LONG years ago, in those speedless days of the late nineties when children dropped homemade curtsies and said, “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” quite as a matter of course, when they recited the sixty-three books of the Bible, the kings of Israel, and the twelve disciples according to St. Matthew without the least idea of achievement, when baby specialists and motion pictures were almost unknown, and when the efficacy of springtime asafœtida-bags and of sulphur and molasses taken according to the magic rule of three was sponsored by the most intelligent of parents—years ago, on a certain warm day very early in the month of June, the four Wescott children, who were swinging on a white gate beneath great elm trees, were startled by the most curious and, for the duration of a long half-hour, quite inexplicable behavior on the part of their father. At high noon, just as the church clock was sending twelve mellow, wavering notes down through the sunlit air to cling unseen to tree-tops or to hide in daisy fields—at high noon he came up the street in full view of his neighbors, and halted with no apparent embarrassment before his four awestruck children, wearing his collar and tie!
Now, at the imminent risk of ruining the artistic value of this story,—for we know only too well what it means to stop a truly dramatic incident when it wants to go on,—we must, in all fairness to the father of the four Wescotts, on the one hand, describe—since we cannot explain—a certain distressingly peculiar habit of his, and on the other, assure our readers that neither he nor his wife nor his four children had ever because of it suffered the slightest lessening of social standing in their community. For years, during the months of May, June, July, August, and September, it had been Mr. Wescott’s deplorable custom to traverse the distance between his law office over the village grocery store and his home with his collar and tie in his left hand. Otherwise his appearance was above reproach. His neat gray suit was immaculately pressed and brushed, his neat straw hat was placed at a most conservative angle, his neat black shoes shone from his own early-morning labor, the gold-headed cane which he always carried bespoke the gentleman that he was. But—his collar and tie hung from his left hand.
No one felt entirely sure as to the date and origin of this custom. Mrs. Wescott, who, it will be readily granted, should have known more about those matters than anyone else, was not secure in her mind concerning them. It is true that once, in the strictest confidence, she disclosed to Mary, the eldest of the four Wescotts, her belief that the habit had originated in those over-heated and perilous days when Father Wescott had been doing his best to save the country in general and the State of Maine in particular from the election of President Cleveland. She furthermore advanced the opinion—which, as Mary grew older, she was inclined to share—that the continuance of the habit should be interpreted as silent proof that Mr. Wescott stood ready to defend with all his might the Republican Party with its splendid principles of “honest money and the chance to earn it.” These, however, logical as they seemed, were only theories. Mr. Wescott himself afforded the only source material, and that material was unfortunately impossible of access, since the whole question with all its ramifications was one which, Mrs. Wescott and her four children had tacitly agreed, was never to be referred to whether in or out of the family circle.
It may easily be surmised that this habit of Mr. Wescott’s had been the source of no little embarrassment to his wife and children, and their splendid loyalty cannot, indeed, be too highly commended. Imagine, if you will, any number of situations in which the recognition of such an extraordinary practice might well have redounded to the discredit of the family, and you will appreciate the truly fine material of which these people were made. But as Mrs. Wescott said, again in confidence to Mary and to Cynthia after she was ten, since they had endured the visit of the Governor of Maine, they need have no fear as to anything which the future might hold in store for them.
The gubernatorial guest dined with the Wescotts on an August noon when Mary was eleven, just ten months, in fact, before the beginning of the events which make up this story. He had communicated his nearness to Mr. Wescott, who had hurried home at ten o’clock to warn his wife, to change his clothes, and to decree blue serge for the children. As Mrs. Wescott tied a new tie for him under a fresh collar, misgivings would arise in spite of her, and more than once a warning trembled on her lips. But she controlled herself, true even then to her sense of loyalty, and reasonably secure in her faith that he could not, in view of the distinction about to fall upon the family, so far forget himself. Imagine, then, her distress when, an hour later, she saw her husband conducting their distinguished guest up the street, his head erect and crowned with the top hat which he had chosen for this unusual occasion, his clean collar and new tie gently swinging from his left hand! Imagine, too, the consternation of the children, who sat primly on the front porch in Sunday serge, the girls in Mother Hubbards, the boys as Lord Fauntleroyish as serge would admit, and rehearsed their salutations. Can the mild remonstrance which sprang to Mrs. Wescott’s lips as she stood in the doorway to receive her guest be wondered at?
“Father, how could you!” she said in an undertone, after the Governor had been duly presented. The accusing eyes of his four children, who were engaged in making their curtsies and bows, added poignancy to her thrust. His eyes followed their hostile glances, and his cheeks colored. One could only believe that he, the author of their disgrace, had been, up to this moment, entirely unconscious of the incriminating articles in his hand.
It is extremely comforting, however, to be able to assure our readers that no dire results followed this act, which we must believe to have been quite unpremeditated on the part of Mr. Wescott. The Governor having been shown upstairs by Mary Wescott to wash, he repaired hastily to his own room, from whence he emerged almost simultaneously with his honored guest, his appearance entirely conventional and his native gallantry unimpaired. But although the dinner was a complete success from every point of view, although upon his departure the Governor assured his hostess in most lavish terms of his deep regard for her husband, the ensuing legislative season was an anxious one for Mrs. Wescott. Was it not possible, nay even probable, that habit might assert itself even in the State capital? This fear so plucked at her that she was tormented by frequent nightmares, in the worst of which she saw her husband on a freezing winter day emerge from behind the white marble pillars of the government building, descend the long flight of steps, and walk through the city streets to his Augusta hotel, his collar and tie in his hand. Her cries awoke Cynthia in the next room, but to her startled questions her mother confessed only vaguely to having seen in her sleep a most terrifying thing. Nor were Cynthia’s far more insistent morning queries productive of anything more definite.
Relief came in the shape of a legislator and friend from a neighboring town, who, upon meeting Mrs. Wescott at a county convention of the church, remarked in the course of conversation that she would never know her husband in the ultra-dignified gentleman who lent tone to the State Senate. Circumspect as were his words and uncompromising as was his manner, Mrs. Wescott could only infer that he meant to allay her fears, and the sense of freedom which she henceforth experienced, in spite of her embarrassment at the time of the conversation, was immeasurable.
Nor must we for a moment allow our readers to imagine that this habit, which we have been at such pains to describe, had ever in the slightest degree impaired the really enviable position which the Wescotts maintained in the community. The energies of Mr. Wescott had been dedicated, not merely to the affairs of his State and nation, but to those of his native village as well. Her he had served, in the phrase of the Scriptures, from his youth up. Fence-viewer and Pound-keeper at twenty, he had passed successively through the lesser town offices until now, on the fair side of forty, he was Moderator of the annual Town Meeting, First Selectman, and, most honored of all positions, Judge of the Municipal Court. Mrs. Wescott, in spite of the facts that she had never played bridge in her life, that she belonged to no Women’s Clubs and had never given an afternoon paper on “A Brief Survey of English Literature,” and that woman suffrage, a measure at that time in slight favor among some Western states, had received from her only a kind of pitying amazement, was held in deepest respect by the village at large and was, moreover, I dare say, a very happy woman—that is, as women go. As for the four Wescott children, Mary, Cynthia, Roger, and John, they were quite as promising as it is ever well or needful that children should be.