deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the
principle of hatred.
This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance,
struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was
dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable;
his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober
fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement the
trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the
ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar
sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous
accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was
something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature
that now faced me something seizing, surprising and revolting this
fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that
to my interest in the man s nature and character, there was added a
curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the
world.
These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set
down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on
fire with sombre excitement.
Have you got it? he cried. Have you got it? And so lively was his
impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake
me.
I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my
blood. Come, sir, said I. You forget that I have not yet the
pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please. And I showed
him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as
fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness
of the hour, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of
my visitor, would suffer me to muster.
I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon, he replied civilly enough. What you
say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my
politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry
Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood... He
paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his
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