Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,
Your go-to podcast that guarantees you a calm and relaxing transition into a great night's sleep.
Today's story is called Dr.
Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde.
First published in 1886,
This story explores the duality of human nature and suggests that within each and every one of us lies both good and evil.
But before we begin,
Let's take a moment to focus on where we are now.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
Then let it out on a long sigh.
Chapter Two Search for Mr.
Hyde That evening,
Mr.
Utterson came home to his bachelor house in somber spirits and sat down to dinner without relish.
It was his custom of a Sunday when his meal was over to sit close by the fire,
A volume of some dry divinity on his reading desk,
Until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out to the hour of twelve when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed.
On this night,
However,
As soon as the cloth was taken away,
He took up a candle and went into his business room.
There he opened his safe,
Took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr.
Jekyll's will,
And he sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents.
The will was holograph,
For Mr.
Utterson,
Though he took charge of it now that it was made,
Had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it.
It provided not only that,
In case of the decease of Henry Jekyll,
Etc.
,
All his possessions were to pass into the hands of his friend and benefactor,
Edward Hyde,
But that in case of Dr.
Jekyll's disappearance or unexplained absence for any period extending three calendar months,
The said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay,
And free from any burden or obligation beyond the payment of a few sums to the members of the doctor's household.
This document had long been the lawyer's eyesore.
It offended him both as a lawyer and a lover of the sane and customary sides of life,
To whom the fanciful was the immodest,
And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr.
Hyde that had swelled his indignation.
Now,
By a sudden turn,
It was his knowledge.
It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more.
It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes,
And out of the shifting,
Insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye,
There leaped up the sudden definite presentment of a fiend.
I thought it was madness,
He said,
As he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe,
And now I begin to fear it is disgrace.
With that,
He blew out his candle,
Put on a greatcoat,
And set forth in the direction of Cavendish Square,
That citadel of medicine where his friend the great Dr.
Lanyon had his house and received his crowding patients.
If anyone knows it will be Lanyon,
He thought.
The solemn butler knew and welcomed him.
He was subjected to no stage of delay,
But ushered direct from the door to the dining room where Dr.
Lanyon sat alone over his wine.
This was a hearty,
Healthy,
Dapper,
Red-faced gentleman,
With a shock of hair prematurely white and a boisterous and decided manner.
At the sight of Mr.
Utterson,
He sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands.
The geniality,
As was the way of the man,
Was somewhat theatrical to the eye,
But it reposed on genuine feeling.
For these were two old friends,
Old mates both at school and college,
Both thorough respecters of themselves and of each other,
And what does not always follow,
Men who thoroughly enjoyed each other's company.
After a little rambling talk,
The lawyer led up to the subject which so disagreeably preoccupied his mind.
I suppose,
Lanyon,
He said,
You and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has.
I wish the friends were younger,
Chuckled Dr.
Lanyon,
But I suppose we are.
What of that?
I see little of him now.
Indeed,
Said Utterson,
I thought you had a bond of common interest.
We had,
Was his reply,
But it's more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me.
He began to go wrong,
Wrong in mind,
And though,
Of course,
I continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake,
As they say,
I see and have seen such devilish little of the man,
Such unscientific balderdash,
Added the doctor,
Flushing suddenly purple,
What of a strange daemon and pythias?
This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr.
Utterson.
They have only differed on some point of science,
He thought,
And being a man of no scientific passions,
He even added,
It is nothing worse than that.
He gave his friend a few seconds to recover his composure,
And then approached the question he'd come to put.
Did you ever come across a protégé of his?
One Hyde,
He asked.
Hyde?
Repeated Lanyon.
No,
Never heard of him,
Since my time.
That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to the great dark bed on which he tossed to and fro until the small hours of the morning began to grow large.
It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind,
Toiling in mere darkness and besieged by questions.
Six o'clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr.
Utterson's dwelling,
And still he was digging at the problem.
Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone,
But now his imagination also was engaged,
Or rather enslaved.
And as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room,
Mr.
Enfield's tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures.
He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city,
Then of the figure of a man walking swiftly by,
Then of a child running from the doctors,
And then these met and that human juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams.
Nor else he would see a room in a rich house where his friend lay asleep,
Dreaming and smiling at his dreams,
And then the door of that room would be opened,
The curtains of the bed plucked apart,
The sleeper recalled and,
Lo,
There would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given,
And even at that dead hour he must rise and do its bidding.
The figure in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night.
And if at any time he dozed over,
It was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses,
Or move the more swiftly,
And still the more swiftly,
Even to dizziness,
Through wide labyrinths of lamp-lighted city,
And at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming.
And still the figure had no face by which he might know it.
Even in his dreams it had no face,
Or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes.
And thus it was there that sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer's mind,
Singularly strong,
Almost an inordinate curiosity,
To behold the features of the real Mr Hyde.
