The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | Page 7

devilish
little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly
purple, "would have estranged Damon and Pythias."
This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Utterson. "They have only
differed on some point of science," he thought; and being a man of no scientific passions
(except in the matter of conveyancing), he even added: "It is nothing worse than that!" He
gave his friend a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached the
question he had come to put. "Did you ever come across a protege of his--one Hyde?" he
asked.
"Hyde?" repeated Lanyon. "No. Never heard of him. Since my time."
That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to the great,
dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of the morning began to
grow large. It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and
beseiged by questions.
Six o'clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr.
Utterson's dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it had touched him
on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather
enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained
room, Mr. Enfield's tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would
be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man
walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor's; and then these met, and that
human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or else
he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at
his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed
plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom
power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. The figure
in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was
but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly and
still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and
at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming. And still the figure had no
face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled
him and melted before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in
the lawyer's mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the
features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the
mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious
things when well examined. He might see a reason for his friend's strange preference or
bondage (call it which you please) and even for the startling clause of the will. At least it
would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face
which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a

spirit of enduring hatred.
From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In
the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at
night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or
concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.
"If he be Mr. Hyde," he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek."
And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets
as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern
of light and shadow. By ten o'clock, when the shops were closed the by-street was very
solitary and, in spite of the low growl of London from all round, very silent. Small
sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either side
of the roadway; and the rumour of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long
time. Mr. Utterson had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd light
footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had long grown accustomed
to the quaint effect with which the footfalls