Datasets:
edwindvinas
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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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.