Queed: A Novel

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

"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.