Chapter II: The Tree

"APPEALING to your Father in heaven to witness your sincerity, you, Lewis, do now take this woman whose hand you hold, choosing her alone from all the world, to be your lawfully wedded wife? You trust her as your best earthly friend; you promise to love, cherish, and protect her; to be considerate of her happiness in your plans of life; to cultivate for her sake all manly virtues, and in all things to seek her welfare as you seek your own? You pledge yourself thus honourably to be her husband in good faith, so long as God in his providence shall spare you to each other?"

"In like manner, looking to your heavenly Father for his blessing, you, Louise, do now receive this man, whose hand you hold, to be your lawfully wedded husband? You choose him from all the world, as he has chosen you; you pledge your trust to him as your best earthly friend; you promise to love, to comfort, and to honour him; to cultivate for his sake all womanly graces; to guard his reputation and to assist him in his life-work, and in all things to esteem his happiness as your own? You give yourself thus trustfully to him to be his wife in good faith so long as the providence of God shall spare you to each other?"

The old story, repeated so many hundred times since the world was new, and yet so new a story to each one who becomes an actor in it that it quickens the pulses and pales the cheek.

Estelle Barrows, alert, eager, keen-eared, listened with flushing cheeks and quickened breathing to the interchange of solemn vows, and shivered over the closeness of the promises, and marvelled at the clear steadiness of her sister's voice as she answered, "I do." The same sceptical spirit was in Estelle that had governed her during her talk with her sister. She could not yet see how such things were possible. It was all very well for Lewis to promise to trust Louise as his "best earthly friend,"—of course she was; to promise to love, cherish, and protect her—it was the least he could do after she had given up so much for him. "To be considerate for her in his plans for life." Estelle almost thought that he ought to have hesitated over that promise. Had he been considerate? Did he think that home in the far-away farmhouse would be conducive to her happiness? Still he doubtless meant his best, and it was right enough for him to ring out his "I do" in a strong manly voice. But for Louise, how could she say he was her best earthly friend, with papa looking down on her from his manly height and mamma struggling to hold back the tears? How could she promise to assist him in his life-work? Suppose his entire life had to be spent on that hateful farm, must Louise bury herself there and assist him? How would she do it? Would he expect her, sometimes, to even milk the cows! She had heard that farmers' wives did these things. Or could she be expected to churn the butter, or work it, or mould it ready for market, and then to drive into town on a market-waggon and barter her rolls of butter for woollen yarn to knit him some socks? She had stood with a sort of terrified fascination at one of the busy corners of the city only the day before, and watched a market-woman clamber down from her height and take a pail of butter on one arm and a basket of eggs on the other, and tramp into the store. She had told it to Louise afterward, and she had laughed merrily over the discomforted face, and had asked if the woman did not look rosy-cheeked and happy.

All these and a hundred other commingling and disturbing thoughts floated through Estelle's brain as she watched the quiet face of her sister during the ordeal of marriage. Even after the hopelessly binding words, "I pronounce you husband and wife," had been spoken, she still stood, gazing and wondering. She could never, never do it. Marriage was nice enough in the abstract, and she liked to go to weddings, at least she had always liked to before this one. But to single out one man and make him the centre of all these solemn and unalterable vows! And that man to be Lewis Morgan!

Louise seemed entirely unconscious of the necessity for any such turmoil of brain on her account. She looked as serenely sweet and satisfied in her white silk robes as she had in the simple gold-brown that had been one of her favourite home dresses. Oh yes; she was in white silk and bridal veil and orange blossoms, and the blinds were closed, and the heavy curtains dropped (although it was mid-day), and the blaze of the gas lighted up the scene; and there was a retinue of bridesmaids, in their white robes and their ten-buttoned kids, and there were all the et ceteras of the modern fashionable wedding!

All these things fitted as naturally into the everyday life of the Barrows family as hard work and scanty fare fit into the lives of so many. They had not discussed the question at all, but had merely accepted all these minor details as among the inevitables, and made them ready. Mrs. Barrows came from an aristocratic and wealthy family; so also did the father; and all the surroundings and associations of the family had been connected with wealth and worldliness to such a degree that, although they were reckoned among their set as remarkably plain and conscientiously economical people, viewed from Lewis Morgan's standpoint they were lavish of their expenditures to a degree that he knew his father would have denounced as unpardonable.

Is not it a pity that in this carping world we cannot oftener put ourselves in other people's places, mentally at least, and try to discover how we should probably feel and talk and act were we surrounded by their circumstances and biased by their educations? Something of this Lewis Morgan had done. He might almost be said to occupy half-way ground between the rigid plainness of his country home life and the luxurious ease of his wife's city home life. He had been out into the world, and had seen both sides, and his nature was broad enough and deep enough to distinguish between people and their surroundings. Therefore, while he admired and respected Mr. Barrows, he respected and loved his father, who was the very antipodes of his city brother.

Hundreds of miles away from the gas-lights and glamour of orange blossoms, and bridal veils, and wedding favours, on a bleak hillside, was a plain two-story frame house, surrounded by ample barns, which showed in their architecture and design a more comfortable finish for the purposes for which they were intended than the plain unpainted house had ever shown. There was even a sense of beauty, or at least of careful neatness, in the choosing of the paints and the general air of the buildings, that the house lacked. Whatever Jacob Morgan thought of his family, it was quite apparent that he had a high opinion of his stock.

Within this square, plain, solemn-looking house, on a certain dull and solemn autumn evening, sat the Morgan family, gathered apparently for a special occasion; for though every one of them, down to the gray old cat purring behind the great wood stove, tried to act as usual, a general air of expectancy, indescribable and yet distinctly felt, pervaded the room.

The room, by the way, deserves a passing description. It was at once the sitting-room, dining-room, and kitchen of the Morgans. It was large and square, and scrupulously clean. There was a large old-fashioned table, with its great leaves turned down, and itself pushed up against the north side of the house; and it had a dark, flowered, shiny oil-cloth spread all over its surface, reaching down nearly to the floor. On the oiled surface a large-sized, old-fashioned candlestick held a substantial tallow candle, which served to show Mother Morgan where to put the point of the great darning-needle as she solemnly wove it in and out of the gray sock drawn on her large, labour-roughened hand. The old-fashioned tray and snuffers stood beside the candlestick, and a dreary-faced girl, in a dark calico dress, closely buttoned at the throat and guiltless of a collar, occupied herself in applying the snuffers at regular intervals to the black wick that rapidly formed.

Occasionally the mother hinted that it was a very shiftless way to spend her time, and that she would do better to get out her mending or her knitting. But the girl, with a restless sort of half-sigh, replied that she "couldn't mend or knit to-night."

"And why not to-night as well as any time?" questioned Mrs. Morgan in a half-vexed tone, as one who was fully prepared to combat sentiment or folly of any sort that might have arisen in her daughter's mind. But the daughter only answered, "Oh, I don't know!" and snuffed the candle again; and the darning-needle gleamed back and forth in the candle-glow, and no sound broke the stillness for the next ten minutes.

The other furnishings of the room can be briefly given. A square stand in the corner held the "Farmer's Companion," a weekly paper highly prized; a small copy of "Webster," very much abridged, and with one cover gone. A tack in the wall, over the stand, held the "Farmer's Almanac;" and near it a pasteboard case, somewhat gaily decorated with fancy pictures, held the family hairbrush and comb. The great stove, capable of taking in large pieces of wood at a time, was aglow, both with fire-light and with polish, and was really the only bright and pleasant thing in the room. The floor was painted a good, clear yellow, and was guiltless of even a rug to relieve its bareness.

Behind the stove, with his feet on the hearth, and his slouched hat pushed on the back of his head, and his pants tucked carefully into his barn-yard boots, sat the younger son of the family, John Morgan, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes fixed somewhat gloomily on the fire. Just across from him, occupying the other corner of the fireplace, was the father of the family, a prematurely old, bent man. His gray hair stood in disorder on his head—"stood" being the exact word to apply to it, as even vigorous brushing never coaxed it into quietness for any length of time. He was tilted slightly back in his straight-backed wooden arm-chair, which boasted of a patchwork cushion, and was the only bit of luxury that the room contained. A few chairs, yellow painted like the floor, wooden-bottomed, keeping themselves in orderly condition in the three unoccupied corners of the room, completed its furnishings—unless a shelf at the back of the stove, and in somewhat alarming proximity to the aforesaid barn-yard boots, where a row of milk-pans were stationed waiting for the cream to "set," and a line on which hung certain towels used in cleansing and drying the pans, and a hook at a little distance holding the family hand-towel, can be called furnishings.

Sundry other hooks were empty—the sixteen-year-old daughter having taken counsel with herself for a little, and then quietly removed two coats and a pair of overalls to the back kitchen closet.

A door leading into the small, square, bare-floored bedroom of Jacob Morgan and his wife stood open, and revealed the six-year-old baby of the family, fair-haired, soft-eyed Nellie Morgan, her eyes at this time being wide-open and aglow with an excitement which she could not control. But for the solemn rule that seven o'clock must find her in bed, whether the town three miles away was on fire, or whatever was happening, she would have begged to stay out of that trundle-bed, on this particular evening, just one hour more.

John Morgan winked and blinked, and nodded assent to his dream-thoughts with his mouth wide-open, then came down on the four legs of his chair with a sudden thud that made him wide-awake and rather cross. He looked at the tall, loud-voiced old clock in the corner, which was certainly part of the furniture, and the most important part; it is strange I should have forgotten it. At this moment it was making up its mind to announce the advent of the next hour.

"It seems a pity that Lewis couldn't have got around at a little more seasonable hour," Farmer Morgan said at last, rubbing his eyes and yawning heavily, and gazing at the solemn-faced clock. "I can't see why he couldn't just as well have taken an earlier train and got here this afternoon. It will be getting-up time before we fairly go to bed."

"I don't see any occasion for being very late to bed," Mrs. Morgan said; and she drove the gleaming needle through the sock as though she were vexed at the yawning hole. "We needn't sit up till morning to talk, there will be time enough for that; and so long as Lewis went to the expense of getting supper at the village, we won't have to be hindered on that account."

"I'm most awful glad he did," interposed the candle-snuffer. "I couldn't bear to think of getting supper and washing dishes right before her."

"I wonder why not? She most likely has been used to dishes, and she knows they have to be washed. It isn't worth while to go to putting on airs before her so long as you can't keep them on. The dishes will probably have to be washed three times a day, just as they always have been. Because Lewis has got married the world isn't going to stop turning around."

How fast the darning-needle slipped through the hole, shrinking it at every turn and stabbing its sides with great gray threads!

"I most wonder why you didn't put a fire in the front room, being it was the first night; it would have been less—well, less embarrassing like," the farmer said, hunting in his brain for the right word and apparently not finding it.

"I don't know as there is any call to be embarrassed," Mrs. Morgan said, and the furrows in her face seemed to grow deeper. "I thought it was best to begin as we meant to end; and I didn't s'pose we would be likely to have fires in the front room of evenings now any more than we have had. This room has always been large enough and good enough for Lewis, and I suppose we can make a place for one more."

But she looked that moment as though the "one more" were a sore trial to her, which she endured simply because she must, and out of which she saw no gleam of comfort.

During this family discussion, John Morgan kept his feet in their elevated position on the upper hearth, and continued his steady, gloomy gaze into the fire. He was a young man, not yet twenty, but already his face looked not only gloomy but spiritless. It was not in every sense a good face; there were lines of sullenness upon it, and there were lines which, even thus early, might have been born of dissipation. Mrs. Morgan had been heard to say many a time that Lewis was a good boy, had always been a good boy, but who John took after she could not imagine; he was not a bit like the Morgans, and she was sure he did not favour her side of the house.

But, truth to tell, Lewis Morgan had at last disappointed his mother. Of course, he would get married some time—it was the way with young men; but he was still quite a young man, and she had hoped that he would wait a few years. And then she had hoped that, when the fatal day did come, he would choose one of the good, sensible, hard-working farmers' girls with which the country abounded, any one of whom would have esteemed it an honour to be connected with the Morgan family.

But to go to town for a wife, and then to plunge right into the midst of aristocracy, and actually bring away a daughter of Lyman Barrows, whose father once occupied a high position in the Government! Mrs. Morgan felt aggrieved. Farmers and farmers' wives and daughters had always been good enough for her; why were they not for her son?

This matter of family pride is a very queer thing to deal with. I doubt if you will not find it as strongly developed among the thrifty and intelligent classes of farmers as anywhere in this country. To be sure, there are different manifestations of pride. Assuredly Mrs. Morgan knew how to manifest hers.

"There they come!" declared the candle-snuffer; and her face grew red, and she dropped the snuffers into the tray with a bang. It was just as the old clock had made up its mind to speak, and it solemnly tolled out eight strokes.

"Dorothy!" said she of the darning-needle, severely. "I am ashamed of you. There is no occasion for you going into hysterics if they have come."

The feet on the upper hearth came down on the brick hearth with a louder bang than the snuffers had made. "I'm going to the barn," said their owner promptly. "Lewis will want to have his horse took care of; and I don't want to see none of 'em to-night. You needn't call me in, for I ain't coming."

And he dodged out at the back door just as the front one opened, and a shoving of trunks sounded on the oil-cloth floor of the great old-fashioned hall, and Lewis Morgan's voice said cheerily, "Where are you all?" and the mother rolled up the stocking, and stabbed it with the darning-needle, and shook out her check apron, and stood up to give them greeting; and Louise Morgan had reached her home.