'What's this?' asked Gerald.
Birkin told him about the race of the bride and the bridegroom.
'H'm!' 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 today, my boy,' said Marshall. 'It'd be in your road.'
'Christ! Marshall, go and talk to somebody else,' cried Gerald, with sudden impatience.
'By God, I'm willing,' said Marshall, in a temper. 'Too much bloody soul and talk altogether—'
He withdrew in a dudgeon, Gerald staring after him with angry eyes, that grew gradually calm and amiable as the stoutly-built form of the other man passed into the distance.
'There's one thing, Lupton,' said Gerald, turning suddenly to the bridegroom. 'Laura won't have brought such a fool into the family as Lottie did.'
'Comfort yourself with that,' laughed Birkin.
'I take no notice of them,' laughed the bridegroom.
'What about this race then—who began it?' Gerald asked.
'We were late.
Laura was at the top of the churchyard steps when our cab came up.
She saw Lupton bolting towards her.
And she fled.
But why do you look so cross?
Does it hurt your sense of the family dignity?'
'It does, rather,' said Gerald. 'If you're doing a thing, do it properly, and if you're not going to do it properly, leave it alone.'
'Very nice aphorism,' said Birkin.
'Don't you agree?' asked Gerald.
'Quite,' said Birkin. 'Only it bores me rather, when you become aphoristic.'
'Damn you, Rupert, you want all the aphorisms your own way,' said Gerald.
'No. I want them out of the way, and you're always shoving them in it.'
Gerald smiled grimly at this humorism.
Then he made a little gesture of dismissal, with his eyebrows.
'You don't believe in having any standard of behaviour at all, do you?' he challenged Birkin, censoriously.
'Standard—no.
I hate standards.
But they're necessary for the common ruck.
Anybody who is anything can just be himself and do as he likes.'
'But what do you mean by being himself?' said Gerald. 'Is that an aphorism or a cliche?'
'I mean just doing what you want to do.
I think it was perfect good form in Laura to bolt from Lupton to the church door.
It was almost a masterpiece in good form.
It's the hardest thing in the world to act spontaneously on one's impulses—and it's the only really gentlemanly thing to do—provided you're fit to do it.'
'You don't expect me to take you seriously, do you?' asked Gerald.
'Yes, Gerald, you're one of the very few people I do expect that of.'
'Then I'm afraid I can't come up to your expectations here, at any rate.
You think people should just do as they like.'
'I think they always do.
But I should like them to like the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness.
And they only like to do the collective thing.'
'And I,' said Gerald grimly, 'shouldn't like to be in a world of people who acted individually and spontaneously, as you call it.