CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXV

Thirty seconds can be very long sometimes. Long enough to work a

miracle or a revolution. In thirty seconds life changed wholly for

Barney and Valancy Snaith.

They had gone around the lake one June evening in their disappearing

propeller, fished for an hour in a little creek, left their boat there,

and walked up through the woods to Port Lawrence two miles away.

Valancy prowled a bit in the shops and got herself a new pair of

sensible shoes. Her old pair had suddenly and completely given out, and

this evening she had been compelled to put on the little fancy pair of

patent-leather with rather high, slender heels, which she had bought in

a fit of folly one day in the winter because of their beauty and

because she wanted to make one foolish, extravagant purchase in her

life. She sometimes put them on of an evening in the Blue Castle, but

this was the first time she had worn them outside. She had not found it

any too easy walking up through the woods in them, and Barney guyed her

unmercifully about them. But in spite of the inconvenience, Valancy

secretly rather liked the look of her trim ankles and high instep above

those pretty, foolish shoes and did not change them in the shop as she

might have done.

The sun was hanging low above the pines when they left Port Lawrence.

To the north of it the woods closed around the town quite suddenly.

Valancy always had a sense of stepping from one world to another—from

reality to fairyland—when she went out of Port Lawrence and in a

twinkling found it shut off behind her by the armies of the pines.

A mile and a half from Port Lawrence there was a small railroad station

with a little station-house which at this hour of the day was deserted,

since no local train was due. Not a soul was in sight when Barney and

Valancy emerged from the woods. Off to the left a sudden curve in the

track hid it from view, but over the tree-tops beyond, the long plume

of smoke betokened the approach of a through train. The rails were

vibrating to its thunder as Barney stepped across the switch. Valancy

was a few steps behind him, loitering to gather June-bells along the

little, winding path. But there was plenty of time to get across before

the train came. She stepped unconcernedly over the first rail.

She could never tell how it happened. The ensuing thirty seconds always

seemed in her recollection like a chaotic nightmare in which she

endured the agony of a thousand lifetimes.

The heel of her pretty, foolish shoe caught in a crevice of the switch.

She could not pull it loose.

“Barney—Barney!” she called in alarm.

Barney turned—saw her predicament—saw her ashen face—dashed back. He

tried to pull her clear—he tried to wrench her foot from the prisoning

hold. In vain. In a moment the train would sweep around the curve—would

be on them.

“Go—go—quick—you’ll be killed, Barney!” shrieked Valancy, trying to

push him away.

Barney dropped on his knees, ghost-white, frantically tearing at her

shoe-lace. The knot defied his trembling fingers. He snatched a knife

from his pocket and slashed at it. Valancy still strove blindly to push

him away. Her mind was full of the hideous thought that Barney was

going to be killed. She had no thought for her own danger.

“Barney—go—go—for God’s sake—go!”

“Never!” muttered Barney between his set teeth. He gave one mad wrench

at the lace. As the train thundered around the curve he sprang up and

caught Valancy—dragging her clear, leaving the shoe behind her. The

wind from the train as it swept by turned to icy cold the streaming

perspiration on his face.

“Thank God!” he breathed.

For a moment they stood stupidly staring at each other, two white,

shaken, wild-eyed creatures. Then they stumbled over to the little seat

at the end of the station-house and dropped on it. Barney buried his

face in his hands and said not a word. Valancy sat, staring straight

ahead of her with unseeing eyes at the great pine woods, the stumps of

the clearing, the long, gleaming rails. There was only one thought in

her dazed mind—a thought that seemed to burn it as a shaving of fire

might burn her body.

Dr. Trent had told her over a year ago that she had a serious form of

heart-disease—that any excitement might be fatal.

If that were so, why was she not dead now? This very minute? She had

just experienced as much and as terrible excitement as most people

experience in a lifetime, crowded into that endless thirty seconds. Yet

she had not died of it. She was not an iota the worse for it. A little

wobbly at the knees, as any one would have been; a quicker heart-beat,

as any one would have; nothing more.

Why!

_Was it possible Dr. Trent had made a mistake?_

Valancy shivered as if a cold wind had suddenly chilled her to the

soul. She looked at Barney, hunched up beside her. His silence was very

eloquent. Had the same thought occurred to him? Did he suddenly find

himself confronted by the appalling suspicion that he was married, not

for a few months or a year, but for good and all to a woman he did not

love and who had foisted herself upon him by some trick or lie? Valancy

turned sick before the horror of it. It could not be. It would be too

cruel—too devilish. Dr. Trent _couldn’t_ have made a mistake.

Impossible. He was one of the best heart specialists in Ontario. She

was foolish—unnerved by the recent horror. She remembered some of the

hideous spasms of pain she had had. There must be something serious the

matter with her heart to account for them.

But she had not had any for nearly three months.

Why?

Presently Barney bestirred himself. He stood up, without looking at

Valancy, and said casually:

“I suppose we’d better be hiking back. Sun’s getting low. Are you good

for the rest of the road?”

“I think so,” said Valancy miserably.

Barney went across the clearing and picked up the parcel he had

dropped—the parcel containing her new shoes. He brought it to her and

let her take out the shoes and put them on without any assistance,

while he stood with his back to her and looked out over the pines.

They walked in silence down the shadowy trail to the lake. In silence

Barney steered his boat into the sunset miracle that was Mistawis. In

silence they went around feathery headlands and across coral bays and

silver rivers where canoes were slipping up and down in the afterglow.

In silence they went past cottages echoing with music and laughter. In

silence drew up at the landing-place below the Blue Castle.

Valancy went up the rock steps and into the house. She dropped

miserably on the first chair she came to and sat there staring through

the oriel, oblivious of Good Luck’s frantic purrs of joy and Banjo’s

savage glares of protest at her occupancy of his chair.

Barney came in a few minutes later. He did not come near her, but he

stood behind her and asked gently if she felt any the worse for her

experience. Valancy would have given her year of happiness to have been

able honestly to answer “Yes.”

“No,” she said flatly.

Barney went into Bluebeard’s Chamber and shut the door. She heard him

pacing up and down—up and down. He had never paced like that before.

And an hour ago—only an hour ago—she had been so happy!