Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (easy novels to read txt) 📕

Geoffrey looked at his watch. “Perry expects me in a quarter of an hour,” he said.

Mrs. Glenarm’s indignation assumed a new form. She burst out crying. Geoffrey surveyed her for a moment with a broad stare of surprise—and then took her by both arms, and shook her!

“Look here!” he said, impatiently. “Can you coach me through my training?”

“I would if I could!”

“That’s nothing to do with it! Can you turn me out, fit, on the day of the race? Yes? or No?”

“No.”

“Then dry your eyes and let Perry do it.”

Mrs. Glenarm dried her eyes, and made another effort.

“I’m not fit to be seen,” she said. “I’m so agitated, I don’t know what to do. Come indoors, Geoffrey—and have a cup of tea.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “Perry forbids tea,” he said, “in the middle of the day.”

“You brute!” cried Mrs. Glenarm.

“Do you want me to lose the race?” retorted Geoffrey.

“Yes!”

With that answer she left him at last, and ran back into the house.

Geoffrey took a turn on the terrace—considered a little—stopped—and looked at the porch under which the irate widow had disappeared from his view. “Ten thousand a year,” he said, thinking of the matrimonial prospect which he was placing in peril. “And devilish well earned,” he added, going into the house, under protest, to appease Mrs. Glenarm.

The offended lady was on a sofa, in the solitary drawing-room. Geoffrey sat down by her. She declined to look at him. “Don’t be a fool!” said Geoffrey, in his most persuasive manner. Mrs. Glenarm put her handkerchief to her eyes. Geoffrey took it away again without ceremony. Mrs. Glenarm rose to leave the room. Geoffrey stopped her by main force. Mrs. Glenarm threatened to summon the servants. Geoffrey said, “All right! I don’t care if the whole house knows I’m fond of you!” Mrs. Glenarm looked at the door, and whispered “Hush! for Heaven’s sake!” Geoffrey put her arm in his, and said, “Come along with me: I’ve got something to say to you.” Mrs. Glenarm drew back, and shook her head. Geoffrey put his arm round her waist, and walked her out of the room, and out of the house—taking the direction, not of the terrace, but of a fir plantation on the opposite side of the grounds. Arrived among the trees, he stopped and held up a warning forefinger before the offended lady’s face. “You’re just the sort of woman I like,” he said; “and there ain’t a man living who’s half as sweet on you as I am. You leave off bullying me about Perry, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll let you see me take a Sprint.”

He drew back a step, and fixed his big blue eyes on her, with a look which said, “You are a highly-favored woman, if ever there was one yet!” Curiosity instantly took the leading place among the emotions of Mrs. Glenarm. “What’s a Sprint, Geoffrey?” she asked.

“A short run, to try me at the top of my speed. There ain’t another living soul in all England that I’d let see it but you. Now am I a brute?”

Mrs. Glenarm was conquered again, for the hundredth time at least. She said, softly, “Oh, Geoffrey, if you could only be always like this!” Her eyes lifted themselves admiringly to his. She took his arm again of her own accord, and pressed it with a loving clasp. Geoffrey prophetically felt the ten thousand a year in his pocket. “Do you really love me?” whispered Mrs. Glenarm. “Don’t I!” answered the hero. The peace was made, and the two walked on again.

They passed through the plantation, and came out on some open ground, rising and falling prettily, in little hillocks and hollows. The last of the hillocks sloped down into a smooth level plain, with a fringe of sheltering trees on its farther side—with a snug little stone cottage among the trees—and with a smart little man, walking up and down before the cottage, holding his hands behind him. The level plain was the hero’s exercising ground; the cottage was the hero’s retreat; and the smart little man was the hero’s trainer.

If Mrs. Glenarm hated Perry, Perry (judging by appearances) was in no danger of loving Mrs. Glenarm. As Geoffrey approached with his companion, the trainer came to a stand-still, and stared silently at the lady. The lady, on her side, declined to observe that any such person as the trainer was then in existence, and present in bodily form on the scene.

“How about time?” said Geoffrey.

Perry consulted an elaborate watch, constructed to mark time to the fifth of a second, and answered Geoffrey, with his eye all the while on Mrs. Glenarm.

“You’ve got five minutes to spare.”

“Show me where you run, I’m dying to see it!” said the eager widow, taking possession of Geoffrey’s arm with both hands.

Geoffrey led her back to a place (marked by a sapling with a little flag attached to it) at some short distance from the cottage. She glided along by his side, with subtle undulations of movement which appeared to complete the exasperation of Perry. He waited until she was out of hearing—and then he invoked (let us say) the blasts of heaven on the fashionably-dressed head of Mrs. Glenarm.

“You take your place there,” said Geoffrey, posting her by the sapling. “When I pass you—” He stopped, and surveyed her with a good-humored masculine pity. “How the devil am I to make you understand it?” he went on. “Look here! when I pass you, it will be at what you would call (if I was a horse) full gallop. Hold your tongue—I haven’t done yet. You’re to look on after me as I leave you, to where the edge of the cottage wall cuts the trees. When you have lost sight of me behind the wall, you’ll have seen me run my three hundred yards from this flag. You’re in luck’s way! Perry tries me at the long Sprint to-day. You understand you’re to stop here? Very well then—let me go and get my toggery on.”

“Sha’n’t I see you again, Geoffrey?”

“Haven’t I just told you that you’ll see me run?”

“Yes—but after that?”

“After that, I’m sponged and rubbed down—and rest in the cottage.”

“You’ll come to us this evening?”

He nodded, and left her. The face of Perry looked unutterable things when he and Geoffrey met at the door of the cottage.

“I’ve got a question to ask you, Mr. Delamayn,” said the trainer. “Do you want me? or don’t you?”

“Of course I want you.”

“What did I say when I first come here?” proceeded Perry, sternly. “I said, ‘I won’t have nobody a looking on at a man I’m training. These here ladies and gentlemen may all have made up their minds to see you. I’ve made up my mind not to have no lookers-on. I won’t have you timed at your work by nobody but me. I won’t have every blessed yard of ground you cover put in the noospapers. I won’t have a living soul in the secret of what you can do, and what you can’t, except our two selves.’—Did I say that, Mr. Delamayn? or didn’t I?”

“All right!”

“Did I say it? or didn’t I?”

“Of course you did!”

“Then don’t you bring no more women here. It’s clean against rules. And I won’t have it.”

Any other living creature adopting this tone of remonstrance would probably have had reason to repent it. But Geoffrey himself was afraid to show his temper in the presence of Perry. In view of the coming race, the first and foremost of British trainers was not to be trifled with, even by the first and foremost of British athletes.

“She won’t come again,” said Geoffrey. “She’s going away from Swanhaven in two days’ time.”

“I’ve put every shilling I’m worth in the world on you,” pursued Perry, relapsing into tenderness. “And I tell you I felt it! It cut me to the heart when I see you coming along with a woman at your heels. It’s a fraud on his backers, I says to myself—that’s what it is, a fraud on his backers!”

“Shut up!” said Geoffrey. “And come and help me to win your money.” He kicked open the door of the cottage—and athlete and trainer disappeared from view.

After waiting a few minutes by the little flag, Mrs. Glenarm saw the two men approaching her from the cottage. Dressed in a close-fitting costume, light and elastic, adapting itself to every movement, and made to answer every purpose required by the exercise in which he was abo ut to engage, Geoffrey’s physical advantages showed themselves in their best and bravest aspect. His head sat proud and easy on his firm, white throat, bared to the air. The rising of his mighty chest, as he drew in deep draughts of the fragrant summer breeze; the play of his lithe and supple loins; the easy, elastic stride of his straight and shapely legs, presented a triumph of physical manhood in its highest type. Mrs. Glenarm’s eyes devoured him in silent admiration. He looked like a young god of mythology—like a statue animated with color and life. “Oh, Geoffrey!” she exclaimed, softly, as he went by. He neither answered, nor looked: he had other business on hand than listening to soft nonsense. He was gathering himself up for the effort; his lips were set; his fists were lightly clenched. Perry posted himself at his place, grim and silent, with the watch in his hand. Geoffrey walked on beyond the flag, so as to give himself start enough to reach his full speed as he passed it. “Now then!” said Perry. In an instant more, he flew by (to Mrs. Glenarm’s excited imagination) like an arrow from a bow. His action was perfect. His speed, at its utmost rate of exertion, preserved its rare underlying elements of strength and steadiness. Less and less and less he grew to the eyes that followed his course; still lightly flying over the ground, still firmly keeping the straight line. A moment more, and the runner vanished behind the wall of the cottage, and the stop-watch of the trainer returned to its place in his pocket.

In her eagerness to know the result, Mrs. Glenarm forget her jealousy of Perry.

“How long has he been?” she asked.

“There’s a good many besides you would be glad to know that,” said Perry.

“Mr. Delamayn will tell me, you rude man!”

“That depends, ma’am, on whether I tell him.”

With this reply, Perry hurried back to the cottage.

Not a word passed while the trainer was attending to his man, and while the man was recovering his breath. When Geoffrey had been carefully rubbed down, and clothed again in his ordinary garments, Perry pulled a comfortable easy-chair out of a corner. Geoffrey fell into the chair, rather than sat down in it. Perry started, and looked at him attentively.

“Well?” said Geoffrey. “How about the time? Long? short? or middling?”

“Very good time,” said Perry.

“How long?”

“When did you say the lady was going, Mr. Delamayn?”

“In two days.”

“Very well, Sir. I’ll tell you ‘how long’ when the lady’s gone.”

Geoffrey made no attempt to insist on an immediate reply. He smiled faintly. After an interval of less than ten minutes he stretched out his legs and closed his eyes.

“Going to sleep?” said Perry.

Geoffrey opened his eyes