The Rainbow | Page 4

so that

occasionally a man's figure passed in silhouette, or a man and a towing
horse traversed the sky.
At first the Brangwens were astonished by all this commotion around
them. The building of a canal across their land made them strangers in
their own place, this raw bank of earth shutting them off disconcerted
them. As they worked in the fields, from beyond the now familiar
embankment came the rhythmic run of the winding engines, startling at
first, but afterwards a narcotic to the brain. Then the shrill whistle of
the trains re-echoed through the heart, with fearsome pleasure,
announcing the far-off come near and imminent.
As they drove home from town, the farmers of the land met the
blackened colliers trooping from the pit-mouth. As they gathered the
harvest, the west wind brought a faint, sulphurous smell of pit-refuse
burning. As they pulled the turnips in November, the sharp
clink-clink-clink-clink-clink of empty trucks shunting on the line,
vibrated in their hearts with the fact of other activity going on beyond
them.
The Alfred Brangwen of this period had married a woman from Heanor,
a daughter of the "Black Horse". She was a slim, pretty, dark woman,
quaint in her speech, whimsical, so that the sharp things she said did
not hurt. She was oddly a thing to herself, rather querulous in her
manner, but intrinsically separate and indifferent, so that her long
lamentable complaints, when she raised her voice against her husband
in particular and against everybody else after him, only made those
who heard her wonder and feel affectionately towards her, even while
they were irritated and impatient with her. She railed long and loud
about her husband, but always with a balanced, easy-flying voice and a
quaint manner of speech that warmed his belly with pride and male
triumph while he scowled with mortification at the things she said.
Consequently Brangwen himself had a humorous puckering at the eyes,
a sort of fat laugh, very quiet and full, and he was spoilt like a lord of
creation. He calmly did as he liked, laughed at their railing, excused
himself in a teasing tone that she loved, followed his natural
inclinations, and sometimes, pricked too near the quick, frightened and

broke her by a deep, tense fury which seemed to fix on him and hold
him for days, and which she would give anything to placate in him.
They were two very separate beings, vitally connected, knowing
nothing of each other, yet living in their separate ways from one root.
There were four sons and two daughters. The eldest boy ran away early
to sea, and did not come back. After this the mother was more the node
and centre of attraction in the home. The second boy, Alfred, whom the
mother admired most, was the most reserved. He was sent to school in
Ilkeston and made some progress. But in spite of his dogged, yearning
effort, he could not get beyond the rudiments of anything, save of
drawing. At this, in which he had some power, he worked, as if it were
his hope. After much grumbling and savage rebellion against
everything, after much trying and shifting about, when his father was
incensed against him and his mother almost despairing, he became a
draughtsman in a lace-factory in Nottingham.
He remained heavy and somewhat uncouth, speaking with broad
Derbyshire accent, adhering with all his tenacity to his work and to his
town position, making good designs, and becoming fairly well-off. But
at drawing, his hand swung naturally in big, bold lines, rather lax, so
that it was cruel for him to pedgill away at the lace designing, working
from the tiny squares of his paper, counting and plotting and niggling.
He did it stubbornly, with anguish, crushing the bowels within him,
adhering to his chosen lot whatever it should cost. And he came back
into life set and rigid, a rare-spoken, almost surly man.
He married the daughter of a chemist, who affected some social
superiority, and he became something of a snob, in his dogged fashion,
with a passion for outward refinement in the household, mad when
anything clumsy or gross occurred. Later, when his three children were
growing up, and he seemed a staid, almost middle-aged man, he turned
after strange women, and became a silent, inscrutable follower of
forbidden pleasure, neglecting his indignant bourgeois wife without a
qualm.
Frank, the third son, refused from the first to have anything to do with
learning. From the first he hung round the slaughter-house which stood

away in the third yard at the back of the farm. The Brangwens had
always killed their own meat, and supplied the neighbourhood. Out of
this grew a regular butcher's business in connection with the farm.
As a child Frank had been drawn