BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

STORY OF THE DOOR
MR. UTTERSON the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that wasnever lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed indiscourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, andyet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was tohis taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye;something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but whichspoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, butmore often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere withhimself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste forvintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed thedoors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance forothers; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressureof spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclinedto help rather than to reprove.
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"I incline to, Cain's heresy," he used to say. "I let my brother goto the devil in his quaintly: "own way." In this character, it wasfrequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and thelast good influence in the lives of down-going men. And to such asthese, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked ashade of change in his demeanour.
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he wasundemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to befounded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of amodest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the handsof opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way. His friends werethose of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; hisaffections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied noaptness in the object. Hence, no doubt, the bond that united him toMr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man abouttown. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see ineach other, or what subject they could find in common. It wasreported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks, thatthey said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail withobvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two menput the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chiefjewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure,but even resisted the calls
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of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down aby-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was small andwhat is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on theweek-days. The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and allemulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus oftheir gains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along thatthoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smilingsaleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charmsand lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out incontrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; andwith its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, andgeneral cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleasedthe eye of the passenger.