MAYHEW

The lives of most men are determined by their environment. They accept their circumstances not only with resignation but even with good will.

Hahaha!... They are like street-cars running contentedly on their rails and they despise the sprightly flivver that dashes in and out of the traffic and speeds so jauntily across the open country. I respect them, however. They are good citizens, good husbands, and good fathers, and of course somebody has to pay the taxes; but I do not find them exciting. No… I am fascinated by the men, few enough in all conscience, who take life in their own hands and seem to mould it to their own liking.

It may be that we have no such thing as free will, but at all events we have the illusions of it.

At a crossroad it does seem to us that we might go either to the right or to the left and, the choice once made, it is difficult to see that the whole course of the world’s history obliged us to take the turn we did.

I never met a more interesting man than Mayhew. He was a lawyer in Detroit. He was an able and a successful one. By the time he was thirty-five he had a large and a lucrative practice, he had amassed a competence, and he stood on the threshold of a distinguished career. He had an acute brain, an attractive personality, and uprightness. There was no reason why he should not become, financially or politically, a power in the land.

One evening he was sitting in his club with a group of friends and they were perhaps a little worse (or even better) for liquor. One of them had recently come from Italy and he told them of a house he had seen at Capri, a house on the hill, overlooking the Bay of Naples, with a large and shady garden. He described to them the beauty of the most beautiful island in the Mediterranean.

‘It sounds fine,’ said Mayhew. ‘Is that house for sale?’

‘Everything is for sale in Italy.’

‘Let’s send’em a cable  and make an offer for it.’

‘What in heaven’s name would you do with a house in Capri?’

‘Live in it,’ said Mayhew.

He sent for a cable form, wrote it out, and dispatched it. In a few hours the reply came back, The offer was accepted.

Mayhew was no hypocrite and he made no secret of the fact that he would never have done so wild a thing if he had been sober, but when he was he did not regret it.

He was neither an impulsive nor an emotional man, but a very honest and sincere one. He would never have continued from bravado in a course that he had come to the conclusion was unwise. He made up his mind to do exactly as he had said. He did not care for wealth and he had enough money on which to live in Italy. He thought he could do more with life than merely spend it on correcting the trivial quarrels of unimportant people back home in Detroit.

He had no definite plan. He only wanted to get away from a life that had given him all it had to offer.

I suppose his friends thought him crazy; some must have done all they could to dissuade him.

He arranged his affairs, packed up his furniture, and started.