CHAPTER I.
I AM Garthoyle; but the Gardens were not called after me. My uncle, Algernon Garthoyle, built them, a triangle of twenty-one houses in the heart of Mayfair, and called them after himself. When, after the poor old chap's funeral, his will was read, and I found that he had left them to me, I was indeed surprised. I had always taken it for granted that he would leave them to that strenuous politician, my cousin, Herbert Polkington. So had Herbert; and he did look disgusted. I myself should have thought deucedly lucky if my uncle had left me half of the hundred thousand pounds that he had invested outside the Gardens; the Gardens themselves, twenty-five thousand a year, sounded too good to be true.
But there is always a fly in the ointment, and the clause in the will in which the Gardens were left to me ended with the condition that I should manage them myself.
Well, there was no help for it. I must buckle to. The first thing to do was to get help. As I motored down to the Temple and climbed the stairs to Jack Thurman's rooms in the King's Bench Walk, Garthoyle Gardens, all the twenty-one houses, weighed heavily on my mind.
Jack himself opened his door to me. I greeted him gloomily, and we went into his sitting room.
“Jack,” I said sadly, “within the last two hours I've become one of the workers of the world.”
“Never!” cried Jack. “Well, I am glad to hear it! I've always been worrying you to stop leading your idle, rackety life, and use those brains of yours.”
“And you call yourself my friend!” I said reproachfully
“Well, you have brains, you know; all vertebrates have brains. What's happened?”
“I've become the owner of Garthoyle Gardens.”
“Well, but—but that only means you've thirty thousand a year to spend on racketing about instead of five,” said Jack, with a perplexed air.
“No; it means that I shall have no time to racket about. You didn't know my Uncle Algernon. Garthoyle Gardens were his passion; they were almost his monomania. I dined with him once every month—a family dinner, don't you know?—just he and I. And I give you my word he bored me to death with his talk about those Gardens. I didn't let him see it, of course, for I was fond of the old chap. He knew everything about the Gardens—the history of every tenant in every house; how he made his money, if he hadn't inherited it; how many sons and daughters he had; how many servants—male and female—he kept; how many horses, carriages, and motor cars.”
“He must have had a capacious brain,” said Jack.
“Oh, he kept a record of all these things in a big book, like a ledger. He even entered in it all the births, deaths, and marriages that took place in the Gardens. At one time, when I dined with him, I used to ask him how many babies had been vaccinated in the Gardens during the month. But I gave that up. It set him talking about the Gardens at once, and I was the sooner bored. Those Gardens were the apple of his eye—yes, the apple of his eye.”
“Then I wonder that he left them to you,” said Jack frankly.
“So did I. He was always down on me—worse than you—for my idle life. He wanted me to take my duties as a hereditary legislator more seriously, take lessons in elocution, engage a political expert as my secretary, and deliver such speeches as he composed for me to the House of Lords. He was always grumbling at my idleness. I should have thought myself deucedly lucky if he'd left me fifty thousand pounds. And now I've got the Gardens! But—Garthoyle Gardens are a gilded pill.”
“I should like to have the swallowing of it,” said Jack, and he smacked his lips. “But what do you mean?”
“I mean that Garthoyle Gardens mean the strenuous life. They are left to me on the condition that I am my own house agent, that I run them myself. I've got to interview proposed tenants, examine their standing, their references, and their leases; I've got to see to all matters connected with the upkeep of the Gardens, estimates, and contracts for repairs. I've got to run those Gardens ever so much more than my uncle did himself.”
“Good! Excellent!” cried Jack.
“And I thought you were my friend,” I said again reproachfully.
“Do you all the good in the world,” grinned Jack. “And if you fail to fulfill the condition you lose the property?”
“No; that's where my uncle had me. There's no such provision. If I accept the bequest, it's left entirely to my honor to fulfill the condition. Of course, I accept it. No one refuses twenty-five thousand a year.”
“Hardly,” said Jack.
“Besides, I want money. It's been the deuce of a job to keep up the title on five thousand a year; and I hate having to let Garth Royal to that Hamburg money lender.”
“Yes; that certainly is a nuisance,” said Jack.
“But taking the Gardens on these terms means chaining a log—a gold log—round my neck for the rest of my life. I can't go off to the States for six months, as I did last year. I can't go shooting in Uganda again—not for long enough to be worth while. You see, my uncle has shown such utter confidence in me that I can't go back on him. Hard labor is what it means for me.”
“You'll soon get used to work,” consoled Jack.
I shook my head.
“I'm very doubtful about that. Mine is an untrammeled spirit. And there is also terrible danger attached to th bequest. My uncle's last words in the document containing these conditions were that he was sure I should grow as fond of the Gardens as he was himself. That would be awful. I might grow to talk of nothing else, choke off my friends one by one by boring them about the Gardens, and bring myself to an old age of lonely desolation. Think on it.”
“I can't,” said Jack.
“Well, you see how things are. I'm one of the workers of the world—in for the strenuous life of the house agent. Now, what I want is a right-hand man. I want you. I'll give you a thousand a year, and you'll give me all the time you can spare from the Bar.”
Jack's eyes opened wide, and they shone. He had done brilliant things at Oxford; but that period had come to an end, and he was now in the briefless stage of his barrister's career and hard up. Then his face fell, and he shook his head.
“My good Garth, it's very nice of you to make this offer, but it's absurd. You can get a clerk for a hundred and fifty a year who will give you all his time and do everything for you.”
“You're wrong,” I said. “A clerk can't do what I want. I want some one to teach me the work—to explain everything to me from the beginning patiently. And, above all, I want some one to keep me up to my work. That's the important thing. No clerk would do that. He'd always be saving me the trouble. You're the only man who can really help me to carry out my uncle's wishes, and I must have you. It's settled. There's nothing more to be said about it.”
Jack seemed to think that there was more to be said about it, and he said it for nearly an hour. But since I was doomed to the strenuous life, I thought I might as well begin; and I was strenuous with him. In fact, I wore him down to a compromise. He agreed to become my right-hand man on a salary of five hundred a year; and I was very glad to get him.
The next day I fully realized that I had burned my boats—for the first time in my life I had an occupation. I settled down to prepare for it gloomily. moved from Mount Street to my uncle's house in Garthoyle Gardens, Number Eighteen.
As I have said, the Gardens are a triangle of twenty-one houses, seven houses on either side, and seven at the base. They look out on a triangular garden in the middle, of which all the occupants of the houses have the use. Number Eighteen is in the center of the base of the triangle; and it affords a good view of the whole of it.
My uncle had made the library, on the first floor, his watch tower: and I am sorry to say that he had carried his vigilance to the point of having two pairs of extremely powerful field glasses on a little table beside the window at which he used to sit. I say that I am sorry, because when I picked up the largest pair and turned them on to Number Three, I not only got a perfect view of the Luddingtons at lunch, but also I got a perfect view of their being acrimonious with one another. It is hardly fair that one should know so much about one's tenants.
It was quite plain to me that to be a real house agent I must have an office; and it was also quite plain that it must be in the house, so that I could always step into it without having to make a tiresome journey. I decided that I would not use the library, as my uncle had done, but that I would fit up a pleasant room on the ground floor, looking out on the garden at the back of the house, as a complete office, with desks and pigeonholes and a safe.
I did not bother Jack about this; I was paying him for legal help. I motored up to Oxford Street and along it till I found a likely-looking shop, and there I ordered everything that seemed right. When the room had been fitted up, I had all the books and documents connected with the Gardens moved into it from the offices of Messrs. Siddle & Wodgett, who had acted as my uncle's house agents.
When they had all been brought in and put tidily away, and at last I stood in my own complete office, I had a proud sense of being truly one of the workers of the world. Then it occurred to me that I needed some one to work the typewriter; I could not do it myself—not properly. I tried.
Jack told me that the best way to get some one was to advertise; and I advertised for a lady typist, stenographer, and bookkeeper, as he suggested. But he was not at hand when I wrote out that advertisement, and we had not discussed the question of salary. Therefore, I offered three guineas a week, which seemed to me fair to begin with. I got my first experience of what a hard life a house agent's is.
I invited applicants for the post to call at ten. At nine, when I got up, I heard a good deal of noise out in the Gardens, and I observed that Mowart, my man, was pale and scared.
Mowart is not allowed to speak to me before breakfast, but I saw that he was dying to speak, and I said:
“What's the matter with you, Mowart? Has there been an earthquake in the night?”
“No, your lordship. But there's some young persons waiting to see your lordship,” said Mowart.
“That's all right. I advertised for them,” I said.
“There's a good many young persons, your lordship,” said Mowart, in a shaky voice.
I went to the window, and my eyes and mouth opened wide as I gazed down on a surging, seething sea of wide-spreading hats. Among them rose scores of policemen's helmets, and a column of police was marching into the triangle through its apex. For a moment I thought that I had assembled around my door half England's womanhood, and all the metropolitan police.
“Ain't it awful, your lordship?” said Mowart, over my shoulder.
And I could scarcely hear him for the volume of shrill sound that rose from that female sea.
His voice recalled me to myself. I remembered that in great emergencies England looks to her peers; and with an effort I got my mouth shut.
“I shall have a wide choice,” I said calmly; and I went to my bath. I did not trust my chin to Mowart's hands that morning; they were too shaky.
“I suppose I must interview them—after breakfast,” I said calmly.
“All them thousands?” quavered Mowart.
“If I have to do it to get what I want,” I replied firmly. And I went in to breakfast.
At breakfast, Richards, my uncle's old butler, was in such an emotional condition, clattering dishes and dropping plates, that I had to pause to assure him—in a shout, for the volume of shrill chattering was deafening—that women did not bite—often.
After breakfast, I began to interview the applicants. Ten policemen admitted them, one at a time, through the front door. I sat down at my desk in the office, and asked them questions and wrote down their answers and qualifications in a most businesslike way. At the end of the interview, each one was let out by the back door.
Of the first hundred applicants, forty-three were actual typists, the other fifty-seven, as far as I could make out, had come just for the pleasure of a little conversation with a peer. Some of them took it blushing, others did not. I was much touched by their devotion to the Upper House, but they rather wasted my time, and you cannot be strenuous and have your time wasted, too. I grew rather short with that kind before the end of the morning.
The hundred and eleventh girl, Miss Delicia Wishart, was the girl I wanted. She was fully qualified; she spoke and looked as if she were capable; and she was undoubtedly attractive, with a soft, pleasant voice. I thought that I should work better with an attractive assistant. I engaged her.