14 - Black Flemings by Kathleen Norris

Gabrielle has always called the imposing brick mansion on the rugged New England coast home. But when she returns to Wastewater Hall, she finds it transformed into a sinister place brimming with malevolence. As she delves deeper into the dark mysteries that have overtaken her beloved home, each step brings her closer to danger—and perhaps even death. Join Gabrielle on her harrowing journey to uncover the truth behind this haunting transformation. - Summary by kirk202

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter fourteen of The Black Flemings by Kathleen Norris. This
libriv auctory courting is in the public domain chapter fourteen.
So there was this new fact with which to deal.
Tom Fleming had come home. Tom thirty lane, burned a
leathery brown by a thousand tropic suns, had apparently determined

(00:23):
to return with infinitely less deliberation than he had exercised
over his running away almost twenty years before. He made
no particular explanation for his old reasons for departure. On
the other hand, there was no mystery about it. The
sea and ships, adventure, danger, exploration, storms had always been

(00:46):
more real to Tom than his name and family and waste water.
He had found them all, drunk deep of them all
between fourteen and thirty. He meant, of course, to go
back to them some day. Meanwhile, while he had been ill,
was still weak and shaken and unable to face even
the serenest crews, and so he had come home to

(01:09):
see the folks, he explained, with a grin on his
brown face, which wore smooth, deep folds about cheek bones
and chin. For all his leanness that made him look
older than he was in actual features. He was as
handsome as his handsome father. But Tom, garrulous, boastful, simply

(01:29):
shrewd and childishly ignorant, was in no other way like
Black Roger. Roger had been an exquisite, loving fine linen,
fine music, in books, the turn of a phrase, or
the turn of a woman's wrist. All these were an
unknown world to Tom, and Tom seemed to know it,

(01:50):
and to be actuated in his youthful, shallow bombast by
the fear that these others, these discovered relatives, might fancy him.
Ashamed of it, Tom never was ashamed of anything. He
instantly gave them to understand, No, sir, he had knocked
men down, He had run risks, He had been smarter

(02:12):
than the others. He had foxed them in Archangel or Tahiti,
Barbados or Yokohama. Tom's adventures had terminated triumphantly. Women had
always been his friends, scores of women, mysterious Russian women
who were really the political power behind international movements, beautiful

(02:33):
Hawaiian girls, stunning Spanish senoritas in Buenos Aires. He held
them all in the hollow of his lean, brown, heighted hand.
He was a hero in his own eyes. He wanted
to be a hero in the eyes of his relatives
as well. It was perhaps only Gabriella, who had wistfully
longed to be claimed and admired too so short a

(02:56):
time ago, who appreciated, upon that strange evening, that there
was something intensely pathetic in Tom's boasting. What were this
old brick house and these women with their fuss about
vases of flowers and clean sheets to him, he seemed
to ask, scornfully, Let him think he was a rough
neck if they wanted to. He didn't care everyone looking

(03:20):
at him so solemnly, everyone implying that this money of
his father's was so important. Let them find out it
didn't mean so much to Tom Fleming. Yet Tom was impressed,
deeply and fundamentally stirred by this homecoming, in a sense
that all his adventures had never stirred him. Old memories

(03:40):
wrenched at his heart. His wonderful father had been here
at Wastewater when Tom had last been here, and his
father's frail little second wife, the delicate Cecily, who had
been the object of a sort of boyish admiration from Tom.
Perhaps the lean, long sun brown sailor whose actual adventures

(04:01):
had taken the place of that little boy's dreams of
the sea. Felt deep within himself that he had not
gained everything by the change. Slowly, all the fibers of
soul and body had been hardening coarsening. Tom had not
been conscious of the slow degrees of the change, but
he was vaguely conscious of it now. The old house

(04:22):
had seemed to capture and preserve the traditions, the dignified
customs of his race. The very room seemed full of
reproaches and of questions. His aunt he found only older, dreammer,
more silent than he had remembered her. Sylvie had drawn
from a tiny girl into a beautiful woman, and Gabriella's

(04:43):
birth had not been until after his departure. But David
and he had spent all their little boyhood days together,
and David immediately assumed the attitude of his guide, wandering
about the old place with him in a flood of reminiscences,
and taking him down to the housekeeping regions world head
and Trudy in Margaret, who remembered him as a child,

(05:07):
wept and laughed over him excitedly. Tom enjoyed this, but
when the first flush of greetings to the family, and
the first shock of stun surprise were over. A curious
restraint seemed to fall upon their relationship, and the return
of the air made more troublesome than ever the separate
problems of the group. Sylvia, from the first half, incredulous instant,

(05:31):
had borne the blow with all her characteristic dignity and courage.
It was hard for her to realize, as she immediately
realized that even in her loss, she was comparatively unimportant,
and that whoso surrendered the fortune was infinitely of less
moment than whoso received it. But she gave no sign.

(05:53):
She welcomed Tom with charming simplicity, with a spontaneous phrase
or two of eagerness and astonishment, and no word was
said of material considerations until much later. Yet it was
an exquisitely painful situation for Sylvia, the more because she
had been so absolute a tool in the hands of

(06:13):
the fate that had first made her rich and now
made her poor. In her breath, she had not wanted
Uncle Roger's money. She had indeed been a child when
the will was made. Tom might easily have been supposed
to return the second Missus Fleming might have had children,
and her own mother, although she had indeed married Will

(06:35):
Fleming rather late in life, might have given Sylvia younger
sisters and brothers. But gradually the path had cleared. Before Sylvia,
Tom had not come home. Sylvia's father had died, leaving
her still the only child. Cecily had died childless, and
Uncle Roger had died. For years. Sylvia's mother and David,

(06:59):
watching her from a beautiful childhood to a fine and
conscientious girlhood, had prefaced all talk of her fortune with
unless Tom comes home. But gradually that had stopped. Gradually,
they and her circle, and the girl herself had come
to think of her as the rightful heiress. Now, between

(07:20):
luncheon and dinner upon a burning summer afternoon, all this
had been snatched from her, instantly, taken beyond all doubt
or question. Here was Tom indisputably re established as sole legity,
as owner of everything here at Wastewater yesterday, a rather

(07:41):
carelessly dressed, brown faced sailor with a harsh blue black jaw.
Unnoticed among a hundred others in a crowded harbor city tonight,
he was their host. Sylvia asked no sympathy and made
no complaint, but the very foundations of her life were shaken.
All the ambitions of her busy colleage ears were laid waste,

(08:04):
and from being admired and envied, she must descend to
pity and obscurity. She and her mother would have Flora's
few thousand a year plenty, of course, much more than
the majority of persons had. Sylvia knew that, But she
must readjust everything now to this level, abandoned the little

(08:25):
red check book and learned to live without the respectfully
congratulatory and envious glances. It was bitterly hard. Wherever her
thoughts went, she was met by that new and baffling
consideration of ways and means Europe. But could they afford
it escape from the whole tangle? Yes, but how they

(08:49):
could not leave Gabriela here with Tom, even if Sylvia
were not indeed needed. While all the matter of the
inheritance was being adjusted. Sylvia had said a hundred times
that she would really have liked to be among the
women who must make their own fortune and their own
place in the world. Now she found it only infinitely

(09:09):
humiliating and wearisome to contemplate. She did not know whether
to be resentful or relieved at the general tendency now
to overlook her. Tom naturally had the center of the stage,
but it was all uncomfortable and unnatural, and the girl
felt superfluous, unhappy, restless, and unsettled. For the first time

(09:32):
in her well ordered life. Flora had borne the news
with the look of one touched by death. She had
not in fact been made ill, nor had her usual
course of life been altered in any way, unless her
stony reserve grew more stony and her stern gray face
more stern. But David thought more than once that her

(09:53):
nephew's reappearance seemed to affect aunt Flora with a sort
of horror, as if he had come back from the day.
She had presented him with her lifeless cheek to kiss
when he arrived, and there had been a deep, ring,
harsh and almost frightening in the voice with which she
had welcomed him. Flora was not mercenary. Gabriela and David

(10:16):
both appreciated clearly that it was not her daughter's loss
of fortune that had affected her, But from the very
hour of Tom's return, she seemed like a woman afraid, nervous, apprehensive, anxious,
at one moment to get away from wastewater, desolated, at
another at the thought of leaving the place where she

(10:36):
had spent almost all her life. Oddly, seeing this fear,
David and Gay saw too that it was not of Tom,
or of any possible secret or revelation connected with Tom.
It was as if Flora saw in his reappearance the
reappearance to of some old fear or hate, or perhaps

(10:57):
of a general fear and hate that had once controlled
all her life, and that had seemed to be returning
with this person. There is a curse on this place.
I think Gabriella heard her whisper once, many times over
and over. But it was not to Gabriella she spoke,
and one night she fainted. Tom had been telling them

(11:19):
a particularly hair raising tale at table, and because he
really felt the horrible thrill of it himself, he did not,
as was usual with him, embroider it with all sorts
of flat and stupid inventions of his own. It was
the story of a man stranded on a small island,
conscious of a hidden crime, and attempting to act the

(11:42):
part of innocence. Of all things, Gabriella had said impressed
it seems to me the most terrible would be to
have a secret to hide. I mean it, the girl
had added, seriously, turning her sapphire eyes from one to
another as they smiled at her earn earnestness. I would
rather be a beggar, or in prison, or sick or banished,

(12:06):
anything but to be afraid. Flora at the words had
risen slowly to her feet, staring blindly ahead of her,
and with a hurried and suffocated word, had turned from
her place at the table, and before David could get
to her or Sylvia make anything but a horrified exclamation,
she had fainted. This had been on Tom's third evening

(12:29):
at home, a close summer night that had afforded Flora
ample excuse for feeling oppressed yet gay, looking about the
circle as the days went by. David is always thoughtful
and sympathetic, if he was more than usually silent, Sylvia
beautiful and serene, if also strangely subdued, Tom seeming to

(12:51):
belong so much less to waste water with his strange
manners and his leathery skin than any of the others,
and Flora's severe and terrible felled to rising in her
again all the fearful apprehensions of her first weeks there,
almost a year ago. What was going to happen? Her
heart hammered incessantly, What was going to happen? What could happen?

(13:17):
These were not the days of mysterious murders and secret passages,
dark deeds in dark nights. Why did waste Water suddenly
seem a dreadful place again? A place that was indeed
allied to the measureless ocean, with its relentless advance and retreat,
and to the dark woods behind which red sunset smoldered

(13:38):
so angrily. But that had nothing in common with the
sweet village life of Crowchester and Keyboard, where happy children
played through vacation days and little boats danced in and out.
I am afraid, Gabriella, whispered to herself more than once,
as the blazing blue days of August went by, and
the moon walked across the sea, and silent frightening nights.

(14:02):
David and Tom were there, seven or eight maids, gardener, chauffeur, stableman.
Yet she was afraid, if we are only all out
of here before winter comes, she would think, staring at
the high merciless sky where distant wisps of cloud drifted
against the merciless bright distances of the summer sea. She

(14:24):
could not face another winter at wastewater. David was quiet
in these days, spending long hours with Tom painting, taking
solitary walks before breakfast. Gabriella knew the girl would look
at him wistfully. Ah, why couldn't they all seem as
young as they were? Why weren't they all walking, talking,

(14:47):
picnicking together as other families did. David was always kind,
always most intelligently sympathetic in any problem, but he seemed
so far away she could do not break through the
wall that seemed to have grown between them. It made
her quiet, unresponsive in her turn. David, watching her, thought

(15:10):
what a mad dream his had been of Gabriella as
his wife, and felt himself bitterly to be a failure.
Had he taken his place years ago in the world
of business and professional men, had he risen to a
reputation and an income, he might have had the right
to speak. Now. As it was, she was as inaccessible

(15:32):
from the standpoint of his poverty, his stupid silences, and
inexperience as a star. She had no thought of him
except as a useful older brother and talking business with Tom.
He was an idling fool of an unsuccessful painter in
a world full of conversational pleasant failures. He hated himself,

(15:55):
his canvases and palates, his paltry four thousand year, his
old sickening complacencies over a second hand book or a
volume of etchings. Life had become insufferable to him, and
David told himself that if it had not been for
Tom's needs, he would have disappeared for another long year
of painting in Europe or in China. As it was,

(16:20):
he had to see her every day, the woman who
filled all the world with exquisite pain for him and
with agonizing joy. She came downstairs, pale and starry eyed
in her thin white gown and shady hat. On these
hot days. She asked him a simple question, She pleaded

(16:41):
without words, for his old friendship and understanding. He could
not give it. And one day Sylvia asked him if
he had noticed that Tom was falling in love with Gay.
David stood perfectly still for a few seconds. He had
a strange, brassy taste in his mouth of feeling that
the world is simply stopped. Everything was over, Hope was

(17:05):
dead within him. Haven't you noticed it, Sylvia said, ah,
I do, hope it's true. They were in the downstairs
sitting room, which had been darkened against the blazing heat
of the day. All four of the young Flemings had
been down on the rocks by the sea, on a
favorite bit of beach, but even there the day had

(17:26):
been too hot for them, and now at five they
had idle slowly toward the house through a garden in
which the sunlight lay in angry, blazing pools of brightness
between the unstirring, thick leafage of the trees. There was
no life in the air to day, no life in
the slow lip and rock of the sea. The girls

(17:48):
had talked of a sea bath at twilight, when the
night might be shutting down with something like a break
in the heat, but even that necessitated more effort than
they cared to make. Dressing again, Gabriella had protested, would
reduce them to their former state of limp and sticky discomfort.
The sitting room was hot and smelled of dust and

(18:10):
upholstery and old books. Through the old fashioned wooden blinds,
the sun sent dazzling slits of light swimming with moats.
There was a warm glow here, like the gloom in
a tropic cave. Sylvia, whose rich, dark beauty was enhanced
by summer, and who was glowing like a rose despite

(18:31):
tumbled hair and thin, crumpled gown, came to stand at
the window and look over David's shoulder. Gabriella and Tom
with the dog had just walked down the drive and
disappeared in the direction of the stable. It had been
Gabriella's extraordinary voice heard outside that had brought David to
the window. You speak with feeling, Tom, she had been saying.

(18:57):
The words had drifted in at the window, and David
seem still to hear them, lingering, sweet and husky and
amusedly maternal in the air. Of course, that was it.
She would marry Tom. The thought had never crossed his
mind before. He seemed to know the fact now, and
his heart and mind shrank away from it with utter

(19:19):
unwillingness to believe. A month ago, poor as he was,
he might have done anything. Now it was too late.
I see him, just as you see him, David, Sylvie
was saying, a big, lax, good natured sort of boastful boy.
That's what he is, but I don't believe she sees

(19:40):
him that way. And if she could like him, it
would be a wonderful marriage for her. Wouldn't it fancy
that youngster as a mistress here? And isn't he exactly
the sort of rather well, what shall I say? Rather
coarse adoring man who would spoil a young and pretty wife.

(20:01):
She likes him, David managed to say, slowly, I think
she's beginning to She has a nice, sort of friendly
way with him. Sylvia said, he doesn't seem to bore
her as he does me. He wearies me almost to tears.
I thought it seemed to me it was just her way,

(20:21):
David reasoned, And the darkest shadow that he had ever
known at Wastewater fell upon his heart then, and he
felt that he could not support it. Of course, she
would be rich and beloved, the furred and jeweled little
missus fleming of Wastewater. He must not stand in her way.
A few days later, he went off for a fortnight's

(20:44):
tramp with Rucker, he said, somewhere in Canada. He left
no address, promising to send him a line now and then,
and Gabriella, bewildered with the pain of his composed and
quiet parting, watching his old belded suit and the sturdy,
shabby knickers out of sight, said to herself again, I

(21:05):
am afraid Tom had made her a special ally and
confidante of late, and only Gabriella knew how far her
friendship had been influential in keeping him home at all.
He disliked his aunt Flora, and felt that Sylvia look
down upon him, as indeed she did. David, affectionately interested

(21:26):
as he was, was a forceful, almost formidable element wherever
he might be, and nobody knew it better than Tom.
David might be comparatively speaking poor. He might wear his
old paint dabbed jacket. He might depreciating lee shrug when
a discussion was under way. He might listen smilingly without

(21:48):
comment when Tom was noisily emphatic. Yet Tom knew, and
they all recognized that there was a silent power behind David.
He was a gentleman. Books, art, galleries, languages, political and
social movements. David was quietly in touch with them all.
He was what Tom would never be, that strange creature

(22:12):
a personality. Even while he nodded and applauded and praised,
he had an uncomfortable effect of making Tom feel awkward
and even humble, making him see how absurd were his
pretense and his shallow vanity. After all. But Gay was inexacting, friendly, impressionable,

(22:32):
and she combined a most winning and motherly concern for
Tom's physical welfare with a childish appetite for his tales.
She felt intensely sorry for Tom, chained here in the
unsympathetic environment he had always disliked, and she assumed an
attitude that was somewhat that of a mother, somewhat that
of a sister, and devoted herself to him. She liked

(22:57):
him best when he talked of the sea. As they
sat on the rocks facing the northeast, sheltered by the
rise of the Garden Cliff from the afternoon sea, dots
of boats would be moving far out upon the silky
surface of the waters. Now and then a big liner
went slowly by, writing a languid signature in smoke, scarcely

(23:18):
deeper in tone than the summer sky. Tom talked of boats,
little freighters, fussing their way up and down strange coasts,
nosing into strange and odorous tropic harbors. Palermo with the
tasseled donkeys jerking their blue and red head dresses upon
the sun soak piers nick to Roy in its frame

(23:38):
of four hundred islands, Batavia, Barbadoes, Singapore. Tom knew them all. Sometimes,
the listening girl was fascinated by real glimpses of the
great nations seen through their shipping. Saw England in her
grim colliers fighting through mists and cold and rolling seas.

(23:59):
Saw the white clad cattle kings of the Pampas watching
the lading of the meat boats from under brom brimmed
white hats, And it seemed to Gabriella and to them all.
As the days went by, Tom lost some of his
surface boastfulness and became simpler and more true. He was
not stupid, and he must see himself. How differently they

(24:22):
received his inconsequential on his talk, from the fantastic and
elaborate structures he so often raised to impress them. I'm
beginning to like him, she said, and she wondered why
Aunt Flora and Sylvia looked at her so oddly. End
of Chapter fourteen,