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标 题: Women In Love 1 (D. H. Lawrence)
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CHAPTER I
Sisters
URSULA AND GUDRUN Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their
father's house inBeldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a
piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, andGudrun was drawing upon a board
which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking astheir
thoughts strayed through their minds.
`Ursula,' said Gudrun, `don't you really want to get married?' Ursula laid
her embroidery in her lapand looked up. Her face was calm and considerate.
`I don't know,' she replied. `It depends how you mean.'
Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister for some moments.
`Well,' she said, ironically, `it usually means one thing! But don't you
think anyhow, you'd be --' shedarkened slightly -- `in a better position
than you are in now.'
A shadow came over Ursula's face.
`I might,' she said. `But I'm not sure.'
Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to be quite definite.
`You don't think one needs the experience of having been married?' she
asked.
`Do you think it need be an experience?' replied Ursula.
`Bound to be, in some way or other,' said Gudrun, coolly. `Possibly
undesirable, but bound to bean experience of some sort.'
`Not really,' said Ursula. `More likely to be the end of experience.'
Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this.
`Of course,' she said, `there's that to consider.' This brought the
conversation to a close. Gudrun,almost angrily, took up her rubber and
began to rub out part of her drawing. Ursula stitchedabsorbedly.
`You wouldn't consider a good offer?' asked Gudrun.
`I think I've rejected several,' said Ursula.
`Really!' Gudrun flushed dark -- `But anything really worth while? Have
you really?'
`A thousand a year, and an awfully nice man. I liked him awfully,' said
Ursula.
`Really! But weren't you fearfully tempted?'
`In the abstract but not in the concrete,' said Ursula. `When it comes
to the point, one isn't eventempted -- oh, if I were tempted, I'd marry
like a shot. I'm only tempted not to.' The faces of bothsisters suddenly
lit up with amusement.
`Isn't it an amazing thing,' cried Gudrun, `how strong the temptation is,
not to!' They both laughed,looking at each other. In their hearts they
were frightened.
There was a long pause, whilst Ursula stitched and Gudrun went on with
her sketch. The sisterswere women, Ursula twenty-six, and Gudrun
twenty-five. But both had the remote, virgin look ofmodern girls, sisters
of Artemis rather than of Hebe. Gudrun was very beautiful,
passive,soft-skinned, soft-limbed. She wore a dress of dark-blue silky
stuff, with ruches of blue and greenlinen lace in the neck and sleeves;
and she had emerald-green stockings. Her look of confidenceand diffidence
contrasted with Ursula's sensitive expectancy. The provincial people,
intimidated byGudrun's perfect sang-froid and exclusive bareness of
manner, said of her: `She is a smart woman.'She had just come back from
London, where she had spent several years, working at anart-school, as
a student, and living a studio life.
`I was hoping now for a man to come along,' Gudrun said, suddenly catching
her underlip betweenher teeth, and making a strange grimace, half sly
smiling, half anguish. Ursula was afraid.
`So you have come home, expecting him here?' she laughed.
`Oh my dear,' cried Gudrun, strident, `I wouldn't go out of my way to look
for him. But if there didhappen to come along a highly attractive
individual of sufficient means -- well --' she tailed offironically. Then
she looked searchingly at Ursula, as if to probe her. `Don't you find
yourself gettingbored?' she asked of her sister. `Don't you find, that
things fail to materialise? Nothingmaterialises! Everything withers in
the bud.'
`What withers in the bud?' asked Ursula.
`Oh, everything -- oneself -- things in general.' There was a pause, whilst
each sister vaguelyconsidered her fate.
`It does frighten one,' said Ursula, and again there was a pause. `But
do you hope to get anywhereby just marrying?'
`It seems to be the inevitable next step,' said Gudrun. Ursula pondered
this, with a little bitterness.She was a class mistress herself, in Willey
Green Grammar School, as she had been for someyears.
`I know,' she said, `it seems like that when one thinks in the abstract.
But really imagine it: imagineany man one knows, imagine him coming home
to one every evening, and saying "Hello," and givingone a kiss --'
There was a blank pause.
`Yes,' said Gudrun, in a narrowed voice. `It's just impossible. The man
makes it impossible.'
`Of course there's children --' said Ursula doubtfully.
Gudrun's face hardened.
`Do you really want children, Ursula?' she asked coldly. A dazzled,
baffled look came on Ursula'sface.
`One feels it is still beyond one,' she said.
`Do you feel like that?' asked Gudrun. `I get no feeling whatever from
the thought of bearingchildren.'
Gudrun looked at Ursula with a masklike, expressionless face. Ursula
knitted her brows.
`Perhaps it isn't genuine,' she faltered. `Perhaps one doesn't really want
them, in one's soul -- onlysuperficially.' A hardness came over Gudrun's
face. She did not want to be too definite.
`When one thinks of other people's children --' said Ursula.
Again Gudrun looked at her sister, almost hostile.
`Exactly,' she said, to close the conversation.
The two sisters worked on in silence, Ursula having always that strange
brightness of an essentialflame that is caught, meshed, contravened. She
lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working,passing on from day to
day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her
ownunderstanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the
darkness, something wascoming to pass. If only she could break through
the last integuments! She seemed to try and put herhands out, like an
infant in the womb, and she could not, not yet. Still she had a strange
prescience,an intimation of something yet to come.
She laid down her work and looked at her sister. She thought Gudrun so
charming, so infinitelycharming, in her softness and her fine, exquisite
richness of texture and delicacy of line. There was acertain playfulness
about her too, such a piquancy or ironic suggestion, such an untouched
reserve.Ursula admired her with all her soul.
`Why did you come home, Prune?' she asked.
Gudrun knew she was being admired. She sat back from her drawing and looked
at Ursula, fromunder her finely-curved lashes.
`Why did I come back, Ursula?' she repeated. `I have asked myself a
thousand times.'
`And don't you know?'
`Yes, I think I do. I think my coming back home was just reculer pour mieux
sauter.'
And she looked with a long, slow look of knowledge at Ursula.
`I know!' cried Ursula, looking slightly dazzled and falsified, and as
if she did not know. `But wherecan one jump to?'
`Oh, it doesn't matter,' said Gudrun, somewhat superbly. `If one jumps
over the edge, one is boundto land somewhere.'
`But isn't it very risky?' asked Ursula.
A slow mocking smile dawned on Gudrun's face.
`Ah!' she said laughing. `What is it all but words!' And so again she closed
the conversation. ButUrsula was still brooding.
`And how do you find home, now you have come back to it?' she asked.
Gudrun paused for some moments, coldly, before answering. Then, in a cold
truthful voice, shesaid:
`I find myself completely out of it.'
`And father?'
Gudrun looked at Ursula, almost with resentment, as if brought to bay.
`I haven't thought about him: I've refrained,' she said coldly.
`Yes,' wavered Ursula; and the conversation was really at an end. The
sisters found themselvesconfronted by a void, a terrifying chasm, as if
they had looked over the edge.
They worked on in silence for some time, Gudrun's cheek was flushed with
repressed emotion. Sheresented its having been called into being.
`Shall we go out and look at that wedding?' she asked at length, in a voice
that was too casual.
`Yes!' cried Ursula, too eagerly, throwing aside her sewing and leaping
up, as if to escapesomething, thus betraying the tension of the situation
and causing a friction of dislike to go overGudrun's nerves.
As she went upstairs, Ursula was aware of the house, of her home round
about her. And sheloathed it, the sordid, too-familiar place! She was
afraid at the depth of her feeling against the home,the milieu, the whole
atmosphere and condition of this obsolete life. Her feeling frightened
her.
The two girls were soon walking swiftly down the main road of Beldover,
a wide street, part shops,part dwelling-houses, utterly formless and
sordid, without poverty. Gudrun, new from her life inChelsea and Sussex,
shrank cruelly from this amorphous ugliness of a small colliery town in
theMidlands. Yet forward she went, through the whole sordid gamut of
pettiness, the long amorphous,gritty street. She was exposed to every
stare, she passed on through a stretch of torment. It wasstrange that she
should have chosen to come back and test the full effect of this shapeless,
barrenugliness upon herself. Why had she wanted to submit herself to it,
did she still want to submit herselfto it, the insufferable torture of
these ugly, meaningless people, this defaced countryside? She feltlike
a beetle toiling in the dust. She was filled with repulsion.
They turned off the main road, past a black patch of common-garden, where
sooty cabbage stumpsstood shameless. No one thought to be ashamed. No one
was ashamed of it all.
`It is like a country in an underworld,' said Gudrun. `The colliers bring
it above-ground with them,shovel it up. Ursula, it's marvellous, it's
really marvellous -- it's really wonderful, another world. Thepeople are
all ghouls, and everything is ghostly. Everything is a ghoulish replica
of the real world, areplica, a ghoul, all soiled, everything sordid. It's
like being mad, Ursula.'
The sisters were crossing a black path through a dark, soiled field. On
the left was a largelandscape, a valley with collieries, and opposite
hills with cornfields and woods, all blackened withdistance, as if seen
through a veil of crape. White and black smoke rose up in steady
columns,magic within the dark air. Near at hand came the long rows of
dwellings, approaching curved up thehill-slope, in straight lines along
the brow of the hill. They were of darkened red brick, brittle, withdark
slate roofs. The path on which the sisters walked was black, trodden-
in by the feet of therecurrent colliers, and bounded from the field by
iron fences; the stile that led again into the roadwas rubbed shiny by
the moleskins of the passing miners. Now the two girls were going
betweensome rows of dwellings, of the poorer sort. Women, their arms
folded over their coarse aprons,standing gossiping at the end of their
block, stared after the Brangwen sisters with that long,unwearying stare
of aborigines; children called out names.
Gudrun went on her way half dazed. If this were human life, if these were
human beings, living in acomplete world, then what was her own world,
outside? She was aware of her grass-greenstockings, her large grass-green
velour hat, her full soft coat, of a strong blue colour. And she felt asif
she were treading in the air, quite unstable, her heart was contracted,
as if at any minute she mightbe precipitated to the ground. She was afraid.
She clung to Ursula, who, through long usage was inured to this violation
of a dark, uncreated,hostile world. But all the time her heart was crying,
as if in the midst of some ordeal: `I want to goback, I want to go away,
I want not to know it, not to know that this exists.' Yet she must
goforward.
Ursula could feel her suffering.
`You hate this, don't you?' she asked.
`It bewilders me,' stammered Gudrun.
`You won't stay long,' replied Ursula.
And Gudrun went along, grasping at release.
They drew away from the colliery region, over the curve of the hill, into
the purer country of theother side, towards Willey Green. Still the faint
glamour of blackness persisted over the fields andthe wooded hills, and
seemed darkly to gleam in the air. It was a spring day, chill, with snatches
ofsunshine. Yellow celandines showed out from the hedge-bottoms, and in
the cottage gardens ofWilley Green, currant-bushes were breaking into
leaf, and little flowers were coming white on thegrey alyssum that hung
over the stone walls.
Turning, they passed down the high-road, that went between high banks
towards the church. There,in the lowest bend of the road, low under the
trees, stood a little group of expectant people, waitingto see the wedding.
The daughter of the chief mine-owner of the district, Thomas Crich, was
gettingmarried to a naval officer.
`Let us go back,' said Gudrun, swerving away. `There are all those people.'
And she hung wavering in the road.
`Never mind them,' said Ursula, `they're all right. They all know me, they
don't matter.'
`But must we go through them?' asked Gudrun.
`They're quite all right, really,' said Ursula, going forward. And
together the two sisters approachedthe group of uneasy, watchful common
people. They were chiefly women, colliers' wives of themore shiftless sort.
They had watchful, underworld faces.
The two sisters held themselves tense, and went straight towards the gate.
The women made wayfor them, but barely sufficient, as if grudging to yield
ground. The sisters passed in silence throughthe stone gateway and up the
steps, on the red carpet, a policeman estimating their progress.
`What price the stockings!' said a voice at the back of Gudrun. A sudden
fierce anger swept overthe girl, violent and murderous. She would have
liked them all annihilated, cleared away, so that theworld was left clear
for her. How she hated walking up the churchyard path, along the red
carpet,continuing in motion, in their sight.
`I won't go into the church,' she said suddenly, with such final decision
that Ursula immediatelyhalted, turned round, and branched off up a small
side path which led to the little private gate of theGrammar School, whose
grounds adjoined those of the church.
Just inside the gate of the school shrubbery, outside the churchyard,
Ursula sat down for a momenton the low stone wall under the laurel bushes,
to rest. Behind her, the large red building of theschool rose up peacefully,
the windows all open for the holiday. Over the shrubs, before her, werethe
pale roofs and tower of the old church. The sisters were hidden by the
foliage.
Gudrun sat down in silence. Her mouth was shut close, her face averted.
She was regretting bitterlythat she had ever come back. Ursula looked at
her, and thought how amazingly beautiful she was,flushed with
discomfiture. But she caused a constraint over Ursula's nature, a certain
weariness.Ursula wished to be alone, freed from the tightness, the
enclosure of Gudrun's presence.
`Are we going to stay here?' asked Gudrun.
`I was only resting a minute,' said Ursula, getting up as if rebuked. `We
will stand in the corner bythe fives-court, we shall see everything from
there.'
For the moment, the sunshine fell brightly into the churchyard, there was
a vague scent of sap and ofspring, perhaps of violets from off the graves.
Some white daisies were out, bright as angels. In theair, the unfolding
leaves of a copper-beech were blood-red.
Punctually at eleven o'clock, the carriages began to arrive. There was
a stir in the crowd at the gate,a concentration as a carriage drove up,
wedding guests were mounting up the steps and passingalong the red carpet
to the church. They were all gay and excited because the sun was shining.
Gudrun watched them closely, with objective curiosity. She saw each one
as a complete figure, likea character in a book, or a subject in a picture,
or a marionette in a theatre, a finished creation. Sheloved to recognise
their various characteristics, to place them in their true light, give
them their ownsurroundings, settle them for ever as they passed before
her along the path to the church. She knewthem, they were finished, sealed
and stamped and finished with, for her. There was none that hadanything
unknown, unresolved, until the Criches themselves began to appear. Then
her interest waspiqued. Here was something not quite so preconcluded.
There came the mother, Mrs Crich, with her eldest son Gerald. She was a
queer unkempt figure, inspite of the attempts that had obviously been made
to bring her into line for the day. Her face waspale, yellowish, with a
clear, transparent skin, she leaned forward rather, her features were
stronglymarked, handsome, with a tense, unseeing, predative look. Her
colourless hair was untidy, wispsfloating down on to her sac coat of dark
blue silk, from under her blue silk hat. She looked like awoman with a
monomania, furtive almost, but heavily proud.
Her son was of a fair, sun-tanned type, rather above middle height,
well-made, and almostexaggeratedly well-dressed. But about him also was
the strange, guarded look, the unconsciousglisten, as if he did not belong
to the same creation as the people about him. Gudrun lighted on himat once.
There was something northern about him that magnetised her. In his clear
northern fleshand his fair hair was a glisten like sunshine refracted
through crystals of ice. And he looked so new,unbroached, pure as an arctic
thing. Perhaps he was thirty years old, perhaps more. His gleamingbeauty,
maleness, like a young, good-humoured, smiling wolf, did not blind her
to the significant,sinister stillness in his bearing, the lurking danger
of his unsubdued temper. `His totem is the wolf,'she repeated to herself.
`His mother is an old, unbroken wolf.' And then she experienced a
keenparoxyism, a transport, as if she had made some incredible discovery,
known to nobody else onearth. A strange transport took possession of her,
all her veins were in a paroxysm of violentsensation. `Good God!' she
exclaimed to herself, `what is this?' And then, a moment after, she
wassaying assuredly, `I shall know more of that man.' She was tortured
with desire to see him again, anostalgia, a necessity to see him again,
to make sure it was not all a mistake, that she was notdeluding herself,
that she really felt this strange and overwhelming sensation on his
account, thisknowledge of him in her essence, this powerful apprehension
of him. `Am I really singled out forhim in some way, is there really some
pale gold, arctic light that envelopes only us two?' she askedherself.
And she could not believe it, she remained in a muse, scarcely conscious
of what was goingon around.
The bridesmaids were here, and yet the bridegroom had not come. Ursula
wondered if somethingwas amiss, and if the wedding would yet all go wrong.
She felt troubled, as if it rested upon her.The chief bridesmaids had
arrived. Ursula watched them come up the steps. One of them sheknew, a
tall, slow, reluctant woman with a weight of fair hair and a pale, long
face. This wasHermione Roddice, a friend of the Criches. Now she came along,
with her head held up, balancingan enormous flat hat of pale yellow velvet,
on which were streaks of ostrich feathers, natural andgrey. She drifted
forward as if scarcely conscious, her long blanched face lifted up, not
to see theworld. She was rich. She wore a dress of silky, frail velvet,
of pale yellow colour, and she carried alot of small rose-coloured
cyclamens. Her shoes and stockings were of brownish grey, like thefeathers
on her hat, her hair was heavy, she drifted along with a peculiar fixity
of the hips, a strangeunwilling motion. She was impressive, in her lovely
pale-yellow and brownish-rose, yet macabre,something repulsive. People
were silent when she passed, impressed, roused, wanting to jeer, yetfor
some reason silenced. Her long, pale face, that she carried lifted up,
somewhat in the Rossettifashion, seemed almost drugged, as if a strange
mass of thoughts coiled in the darkness within her,and she was never
allowed to escape.
Ursula watched her with fascination. She knew her a little. She was the
most remarkable woman inthe Midlands. Her father was a Derbyshire Baronet
of the old school, she was a woman of the newschool, full of
intellectuality, and heavy, nerve-worn with consciousness. She was
passionatelyinterested in reform, her soul was given up to the public
cause. But she was a man's woman, it wasthe manly world that held her.
She had various intimacies of mind and soul with various men of capacity.
Ursula knew, amongthese men, only Rupert Birkin, who was one of the
school-inspectors of the county. But Gudrunhad met others, in London.
Moving with her artist friends in different kinds of society, Gudrun
hadalready come to know a good many people of repute and standing. She
had met Hermione twice,but they did not take to each other. It would be
queer to meet again down here in the Midlands,where their social standing
was so diverse, after they had known each other on terms of equality inthe
houses of sundry acquaintances in town. For Gudrun had been a social
success, and had herfriends among the slack aristocracy that keeps touch
with the arts.
Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself to be the social
equal, if not far thesuperior, of anyone she was likely to meet in Willey
Green. She knew she was accepted in theworld of culture and of intellect.
She was a Kulturtrager, a medium for the culture of ideas. Withall that
was highest, whether in society or in thought or in public action, or even
in art, she was atone, she moved among the foremost, at home with them.
No one could put her down, no one couldmake mock of her, because she stood
among the first, and those that were against her were belowher, either
in rank, or in wealth, or in high association of thought and progress and
understanding.So, she was invulnerable. All her life, she had sought to
make herself invulnerable, unassailable,beyond reach of the world's
judgment.
And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up the path to the
church, confident as shewas that in every respect she stood beyond all
vulgar judgment, knowing perfectly that herappearance was complete and
perfect, according to the first standards, yet she suffered a
torture,under her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to
wounds and to mockery and todespite. She always felt vulnerable,
vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour. Shedid not know
herself what it was. It was a lack of robust self, she had no natural
sufficiency, therewas a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being
within her.
And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to close it up for
ever. She craved for RupertBirkin. When he was there, she felt complete,
she was sufficient, whole. For the rest of time shewas established on the
sand, built over a chasm, and, in spite of all her vanity and securities,
anycommon maid-servant of positive, robust temper could fling her down
this bottomless pit ofinsufficiency, by the slightest movement of jeering
or contempt. And all the while the pensive,tortured woman piled up her
own defences of aesthetic knowledge, and culture, and world-visions,and
disinterestedness. Yet she could never stop up the terrible gap of
insufficiency.
If only Birkin would form a close and abiding connection with her, she
would be safe during thisfretful voyage of life. He could make her sound
and triumphant, triumphant over the very angels ofheaven. If only he would
do it! But she was tortured with fear, with misgiving. She made
herselfbeautiful, she strove so hard to come to that degree of beauty and
advantage, when he should beconvinced. But always there was a deficiency.
He was perverse too. He fought her off, he always fought her off. The more
she strove to bring himto her, the more he battled her back. And they had
been lovers now, for years. Oh, it was sowearying, so aching; she was so
tired. But still she believed in herself. She knew he was trying toleave
her. She knew he was trying to break away from her finally, to be free.
But still she believedin her strength to keep him, she believed in her
own higher knowledge. His own knowledge washigh, she was the central
touchstone of truth. She only needed his conjunction with her.
And this, this conjunction with her, which was his highest fulfilment also,
with the perverseness of awilful child he wanted to deny. With the
wilfulness of an obstinate child, he wanted to break the holyconnection
that was between them.
He would be at this wedding; he was to be groom's man. He would be in the
church, waiting. Hewould know when she came. She shuddered with nervous
apprehension and desire as she wentthrough the church-door. He would be
there, surely he would see how beautiful her dress was,surely he would
see how she had made herself beautiful for him. He would understand, he
would beable to see how she was made for him, the first, how she was, for
him, the highest. Surely at last hewould be able to accept his highest
fate, he would not deny her.
In a little convulsion of too-tired yearning, she entered the church and
looked slowly along hercheeks for him, her slender body convulsed with
agitation. As best man, he would be standingbeside the altar. She looked
slowly, deferring in her certainty.
And then, he was not there. A terrible storm came over her, as if she were
drowning. She waspossessed by a devastating hopelessness. And she
approached mechanically to the altar. Neverhad she known such a pang of
utter and final hopelessness. It was beyond death, so utterly null,desert.
The bridegroom and the groom's man had not yet come. There was a growing
consternationoutside. Ursula felt almost responsible. She could not bear
it that the bride should arrive, and nogroom. The wedding must not be a
fiasco, it must not.
But here was the bride's carriage, adorned with ribbons and cockades.
Gaily the grey horsescurvetted to their destination at the church-gate,
a laughter in the whole movement. Here was thequick of all laughter and
pleasure. The door of the carriage was thrown open, to let out the
veryblossom of the day. The people on the roadway murmured faintly with
the discontented murmuringof a crowd.
The father stepped out first into the air of the morning, like a shadow.
He was a tall, thin, carewornman, with a thin black beard that was touched
with grey. He waited at the door of the carriagepatiently, self-
obliterated.
In the opening of the doorway was a shower of fine foliage and flowers,
a whiteness of satin andlace, and a sound of a gay voice saying:
`How do I get out?'
A ripple of satisfaction ran through the expectant people. They pressed
near to receive her, lookingwith zest at the stooping blond head with its
flower buds, and at the delicate, white, tentative footthat was reaching
down to the step of the carriage. There was a sudden foaming rush, and
the bridelike a sudden surf-rush, floating all white beside her father
in the morning shadow of trees, her veilflowing 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 himlook more careworn, mounted
the steps stiffly, as if his spirit were absent; but the laughing mist
ofthe 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 acarriage. It
was running. It had just come into sight. Yes, it was he. Ursula turned
towards the brideand the people, and, from her place of vantage, gave an
inarticulate cry. She wanted to warn themthat he was coming. But her cry
was inarticulate and inaudible, and she flushed deeply, between herdesire
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. Shesaw a confusion among the
people, a cab pulling up, and her lover dropping out of the carriage,
anddodging among the horses and into the crowd.
`Tibs! Tibs!' she cried in her sudden, mocking excitement, standing high
on the path in the sunlightand 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. Aqueer, startled look went over his face. He hesitated
for a moment. Then he gathered himselftogether for a leap, to overtake
her.
`Ah-h-h!' came her strange, intaken cry, as, on the reflex, she started,
turned and fled, scuddingwith an unthinkable swift beating of her white
feet and fraying of her white garments, towards thechurch. 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 gonebeyond the grey stone buttress.
In another instant the bridegroom, bent forward as he ran, hadcaught 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 Ursulanoticed again the dark, rather stooping figure
of Mr Crich, waiting suspended on the path, watchingwith expressionless
face the flight to the church. It was over, and he turned round to look
behindhim, 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. Hewent with a slight trail of one foot, which came only
from self-consciousness. Although he wasdressed correctly for his part,
yet there was an innate incongruity which caused a slightridiculousness
in his appearance. His nature was clever and separate, he did not fit at
all in theconventional 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
onlookersfor 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 playedwith 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 timeto 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'msorry.'
The two men were gone, there was nothing more to see, for the time. Ursula
was left thinking aboutBirkin. 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 officialcapacity 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 theunderstanding to develop. And something kept her from him, as well
as attracted her to him. Therewas 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 todiscuss 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 ifshe were
his greatest consideration. One feels so awfully sold, oneself.'
`Why does he do it?' said Ursula.
`Because he has no real critical faculty -- of people, at all events,'
said Gudrun. `I tell you, he treatsany little fool as he treats me or you
-- and it's such an insult.'
`Oh, it is,' said Ursula. `One must discriminate.'
`One must discriminate,' repeated Gudrun. `But he's a wonderful chap, in
other respects -- amarvellous personality. But you can't trust him.'
`Yes,' said Ursula vaguely. She was always forced to assent to Gudrun's
pronouncements, evenwhen she was not in accord altogether.
The sisters sat silent, waiting for the wedding party to come out. Gudrun
was impatient of talk. Shewanted to think about Gerald Crich. She wanted
to see if the strong feeling she had got from himwas real. She wanted to
have herself ready.
Inside the church, the wedding was going on. Hermione Roddice was thinking
only of Birkin. Hestood near her. She seemed to gravitate physically
towards him. She wanted to stand touching him.She could hardly be sure
he was near her, if she did not touch him. Yet she stood subjected
throughthe wedding service.
She had suffered so bitterly when he did not come, that still she was dazed.
Still she was gnawed asby a neuralgia, tormented by his potential absence
from her. She had awaited him in a faint deliriumof nervous torture. As
she stood bearing herself pensively, the rapt look on her face, that
seemedspiritual, like the angels, but which came from torture, gave her
a certain poignancy that tore hisheart with pity. He saw her bowed head,
her rapt face, the face of an almost demoniacal ecstatic.Feeling him
looking, she lifted her face and sought his eyes, her own beautiful grey
eyes flaring him agreat signal. But he avoided her look, she sank her head
in torment and shame, the gnawing at herheart going on. And he too was
tortured with shame, and ultimate dislike, and with acute pity forher,
because he did not want to meet her eyes, he did not want to receive her
flare of recognition.
The bride and bridegroom were married, the party went into the vestry.
Hermione crowdedinvoluntarily up against Birkin, to touch him. And he
endured it.
Outside, Gudrun and Ursula listened for their father's playing on the
organ. He would enjoy playinga wedding march. Now the married pair were
coming! The bells were ringing, making the air shake.Ursula wondered if
the trees and the flowers could feel the vibration, and what they thought
of it,this strange motion in the air. The bride was quite demure on the
arm of the bridegroom, who staredup into the sky before him, shutting and
opening his eyes unconsciously, as if he were neither herenor there. He
looked rather comical, blinking and trying to be in the scene, when
emotionally hewas violated by his exposure to a crowd. He looked a typical
naval officer, manly, and up to hisduty.
Birkin came with Hermione. She had a rapt, triumphant look, like the fallen
angels restored, yet stillsubtly demoniacal, now she held Birkin by the
arm. And he was expressionless, neutralised,possessed by her as if it were
his fate, without question.
Gerald Crich came, fair, good-looking, healthy, with a great reserve of
energy. He was erect andcomplete, there was a strange stealth glistening
through his amiable, almost happy appearance.Gudrun rose sharply and went
away. She could not bear it. She wanted to be alone, to know thisstrange,
sharp inoculation that had changed the whole temper of her blood.
--
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