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.