A week later, Henry and I made our way to Dr. Jekyll’s classroom in the early morning, but as we approached the double doors that led to the operating theater, we found our classmates were gathered outside, blocking the way. They pushed and shoved each other, jockeying for a better view through the small rectangular windows. Samuel Riser—one of the upperclassmen who always seemed to be cleaning blackboards as punishment for rule-breaking—pushed his way to the front of the crowd.
“Get back!” Samuel shouted. “I want to see him get put out.”
“See who get put out?” Henry asked in a whisper.
Everyone moved off to the side long enough for Henry to take their place at the window. His mouth fell open and a look of utter confusion washed over his face. He backed away from the door and looked down at the floor, shaking his head.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Samuel said. “It was only a matter of time.”
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Lanyon made his way toward me, his brow furrowed, his gaze narrow. “This is a complete farce. Sir Hastings is despicable.”
I had no doubt about that, but I still didn’t understand what all the commotion was about.
The double doors suddenly flew open, knocking several students back. Dr. Jekyll stumbled out carrying a wooden crate full of test tubes and glass vials.
“You will not set one foot off this campus with materials that belong to the institution!” Sir Hastings screamed, tripping along behind him.
Henry’s father turned on his heel. “Your patrons make it explicit that their money is not to go toward my classes in any way. My god, Hastings, have you attended a single board meeting? Or are you happy to remain ignorant?”
Sir Hastings looked as if he might actually explode. “How dare you speak to me this way!”
“As I am no longer in your employ, I’ll speak to you in the way that seems most appropriate,” Dr. Jekyll snapped. “I will be removing my materials, all of which were purchased with my own funds. I will continue my studies elsewhere.”
“Your studies? Your fringe science? Jekyll, you fool! Go! Take your tools and hide yourself away. It’s what a disgrace such as yourself deserves!”
“Father,” Henry began, but Dr. Jekyll took him roughly by the arm, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“Come straight home at the end of the day.” He let go of Henry and stormed off as Sir Hastings fumed.
Samuel and his friends spoke in hushed whispers, laughing among themselves. Lanyon leaned close to me.
“Henry does not look well,” he said. “You should tend to him but please, if there’s anything I can do, do not hesitate to ask.” He gently squeezed my arm and then left.
I’d seen much more of Lanyon on campus since the circus, but I was unsure if that was because he was seeking me out or simple coincidence. His distrust of Sir Hastings and concern for Henry gave me some hope that I had found another ally.
Henry looked like he might collapse under the weight of the embarrassment. I took him by the elbow and pulled him into the operating theater, toward his father’s office. We went in and I closed the door as Henry slumped down in the chair and rested his head on his arms on top of the small desk.
“What is going on?” I asked.
Henry pressed his forehead into the desk as his body trembled. “My father has been working very hard for this institution for the better part of ten years. He’s always been undervalued. Look at this office. Look at where he’s forced to teach.” He sighed. “Sir Hastings has been accusing my father of stealing since the summer.”
I remembered the way Sir Hastings had burst into our classroom the previous year, demanding to know what had become of a shipment of supplies.
“That’s a very serious claim,” I said.
“It’s not a claim,” Henry said with a heavy sigh. “It’s true.”
I was struck silent. I moved closer to the desk. “Your father has been stealing from the university?”
“The same way they steal from everyone else,” Henry said. “His colleagues steal his research and pass it off as their own. They charge my father triple the amount of tuition for me to attend, thinking he could never afford it, and when he does, they’re so disappointed their plans have failed they take every opportunity to make his life a living hell.”
I gently put my hand on Jekyll’s shoulder. I didn’t know what to say.
“My father would do anything for me,” said Henry. “He wants nothing except for me to succeed where he thinks he’s failed.”
I understood that all too well.
Henry pushed his chair back and stood up. “Meet me in the courtyard after class.” He brushed past me and turned his head just enough to give me a warm smile. “Please?”
“Of course.”
He left without another word.
I stood alone in the disarray of Dr. Jekyll’s office. There were papers and books scattered about the floor. He must have grabbed only what he could carry. On his desk there was a notebook lying open with his nearly illegible handwriting covering every inch of it. I didn’t recognize much of the language used—scientific terms I was not familiar with—and there were few drawings to illustrate whatever formulations he was obsessing over. I turned the pages and came across a lifelike drawing of Henry near the back.
Rendered from the shoulders up in black and white, Henry’s smiling face beamed up at me from the page. Even in ink on paper his expression stirred something deep inside me. I wondered if Dr. Jekyll would mind if I kept the drawing for myself. I ran my hand over the paper and noticed a series of numbers, letters, and symbols—equations—at the bottom of the page. In a neat scrawl was a sentence I assumed was writing in Dr. Jekyll’s own hand … We cannot escape the nature of man’s duality, but we can control its monstrous urges.
In the courtyard, Henry stood in the shade of a towering silver maple, his jacket draped over his shoulder. The sun was beaming down on him, a short break in the usual gloom.
“Walk with me?” he asked.
I smiled at him. “You’re asking me? You know there is nothing you could ask of me that I would not do.”
“I want to take you home with me,” Henry said.
I stopped in my tracks.
Henry’s brow pushed together. “Unless you don’t want to go,” he said. “Of course you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“No. I want to, I just—” I stepped closer to him. “Do your parents know about us?”
“Yes,” he said, his tone flat.
I was at a loss. “You told them?”
“I could not hide from my father. But just because he knows does not mean he accepts it. That’s something different altogether.”
“And your mother?”
He kept his gaze on the road ahead of us. “She both knows and accepts, but ask her what it’s like to say that out loud in my father’s presence.”
We traversed the London streets and came upon the Jekyll estate at 28 Leicester Square. Though large, enclosing nearly half a city block, it sat amid a sinister collection of buildings. Rot had seeped into the wood of all the residences that lined the street, but their owners tried very hard not to let it show. The Jekyll home was no different. The exterior was worn with age. Layers of chipped paint covered the shutters, and the front door was a patchwork of various woods—planks and slivers replaced one at a time instead of all at once. The surrounding wall, a six-foot brick-and-mortar structure, had been repaired so many times I wondered if any part of the original still remained. The front door of the home faced the street, surrounded by a high wall enclosing what I could just make out to be a garden and another large building. Henry mounted the front steps and waved me inside.
“Mother?” he called as he closed the door behind me.
The house was massive, and while it had clearly seen better days, it was a palace compared to the boardinghouse. It was warm and smelled of fresh flowers and burning firewood. There were three large rooms off the main hall and a kitchen near the rear that—from the sounds of clanking pots and the smell of fresh bread—was bustling.
I eyed the large painting of a stern-looking man in a blue suit that hung in the entryway. Dr. Jekyll’s familiar check-patterned coat hung from a nearby coatrack; an assortment of walking canes, one with a handle in the shape of an eagle’s head, stood in the corner.
A tall woman in a gray dress swept up to us. She embraced Henry and looked him over with the type of discerning gaze that told me she was his mother.
“You’ve already heard about your father, then?” she asked.
Henry nodded.
His mother turned her attention to me, and then back to Henry for a split second longer than she needed to. She pressed her hand over her heart and took Henry’s hand in hers, something unspoken passing between them. His mother’s gaze flitted to the back door, then down to the floor as she seemed to get lost in her own thoughts.
“Mother, this is Gabriel Utterson. He’s staying in the boardinghouse, too. We have most of our classes together.”
She shook herself out of her own head and stepped toward me. She rested her hands on my shoulders. Her eyes were the same chestnut brown as Henry’s, her dark, coily hair streaked with gray and folded into a braided halo.
“It’s very good to meet you,” she said. “My Henry has exchanged so many letters with you, I feel as if we already know each other.”
My eyes grew wide, my heart nearly leaping out of my chest.
“Oh, but I haven’t read them,” she said quickly, looking away from me. “I would never. No. I just pass them through the post or deliver them to him when they arrive.”
She patted me on the shoulder, and I had to keep myself from asking Henry right then why—if his parents were at least somewhat aware of his feelings for me—did he feel the need to burn my letters.
“Where’s Father?” Henry asked.
His mother glanced toward the back door again. “Where he always is.”
She gave Henry a kiss on the cheek and disappeared into the kitchen.
“He’s in his laboratory,” Henry said quietly. “Lately he’s been taking meals there, sometimes sleeping there, too. It’s stressful for my mother.”
“Why does he spend so much time there?” I asked.
Henry stepped into the front room and sat down on a wide, evergreen chaise. He leaned his head back, and the dappled light filtering through the front window illuminated his troubled expression.
“He is trying very hard to continue his work. The facilities at the university were much more convenient. I think he’s trying to replicate the same working environment in his own lab. It will take time, but I’m sure when he’s done I’ll see more of him.”
He didn’t make it sound like that was something he really wanted.
“Does your father have any recourse at the university? Can he appeal the firing?”
“On what grounds?” Henry asked. “He did what they’ve accused him of. He can’t admit it, but he also can’t deny it. Not fully.”
“And there are no legal options?” I tried to think of anything that might help Dr. Jekyll regain his position. I was pained by the realization that if I’d gone to study law the way I wanted to, I might have had some better idea of what options were available.
The entire situation—Dr. Jekyll’s firing, the strain it would inevitably put on Henry’s already troubled mother—seemed avoidable, if only Henry’s father had an advocate.