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.




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