Chapter L

by William Somerset Maugham

　　I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place.Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but theyhave always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They arestrangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they haveknown from childhood or the populous streets in which theyhave played, remain but a place of passage. They may spendtheir whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloofamong the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it isthis sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in thesearch for something permanent, to which they may attachthemselves. Perhaps some deeprooted atavism urges thewanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dimbeginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place towhich he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the homehe sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has neverseen before, among men he has never known, as though they werefamiliar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.I told Tiare the story of a man I had known at St. Thomas'sHospital. He was a Jew named Abraham, a blond, rather stoutyoung man, shy and very unassuming; but he had remarkable gifts.He entered the hospital with a scholarship, and duringthe five years of the curriculum gained every prize that wasopen to him. He was made house-physician and house-surgeon.His brilliance was allowed by all. Finally he was elected toa position on the staff, and his career was assured. So faras human things can be predicted, it was certain that he wouldrise to the greatest heights of his profession. Honours andwealth awaited him. Before he entered upon his new duties hewished to take a holiday, and, having no private means,he went as surgeon on a tramp steamer to the Levant.It did not generally carry a doctor, but one of the seniorsurgeons at the hospital knew a director of the line,and Abraham was taken as a favour.In a few weeks the authorities received his resignation of thecoveted position on the staff. It created profoundastonishment, and wild rumours were current. Whenever a mandoes anything unexpected, his fellows ascribe it to the mostdiscreditable motives. But there was a man ready to step intoAbraham's shoes, and Abraham was forgotten. Nothing more washeard of him. He vanished.It was perhaps ten years later that one morning on board ship,about to land at Alexandria, I was bidden to line up with theother passengers for the doctor's examination. The doctor wasa stout man in shabby clothes, and when he took off his hat Inoticed that he was very bald. I had an idea that I had seenhim before. Suddenly I remembered."Abraham," I said.He turned to me with a puzzled look, and then, recognizing me,seized my hand. After expressions of surprise on either side,hearing that I meant to spend the night in Alexandria, heasked me to dine with him at the English Club. When we metagain I declared my astonishment at finding him there. It wasa very modest position that he occupied, and there was abouthim an air of straitened circumstance. Then he told me his story.When he set out on his holiday in the Mediterranean hehad every intention of returning to London and his appointmentat St. Thomas's. One morning the tramp docked at Alexandria,and from the deck he looked at the city, white in thesunlight, and the crowd on the wharf; he saw the natives intheir shabby gabardines, the blacks from the Soudan, the noisythrong of Greeks and Italians, the grave Turks in tarbooshes,the sunshine and the blue sky; and something happened to him.He could not describe it. It was like a thunder-clap, hesaid, and then, dissatisfied with this, he said it was like arevelation. Something seemed to twist his heart, and suddenlyhe felt an exultation, a sense of wonderful freedom. He felthimself at home, and he made up his mind there and then, in aminute, that he would live the rest of his life in Alexandria.He had no great difficulty in leaving the ship, and in twenty-fourhours, with all his belongings, he was on shore."The Captain must have thought you as mad as a hatter," I smiled."I didn't care what anybody thought. It wasn't I that acted,but something stronger within me. I thought I would go to alittle Greek hotel, while I looked about, and I felt I knewwhere to find one. And do you know, I walked straight there,and when I saw it, I recognised it at once.""Had you been to Alexandria before?""No; I'd never been out of England in my life."Presently he entered the Government service, and there he hadbeen ever since."Have you never regretted it?""Never, not for a minute. I earn just enough to live upon,and I'm satisfied. I ask nothing more than to remain as I amtill I die. I've had a wonderful life."I left Alexandria next day, and I forgot about Abraham till alittle while ago, when I was dining with another old friend inthe profession, Alec Carmichael, who was in England on short leave.I ran across him in the street and congratulated him onthe knighthood with which his eminent services during thewar had been rewarded. We arranged to spend an eveningtogether for old time's sake, and when I agreed to dine withhim, he proposed that he should ask nobody else, so that wecould chat without interruption. He had a beautiful old housein Queen Anne Street, and being a man of taste he hadfurnished it admirably. On the walls of the diningroom I sawa charming Bellotto, and there was a pair of Zoffanys that I envied.When his wife, a tall, lovely creature in cloth of gold,had left us, I remarked laughingly on the change in hispresent circumstances from those when we had both been medicalstudents. We had looked upon it then as an extravagance todine in a shabby Italian restaurant in the Westminster Bridge Road.Now Alec Carmichael was on the staff of half a dozen hospitals.I should think he earned ten thousand a year, and hisknighthood was but the first of the honours which mustinevitably fall to his lot."I've done pretty well," he said, "but the strange thing isthat I owe it all to one piece of luck.""What do you mean by that?""Well, do you remember Abraham? He was the man who had the future.When we were students he beat me all along the line.He got the prizes and the scholarships that I went in for.I always played second fiddle to him. If he'd kept on he'd bein the position I'm in now. That man had a genius for surgery.No one had a look in with him. When he wasappointed Registrar at Thomas's I hadn't a chance of gettingon the staff. I should have had to become a G.P., and youknow what likelihood there is for a G.P. ever to get out ofthe common rut. But Abraham fell out, and I got the job.That gave me my opportunity.""I dare say that's true.""It was just luck. I suppose there was some kink in Abraham.Poor devil, he's gone to the dogs altogether. He's got sometwopenny-halfpenny job in the medical at Alexandria --sanitary officer or something like that. I'm told he liveswith an ugly old Greek woman and has half a dozen scrofulous kids.The fact is, I suppose, that it's not enough to have brains.The thing that counts is character. Abraham hadn't got character."Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal ofcharacter to throw up a career after half an hour'smeditation, because you saw in another way of living a moreintense significance. And it required still more characternever to regret the sudden step. But I said nothing, and AlecCarmichael proceeded reflectively:"Of course it would be hypocritical for me to pretend that Iregret what Abraham did. After all, I've scored by it."He puffed luxuriously at the long Corona he was smoking."But if I weren't personally concerned I should be sorry at the waste.It seems a rotten thing that a man should make such a hash of life."I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life.Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions thatplease you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life;and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand ayear and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on whatmeaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge tosociety, and the claim of the individual. But again I held mytongue, for who am I to argue with a knight?