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Incident
of Dr. Lanyon Time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered
in reward, for the death of Sir Danvers was resented as a public injury; but
Mr. Hyde had disappeared out of the ken of the police as though he had never
existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable: tales
came out of the man’s cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of his vile
life, of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed to have surrounded
his career; but of his present whereabouts, not a whisper. From the time he had
left the house in Soho on the morning of the murder, he was simply blotted out;
and gradually, as time drew on, Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness
of his alarm, and to grow more at quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers
was, to his way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr.
Hyde. Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr.
Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends,
became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always
been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was
busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and
brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two
months, the doctor was at peace. On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the
doctor’s with a small party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host
had looked from one to the other as in the old days when the trio were
inseparable friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut
against the lawyer. “The doctor was confined to the house,” Poole said, “and
saw no one.” On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having now
been used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found this
return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had in Guest
to dine with him; and the sixth he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon’s. There at least he was not denied admittance;
but when he came in, he was shocked at the change which had taken place in the
doctor’s appearance. He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face.
The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder
and older; and yet it was not so much these tokens of a swift physical decay
that arrested the lawyer’s notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner
that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind. It was unlikely
that the doctor should fear death; and yet that was what Utterson was tempted
to suspect. “Yes,” he thought; “he is a doctor, he must know his own state and
that his days are counted; and the knowledge is more than he can bear.” And yet
when Utterson remarked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of great firmness
that Lanyon declared himself a doomed man. “I have had a shock,” he said, “and I shall
never recover. It is a question of weeks. Well, life has been pleasant; I liked
it; yes, sir, I used to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be
more glad to get away.” “Jekyll is ill, too,” observed Utterson. “Have
you seen him?” But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a
trembling hand. “I wish to see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll,” he said in a
loud, unsteady voice. “I am quite done with that person; and I beg that you
will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead.” “Tut-tut,” said Mr. Utterson; and then after a
considerable pause, “Can’t I do anything?” he inquired. “We are three very old
friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to make others.” “Nothing can be done,” returned Lanyon; “ask
himself.” “He will not see me,” said the lawyer. “I am not surprised at that,” was the reply.
“Some day, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right
and wrong of this. I cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can sit and
talk with me of other things, for God’s sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot
keep clear of this accursed topic, then in God’s name, go, for I cannot bear
it.” As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and
wrote to Jekyll, complaining of his exclusion from the house, and asking the
cause of this unhappy break with Lanyon; and the next day brought him a long
answer, often very pathetically worded, and sometimes darkly mysterious in
drift. The quarrel with Lanyon was incurable. “I do not blame our old friend,”
Jekyll wrote, “but I share his view that we must never meet. I mean from
henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor
must you doubt my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. You must
suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a
danger that I cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of
sufferers also. I could not think that this earth contained a place for
sufferings and terrors so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to
lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence.” Utterson was amazed;
the dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his
old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise
of a cheerful and an honoured age; and now in a moment, friendship, and peace
of mind, and the whole tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and unprepared
a change pointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon’s manner and words, there
must lie for it some deeper ground. A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed,
and in something less than a fortnight he was dead. The night after the
funeral, at which he had been sadly affected, Utterson locked the door of his
business room, and sitting there by the light of a melancholy candle, drew out
and set before him an envelope addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal
of his dead friend. “Private: for the hands of G. J. Utterson alone, and in
case of his predecease to be destroyed unread,” so it was emphatically
superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents. “I have buried one
friend today,” he thought: “what if this should cost me another?” And then he
condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and broke the seal. Within there was
another enclosure, likewise sealed, and marked upon the cover as “not to be
opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll.” Utterson could not
trust his eyes. Yes, it was disappearance; here again, as in the mad will which
he had long ago restored to its author, here again were the idea of a
disappearance and the name of Henry Jekyll bracketted. But in the will, that
idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion of the man Hyde; it was set there
with a purpose all too plain and horrible. Written by the hand of Lanyon, what
should it mean? A great curiosity came on the trustee, to disregard the
prohibition and dive at once to the bottom of these mysteries; but professional
honour and faith to his dead friend were stringent obligations; and the packet
slept in the inmost corner of his private safe. It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may be doubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired the society of his surviving friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly; but his thoughts were disquieted and fearful. He went to call indeed; but he was perhaps relieved to be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak with Poole upon the doorstep and surrounded by the air and sounds of the open city, rather than to be admitted into that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak with its inscrutable recluse. Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news to communicate. The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined himself to the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even sleep; he was out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not read; it seemed as if he had something on his mind. Utterson became so used to the unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off little by little in the frequency of his visits. |