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.