_Of President West of Old Blaines College, his Trustees and his
Troubles; his Firmness in the Brown-Jones Hazing Incident so
misconstrued by Malicious Asses; his Article for the Post, and why
it was never printed: all ending in West's Profound Dissatisfaction
with the Rewards of Patriotism._
The way of Blaines College was not wholly smooth that winter, and
annoyances rose to fret the fine edge of President West's virgin
enthusiasms. The opening had been somewhat disappointing. True, there
were more students than last year, the exact increment being nine. But
West had hoped for an increase of fifty, and had communicated his
expectations to the trustees, who were correspondingly let down when the
actual figures--total enrolment, 167--were produced at the October
meeting. The young president explained about the exasperating delays in
getting out his advertising literature, but the trustees rather hemmed
over the bills and said that that was a lot of money. And one of them
bluntly called attention to the fact that the President had not assumed
his duties till well along in September.
West, with charming humility and good humor, asked indulgence for his
inexperience. His mistake, he said, in giving an excess of time to the
study of the great collegiate systems of the old world, if it was a
mistake, was one that could hardly be repeated. Next year ...
"Meantime," said the blunt trustee, "you've got a ten per cent increase
in expenditures and but nine more stoodents."
"Let us not wholly forget," said West, with his disarming smile, "my
hope to add substantially to the endowment."
But he marked this trustee as one likely to give trouble in the future,
and hence to be handled with care. He was a forthright, upstanding,
lantern-jawed man of the people, by the name of James E. Winter. A
contractor by profession and a former member of the city council, he
represented the city on the board of trustees. For the city appropriated
seventy-five hundred dollars a year, for the use of the college, and in
return for this munificence, reserved the right to name three members of
the board.
Nor was Mr. Winter the only man of his kidney on that directorate. From
his great friend among the trustees, Mr. Fyne, donator of the fifty
thousand dollar endowment on which Blaines College partly subsisted,
West learned that his election to the presidency had failed of being
unanimous. In fact, the vote had stood seven to five, and the meeting at
which he was chosen had at times approached violence. Of the five, two
had voted against West because they thought that old Dr. Gilfillan's
resignation did not have that purely spontaneous character so desirable
under the circumstances; two because they did not think that West had
the qualifications, or would have the right point of view, for a
people's college; and one for all these reasons, or for any other
reason, which is to say for personal reasons. This one, said Mr. Fyne,
was James E. Winter.
"I know," said West. "He's never got over the poundings we used to give
him in the _Post_ when he trained with those grafters on the Council.
He'd put poison in my tea on half a chance."
Unhappily, the sharp cleft made in the board at the time of the election
survived and deepened. The trustees developed a way of dividing seven to
five on almost all of West's recommendations which was anything but
encouraging. An obstinate, but human, pride of opinion tended to keep
the two factions facing each other intact, and matters very tiny in
themselves served, as the weeks went by, to aggravate this feeling.
Once, at least, before Christmas, it required all of West's tact and
good-humor to restore the appearance of harmony to a meeting which was
fast growing excited.
But the young president would not allow himself to become discouraged.
He earnestly intended to show James E. Winter which of the two knew most
about running a modern institution of the higher learning. Only the
perfectest bloom of his ardor faded under the constant handling of rough
fingers. The interval separating Blaines College and the University of
Paris began to loom larger than it had seemed in the halcyon
summer-time, and the classic group of noble piles receded further and
further into the prophetic haze. But West's fine energy and optimism
remained. And he continued to see in the college, unpromising though the
outlook was in some respects, a real instrument for the uplift.
The president sat up late on those evenings when social diversions did
not claim his time, going over and over his faculty list with a critical
eye, and always with profound disapproval. There were only three Ph.D.'s
among them, and as a whole the average of attainment was below, rather
than above, the middle grade. They were, he was obliged to admit, a lot
of cheap men for a cheap college. With such a staff, a distinguished
standard was clearly not to be hoped for. But what to do about it? His
general idea during the summer had been mercilessly to weed out the weak
brothers in the faculty, a few at a time, and fill their places with men
of the first standing. But now a great obstacle presented itself. Men of
the first standing demanded salaries of the first standing. Blaines
College was not at present in position to pay such salaries. Obviously
one of two courses remained. Either the elevation of the faculty must
proceed in a very modest form, or else Blaines College must get in
position to pay larger salaries. West decided to move in both
directions.
There was one man on the staff that West objected to from the first
faculty meeting. This was a man named Harkly Young, a youngish,
tobacco-chewing fellow of lowly origin and unlessoned manners, who was
"assistant professor" of mathematics at a salary of one thousand dollars
a year. Professor Young's bearing and address did anything but meet the
president's idea of scholarliness; and West had no difficulty in
convincing himself of the man's incompetence. Details came to his
attention from time to time during the autumn which served to strengthen
his snap-shot judgment, but he made the mistake, doubtless, of failing
to communicate his dissatisfaction to Professor Young, and so giving him
an inkling of impending disaster. West knew of just the man for this
position, a brilliant young assistant superintendent of schools in
another part of the state, who could be secured for the same salary.
Eager to begin his house-cleaning and mark some definite progress, West
hurled his bolt from the blue. About the middle of December he
dispatched a letter to the doomed man notifying him that his services
would not be required after the Christmas recess.
Instead of accepting his dismissal in a quiet and gentlemanly way, and
making of himself a glad thank-offering on the altar of scholarship,
Professor Young had the poor taste to create an uproar. After satisfying
himself in a stirring personal interview that the president's letter was
final, he departed in a fury, and brought suit against the college and
Charles Gardiner West personally for his year's salary. He insisted that
he had been engaged for the full college year. To the court he
represented that he was a married man with six children, and absolutely
dependent upon his position for his livelihood.
Professor Young happened to be very unpopular with both his colleagues
and the students, and probably all felt that it was a case of good
riddance, particularly as West's new man rode rapidly into general
popularity. These facts hampered the Winterites on the board, but
nevertheless they made the most of the incident, affecting to believe
that Young had been harshly treated. The issue, they intimated, was one
of the classes against the masses. The _Chronicle_, the penny evening
paper which found it profitable business to stand for the under-dog and
"the masses," scareheaded a jaundiced account of the affair, built up
around an impassioned statement from Professor Young. The same issue
carried an editorial entitled, "The Kid Glove College." West laughed at
the editorial, but he was a sensitive man to criticism and the sarcastic
gibes wounded him. When the attorneys for the college advised a
settlement out of court by paying the obstreperous Young three hundred
dollars in cash, James Winter was outspoken in his remarks. A resolution
restraining the president from making any changes in the faculty,
without the previous consent and approval of the board, was defeated,
after warm discussion, by the margin of seven votes to five.
"By the Lord, gentlemen," said Mr. Fyne, indignantly, "if you cannot put
any confidence in the discretion of your president, you'd better get one
whose discretion you can put confidence in."
"That's just what I say," rejoined James E. Winter, with instant
significance.
Other changes in his faculty West decided to defer till the beginning of
a new year. All his surplus energy should be concentrated, he decided,
on raising an endowment fund which should put the college on a sound
financial basis before that time came. But here again he collided with
the thick wall of trustee bigotry.
In the city, despite his youth, he was already well known as a speaker,
and was a favorite orator on agreeable occasions of a semi-public
nature. This was a sort of prestige that was well worth cultivating. In
the State, and even outside of it, he had many connections through
various activities, and by deft correspondence he easily put himself in
line for such honors as they had to offer. Invitations to speak came
rolling in in the most gratifying way. His plan was to mount upon these
to invitations of an even higher class. In December he made a much
admired address before the Associated Progress Boards. The next month,
through much subtle wire-pulling, he got himself put on the toast list
at the annual banquet of the distinguished American Society for the
Promotion of the Higher Education. There his name met on equal terms
with names as yet far better known. He spoke for ten minutes and sat
down with the thrill of having surpassed himself. A famous financier who
sat with him at the speaker's table told him that his speech was the
best of the evening, because the shortest, and asked several questions
about Blaines College. The young President returned home in a fine glow,
which the hostile trustees promptly subjected to a cold douche.
"I'd like to inquire," said James E. Winter, sombrely, at the January
board meeting, "what is the point, if any, of the President of Blaines
College trapesing all over the country to attend these here banquets."
They used unacademic as well as plain language in the Blaines board
meeting by this time. West smiled at Trustee Winter's question. To him
the man habitually seemed as malapropos as a spiteful old lady.
"The point is, Mr. Winter, to get in touch with the sources of endowment
funds. Blaines College on its present foundation cannot hope to compete
with enlightened modern colleges of from five to one hundred times its
resources. If we mean to advance, we must do it by bringing Blaines
favorably to the attention of philanthropists who--"
"No, _sir!_" roared Winter, bringing his contractor's fist down
thuddingly upon the long table. "Such noo-fangled ideas are against the
traditions of old Blaines College, I say! Old Blaines College is not
asking for alms. Old Blaines College is not a whining beggar, whatever
those Yankee colleges may be. I say, gentlemen, it's beneath the dignity
of old Blaines College for its president to go about Noo York bowing and
scraping and passing the hat to Rockyfeller, and such-like boocaneers."
To West's unfeigned surprise, this view of the matter met with solid
backing. Reminiscences of the "tainted money" controversy appeared in
the trustees' talk. "Subsidized education" was heard more than once. One
spoke bitterly of Oil Colleges. No resolution was introduced, James E.
Winter having inadvertently come unprepared, but the majority opinion
was clearly that old Blaines College (founded 1894) should draw in her
traditional skirts from the yellow flood then pouring over the country,
and remain, small it may be, but superbly incorruptible.
For once, West left his trustees thoroughly disgusted and out of humor.
"Why, _why_ are we doomed to this invincible hostility to a new idea?"
he cried, in the bitterness of his soul. "Here is the spirit of progress
not merely beckoning to us, but fairly springing into our laps, and
because it speaks in accents that were unfamiliar to the slave
patriarchy of a hundred years ago, we drag it outside the city and
crucify it. I tell you these old Bourbons whom we call leaders are
millstones around our necks, and we can never move an inch until we've
laid the last one of them under the sod."
Sharlee Weyland, to whom he repeated this thought, though she was all
sympathy with his difficulties, did not nevertheless think that this was
quite fair. "Look," she said, "at the tremendous progress we've made in
the last ten years."
"Yes," he flashed back at her, "and who can say that a state like
Massachusetts, with the same incomparable opportunities, wouldn't have
made ten times as much!"
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 entitled to any assistance. 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 glasses, 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 prickly 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
asses 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 assembly-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 Saturday 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
Saturday, 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 circumstance 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
asserted--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 principally 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 circumstances. 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 masses, 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 damning 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
buttonhole, engaged in booting a lad of singular nobility 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 entitled: "Justice in
Silk Stockings."
But this was only a beginning. Next morning's _Post_, which West had
counted on to come to his assistance 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 circumstance, he was hissed when he
entered the morning assembly--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_ passionately 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 régime. 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 assistant 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
space-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 endorsement, 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 assistant, 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
assume 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.
If he had a passion in his scientist's bosom, it was for exact and
unflinching veracity. Even to keep the _Post_ silent had been something
of a strain upon his instinct for truth, for a voice within him had
whispered that an honest journal _ought_ to have some opinion to express
on a matter so locally interesting as this. To publish this editorial
would strain the instinct to the breaking point and beyond. For it would
be equivalent to saying, whether anybody else but him knew it or not,
that he, the present editor of the _Post_ approved and endorsed West's
position, when the truth was that he did nothing of the sort.
At eight o'clock that night, he succeeded, after prolonged search of the
town on the part of the switchboard boy, in getting West to the
telephone.
"Mr. West," said Queed, "I am very sorry, but I don't see how I can
print your article."
"Oh, Lord!" came West's untroubled voice back over the wire. "And a
man's enemies shall be those of his own household. What's wrong with it,
Mr. Editor?"
Queed explained his reluctances. "If that is not satisfactory to you,"
he added, at the end, "as it hardly can be, I give you my resignation
now, and you yourself can take charge immediately."
"Bless your heart, no! Put it in the waste-basket. It doesn't make a
kopeck's worth of difference. Here's a thought, though. Do you approve
of the tactics of those _Chronicle_ fellows in the matter?"
"No, I do not."
"Well, why not show them up to-morrow?"
"I'll be glad to do it."
So Queed wrote a stinging little article of a couple of sticks' length,
holding up to public scorn journalistic redshirts who curry-combed the
masses, and preached class hatred for the money there was in it. It is
doubtful if this article helped matters much. For the shameless
_Chronicle_ seized on it as showing that the _Post_ had tried to defend
the president, and utterly failed. "Even the West organ," so ran its
brazen capitals, "does not dare endorse its darling. And no wonder,
after the storm of indignation aroused by the _Chronicle's_ fearless
exposures."
West kept his good humor and self-control intact, but it was hardly to
be expected that he enjoyed venomous misrepresentation of this sort. The
solidest comfort he got in these days came from Sharlee Weyland, who did
not read the _Chronicle_, and was most beautifully confident that
whatever he had done was right. But after all, the counselings of Miss
Avery, of whom he also saw much that spring, better suited his
disgruntled humor.
"They are incapable of appreciating you," said she, a siren in the red
motor. "You owe it to yourself to enter a larger field. And"--so ran the
languorous voice--"to your friends."
The trustees met on Saturday, with the _Chronicle_ still pounding away
with deadly regularity. Its editorial of the afternoon before was
entitled, "We Want A College President--Not A Class President," and had
frankly urged the trustees of old Blaines to consider whether a change
of administration was not advisable. This was advice which some of the
trustees were only too ready to follow. James E. Winter, coming armed
cap-à-pie to the meeting, suggested that Mr. West withdraw for a time,
which Mr. West properly declined to do. The implacable insurgent
thereupon launched into a bitter face-to-face denunciation of the
president's conduct in the hazing affair, outpacing the _Chronicle_ by
intimating, too plainly for courtesy, that the president's conduct
toward Jones was characterized by duplicity, if not wanting in
consistent adherence to veracity. "I had a hard time to keep from
hitting him," said West afterwards, "but I knew that would be the worst
thing I could possibly do." "Maybe so," sighed Mr. Fyne, apparently not
with full conviction. Winter went too far in moving that the president's
continuance in office was prejudicial to the welfare of Blaines College,
and was defeated 9 to 3. Nevertheless, West always looked back at this
meeting as one of the most unpleasant incidents in his life. He flung
out of it humiliated, angry, and thoroughly sick at heart.
West saw himself as a persecuted patriot, who had laid a costly oblation
on the altar of public spirit only to see the base crowd jostle forward
and spit upon it. He was poor in this world's goods. It had cost him
five thousand a year to accept the presidency of Blaines College. And
this was how they rewarded him. To him, as he sat long in his office
brooding upon the darkness of life, there came a visitor, a tall,
angular, twinkling-eyed, slow-speaking individual who perpetually chewed
an unlighted cigar. He was Plonny Neal, no other, the reputed great
chieftain of city politics. Once the _Post_, in an article inspired by
West, had referred to Plonny as "this notorious grafter." Plonny could
hardly have considered this courteous; but he was a man who never
remembered a grudge, until ready to pay it back with compound interest.
West's adolescent passion for the immediate reform of politics had long
since softened, and nowadays when the whirligig of affairs threw the two
men together, as it did not infrequently, they met on the easiest and
friendliest terms. West liked Plonny, as everybody did, and of Plonny's
sincere liking for him he never had the slightest doubt.
In fact, Mr. Neal's present call was to report that the manner in which
a lady brushes a midge from her summering brow was no simpler than the
wiping of James E. Winter off the board of Blaines College.
That topic being disposed of, West introduced another.
"Noticed the way the _Chronicle_ is jumping on me with all four feet,
Plonny?" he asked, with rather a forced laugh. "Why can't those fellows
forget it and leave me alone?"
By a slow facial manoeuvre, Mr. Neal contrived to make his cigar look
out upon the world with contemptuousness unbearable.
"Why, nobody pays no attention to them fellers' wind, Mr. West. You
could buy them off for a hundred dollars, ten dollars down, and have
them praising you three times a week for two hundred dollars,
twenty-five dollars down. I only take the paper," said Mr. Neal,
"because their Sunday is mighty convenient f'r packin' furniture f'r
shipment."
The _Chronicle_ was the only paper Mr. Neal ever thought of reading, and
this was how he stabbed it in the back.
"I don't want to butt in, Mr. West," said he, rising, "and you can stop
me if I am, but as a friend of yours--why are you botherin' yourself at
all with this here kid's-size proposition?"
"What kid's-size proposition?"
"This little two-by-twice grammar school that tries to pass itself off
for a college. And you ain't even boss of it at that! You got a gang of
mossbacks sitting on your head who don't get a live idea among 'em wunst
a year. Why, the archangel Gabriel wouldn't have a show with a lot of
corpses like them! Of course it ain't my business to give advice to a
man like you, and I'm probably offendin' you sayin' this, but someway
you don't seem to see what's so plain to everybody else. It's your
modesty keeps you blind, I guess. But here's what I don't see: why don't
you come out of this little hole in the ground and get in line?"
"In line?"
"You're dead and buried here. Now you mention the _Evening Windbag_ that
nobody pays no more attention to than kids yelling in the street. How
about having a paper of your own some day, to express your own ideas and
get things done, big things, the way you want 'em?"
"You mean the _Post?_"
"Well, the editor of the _Post_ certainly would be in line, whereas the
president of Blaines Grammar School certainly ain't."
"What do you mean by in line, Plonny?"
Mr. Neal invested his cigar with an enigmatic significance. "I might
mean one thing and I might mean another. I s'pose you never give a
thought to poltix, did you?"
"Well, in a general way I have thought of it sometimes."
"Think of it some more," said Mr. Neal, from the door. "I see a kind of
shake-up comin'. People say I've got infloonce in poltix, and sort of
help to run things. Of course it ain't so. I've got no more infloonce
than what my ballot gives me, and my takin' an intelligent public
interest in what's goin' on. But it looks to an amatoor like the people
are gettin' tired of this ring-rule they been givin' us, and 're goin'
to rise in their majesty pretty soon, and fill the offices with young
progressive men who never heeled f'r the organization."
He went away, leaving the young president of Blaines vastly cheered.
Certainly no language could have made Neal's meaning any plainer. He
had come to tell West that, if he would only consent to get in line, he,
great Neal, desired to put him in high office--doubtless the Mayoralty,
which in all human probability meant the Governorship four years later.
West sat long in rapt meditation. He marveled at himself for having ever
accepted his present position. Its limitations were so narrow and so
palpable, its possibilities were so restricted, its complacent
provincialism so glaring, that the imaginative glories with which he had
once enwrapped it seemed now simply grotesque. As long as he remained,
he was an entombed nonentity. Beyond the college walls, out of the reach
of the contemptible bigotry of the trustees of this world, the people
were calling for him. He could be the new type of public servant, the
clean, strong, fearless, idolized young Moses, predestined to lead a
tired people into the promised land of political purity. Once more a
white meadow of eager faces rolled out before the eye of his mind; and
this time, from the buntinged hustings, he did not extol learning with
classic periods, but excoriated political dishonesty in red-hot phrases
which jerked the throngs to their feet, frenzied with ardor....
And it was while he was still in this vein of thought, as it happened,
that Colonel Cowles, at eleven o'clock on the first night of June,
dropped dead in his bathroom, and left the _Post_ without an editor.