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dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to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 to-day, 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 bracketed. 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
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