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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 5
In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape, and came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick with hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin. Yet as he continued to walk the pavements, he wondered to find in his heart a sort of peaceful exultation, a great content, a sense, as it were, of divine presence and the kindliness of fate; and he was able to tell himself that even if the worst befell, he could now starve with a certain comfort since Zero was expunged.
Late in the afternoon he found himself at the door of Mr. Godall’s shop; and being quite unmanned by his long fast, and scarce considering what he did, he opened the glass door and entered.
“Ha!” said Mr. Godall, “Mr. Somerset! Well, have you met with an adventure? Have you the promised story? Sit down, if you please; suffer me to choose you a cigar of my own special brand; and reward me with a narrative in your best style.”
“I must not take a cigar,” said Somerset.
“Indeed!” said Mr. Godall. “But now I come to look at you more closely, I perceive that you are changed. My poor boy, I hope there is nothing wrong?”
Somerset burst into tears.
EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN
On a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year, and between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward Challoner pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the Cigar Divan in Rupert Street. It was a place he had visited but once before: the memory of what had followed on that visit and the fear of Somerset having prevented his return. Even now, he looked in before he entered; but the shop was free of customers.
The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a penny version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner’s arrival. On a second glance, it seemed to the latter that he recognised him.
“By Jove,” he thought, “unquestionably Somerset!”
And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful to avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed distaste to curiosity.
“’Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,’” said the shopman to himself, in the tone of one considering a verse. “I suppose it would be too much to say‘orotunda,’ and yet how noble it were!‘Or opulent orotunda strike the sky.’ But that is the bitterness of arts; you see a good effect, and some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.”
“Somerset, my dear fellow,” said Challoner, “is this a masquerade?”
“What? Challoner!” cried the shopman. “I am delighted to see you. One moment, till I finish the octave of my sonnet: only the octave.” And with a friendly waggle of the hand, he once more buried himself in the commerce of the Muses. “I say,” he said presently, looking up, “you seem in wonderful preservation: how about the hundred pounds?”
“I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in Wales,” replied Challoner modestly.
“Ah,” said Somerset, “I very much doubt the legitimacy of inheritance. The State, in my view, should collar it. I am now going through a stage of socialism and poetry,” he added apologetically, as one who spoke of a course of medicinal waters.
“And are you really the person of the – establishment?” inquired Challoner, deftly evading the word “shop.”
“A vendor, sir, a vendor,” returned the other, pocketing his poesy. “I help old Happy and Glorious. Can I offer you a weed?”
“Well, I scarcely like …” began Challoner.
“Nonsense, my dear fellow,” cried the shopman. “We are very proud of the business; and the old man, let me inform you, besides being the most egregious of created beings from the point of view of ethics, is literally sprung from the loins of kings.‘De Godall je suis le fervent.’ There is only one Godall. – By the way,” he added, as Challoner lit his cigar, “how did you get on with the detective trade?”
“I did not try,” said Challoner curtly.
“Ah, well, I did,” returned Somerset, “and made the most incomparable mess of it; lost all my money and fairly covered myself with odium and ridicule. There is more in that business, Challoner, than meets the eye; there is more, in fact, in all businesses. You must believe in them, or get up the belief that you believe. Hence,” he added, “the recognised inferiority of the plumber, for no one could believe in plumbing.”
“A propos,” asked Challoner, “do you still paint?”
“Not now,” replied Paul; “but I think of taking up the violin.”
Challoner’s eye, which had been somewhat restless since the trade of the detective had been named, now rested for a moment on the columns of the morning paper, where it lay spread upon the counter.
“By Jove,” he cried, “that’s odd!”
“What is odd?” asked Paul.
“Oh, nothing,” returned the other: “only I once met a person called M’Guire.”
“So did I!” cried Somerset. “Is there anything about him?”
Challoner read as follows: “Mysterious death in Stepney. An inquest was held yesterday on the body of Patrick M’Guire, described as a carpenter. Dr. Dovering stated that he had for some time treated the deceased as a dispensary patient, for sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and nervous depression. There was no cause of death to be found. He would say the deceased had sunk. Deceased was not a temperate man, which doubtless accelerated death. Deceased complained of dumb ague, but witness had never been able to detect any positive disease. He did not know that he had any family. He regarded him as a person of unsound intellect, who believed himself a member and the victim of some secret society. If he were to hazard an opinion, he would say deceased had died of fear.”
“And the doctor would be right,” cried Somerset; “and my dear Challoner, I am so relieved to hear of his demise, that I will – . Well, after all,” he added, “poor devil, he was well served.”
The door at this moment opened, and Desborough appeared upon the threshold. He was wrapped in a long waterproof, imperfectly supplied with buttons; his boots were full of water, his hat greasy with service; and yet he wore the air of one exceeding well content with life. He was hailed by the two others with exclamations of surprise and welcome.
“And did you try the detective business?” inquired Paul.
“No,” returned Harry. “Oh yes, by the way, I did though: twice, and got caught out both times. But I thought I should find my – my wife here?” he added, with a kind of proud confusion.
“What? are you married?” cried Somerset.
“Oh yes,” said Harry, “quite a long time: a month at least.”
“Money?” asked Challoner.
“That’s the worst of it,” Desborough admitted. “We are deadly hard up. But the Pri – Mr. Godall is going to do something for us. That is what brings us here.”
“Who was Mrs. Desborough?” said Challoner, in the tone of a man of society.
“She was a Miss Luxmore,” returned Harry. “You fellows will be sure to like her, for she is much cleverer than I. She tells wonderful stories, too; better than a book.”
And just then the door opened, and Mrs. Desborough entered. Somerset cried out aloud to recognise the young lady of the Superfluous Mansion, and Challoner fell back a step and dropped his cigar as he beheld the sorceress of Chelsea.
“What!” cried Harry, “do you both know my wife?”
“I believe I have seen her,” said Somerset, a little wildly.
“I think I have met the gentleman,” said Mrs. Desborough sweetly; “but I cannot imagine where it was.”
“Oh no,” cried Somerset fervently; “I have no notion – I cannot conceive – where it could have been. Indeed,” he continued, growing in emphasis, “I think it highly probable that it’s a mistake.”
“And you, Challoner?” asked Harry, “you seemed to recognise her, too.”
“These are both friends of yours, Harry?” said the lady. “Delighted, I am sure. I do not remember to have met Mr. Challoner.”
Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having groped after his cigar. “I do not remember to have had the pleasure,” he responded huskily.
“Well, and Mr. Godall?” asked Mrs. Desborough.
“Are you the lady that has an appointment with old …” began Somerset, and paused, blushing. “Because if so,” he resumed, “I was to announce you at once.”
And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed into a small pavilion which had been added to the back of the house. On the roof, the rain resounded musically. The walls were lined with maps and prints and a few works of reference. Upon a table was a large-scale map of Egypt and the Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on which, by the aid of coloured pins, the progress of the different wars was being followed day by day. A light, refreshing odour of the most delicate tobacco hung upon the air; and a fire, not of foul coal, but of clear-flaming resinous billets, chattered upon silver dogs. In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat in a morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to the rain upon the roof.
“Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,” said he, “and have you since last night adopted any fresh political principle?”
“The lady, sir,” said Somerset, with another blush.
“You have seen her, I believe?” returned Mr. Godall; and on Somerset’s replying in the affirmative: “You will excuse me, my dear sir,” he resumed, “if I offer you a hint. I think it not improbable this lady may desire entirely to forget the past. From one gentleman to another, no more words are necessary.”
A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that grave and touching urbanity that so well became him.
“I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,” he said; “and shall be still more so, if what were else a barren courtesy and a pleasure personal to myself, shall prove to be of serious benefit to you and Mr. Desborough.”
“Your highness,” replied Clara, “I must begin with thanks; it is like what I have heard of you, that you should thus take up the case of the unfortunate; and as for my Harry, he is worthy of all that you can do.” She paused.
“But for yourself?” suggested Mr. Godall – “it was thus you were about to continue, I believe.”
“You take the words out of my mouth,” she said. “For myself, it is different.”
“I am not here to be a judge of men,” replied the prince; “still less of women. I am now a private person like yourself and many million others; but I am one who still fights upon the side of quiet. Now, madam, you know better than I, and God better than you, what you have done to mankind in the past; I pause not to inquire; it is with the future I concern myself, it is for the future I demand security. I would not willingly put arms into the hands of a disloyal combatant; and I dare not restore to wealth one of the levyers of a private and a barbarous war. I speak with some severity, and yet I pick my terms. I tell myself continually that you are a woman; and a voice continually reminds me of the children whose lives and limbs you have endangered. A woman,” he repeated solemnly – “and children. Possibly, madam, when you are yourself a mother, you will feel the bite of that antithesis: possibly when you kneel at night beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you, heavier than any shame; and when your child lies in the pain and danger of disease, you shall hesitate to kneel before your Maker.”
“You look at the fault,” she said, “and not at the excuse. Has your own heart never leaped within you at some story of oppression? But, alas, no! for you were born upon a throne.”
“I was born of woman,” said the prince; “I came forth from my mother’s agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings. This, which you forgot, I have still faithfully remembered. Is it not one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops manœuvring, warships at sea, and a great dust of battles on shore; and, casting anxiously about for what should be the cause of so many and painful preparations, spied at last, in the centre of all, a mother and her babe? These, madam, are my politics; and the verses, which are by Mr. Coventry Patmore, I have caused to be translated into the Bohemian tongue. Yes, these are my politics: to change what we can, to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions; and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.”
There was a silence of a moment.
“I fear, madam,” resumed the prince, “that I but weary you. My views are formal like myself; and like myself, they also begin to grow old. But I must still trouble you for some reply.”
“I can say but one thing,” said Mrs. Desborough: “I love my husband.”
“It is a good answer,” returned the prince; “and you name a good influence, but one that need not be conterminous with life.”
“I will not play at pride with such a man as you,” she answered. “What do you ask of me? not protestations, I am sure. What shall I say? I have done much that I cannot defend and that I would not do again. Can I say more? Yes: I can say this: I never abused myself with the muddle-headed fairy tales of politics. I was at least prepared to meet reprisals. While I was levying war myself – or levying murder, if you choose the plainer term – I never accused my adversaries of assassination. I never felt or feigned a righteous horror, when a price was put upon my life by those whom I attacked. I never called the policeman a hireling. I may have been a criminal, in short; but I never was a fool.”
“Enough, madam,” returned the prince: “more than enough! Your words are most reviving to my spirits; for in this age, when even the assassin is a sentimentalist, there is no virtue greater in my eyes than intellectual clarity. Suffer me then to ask you to retire; for by the signal of that bell, I perceive my old friend, your mother, to be close at hand. With her I promise you to do my utmost.”
And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the prince, opening a door upon the other side, admitted Mrs. Luxmore.
“Madam, and my very good friend,” said he, “is my face so much changed that you no longer recognise Prince Florizel in Mr. Godall?”
“To be sure!” she cried, looking at him through her glasses. “I have always regarded your highness as a perfect man; and in your altered circumstances, of which I have already heard with deep regret, I will beg you to consider my respect increased instead of lessened.”
“I have found it so,” returned the prince, “with every class of my acquaintance. But, madam, I pray you to be seated. My business is of a delicate order, and regards your daughter.”
“In that case,” said Mrs. Luxmore, “you may save yourself the trouble of speaking, for I have fully made up my mind to have nothing to do with her. I will not hear one word in her defence; but as I value nothing so particularly as the virtue of justice, I think it my duty to explain to you the grounds of my complaint. She deserted me, her natural protector; for years she has consorted with the most disreputable persons; and, to fill the cup of her offence, she has recently married. I refuse to see her, or the being to whom she has linked herself. One hundred and twenty pounds a year, I have always offered her: I offer it again. It is what I had myself when I was her age.”
“Very well, madam,” said the prince; “and be that so! But to touch upon another matter: what was the income of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe?”
“My father?” asked the spirited old lady. “I believe he had seven hundred pounds in the year.”
“You were one, I think, of several?” pursued the prince.
“Of four,” was the reply. “We were four daughters; and, painful as the admission is to make, a more detestable family could scarce be found in England.”
“Dear me!” said the prince. “And you, madam, have an income of eight thousand?”
“Not more than five,” returned the old lady; “but where on earth are you conducting me?”
“To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,” replied Florizel, smiling. “For I must not suffer you to take your father for a rule. He was poor, you are rich. He had many calls upon his poverty: there are none upon your wealth. And indeed, madam, if you will let me touch this matter with a needle, there is but one point in common to your two positions: that each had a daughter more remarkable for liveliness than duty.”
“I have been entrapped into this house,” said the old lady, getting to her feet. “But it shall not avail. Not all the tobacconists in Europe…”
“Ah, madam,” interrupted Florizel, “before what is referred to as my fall, you had not used such language! And since you so much object to the simple industry by which I live, let me give you a friendly hint. If you will not consent to support your daughter, I shall be constrained to place that lady behind my counter, where I doubt not she would prove a great attraction; and your son-in-law shall have a livery and run the errands. With such young blood my business might be doubled, and I might be bound, in common gratitude, to place the name of Luxmore beside that of Godall.”
“Your highness,” said the old lady, “I have been very rude, and you are very cunning. I suppose the minx is on the premises. Produce her.”
“Let us rather observe them unperceived,” said the prince; and so saying he rose and quietly drew back the curtain.
Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; Somerset and Harry were hanging on her words with extraordinary interest; Challoner, alleging some affair, had long ago withdrawn from the detested neighbourhood of the enchantress.
“At that moment,” Mrs. Desborough was saying, “Mr. Gladstone detected the features of his cowardly assailant. A cry rose to his lips: a cry of mingled triumph…”
“That is Mr. Somerset!” interrupted the spirited old lady, in the highest note of her register. “Mr. Somerset, what have you done with my house-property?”
“Madam,” said the prince, “let it be mine to give the explanation; and in the meanwhile, welcome your daughter.”
“Well, Clara, how do you do?” said Mrs. Luxmore. “It appears I am to give you an allowance. So much the better for you. As for Mr. Somerset, I am very ready to have an explanation; for the whole affair, though costly, was eminently humorous. And at any rate,” she added, nodding to Paul, “he is a young gentleman for whom I have a great affection, and his pictures were the funniest I ever saw.”
“I have ordered a collation,” said the prince. “Mr. Somerset, as these are all your friends, I propose, if you please, that you should join them at table. I will take the shop.”
STRANGE CASE OF
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
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 beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols 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 though 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 incline 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 the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendships 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, were 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, and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the week-days. The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry; so that the shop-fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.
Two doors from one corner on the left hand going east, the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two stories high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower story and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.
Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street, but when they came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up his cane and pointed.
“Did you ever remark that door?” he asked; and when his companion had replied in the affirmative, “it is connected in my mind,” added he, “with a very odd story.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice, “and what was that?”
“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield: “I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street, and all the folks asleep – street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church – till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All at once I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten, who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a view-holloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool, and made no resistance, but gave me one look so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The people who had turned out were the girl’s own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent, put in his appearance. Well, the child was not much the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there you might have supposed would be an end to it. But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child’s family, which was only natural. But the doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut-and-dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this as should make his name stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we were pitching it in red-hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we could, for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black sneering coolness – frightened, too, I could see that – but carrying it off, sir, really like Satan.‘If you choose to make capital out of this accident,’ said he,‘I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but wishes to avoid a scene,’ says he.‘Name your figure.’ Well, we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the child’s family; he would have clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of us that meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with the door? – whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts’s, drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can’t mention, though it’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well known and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the signature was good for more than that, if it was only genuine. I took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar-door at four in the morning and come out of it with another man’s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and sneering. ’Set your mind at rest,’ says he,‘I will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’ So we all set off, the doctor, and the child’s father, and our friend and myself, and passed the rest of the night in my chambers; and next day, when we had breakfasted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the cheque myself, and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of it. The cheque was genuine.”
