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.