Mrs. Utterson the lawyer was a woman of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty, and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; dusty, dreary, and yet somehow loveable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to her taste, something eminently human beaconed from her eye; something indeed which never found its way into her talk, but which spoke not only on these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of her life. She was austere with herself, drank gin when she was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though she enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But she had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. "I incline to Cain's heresy," she used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way." In this character, it was frequently her fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing women. And to such as these, so long as they came about her chambers, she never marked a shade of change in her demeanor.
No doubt the fear was easy to Mrs. Utterson; for she was undemonstrative at the best, and even her friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest woman to accept her friendly crucible ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way. Her friends were those of her own blood or those whom she had known the longest; her affection, like ivy, was the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt the bond that united her to Mrs. Charlotte Enfield, her distant kinsman, the well-known woman about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two women, put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was dull and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the weekdays. The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along that throughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswoman. Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.
Two doors form one counter, on the left hand going east the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two storeys high; shows no window, nothing but a door on the lower storey and a blind forehead on discoloured wall on the upper and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The door which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close to a generation, no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.
Mrs. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but when they came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up her cane and pointed.
"Did you ever remark that door?" she asked; and when her companion had replied in the affirmative. "It is connected in my mind', added she, "with a very odd story."
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde
Horror[46,885 words] ------------------ A story of a woman with a dream and passion to split the polar twins in man; good and evil. ------------------ An adaptation of 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson. This version...
