There was always regular connection between the Yew Cottage
and the Marsh, yet the two households remained separate,
distinct.
After Anna's marriage, the Marsh became the home of the two
boys, Tom and Fred. Tom was a rather short, good-looking youth,
with crisp black hair and long black eyelashes and soft, dark,
possessed eyes. He had a quick intelligence. From the High
School he went to London to study. He had an instinct for
attracting people of character and energy. He gave place
entirely to the other person, and at the same time kept himself
independent. He scarcely existed except through other people.
When he was alone he was unresolved. When he was with another
man, he seemed to add himself to the other, make the other
bigger than life size. So that a few people loved him and
attained a sort of fulfilment in him. He carefully chose these
few.
He had a subtle, quick, critical intelligence, a mind that
was like a scale or balance. There was something of a woman in
all this.
In London he had been the favourite pupil of an engineer, a
clever man, who became well-known at the time when Tom Brangwen
had just finished his studies. Through this master the youth
kept acquaintance with various individual, outstanding
characters. He never asserted himself. He seemed to be there to
estimate and establish the rest. He was like a presence that
makes us aware of our own being. So that he was while still
young connected with some of the most energetic scientific and
mathematical people in London. They took him as an equal. Quiet
and perceptive and impersonal as he was, he kept his place and
learned how to value others in just degree. He was there like a
judgment. Besides, he was very good-looking, of medium stature,
but beautifully proportioned, dark, with fine colouring, always
perfectly healthy.
His father allowed him a liberal pocket-money, besides which
he had a sort of post as assistant to his chief. Then from time
to time the young man appeared at the Marsh, curiously
attractive, well-dressed, reserved, having by nature a subtle,
refined manner. And he set the change in the farm.
Fred, the younger brother, was a Brangwen, large-boned,
blue-eyed, English. He was his father's very son, the two men,
father and son, were supremely at ease with one another. Fred
was succeeding to the farm.
Between the elder brother and the younger existed an almost
passionate love. Tom watched over Fred with a woman's poignant
attention and self-less care. Fred looked up to Tom as to
something miraculous, that which he himself would aspire to be,
were he great also.
So that after Anna's departure, the Marsh began to take on a
new tone. The boys were gentlemen; Tom had a rare nature and had
risen high. Fred was sensitive and fond of reading, he pondered
Ruskin and then the Agnostic writings. Like all the Brangwens,
he was very much a thing to himself, though fond of people, and
indulgent to them, having an exaggerated respect for them.