Page:Women in Love, Lawrence, 1920.djvu/38

30 water gleamed and the opposite woods were purplish with new life. Charming Jersey cattle came to the fence, breathing hoarsely from their velvet muzzles at the human beings, expecting perhaps a crust.

Birkin leaned on the fence. A cow was breathing wet hotness on his hand.

"Pretty cattle, very pretty," said Marshall, one of the brothers-in-law. "They give the best milk you can have."

"Yes," said Birkin.

"Eh, my little beauty, eh, my beauty!" said Marshall, in a queer high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to have convulsions of laughter in his stomach.

"Who won the race, Lupton?" he called to the bride-groom, to hide the fact that he was laughing.

The bridegroom took his cigar from his mouth.

"The race?" he exclaimed. Then a rather thin smile came over his face. He did not want to say anything about the flight to the church door. "We got there together. At least she touched first, but I had my hand on her shoulder."

"What's this?" asked Gerald.

Birkin told him about the race of the bride and the bridegroom.

"Hm!" said Gerald, in disapproval. "What made you late then?"

"Lupton would talk about the immortality of the soul," said Birkin, "and then he hadn't got a button-hook."

"Oh, God!" cried Marshall. "The immortality of the soul on your wedding day! Hadn't you got anything better to occupy your mind?"

"What's wrong with it?" asked the bridegroom, a clean- shaven naval man, flushing sensitively.

"Sounds as if you were going to be executed instead of married. The immortality of the soul!" repeated the brother-in-law, with most killing emphasis.

But he fell quite flat.

"And what did you decide?" asked Gerald, at once pricking up his ears at the thought of a metaphysical discussion.

"You don't want a soul to-day, my boy," said Marshall. "It'd be in your road."