Devoted

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter sixteen of the Mystery of Edwin Drood. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Helen Chant. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the

(00:24):
Unfinished novel by Charles Dickens. Chapter sixteen devoted when John
Jasper recovered from his fit or swoon, he found himself
being tended by mister and Missus Tope, whom his visitor
had summoned for the purpose. His visitor, Wooden of aspect,

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sat stiffly in a chair with his hands upon his knees,
watching his recovery. There you've come too nicely, now, sir,
said the tearful Missus Tope. You were thoroughly worn out,
and no wonder a man, said mister Grugius, with his
usual air of repeating a lesson. Cannot have his rest

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broken and his mind cruelly tormented and his body overtaxed
by fatigue without being thoroughly worn out. I fear I
have alarmed you, Jasper apologized faintly when he was helped
into his easy chair. Not at all, I thank you,

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answered mister Grugius, you are too considerate, not at all,
I thank you, answered mister Grugius. Again. You must take
some wine, sir, said Missus Tope, and the jelly that
I had ready for you, and that you wouldn't put

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your lips to at noon, though I've warned you what
would come of it, you know had you not breakfasted.
And you must have a wing of the roast fowl
that has been put back twenty times. If it's been
put back once, it shall all be on table in
five minutes. And this good gentleman belike will stop and

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see you take it. This good gentleman replied with a
snort which might mean yes or no, or anything or nothing,
and which Missus Tope would have found highly mystifying, but
that her attention was divided by the service of the table.
You will take something with me, said Jasper, as the

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cloth was laid. I couldn't get a morsel down my throat.
I thank you, answered mister Grugius. Jasper both ate and
drank almost voraciously, combined with the hurry in his mode
of doing it was an evident indifference to the taste
of what he took, suggesting that he ate and drank

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to fortify himself against other failures of the spirits, far
more than to gratify his palate. Mister Grugius, in the
mean time, sat upright, with no expression in his face,
and a hard kind of imperturbably polite protest all over him,
as though he would have said in reply to some

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invitation to discourse, I couldn't originate the faintest approach to
an observation on any subject whatever, I thank you? Do
you know, said Jasper, when he had pushed away his
plate and glass and had sat meditating for a few minutes.

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Do you know that I find some crumbs of comfort
in the communication with which you have so much amazed me?
Do you? Returned mister Grugius, pretty plainly, adding the unspoken clause,
I don't I thank you? After recovering from the shock

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of a piece of news of my dear boy so
entirely unexpected and so destructive of all the castles I
had built for him, and after having had time to
think of it, Yes, I shall be glad to pick
up your crumbs, said mister Grudius dryly. Is there not?

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Or is there if I deceive myself? Tell me so?
And shorten my pain? Is there not, or is there
hope that, finding himself in this new position, am becoming
sensitively alive to the awkward burden of explanation in this
quarter and that and the other with which it would

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load him. He avoided the awkwardness and took to flight.
Such a thing might be, said mister Grugeous, pondering such
a thing has been. I have read of cases in
which people, rather than face a seven days wonder and

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have to account for themselves to the idol and impertinent,
have taken themselves away and been long unheard of. I
believe such things have happened, said mister grugious, pondering. Still,
when I had and could have, no suspicion, pursued Jasper, eagerly,

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following the new track, that the dear lost boy had
withheld anything from me, most of all such a leading
matter as this, What gleam of light was there for
me in the whole black sky? When I supposed that
his intended wife was here and his marriage close at hand,

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How could I entertain the possibility of his voluntarily leaving
this place in a manner that would be so unaccountable, capricious,
and cruel. But now that I know what you have
told me, is there no little chink through which day
Pierces suppose him to have disappeared of his own act?

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Is not his disappearance more accountable and less cruel? The
fact of his having just parted from your ward is
in itself a sort of reason for his going away.
It does not make his mysterious departure the less cruel
to me, it is true, but it relieves it of

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cruelty to her. Mister Grugius could not but assent to this,
and even as to me, continued Jasper, still pursuing the
new track with ardor, and as he did so, brightening
with hope. He knew that you were coming to me,
He knew that you were entrusted to tell me what

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you have told me. If your doing so has awakened
a new train of thought in my perplexed mind, it
reasonably follows that from the same premises he might have
foreseen the inferences that I should draw. Grant that he
did foresee them, and even the cruelty to me, and

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who am I? John Jasper music Master vanishes once more.
Mister Grugius could not but assent to this. I have
had my distrusts, and terrible distrust they have been, said Jasper.
But your disclosure overpowering, as it was at first, showing

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me that my own dear boy had had a great
disappointing reservation from me who so fondly loved him. Kindles
hope within me. You do not extinguish it when I
state it, but admit it to be a reasonable hope.
I begin to believe it possible, here he clasped his hands,

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that he may have disappeared from among us of his
own accord, and that he may yet be alive and well.
Mister Chrisparkle came in at the moment, to whom mister
Jasper repeated, I begin to believe it possible that he
may have disappeared of his own accord, and may yet

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be alive and well. Mister Chrisparkle takes a seat, and
inquiring why so, mister Jasper repeated the arguments he had
just set forth. If they had been less plausible than
they were, the good Minor Canon's mind would have been
in a state of preparation to receive them as exculpatory

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of his unfortunate pupil. But he too did really attach
great importance to the lost young man's having been so
immediately before his disappearance placed in a new and embarrassing
relation towards every one acquainted with his projects and affairs,
and the fact seemed to him to present the question

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in a new light. I stated to mister Sapsey when
we waited on him, said Jasper, as he really had done,
that there was no quarrel or difference between the two
young men at their last meeting. We all know that
their first meeting was unfortunately very far from amicable, but

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all went smoothly and quietly. When they were last together
at my house. My dear boy was not in his
usual spirits. He was depressed. I noticed that, and I
am bound henceforth to dwell upon the circumstance, the more
now that I know there was a special reason for

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his being depressed, a reason moreover, which may possibly have
induced him to absent himself. I pray to heaven it
may turn out so, exclaimed mister Chrisparkle. I pray to
heaven it may turn out so, repeated Jasper. You know,

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and mister Grugius should now know likewise that I talk
a great prepossession against mister Neville Landless, arising out of
his furious conduct on that first occasion. You know that
I came to you extremely apprehensive on my dear boy's
behalf of his mad violence. You know that I even

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entered in my diary and showed the entry to you
that I had dark forebodings against him. Mister Grugius ought
to be possessed of the whole case. He shall not,
through any suppression of mine, be informed of a part
of it and kept in ignorance of another part of it.

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I wish him to be good enough to understand that
the communication he has made to me has hopefully influenced
my mind, in spite of its having been before this
mysterious occurrence took place, profoundly impressed against young Landless, this

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fairness troubled the miner canon much. He felt that he
was not as open in his own dealing. He charged
against himself reproachfully that he had suppressed so far the
two points of a second strong outbreak of temper against
Edwin Drood on the part of Neville, and of the

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passion of jealousy, having to his own certain knowledge, flamed
up in Nevill's breast against him. He was convinced of
Nevill's innocence of any part in the ugly disappearance, And
yet so many little circumstances combined so woefully against him,
that he dreadied to add two more to their cumulative weight.

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He was among the truest of men, but he had
been balancing in his mind, much to its distress, whether
his volunteering to tell these two fragments of truth at
this time would not be tantamount to ap piecing together
of falsehood in the place of truth. However, here was

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a model before him. He hesitated no longer, addressing mister
Grugius as one placed in authority by the revelation he
had brought to bear on the mystery, and surpassingly angular
mister Grugius became when he found himself in that unexpected position.
Mister Chrisparkle bore his testimony to mister Jasper's strict sense

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of justice, and expressing his absolute confidence in the complete
clearance of his pupil from the least taint of suspicion.
Sooner or later avowed that his confidence in that young
gentleman had been formed in spite of his confidential knowledge
that his temper was of the hottest and fiercest, and

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that it was directly incensed against mister Jasper's neview by
the circumstance of his romantically supposing himself to be enamoured
of the same young lady. The sanguine reaction manifest in
mister Jasper was proof even against this unlooked for declaration.

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It turned him paler, but he repeated that he would
cling to the hope he had derived from mister Grugius,
and that if no trace of his dear boy were found,
leading to the dreadful inference that he had been made
away with, he would cherish, unto the last stretch of possibility,
the idea that he might have absconded of his own

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wild will. Now it fell out that mister Chrispartle, going
away from this conference, still very uneasy in his mind
and very much troubled on behalf of the young man
whom he held as a kind of prisoner in his
own house, took a memorable night walk. He walked to

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cloisterroom weir. He often did so, and consequently there was
nothing remarkable in his footsteps tending that way, but the
prior occupation of his mind so hindered him from planning
any walk or taking heed of the objects he passed.
That his first consciousness of being near the weir was

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derived from the sound of the falling water close at hand.
How did I come here? Was his first thought as
he stopped. Why did I come here? Was his second?
Then he stood intently listening to the water, a familiar
passage in his reading about airy tongues, that syllable men's

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names rose so unbitten to his ear that he put
it from him with his hand, as if it were tangible.
It was starlight. The weir was two full miles above
the spot to which the young men had repaired to
watch the storm. No search had been made up here,
for the tide had been running strongly down at that

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time of the night of Christmas Eve, and the likeliest
places for the discovery of a body if a fatal
accident had happened under such circumstances, all lay both when
the tide ebbed and when it flowed again between that
spot and the sea. The water came over the weir
with its usual sound on a cold, starlit night, and

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little could be seen of it. Yet mister Chris Sparkle
had a strange idea that something unusual hung about the place.
He reasoned with himself, what was it, where was it?
Put it to the proof, what sense did it address?
No sense reported anything unusual there. He listened again, and

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his sense of hearing again checked the water coming over
the weir with its usual sound on a cold, starlight night.
Knowing very well that the mystery with which his mind
was occupied might of itself give the place this haunted air,
he strained those hawk's eyes of his for the correction
of his sight. He got closer to the weir and

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peered at its well known posts and timbers. Nothing in
the least unusual was remotely shadowed forth, but he resolved
that he would come back early in the morning. The
weir ran through his broken sleep all night, and he
was back again at sunrise. It was a bright, frosty morning.

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The whole composition before him, when he stood where he
had stood last night, was clearly discernible in its minutest details.
He had surveyed it closely for some minutes and was
about to withdraw his eyes when they were attracted keenly
to one spot. He turned his back upon the weir

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and looked far away at the sky and at the earth,
and then looked again at at one spot. It caught
his sight again immediately, and he concentrated his vision upon it.
He could not lose it now. Though it was but
such a speck in the landscape, it fascinated his sight.
His hands began plucking off his coat, for it struck

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him that at that spot, a corner of the weir,
something glistened, which did not move and come over with
the glistening water drops, but remained stationary. He assured himself
of this, He threw off his clothes. He plunged into
the icy water and swam for the spot. Climbing the timbers,

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he took from them, caught among the interstices by its
chain a gold watch bearing engraved upon its back e
d He brought the watch to the bank, swam to
the weir again, climbed it and dived off. He knew

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every hole and corner of all the depths, and dived
and duck and dived until he could bear the cold
no more. His notion was that he would find the body.
He only found a shirt pin sticking in some mud
and ooze. With these discoveries, he returned to Cloisterham and

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taking Neville landless with him, went straight through the mare.
Mister Jasper was sent for the watch and shirt pin
were identified. Neville was detained, and the wildest frenzy and
fatuity of evil report arose against him. He was of
that vindictive and violent nature that, but for his poor sister,

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who alone had influence over him, and out of whose
sight he was never to be trusted, he would be
in the daily commission of murder. Before coming to England,
he had cause to be whipped to death Sundry natives,
nomadic persons in camping, now in Nasia, now in Africa,
now in the West Indies, and now at the North Pole,

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vaguely supposed in Cloisterham to be always black, always of
great virtue, always calling themselves me and everybody else massa
or mercy according to sex, and always reading tracts of
the obscurest meaning in broken English, but always accurately understanding
them in the purest mother tongue. He had nearly brought

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missus Chris Sparkle's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.
These original expressions were mister Sapsey's. He had repeatedly said
he would have mister Chris Sparkle's life. He had repeatedly
said he would have everybody's life and become, in effect
the last man. He had been brought down to Cloister

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and from London by an eminent philanthropist. And why because
that philanthropist had expressly declared, I owe it to my
fellow creatures that he should be in the words of Bentham,
where he is the cause of the greatest danger to
the smallest number. These dropping shots from the blunderbusses of

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blunder headedness might not have hit him in a vital place,
but he had to stand against a trained and well
directed fire of arms of precision. Too. He had notoriously
threatened the lost young man, and had, according to the
showing of his own faithful friend and tutor, who strove
so hard for him, a cause of bitter animosity created

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by himself and stated by himself against that ill starred fellow.
He had armed himself with an offensive weapon for the
fatal night, and he had gone off early in the
morning after making preparations for departure. He had been found
with traces of blood on him. Truly they might have

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been wholly caused, as he represented, but they might not.
Also on a search warrant being issued for the examination
of his room, clothes, and so forth, it was discovered
that he had destroyed all his papers and re arranged
all his possessions on the very afternoon of the disappearance

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the watch found that the weir was challenged by the
jeweler as one he had wound and set for Edwin
Drood at twenty minutes past two on that same afternoon,
and it had run down before being cast into the water,
and it was the jeweler's positive opinion that it had
never been rewound. This would justify the hypothesis that the

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watch was taken from him not long after he had
left mister Jasper's house at midnight in company with the
last person seen with him, and that it had been
thrown away after being retained some hours. Why thrown away
if he had been murdered and so artfully disfigured or concealed,
or both, as that the murderer hoped identification to be

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impossible except from something that he wore. Assuredly, the murderer
would seek to remove from the body the most lasting,
the best known, and the most easily recognizable things upon it.
These things would be the watch and shirt pin as
to his opportunities of casting them into the river. If

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he were the object of these suspicions, they were easy,
for he had been seen by many persons wandering about
on that side of the city, indeed on all sides
of it, in a miserable and seemingly half distracted manner.
As to the choice of the spot, obviously, such criminating

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evidence had better take its chance of being found anywhere
rather than upon himself or in his possession. Concerning the
reconciliatory nature of the appointed meeting between the two young men,
very little could be made of that in young Landless's favor,
for it distinctly appeared that the meeting originated not with him,

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but with mister Chris Sparkle, and that it had been
urged on by mister Chris Sparkle. And who could say
how unwillingly or in what ill conditioned mood his enforced
pupil had gone to it. The more his case was
looked into, the weaker it became. In every point. Even
the broad suggestion that the lost young man had absconded

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was rendered additionally improbable. On the showing of the young
lady from whom he had so lately parted for what
did she say, with great earnestness and sorrow, when interrogated,
that he had expressly and enthusiastically planned with her that
he should await the arrival of her guardian, mister Grugious,

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And yet, be it observed, he disappeared before that gentleman arrived.
On the suspicions thus urged and supported, Nevill was detained
and re detained, and the search was pressed on every hand,
and Jasper labored night and day. But nothing more was found,

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no discovery being made which proved the lost man to
be dead. It at length became necessary to release the
person suspected of having made away with him. Neville was
set at large. Then a consequence ensued which mister Chris
Sparkle had too well foreseen. Nevill must leave the place,

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for the place shunned him and cast him out. Even
had it not been so, the dear old China Shepherdess
would have worried herself to death with fears for her son,
and with general trepidation occasioned by their having such an inmate,
even had that not been so. The authority to which
the minor canon deferred officially would have settled the point,

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mister Chris Sparkle quoth the Dean. Human justice may err,
but it must act according to its lights. The days
of taking sanctuary are past. This young man must not
take sanctuary with us. You mean that he must leave
my house, sir, mister Chris Sparkle returned, the prudent Dean.

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I claim no authority in your house. I merely confer
with you on the painful necessity you find yourself under
of depriving this young man of the great advantages of
your counsel and instruction. It is very lamentable, sir, mister
Chris Sparkle represented, very much so. The Dean assented, And

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if it be a necessity, mister Chris Sparkle faltered as
you unfortunately find it to be returned the Dean. Mister
Chris Sparkle bowed submissively. It is hard to prejudge his case, sir,
but I am sensible that just so perfectly as you say,

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mister Chris Sparkle interposed, the Dean, nodding his head smoothly.
There is nothing else to be done, no doubt, no doubt.
There is no alternative, as your good sense has discovered.
I am entirely satisfied of his perfect innocence, Sir. Nevertheless,

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well said the Dean, in a more confidential tone, and
slightly glancing around him. I would not say so generally,
not generally enough of suspicion attaches to him. To no,
I think I would not say so generally, mister Chris

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Sparkle bowed again. It does not become us, perhaps pursued
the Dean to be partisans. Not partisans. We clergy keep
our hearts warm and our heads cool, and we hold
a judicious middle course. I hope you do not object, sir,

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to my having stated in public emphatically that he will
reappear here whenever any new suspicion may be awakened, or
any new circumstance may come to light in this extraordinary matter.
Not at all, returned the Dean. And yet, do you know,

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I don't think with a very nice and neat emphasis
on those two words, I don't think I would state
it emphatically state it, yes, but emphatically no, I think not.
In point of fact, mister Chris Sparkle. Keeping our hearts

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warm and our heads cool, we clergy need to do
nothing emphatically so Minor canon row knew never landless no more,
and he went whithersoever he would or could, with a
blight upon his name and fame. It was not until

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then that John Jaspers silently resumed his place in the choir.
Haggard and red eyed. His hopes plainly had deserted him.
His sanguine mood was gone, and all his worst misgivings
had come back. A day or two afterwards, while unrobing,
he took his diary from a pocket of his coat,

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turned the leaves, and with an impressive look, and without
one spoken word, handed this entry to mister Chrisparkle to read,
my dear boy is murdered. The discovery of the watch
and shirt pin convinces me that he was murdered that night,

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and that his jewelry was taken from him to prevent identification.
By its means, all the delusive hopes I had founded
on his separation from his betrothed wife I give to
the winds they perish before this fatal discovery. I now

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swear and record the oath on this page that I
never more will discuss this mystery with any human creature
until I hold the clew to it in my hand,
that I never will relax in my secrecy or in
my search. That I will fasten the crime of the

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murder of my dear dead boy upon the murderer, and
that I devote myself to his destruction. End of Chapter sixteen,
read by all Enchant of Tunbridge in Kent, England, during

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the summer of two thousand and eight,