They seemed to take no notice of me; I don't suppose that I was even addressed by one of them.
But, as long as one or the other, or all three of them were there, they stood between me as if, I being the titular possessor of the corpse, had a right to be present at their conferences.
Then they all went away and I was left alone for a long time.
And I thought nothing; absolutely nothing.
I had no ideas; I had no strength.
I felt no sorrow, no desire for action, no inclination to go upstairs and fall upon the body of my wife.
I just saw the pink effulgence, the cane tables, the palms, the globular match-holders, the indented ash-trays.
And then Leonora came to me and it appears that I addressed to her that singular remark:
"Now I can marry the girl."
But I have given you absolutely the whole of my recollection of that evening, as it is the whole of my recollection of the succeeding three or four days.
I was in a state just simply cataleptic.
They put me to bed and I stayed there; they brought me my clothes and I dressed; they led me to an open grave and I stood beside it.
If they had taken me to the edge of a river, or if they had flung me beneath a railway train, I should have been drowned or mangled in the same spirit.
I was the walking dead.
Well, those are my impressions.
What had actually happened had been this.
I pieced it together afterwards.
You will remember I said that Edward Ashburnham and the girl had gone off, that night, to a concert at the Casino and that Leonora had asked Florence, almost immediately after their departure, to follow them and to perform the office of chaperone.
Florence, you may also remember, was all in black, being the mourning that she wore for a deceased cousin, Jean Hurlbird.
It was a very black night and the girl was dressed in cream-coloured muslin, that must have glimmered under the tall trees of the dark park like a phosphorescent fish in a cupboard.
You couldn't have had a better beacon.
And it appears that Edward Ashburnham led the girl not up the straight allee that leads to the Casino, but in under the dark trees of the park.
Edward Ashburnham told me all this in his final outburst.
I have told you that, upon that occasion, he became deucedly vocal.
I didn't pump him.
I hadn't any motive. At that time I didn't in the least connect him with my wife.
But the fellow talked like a cheap novelist.—Or like a very good novelist for the matter of that, if it's the business of a novelist to make you see things clearly.
And I tell you I see that thing as clearly as if it were a dream that never left me.
It appears that, not very far from the Casino, he and the girl sat down in the darkness upon a public bench.
The lights from that place of entertainment must have reached them through the tree-trunks, since, Edward said, he could quite plainly see the girl's face—that beloved face with the high forehead, the queer mouth, the tortured eyebrows, and the direct eyes.
And to Florence, creeping up behind them, they must have presented the appearance of silhouettes.
For I take it that Florence came creeping up behind them over the short grass to a tree that, I quite well remember, was immediately behind that public seat.
It was not a very difficult feat for a woman instinct with jealousy.
The Casino orchestra was, as Edward remembered to tell me, playing the Rakocsy march, and although it was not loud enough, at that distance, to drown the voice of Edward Ashburnham it was certainly sufficiently audible to efface, amongst the noises of the night, the slight brushings and rustlings that might have been made by the feet of Florence or by her gown in coming over the short grass.
And that miserable woman must have got it in the face, good and strong. It must have been horrible for her.
Horrible!
Well, I suppose she deserved all that she got.
Anyhow, there you have the picture, the immensely tall trees, elms most of them, towering and feathering away up into the black mistiness that trees seem to gather about them at night; the silhouettes of those two upon the seat; the beams of light coming from the Casino, the woman all in black peeping with fear behind the tree-trunk.
It is melodrama; but I can't help it.
And then, it appears, something happened to Edward Ashburnham.
He assured me—and I see no reason for disbelieving him—that until that moment he had had no idea whatever of caring for the girl.
He said that he had regarded her exactly as he would have regarded a daughter.
He certainly loved her, but with a very deep, very tender and very tranquil love.
He had missed her when she went away to her convent-school; he had been glad when she had returned.
But of more than that he had been totally unconscious.
Had he been conscious of it, he assured me, he would have fled from it as from a thing accursed.
He realized that it was the last outrage upon Leonora.
But the real point was his entire unconsciousness.
He had gone with her into that dark park with no quickening of the pulse, with no desire for the intimacy of solitude.
He had gone, intending to talk about polo-ponies, and tennis-racquets; about the temperament of the reverend Mother at the convent she had left and about whether her frock for a party when they got home should be white or blue.