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, there was nothing more to see, for the time.
Ursula was left thinking about Birkin.He piqued her, attracted her, and annoyed her.
She wanted to know him more.She had spoken with him once or twice, but only in his official capacity as inspector.She thought he seemed to acknowledge some kinship between her and him, a natural, tacit understanding, a using of the same language.But there had been no time for the understanding to develop.And something kept her from him, as well as attracted her to him.There was a certain hostility, a hidden ultimate reserve in him, cold and inaccessible.
Yet she wanted to know him.
`What do you think of Rupert Birkin?' she asked, a little reluctantly, of Gudrun.She did not want to discuss him.
`What do I think of Rupert Birkin?' repeated Gudrun.`I think he's attractive -- decidedly attractive.What I can't stand about him is his way with other people -- his way of treating any little fool as if she were his greatest consideration.One feels so awfully sold, oneself.'
`Why does he do it?' said Ursula.