THE BLACK FLEMINGS
THE
BLACK FLEMINGS
BY
KATHLEEN NORRIS
PALO ALTO EDITION
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
1929
COPYRIGHT, 1924, 1925, 1926, BY KATHLEEN
NORRIS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED
IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY
LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
THE BLACK FLEMINGS
THE BLACK FLEMINGS
CHAPTER I
Once through the dark old iron gates, he seemed tohave left the warm and friendly autumn day, the warmand friendly world, behind him.
David Fleming laughed half aloud at the fancy andstepped back into the rambling country road, wherewheel tracks were so quickly obliterated in the loose-driftingsand, to contrast once more, for his own amusement,the peaceful dreaming landscape in the afternoonsunlight and the sinister shadows of Wastewater.
Five miles away along the rugged coast lay Crowchester,the little fishing village whose activities tingedthe fresh salty air, even here, with the odour of saltedfish. Between Crowchester and Wastewater, besidewhose forbidding great gates he stood, ran the irregularroad, rising through dunes, skirting wind-twisted grovesof pine and fir, disappearing into ragged hollows toemerge again on turfy bluffs, and finally winding inhere toward the old brick house that lay hidden behindthese high walls.
On his right lay the shore, rocky, steep, rough, withpebbles complaining as the tide dragged them to and fro,surf hammering restlessly among the rocks or brimmingand ebbing with tireless regularity over the scooped stone[2]of the pools. No two inches of it, no two drops of itsimmensity ever the same; it held him now, as it had heldhim for so many hours in his very babyhood, in a sort oftranced contemplation.
The sun was setting in angry red beyond the forestbehind him, but a hard and brilliant light still lay on thewater, and the waves were sculptured harshly in silver-tippedsteel. Where the old brick wall of Wastewaterdescended to the shore enough sand had been stored inthe lee of the wall to form a triangular strip of beach,and here scurfy suds were eddying lazily, hemmed backfrom the tide by a great jammed log and only stirrednow and then by a fringe of the surf, which formed newbubbles even while it pricked the old.
On the sharp irregular fall of the cliff, distorted, wind-blownpines and tight-woven mallows clung, with thehardy smaller growths of the seaside: blown blue lupin,coarse sedge and furzy grasses, yellow-topped odoroussage and dry fennel. About their exposed, tenaciouslyclinging roots was tangled all t