So Nick had perforce to bow to Claire’s decision, and it was settled that for the first month of two, at least, of her widowhood Jean should remove herself and her belongings from Staple and bear her company at Charnwood. And meanwhile Nick and Claire would spend many peaceful hours together of quiet happiness and companionship, while Claire, as she herself expressed it, “rebuilt her soul.”
To Jean the issue of events had brought nothing but pure joy. Her belief had been justified, and the grim gateway of death had become for these two friends of hers the gateway to happiness.
She had neither seen nor heard anything from Burke since the day she had fled from him on the Moor, although indirectly she had discovered that he had quitted the bungalow the day following that of her flight from it and had gone to London.
Judith sent her a brief, rather formal letter of congratulation upon her engagement, but in it she made no reference to him nor did she endeavour to explain away or palliate her own share in his scheme to force Jean’s hand. Probably an odd kind of loyalty to her brother prevented her from clearing herself at his expense, added to a certain dogged pride which refused to let her extenuate any action of hers; to the daughter of Glyn Peterson.
But none of these things had any power to hurt Jean now. In her new-born happiness she felt that she could find it in her heart to forgive anybody anything! She was even conscious of a certain tentative understanding and indulgence for Burke himself. He had only used the “primitive man” methods his temperament dictated in his effort to win the woman he wanted for his wife. And he had failed. Just now, Jean could not help sympathising with anybody who had failed to find the happiness that love bestows.
She reflected that the old gipsy on the Moor had been wonderfully correct in her prophecy concerning Nick and Claire. The sun was “shin’ butivul” for them at last, just as she had assured them that it would.
And, with the same, came a sudden little clutch of fear at Jean’s heart, like the touch of a strange hand. The gipsy had had other words for her—harsher, less sweet-sounding.
“For there’s darkness comin’... black darkness.”
She shivered a little. She felt as though a breath of cold air had passed over her, chilling the warm blood that ran so joyously in her veins.