Part 29 (2/2)
Spargo drummed his fingers on his blotting-pad. He was thinking hard.
”How old is your father?” he asked suddenly.
”He was fifty-nine a few weeks ago,” answered Evelyn.
”And how old are you, and how old is your sister?” demanded Spargo.
”I am twenty, and Jessie is nearly nineteen.”
”Where were you born?”
”Both of us at San Gregorio, which is in the San Jose province of Argentina, north of Monte Video.”
”Your father was in business there?”
”He was in business in the export trade, Mr. Spargo. There's no secret about that. He exported all sorts of things to England and to France--skins, hides, wools, dried salts, fruit. That's how he made his money.”
”You don't know how long he'd been there when you were born?”
”No.”
”Was he married when he went out there?”
”No, he wasn't. We do know that. He's told us the circ.u.mstances of his marriage, because they were romantic. When he sailed from England to Buenos Ayres, he met on the steamer a young lady who, he said, was like himself, relationless and nearly friendless. She was going out to Argentina as a governess. She and my father fell in love with each other, and they were married in Buenos Ayres soon after the steamer arrived.”
”And your mother is dead?”
”My mother died before we came to England. I was eight years old, and Jessie six, then.”
”And you came to England--how long after that?”
”Two years.”
”So that you've been in England ten years. And you know nothing whatever of your father's past beyond what you've told me?”
”Nothing--absolutely nothing.”
”Never heard him talk of--you see, according to your account, your father was a man of getting on to forty when he went out to Argentina.
He must have had a career of some sort in this country. Have you never heard him speak of his boyhood? Did he never talk of old times, or that sort of thing?”
”I never remember hearing my father speak of any period antecedent to his marriage,” replied Evelyn.
”I once asked him a question about his childhood.” said Jessie. ”He answered that his early days had not been very happy ones, and that he had done his best to forget them. So I never asked him anything again.”
”So that it really comes to this,” remarked Spargo. ”You know nothing whatever about your father, his family, his fortunes, his life, beyond what you yourselves have observed since you were able to observe?
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