Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (e book reader pc .txt) 📕

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 about 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 stopwatch 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 with an effort. “No,” he said. The word had hardly passed his lips before his eyes closed again.

“Hullo!” said Perry, watching him. “I don’t like that.”

He went closer to the chair. There was no doubt about it. The man was asleep.

Perry emitted a long whistle under his breath. He stooped and laid two of his fingers softly on Geoffrey’s pulse. The beat was slow, heavy, and labored. It was unmistakably the pulse of an exhausted man.

The trainer changed color, and took a turn in the room. He opened a cupboard, and produced from it his diary of the preceding year. The entries relating to the last occasion on which he had prepared Geoffrey for a footrace included the fullest details. He turned to the report of the first trial, at three hundred yards, full speed. The time was, by one or two seconds, not so good as the time on this occasion. But the result, afterward, was utterly different. There it was, in Perry’s own words: “Pulse good. Man in high spirits. Ready, if I would have let him, to run it over again.”

Perry looked round at the same man, a year afterward⁠—utterly worn out, and fast asleep in the chair.

He fetched pen, ink, and paper out of the cupboard, and wrote two letters⁠—both marked “Private.” The first was to a medical man, a great authority among trainers. The second was to Perry’s own agent in London, whom he knew he could trust. The letter pledged the agent to the strictest secrecy, and directed him to back Geoffrey’s opponent in the footrace for a sum equal to