The Marsh and the Flood

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.