hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night,
however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went
into his business room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private
part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll's Will, and sat
down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph,8 for
Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused
to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in
case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S.,9 etc., all his
possessions were to pass into the hands of his 'friend and benefactor Edward
Hyde,' but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's 'disappearance or unexplained absence
for any period exceeding three calendar months,' the said Edward Hyde should
step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any
burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members
of the doctor's household. This document had long been the lawyer's eyesore.
It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary
sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his
ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden
turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but
a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be
clothed upon with detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial
mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite
presentment1 of a fiend. 'I thought it was madness,' he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in
the safe, 'and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.'
With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in the
direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine,2 where his friend, the
great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. 'If anyone
knows, it will be Lanyon,' he had thought.
The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage
of delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where Dr. Lan
yon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced
gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and
decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and
welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was the way of the man, was
somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these
two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, both thorough
respecters of themselves and of each other, and, what does not always follow,
men who thoroughly enjoyed each other's company.
After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so disa
greeably preoccupied his mind.
'I suppose, Lanyon,' said he, 'you and I must be the two oldest friends that
Henry Jekyll has?' 'I wish the friends were younger,' chuckled Dr. Lanyon. 'But I suppose we
are. And what of that? I see little of him now.'
'Indeed?' said Utterson. 'I thought you had a bond of common interest.'
'We had,' was the reply. 'But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll
became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though
8. In the author's handwriting. 1. Image. 9. Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Civil Law, Doc-2. A once- aristocratic neighborhood where fashtor of Laws, and Fellow of the Royal Society. ionable doctors had their offices.
.
1650 / ROBERT Louis STEVENSON
