The Judge paused. Arthur sat, twirling his light straw hat in his hand, but looking earnestly at his uncle. “Shall I send her here to you, sir?” he said, finally, finding the suspense intolerable.
The Judge looked at him gravely, over his spectacles.
“On the whole, I think New York will be the best place for you. I will write to Mrs. Livingstone about it to-night. But not a word of this to Gracie, mind. And now, good-night.”
Arthur got up; but he hesitated nervously at the door, before turning the handle.
“And suppose—suppose she asks me, sir?”
“You will tell her I unqualifiedly disapprove of the whole project,” thundered the Judge in his most court-like manner; and Arthur must fain go content with that answer. But he met Gracie in the parlor, and told her that her father would not give his consent as yet; but that he had written to New York, and would find him, Arthur, a place in some banking-house.
And so, these two went on to talk of more important matters; or rather, Arthur did; as, how long he had loved her, and how much, and how he had come to speak upon just that day; until Gracie, hearing nothing from her father, feared that he might be ill or worried, and gave Arthur his dismissal, and with more formality than usual. A certain constraint was between these two now, most new and delightful, to Arthur, at least; but quite different from the old cousinly ease.
Meantime, the Judge had dropped his papers from him and set to considering this last case, that was so much nearer home. He had no objections—of course, he had no serious objection to his daughter’s marrying Arthur—if Arthur was good enough for her; for cousinship is but a slight objection in New England. The Judge had always looked up to his elder brother, the clergyman, as being far his own superior; but somehow, with his son and his own daughter, it seemed otherwise. The Judge strenuously kept out of his mind any consideration of Gracie’s leaving him, lest it should bias his decision; he felt an odd desire to submit the case to someone else, as one in which he was too much interested to sit.
Perhaps in every middle-aged or elderly mind, there is a slight impatience with the matrimonial doings of the younger, as being always somewhat premature and ill-considered. When one’s own life is neatly rounded off, when one has duly weighed its emptiness, and properly resigned one’s self to it; when that resignation, which once seemed so unlike content, has become a habit; there must be a certain impertinence,—you being so ready to say enfin!—in anyone’s starting up and crying recommençons! Of course, Judge Holyoke knew that Gracie would some day wed—of course, he wished her to be well, i.e., happily married—but not exactly here—not now—not to this one nor to that one. Not that he doubted that Arthur was in earnest—or that he spoke the truth in saying Gracie loved him—nor did he think that they were both too young to know their own minds. It is the fashion to scoff at first loves, but the Judge believed in them; whether rightly or wrongly, we cannot say; but this was part of that which made him trusted, even by the prisoner upon whom he was passing sentence; and yet, a just judge, too.
But somehow, things had changed so much since the Judge was young, that he did not see how any one could soberly contract to see them change much further, or take the risk of any new beginning. He himself had been a Rousseau, a Robespierre, a Lovelace with a dash of folly and Tom Paine, to the worthy people of the town where he then sat, the people who were then sleeping in the hillside yonder; and yet, how fine a town these same good folk had made, in the days when he was a young law-student under old Judge Sewall! But in middle life, the world and its movement had passed him; and now, the gay folk and the band were almost out of sight ahead of him, and he behind with the feeble and the stragglers, the old and the obstructive, and no longer any hankering to be drum-major.