August 21, 2025 • 30 mins
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
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eighteen, Part one of The Black Flemings by Kathleen Norris.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter eighteen,
Part one. The doctor returned with another doctor in the
course of the strange, disorganized day, and Etta, murmuring with
the other maids in the kitchen, sucked in a great
(00:23):
sigh as she escorted them upstairs. Poor missus Fleming would
be a long time getting over this night's work, she
and Hetta and Trudy said over and over again. While
the professional men were in consultation, Sylvia, who had been
lying down, went upstairs with them, Gabriella waiting restlessly for
(00:44):
their opinion. Almost immediately after they had come down, however,
David called her. She went out of the dining room
to find him on the stairway. Gay, dear, Aunt Flora
wants to see you. His tone frightened her. She's not
very sick. We hope not, dear, But they are not satisfied.
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They give no hope. Sylvia is making her some broth. Now.
She wants to see you and me and Tom. But David,
we can get her into Boston, can't We didn't head
us say something about an ambulance this afternoon. It's a
question of whether the roads are passable. They're discussing that now.
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A great offe fell upon Gabriella. As she went up
to the crowded little bedroom. She could see nothing except
Aunt Flora lying straight in the girlish little bed, with
its paper and ribbon souvenirs tied to the white enamel bars.
Aunt Flora looking sunken, cheeked and ghastly, and living only
in her restless and tortured eyes. How do you feel now,
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David said, cheerfully, sitting down beside the bed and patting
her hand. She did not smile, but she moved her
eyes to his face and fixed them there. Sylvia was
at one side of the bed. David and Tom took
chairs at the foot, and Gabriella quite naturally sank to
her knees beside Sylvia, so that the two girl's faces
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were close to Flora's. It was afternoon now, a steely,
clear winter afternoon, at about four o'clock, and to Gabriella's
worried senses, no hour in the strange twenty four hours
since she and David had walked in the great wind
to Crowchester seemed more strange or unreal than this one,
Aunt Flora, lying here, grizzled, dressed in one of the
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plain nightgowns of John's wife's, and surrounded by Little Edda's keepsakes.
Tom serious and still oddly disheveled and disorderly from the
long night and the day's broken rest, Sylvia pale and
with new and tragic deeps in her dark eyes, and David,
as always the balance will that seemed to keep them
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all steady. Flora moved her solemn gaze to Gabriella's face.
I am very sick, she whispered. Oh, Aunt Flora, you'll
feel so much better when you get into a comfortable hospital,
Gabriella said, gently, infinitely distressed. No, the sick woman said,
shaking her head. They'll not move me. David told you
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and Tom something yesterday, she added, wearily, shutting her eyes
and hardly moving her lips. You should have known it
long ago. You and Tom are angry at me, Oh,
Aunt Flora, No, you are Roger Fleming's daughter, Gabriella Flora whispered,
clutching her hand and eyeing her anxiously. So, David said,
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Gabriella murmured with a troubled glance at him. To talk
in this childish, lifeless way, Aunt Flora, must be very ill.
You should have known it long ago, Flora repeated, beating
gently on Gabriella's hand. It was the sin, the terrible
sin of my life. But David, she interrupted herself, appealing
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to him, I did not mean to harm them. I'm
sure of it, Aunt Flora. But why we're yourself with it? Now?
We are all safe, all well, couldn't it? Wait, David
urged with infinite gentleness. No, no, no, she exclaimed, raising
herself into a sitting position and struggling, almost as if
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they were constraining her physically. I must talk now, and
then I shall sleep. You must let me talk, and
then I shall sleep. I want you all to understand.
Did you ever know? She went on, seeming to feel
her way for the right phrases, and sinking back into
the pillows with shut eyes. Did you ever know how
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I happened to come first to waste water. My father
was John Fleming, Roger Fleming's cousin. He was a dentist
in Brookline. We were very poor when I was a child,
and the first days I remember were of a little
brookline flat, and my mother's sewing at a sewing machine.
My sister Lily was a delicate little baby. Then Lily
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was six years younger than I. For days and days
and days of rain, I remember the sewing machine and
the crying of the baby, and my mother murmuring at
the hall door to men who came about bills in
the spring, I had to take the baby out, and
sometimes the wind would chap both our faces, and we
would sit crying in the park. It seems to me
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we were always cold. I don't believe children get much
deep impressions of hot weather. Dearest, do you want to
talk now? Sylvia asked tenderly. As the harsh, deep voice paused,
Flora opened the eyes that had been slowly sinking shut
and widened them anxiously. Yes, I must talk, she answered,
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and she looked about the silent little group alarmedly, as
if she feared that one of them might have slipped away.
When I was eight and Lily two years old, she
went on, our father died, my mother was left miserably poor,
and I heard enough talk then among her and her
few friends to fear, as only a child can fear,
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actual starvation. It was then that an uncle of whom
we had scarcely heard came to see us. That was
Tom Fleming, Roger's father. He had quarreled with my father
years before, and as everything my father touched turned to loss,
so everything that Tom Fleming went into prospered. It was
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a railroad venture that made his fortune finally, but everything properties, bonds,
stalks went well with him. He came to my mother's
poor little flat and ah, my god, my god, whispered
Flora forgetting her audience, as she pressed a dark hand
to her eyes and speaking to herself, what a day
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that was for me. He asked my mother to bring
her little girls to his country house to waste water,
and tell she should get her bearings. He left money
on the little red tablecloth in the dining room. My
poor mother burst out crying and tried to kiss his hand.
A week later, on a summer afternoon, we got here.
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I had never seen the insight of a big house
or the open expanse of the sea before, never been
in a stable yard where there were chickens and cats
and horses, and we had half a dozen horses at wastewater.
Then Uncle Tom's big percherons and riding horses. Why I
couldn't get enough of the stairs. I worked my way
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up and down them for days, singing to myself for
pure rapture. It was all a fairy tale to me.
The silver, the meals, the big rooms, What a wonder
land it was. Use Uncle Tom was a widower with
two sons, boys of thirteen and eleven, Roger and Will.
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They were out in the stable yards with some puppies
when we got there, and Roger was not too big
a boy to take a little girl cousin under his wing.
He showed me the puppies. He let me name one
of them silver. I have never seen any other puppies
that were to me as strangely important as those were.
Flora went on, her eyes closed, her voice the mere
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essence of its usual self. Nor such a lingering early
summer afternoon as that was. It seemed to me my
heart would burst with joy to have supper in the
pantry that was full of maids and sunshine, and such
supplies of cake and butter and milk, and to sleep
in a big, smooth bed in such a great room.
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All those early days were filled with anxiety for me.
I was afraid any instant that we might be sent away.
My mother told me long afterward that I cried myself,
almost sick with excitement, when she told me that Uncle
Tom had asked her to stay and take care of
his house for him. I don't remember that day, but
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I remember, in my gratitude, telling Roger that I hope
some day he would be out at sea in a wreck,
and that I would save his life. And how he
laughed at me. He was, I suppose, as handsome a
boy as ever lived. It was not that surely. I
was too small a girl to know or care what
real beauty was. But I loved him from the first
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instant I saw him, not I think now as other
children love, as other young girls love. There was no
vanity in it. I can say that there was no happiness,
no prettiness. It was agony to me almost from that
first June afternoon. He seemed to me to be in
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a class all by himself, whether I liked it or not,
and it was years before I realized it fully. I
had to keep him there. His least word was important.
His kindness made me tremble all over. And if ever
Roger were cross with me, I used to be actually
sick with grief, and my mother would ask him to
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come up to my room and let me sob wildly
in his arms and beg him to forgive me. I
never got any pleasure out of it. God knows. It
was constant pain. If he smiled at anyone else, I
was wretched. No matter what he did. His laugh, his voice,
with his horse, his use of his hands, and he
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had beautiful hands, was full of magic for me. I
used to pray, to pray that he would not always
seem so wonderful to me that I would see him
in ordinary human daylight. I never did. He was my
whole world. So the years went by, and Uncle Tom died,
and Roger was the heir. Roger was twenty five then,
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tall and straight, and so clever that he could do anything.
He rode and he sang, He danced and shot better
than any of his friends. Women were already beginning, Ah,
how women loved him. Will, his brother, had been wild
from his very boyhood. From his fifteenth year, he drank, heavily, gambled.
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He and his father had been enemies for a long time.
Uncle Tom had advanced money to Will, great sums of it,
and Will had gambled it away. He left Will a
comfortable fortune. He left Roger waste Water and the rest
of his money. And Roger was everything. He had a manner,
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a sweetness, I don't know, a way of seeming interested,
seeming absorbed in what you were telling him. And he
was witty too. What parties I can remember here when
they would all be laughing at him, crying with laughter.
I was twenty when Uncle Tom died. My mother went
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on keeping house for Roger and Will, and perhaps she
thought sometimes of what I prayed and prayed might come
to pass, that Roger Fleming and I might be man
and wife, and waste Water her home forever. For years
I had to see him depart for those long visits
of his in Boston when he was ah, Yes, it
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wasn't only my imagination, when he was the idol of them,
all faded and followed and imitated by the very best
of them. I had to say good bye to him
when he started off to Europe with beautiful girls in
the party, money, youth, lovely clothes, romantic settings, all against me.
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Presently he was thirty and I was twenty five, twenty six,
twenty seven, and then suddenly he seemed for the first
time to see me. I didn't dare believe it at first,
I didn't dare believe it. He would follow me down
to the shore and sit there with Lily and me.
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He would come back unexpectedly from Boston or New York.
I would hear his voice as I hear it now. Flow,
Where's flow? Ah? What those days were? They seemed all
rose color. I've come to hate the memory of them now,
But they were heaven then. Sometimes now I find myself
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obliged to go over them day after day, and hour
after hour, day after day and hour after hour of
a fool's paradise. One day, he said to me one night,
rather when there was gray moonlight over the garden, and
he and I were walking up and down, and poor
Lily inside at the piano was singing Flow. Why is
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it that I have grown to prefer puttering about this
old place with you and lil to any other thing
in the world. Perhaps because you like me, Roger, I said,
I've been ready to bite my tongue out for it
a thousand times in these thirty years, but it brought
me a few more hours of insanity. Then he caught
me in his arms and laughed as he kissed me.
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Why that's the way of it, is it? He said?
How long has this been going on? Eh? Always? I
told him, poor little flow, He said, with all you
know of me? Is it like that? Like that? I said,
and he kissed me again. Well, he said, we'll have
to see about this. That was all. Presently I ran
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into the house with my heart simply singing, and all
that summer night I lay awake, laughing and crying for joy.
The next morning I hardly dared raise my eyes to him.
It was that next day that your mother came to
waste water, David. It was the very next day. Flora
had been talking with her eyes shut. Now she opened them,
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almost as if she were surprised to see the circle
of attentive and serious young faces. Her hand beat the
cover lid restlessly. Your mother was about thirty and a widow,
she said. She had been widowed a few months before
your birth, and you were only three or four weeks old.
She was a beautiful woman, with reddish, thick hair, all
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swathed in crape, and with the trailing dresses of the
tiny baby in her arms. Her father was an Argentine planter,
and she was taking you, David back to Rosario, where
she had sisters and cousins. But for some reason, the
boat was a month delaid a strike. Perhaps the service
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was very uneven then, and she had written my mother
asking if she might come for a few days to
waste water. Families did more of that sort of thing. Then.
Her husband had been a Fleming, and I remember that
he had once been a vacation with us here when
he was a little boy, David Fleming. She told me
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a hundred times afterward that she had written my mother
only because she was so lonely and sad in the
big city. She hardly expected an answer. She knew that
Tom Fleming was dead, she hardly knew anything about Roger
and will. So she came here not six months a widow,
And from the instant she got here, Roger Fleming was
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a changed being. I never saw a man so instantly possessed.
The very first night, he was asking me, isn't she beautiful? Flow,
isn't she wonderful? He hung about her. I don't think
he ever thought of me again, or of anything, but Janet,
seven weeks later they were married. She was beautiful. Flora
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went on after a dead silence in which none of
the young persons seemed to find the right word, and
in which her hand beat steadily on the bed and
her eyes were shut. She went with him to Boston, Washington, everywhere,
and ten months later she gave him a son, Tom.
She looked at Tom strangely closed her eyes again. My mother,
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all this while Flora resumed, had been like a sort
of housekeeper. She was a little, wiry woman, very gray,
as poor Lily was. At the end, two years after
Roger and Janet were married, my mother died, and then
Lily and I felt keenly what our exact position here was,
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poor relations in a rich man's house. Roger always was
generous to us. He was the soul of generosity, and
he was prospering as steadily as his father had. And
Janet was kind too. She and Roger sometimes went away
for weeks and left the two little boys with us,
and I remember more than once Roger telling me that
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it was only my influence that kept his brother Will
straight at all. Will was like many a young man
in those times. He would have a position for a while,
give it up for different reasons, drink and gamble and
idle for a while, and be persuaded into another position. Again.
It wasn't considered disgraceful then. He was a sweet, good
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natured sort of fellow. He would spend weeks here at Wastewater,
perfectly willing to idle about with Lily and Janet and
me and the babies. For David was hardly more and
to have a little pocket money from Roger, and then
he would go over to Keyboard or Crowchester and be
their whole days drinking and playing poker. Sylvia drew a quick,
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sharp breath. You mustn't judge your father too harshly, Flora whispered,
moving her troubled eyes to her daughter's face. Nowadays it
sounds far worse than it did then. Almost every family
had such a son, and frequently you would hear even
mothers laughing as they said it was time for Dick
or Jack to marry and settle down. Afterward, Will would
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be two or three days sick in bed. The droning,
weary voice presently resumed, and Roger would talk to him
so kindly, begging him to pull himself together and get
a new start. And then Roger would find him a
new position, and Will would come down to dinner rested
and shaved in, well dressed and in high spirits, telling
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us all how rich he was going to be. So
I tried to make myself indispensable, and I hoped and
hoped that Lily would marry, marry Will or anybody. As
a sort of justification for my remaining single. I looked
out for you. Boy's roardrobes mothered, Will managed their parties,
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managed the servants. Your mother, Janet, went to the opera
with your father one night, she added, opening her eyes
to look at David and Tom. And a day or
two later he telegraphed me from New York that, as
she was not well, he would keep her there until
it was safe to bring her home. That was a
snowy Sunday afternoon. I remember that Will and Lily and
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I played games with you little fellows, put you to
bed ourselves. It was almost as if we knew that
you were not to see your mother again. The days
went by, you went back to school, and I knew,
I knew all the time that it was the end.
Ten days later, your mother died, and the day after
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the funeral, Roger went away where I never knew he
was gone. For weeks came home, would burst out into
bitter crying at the table, walk up and down the
garden like a madman, and be off again. One day,
about six or seven weeks after Janet's death, he said
to me, in a dark, moody sort of tone, flow,
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how long am I to wear mourning outside inside? He said, passionately,
I shall mourn her all my life. A year I
told him. It was a dark, misty day I remember,
with a garden full of thick, cold fog and lights
burning at the lunch table. He and I had come
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out and were walking along the cliff road in the mist.
We could hear the boys ringing, ringing away toward keypwort flow.
He said, when that time is up, will you forgive
me and marry me? You and I understand each other.
I want to be anchored. I want to be done
with the world and make this my world. And he
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looked back toward the garden in the house gladly, Roger,
I said, And for a long while we did not
speak again. Then he said to me, will you tell
Lily and the boys and will that it is to
be that way? And I said, yes, you remember, David, Yes,
I remember your telling us that you were to be
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married to him, David's voice said, strangely, vital against that
other monotonous voice. Sometimes, but not often, we would talk
of it quietly, Flora resumed, not that I was ever
happy about it, but I told myself I would be.
I told myself that it should. It must mean happiness
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to us both Janet night in January, this was perhaps March.
A few days later in April, a missus Kant, whom
Roger had admired immensely as a beautiful girl when he
was hardly more than a boy, when he was, in fact,
in college, came here with her daughter for a visit.
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I don't think the mother was more than thirty seven
or eight. She had been a great bell and had
married at eighteen. She was plump and pretty, covered with jewels,
full of life, and had left her husband and little
boy in Canada to bring this child from a school
in Baltimore. She had just this hair, Flora said, laying
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her dark, thin hand upon Gabriella's tawny, rich masses as
the girl knelt beside her. The girl, Cecily, was seventeen,
dark and pale faced. She looked like a child. She
had her hair in a braid. There were other old
friends in the party. A group of them had come
down from Boston to see Roger Fleming, and were very gay.
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I don't know that I ever heard greater laughing or
chattering here, or that we ever served more formal meals.
I had my hands full. Loie saw more of little
Cecily Kent than I did, and she told me one day,
not that it interested me particularly then, that the girl
had been attending a convent in Montreal and longed to
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be a nun, and that her mother had said that
she would rather see her dead. They were only here
a short week. It was spring, and there were walks
and picnics, and bridge and music and billiards. The time
flew by, and it was on the afternoon when the
Cans were going their baggage in the hall, and when
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the other guests had gone, that Cicely Kent burst out crying,
and Roger put his arm about her. The moment I
saw that my heart turned to water. That moment, Flora said,
with sudden bitter violence, raising herself upon her elbow, all
my hopes died, all my trust in him. It was
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my curse that I could not stop loving him as well.
The cold winter sunset, streaming through the bare woods beyond
the stable yard, shone red upon the cheap, cheerful paper
of the walls, and struck Flora's grizzled hair with a
tinge of blood, and shadowed clearly behind her the hand
she raised. They had already been met and wife forty
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eight hours. She said. I think Roger Fleming felt remorse
for the first time in his life when he saw
the mother's face. Perhaps life had always been too easy
for him. Perhaps it had really never occurred to him
that a few months a widower, and with his two
little sons, and with his forty years, he might not
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be thought an ideal match for a dreamy girl of seventeen.
He had always been so courted, so wanted. At first,
missus Kent talked of annalling the marriage. She was more
like a woman suddenly smitten with insanity than any one
I ever saw before or since. She grasped the girl
by the arm, and her eyes blazed and her face
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was ashen. No, she said, you shall not have her.
She's hardly more than a baby. She knows nothing of life.
Mamma Cicely said, crying and clinging to her. We were
married two days ago. I am his wife. I remember
the mother looking at her, and the terrible silence there
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was in the hall. Lily began to whimper beside me,
and I caught her by the wrist. There were servants
staring from the dining room doorway. You cissy, missus Kent said,
in a whisper. Cicely went down on her knees, sobbing,
almost screaming like a child, and caught her mother about
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her knees. Cicely, Roger said, trying to raise her, You
are mine. Now. Your mother cannot hurt you. You are
my wife. Oh, let me go with my mother. She sobbed.
I hate you, she is, in fact your wife, missus
Kent said, looking over Cicely's head at him. Roger nodded.
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Then you must stay with your husband, My child, missus
Kent said, very gravely. And may God punish you through
your children. Roger Fleming, she said, for what you have
done to mine. Go tear the buds from those rose trees,
she said, pointing to the garden. Go strip the new
green fruit from your trees, and you will harvest what
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you must harvest. Now, your little boys there playing in
the drive are better fitted for life than she is.
And she turned to Moses, the colored butler we had.
Then Moses put my bags in the carriage, she said.
Nobody spoke as she went away. Cicely lay on the
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floor moaning, Roger on one knee beside her, talking naturally
and kindly. She never saw her mother, or her father
or her brother again. I heard long afterward that the pretty,
cheerful mother had died and the father married again. They
they would be your people, Gabriella. You could easily trace them.
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Cicely had been three days a wife, but she had
lost her husband then. She never knew it, but I did,
and I God forgive me. I was glad when she
clung to her mother and screamed that she hated him.
A look came into Roger Fleming's face that only I
could understand. It was as if she had said, I'm
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seventeen and he is forty. I knew nothing, He knew everything.
My only loves were a daughter's love, a sister's love.
He demanded more of me, and if I had it,
I would loathe myself forgiving it. He has robbed me
of my mother and my father, and my body and
my soul. She cried all that night, would not come
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downstairs or eat, or look at him or talk to him.
She cried for many days, and Roger used all his
patience and all his kindness trying to console her, But
he never gave her love again. He never had it
to give after that day. She had cut him to
the very heart. And the Flemings are all proud, and
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none of them ever prouder than he. After a while,
she began to slip about the house like a shadow.
She had never been pretty except for her eyes that
were like Gabriella's hair, and she grew so thin and
so white that she seemed all eyes. She would have
no company, no entertaining. She seemed even to dread talking
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to Roger, and was fondest of you children, and poor Lily.
It was never any definite illness at first, just the
doctor for one pain or another, and Roger taking her
in for consultations and advice. They all gave the same advice.
She needed amusement and relief from mental strain, but that
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was one thing he couldn't buy her. She used to
lay out there in the garden telling Lily about her
mother and Father, end of Chapter eighteen, Part one,
Chapter eighteen, Part one of The Black Flemings by Kathleen Norris.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter eighteen,
Part one. The doctor returned with another doctor in the
course of the strange, disorganized day, and Etta, murmuring with
the other maids in the kitchen, sucked in a great
(00:23):
sigh as she escorted them upstairs. Poor missus Fleming would
be a long time getting over this night's work, she
and Hetta and Trudy said over and over again. While
the professional men were in consultation, Sylvia, who had been
lying down, went upstairs with them, Gabriella waiting restlessly for
(00:44):
their opinion. Almost immediately after they had come down, however,
David called her. She went out of the dining room
to find him on the stairway. Gay, dear, Aunt Flora
wants to see you. His tone frightened her. She's not
very sick. We hope not, dear, But they are not satisfied.
(01:05):
They give no hope. Sylvia is making her some broth. Now.
She wants to see you and me and Tom. But David,
we can get her into Boston, can't We didn't head
us say something about an ambulance this afternoon. It's a
question of whether the roads are passable. They're discussing that now.
(01:26):
A great offe fell upon Gabriella. As she went up
to the crowded little bedroom. She could see nothing except
Aunt Flora lying straight in the girlish little bed, with
its paper and ribbon souvenirs tied to the white enamel bars.
Aunt Flora looking sunken, cheeked and ghastly, and living only
in her restless and tortured eyes. How do you feel now,
(01:50):
David said, cheerfully, sitting down beside the bed and patting
her hand. She did not smile, but she moved her
eyes to his face and fixed them there. Sylvia was
at one side of the bed. David and Tom took
chairs at the foot, and Gabriella quite naturally sank to
her knees beside Sylvia, so that the two girl's faces
(02:12):
were close to Flora's. It was afternoon now, a steely,
clear winter afternoon, at about four o'clock, and to Gabriella's
worried senses, no hour in the strange twenty four hours
since she and David had walked in the great wind
to Crowchester seemed more strange or unreal than this one,
Aunt Flora, lying here, grizzled, dressed in one of the
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plain nightgowns of John's wife's, and surrounded by Little Edda's keepsakes.
Tom serious and still oddly disheveled and disorderly from the
long night and the day's broken rest, Sylvia pale and
with new and tragic deeps in her dark eyes, and David,
as always the balance will that seemed to keep them
(02:55):
all steady. Flora moved her solemn gaze to Gabriella's face.
I am very sick, she whispered. Oh, Aunt Flora, you'll
feel so much better when you get into a comfortable hospital,
Gabriella said, gently, infinitely distressed. No, the sick woman said,
shaking her head. They'll not move me. David told you
(03:19):
and Tom something yesterday, she added, wearily, shutting her eyes
and hardly moving her lips. You should have known it
long ago. You and Tom are angry at me, Oh,
Aunt Flora, No, you are Roger Fleming's daughter, Gabriella Flora whispered,
clutching her hand and eyeing her anxiously. So, David said,
(03:42):
Gabriella murmured with a troubled glance at him. To talk
in this childish, lifeless way, Aunt Flora, must be very ill.
You should have known it long ago, Flora repeated, beating
gently on Gabriella's hand. It was the sin, the terrible
sin of my life. But David, she interrupted herself, appealing
(04:04):
to him, I did not mean to harm them. I'm
sure of it, Aunt Flora. But why we're yourself with it? Now?
We are all safe, all well, couldn't it? Wait, David
urged with infinite gentleness. No, no, no, she exclaimed, raising
herself into a sitting position and struggling, almost as if
(04:27):
they were constraining her physically. I must talk now, and
then I shall sleep. You must let me talk, and
then I shall sleep. I want you all to understand.
Did you ever know? She went on, seeming to feel
her way for the right phrases, and sinking back into
the pillows with shut eyes. Did you ever know how
(04:48):
I happened to come first to waste water. My father
was John Fleming, Roger Fleming's cousin. He was a dentist
in Brookline. We were very poor when I was a child,
and the first days I remember were of a little
brookline flat, and my mother's sewing at a sewing machine.
My sister Lily was a delicate little baby. Then Lily
(05:12):
was six years younger than I. For days and days
and days of rain, I remember the sewing machine and
the crying of the baby, and my mother murmuring at
the hall door to men who came about bills in
the spring, I had to take the baby out, and
sometimes the wind would chap both our faces, and we
would sit crying in the park. It seems to me
(05:35):
we were always cold. I don't believe children get much
deep impressions of hot weather. Dearest, do you want to
talk now? Sylvia asked tenderly. As the harsh, deep voice paused,
Flora opened the eyes that had been slowly sinking shut
and widened them anxiously. Yes, I must talk, she answered,
(05:57):
and she looked about the silent little group alarmedly, as
if she feared that one of them might have slipped away.
When I was eight and Lily two years old, she
went on, our father died, my mother was left miserably poor,
and I heard enough talk then among her and her
few friends to fear, as only a child can fear,
(06:19):
actual starvation. It was then that an uncle of whom
we had scarcely heard came to see us. That was
Tom Fleming, Roger's father. He had quarreled with my father
years before, and as everything my father touched turned to loss,
so everything that Tom Fleming went into prospered. It was
(06:41):
a railroad venture that made his fortune finally, but everything properties, bonds,
stalks went well with him. He came to my mother's
poor little flat and ah, my god, my god, whispered
Flora forgetting her audience, as she pressed a dark hand
to her eyes and speaking to herself, what a day
(07:03):
that was for me. He asked my mother to bring
her little girls to his country house to waste water,
and tell she should get her bearings. He left money
on the little red tablecloth in the dining room. My
poor mother burst out crying and tried to kiss his hand.
A week later, on a summer afternoon, we got here.
(07:26):
I had never seen the insight of a big house
or the open expanse of the sea before, never been
in a stable yard where there were chickens and cats
and horses, and we had half a dozen horses at wastewater.
Then Uncle Tom's big percherons and riding horses. Why I
couldn't get enough of the stairs. I worked my way
(07:47):
up and down them for days, singing to myself for
pure rapture. It was all a fairy tale to me.
The silver, the meals, the big rooms, What a wonder
land it was. Use Uncle Tom was a widower with
two sons, boys of thirteen and eleven, Roger and Will.
(08:08):
They were out in the stable yards with some puppies
when we got there, and Roger was not too big
a boy to take a little girl cousin under his wing.
He showed me the puppies. He let me name one
of them silver. I have never seen any other puppies
that were to me as strangely important as those were.
Flora went on, her eyes closed, her voice the mere
(08:31):
essence of its usual self. Nor such a lingering early
summer afternoon as that was. It seemed to me my
heart would burst with joy to have supper in the
pantry that was full of maids and sunshine, and such
supplies of cake and butter and milk, and to sleep
in a big, smooth bed in such a great room.
(08:54):
All those early days were filled with anxiety for me.
I was afraid any instant that we might be sent away.
My mother told me long afterward that I cried myself,
almost sick with excitement, when she told me that Uncle
Tom had asked her to stay and take care of
his house for him. I don't remember that day, but
(09:14):
I remember, in my gratitude, telling Roger that I hope
some day he would be out at sea in a wreck,
and that I would save his life. And how he
laughed at me. He was, I suppose, as handsome a
boy as ever lived. It was not that surely. I
was too small a girl to know or care what
real beauty was. But I loved him from the first
(09:37):
instant I saw him, not I think now as other
children love, as other young girls love. There was no
vanity in it. I can say that there was no happiness,
no prettiness. It was agony to me almost from that
first June afternoon. He seemed to me to be in
(09:58):
a class all by himself, whether I liked it or not,
and it was years before I realized it fully. I
had to keep him there. His least word was important.
His kindness made me tremble all over. And if ever
Roger were cross with me, I used to be actually
sick with grief, and my mother would ask him to
(10:20):
come up to my room and let me sob wildly
in his arms and beg him to forgive me. I
never got any pleasure out of it. God knows. It
was constant pain. If he smiled at anyone else, I
was wretched. No matter what he did. His laugh, his voice,
with his horse, his use of his hands, and he
(10:41):
had beautiful hands, was full of magic for me. I
used to pray, to pray that he would not always
seem so wonderful to me that I would see him
in ordinary human daylight. I never did. He was my
whole world. So the years went by, and Uncle Tom died,
and Roger was the heir. Roger was twenty five then,
(11:05):
tall and straight, and so clever that he could do anything.
He rode and he sang, He danced and shot better
than any of his friends. Women were already beginning, Ah,
how women loved him. Will, his brother, had been wild
from his very boyhood. From his fifteenth year, he drank, heavily, gambled.
(11:29):
He and his father had been enemies for a long time.
Uncle Tom had advanced money to Will, great sums of it,
and Will had gambled it away. He left Will a
comfortable fortune. He left Roger waste Water and the rest
of his money. And Roger was everything. He had a manner,
(11:50):
a sweetness, I don't know, a way of seeming interested,
seeming absorbed in what you were telling him. And he
was witty too. What parties I can remember here when
they would all be laughing at him, crying with laughter.
I was twenty when Uncle Tom died. My mother went
(12:10):
on keeping house for Roger and Will, and perhaps she
thought sometimes of what I prayed and prayed might come
to pass, that Roger Fleming and I might be man
and wife, and waste Water her home forever. For years
I had to see him depart for those long visits
of his in Boston when he was ah, Yes, it
(12:31):
wasn't only my imagination, when he was the idol of them,
all faded and followed and imitated by the very best
of them. I had to say good bye to him
when he started off to Europe with beautiful girls in
the party, money, youth, lovely clothes, romantic settings, all against me.
(12:52):
Presently he was thirty and I was twenty five, twenty six,
twenty seven, and then suddenly he seemed for the first
time to see me. I didn't dare believe it at first,
I didn't dare believe it. He would follow me down
to the shore and sit there with Lily and me.
(13:12):
He would come back unexpectedly from Boston or New York.
I would hear his voice as I hear it now. Flow,
Where's flow? Ah? What those days were? They seemed all
rose color. I've come to hate the memory of them now,
But they were heaven then. Sometimes now I find myself
(13:33):
obliged to go over them day after day, and hour
after hour, day after day and hour after hour of
a fool's paradise. One day, he said to me one night,
rather when there was gray moonlight over the garden, and
he and I were walking up and down, and poor
Lily inside at the piano was singing Flow. Why is
(13:56):
it that I have grown to prefer puttering about this
old place with you and lil to any other thing
in the world. Perhaps because you like me, Roger, I said,
I've been ready to bite my tongue out for it
a thousand times in these thirty years, but it brought
me a few more hours of insanity. Then he caught
me in his arms and laughed as he kissed me.
(14:19):
Why that's the way of it, is it? He said?
How long has this been going on? Eh? Always? I
told him, poor little flow, He said, with all you
know of me? Is it like that? Like that? I said,
and he kissed me again. Well, he said, we'll have
to see about this. That was all. Presently I ran
(14:43):
into the house with my heart simply singing, and all
that summer night I lay awake, laughing and crying for joy.
The next morning I hardly dared raise my eyes to him.
It was that next day that your mother came to
waste water, David. It was the very next day. Flora
had been talking with her eyes shut. Now she opened them,
(15:06):
almost as if she were surprised to see the circle
of attentive and serious young faces. Her hand beat the
cover lid restlessly. Your mother was about thirty and a widow,
she said. She had been widowed a few months before
your birth, and you were only three or four weeks old.
She was a beautiful woman, with reddish, thick hair, all
(15:29):
swathed in crape, and with the trailing dresses of the
tiny baby in her arms. Her father was an Argentine planter,
and she was taking you, David back to Rosario, where
she had sisters and cousins. But for some reason, the
boat was a month delaid a strike. Perhaps the service
(15:50):
was very uneven then, and she had written my mother
asking if she might come for a few days to
waste water. Families did more of that sort of thing. Then.
Her husband had been a Fleming, and I remember that
he had once been a vacation with us here when
he was a little boy, David Fleming. She told me
(16:10):
a hundred times afterward that she had written my mother
only because she was so lonely and sad in the
big city. She hardly expected an answer. She knew that
Tom Fleming was dead, she hardly knew anything about Roger
and will. So she came here not six months a widow,
And from the instant she got here, Roger Fleming was
(16:32):
a changed being. I never saw a man so instantly possessed.
The very first night, he was asking me, isn't she beautiful? Flow,
isn't she wonderful? He hung about her. I don't think
he ever thought of me again, or of anything, but Janet,
seven weeks later they were married. She was beautiful. Flora
(16:55):
went on after a dead silence in which none of
the young persons seemed to find the right word, and
in which her hand beat steadily on the bed and
her eyes were shut. She went with him to Boston, Washington, everywhere,
and ten months later she gave him a son, Tom.
She looked at Tom strangely closed her eyes again. My mother,
(17:19):
all this while Flora resumed, had been like a sort
of housekeeper. She was a little, wiry woman, very gray,
as poor Lily was. At the end, two years after
Roger and Janet were married, my mother died, and then
Lily and I felt keenly what our exact position here was,
(17:39):
poor relations in a rich man's house. Roger always was
generous to us. He was the soul of generosity, and
he was prospering as steadily as his father had. And
Janet was kind too. She and Roger sometimes went away
for weeks and left the two little boys with us,
and I remember more than once Roger telling me that
(18:01):
it was only my influence that kept his brother Will
straight at all. Will was like many a young man
in those times. He would have a position for a while,
give it up for different reasons, drink and gamble and
idle for a while, and be persuaded into another position. Again.
It wasn't considered disgraceful then. He was a sweet, good
(18:24):
natured sort of fellow. He would spend weeks here at Wastewater,
perfectly willing to idle about with Lily and Janet and
me and the babies. For David was hardly more and
to have a little pocket money from Roger, and then
he would go over to Keyboard or Crowchester and be
their whole days drinking and playing poker. Sylvia drew a quick,
(18:48):
sharp breath. You mustn't judge your father too harshly, Flora whispered,
moving her troubled eyes to her daughter's face. Nowadays it
sounds far worse than it did then. Almost every family
had such a son, and frequently you would hear even
mothers laughing as they said it was time for Dick
or Jack to marry and settle down. Afterward, Will would
(19:11):
be two or three days sick in bed. The droning,
weary voice presently resumed, and Roger would talk to him
so kindly, begging him to pull himself together and get
a new start. And then Roger would find him a
new position, and Will would come down to dinner rested
and shaved in, well dressed and in high spirits, telling
(19:33):
us all how rich he was going to be. So
I tried to make myself indispensable, and I hoped and
hoped that Lily would marry, marry Will or anybody. As
a sort of justification for my remaining single. I looked
out for you. Boy's roardrobes mothered, Will managed their parties,
(19:53):
managed the servants. Your mother, Janet, went to the opera
with your father one night, she added, opening her eyes
to look at David and Tom. And a day or
two later he telegraphed me from New York that, as
she was not well, he would keep her there until
it was safe to bring her home. That was a
snowy Sunday afternoon. I remember that Will and Lily and
(20:17):
I played games with you little fellows, put you to
bed ourselves. It was almost as if we knew that
you were not to see your mother again. The days
went by, you went back to school, and I knew,
I knew all the time that it was the end.
Ten days later, your mother died, and the day after
(20:37):
the funeral, Roger went away where I never knew he
was gone. For weeks came home, would burst out into
bitter crying at the table, walk up and down the
garden like a madman, and be off again. One day,
about six or seven weeks after Janet's death, he said
to me, in a dark, moody sort of tone, flow,
(21:00):
how long am I to wear mourning outside inside? He said, passionately,
I shall mourn her all my life. A year I
told him. It was a dark, misty day I remember,
with a garden full of thick, cold fog and lights
burning at the lunch table. He and I had come
(21:20):
out and were walking along the cliff road in the mist.
We could hear the boys ringing, ringing away toward keypwort flow.
He said, when that time is up, will you forgive
me and marry me? You and I understand each other.
I want to be anchored. I want to be done
with the world and make this my world. And he
(21:43):
looked back toward the garden in the house gladly, Roger,
I said, And for a long while we did not
speak again. Then he said to me, will you tell
Lily and the boys and will that it is to
be that way? And I said, yes, you remember, David, Yes,
I remember your telling us that you were to be
(22:05):
married to him, David's voice said, strangely, vital against that
other monotonous voice. Sometimes, but not often, we would talk
of it quietly, Flora resumed, not that I was ever
happy about it, but I told myself I would be.
I told myself that it should. It must mean happiness
(22:27):
to us both Janet night in January, this was perhaps March.
A few days later in April, a missus Kant, whom
Roger had admired immensely as a beautiful girl when he
was hardly more than a boy, when he was, in fact,
in college, came here with her daughter for a visit.
(22:48):
I don't think the mother was more than thirty seven
or eight. She had been a great bell and had
married at eighteen. She was plump and pretty, covered with jewels,
full of life, and had left her husband and little
boy in Canada to bring this child from a school
in Baltimore. She had just this hair, Flora said, laying
(23:10):
her dark, thin hand upon Gabriella's tawny, rich masses as
the girl knelt beside her. The girl, Cecily, was seventeen,
dark and pale faced. She looked like a child. She
had her hair in a braid. There were other old
friends in the party. A group of them had come
down from Boston to see Roger Fleming, and were very gay.
(23:34):
I don't know that I ever heard greater laughing or
chattering here, or that we ever served more formal meals.
I had my hands full. Loie saw more of little
Cecily Kent than I did, and she told me one day,
not that it interested me particularly then, that the girl
had been attending a convent in Montreal and longed to
(23:56):
be a nun, and that her mother had said that
she would rather see her dead. They were only here
a short week. It was spring, and there were walks
and picnics, and bridge and music and billiards. The time
flew by, and it was on the afternoon when the
Cans were going their baggage in the hall, and when
(24:17):
the other guests had gone, that Cicely Kent burst out crying,
and Roger put his arm about her. The moment I
saw that my heart turned to water. That moment, Flora said,
with sudden bitter violence, raising herself upon her elbow, all
my hopes died, all my trust in him. It was
(24:38):
my curse that I could not stop loving him as well.
The cold winter sunset, streaming through the bare woods beyond
the stable yard, shone red upon the cheap, cheerful paper
of the walls, and struck Flora's grizzled hair with a
tinge of blood, and shadowed clearly behind her the hand
she raised. They had already been met and wife forty
(25:01):
eight hours. She said. I think Roger Fleming felt remorse
for the first time in his life when he saw
the mother's face. Perhaps life had always been too easy
for him. Perhaps it had really never occurred to him
that a few months a widower, and with his two
little sons, and with his forty years, he might not
(25:21):
be thought an ideal match for a dreamy girl of seventeen.
He had always been so courted, so wanted. At first,
missus Kent talked of annalling the marriage. She was more
like a woman suddenly smitten with insanity than any one
I ever saw before or since. She grasped the girl
by the arm, and her eyes blazed and her face
(25:44):
was ashen. No, she said, you shall not have her.
She's hardly more than a baby. She knows nothing of life.
Mamma Cicely said, crying and clinging to her. We were
married two days ago. I am his wife. I remember
the mother looking at her, and the terrible silence there
(26:06):
was in the hall. Lily began to whimper beside me,
and I caught her by the wrist. There were servants
staring from the dining room doorway. You cissy, missus Kent said,
in a whisper. Cicely went down on her knees, sobbing,
almost screaming like a child, and caught her mother about
(26:26):
her knees. Cicely, Roger said, trying to raise her, You
are mine. Now. Your mother cannot hurt you. You are
my wife. Oh, let me go with my mother. She sobbed.
I hate you, she is, in fact your wife, missus
Kent said, looking over Cicely's head at him. Roger nodded.
(26:49):
Then you must stay with your husband, My child, missus
Kent said, very gravely. And may God punish you through
your children. Roger Fleming, she said, for what you have
done to mine. Go tear the buds from those rose trees,
she said, pointing to the garden. Go strip the new
green fruit from your trees, and you will harvest what
(27:10):
you must harvest. Now, your little boys there playing in
the drive are better fitted for life than she is.
And she turned to Moses, the colored butler we had.
Then Moses put my bags in the carriage, she said.
Nobody spoke as she went away. Cicely lay on the
(27:30):
floor moaning, Roger on one knee beside her, talking naturally
and kindly. She never saw her mother, or her father
or her brother again. I heard long afterward that the pretty,
cheerful mother had died and the father married again. They
they would be your people, Gabriella. You could easily trace them.
(27:53):
Cicely had been three days a wife, but she had
lost her husband then. She never knew it, but I did,
and I God forgive me. I was glad when she
clung to her mother and screamed that she hated him.
A look came into Roger Fleming's face that only I
could understand. It was as if she had said, I'm
(28:14):
seventeen and he is forty. I knew nothing, He knew everything.
My only loves were a daughter's love, a sister's love.
He demanded more of me, and if I had it,
I would loathe myself forgiving it. He has robbed me
of my mother and my father, and my body and
my soul. She cried all that night, would not come
(28:39):
downstairs or eat, or look at him or talk to him.
She cried for many days, and Roger used all his
patience and all his kindness trying to console her, But
he never gave her love again. He never had it
to give after that day. She had cut him to
the very heart. And the Flemings are all proud, and
(29:01):
none of them ever prouder than he. After a while,
she began to slip about the house like a shadow.
She had never been pretty except for her eyes that
were like Gabriella's hair, and she grew so thin and
so white that she seemed all eyes. She would have
no company, no entertaining. She seemed even to dread talking
(29:23):
to Roger, and was fondest of you children, and poor Lily.
It was never any definite illness at first, just the
doctor for one pain or another, and Roger taking her
in for consultations and advice. They all gave the same advice.
She needed amusement and relief from mental strain, but that
(29:45):
was one thing he couldn't buy her. She used to
lay out there in the garden telling Lily about her
mother and Father, end of Chapter eighteen, Part one,
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