Women in Love

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.