Whatever the case, it would be good to renew contact with someone—anyone—who might take his side. Increasingly friendless in London, Utterson hungered desperately for support as he prepared for the claimant’s dinner. Hercules himself, as Professor Keyes would have attested, must surely have shivered before facing his labours alone.
A Tempest of Emotions
THERE WAS A time when dinners at Jekyll’s house were the chief jewels of the social season. Utterson looked forward to them as he might a royal banquet, savoured them in the moment like a vintage wine, then kindled the memories for weeks—months—afterwards.
On this Saturday, however, he arrived at his home at Gaunt Street at six o’clock, opened the door guardedly, ascended on hushed feet to his bedroom, brushed his tailcoat, affixed his tie and cufflinks, and uncapped a decanter of bedside gin to settle his nerves. His hands, he noticed, were shaking uncontrollably.
‘Will sir be requiring dinner this evening?’ Poole asked from the door.
Utterson hurriedly concealed the glass. ‘Not tonight, Poole,’ he managed. ‘I’m dining with old friends.’
‘Old friends, sir?’
‘All rather unexpected, which is why I failed to inform you.’
‘Very well, sir—I take it you’ll be returning late?’
‘Very late, I expect. If you’ve prepared something for dinner you may enjoy it yourself.’
‘Why thank you, sir.’
In the cab, still trembling, Utterson could not prevent his mind from reliving a high tea of exceptional awkwardness that he had shared that very afternoon with the widow Spratling.
It was at the tea rooms of the Savoy Hotel, the sort of fashionable establishment he would never have patronised had he not been seeking to impress a lady. The widow, still in mourning silks, and looking indecently alluring even under the hideous glare of the hotel’s electric lamps, was accompanied as usual by her smirking son Terrence and was wearing on her countenance an expression of great expectation.
‘You said last week you had some pleasing news for me, Gabriel.’
‘That I did …’
‘And yet you have already been so good to me that I don’t know how I might ever repay you.’
‘You should not even think about repaying me, Nora.’
‘But I do think about it, Gabriel. Every day I say to Terrence that we have been delivered an angel. I say to him that we should never despair if things look bleak, because Gabriel will find a way to extricate us from our misery.’
‘You should not elevate me to such levels,’ Utterson said stiffly. ‘Indeed, I fear I might yet prove something of a disappointment to you, for a certain announcement I had intended to make might need to be postponed.’
‘Oh?’ The widow’s face wrinkled.
‘Well,’ conceded Utterson, ‘it’s just a temporary setback, I hope, and I am doing everything to settle the matter expeditiously. Nonetheless, it means I am unable to play the angelic role you have generously ascribed to me. So I trust you will forgive me.’
‘Of course I forgive you, Gabriel—how could I not?’ Nora paused, clearly struggling to contain her curiosity. ‘But whatever could it be,’ she went on finally, ‘that you were intending to announce to me? I hope it is not improper to ask?’
Stung by her plaintive tone, and melted by the anguish in her eyes, Utterson found himself divulging his little secret. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. You see, I had been intending to move personally into the Jekyll home next week, once it legally became my property, leaving my current abode in Gaunt Street vacant for the two of you.’
The widow gasped. ‘You mean to say you would offer your own home to Terrence and me?’
‘Precisely.’
She beamed. ‘Good Lord, Gabriel—could it possibly be true?’
‘It has been my intention for some time now.’
‘But how would I ever afford the rent for such a fine house, in the straits I am in?’
‘I expect no rent at all,’ said Utterson. ‘In fact, it is you who would be doing a favour for me, as I do not wish to part with the place entirely; nor can I conceive of tenants more reliable than you and Terrence.’
‘Oh, it’s true, Gabriel—it’s true! We would care for the place as our own! Why, this is exactly the news we have been waiting to hear. A home in Gaunt Street! This is just what I have been dreaming of—to get away from that stinking, noisy hovel in Shepherd’s Bush. Oh Gabriel, make no mistake, you are an angel indeed!’
Utterson was already regretting his disclosure. ‘And yet,’ he warned, ‘there might well be a delay, as I’ve indicated—perhaps a serious one.’
‘But how could it be, Gabriel? What could possibly thwart us?’
Utterson sighed. ‘It’s all very silly,’ he said. ‘You see, a man—an impostor—has moved into the Jekyll home, claiming it as his own.’
‘An impostor?’
‘A man claiming to be Henry Jekyll.’
‘Henry Jekyll! Our Henry?’
‘A fraudster,’ Utterson insisted. ‘A brazen, black-hearted fraudster.’
The widow frowned, thinking about it. ‘But if he’s a fraudster, dear Gabriel, then why have you not had him evicted?’
‘Whoever he is, he has managed to hoodwink many of those who have met him—mainly old men with failing memories.’
‘But not you?’
‘Not I,’ sniffed Utterson. ‘I shall confront him shortly.’
‘So you’ve not yet seen him?’
‘I shall do so tonight, at dinner.’
‘At dinner, you say? You’re going to meet this fraudster over dinner?’
Utterson realised how far-fetched it all sounded. ‘I shall deal with him there.’
The widow looked uncertain. ‘And you are absolutely sure he’s not Henry?’
‘Entirely.’
‘Even though Henry’s body was never discovered?’
‘His body … his body does not need to be discovered.’
‘And though you admit you have no real proof that Henry is dead?’
‘I had no need of proof. None, I tell you. Because I know Henry Jekyll is dead. And I know that his friends have been deceived. I know this for a fact.’
There followed an excruciating silence, during which the widow appeared increasingly distant. ‘Henry Jekyll …’ she whispered.
‘Not Jekyll,’ Utterson said. ‘A charlatan.’
But the widow seemed not to have heard him. She seemed, indeed, to have fallen into a trance.
And Utterson, in that dreadful moment, understood that Nora, too, wanted to believe, for her own reasons, that Henry Jekyll was still alive.
Because, by God, she’s still in love with him.
All these thoughts were scraping through his head as the cab wheeled into Jekyll’s street, where a sudden chill would years earlier have made the amber glow of the doctor’s windows seem inordinately inviting. Tonight, however, through a tempest of emotions, they resembled to Utterson nothing less than the fires of hell.
Through Blurred Vision
UTTERSON’S FIRST SURPRISE was that the impertinent Baxter was nowhere to be seen. Greeting him at the door was an immaculately groomed manservant of perfect bearing and manners, while down the passage a couple of freshly scrubbed kitchenmaids were bustling into the kitchen—hired staff, he assumed, engaged exclusively for the occasion.
His second surprise was that all the articles of furniture that had been hibernating in the dissecting rooms—mahogany chairs, an ornate umbrella stand, paintings of foxhunts—had been returned to their place in the entrance hall, and with remarkable accuracy at that; as if, indeed, they had never been anywhere else.
Unnerved and indignant—for the restoration of Jekyll’s place was a pleasure he had been reserving for himself—Utterson became aware of voices in the front parlour: men chatting and joking as though they were at a race meeting. A pall of cigar smoke as thick as church incense. The sizzle of fat from t
he kitchens. And then, just as he was polishing his spectacles—the rapid contrast between exterior and interior temperatures had misted the lenses—he heard a strikingly familiar voice:
‘Utterson, old chap! My word, it’s good to see your face again!’
Utterson wheeled around and saw, through blurred vision, a figure swooping across the hall to greet him.
‘Has it really been seven years?’
Then, before he could summon the snide response he had been brewing for days—‘Have we met, sir?’—he prodded the spectacles up his nose and beheld a figure who seemed to have been recreated from his most cherished memories.
The same broad shoulders and sporting physique, the same flashing brown irises and flared black eyebrows, the same knavish smile, the same wine-stained lips and dusky skin, the same thick crop of oiled-back hair silvering at the sides. And all of it resplendent in tail coat, wing-collar shirt and black necktie—items lifted directly, it seemed, from the doctor’s wardrobe.
Henry Jekyll, like his entrance hall, had been restored with unerring accuracy.
‘What’s the matter, old fellow? You’ve not pawned that silver tongue of yours, I hope?’
‘N-n-no,’ Utterson managed, shaking the man’s hand. ‘I’m not late, am I?’
‘Late?’ The claimant laughed. ‘No timepiece in London is more reliable than Gabriel Utterson! Come this way, good fellow, we’ve just been talking about you.’
And with that the lawyer found himself being guided down the passage as the claimant mumbled apologies in his ear:
‘Sorry about Baxter again, old chap, but you must understand the man was never intended to be a butler. He was a merchant seaman when I first took him in, so his manners are not quite what they should be. And my most heartfelt apologies, too, for not paying you a visit in recent days. But I’m led to understand you’ve engaged Poole as your butler, and I didn’t want to risk running into the old fellow alone. Poole always thought so absurdly highly of me that I’m not at all sure how he will receive the news of my return. He can be surprisingly emotional in his way.’
‘He saw your envelope,’ Utterson murmured.
‘What’s that?’
‘I said he saw your envelope—the handwriting.’
‘So he knows already that I’m back, does he?’
‘He said … something.’
‘Well, I should have guessed. He never did miss much, did old Poole.’
But then, as if hearing the conversation from afar, Utterson with a shock became aware that he was already being lured into the impostor’s trap. For he had been so disarmed by the physical similarity, not to mention the warm tone of familiarity, that he was responding to the claimant as if he really were Henry Jekyll.
But now he was entering the parlour, where he saw Hubert Frost and Chauncey Wiseman chatting convivially; Edmond Keyes was smoking in the corner with Roderick Godfreys, QC; while Hubert Tilley, the royal portrait artist, and Christopher Piggott, the writer of renown, were inspecting a china vase. And all these men paused for a moment to register Utterson’s arrival and murmur guarded greetings and shift awkwardly around the room, while the claimant, doing the rounds, continued laughing and reminiscing and occasionally glancing in Utterson’s direction as if for approval. The lawyer himself, meanwhile, having recovered from his initial shock, stared back at the man with mounting annoyance, for he could see now that the fellow resembled Henry Jekyll just too accurately to be credible. It was as if he had groomed himself to look precisely like the only surviving image of Jekyll (a photographic portrait from the Royal College of Surgeons). But under the glare of the gas bracket it was clear that his complexion owed much to the application of theatrical powders, that his hair had been darkened as if with India ink, and that his every gesture was unnaturally studied, as if he were performing Jekyll’s mannerisms like stage directions in a play.
It was not Jekyll, and Utterson knew it. So why were the others so damnably receptive?
A bell tinkled and the men repaired as one to the dining room, where Jekyll’s magnificent rosewood table had been dressed in satin napery and set with the house’s finest crockery and services. There was even an uncorked bottle of Bouchard that Utterson had been planning to savour ever since he discovered it, years earlier, in the cellar.
The claimant took to the head of the table with Utterson facing him from the polar end; the others settled in at the sides; the apricot-shaded lamps cast a salmony glow across the room; and from the kitchens in succession came oxtail soup, Welsh rarebit, fried oysters, mutton chops, widgeon, braised pheasant, stewed pickles and devilled ice cream.
But Utterson ate sparingly and drank not at all, waiting impatiently for an après-dîner moment when he could confront the impostor alone. And in the meantime he had to content himself with observing the man’s fabricated enthusiasm, his counterfeit manners and his outrageously contrived ‘explanation’.
‘Now I’ve no doubt you’ve many questions to ask about my disappearance,’ the man said, stubbing his cigar, ‘and to some extent I hope I’ve already answered them in person. Yet I’m afraid that there remain many points upon which my account is going to remain insubstantial, even entirely unsatisfactory, owing to the severity of the injuries to my memory.’
Utterson could not resist a snort at this and the others glanced at him sharply.
‘Yes,’ the claimant said, looking humbled, ‘I know very well how inadequate it all sounds, but alas there is little more that I can do. I fear there are some broken bridges in my mind that will never be repaired, and some threads in the fabric of my memory that can never be re-sewn. But please do not be fooled by my appearance, gentlemen, for the truth is you are dining tonight with a very sick man.’
‘Sick, are you?’ Utterson said.
‘Sick, indeed,’ said the claimant, sighing, and for a moment seemed as though he could not summon the strength to continue. ‘And it all began,’ he went on finally, ‘with that man of the most loathsome character, that scoundrel whose nature was immediately apparent to all who met him—and whose nature, more to the point, was immediately apparent to me …’
Thinking for a moment, illogical as it was, that the claimant was about to admit his peculiar relationship with Hyde—that Jekyll was Hyde—Utterson held his breath. But then the man continued:
‘Well, perhaps it starts earlier than Hyde,’ he admitted. ‘With my experiments in the field of transformative potions. Some of you know better than others what I’m talking about, but in truth I was always very guarded about the scale of my ambitions, even with my closest friends. For I was determined, you see, to produce chemical formulae that would transform the nature of man, potions that would drain him of his most violent impulses, and turn the most inveterate villains into men of virtue. But alas, there was always a certain impediment to my success, for naturally I needed a subject—one man, at least, upon whom I could test the efficacy of my brews.’
The claimant paused, looking anguished again, and for a moment it seemed that he was about to admit his great secret: ‘So I resolved to test the potion upon myself.’ And again Utterson had to remind himself that this was not the real Jekyll.
‘But then, at some devilish hour of the morning,’ the man went on, ‘I was out walking the streets, trying to clear my head, when I chanced upon a most violent and horrible scene. In the mouth of an alley, at the back of some crumbling block of storehouses, a little man in a greatcoat was thrashing a young urchin with his stick, and repeatedly kicking him in the ribs. Now my first reaction was naturally to restrain the brute; and so, together with a passing stranger, I collared him and held him down, though he was struggling like a wildcat. We intended to hail a constable—the urchin, who turned out to be a pickpocket, had already bolted—but we could not find one in that barren district, as much as we hollered. So we resolved to detain the villain temporarily, until the police could be called, and seeing my house was closest we went there, making a gaol of sorts out of my dissecting rooms; an
d it was there, for better or worse, that I became better acquainted with the little fellow.’
The claimant, clearly aware that he had his guests spellbound, pursed his dark lips as if tasting his own disdain.
‘The other man, being a baker, needed to head off and attend to his trade, meaning I was left alone with the brute; and listening as he railed against the world in general, and sensing the palpable malevolence that he exuded like a musk, and understanding, by the course of his ramblings, that he was an ex-convict of no fixed address, destined it seemed to some further mayhem … well, I was struck by an entirely new possibility. For it seemed to me that now, literally within my grasp, was the answer to all my problems. Indeed, it was as if Providence had furnished me with this little monster, specifically that in him I might gain a subject for my chemical experiments.’
The only sound was the tick of Jekyll’s clock in the hall.
The claimant sighed. ‘So I made a pact with the fellow. I told him I would not turn him over to the police, as I had every right to do, if he would only agree to partake of my formulae. I offered him board and money for the duration, even a stake in my inheritance, in return for his obedience and silence. And though the villain was understandably leery at first, he accepted the terms of my offer, which of course could never be committed formally on paper.
‘And so began my efforts to change the bestial nature of “Mr. Hyde”—this being the new name which I had given him—by summoning from their slumber the man’s more virtuous qualities, and simultaneously exorcising his more destructive demons.
‘I rented some dingy rooms in Soho, which served as his lodgings, and in secret, late at night, he would present himself at my house, entering through the door of the dissecting rooms, to ingest my potions. Now I cannot claim my success was immediate, for there was much trial and error, but it seemed to me that within a matter of months Mr. Hyde became a different man, a more agreeable man, capable of compassion and flashes of wit—so much so that I genuinely believed I was changing him for the better. And though this was all so profound that at times I was tempted to shout “Eureka!”, I still could not be certain, because it was possible that the improvements in his demeanour were merely a response to the security and friendship that I had bestowed upon him. So I secretly began to administer to him placebo mixtures—foaming water with no real transformative properties—simply to see if the absence of the genuine potion would return the man to his former state …’
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Seek Page 4