THE heavy snow lasted until the day before the New Year when the weather, turning suddenly, sent it slithering away down the gutters of the Town in streams of black water to swell the volume of the Black Fork so that in the Flats, where the stream meandered a tortuous course, it overflowed its banks and filled the cellars of the hovels with stinking damp. It was through this malodorous area that the fastidious carriages of the Town made their way on New Year’s Eve to the eminence crowned by Shane’s Castle, aglow now with the lights that had flashed into existence upon the arrival of Lily. Kentucky thoroughbreds picked their way daintily through the streaming gutters, drawing behind them the old families of the Town and one or two of the new, for the Shanes, the Barrs and the Tollivers did not, save in cases of rare distinction, admit the existence of the new. Consequently there was no carriage bearing a member of the Seton family. It was this circumstance, far more perhaps than any other, which had precipitated the dinner table crisis of Christmas Day. And its consequences had not ended there; they were destined once more to enter into the existence of Clarence Murdock.
On the same New Year’s Eve at about the hour when the gaiety in the house among the mills, centering itself about the returned prodigal, had reached its height, Mrs. Seton, with a rustling of her voile skirts, drew May off to bed. Even the persistent Jimmy was swept with them, so that Clarence, left conspicuously alone with the father, understood that some event of grave importance had been arranged. Indeed, the manner of the corset manufacturer made his divination doubly sure. The man poked the remnants of the fire to make certain that it was entirely consumed before he retired, and then faced his guest.
Clarence, opposite him in a stiff backed chair of mahogany veneer, stirred with a sense of impending doom. The green eyes of his host fastened upon him with the old implication of guilt. From one corner of his narrow mouth there hung, limply, an unlighted and rather worn cigar which had done service all the day.
“I’ve been thinking it over,” he said presently in his cold, deliberate voice. “I thought perhaps we’d better talk over a few things before you go away for good.” A cinder slipping in the grate disturbed the stillness of the room and he continued. “I don’t want to hurry you about anything, but it’s best to come to an understanding.”
In his uncomfortable chair, Clarence, swayed by the cold deliberate manner of the Elder, shifted his position as if he were sitting on a bag of rocks.
“Yes,” he managed to articulate, as if he knew what was coming. “It’s always better.”
“First of all,” began his host, “there is this matter of the Shane woman.... Lily Shane.” He coughed and looked into the fire for a long time. And then, “It’s a matter I don’t care to discuss before May.... She’s innocent, you know, like a flower.... The way girls should be.”
“Yes,” said Clarence agreeably; but there rang in his ears the horrid memory of May’s knowing giggle.
“I don’t understand how Jimmy could have found out unless he overheard his mother discussing it,” continued the father. “We’ve always kept such things from the children. My wife and I are great believers in innocence ... and purity. It’s a fine protection.”
A month ago, Clarence would have agreed. Now he murmured, “Yes,” politely, but in his heart he felt stirring a faint desire to protest, to deny this assertion. Lately there had come into his mind a certainty that the greatest of all protections lay in knowledge. One could not know too much. Each bit of knowledge was a link in the armor.