Queed: A Novel

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

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.