"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 a little Greek hotel, while I looked about, and I felt I knew where 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 had been 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 am till I die.I've had a wonderful life."I left Alexandria next day, and I forgot about Abraham till a little while ago, when I was dining with another old friend in the profession, Alec Carmichael, who was in England on short leave.I ran across him in the street and congratulated him on the knighthood with which his eminent services during the war had been rewarded.We arranged to spend an evening together for old time's sake, and when I agreed to dine with him, he proposed that he should ask nobody else, so that we could chat without interruption.He had a beautiful old house in Queen Anne Street, and being a man of taste he had furnished it admirably.On the walls of the diningroom I saw a 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 his present circumstances from those when we had both been medical students.We had looked upon it then as an extravagance to dine 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 his knighthood was but the first of the honours which must inevitably fall to his lot.
"I've done pretty well," he said, "but the strange thing is that 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 be in the position I'm in now.That man had a genius for surgery.No one had a look in with him.When hewas appointed Registrar at Thomas's I hadn't a chance of getting on the staff.I should have had to become a G.P., and you know what likelihood there is for a G.P.ever to get out of the 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 some twopenny- halfpenny job in the medical at Alexandria -- sanitary officer or something like that.I'm told he lives with 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 of character to throw up a career after half an hour's meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance.And it required still more character never to regret the sudden step.But I said nothing, and Alec Carmichael proceeded reflectively:
"Of course it would be hypocritical for me to pretend that I regret 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 that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual.But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight?
