Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,
Your go-to podcast that guarantees you a calm and relaxing transition into a great night's sleep.
Today's story is called Dr.
Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde.
First published in 1886,
This story explores the duality of human nature and suggests that within each and every one of us lies both good and evil.
But before we begin,
Let's take a moment to focus on where we are now.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
Then let it out on a long sigh.
Chapter 10 continued.
Even at that time,
I had not yet conquered my aversion 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.
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 made my preparations with the most studious care.
I took and furnished the house in Soho,
To which Hyde was tracked by the police,
And engaged as a housekeeper a creature whom I well-known to be silent and unscrupulous.
On the other side,
I announced to my servants that Mr.
Hyde was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square.
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 thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability,
And then,
In a moment,
Like a schoolboy,
Strip off those 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 drawer,
Give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught,
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,
Was a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion,
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 towards 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 centred on self,
Drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from every 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.
Jekyll was no worse.
He woke again to his good quality seemingly unimpaired.
He would even make haste where it was possible to undo the evil done by Hyde.
And thus his conscience slumbered.
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 in the person of your kinsman.
When the doctor and the child's family joined him,
There were moments I feared for my life.
But 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.
This danger was easily eliminated from the future by opening an account at another bank in the name of Edward Hyde himself.
When sloping my own hand backwards,
I supplied my double with a signature and I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.
Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers,
I'd 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 I recognised the pattern of the bed curtains and the design of the mahogany frame.
Something still kept insisting I was not where I thought 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.
In my psychological way,
I began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion.
I was still so engaged when my eyes dropped to my hand.
Now the hand of Henry Jekyll was professional in shape and size,
Large,
Firm,
White and comely,
But the hand which I now saw lying half shut on the bedclothes was lean,
Corded,
Knuckly and thickly shaded with a swat growth of hair.
It was the hand of Edward Hyde.
I must have stared upon it for nearly 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 crush of cymbals.
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 and I had awakened as Edward Hyde.
How was this to be explained,
I asked myself,
And how was it to be remedied?
It was now 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 dark passage,
Across the open court and through the anatomical theatre,
From where I was then standing,
Horror struck.
I considered,
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?
Then,
With an overpowering sweetness of relief,
It came back upon my mind,
The servants were already used to the coming and going of my second self.
So I soon dressed,
As well as I was able,
In clothes of my own size,
And passed through the house,
Where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr Hyde at such an hour.
I spent that morning in reflection.
That part of me which I had the power of projecting,
Had lately been much exercised and nourished,
But it seemed to me of late,
The body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature,
As though 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 would become irrevocably mine.
The power of the drug had not always been 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.
These rare uncertainties had cast,
Hitherto,
The sole shadow on my contentment.
Now,
In the light of this 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 throw off the body of Hyde.
All things,
Therefore,
Seemed to point to this.
I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self,
And slowly becoming incorporated with my second and worse self.
It was time for me to choose.
