that in the agonised womb of consciousness, thesepolar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were theydissociated?
I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side light beganto shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began toperceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the tremblingimmateriality, the mistlike transience, of this seemingly so solid bodyin which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power toshake and pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might tossthe curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not enterdeeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because Ihave been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is boundfor ever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to castit off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awfulpressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident,my discoveries were incomplete. Enough then, that I not only recognisedmy natural body from the mere aura and effulgence of certain of thepowers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by whichthese powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second formand countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because theywere the expression, and bore the stamp of lower elements in my soul.
I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. Iknew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlledand shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple ofan overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition,utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it tochange. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound atlast overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared mytincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, alarge quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments,to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, Icompounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in theglass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow ofcourage, drank off the potion.
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadlynausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hourof birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, andI came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was somethingstrange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its verynovelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body;within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disorderedsensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of thebonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked,tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought,in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out myhands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, Iwas suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.
There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands besideme as I write, was brought there later on and for the very purposeof these transformations. The night however, was far gone intothe morning--the morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for theconception of the day--the inmates of my house were locked in the mostrigorous hours of slumber; and I determined, flushed as I was withhope and triumph, to venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom.I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, Icould have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort thattheir unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole throughthe corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I sawfor the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.
I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, butthat which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, towhich I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust andless developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in thecourse of my life, which had been, after all, nine tenths a life ofeffort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and muchless exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hydewas so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even asgood shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadlyand plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must stillbelieve to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprintof deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in theglass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome.This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it borea livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, thanthe imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomedto call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed thatwhen I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me atfirst without a visible misgiving o
f the flesh. This, as I take it, wasbecause all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of goodand evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.
I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusiveexperiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I hadlost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from ahouse that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, Ionce more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangsof dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, thestature and the face of Henry Jekyll.
That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached mydiscovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment whileunder the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have beenotherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forthan angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action;it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of theprisonhouse of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, thatwhich stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil,kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; andthe thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had nowtwo characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and theother was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound ofwhose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. Themovement was thus wholly toward the worse.
Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness ofa life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as mypleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only wellknown and highly considered, but growing towards the elderly man, thisincoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on thisside that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but todrink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and toassume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion;it seemed to me at the time to be humourous; and I made my preparationswith the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho,to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as a housekeepera creature whom I knew well to be silent and unscrupulous. On the otherside, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described)was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square; and toparry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar object, inmy second character. I next drew up that will to which you so muchobjected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll,I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thusfortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by thestrange immunities of my position.
Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their ownperson and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever didso for his pleasures. I was the first that could plod in the public eyewith a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy,strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty.But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Thinkof it--I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory door,give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I hadalways standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would passaway like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead,quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man whocould afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.
The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I havesaid, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands ofEdward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I wouldcome back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind ofwonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out ofmy own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a beinginherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered onself; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of tortureto another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at timesaghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart fromordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It wasHyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse;he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would evenmake haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. Andthus his conscience slumbered.
Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even nowI can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design of entering; Imean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with whichmy chastisement approached. I met with one accident which, as it broughton no consequence, I shall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to achild aroused against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognisedthe other day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and the child'sfamily joined him; there were moments when I feared for my life; and atlast, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward Hyde had tobring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn in the name ofHenry Jekyll. But this danger was easily eliminated from the future, byopening an account at another bank in the name of Edward Hyde himself;and when, by sloping my own hand backward, I had supplied my double witha signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.
Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for oneof my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next day inbed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about me; invain I saw the decent furniture and tall proportions of my room in thesquare; in vain that I recognised the pattern of the bed curtains andthe design of the mahogany frame; something still kept insisting that Iwas not where I was, that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but inthe little room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the bodyof Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and in my psychological way, beganlazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion, occasionally, evenas I did so, dropping back into a comfortable morning doze. I was stillso engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments, my eyes fell uponmy hand. Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) wasprofessional in shape and size: it was large, firm, white and comely.But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of amid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corder,knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth ofhair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.
I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in themere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as suddenand startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed I rushedto the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed intosomething exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll,I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I askedmyself; and then, with another bound of terror--how was it to beremedied? It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all mydrugs were in the cabinet--a long journey down two pairs of stairs,through the back passage, across the open court and through theanatomical theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. Itmight indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that,when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And then withan overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind that theservants were already used to the coming and going of my second self. Ihad soon dressed, as well as I was able, in clothes of my own size: hadsoon passed through the house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back atseeing Mr. Hyde at such an hour and in such a strange array; and tenminutes later, Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sittingdown, with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.
Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversalof my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on thewall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began toreflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilitiesof my double existence. That part of me which I had the power ofprojecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished; it had seemedto me of late as though the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, asthough (when I wor
e that form) I were conscious of a more generous tideof blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this were much prolonged,the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, the power ofvoluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde becomeirrevocably mine. The power of the drug had not been always equallydisplayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed me;since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to double, andonce, with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these rareuncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment.Now, however, and in the light of that morning's accident, I was led toremark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been tothrow off the body of Jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedlytransferred itself to the other side. All things therefore seemed topoint to this; that I was slowly losing hold of my original and betterself, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.
Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memoryin common, but all other faculties were most unequally sharedbetween them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitiveapprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in thepleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, orbut remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern inwhich he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father'sinterest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference. To cast in my lotwith Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretlyindulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, wasto die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blowand forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal;but there was still another consideration in the scales; for whileJekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would benot even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstanceswere, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man;much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted andtrembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vasta majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was foundwanting in the strength to keep to it.
Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded byfriends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell tothe liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulsesand secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I madethis choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neithergave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde,which still lay ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was trueto my determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity asI had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of anapproving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the freshnessof my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing ofcourse; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hydestruggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, Ionce again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.
I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon hisvice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers thathe runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, longas I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the completemoral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were theleading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I waspunished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I wasconscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a morefurious propensity to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, thatstirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened tothe civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God, noman morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so pitiful aprovocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit than that inwhich a sick child may break a plaything. But I had voluntarily strippedmyself of all those balancing instincts by which even the worst of uscontinues to walk with some degree of steadiness among temptations; andin my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was to fall.
Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport ofglee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow;and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly,in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrillof terror. A mist dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled fromthe scene of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust ofevil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to the topmostpeg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance doubly sure)destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the lamplit streets, inthe same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on my crime, light-headedlydevising others in the future, and yet still hastening and stillhearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a song uponhis lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged thedead man. The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, beforeHenry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, hadfallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil ofself-indulgence was rent from head to foot. I saw my life as a whole:I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with myfather's hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professionallife, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, atthe damned horrors of the evening. I could have screamed aloud; I soughtwith tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images andsounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between thepetitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul. As theacuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by asense of joy. The problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforthimpossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to the betterpart of my existence; and O, how I rejoiced to think of it! with whatwilling humility I embraced anew the restrictions of natural life! withwhat sincere renunciation I locked the door by which I had so often goneand come, and ground the key under my heel!
The next day, came the news that the murder had not been overlooked,that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim wasa man high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been atragic folly. I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to havemy better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of thescaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out aninstant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him.
I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say withhonesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself howearnestly, in the last months of the last year, I laboured to relievesuffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the dayspassed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that Iwearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that Idaily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my dualityof purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lowerside of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growlfor licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea ofthat would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person that Iwas once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was asan ordinary secret sinner that I at last fell before the assaults oftemptation.
There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filledat last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed thebalance 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 afine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, butcloudless overhead; and the Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupingsand sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animalwithin me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a littledrowsed, 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 withthe lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of thatvainglorious thought, a qualm
came over me, a horrid nausea and the mostdeadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then asin its turn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change inthe temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger,a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hungformlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was cordedand hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safeof all men's respect, wealthy, beloved--the cloth laying for me in thedining-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 onceobserved that in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened toa point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that,where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importanceof the moment. My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; howwas I to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my temples inmy hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. IfI sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to thegallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. Howwas he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture inthe streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? and how shouldI, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physicianto rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered thatof my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my ownhand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I mustfollow became lighted up from end to end.
Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning apassing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name ofwhich I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which was indeed comicalenough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver couldnot conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust ofdevilish fury; and the smile withered from his face--happily forhim--yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainlydragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about mewith so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a lookdid they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders,led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hydein danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinateanger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet thecreature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will;composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; andthat he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent themout with directions that they should be registered. Thenceforward, hesat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; therehe dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailingbefore his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forthin the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about thestreets of the city. He, I say--I cannot say, I. That child of Hell hadnothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when atlast, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he dischargedthe cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, anobject marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnalpassengers, these two base passions raged within him like a tempest.He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself, skulkingthrough the less frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes thatstill divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to him, offering, Ithink, 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 perhapsaffected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop inthe sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. Achange 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'scondemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I camehome to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostrationof the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even thenightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morningshaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thoughtof the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten theappalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home, in myown house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone sostrong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.
I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinkingthe chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with thoseindescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but thetime to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again ragingand freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion adouble dose to recall me to myself; and alas! six hours after, as I satlooking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to bere-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a greateffort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of thedrug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all hours ofthe day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; aboveall, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was alwaysas Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually impendingdoom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, evenbeyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, acreature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body andmind, 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 wouldleap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grewdaily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with imagesof terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemednot strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The powers ofHyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainlythe hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, itwas a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformityof that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena ofconsciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these linksof community, which in themselves made the most poignant part ofhis distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as ofsomething not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing;that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that theamorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and hadno shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that thatinsurgent 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 struggleto be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence ofslumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life. The hatredof Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. His terror of the gallowsdrove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to hissubordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed thenecessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen,and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hencethe ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own handblasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroyingthe portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear ofdeath, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me inthe ruin. But his love of me is wonderful; I go further: I, who sickenand freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection andpassion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cuthim off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.
It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong thisdescription; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice;and yet even to these, habit brought--no, not alleviation--but acertain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and mypunishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity whichhas now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face andnature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since thedate of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a freshsupply and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first
change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was withoutefficiency. 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 thedraught.
About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under theinfluence 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 seehis own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delaytoo long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hithertoescaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudenceand great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the act ofwriting it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shallhave elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness andcircumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from theaction of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on usboth has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, whenI shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know how Ishall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the moststrained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down thisroom (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace.Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to releasehimself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my truehour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Herethen, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, Ibring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Page 10
