Lifes Little Ironies | Page 9

not such as to require
much thought, and they talked together on indifferent subjects.
'I am a lonely man, Bindon--a lonely man,' Millborne took occasion to
say, shaking his head gloomily. 'You don't know such loneliness as
mine . . . And the older I get the more I am dissatisfied with myself.
And to- day I have been, through an accident, more than usually
haunted by what, above all other events of my life, causes that
dissatisfaction--the recollection of an unfulfilled promise made twenty

years ago. In ordinary affairs I have always been considered a man of
my word and perhaps it is on that account that a particular vow I once
made, and did not keep, comes back to me with a magnitude out of all
proportion (I daresay) to its real gravity, especially at this time of day.
You know the discomfort caused at night by the half-sleeping sense
that a door or window has been left unfastened, or in the day by the
remembrance of unanswered letters. So does that promise haunt me
from time to time, and has done to-day particularly.'
There was a pause, and they smoked on. Millborne's eyes, though fixed
on the fire, were really regarding attentively a town in the West of
England.
'Yes,' he continued, 'I have never quite forgotten it, though during the
busy years of my life it was shelved and buried under the pressure of
my pursuits. And, as I say, to-day in particular, an incident in the law-
report of a somewhat similar kind has brought it back again vividly.
However, what it was I can tell you in a few words, though no doubt
you, as a man of the world, will smile at the thinness of my skin when
you hear it . . . I came up to town at one-and-twenty, from
Toneborough, in Outer Wessex, where I was born, and where, before I
left, I had won the heart of a young woman of my own age. I promised
her marriage, took advantage of my promise, and--am a bachelor.'
'The old story.'
The other nodded.
'I left the place, and thought at the time I had done a very clever thing
in getting so easily out of an entanglement. But I have lived long
enough for that promise to return to bother me--to be honest, not
altogether as a pricking of the conscience, but as a dissatisfaction with
myself as a specimen of the heap of flesh called humanity. If I were to
ask you to lend me fifty pounds, which I would repay you next
midsummer, and I did not repay you, I should consider myself a shabby
sort of fellow, especially if you wanted the money badly. Yet I
promised that girl just as distinctly; and then coolly broke my word, as
if doing so were rather smart conduct than a mean action, for which the

poor victim herself, encumbered with a child, and not I, had really to
pay the penalty, in spite of certain pecuniary aid that was given. There,
that's the retrospective trouble that I am always unearthing; and you
may hardly believe that though so many years have elapsed, and it is all
gone by and done with, and she must be getting on for an old woman
now, as I am for an old man, it really often destroys my sense of
self-respect still.'
'O, I can understand it. All depends upon the temperament. Thousands
of men would have forgotten all about it; so would you, perhaps, if you
had married and had a family. Did she ever marry?'
'I don't think so. O no--she never did. She left Toneborough, and later
on appeared under another name at Exonbury, in the next county,
where she was not known. It is very seldom that I go down into that
part of the country, but in passing through Exonbury, on one occasion,
I learnt that she was quite a settled resident there, as a teacher of music,
or something of the kind. That much I casually heard when I was there
two or three years ago. But I have never set eyes on her since our
original acquaintance, and should not know her if I met her.'
'Did the child live?' asked the doctor.
'For several years, certainly,' replied his friend. 'I cannot say if she is
living now. It was a little girl. She might be married by this time as far
as years go.'
'And the mother--was she a decent, worthy young woman?'
'O yes; a sensible, quiet girl, neither attractive nor unattractive to the
ordinary observer; simply commonplace. Her position at the time of
our acquaintance was not so good as mine. My father was a solicitor, as
I think I have told you. She was