D H Lawrence

The Rainbow D H Lawrence

The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where theErewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire fromNottinghamshire. Two miles away, a church-tower stood on a hill, the houses of the littlecountry town climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one of the Brangwens in the fieldslifted his head from his work, he saw the church-tower at Ilkeston in the empty sky. So thatas he turned again to the horizontal land, he was aware of something standing above himand beyond him in the distance. There was a look in the eyes of the Brangwens as if they were expecting somethingunknown, about which they were eager. They had that air of readiness for what wouldcome to them, a kind of surety, an expectancy, the look of an inheritor. They were fresh, blond, slow-speaking people, revealing themselves plainly, but slowly, so that one could watch the change in their eyes from laughter to anger, blue, lit-uplaughter, to a hard blue-staring anger; through all the irresolute stages of the sky when theweather is changing. Living on rich land, on their own land, near to a growing town, they had forgotten what itwas to be in straitened circumstances. They had never become rich, because there werealways children, and the patrimony was divided every time. But always, at the Marsh, therewas ample. So the Brangwens came and went without fear of necessity, working hard because of thelife that was in them, not for want of the money. Neither were they thriftless. They wereaware of the last halfpenny, and instinct made them not waste the peeling of their apple, forit would help to feed the cattle. But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and howshould this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannothalt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, leaves theyoung-born on the earth