Читать книгу The Doom of Stark House - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 7

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A premature twilight soon enveloped them. The horses found the going more difficult with every mile. Drifts seemed to pile up in no time. Jacques Bonner’s orders to the animals were scarcely audible above the screaming wind. It seemed appropriate that Chester should alleviate the tedium of the journey by giving Hal some vivid mental pictures of the Stark history at Beyond.

“My father fell heir to it,” he was saying in his mild voice. “There was five thousand acres of timber in all that my Grandad owned. Dad was working as foreman of his gang—Jacques Bonner was one of the gang. They were very young men together.”

“So that’s how the Stark-Bonner combination started, huh?” Hal asked.

“That’s how Jacques and Dad got acquainted,” Chester sighed. “How the combination started I don’t know. All I do know is that Dad added the two wings to Stark House that make it its present size. About that time, as I understand it, Jacques came into the Stark household. My mother died around then, too. Mrs. Bonner has taken charge of the house since that time. Now she supervises two half-breed cousins of Jacques who’ve also been with us many years. Their half-breed husbands have helped Jacques and his son Rene about the grounds. Jacques, of course, does little or nothing—confound him. And I’ve reason to believe Dad has paid him handsomely all these years—they’re all well paid—every slinking man and woman servant of the Bonner clan!” he added indignantly.

“In other words, the Bonner family seem to constitute your father’s entire staff of employees.”

“Exactly. And the Bonner family are hated in this part of the country. The talk Dad takes from them never fails to furnish a subject for the folks at Sainte Beauve—they say down there that Jacques Bonner is master at Stark House; Tallman Stark is merely a puppet. Deucedly bad idea for folks to get of my father, but I’m afraid you’ll not be long in discovering that it’s true.”

“But, I can believe...”

“All I ask you to do is to see it for yourself and then give me your candid opinion,” Chester interposed heatedly. “I want you to watch and see if the opinion of Sainte Beauve is correct when they say that Dad has practically buried himself at Beyond because he’s afraid of Jacques Bonner. See if you can see it. Dad has no friends of his own—he welcomes only friends of my sisters and myself, and even then it’s only a sort of fearful welcome on his part. So you see why I warned you that Stark House isn’t a cheerful place.”

“Poor Ches, will you stop worrying about the effect of Stark House on the Keen personality!” Hal laughed. But suddenly he sobered, then: “Just tell me one thing, Ches—what was the idea of your father sticking it out in such a lonesome place as you represent Beyond to be?”

“He’s had to do it,” Chester explained. “It was in Grandad’s will that Dad, in order to inherit the estate, must live in Stark House as long as the foundation stands. He wanted Dad to live there in case Harrington Stark (Dad’s only brother) might some day return to Beyond. Harrington Stark was one of those worthless blighters in his youth, I guess. Grandad threw him out and disinherited him, then repented it before he died. He provided in the will that Dad should share equally with his brother if Harrington should ever return. So Dad has stayed and waited.”

“And Harrington has never returned, has he?”

“No. It’s grieved Dad, too, I guess, for the mere mention of Uncle Harrington’s name seems to give him pain. We’re careful lately not to mention him at all.”

Hal said nothing; there was nothing he could say. He could only stare ahead of the sleigh into the vast, black abyss of the night and speculate as to just what was the matter at Beyond.