A seldom-read writer and a top-shelf short story: Maugham's The Outstation

Nobody reads W Somerset Maugham any more do they? - seems everyone but me read The Razor's Edge once upon a time - but poking around in a story collection I read his piece The Outstation and was very impressed. It's easy to dismiss the genre - colonial literature strictly from the POV of the colonists - but just because he writes from what he knows doesn't mean he likes those about whom he writes. In this piece there are only two significant characters - the only two white men at a colonial outpost in Borneo - and the complete focus on these two men, with the others all treated as and perceived as some subhuman species bred to serve and to slave, is the essence of the colonial mentality. But the two men, Warburton and Cooper show two opposite sides of the same coin. W is the elder and the man in charge of the station, a complete snob by every account - washed up in Borneo after gambling away his fortune, his only interest, his obsession, is with rank, title, the proper schools - and he's mocked behind his back (by other colonists) for his repeated re-telling of his brief friendship w/ King Edward in youth. He seems to have a true affection for the land and even the people, and absolutely no conception of his exploitation of the people. He dresses for dinner even in the tropical heat, even when dining alone, and he religiously reads the Times, esp the society announcements. In one of the most poignant moments in the story, he recalls telling one of the "noble" members of his London club that he was off to Borneo because he had no money, and the man just brushes him off w/out a shred of care or sympathy. Cooper, on the other hand, the 2nd in command whose arrival at the post sets the story in motion, is of a lower "class," raised in the Barbados, ordinary schools, served in the ranks the World War, and he's contemptuous of the natives, bullies and bosses his servants - but isn't this just a more naked and honest mistreatment that Warburton's condescension? The story pits the two of them as antagonists in this tiny community and Maugham, an architect of plot, ends the story with a surprisingly dramatic climax and a bitter twist (I won't give it away).