The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Page B

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