"You say you have lost something valuable. All you had, you said it was; but that is nonsense. You have health, and more money than you want, and brains and education, of which you are making very poor use, and friends, whom you are treating badly. I can't think what you have lost—unless it was your heart, perhaps." This I brought in in the way of afterthought, as if it had suddenly occurred to me. He started, but assumed a tone of cynical indifference.
"My heart? Would I sit down and howl over that? What use have I for a heart, any more than for a poodle? And if I had one, what does it matter what may have become of it?"
"Strayed or stolen, probably. Such things have happened, especially when persons of the opposite sex are about. They are apt to attach themselves to poodles, and vice versa. But if you give me your honor that a loss of heart is not the cause of these lamentations—"
"Why will you press that point, Bob? What is done can't be undone, and what is broken can't be mended."
"And what is crooked can't be made straight, and what is wanting can't be supplied; though these things are done every day and every hour. Why any able-bodied lady of my acquaintance, even those at my own house, limited as is their experience of the world's devious ways—Jane, I mean, or Mabel—could tell you how."
"Robert, I am too old for these follies."
"James, you are the youngest man I ever knew. Any boy of eighteen would be apt to know better how to manage such matters, and—if you will pardon the frankness you employ yourself—to exhibit more sense."
He stared a little, and I gave him time to recover. Then he took up his parable, defensively falling back on the abstract, after his manner.
"Of course I have thought of these things, Bob, and the philosophy of them, if they can be said to have any. They seem much like everything else. Taking Life in its unfinancial aspects, men do things, not because the particular things are worth doing, but as an apology for the unwarranted liberty they take in being alive. 'I am: why am I?' said the youth at prayer-meeting, and everybody gave it up. As an effort toward answering his own conundrum, he entered the ministry. Being alive, we have to make a pretense of doing something, which else might better remain undone. That is why books are written, and controversies waged; it explains most of our intellectual and moral activities. So with society: time must be killed, and we go out for an evening, though we are dreadfully bored and gain nothing at all. So, I suppose, with what is called love. The emotional part of our nature, which is the absurdest part of all, finds or fancies itself unemployed: a void craves and aches in the breast, and the man, as an old farmer once expressed it, is 'kinder lovesick for suthin he ain't got and dunno what.' Almost any material of the other sex, if you allow a little for taste and temperament, will fill the void—in a way, and for a time at least. Darby marries Joan and is content, though any other woman would have served his turn as well. With us of the finer feelings and higher standards, the only difference is that we rant more and sophisticate more, as belongs to our wider range. No one ever felt thus before—because the feeling is new to us, and newer each time it comes: so Festus protests to each successive mistress, perjuring himself in all sincerity. Nor was any mistress ever so beautiful and divine as this one, appointed to possess and be adored by us. All that is purely a mental exercise: carry the illusion a little farther, and it might be practised as well on a milliner's lay-figure. 'He that loves a coral cheek or a ruby lip admires' is simply a red hot donkey, Bob. Nature provides the imbecile desire, Propinquity furnishes an object at random. Imagination does all the rest."
"Just so, Jim. I am glad to find you again capable of such lucid and exhaustive analysis. But how about what is called falling in love, when the wild ass has not been craving to have his void filled up at all, but is suddenly brought down unawares by an Amazonian arrow?"