"It is well, then that we should be frank," said the other. "We both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. This masked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?"


"Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that I could hardly swear to that," was the answer. "But if you mean, was it Mr. Hyde?—why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the same bigness; and it had the same quick, light way with it; and then who else could have got in by the laboratory door? You have not forgot, sir, that at the time of the murder he had still the key with him? But that's not all. I don't know, Mr. Utterson, if you ever met this Mr. Hyde?"


"Yes," said the lawyer, "I once spoke with him."


"Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was something queer about that gentleman—something that gave a man a turn—I don't know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt in your marrow kind of cold and thin."


"I own I felt something of what you describe," said Mr. Utterson.


"Quite so, sir," returned Poole. "Well, when that masked thing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it went down my spine like ice. O, I know it's not evidence, Mr. Utterson; I'm book-learned enough for that; but a man has his feelings, and I give you my bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!"


"Ay, ay," said the lawyer. "My fears incline to the same point. Evil, I fear, founded—evil was sure to come—of that connection. Ay truly, I believe you; I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer (for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim's room. Well, let our name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw."


The footman came at the summons, very white and nervous.


"Pull yourself together, Bradshaw," said the lawyer. "This suspense, I know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention to make an end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into the cabinet. If all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame. Meanwhile, lest anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to escape by the back, you and the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks and take your post at the laboratory door. We give you ten minutes to get to your stations."


As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. "And now, Poole, let us get to ours," he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the way into the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it was now quite dark. The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that deep well of building, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait. London hummed solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, the stillness was only broken by the sounds of a footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.


"So it will walk all day, sir," whispered Poole; "ay, and the better part of the night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist, there's a bit of a break. Ah, it's an ill conscience that's such an enemy to rest! Ah, sir, there's blood foully shed in every step of it! But hark again, a little closer—put your heart in your ears, Mr. Utterson, and tell me, is that the doctor's foot?"


The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they went so slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyll. Utterson sighed. "Is there never anything else?" he asked.


Poole nodded. "Once," he said. "Once I heard it weeping!"


"Weeping? how that?" said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of horror.


"Weeping like a woman or a lost soul," said the butler. "I came away with that upon my heart, that I could have wept too."


But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole disinterred the axe from under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest table to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated breath to where that patient foot was still going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night.


"Jekyll," cried Utterson, with a loud voice, "I demand to see you." He paused a moment, but there came no reply. "I give you fair warning, our suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you," he resumed; "if not by fair means, then by foul—if not of your consent, then by brute force!"


"Utterson," said the voice, "for God's sake, have mercy!"


"Ah, that's not Jekyll's voice—it's Hyde's!" cried Utterson. "Down with the door, Poole!"


Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and the red baize door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal screech, as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up went the axe again, and again the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four times the blow fell; but the wood was tough and the fittings were of excellent workmanship; and it was not until the fifth, that the lock burst and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet.


The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had succeeded, stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer or two open, papers neatly set forth on the business table, and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea; the quietest room, you would have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the most commonplace that night in London.


Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and beheld the face of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the doctor's bigness; the cords of his face still moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone; and by the crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a self-destroyer.


"We have come too late," he said sternly, "whether to save or punish. Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the body of your master."


The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre, which filled almost the whole ground storey and was lighted from above, and by the cabinet, which formed an upper storey at one end and looked upon the court. A corridor joined the theatre to the door on the by-street; and with this the cabinet communicated separately by a second flight of stairs. There were besides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar. All these they now thoroughly examined. Each closet needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell from their doors, had stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed, was filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon who was Jekyll's predecessor; but even as they opened the door they were advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance. Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.


Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. "He must be buried here," he said, hearkening to the sound.


"Or he may have fled," said Utterson, and he turned to examine the door in the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they found the key, already stained with rust.


"This does not look like use," observed the lawyer.


"Use!" echoed Poole. "Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a man had stamped on it."


"Ay," continued Utterson, "and the fractures, too, are rusty." The two men looked at each other with a scare. "This is beyond me, Poole," said the lawyer. "Let us go back to the cabinet."


They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional awestruck glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet. At one table, there were traces of chemical work, various measured heaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man had been prevented.


"That is the same drug that I was always bringing him," said Poole; and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over.


This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up, and the tea things stood ready to the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand with startling blasphemies.


Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval-glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in.


"This glass has seen some strange things, sir," whispered Poole.


"And surely none stranger than itself," echoed the lawyer in the same tones. "For what did Jekyll"—he caught himself up at the word with a start, and then conquering the weakness—"what could Jekyll want with it?" he said.


Next they turned to the business table. On the desk, among the neat array of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor's hand, the name of Mr. Utterson. The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of death and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but in place of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement read the name of Gabriel John Utterson. He looked at Poole, and then back at the paper, and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet.


"My head goes round," he said. "He has been all these days in possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document."


He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor's hand and dated at the top. "O Poole!" the lawyer cried, "he was alive and here this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space; he must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we venture to declare this suicide? O, we must be careful. I foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe."


"Why don't you read it, sir?" asked Poole.


"Because I fear," replied the lawyer solemnly. "God grant I have no cause for it!" And with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows:


"My dear Utterson,—When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of


"Your unworthy and unhappy friend,


"There was a third enclosure?" asked Utterson.


"Here, sir," said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet sealed in several places.


The lawyer put it in his pocket. "I would say nothing of this paper. If your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is now ten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police."


They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and Utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged back to his office to read the two narratives in which this mystery was now to be explained.


On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague and old school companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised by this; for we were by no means in the habit of correspondence; I had seen the man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and I could imagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify formality of registration. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran:


"10th December, 18—.


"Dear Lanyon,—You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day when, if you had said to me, 'Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason, depend upon you,' I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me to-night, I am lost. You might suppose, after this preface, that I am going to ask you for something dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.


"I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night—ay, even if you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless your carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in your hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be forced; and you are to go in alone; to open the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand, breaking the lock if it be shut; and to draw out, with all its contents as they stand, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the third from the bottom. In my extreme distress of mind, I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, you may know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a phial and a paper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.


"That is the first part of the service: now for the second. You should be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to be preferred for what will then remain to do. At midnight, then, I have to ask you to be alone in your consulting room, to admit with your own hand into the house a man who will present himself in my name, and to place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from my cabinet. Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitude completely. Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you will have understood that these arrangements are of capital importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they must appear, you might have charged your conscience with my death or the shipwreck of my reason.


"Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility. Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told. Serve me, my dear Lanyon and save


"P.S.—I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my soul. It is possible that the post-office may fail me, and this letter not come into your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case, dear Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in the course of the day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight. It may then already be too late; and if that night passes without event, you will know that you have seen the last of Henry Jekyll."


Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane; but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do as he requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance; and an appeal so worded could not be set aside without a grave responsibility. I rose accordingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to Jekyll's house. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received by the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman's surgical theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll's private cabinet is most conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith was near despair. But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hour's work, the door stood open. The press marked E was unlocked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to Cavendish Square.


Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that it was plain they were of Jekyll's private manufacture; and when I opened one of the wrappers I found what seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been about half full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version book and contained little but a series of dates. These covered a period of many years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and quite abruptly. Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date, usually no more than a single word: "double" occurring perhaps six times in a total of several hundred entries; and once very early in the list and followed by several marks of exclamation, "total failure!!!" All this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was definite. Here were a phial of some salt, and the record of a series of experiments that had led (like too many of Jekyll's investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. How could the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could go to one place, why could he not go to another? And even granting some impediment, why was this gentleman to be received by me in secret? The more I reflected the more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral disease; and though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver, that I might be found in some posture of self-defence.


Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded very gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a small man crouching against the pillars of the portico.


"Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?" I asked.


He told me "yes" by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into the darkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing with his bull's eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor started and made greater haste.


These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed him into the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my hand ready on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution, and—last but not least—with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.


This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable; his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement—the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me—something seizing, surprising and revolting—this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in the man's nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world.


These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on fire with sombre excitement.


"Have you got it?" he cried. "Have you got it?" And so lively was his impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me.


I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood. "Come, sir," said I. "You forget that I have not yet the pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please." And I showed him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer me to muster.


"I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough. "What you say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood..." He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria—"I understood, a drawer..."


But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some perhaps on my own growing curiosity.


"There it is, sir," said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.


He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart; I could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.


"Compose yourself," said I.


He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, "Have you a graduated glass?" he asked.


I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he asked.


He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.


"And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan."


"Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly possessing, "you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end."


"It is well," replied my visitor. "Lanyon, you remember your vows: what follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors—behold!"


He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he seemed to swell—his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.


"O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for there before my eyes—pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death—there stood Henry Jekyll!


What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was, on Jekyll's own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.


I was born in the year 18— to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together—that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated?


I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mistlike transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete. Enough then, that I not only recognised my natural body from the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul.


I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.


The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.


There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of these transformations. The night however, was far gone into the morning—the morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for the conception of the day—the inmates of my house were locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber; and I determined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.


I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine tenths a life of effort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.


I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the stature and the face of Henry Jekyll.


That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prisonhouse of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.


Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing towards the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humourous; and I made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as a housekeeper a creature whom I knew well to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar object, in my second character. I next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of my position.


Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could plod in the public eye 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 my double with a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.


Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about me; in vain I saw the decent furniture and tall proportions of my room in the square; in vain that I recognised the pattern of the bed curtains and the design of the mahogany frame; something still kept insisting that I was not where I was, that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but in the little room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the body of Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and in my psychological way, began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion, occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a comfortable morning doze. I was still so engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size; it was large, firm, white and comely. But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.


I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself; and then, with another bound of terror—how was it to be remedied? It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugs were in the cabinet—a long journey down two pairs of stairs, through the back passage, across the open court and through the anatomical theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. It might indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that, when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And then with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind that the servants were already used to the coming and going of my second self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was able, in clothes of my own size: had soon passed through the house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde at such an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later, Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down, with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.


Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That part of me which I had the power of projecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as though the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though (when I wore that form) I were conscious of a more generous tide of blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this were much prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine. The power of the drug had not been always equally displayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed me; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to double, and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in the light of that morning's accident, I was led to remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side. All things therefore seemed to point to this; that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.


Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference. To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.


Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was true to my determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.


I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God, no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so pitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. But I had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was to fall.


Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to the topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot. I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father's hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul. As the acuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy. The problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforth impossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to the better part of my existence; and O, how I rejoiced to think of it! with what willing humility I embraced anew the restrictions of natural life! with what sincere renunciation I locked the door by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key under my heel!


The next day, came the news that the murder had not been overlooked, that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him.


I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how earnestly, in the last months of the last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person that I was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation.


There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had made my discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved—the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.


My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more than once observed that in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my own hand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted up from end to end.


Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of which I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which was indeed comical enough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face—happily for him—yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with directions that they should be registered. Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the less frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled.


When I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home, in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.


I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to myself; and alas! six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self. But when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But his love of life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.


It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought—no, not alleviation—but a certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face and nature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.


About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under the influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.


Title: The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel


Author: Anonymous


Release date: October 14, 2009 [eBook #30254] Most recently updated: October 24, 2024


Credits: Daniel Fromont Revised by Richard Tonsing.


The Romance of Lust


A classic Victorian erotic novel


by Anonymous


The Novice—Mrs. Benson—Mary—Mrs. Benson's Correspondence with Mrs. Egerton—Miss Evelyn—Eliza


There were three of us—Mary, Eliza, and myself. I was approaching fifteen, Mary was about a year younger, and Eliza between twelve and thirteen years of age. Mamma treated us all as children, and was blind to the fact that I was no longer what I had been. Although not tall for my age, nor outwardly presenting a manly appearance, my passions were awakening, and the distinctive feature of my sex, although in repose it looked magnificent enough, was very sufficiently developed when under the influence of feminine excitement.


As yet, I had absolutely no knowledge of the uses of the different organs of sex. My sisters and I all slept in the same room. They together in one bed, I alone in another. When no one was present, we had often mutually examined the different formations of our sexes.


We had discovered that mutual handlings gave a certain amount of pleasing sensation; and, latterly, my eldest sister had discovered that the hooding and unhooding of my doodle, as she called it, instantly caused it to swell up and stiffen as hard as a piece of wood. My feeling of her little pinky slit gave rise in her to nice sensations, but on the slightest attempt to insert even my finger, the pain was too great. We had made so little progress in the attouchements that not the slightest inkling of what could be done in that way dawned upon us. I had begun to develop a slight growth of moss-like curls round the root of my cock; and then, to our surprise, Mary began to show a similar tendency. As yet, Eliza was as bald as her hand, but both were prettily formed, with wonderfully full and fat mounts of Venus. We were perfectly innocent of guile and quite habituated to let each other look at all our naked bodies without the slightest hesitation; and when playing in the garden, if one wanted to relieve the pressure on the bladder, we all squatted down together, and crossed waters, each trying who could piddle fastest. Notwithstanding these symptoms of passion when excited, in a state of calm I might have passed for a boy of ten or eleven.


My father had left us but moderately provided for, and mamma, wishing to live comfortably, preferred giving me lessons along with my sisters at home to sending me to school; but her health beginning to fail, she inserted an advertisement in the Times for a governess. Out of a large number of applicants, a young lady, of the name of Evelyn, was selected. Some ten days afterwards she arrived, and became one of the family.


We did not see much of her the first evening, but after breakfast the following morning, mamma accompanied her to what was considered our schoolroom, and said, "Now, my dears, I place you under Miss Evelyn's care; you must obey her in all things; she will teach you your lessons, as I am unable to do so any longer." Then, turning to our new governess, "I fear you will find them somewhat spoiled, and unruly; but there is a horse, and Susan will make you excellent birch rods whenever you require them. If you spare their bottoms when they deserve whipping, you will seriously offend me." As mamma said this, I observed Miss Evelyn's eyes appeared to dilate with a sort of joy, and I felt certain that, severely as mamma had often whipped us, if we should now deserve it, Miss Evelyn would administer it much more severely. She looked amiability itself, and was truly beautiful in face and person, twenty-two years of age, full and finely formed, and dressed always with the most studied neatness. She was, in truth, a seductive creature. She made an instantaneous impression on my senses. There was, however, somewhat of a sternness of expression, and a dignity of carriage, which caused at once to fear and respect her. Of course, at first, all went smoothly enough, and seeing that mamma treated me precisely as she did my sisters, I came to be regarded as quite a child by Miss Evelyn. She found that she had to sleep in the same room with my sisters and myself. I fancied that on the first night Miss Evelyn did not approve of this arrangement, but gradually became familiarized with it, and seemed to think no more about it.


When bedtime came, we all kissed mamma and retired early, as usual. Miss Evelyn followed some hours later. When she came in, she carefully locked the door, then looked at me to see if I was asleep. Why, I know not, but I was instinctively prompted to feign sleep. I did so successfully, notwithstanding the passing of the candle before my eyes. So she at once commenced undressing. When her back was turned, I opened my eyes, and greedily devoured her naked charms as they were gradually exhibited before me. The moment she turned round, I was again as if asleep. I have said that my passions had begun to develop themselves, but as yet I did not understand their force or direction. I well remember this first night, when a fine ripe woman gradually removed every particle of dress within a couple of yards of me—the effect of each succeeding charm, from her lovely and beautifully formed bubbies to the taking off her shoes and stockings from her well-formed legs and small feet and ankles, caused my prick to swell and stiffen to a painful extent. When all but her chemise was removed, she stopped to pick up her petticoats that she had allowed to fall to her feet, and in lifting them, raised also her chemise, and exposed to my view a most glorious bottom—dazzlingly white and shining like satin. As the light was full upon it, and she was still in a stooping position, I could see that below her slit she was well covered with dark hair. Turning round, to put her petticoats on a chair, and to take up her nightgown, she slipped her chemise from her arm, and letting it fall to the ground while she lifted the nightgown over her head, I had for some seconds a view of her beautiful belly, thickly covered with dark curly hair over the mount of Venus. So voluptuous was the sight, I almost shuddered, so intense was my excitement. She now sat down on the bed to take off her shoes and stockings. Oh! what beautiful thighs, legs, ankles, and feet she had!


I am now advanced in life, and have had many handsome and well-formed women, but I never saw limbs more voluptuously formed.


In a few minutes the light was extinguished, and a rushing rill flowed into the night vase; very different from the gentle tricklings from myself and sisters as we often squatted down opposite each other and crossed water, laughing at the different sources from which they flowed. My sisters often envied me the power of directing the spurt where I pleased, so little were we from dreaming of the real intent of that projecting little instrument.


I heard the charming creature get into bed, and shortly breathe hard. As for me, I could not sleep. I lay awake the greater part of the night, afraid to be restless, lest I should disturb Miss Evelyn and give her reason to think I had been observant of her undressing. When at last I dozed off, it was but to dream of all the charms I had seen.


About a month passed thus. Every night Miss Evelyn became more and more at her ease, and confident of my mere childishness, often gave me glorious and lengthened glimpses of her beautifully developed charms: although it was only about every other night that I could enjoy them, for, as they always produced sleeplessness afterwards, the following night nature assured her rights, and I usually slept profoundly when I would have preferred continued gazing on the charms of my lovely governess. But, doubtless, those exhausting sleeps helped to throw her off her guard, and gave me better opportunities than I should otherwise have had. Once or twice she used the night ware before putting on her nightgown, and I could see the rosy-lipped opening embosomed in exquisite dark curls, pouring out its full measure of water; showing a fine force of nature, and driving me wild with excitement. Yet it is singular that I never once thought of applying to my fingers for relief from the painful stiffness that nearly burst my prick asunder.


Whether mamma had observed my very frequent projection of my trousers, or began to think it better I should not sleep in the same room as Miss Evelyn, I cannot say, but she had my bed removed into her own. However, I was so thoroughly treated as a mere boy by everyone in the house, that Miss Evelyn seemed to forget my sex; and there was at all times a freedom of carriage and an abandon in her attitudes that she certainly would not have indulged in if she had felt any restraint from considering herself in the presence of a youth of the age of puberty.


In cold weather I used to sit on a low stool by the fire—Miss Evelyn was seated in front, I had my lesson book on my knee, and she herself would place her beautiful feet on the high school fender, with her work in her lap, while she heard my sisters repeat their lesson, totally unconscious that for half an hour at a time she was exposing her beautiful legs and thighs to my ardent gaze; for sitting much below her, and bending my head as if intent on my lesson, my eyes were below her raised petticoats. Her close and tight-fitting white stockings displayed her well-formed legs, for while confined to the house during our morning lessons she did not wear drawers; so that in the position she sat in, with her knees higher than her feet on the already high fender, and her legs somewhat apart to hold her work in her lap more easily, the whole glorious underswell of both thighs, and the lower part of her fine large bottom, with the pinky slit quite visible, nestled in a rich profusion of dark curls, were fully exposed to my view. The light from the fire glancing under her raised petticoats tinged the whole with a glow, and set me equally in a blaze of desire until I was almost ready to faint. I could have rushed headlong under her petticoats, and kissed and fondled that delicious opening and all its surroundings. Oh, how little she thought of the passion she was raising. Oh! dear Miss Evelyn, how I did love you from the dainty kid slipper and tight glossy silk stocking, up to the glorious swell of the beautiful bubbies, that were so fully exposed to me nearly every night, and the lovely lips of all that I longed to lovingly embrace.


Thus day after day passed away, and Miss Evelyn became to me a goddess, a creature whom, in my heart of hearts, I literally worshiped. When she left the schoolroom, and I was alone, I kissed that part of the fender her feet had pressed, and the seat on which she sat, and even the air an inch above, imagination placing there her lovely cunt. I craved for something beyond this without knowing exactly what I wanted; for, as yet, I really was utterly ignorant of anything appertaining to the conjunction of the sexes.


One day I had gone up to my sisters' bedroom where the governess slept, that I might throw myself on her bed, and in imagination embrace her beautiful body. I heard someone approaching, and knowing that I had no business there, I hid myself under the bed. The next moment Miss Evelyn herself entered, and locked the door. It was about an hour before dinner. Taking off her dress, and hanging it on the wardrobe, she drew out a piece of furniture, which had been bought for her, the use of which had often puzzled me; she took off the lid, poured water into its basin, and placed a sponge near it. She then took off her gown, drew her petticoats and chemise up to her waist and fastened them there, straddled across it, and seated herself upon it.


I thus had the intoxicating delight of gazing on all her beautiful charms, for when she tucked up her clothes she stood before her glass, presenting to my devouring glance her glorious white bottom in all its fullness, turning to approach the bidet, she equally exposed her lower belly and beautiful mount, with all its wealth of hair. While straddling over the bidet before she sat down, the whole of her pinky-lipped cunt broke on my enraptured sight. Never shall I forget the wild excitement of the moment. It was almost too much for my excited senses; fortunately, when seated, the immediate cause of my almost madness vanished. She sponged herself well between the thighs for about five minutes. She then raised herself off the bidet, and for a moment again displayed the pouting lips of her cunt—then stood fronting me for two or three minutes while she removed, with the rinsed sponge, the trickling drops of water which still gathered on the rich bush of curls around her quim. Thus her belly, mount and thighs, whose massy-fleshed and most voluptuous shape were more fully seen by me than they had heretofore been, and it may easily be conceived into what a state such a deliberate view threw me.


Oh, Miss Evelyn, dear, delicious Miss Evelyn! what would you have thought had you known that I was gazing on all your angelic charms, and that my eager eyes had been straining themselves to penetrate the richness of those charming pouting lips which lay so snugly in that rich mass of dark curling hair. Oh! how I do long to kiss them; for at that time I had no other idea of embracing and still less of penetrating them.


When her ablutions were completed, she sat down and drew off her stockings, displaying her beautiful white calves and charming little feet. I believe it was this first admiration of really exquisitely formed legs, ankles and feet, which were extraordinarily perfect in make, that first awakened my passion for those objects, which have since always exercised a peculiar charm over me. She was also so particularly neat in her shoes—little dark ones—that were bijoux to look at, I often took them up and kissed them, when left in the room. Then her silk stockings, always drawn up tight and fitting like a glove, set off to the greatest advantage the remarkable fine shape of her legs.


Putting on silk for cotton stockings, she took down a low-bodiced dress, finished her toilet, and left the room. I crawled out from under the bed, washed my face and hands in the water of the bidet, and even drank some in my excitement.


Some six weeks had now elapsed since the arrival of Miss Evelyn. The passion that had seized me for her had so far kept me most obedient to her slightest command, or even wish, and, from the same cause, attentive to my lessons, when not distracted by the circumstances already detailed. My example had also had the effect of keeping my sisters much in the same groove, but it was impossible this could last—it was not nature. As long as all went smoothly, Miss Evelyn seemed to be all amiability. We fancied we could do as we liked, and we grew more careless.


Miss Evelyn became more reserved, and cautioned us at first, and then threatened us with the rod. We did not think she would make use of it. Mary grew impertinent, and one afternoon turned sulky over her lessons, and set our teacher at defiance. Miss Evelyn, who had been growing more and more angry, had her rise from her seat. She obeyed with an impudent leer. Seizing her by the arm, Miss Evelyn dragged the struggling girl to the horse. My sister was strong and fought hard, using both teeth and nails, but it was to no purpose. The anger of our governess was fully roused, and raising her in her arms, she carried her forcibly to the horse, placed her on it, held her firmly with one hand while she put the noose round her with the other, which, when drawn, secured her body; other nooses secured each ankle to rings in the floor, keeping her legs apart by the projection of the horse, and also forcing the knees to bend a little, by which the most complete exposure of the bottom, and, in fact, of all her private parts too, was obtained.


Miss Evelyn then left her, and went to mamma for a rod. In a few minutes she returned, evidently flushed with passion, and proceded to tie Mary's petticoats well up to her waist, leaving her bottom and her pinky slit quite bare and exposed directly before my eyes. It was quite two months since I had seen her private parts, and I was well surprised to observe the lips more pouting and swelled out, as well as the symptoms of a mossy covering of the mount much more developed. Indeed, it was in itself more exciting than I had expected, for my thoughts had so long dwelt only on the riper beauties of Miss Evelyn that I had quite ceased to have any toying with Mary.


This full view of all her private parts reawakened former sensations and strengthened them. Miss Evelyn first removed her own scarf, laying bare her plump ivory shoulders, and showing the upper halves of her beautiful bubbies, which were heaving with the excitement of her anger. She bared her fine right arm, and grasping the rod, stepped back and raised her arm; her eyes glistened in a peculiar way. She was indeed beautiful to see.


I shall never forget that moment—it was but a moment. The rod whistled through the air and fell with a cruel cut on poor Mary's plump little bottom. The flesh quivered again, and Mary, who had resolved not to cry, flushed in her face, and bit the damask with which the horse was covered.


Again the arm was raised, and again, with a sharp whistle, it fell on the palpating buttocks below it. Still her stubborn temper bore her up, and although we saw how she winced, not a sound escaped her lips. Drawing back a step, Miss Evelyn again raised her hand and arm, and this time her aim was so true that the longer points of the rod doubled between the buttocks and concentrated themselves between the lips of Mary's privates. So agonising was the pain that she screamed out dreadfully. Again the rod fell precisely on the same spot.


"Oh! oh! oh! Dear Miss Evelyn. I will never, no, never, do so again."


Her shrieks were of no avail. Cut succeeded cut, yell succeeded yell—until the rod was worn to a stump, and poor Mary's bottom was one mass of weals and red as raw beef. It was fearful to see, and yet such is our nature that to see it was, at the same time, exciting. I could not keep my eyes from her pouting quim, the swelling lips of which, under the severity of the punishment it was undergoing, not only seemed to thicken, but actually opened and shut, and evidently throbbed with agony. But all this was highly exciting for me to witness. I then and there resolved to have a closer inspection at a more convenient opportunity, which did not fail me in the end.


Meanwhile, her spirit was completely cowed, or rather, crushed. Indeed, we were all fully frightened, and now knew what we had to expect, if we did not behave ourselves. There was now no fear of any manifestation of temper, and we felt we must indeed obey implicitly whatever our governess chose to order. We instinctively learned to fear her.


A very few days after this memorable whipping, some visitors arrived—a gentleman and lady. The gentleman was an old friend of mamma's, who had lately married, and mamma had asked them to visit her on their wedding tour and spent a short time with us.


The gentleman was a fine-looking man, tall and powerfully built; the lady rather delicate looking, but well shaped, with good breasts and shoulders, small waist, and spreading haunches, well-formed arms, small hands and feet, and very brilliant eyes.


I think it was about three days after their arrival that one afternoon I went into the spare room, which was occupied by these visitors; while there, I heard them coming upstairs. The lady entered first, and I had just time to slip into a closet and draw the door to; it was not quite closed, but nearly so. In a minute the gentleman followed, and gently shutting the door, locked it. Mrs. Benson smiled, and said—


"Well, my love, you are a sad teaser; you let me have no rest. Surely, you had enough last night and this morning without wanting it again so soon?"


"Indeed, I had not," he said, "I never can have enough of your delicious person. So come, we must not be long about it, or our absence will be observed."


He seized her round the waist, and drew her lips to his, and gave her a long, long kiss; squeezing her to him, and moving himself against her. Then seating himself, he pulled her on his knee, and thrust his hand up her petticoats, their mouths being glued together for some time.


"We must be quick, dear," she murmured.


He got up, and lifted her on the edge of the bed, threw her back, and taking her legs under his arms, exposed everything to my view. She had not so much hair on her mount of Venus as Miss Evelyn, but her slit showed more pouting lips, and appeared more open. Judge of my excitement when I saw Mr. Benson unbutton his trousers and pull out an immense cock. Oh, dear, how large it looked; it almost frightened me. With his fingers he placed the head between the lips of Mrs. Benson's sheath, and then letting go his hold, and placing both arms so as to support her legs, he pushed it all right into her to the hilt at once. I was thunderstruck that Mrs. Benson did not shriek with agony, it did seem such a large thing to thrust right into her belly. However, far from screaming with pain, she appeared to enjoy it. Her eyes glistened, her face flushed, and she smiled most graciously on Mr. B. The two appeared very happy. His large cock slipped in and out quite smoothly, and his hands pressed the large glossy buttocks and pulled them to him at each home thrust. This lasted nearly five minutes, when all at once Mr. B. stopped short, and then followed one or two convulsive shoves—he grinning in a very absurd way at her. He remained quiet for a few minutes, and then drew out his cock, all soft, with slimy drops falling from it onto the carpet. Taking a towel, he wiped up the carpet, and wrapping it round his cock, went to the basin and washed it.


Mrs. Benson lay for a few minutes longer all exposed, her quim more open than before, and I could see a white slime oozing from it.


You can hardly imagine the wild excitement this scene occasioned me. First, the grand mystery was at once explained to me, and my ignorant longings now knew to what they tended. After giving me plenty of time to realise all the beauties of her private parts, she slipped down on the floor, adjusted her petticoats, and smoothed the disordered counterpane, and then went to the glass to arrange her hair. This done, she quietly unlocked the door, and Mr. Benson went out. The door was then relocked, and Mrs. B. went to the basin, emptied and filled it, then raised up her petticoats, and bathed the parts between her legs with a sponge, and then rubbed all dry with a towel; all this time exposing everything to my ardent gaze. But, horror of horrors! she after this came straight to the closet and gave a slight scream on discovering me there. I blushed up to the ears, and tried to stammer out an excuse. She stared at me at first in silent amazement; but at last said—


"How came you here, sir, tell me?"


"I was here when you came up; I wanted my football, which was in this closet, and when I heard you coming, I hid myself, I don't know why."


For some minutes she seemed to consider and examine me attentively. She then said—


"You will never tell anyone what you have seen?"


"Well, keep this promise, and I shall try what I can do to reward you. Now, go downstairs."


I went to the schoolroom, but I was greatly agitated, I scarcely knew what I was doing. The scene I had witnessed had complete possession of my thoughts. In years but a boy, the mystery now practically explained to me had awakened all the passions of a man. Instead of studying my lessons, my thoughts wandered to Mrs. B., thrown back on the bed with her fine legs and thighs fully exposed; above all, the sight of the pinky gash, with its fleecy hair at the bottom of her belly, which I had seen for some minutes all open and oozing out the slimy juice that followed the amorous encounter they had been indulging in. It seemed so much more developed than Miss Evelyn's. I felt sure that Miss Evelyn could never take in such a thick long thing as Mr. B. had thrust into his wife, and yet it appeared to go in so easily, and moved about so smoothly, and so evidently to the satisfaction and utmost delight of both, as was proved by their ardent embracings, fond murmurs, and voluptuous movements, especially just before they both ceased together all movement whatever.


Then I thought, how delicious it would be to treat Miss Evelyn in the same way, and to revel with my stiff-standing prick in her delicious quim, which in my mind's eye I saw before me as I had viewed it on her rising from the bidet, when I lay hid under the bed. Then I thought of my sister Mary's smaller, although attractive little quim, and I resolved, as that was the easiest to get hold of, to initiate her in all the newly discovered mysteries. I fully determined that my own first lesson, as well as hers, should be taken on her little fat chubby cunt. Then the recollection of its pouting and throbbing lips under the fearful flagellation she had undergone, began to excite me, and made my cock stand stiff and throb again. All the weeks of excitement I had now constantly been under had produced a wonderful effect on my pego, which had become considerably more developed when in a state of erection. As you may suppose, with such distracting thoughts, I did not get on with my lessons. Miss Evelyn, for some reason or other, was out of humour that morning, and more than once spoke crossly to me for my evident inattention. At length she called me to her, and finding that I had scarcely done anything, she said—


"Now, Charles, I give you ten minutes longer to finish that sum, if not done in that time I shall whip you; you are exhibiting the mere spirit of idleness. I do not know what has come over you, but if persisted in, you shall certainly be punished."


The idea of the beautiful Miss Evelyn whipping my bare bottom did not tend to calm my excitement, on the contrary, it turned my lewd thoughts upon the beauties of her person, which I had so often furtively gazed upon.


It was close upon four o'clock, at which hour we always broke up for a run in the garden for an hour, and during this period I had resolved to begin instructing Mary in the secret mysteries I had so lately been a witness to. But fate had ordered it otherwise, and I was to receive my first practical lesson and be initiated on the person of a riper and more beautiful woman; but of this hereafter. At four o'clock I had done nothing with my task—Miss Evelyn looked grave:


"Mary and Eliza, you may go out, Charles will remain here."


My sisters, simply imagining that I was kept to finish my lessons, ran into the garden. Miss Evelyn turned the key in the door, opened a cupboard, and withdrew a birch rod neatly tied up with blue ribbons. Now my blood coursed through my veins, and my fingers trembled so that I could hardly hold my pencil.


"Put down your slate, Charles, and come to me."


I obeyed, and stood before my beautiful governess, with a strange commixture of fear and desire.


"Unfasten your braces, and pull down your trousers."


I commenced doing this, though but very slowly. Angry at my delay her delicate fingers speedily accomplished the work. My trousers fell to my feet.


"Place yourself across my knees."


Tremblingly, with the same commixture of feeling, I obeyed. Her silk dress was drawn up to prevent its being creased—my naked flesh pressed against her snowy white petticoats. A delicate perfume of violet and vervain assailed my nerves. As I felt her soft and delicate fingers drawing up my shirt, and passing over my bare posteriors, while the warmth of her pulpy form beneath me penetrated my flesh, nature exerted her power, and my prick began to swell out to a most painful extent. I had but little time, however, to notice this before a rapid succession of the most cruel cuts lacerated my bottom.


"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, Miss Evelyn. I will do the sum if you will only forgive me. Oh, oh, oh, &c."


Holding me firmly with her left arm, Miss Evelyn used the rod most unmercifully. At first, the pain was excruciating, and I roared out as loud as I could, but gradually the pain ceased to be so acute, and was succeeded by the most delicious tickling sensation. My struggles at first had been so violent as to greatly disorder Miss Evelyn's petticoats, and to raise them up so as to expose to my delighted eyes her beautifully formed silk-clad legs up to the knees, and even an inch or two of naked thigh above.


This, together with the intense tickling irritation communicated to my bottom, as well as to the friction of my cock against the person of Miss Evelyn in my struggles, rendered me almost delirious, and I tossed and pushed myself about on her knees in a state of perfect frenzy as the blows continued to be showered down upon my poor bottom. At last the rod was worn to a stump, and I was pushed off her knees. As I rose before her, with my cheeks streaming with tears, my shirt was jutting out considerably in front in an unmistakable and most prominent manner, and my prick was at the same time throbbing beneath it with convulsive jerks, which I could by no means restrain.


Miss Evelyn glared at the projection in marked astonishment, and her open eyes were fixed upon it as I stood rubbing my bottom and crying, without attempting to move or button up my trousers. She continued for a minute or two to stare at the object of attraction, flushing scarlet up to the forehead, and then she suddenly seemed to recollect herself, drew a heavy breath, and rapidly left the room. She did not return until after my sisters came back from the garden, and seemed still confused, and avoided fixing her eye upon me.


In two days afterwards, all disagreeable marks of this very severe whipping had disappeared. On the following day we were invited to pass the afternoon at the grange, a beautiful place about two miles from us. The afternoon was fine and warm; we walked there, and arrived about four o'clock. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson were in the drawing room, but at once desired us to go in the garden and amuse ourselves with their three daughters, whom we would find there. We went at once, and found them amusing themselves on a swing. Sophia, the eldest, about nineteen, was swinging a sister about two years younger, a very fine, fully developed young woman. Indeed, all three sisters were finer women and more beautiful than the average of young ladies.


Another sister, Agnes, was not seated, but standing on the board between the ropes. Sophia was making both mount as high as possible. They were laughing loudly, when we found them, at the exposure each made—one in advancing, the other retiring. Agnes's light dress of muslin and single petticoat, as she retired and the wind came up from behind, was bulged out in front, and exposed her limbs up to her belly, so that one could see that her mount was already well furnished. The other, in advancing, threw her legs up, and exposed all the underside of her thighs and a part of her bottom, and you could just discern that there was dark hair between the lower thighs and bottom.


As they considered me but a child, I was no check to their mirth and sport. On the contrary, they gave me a long rope to pull down the swing when at its highest, and I sat down on the grass in front for greater convenience. The fine limbs and hairy quims exposed freely before me from moment to moment excited my passions. None of them wore more than one petticoat, and they had no drawers, so that when they mounted to the highest point from me, I had the fullest possible view of all. My cock soon rose to a painful extent, which I really believe was noticed and enjoyed by them, I observed, too, that I was an object of attention to Miss Evelyn, who shortly seated herself in the swing, and allowed me to swing her with the end of the rope. I even fancied that she threw up her legs more than was at all necessary; at all events, she naturally, with the strong feelings I had towards her, excited me more than all the rest.


We were as merry as could be, and we passed a delightful evening until eight o'clock, when it began to rain. As it continued, and became very heavy, Mr. Robinson ordered out the closed carriage to take us home. It was a brougham, only seated for two. Mary took Eliza on her knee, Miss Evelyn took me upon hers. I know not how it happened, but her lovely arm soon passed round my body as if to hold me on her knee, and her hand fell, apparently by accident, exactly on my cock—the touch was electric. In an instant, my member stood stiff and strong beneath her hand. Still Miss Evelyn, who must have felt the movement going on beneath her fingers, did not remove her hand, but rather seemed to press more upon it. In my boyish ignorance, I imagined she was not aware of what was happening. The motion and jolting of the carriage over rough road caused her hand to rub up and down upon my erected and throbbing member. I was almost beside myself, and to conceal my condition I feigned sleep. I let my head fall on Miss Evelyn's shoulder and neck—she allowed this.


Whether she thought I had really fallen asleep I know not, but I was quite sensible that her fingers pressed my swollen and throbbing cock, and I fancied she was measuring its size.


The tight grasp she managed to gain, and the continued jolting of the carriage, brought me up at last to such a pitch state that a greater jolt than usual, repeated two or three times in succession, each followed by a firmer pressure of her charming fingers, caused me such an excess of excitement that I actually swooned away with the most delicious sensation I had ever experienced in my life. I was some time before I knew where I was, or what I was about, and was only made conscious of our arrival at home by Miss Evelyn shaking me to rouse me up. I stumbled up, but though partially stupefied, I fancied Miss Evelyn's eyes shone with a brilliancy I had never before observed, and that there was a bright hectic flush on her cheek. She refused to go into the parlour, but hurried to bed on pretence of a headache.


When I retired to bed, and took off my shirt, I found it all sticky and wet in front.


It was thus I paid down my first tribute to Venus. I thought long over this evident approach to familiarity on the part of Miss Evelyn, and went to sleep with a lively hope of a more private interview with her, when I trusted that her evident passion would initiate me in the pleasures to be derived from her beauteous body.


But again fate intervened, and another, not less beautiful, more experienced, and more inclined for the sport, was to be my charming mistress in love's revels.