Queed Part 37

But he was the best-natured man alive, and his vexation soon faded. In a week, he was once more busy planning out ways and means. He sought funds in the metropolis no more, and the famous financier spared him the mortification of having to refuse a donation by considerately not offering one. But he continued to make addresses in the State, and in the city he was in frequent demand. However, the endowment fund remained obstinately immovable. By February there had been no additions, unless we can count five hundred dollars promised by dashing young Beverley Byrd on the somewhat whimsical condition that his brother Stewart would give an equal amount.

"Moreover," said young Mr. Byrd, "I'll increase it to seven hundred and fifty dollars if your friend Winter will publicly denounce me as a boocaneer. It'll help me in my business to be lined up with Rockefeller and all those Ikes."

But this gift never materialized at all, for the reason that Stewart Byrd kindly but firmly refused to give anything. A rich vein of horse-sense underlay Byrd's philanthropic enthusiasms; and even the necessity for the continued existence of old Blaines College appeared to be by no means clear in his mind.

"If you had a free hand, Gardiner," said he, "that would be one thing, but you haven't. I've had my eye on Blaines for a long time, and frankly I don't think it is ent.i.tled to any a.s.sistance. You have an inferior plant and a lot of inferior men; a small college governed by small ideas and ridden by a close corporation of small trustees--"

"But heavens, man!" protested West, "your argument makes a perfect circle. You won't help Blaines because it's poorly equipped, and Blaines is poorly equipped because the yellow-rich--that's you--won't help it."

Stewart Byrd wiped his gold-rimmed gla.s.ses, laughing pleasantly. He was the oldest of the four brothers, a man of authority at forty; and West watched him with a secret admiration, not untouched by a flicker of envy.

"What's the answer? Blessed if I know! The fact is, old fellow, I think you've got an utterly hopeless job there, and if I were you, I believe I'd get ready to throw it over at the first opportunity."

West replied that it was only the hard things that were worth doing in this life. None the less, as winter drew to a close, he insensibly relaxed his efforts toward the immediate exaltation of old Blaines. As he looked more closely into the situation, he realized that his too impetuous desire for results had driven him to waste energy in hopeless directions. How could he ever do anything, with a lot of moss-backed trustees tying his hands and feet every time he tried to toddle a step forward--he and Blaines? Clearly the first step of all was to oust the fossils who stood like rocks in the path of progress, and fill their places with men who could at least recognize a progressive idea when they were beaten across the nose with it. He studied his trustee list now more purposefully than he had ever pored over his faculty line up.

By the early spring, he was ready to set subtle influences going looking to the defeat of the insurgent five, including James E. Winter, whose term happily expired on the first of January following.

But the president's lines did not all fall in gloomy and p.r.i.c.kly places in these days. His perennial faculty for enjoyment never deserted him even in his darkest hours. His big red automobile, acquired on the crest of Semple and West's prosperity, was constantly to be seen bowling down the street of an early-vernal afternoon, or dancing down far country lanes light with a load of two. The Thursday German had known him as of old, and many were the delightful dinners where he proved, by merit alone, the life of the party. Nor were his pleasures by any means all dissociated from Blaines College. The local prestige that the president acquired from his position was decidedly agreeable to him. Never an educational point arose in the life of the city or the nation but the _Post_ carried a long interview giving Mr. West's views upon it.

Corner-stone laying afforded him a sincere joy. Even discussions with parents about their young hopefuls was anything but irksome to his buoyant nature.

Best and pleasantest of all was his relation with the students. His notable gift for popularity, however futile it might be with embittered a.s.ses like James E. Winter, served him in good stead here. West could not conceal from himself that the boys idolized him. With secret delight he saw them copying his walk, his taste in waistcoats, the way he brushed back his hair. He had them in relays to his home to supper, skipping only those of too hopeless an uncouthness, and sent them home enchanted. He had introduced into the collegiate programme a five-minute prayer, held every morning at nine, at which he made brief addresses on some phase of college ideals every Tuesday and Friday. Attendance at these gatherings was optional, but it kept up in the most gratifying way, and sometimes on a Friday the little a.s.sembly-room would be quite filled with the frankly admiring lads. "Why should I mind the little annoyances," would flash into his mind as he rose to speak, "when I can look down into a lot of fine, loyal young faces like this. _Here_ is what counts." His appearance at student gatherings was always attended by an ovation. He loved to hear the old Blaines cheer, with three ringing "Prexy's" tacked on the end. One Sat.u.r.day in early April, Prexy took Miss Avery to a baseball game, somewhat against her will, solely that she might see how his students worshiped him. On the following Sat.u.r.day, all with even-handed liberality, he took Miss Weyland to another baseball game, with the same delightful purpose.

The spring found West stronger and more contented with his lot as president of a jerkwater college, decidedly happier for the burning out of the fires of hot ambition which had consumed his soul six months earlier. He told himself that he was reconciled to a slow advance with fighting every inch of the way. But he saw the uselessness of fighting trustees who were doomed soon to fall, and resigned himself to a quiet, in fact a temporarily suspended, programme of progress. And then, just when everything seemed most comfortably serene, a new straw suddenly appeared in the wind, which quickly multiplied into a bundle and then a bale, and all at once the camel's back had more than it could bear.

April was hardly dead before the college world was in a turmoil, by the side of which the Young affair was the mere buzzing of a gnat.

History is full of incidents of the kind: incidents which are trifling beyond mention in the beginning, but which malign circ.u.mstance distorts and magnifies till they set nations daggers-drawn at each other's throats. Two students lured a "freshman" to their room and there invited him to drink a marvelous compound the beginnings of which were fat pork and olive oil; this while standing on his head. The freshman did not feel in a position to deny their request. But his was a delicate stomach, and the result of his accommodating spirit was that he became violently, though not seriously, ill. Thus the matter came to the attention of his parents, and so to the college authorities. The sick lad stoutly declined to tell who were his persecutors, but West managed to track one of them down and summoned him to his office. We may call this student Brown; a pleasant-mannered youth of excellent family, whose sister West sometimes danced with at the Thursday German. Brown said that he had, indeed, been present during the sad affair, that he had, in fact, to his eternal humiliation and regret, aided and abetted it; but he delicately hinted that the prime responsibility rested on the shoulders of the other student. Rather unwisely, perhaps, West pressed him to disclose the name of his collaborator. (Brown afterwards, to square himself with the students, alleged "intimidation.") A youth whom we may describe as Jones was mentioned, and later, in the august private office, was invited to tell what he knew of the disorder. Henceforward accounts vary. Jones declared to the end that the president promised a light punishment for all concerned if he would make a clean breast. West a.s.serted--and who would doubt his statement?--that he had made no promise, or even a suggestion of a promise, of any kind. Be that as it may, Jones proceeded, though declining to mention any other name than his own. He declared positively that the idea of hazing the freshman had not originated with him, but that he had taken a culpable part in it, for which he was heartily sorry. Asked whether he considered himself or his colleague princ.i.p.ally responsible for the injury to the freshman's health, he said that he preferred not to answer. To West this seemed a damaging admission, though perhaps not everybody would have so viewed it. He sent Jones away with no intimation of what he proposed to do.

There was the situation, plain as a barn at noonday. All that was needed was tact, judgment, and a firm hand. The young president hesitated.

Ordinarily he would have taken a quiet hour in the evening to think it all over carefully, but as it happened--like Lord George Germaine and the dispatch to Burgoyne--social engagements rushed forward to occupy his time. Next morning his mail brought several letters, urging him to set his foot ruthlessly on the serpent-head of hazing. His telephone rang with the same firm counsel. The _Post_, he saw, had a long leading article insisting that discipline must be maintained at all hazards. It was observed that this article thundered in the old Colonel's best style, and this was the more noteworthy in that the article in question happened to be written by a young man of the name of Queed.

West would have preferred to let the matter stand for a day or so, but he saw that prompt and decisive action was expected of him. Denying himself to callers, he shut himself in his office, to determine what was just and fair and right. The advice of his correspondents, and of the _Post_, tallied exactly with what the trustees had told him in the beginning about the traditions of old Blaines. Hazing was not to be tolerated under any circ.u.mstances. Therefore, somebody's head would now have to fall. There could hardly be any occasion for expelling nice young Brown. For a minor consideration, it would be decidedly awkward henceforward, to have to offer salt to Mrs. Brown at dinner, as he had done only last week, with the hand that had ruined her son's career.

Much more important, it seemed clear enough to West that the boy had only been weak, and had been tempted into misbehavior by his older and more wilful comrade. West had never liked young Jones. He was a rawboned, unkempt sprig of the ma.s.ses, who had not been included in any of the student suppers at the president's house. Jones's refusal to speak out fully on all the details of the affair pointed strongly, so West argued, to consciousness of d.a.m.ning guilt. The path of administrative duty appeared plain. West, to say truth, had not at first expected to apply the drastic penalty of expulsion at all, but it was clear that this was what the city expected of him. The universal cry was for unshrinking firmness. Well, he would show them that he was firm, and shrank from no unpleasantness where his duty was concerned. Brown he ordered before him for a severe reprimand, and Jones he summarily dismissed from old Blaines College.

These decrees went into effect at noon. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon the war-dogs broke their leashes. Four was the hour when the "night"

edition of the _Evening Chronicle_ came smoking hot from the presses. It appeared that young Jones was the son, not merely of a plumber, but of a plumber who was decidedly prominent in lodge circles and the smaller areas of politics. His case was therefore precisely the kind that the young men of the Chronicle loved to espouse. The three-column scare-head over their bitterly partisan "story" ran thus:

POOR BOY KICKED OUT BY PRESIDENT WEST

Close beside this, lest the reader should fail to grasp the full meaning of the boldface, was a three-column cartoon, crudely drawn but adroit enough. It represented West, unpleasantly caricatured, garbed in a swallow-tail coat and enormous white gloves, with a gardenia in his b.u.t.tonhole, engaged in booting a lad of singular n.o.bility of countenance out of an open door. A tag around the lad's neck described him as "The Workingman's Son." Under the devilish drawing ran a line which said, succinctly, "His Policies." On page four was a double column, double-leaded editorial, liberal with capitals and ent.i.tled: "Justice in Silk Stockings."

But this was only a beginning. Next morning's _Post_, which West had counted on to come to his a.s.sistance with a ringing leader, so earnestly discussed rotation of crops and the approaching gubernatorial campaign, that it had not a line for the little disturbance at the college. If this was a disappointment to West, a greater blow awaited him. Not to try to gloss over the mortifying circ.u.mstance, he was hissed when he entered the morning a.s.sembly--he, the prince, idol, and darling of his students. Though the room was full, the hissing was of small proportions, but rather too big to be ignored. West, after debating with himself whether or not he should notice it, made a graceful and manly two-minute talk which, he flattered himself, effectually abashed the lads who had so far forgotten themselves. None the less the demonstration cut him to the quick. When four o'clock came he found himself waiting for the appearance of the _Chronicle_ with an anxiety which he had never conceived possible with regard to that paper. A glance at its lurid front showed that the blatherskites had pounded him harder than ever. A black headline glared with the untruth that President West had been "Hissed by Entire Student Body." Editorially, the _Chronicle_ pa.s.sionately inquired whether the taxpayers enjoyed having the college which they so liberally supported (exact amount seventy-five hundred dollars a year) mismanaged in so gross a way.

West put a laughing face upon these calumnies, but to himself he owned that he was deeply hurt. Dropping in at the club that night, he found a group of men, all his friends, eagerly discussing the shindig, as they called it. Joining in with that perfect good-humor and lack of false pride which was characteristic of him, he gathered that all of them thought he had made a mistake. It seemed to be considered that Brown had put himself in a bad light by trying to throw the blame on Jones. Jones, they said, should not have been bounced without Brown, and probably the best thing would have been not to bounce either. The irritating thing about this latter view was that it was exactly what West had thought in the first place, before pressure was applied to him.

In the still watches of the night the young man was harried by uncertainties and tortured by stirring suspicions. Had he been fair to Jones, after all? Was his summary action in regard to that youth prompted in the faintest degree by personal dislike? Was he conceivably the kind of man who is capable of thinking one thing and doing another?

The most afflicting of all doubts, doubt of himself, kept the young man tossing on his pillow for at least an hour.

But he woke with a clear-cut decision singing in his mind and gladdening his morning. He would take Jones back. He would generously reinstate the youth, on the ground that the public mortification already put upon him was a sufficient punishment for his sins and abundant warning for others like-minded. This would settle all difficulties at one stroke and definitely lay the ghost of a disagreeable occurrence. The solution was so simple that he marvelled that he had not thought of it before.

His morning's mail, containing one or two very unpleasant letters, only strengthened his determination. He lost no time in carrying it out. By special messenger he dispatched a carefully written and kindly letter to Jones, Senior. Jones, Senior, tore it across the middle and returned it by the same messenger. He then informed the _Chronicle_ what he had done. The _Chronicle_ that afternoon shrieked it under a five-column head, together with a ferocious statement from Jones, Senior, saying that he would rather see his son breaking rocks in the road than a student in such a college as Blaines was, under the present regime. The editor, instead of seeing in West's letter a spontaneous act of magnanimity in the interest of the academic uplift, maliciously twisted it into a grudging confession of error, "unrelieved by the grace of manly retraction and apology." So ran the editorial, which was offensively headed "West's Fatal Flop." Some of the State papers, it seemed from excerpts printed in another column, were foolishly following the _Chronicle's_ lead; Republican cracker-box orators were trying somehow to make capital of the thing; and altogether there was a very unpleasant little mess, which showed signs of developing rapidly into what is known as an "issue."

That afternoon, when the tempest in the collegiate teapot was storming at its merriest, West, being downtown on private business, chanced to drop in at the Post office, according to his frequent habit. He found the sanctum under the guard of the young a.s.sistant editor. The Colonel, in fact, had been sick in bed for four days, and in his absence, Queed was acting-editor and sole contributor of the leaded minion. The two young men greeted each other pleasantly.

"I'm reading you every day," said West, presently, "and, flattery and all that aside, I've been both surprised and delighted at the character of the work you're doing. It's fully up to the best traditions of the _Post_, and that strikes me as quite a feat for a man of your years."

Because he was pleased at this tribute, Queed answered briefly, and at once changed the subject. But he did it maladroitly by expressing the hope that things were going well with Mr. West.

"Well, not hardly," said West, and gave his pleasant laugh. "You may possibly have noticed from our esteemed afternoon contemporary that I'm in a very pretty little pickle. But by the way," he added, with entire good humor, "the _Post_ doesn't appear to have noticed it after all."

"No," said Queed, slowly, not pretending to misunderstand. He hesitated, a rare thing with him. "The fact is I could not write what you would naturally wish to have written, and therefore I haven't written anything at all."

West threw up his hands in mock horror. "Here's another one! Come on, fellers! Kick him!--he's got no friends! You know," he laughed, "I remind myself of the man who stuck his head in at the teller's window, wanting to have a check cashed. The teller didn't know him from Adam.

'Have you any friends here in the city?' asked he. 'Lord, no!' said the stranger; 'I'm the weather man.'"

Queed smiled.

"And I was only trying in my poor way," said West, mournfully, "to follow the advice that you, young man, roared at me for a column on the fatal morning."

"I've regretted that," said Queed. "Though, of course, I never looked for any such developments as this. I was merely trying to act on Colonel Cowles's advice about always playing up local topics. You are doubtless familiar with his dictum that the people are far more interested in a cat-fight at Seventh and Centre Streets than in the greatest exploits of science."

West laughed and rose to go. Then a good-natured thought struck him.

"Look here," said he, "this must be a great load, with the Colonel away--doing all of three columns a day by yourself. How on earth do you manage it?"

"Well, I start work at eight o'clock in the morning."

"And what time does that get you through?"

"Usually in time to get to press with it."

"Oh, I say! That won't do at all. You'll break yourself down, playing both ends against the middle like that. Let me help you out, won't you?

Let me do something for you right now?"

"If you really feel like it," said Queed, remembering how the Colonel welcomed Mr. West's occasional contributions to his columns, "of course I shall be glad to have something from you."

"Why, my dear fellow, certainly! Hand me some copy-paper there, and go right on with your work while I unbosom my pent-up Uticas."

He meditated a moment, wrote rapidly for half an hour, and rose with a hurried glance at his watch.

"Here's a little squib about the college that may serve as a s.p.a.ce-filler. I must fly for an engagement. I'll try to come down to-morrow afternoon anyway, and if you need anything to-night, 'phone me. Delighted to help you out."

Queed picked up the scattered sheets and read them over carefully. He found that Director West had written a very able defense, and whole-hearted endors.e.m.e.nt, of President West's position in the Blaines College hazing affair.

The acting editor sat for some time in deep thought. Eighteen months'

increasing contact with Buck Klinker and other men of action had somewhat tamed his soaring self-sufficiency. He was not nearly so sure as he once was that he knew everything there was to know, and a little more besides. West, personally, whom he saw often, he had gradually come to admire with warmth. By slow degrees it came to him that the popular young president had many qualities of a very desirable sort which he himself lacked. West's opinion on a question of college discipline was likely to be at least as sound as his own. Moreover, West was one of the owners and managers of the _Post_.

Nevertheless, he, Queed, did not see how he could accept and print this article.

It was the old-school Colonel's fundamental axiom, drilled into and fully adopted by his a.s.sistant, that the editor must be personally responsible for every word that appeared in his columns. Those columns, to be kept pure, must represent nothing but the editor's personal views.

Therefore, on more than one occasion, the Colonel had refused point-blank to prepare articles which his directors wished printed. He always accompanied these refusals with his resignation, which the directors invariably returned to him, thereby abandoning their point.

Queed was for the moment editor in the Colonel's stead. Over the telephone, Colonel Cowles had instructed him, four days before, to a.s.sume full responsibility, communicating with him or with the directors if he was in doubt, but standing firmly on his own legs. As to where those legs now twitched to lead him, the young man could have no doubt.