Free The House without the Door by Elizabeth Daly Page B

airily: "I didn't expect any help from Gregson while he lived."
    "Bellfield probably wasn't highly aware of the arts. I dare say you didn't get much encouragement in your art while you lived there."
    "I never lived in Bellfield."
    "Didn't?"
    "No; Gregson's house was the place where I ate and slept."
    "A dour household, perhaps."
    "It never seemed so to me; I wasn't part of it. Nobody in it cared about me, or I about them—except poor old Minnie, of course, and she loves everybody." He leaned back against the cushion, and for a while his archaic profile looked motionless as stone. Then he said: "Gregson wasn't the kind of person you like or dislike, and I felt no particular gratitude to him; he took me in because he was fond of my father. He ignored me, after he found that I was determined to dance. He would certainly have thrown me out, only my father was his best friend. I don't know how Father put up with him; but Gregson used to come to our place, and he liked it. He was lucky—you don't meet people like my father every day. Gregson would never have come within miles of knowing him if they hadn't gone to college together."
    "Didn't Gregson recognize the obligation?"
    "We didn't beg of him, if that's what you mean. My father died of pneumonia; we didn't exactly roll in luxury, and he never did take care of himself."
    "So Mr. Gregson adopted you—and let it go at that."
    "He didn't adopt me legally, and he certainly let it go at that. I couldn't have borrowed money from him. I think poor old Minnie Stoner is the only person I ever did borrow money from; but she was a human being, you know."
    "Wasn't Mrs. Gregson a human being?"
    "I didn't know her well; she was just an uninteresting woman to me, and of course she had no money of her own to give away."
    "Miss Warren?"
    Locke turned his head and lifted an eyebrow. "Cecilia Warren hadn't a penny; and besides, she'd had all the humanity killed out of her. She was for herself, first, last, and all the time. You don't know much about poor relations. You don't know what it's like to be a hanger-on." Locke smiled. "Minnie used to go down to the cellar in the middle of the night in midwinter and stoke up the old hot-air furnace so we shouldn't freeze to death next morning in the attic. Gregson was sure to make a row, too, if he thought the consumption of coal seemed abnormal. Minnie used to make sandwiches for us and hide them in our rooms so that we could have a snack when we came in late. When she lent me that money to pay for my lessons, all she had on earth was some few hundreds she'd saved from her husband's insurance. I'm glad that the poor old girl has that annuity and a snug berth with Mrs. G."
    Locke apparently had no intention of asking questions. Gamadge said: "Mrs. G. seems to think more of you than you do of her."
    "Oh—she's told you that she gives Celia and me allowances?"
    "She's left you and Miss Warren all the Gregson money in her will."
    "She'll live forever."
    "Well, let us hope so; but it's a compliment, at least." Gamadge studied him with a certain amusement.
    "Why shouldn't she leave us the money? Celia's her only relative, and she knows Gregson expected her to look out for me—if anything happened to him."
    "You're sure of that?"
    "She told us so. But I appreciate the compliment, as you call it; I go up to see her at that dreary place near Burford—go up two or three times a year in my old wreck of a car. For a busy man like me, that's something."
    "You go up to see her because she's promised to leave you money?"
    "About a hundred thousand; do you know any better reason for paying a visit?" Locke's thin mouth widened. Gamadge also smiled, as he said: "Is that why Miss Warren goes?"
    "I assume that it is."
    "Mrs. Gregson certainly did very little for Miss Warren in a social way, while you were all living in Bellfield."
    "The Gregsons did very little for themselves in a social way. Gregson grubbed for money and played golf; Aunt Vina, as I