Chapter 18

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.