15 - 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 fifteen of The Black Flemings by Kathleen Norris. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter fifteen. One afternoon,
when he had been at home for several weeks, he
and Gay were alone on the rocks. It was again
a burning afternoon, but Tom liked heat, and Gabriella's dewy

(00:23):
skin still had the child's quality of only glowing more
exquisitely for the day's warmth. Sylvia and her mother had
gone in to Crowchester. David was still away. Tom had
taken a rather personal tone of late with Gabriella, a
tone that the girl found vaguely disquieting. Now he was

(00:43):
asking her, half smiling and half earnest, if she had
ever been in love, And as he asked it, he
put his lean brown hand over hers as it lay
on the rocks beside him. Kay did not look down
at her hands, but her heart rose in her breast,
and she wriggled her own warm fingers slightly as a

(01:04):
hint to be set free. Have I ever been in love? Yes?
I think so, Tom, Oh, you think so? As bad
as that? A lot you know about it, Tom jeered,
good naturedly, if you'd ever been in love. You'd know it,
he added, I suppose so. Gabriel agreed amiably. Well, who

(01:27):
is it, asked Tom curiously, David, huh. Gabriella felt as
if touched by a galvanic shock. There was a choking
confusion in all her senses and a scarlet color in
her face as she said, David, David, is Sylvia's Oh?
Is that so? Tom asked interestedly. I thought so, he added,

(01:49):
in satisfaction, and with a long half whistle and pursed lips.
After a moment of profound thought, when his half closed
eyes were off across the wide seas, he repeated, thoughtfully,
is that so? Say? My coming home must have made
some difference to them, he added suddenly, as they did

(02:10):
not speak. Only in this way, the girl said quickly,
with one hand quite unconsciously pressed against the pain that
was like a physical cut in her heart. Only in
that now he will feel free to ask her, Tom say,
Tom drawled with a crafty, cunning look of incredulity and sagacity.

(02:30):
He'd hate her with a lot of money tied to her.
I don't think, he added, good naturedly. But a moment later,
a different look new to him lately came into his face,
and he said, more quietly and with conviction, I don't know,
though I'll bet you're right. Immediately afterward he fell into
a sort of study, in a fashion not unusual with him,

(02:54):
he freed Gabriella's hand, crossed his arms, and sat staring
absently across the ocean, with his lean body sprawled comfortably
into the angles of the rocks and his panama tilted
over his face. I wish to God I knew if
I was going to get well and back to sea again,
he said, presently, in a fretful sort of voice. Gabriella,

(03:17):
who had relievedly availed herself of this interval to shift
by almost imperceptible degrees to a seat a trifle more distant,
was now so placed that she could meet his eyes
when he looked up. She had intended to say to him,
as they had all been sane, some comforting, vague thing
about the doctor's hopeful diagnosis of his illness, and about

(03:40):
patience and rest. But when she saw the big, pathetically childish,
dark eyes staring up wistfully, a sudden little pang of
pity made her say instead gently, I don't know. Tom,
But you're so young and strong, they all say you will.
I'm in no condition to ask a girl to marry.
Mem Me, Tom said moodily. Oh, Tom, Gabriella said interested

(04:05):
at once, have you a girl? He looked at her
as she sat at an angle of the great shaded boulders,
with a sort of sea shine trembling like quicksilver over her.
She was in thin, almost transparent white, with a white
white hat pushed down over her richly shining tawny hair

(04:25):
and shadowing her flushed, earnest face. The hot day had
deepened the number of shadows about her beautiful eyes. Tiny
gold feathers of her hair lay like baby's curls against
her warm forehead, her crossed white ankles, her fine, locked
white hands. The whole slender, fragrant, youthful body might have

(04:46):
been made for a study of ideal girlhood and innocence
and sweetness in summertime. Let me tell you something, The
man began in his abrupt way, and he took from
his pocket a slim, flat leather wall, brown once but
now worn black and oily, and containing only a few papers.
One of these was an unmounted camera print of a

(05:08):
woman's picture. She was a slim, dark woman, looking like
a native of some tropic country, wearing a single white garment,
barefooted and with flowers about her shoulders and head. The
setting was of palms and sea. Indeed, the woman's feet
were in the waves. She was smiling, but the face

(05:29):
was clumsily featured, the mouth large and full, and the expression,
though brightly happy, was stupid. The picture was dirty, curled
by much handling. She's sweet, Gay said hesitatingly, at a loss.
Sweet huh, Tom echoed, taking back the picture, nursing it

(05:50):
in both cupped hands and studying it hungrily, as if
he had never seen it before. That's Tana, he said, softly.
Tana my wife, Tom added briefly, and there was no
bragging in his tone. Now she was the sweetest woman
God ever made, he said, somberly. Your Tom, your wife, certainly,

(06:14):
Tom answered shortly. Now go tell that to them all,
he added, almost angrily, Tell them I married a girl
who was part nigger, if you want to. His tone
was the truest Gabriella had ever heard from him. The
pain in it went to her heart. Tom, I'm so sorry,
she said, timidly. Is she dead? Yep? He said, like

(06:38):
a pistol shot, and was still lately Tom, two years
just before I was ill. Gabriella was silent a long time.
But it was her hand now that crept toward his
and tightened on it softly. And so they sat for
many minutes without speaking. Then the girl said, tell me

(07:00):
about her. Tom put the picture away reverently, carefully. For
a few dubious minutes, she felt that she had heard him,
but suddenly he began with the whole story. He had
met Tana when she was only fourteen, just before the
entrance of the United States into the war. Her father
was a native trader, but the girl had some white blood.

(07:24):
Tom had remembered her, and when he was wounded and imprisoned,
had escaped to make his way back by the devious
back roads of the seas to the tropical island, and
the group of huts and Tana. And Tana had nursed
him and married him solemnly, according to all the customs
of her tribe. And they had lived there in a

(07:46):
little corner of paradise, loving, eating, swimming, sleeping for happy years.
And then there had been Tom, little, soft, round and brown,
never drest in all his short three years, never bathed
except in the green, warm fringes of the ocean, never

(08:07):
fed except at his mother's tender, soft brown breast, until
he was big enough to sit on his father's knee
and eat his meat and bananas like a man. There
were plenty of other brown babies in the settlement, but
it was Thoem's staggering little footprints in the wet sand
that Tom remembered. Thoem standing in sun flooded open reed

(08:27):
doorway with an oriole about his curly little head. Tom
had presently drifted into the service of a small freighting
line again, but never for long trips, never absent for
more than a few days or a week from Tana
and Tham, And so the wonderful months had become years,
and Tom was content, and Tana was more than that.

(08:50):
Until the fever came. Tom had survived them both laid
the tiny brown body straight and bare beside this straightly
drawn white linen that covered Tana, and then his own
illness had mercifully shut down upon him, and he had
known nothing for long months of native nursing. Months afterward,

(09:10):
he had found himself in a spare cabin upon a
little freighter bound eventually for the harbor of New York.
Tana's family, her village indeed had been wiped out. The
captain had told him the ship had delayed only to
superintense and burials before carrying him upon a somewhat desultory course.

(09:31):
They had put into a score of harbors, and Tom
was convalescent before the grim smoke wrapped outlines of New
York burning in midsummer clare and heat had risen before him,
and Tom, then, sick and weary and weak and heartbroken,
had thought he must come home to die. But now,

(09:52):
after these weeks at home, a subtle change had come
over him, and he did not want to die, he
told Gabriel, and she began indeed to understand it. How
strangely rigid and unlovely and lifeless domestic ideals according to
the New England standards had seemed to him at first,
how gloomy the rooms at wastewater, how empty and unsatisfying

(10:16):
the life. But he was getting used to it all now.
He thought Sylvia was a beautiful young lady, but kinder
proud aunt Flora also was okay, And David was, of
course a prince. He's painting and I don't know what
you call it. Up in my room, Tom said, unaffectedly.

(10:37):
He had furnished one of the big Mansard rooms at
the top of the house with odd couches, rugs, and chairs,
and sometimes spent the hot mornings there with David painting
beside him. If there was air moving, it might be
felt here, and Tom liked the lazy and desulatory talk
as David worked. Can he paint good at all? They

(10:59):
don't don't look much like the pictures and books they
are beginning to say, at least some of them do
that he is a genius. Tom, No, it's not like
the pictures that one knows. But there are other men
who paint that way in his school. He has a school.
Huh No, I mean his type of work. I get you,

(11:22):
Tom said, good naturedly. I'm glad about him and Sylvia,
he added, after a thought, engaged. Are they well? I
suppose they will be. There was an understanding between them.
He has something, you know, and Aunt Flora has an
income too. Your father settled something on her when Uncle

(11:43):
Will died. Do you suppose it's money that's holding them back?
I don't imagine, so I think perhaps it's all the
change in confusion and the business end of things. I
could fix him up, Tom suggested magnificently. I wish to God,
he added, uneasily under his breath and without irreverence, that

(12:05):
something would happen. The place makes me feel creepy somehow,
it's voodoo. I wish David would marry and take that
death's head of an old woman off with him and Flora.
And then I'd like to beat it somewhere Boston or
New York, see some life theaters, restaurants, that sort of thing.

(12:27):
Gabriella did not ask what disposition he would make of
herself under this arrangement. She knew she was down among
the flowering border shrubs of the garden on the quiet
September day when David unexpectedly came home. The whole world
was shrouded in a warm, soft mist. The waves crept
in lifelessly. Little gulls rocked on the swells. Trees about

(12:52):
Gabriella were dripping softly. Not a leaf stirred, and the
birds hopped like shadows, like paler shadows, and vanished against
the quiet, opaque walls that shut her in. She and
Sylvia had been spending the afternoon upstairs in Tom's study,
as his mansart sitting room was called the old piano

(13:13):
upon which all these young men and women had practiced
years ago as children had been moved up there. Now
there was a card table, magazines, books. The electric installation
would be begun downstairs in a few weeks, and the
whole place wore an unusually dismantled and desolate air. The

(13:34):
girls were glad to take their sewing up to the
cool and quiet of Tom's study. Flora had been wretched
with malaria of late and spent whole days in bed,
lying without a book or even her knitting, staring darkly
and silently into space. This afternoon, Gabriella had escaped to
scramble for half an hour along the shore, her busy

(13:57):
eyes upon the twinkling low tide life among the rocks,
her thoughts a jumble of strange apprehensions and fears. Now
she was lingering in the garden, reluctant to surrender herself
once more to all the shadows and unnamed menaces of
the house, picking a few of the brave bronzenias and

(14:17):
the velvet wallflowers, the floating pale disks of cosmos on
their feathery leafage, were almost as high as her tawny head.
She started as David's figure loomed suddenly through the soft
veils of the autumn fog close beside her, and laid
her hand with a quite simple gesture of fright against
her heart. The color brought by her scrambling walk into

(14:41):
her cheeks ebbed slowly from beneath the warm cream of
her skin. Her eyes looked large and childish in their
delicate umber shadows. David saw the fine, frail linen over
her beautiful, young breast rise and fall with the quickened
beat of her heart. The sun off moist weather had
curled her tawny hair into little, damp feathers of gold

(15:04):
against her temples. An ache of sheer pain, the pain
of the artist for beauty beyond sensing, shook him. She
was youth, sweetness, loveliness incarnate here against a curtain of
flowers and gray mist, with wallflowers in her hand and
the toneless pink and white stars of the cosmos floating

(15:26):
all about her head. David gave her his hand, and
she clung to it as if she would never let
it go, as if she were a frightened child found
at last, David. Thank god you're home, she said. But
you've tired yourself, she added, instantly concerned. You look thinner

(15:47):
and you look pale. I'm fine, he said, with his
good smile. But why did you want me back? He
asked a little anxiously, in reference to her emotion at
seeing him. Oh, I don't know, things, she said, vaguely,
with a glance toward the looming black shape of waste
water netted in its blackened vines. Things have made me nervous.

(16:12):
I'm not sleeping well. And Flora looks like a ghost too,
the man said, and Gay gave a nervous, little protesting laugh.
Don't talk about ghosts. But it's only her old malaria, David,
she added, frowning faintly. I don't know. Her color looks ghastly.
And Sylvia seems twitchy too. What's the matter with us? All?

(16:36):
Us all? She caught up the phrase accusingly. Then you
feel it too, I think I have always felt something
of it. Here it Gabriel repeated the monosyllable thoughtfully, and
as they turned slowly toward the house horror, she said
under her breath, David David, can't we all get away?

(16:59):
We must get away, He amended. It isn't a good
atmosphere for anyone. Perhaps next summer, he stopped. Sylvia had
given him another significant hen a few minutes ago, but
he dared not ask Gabriella to confirm it. No, he
was only a sort of big brother to her. She

(17:20):
did not need him much. Now presently she would not
need him at all, David, she said quickly and distressedly.
When in their slow and fog shrouded walk they had
reached the little alley under the grapevines where Gay had
seen her mother almost a year ago, will you advise me?
His face was instantly attentive of the sudden plunge of

(17:42):
his heart. There was no sign. Gladly, dear Tom has
asked me to marry him, David, Gabriella said. Their eyes
met seriously. David did not speak. I have known for
some time that he would, Gabriella added, with the pleading
look of a out in trouble who comes to an
omnipotent elder. You told him? I didn't say no. There

(18:08):
was a long pause while neither moved. A bird, unseen
in the mist croaked steadily on a raucous note. Have
you promised him, Gabriella, No, I couldn't do that, But
I couldn't say no. I tried. Gabriella went on, in
a sort of burst and quite unconsciously, clinging to David's hands.

(18:31):
I did try to prevent it, David, you don't know
how I tried. He has been talking about it, oh
since before you went away. He told me he liked
a girl and he would tell me all about her,
pretending that she was not I. I prayed. Gabriella went
on passionately that it was not I. Gabriella, I would

(18:54):
have spoken to him, save you all this. No, no, no,
I know you would, she said feverishly. Aunt floric would
have told him. But David, we couldn't have that. Why
it would have broken his heart. You see, he's proud
and he feels feels that there is a difference between

(19:15):
us and himself. He has been like a child about this,
a child with a wonderful surprise for me. I am
to have jewels and travel and cars everything. If you
marry him, David asked, slowly. If I marry him and
I like him, David, ah, truly, I do I feel

(19:36):
so badly for him? I feel as if it would
be a real, a real life for me, persisted little Gabriella,
gallantly feeling for words to fill waste water with guests
and hospitality and happiness. Again. I can't bear to have
him feel that poor as I am and and nameless,

(19:56):
and he knows I am nameless. Still I could love him.
It will make him bitter and ugly, and he'll go
off again and perhaps die. I've had to be kind
to put anything definite off, and so I've said nothing
to anybody, not even Sylvia. I've had to fight it

(20:17):
out alone, finished Gabriella, with a trembling lip and swimming eyes.
And it has made me nervous, my dear girl, David said, slowly, heavily.
You're sure you wouldn't be happy. You would be very rich, Gabriella,
and you could teach him to make the most of
his money. I think it would make Aunt Flora and

(20:39):
Sylvia very happy. Gabriella was moving slowly ahead of him
toward the house. Now she half turned to look at
him over her shoulder. David, do you think I should say? Yes?
She whispered. I think perhaps you should consider it gravely gay.
You say you like him, And what other woman is

(21:01):
he ever apt to find that would understand him or
even like him? So? Well? Imagine what harm is money
is going to do to him. Once he's better mixing
in the world again, all sorts of social thieves will
be upon him. That's what I think of, she responded, eagerly,
so childishly, so earnestly, concerned that David felt his heart

(21:24):
wrung afresh, with a longing to put his arms about her,
comfort her, kneel at her feet, and put his lips
to her beautiful young hands. If, if only we can
get out of here, she whispered, with another strangely fearful
glance at the old house. His affairs straightened out, Sylvia
and Aunt Flora and I going somewhere, anywhere, David, we

(21:48):
mustn't spend another winter here. And yet now now she
began again with fresh agitation. I don't know what Tom
thinks he may think. Indeed, I know he does think
that everything will be as he wishes. What could I do?
I couldn't help, And indeed I didn't say anything untrue.

(22:11):
I only told him he must not think of such
things until he was much much better. But he seems
to have taken that as a sort of a sort
of consent in a way. Shall I talk to him, dear,
tell him that you need more time. Oh no, please, David,
leave it to me. Sometimes I've been given to understand,

(22:33):
he said, with his quiet smile, that a girl feels
this way when she really is sure, or when at
all events, it develops that the doubt and hesitation were
all natural enough, and part of of really caring. Take
time about it, Gabriella. Money and position do count for something,

(22:53):
after all, And he is a fleming and he knew
your mother. It isn't at a day David, with a
little conscious change in his own tone, it isn't the
other man of whom you spoke to me last June.
For a moment, Gay did not answer. Then she said,
in a peculiar voice. I've often wondered what you meant

(23:15):
by that conversation, David, whether you remembered it. What was
it you had consulted Aunt Flora and Sylvia as to
my destiny, as to the problem of what was to
become of me? I? Yes, I had written, Sylvia, or no,
not exactly that, David, stammered, taken unawares and turning red.

(23:38):
I it was just an idea of mine. It came
into my head suddenly, he added, with a most unwonted
confusion in his manner, as he remembered that bright old
dream of a porch on the seaward side of the
Keyport farmhouse and himself and poor little unwanted, illegitimate gay
breakfasting there. I wrote Sylvia about setting her free of

(24:00):
a sort of understanding between us. David went on with
a baffled feeling that his words were not saying what
he wanted them to say. As a matter of fact,
a letter from her saying the same thing crossed mine,
he finished, again, feeling that this statement was utterly flat
and meaningless, and not in the least relevant to the talk.

(24:22):
You didn't say you cared, Gabriella said, very low. You
simply put it to me as sort of a solution.
I see now that it was an affront to you, gay,
David answered sorely. I have regretted it a thousand times.
I wanted to offer you what I had, but God knows,
he added bitterly, I have nothing to offer so that

(24:46):
you would not do it. Again, Gabriella said, hardly above
a breath, and breathing quickly, yet with an effort to
appear careless. I would never offer any woman less than love. Again,
David asked, answered, if I had not been a bungling
fool in such matters, you should have never been distressed
by it. You see, you did not care for me, David,

(25:10):
the girl reminded him, in a low, strained voice, and
not meeting his eyes. When they were at the gloomy
side door, the mist was thickening with twilight, and a fitful,
warm wind was stirring its fold visibly. I had been
thinking about it for days, he said. It had I
don't know how to express it. It had taken possession

(25:32):
of me. Gabriella, her shoulder turned toward him, flung up
her head with a proud little motion. Tom loves me,
she said steadily. Yet David saw that the hand that
held the flower shake and the beautiful mouth tremble. Tom,
his half brother, said, still unable to shake off the

(25:53):
wretched feeling that they were talking at cross purposes, would
make you devoted and generous, husband. Gabriella neither spoke again.
They went into the dark hallway and upstairs, and the
gloom of waste water sucked them in and wrapped them
about with all its oppressive silences, its misunderstandings, and its memories.

(26:16):
End of chapter fifteen.