with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a
schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of
liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was
complete. Think of it I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my
laboratory door, give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the
draught that I had always standing ready; and whatever he had done,
Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and
there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his
study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry
Jekyll.
The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have
said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands
of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I
would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind
of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of
my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being
inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on
self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture
to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times
aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from
ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was
Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse;
he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even
make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And
thus his conscience slumbered.
Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now I
can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design of entering; I
mean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with which
my chastisement approached. I met with one accident which, as it
brought on no consequence, I shall no more than mention. An act of
cruelty to a child aroused against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I
recognised the other day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and
the child s family joined him; there were moments when I feared for my
life; and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward
Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn in
the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily eliminated from
the future, by opening an account at another bank in the name of Edward
Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own hand backward, I had supplied
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