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?"
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.