‘Thou’dst find it dull soon, Philip, standing there looking at us shelling peas, if thou wert forced to do it,’ said Dame Crawshay, looking up at him with a curious smile.
‘That shows you cannot guess my thoughts. They were of quite a different nature, for I was wishing that there had been some fixing process in nature, so that there might never be any change in our present positions.’
Madge looked as if she had been thinking something very similar; but she went on silently shelling peas; and a sunbeam shooting through a gap in the green pea hedge, made a golden radiance on her face.
‘Eh, deary me, what love will do!’ exclaimed the dame, laughing, but shaking her head regretfully, as if sorry that she could not look at things in the same hopeful humour. ‘Other people have talked like that in the heyday of life. Some have found a little of their hope fulfilled; many have found none of it: all have found that they had to give up the thought of a great deal of what they expected. Some take their disappointment with wise content and make the best of things as they find them. They jog along as happily as mortals may, like Dick and me; a-many kick against the pricks and suffer sorely for it; but all have to give in sooner or later, and own that the world could not get along if everybody could arrange it to suit his own pleasure.’
How gently this good-natured philosopher brought them down from the clouds to what foolish enthusiasts call contemptuously ‘the common earth.’ Sensible people use the same phrase, but they use it respectfully, knowing that this ‘common earth’ may be made beautiful or ugly as their own actions instruct their vision.
To Philip it was quite true that most people sought something they could never attain; that many people fancied they had found the something they wanted, and discovered afterwards, to their sorrow, that they had not found the thing at all. But then, you see, it was an entirely different condition of affairs in his case. He had found what he wanted, and knew that there could be no mistake about it.
To Madge, her aunt’s wisdom appeared to be very cold and even wrong in some respects, considering the placid and happy experiences of her own life. She had her great faith in Philip—her dream of a life which should be made up of devotion to him under any circumstances of joy or sorrow, and she could not believe that it was possible that their experience should be as full of crosses as that of others. And yet there was a strange faintness at her heart, as if she were vaguely conscious that there were possibilities which neither she nor Philip could foresee or understand.
‘We shall be amongst the wise folk,’ said Philip confidently, ‘and take things as they come, contentedly. We shall be easily contented, so long as we are true to each other—and I don’t think you imagine there is any chance of a mistake in that respect.’
Aunt Hessy went on shelling peas for a time in silence. There was a thoughtful expression on her kindly face, and there was even a suggestion of sadness in it. Here were two young people—so young, so happy, so full of faith in each other—just starting on that troublous journey called Life, and she had to speak those words of warning which always seem so harsh to the pupils, until, after bitter experience, they look back and say: ‘If I had only taken the warning in time, what might have been?’
By-and-by she spoke very softly: ‘Thou art thinking, Madge, that I am croaking; and thou, Philip, are thinking the same.... Nay, there is no need to deny it. But I do not mean to dishearten thee. All I want is to make thee understand that there are many things we reckon as certain in the heyday of life, that never come to us.’