`I am not surprised at that,' was the reply. `Some day Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. Icannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can sit and talk with me of other things for God's sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot keep clear of this accursed topic, then, in God's name, go, for cannot bear it.'
As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and wrote to Jekyll, complaining of his exclusion from the house and asking the cause of this unhappy break with Lanyon and the next day brought him a long answer, often yen pathetically worded, and sometimes darkly mysterious' in drift. The quarrel with Lanyon was incurable. `I do no blame our old friend,' Jekyll wrote, `but I share his view that we must never meet. I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, no must you doubt my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. You must suffer me to go my own dark way I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name.
If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so unmanning and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence.' Utterson was amazed; the dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age; and now in a moment, friendship and peace of mind and the whole tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and unprepared a change pointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon's manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.
A week afterwards Dr Lanyon took to his bed, and in something less than a fortnight he was dead. The night after the funeral, at which he had been sadly affected, Utterson locked the door of his business room, and sitting there by the light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set before him an envelope addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend. `PRIVATE: for the hands of J. G. Utterson ALONE, and in case of his predecease to be destroyed unread,' so it was emphatically superscribed;and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents. `I have buried one friend to-day,' he thought: `what if this should cost me another?' And then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and broke the seal. Within there was another enclosure, likewise sealed, and marked upon the cover as `not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr Henry Jekyll'. Utterson could not trust his eyes. Yes, it was disappearance; here again, as in the mad will, which he had long ago restored to its author, here again were the idea of a disappearance and the name of Henry Jekyll bracketed.
But in the will, that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion of the man Hyde; it was set there with a purpose all too plain and horrible. Written by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean? A great curiosity came to the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to the bottom of these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his dead friend were stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost corner of his private safe.
It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may be doubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired the society of his surviving friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly;but his thoughts were disquieted and fearful. He went to call indeed; but he was perhaps relieved to be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak with Poole upon the doorstep, and surrounded by the air and sounds of the open city, rather than to be admitted into that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak with its inscrutable recluse.
Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news to communicate. The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined himself to the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even sleep; he was out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not read; it seemed as if he had something on his mind.
Utterson became so used to the unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off little by little in the frequency of his visits.
