Transcript of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
CHAPTER I. THE STRAINCE CASE OF CHAPTER I. STORY OF THE DOOR Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile, cold, scanty, and embarrassed in discourse, backward in sentiment, lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beckoned from his eye, something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in the silent cymbals of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself, drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages, and although he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he 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 inclined to Cain's heresy, he used to say quaintly. I let my brother go to the devil in his own way. In this character it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour. No doubt this feat was easy to Mr. Utterson, for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready made from the hands of opportunity, and that was the lawyer's way. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest, his affections like ivy with the growth of time. They implied no aptness in the object, hence no doubt the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man 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 men 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 small in what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the weekdays. The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all immulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the