The Blue Castle

hirty 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!