Women in Love | Page 7

foaming
rush, and the bride like a sudden surf-rush, floating all white beside her
father in the morning shadow of trees, her veil flowing with laughter.
'That's done it!' she said.
She put her hand on the arm of her care-worn, sallow father, and
frothing her light draperies, proceeded over the eternal red carpet. Her
father, mute and yellowish, his black beard making him look more
careworn, mounted the steps stiffly, as if his spirit were absent; but the
laughing mist of the bride went along with him undiminished.
And no bridegroom had arrived! It was intolerable for her. Ursula, her
heart strained with anxiety, was watching the hill beyond; the white,
descending road, that should give sight of him. There was a carriage. It
was running. It had just come into sight. Yes, it was he. Ursula turned
towards the bride and the people, and, from her place of vantage, gave
an inarticulate cry. She wanted to warn them that he was coming. But
her cry was inarticulate and inaudible, and she flushed deeply, between
her desire and her wincing confusion.
The carriage rattled down the hill, and drew near. There was a shout
from the people. The bride, who had just reached the top of the steps,
turned round gaily to see what was the commotion. She saw a
confusion among the people, a cab pulling up, and her lover dropping
out of the carriage, and dodging among the horses and into the crowd.
'Tibs! Tibs!' she cried in her sudden, mocking excitement, standing

high on the path in the sunlight and waving her bouquet. He, dodging
with his hat in his hand, had not heard.
'Tibs!' she cried again, looking down to him.
He glanced up, unaware, and saw the bride and her father standing on
the path above him. A queer, startled look went over his face. He
hesitated for a moment. Then he gathered himself together for a leap, to
overtake her.
'Ah-h-h!' came her strange, intaken cry, as, on the reflex, she started,
turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her
white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like
a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging
past her father, his supple haunches working like those of a hound that
bears down on the quarry.
'Ay, after her!' cried the vulgar women below, carried suddenly into the
sport.
She, her flowers shaken from her like froth, was steadying herself to
turn the angle of the church. She glanced behind, and with a wild cry of
laughter and challenge, veered, poised, and was gone beyond the grey
stone buttress. In another instant the bridegroom, bent forward as he ran,
had caught the angle of the silent stone with his hand, and had swung
himself out of sight, his supple, strong loins vanishing in pursuit.
Instantly cries and exclamations of excitement burst from the crowd at
the gate. And then Ursula noticed again the dark, rather stooping figure
of Mr Crich, waiting suspended on the path, watching with
expressionless face the flight to the church. It was over, and he turned
round to look behind him, at the figure of Rupert Birkin, who at once
came forward and joined him.
'We'll bring up the rear,' said Birkin, a faint smile on his face.
'Ay!' replied the father laconically. And the two men turned together up
the path.

Birkin was as thin as Mr Crich, pale and ill-looking. His figure was
narrow but nicely made. He went with a slight trail of one foot, which
came only from self-consciousness. Although he was dressed correctly
for his part, yet there was an innate incongruity which caused a slight
ridiculousness in his appearance. His nature was clever and separate, he
did not fit at all in the conventional occasion. Yet he subordinated
himself to the common idea, travestied himself.
He affected to be quite ordinary, perfectly and marvellously
commonplace. And he did it so well, taking the tone of his
surroundings, adjusting himself quickly to his interlocutor and his
circumstance, that he achieved a verisimilitude of ordinary
commonplaceness that usually propitiated his onlookers for the
moment, disarmed them from attacking his singleness.
Now he spoke quite easily and pleasantly to Mr Crich, as they walked
along the path; he played with situations like a man on a tight-rope: but
always on a tight-rope, pretending nothing but ease.
'I'm sorry we are so late,' he was saying. 'We couldn't find a
button-hook, so it took us a long time to button our boots. But you were
to the moment.'
'We are usually to time,' said Mr Crich.
'And I'm always late,' said Birkin. 'But today I was REALLY punctual,
only accidentally not so. I'm sorry.'
The two men were gone,