The Trey o’ Hearts

He had every legitimate reason to be bored. He had squeezed the orange of amusement dry and had nothing else to do but be bored. And this was England, this was June, this was his twenty-seventh summer; a combination of circumstances so alluring that with almost any other right-minded man it would have proved resistless.

He was, outwardly, a very ordinary person; that is to say, normally sane and good-looking, well-mannered, well cared for, well dressed. In other respects, his was a singular personality. Since childhood he had worked hard, for no good reason that he could see, at learning his duty (and pleasure) in that state of life into which it had pleased God to call him— but he had yet to earn an honest penny. He was master of a dozen-odd arts and crafts which had thus far rewarded him with nothing but ennui. He possessed and maintained in prime condition the body of an athlete, which served him to no particular end. He knew more about most things, from cabbages to kings, than did ninety-nine out of every hundred denizens of his world, but he didn’t know how to avoid boredom. The sum of his wisdom on this subject was to the effect that ennui was inescapable; being good was frightfully wearing on one; misbehaving was worse.

Normally, Mr. Law did behave himself; he was made of the stuff that riches cannot spoil. Left to himself, he would far rather stand at the wheel of a motor boat than beside that of a roulette layout; he preferred playing polo to playing the ponies; hitting the high spots along Montmartre was less amusing, in his esteem, than sailing comfortably over them at an altitude of several thousand feet; while it was never his notion of fun to gulp bromo seltzer as an antidote for last night, and then cocktails to counteract the antidote.

But there were times when it was strongly borne in upon him that he must either break out in some unique and spontaneous manner or blow up. At such times history was apt to be manufactured in bulk. And this—this day of an English June—was one of those times. Mr. Queumvas is uneasily aware of the unrest simmering within him; very much, no doubt, as Vesuvius is periodically conscious of its divine discontent.

His chair stood by an open window, below which lay an old English garden in full flower, the property of the club and its boast. Through the window a half-hearted breeze wafted gusts of air soporific and heavy with the breath of roses.

Mr. Law drank deep of it, and despite his spiritual unrest, sighed slightly and shut his eyes.

An unspoken word troubled the deeps of his consciousness so that old memories stirred and struggled to its surface. The word was “Rose,” and for the time seemed to be the name neither of a woman nor a flower, but oddly of both, as though the two things were one.