The Enchanted Canyon

by Honoré Morrow

CHAPTER VI

A NEWSPAPER REPORTER

"I wonder if Christ ever cared for a woman. He may have, for God wished Him to know and suffer all that men know and suffer, and all love must have been noble in His eyes."—Enoch's Diary.

"Abbott," said Enoch the next day, "do you recall that I have commented to you several times on the fact that some of the southwestern states did not back the Geological Survey in its search for oil fields as we had expected they would?"

"Yes, Mr. Secretary," answered Charley, looking up from his notebook with keen interest in eye and voice. "I have wondered just why the matter bothered you so."

"It has bothered me for several different reasons. It has, to begin with, conflicted with my idea of the fundamental purpose of this office. What could be a stronger reason for being for the Geological Survey than to find and show the public the resources of the public lands? When the Bureau of Mines reports to me that certain oil fields are diminishing at an alarming rate, and when any fool knows that a vital part of our future history is to be written in terms of oil, it behooves the Secretary of the Interior to look for remedial steps. Certain sections of our Southwest are saturated with oil and yet, Abbott, the states resent our locating oil fields. As far as I know now, no open hostility has been shown, unless"—Enoch interrupted himself suddenly,—"do you recall last year that some Indians drove a Survey group out of Apache Canyon and that young Rice was killed and all his data lost?"

"Certainly, I recall it. I knew Rice."

Enoch nodded. "Do you recall that a number of newspapers took occasion then to sneer at government attempts to usurp State and commercial functions?"

"Now you speak of it, I do remember. The Brown papers were especially nasty."

"Yes," agreed Enoch. "Now listen closely, Abbott. When my suspicions had been sufficiently roused, I went to the Secretary of State, and he laughed at me. Then, the Mexico trouble began to come to a head and I told the President what I feared. This was after I'd had that letter from Juan Cadiz. Last night, as you know, I had a session with Cadiz and one of his bandit friends. Here is what I drew from them."

Enoch reviewed rapidly his conversation of the night before. Abbott listened with snapping eyes.

"It looks as if Secretary Fowler would have to stop laughing," he said, when Enoch had finished.

"Abbott," Enoch's voice was very low, "John Fowler, the Secretary of
State, always will laugh at it."

"Why?" asked Charley.

"I don't know," replied Enoch.

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Then Abbott said,
"I've known for a long time that he was jealous of you, politically.
Also he may own Mexican oil stock or he may merely wish to have the
political backing of the Brown newspapers."

"Can you think of any method of persuading him that I am not a political rival, that I merely want to go to the Senate, when I have finished here?" asked Enoch earnestly.

Abbott shook his head, "He might be convinced that you want to be a Senator. But he's a clever man. And even a fool knows that you are America's man on horseback." Charley's voice rose a little. "Why, even in this rotten, cynical city of Washington, they believe in you, they feel that you are the man of destiny. Mr. Fowler is just clever enough to be jealous of you."

A look of sadness came into Enoch's keen gaze. "I wonder if the game is worth it, after all," murmured he. "Abbott, I'd swap it all for—" he stopped abruptly, looked broodingly out of the window, then said, "Charley, my boy, why are you going into political life?"

The younger man's eyes deepened and he cleared his throat. "A few years ago, if I'd answered that question truthfully, I'd have said for personal aggrandizement! But my intimate association with you, Mr. Huntingdon, has given me a different ideal. I'm going into politics to serve this country in the best way I can."

"Thanks, Abbott," said Enoch. "I've been wanting to say to you for some time that I thought you had served your apprenticeship as a secretary. How would you like an appointment as a special investigator?"

Charley shook his head. "As long as you are Secretary of the Interior, I prefer this job; not only because of my personal feeling for you but because I can learn more here about the way a clean political game can be played than I can anywhere else."

"All right, Abbott! I'm more than grateful and more than satisfied at having you with me. See if I can have a conference with first the Secretary of State and then the President. Now let me finish this report before the Attorney General arrives."

Enoch's conference with Secretary Fowler was inconclusive. The Secretary of State chose to take a humorous attitude toward what he termed the Secretary of the Interior's midnight conference with bandits. Enoch laughed with him and then departed for his audience with the chief executive.

The President listened soberly. When the report was finished, he scowled.

"What attitude does Mr. Fowler take in this?"

"He thinks I'm making mountains out of mole hills. It seems to me, Mr. President, that I must be extremely careful not to encroach on the domain of the Secretary of State. My idea is very deliberately to push the work of the Geological Survey and to follow very carefully any activities against its work."

"All very well, of course," agreed the President, "but what of the big game back of it all—what's the means of fighting that?"

"Publicity," replied Enoch briefly.

"Exactly!" exclaimed the President, "There are other newspapers. Brown does not own them all. As fast as evidence is produced, let the story be told. By Jove, if this war talk grows much more menacing, Huntingdon, I think I'll ask you to go across the country and make a few speeches,—on the Geological Survey!"

"I'm willing!" replied Enoch, with a little sigh.

The President looked at him keenly. "Huntingdon, we're working you too hard! You look tired. I try not to overload you, but—"

"But you are so overloaded yourself that you have to shift some of the load," said Enoch, with a smile. "I'm not seriously tired, Mr. President."

"I hope not, old man. By the way, what did you think of Miss Allen yesterday?"

"I thought her a very interesting young woman," replied Enoch.

"My heavens, man!" exclaimed the chief executive. "What do you want!
Why, Diana Allen is as rare as—as a great poem. Look here,
Huntingdon, you make a mistake to cut all women out of your life. It's
not normal."

"Perhaps not," agreed Enoch briefly. "I would be very glad," he added, as if fearing that he had been too abrupt, "I would be very glad to see more of Miss Allen."

"You ought to make a great effort to do," said the President. "Keep me informed on this Mexican matter, please, and take care of yourself, my boy. Good-by, Mr. Secretary. Think seriously of a speaking tour, won't you?"

"I will," replied Enoch obediently, as he left the room.

The remainder of the day was crowded to the utmost. It was not until midnight that Enoch achieved a free moment. This was when in the privacy of his own room Jonas had bidden him a final good night. Enoch did not open his journal. Instead he scrawled a letter.

"Dear Miss Allen: After deliberating on the matter a somewhat shorter time, I'll admit, than you suggested, but still having deliberated on it, I have decided that friendship is an art that needs attention and study. Will you not dine with me to-morrow, or rather, this evening, at the Ashton, at eight o'clock? Jonas, who will bring you this, can bring your answer. Sincerely yours, Enoch Huntingdon."

He gave the note to Jonas the next morning. Jonas' black eyes, when he saw the superscription, nearly started from their sockets: for during all the years of his service with Enoch, he never had carried a note to a woman. It was mid-morning when he tip-toed to the Secretary's desk and laid a letter on it. Enoch was in conference at the time with Bill Timmins, perhaps the foremost newspaper correspondent in America. He excused himself for a moment and opened the envelope.

"Dear Mr. Secretary: Thank you, yes. Sincerely, Diana Allen."

He slipped the letter into his breast pocket and went on with the interview, his face as somber as ever. But all that day it seemed to the watchful Jonas that the Secretary seemed less tired than he had been for weeks.

There was a little balcony at the Ashton, just big enough for a table for two, and shielded from the view of the main dining-room by palms. It was set well out from the second floor, overlooking a quiet park. Enoch was in the habit of dining here with various men with whom he wished semi-privacy yet whom he did not care to entertain at his own home.

Diana was more than charmed by the arrangement. The corners of her mouth deepened as if she were also amused, but Enoch, engrossed in seating her where the light exactly suited him, did not note the curving lips. He did not know much about women's dress, but he liked Diana's soft white gown, and the curious turquoise necklace she wore interested him. He asked her about it.

"Na-che gave it to me," she said. "It was her mother's. It has no special significance beyond the fact that the workmanship is very fine and that the tracery on the silver means joy."

"Joy? What sort of joy?" asked Enoch.

"Is there more than one sort?" countered Diana, in the bantering voice that Enoch always fancied was half tender.

"Oh, yes!" replied the Secretary. "There's joy in work, play, friends. There are as many kinds of joy as there are kinds of sorrow. Only sorrow is so much more persistent than joy! A sorrow can stay by one forever. But joys pass. They are always short lived."

"Joy in work does not pass, Mr. Secretary," said Diana.

Enoch laid down his spoon. "Please, Miss Allen, don't Mr. Secretary me any more."

Diana merely smiled. "Granted that one has a real friend, I believe joy in friendship is permanent," she went on.

"I hope you're right," said Enoch quietly. "We'll see, you and I."

Diana did not reply. She was, perhaps, a little troubled by Enoch's calm and persistent declaration of principles. It is not easy for a woman even of Diana's poise and simple sincerity to keep in order a gentleman as distinguished and as courteous and as obviously in earnest as Enoch.

Finally, "Do you mind talking your own shop, Mr. Huntingdon?" she asked.

"Not at all," replied Enoch eagerly. "Is there some aspect of my work that interests you?"

"I imagine that all of it would," said Diana. "But I was not thinking of your work as a Cabinet Official. I was thinking of you as Police Commissioner of New York."

Enoch looked surprised.

"Father wrote to me the other day," Diana went on, "and asked me to send him the collection of your speeches. I bought it at Brentano's and I don't mind telling you that it pinched the Johnstown lunches a good bit to do so, but it was worth it, for I read the book before mailing it."

"You're not hinting that I ought to reimburse you, are you?" demanded
Enoch, with a delighted chuckle.

"Well, no—we'll consider that the luncheon and this dinner square the Johnstown pinching, perhaps a trifle more. What I wanted to say was that it struck me as worth comment that after you ceased being Police Commissioner, you never again talked of the impoverished boyhood of America. And yet you were a very successful Commissioner, were you not?"

Enoch looked from Diana out over the balcony rail to the fountain that twinkled in the little park.

"One of the most difficult things in public life," he said slowly, "is to hew straight to the line one laid out at the beginning."

"I should think," Diana suggested, "that the difficulty would depend on what the line was. A man who goes into politics to make himself rich, for example, might easily stick to his original purpose."

"Exactly! But money of itself never interested me!" Here Enoch stopped with a quick breath. There flashed across his inward vision the picture of a boy in Luigi's second story, throwing dice with passionate intensity. Enoch took a long sip of water, then went on. "I wanted to be Police Commissioner of New York because I wanted to make it impossible for other boys to have a boyhood like mine. I don't mean that, quite literally, I thought one man or one generation could accomplish the feat. But I did truly think I could make a beginning. Miss Allen, in spite of the beautiful fights I had, in spite of the spectacular clean-ups we made, I did nothing for the boys that my successor did not wipe out with a single stroke of his pen, his first week in office."

Diana drew a long breath. "I wonder why," she said.

"I think that lack of imagination, poor memory, personal selfishness, is the answer. There is nothing people forget quite so quickly as the griefs of their own childhood. There is nothing more difficult for people to imagine than how things affect a child's mind. And yet, nothing is so important in America to-day as the right kind of education for boys. It has not been found as yet."

"Have you a theory about it?" asked Diana.

"Yes, I have. Have you?"

Diana nodded. "I don't think boys and girls should be educated from the same angle."

"No? Why not?" Enoch's blue eyes were eager.

"Wandering about the desert among the Indians, one has leisure to think and to observe the workings of life under frank and simple conditions. It has seemed to me that the boy approaches life from an entirely different direction from a girl and that our system of education should recognize that. Both are primarily guided by sex, their femaleness or their maleness is always their impelling force. I'm talking now on the matter of the spiritual and moral training, not book education."

"Why not include the mental training? I think you'd be quite right in doing so."

"Perhaps so," replied Diana.

They were silent for a moment, then Enoch said, with a quiet vehemence, "Some day they'll dare to defy the creeds and put God into the public schools. I don't know about girls, but, Miss Allen, the growing boys need Him, more than they need a father. Something to cling to, something high and noble and permanent while sex with all its thousand varied impulses flagellates them! Something to go to with those exquisite, generous fancies that even the worst boy has and that even the best boy will not share even with the best mother. The homes today don't have God in them. The churches with their hide-bound creeds frighten away most men. Think, Miss Allen, think of the travesty of our great educational system which ignores the two great facts of the universe, God and sex."

"You've never put any of this into your public utterances."

"No," replied Enoch, "I've been saving it for you," and he looked at her with a quiet smile.

Diana could but smile in return.

"And so," said Enoch, "returning to the answer to your original question, I have found it hard to keep to any sort of fine idealism, partly because of my own inward struggles and partly because politics is a vile game anyhow."

"We Americans," Diana lifted her chin and looked into Enoch's eyes very directly, "feel that at least one politician has played a clean game. It is a very great privilege for me to know you, Mr. Huntingdon."

"Miss Allen," half whispered Enoch, "if you really knew me, with all my inward devils and my half-achieved dreams, you would realize that it's no privilege at all. Nevertheless, I wish that you did know all about me. It would make me feel that the friendship which we are forming could stand even 'the wreckful siege of battering days'!"

"There was a man who understood friendships!" said Diana quickly. "He said in his sonnets all that could be said about it."

"Now don't disappoint me by agreeing with the idiots who try to prove that Shakespeare wrote the sonnets to a man!" cried Enoch. "Only a woman could have brought forth that beauty of song."

Diana rose nobly to do battle. "What nonsense, Mr. Huntingdon! As if
a man like Shakespeare—" She paused as if struck by a sudden thought.
"That's a curious attitude for a notorious woman hater to take, Mr.
Secretary."

Enoch laid down his fork. "Do you think I'm a woman hater, Miss
Allen?" looking steadily into Diana's eyes.

"I didn't mean to be so personal. Just like a woman!" sighed Diana.

"But do you think I'm a woman hater?" insisted Enoch.

Diana looked up earnestly. "Please, Mr. Huntingdon, if our friendship is to ripen, you must not force it."

Enoch's face grew suddenly white. There swept over him with bitter realism a conception of the falseness of the position into which he was permitting himself to drift. He answered his own question with an attempted lightness of tone.

"I can never marry, but I don't hate women."

Diana's chin lifted and Enoch leaned forward quickly. All the aplomb won through years of suffering and experience deserted him. For the moment he was again the boy in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

"Oh, I am stupid, but let me explain. I want you to—"

"Please don't!" said Diana coldly. "I need no warning, Mr. Huntingdon."

"Oh, my dear Miss Allen, you must not be offended! What can I say?"

"You might ask me if it's not time to go home," suggested Diana, coolly. "You mustn't forget that I'm a wage earner."

Enoch bit his lip and turned to sign the check. Then he followed Diana to the door. Here they came upon the Indian Commissioner and his wife, and all opportunity for explanations was gone for the two invited themselves to walk along to Diana's rooming place. Enoch went up the steps with Diana, however, and asked her tensely:

"Will you lunch with me to-morrow, Miss Allen, that I may explain myself?"

"Thank you, no. I shall be very busy to-morrow, Mr. Huntingdon."

"Let me call here in the evening, then."

"I'd rather you wouldn't," answered the girl, coldly. "Good night, Mr.
Secretary," and she was gone.

Enoch stood as if struck dumb, then he made an excuse to Mr. and Mrs. Watkins, and started homeward. The night was stifling. When Jonas let him into the house, his collar was limp and his hair lay wet on his forehead.

"I'm going to New York to-night, Jonas," he said huskily.

"What's happened, boss?" asked Jonas breathlessly, as he followed Enoch up the stairs.

"Nothing! I'm going to give myself a day's rest. Give me something to travel in," pulling off his coat.

"I'm going with you, boss," not stirring, his black eyes rolling.

"No, I'm going alone, Jonas. Here, I'll pack my own grip. You go on out." This in a voice that sent Jonas, however reluctantly, into the hall, where he walked aimlessly up and down, wringing his hands.

"He ain't been as bad as this in years," he muttered. "I wonder what she did to him!"

Enoch came out of his room shortly. "Tell every one I'm in New York,
Jonas," he said, and was gone.

But Enoch did not go to New York. There was, he found on reaching the station, no train for an hour. He checked his suitcase, and the watching Jonas followed him out into the dark streets. He knew exactly whither the boss was heading, and when Enoch had been admitted into a brick house on a quiet street not a stone's throw from the station, Jonas entered nimbly through the basement.

He had a short conference with a colored man in the kitchen, then he went up to the second floor and sat down in a dark corner of the hall where he could keep an eye on all who entered the rear room. Well dressed men came and went from the room all night. It was nearing six o'clock in the morning when Jonas stopped a waiter who was carrying in a tray of coffee.

"How many's there now?" he demanded.

"Only four," replied the waiter. "That red-headed guy's winning the shirts off their backs. I've seen this kind of a game before. It's good for another day."

"Are any of 'em drinking?" asked Jonas.

"Nothing but coffee. Lord, I'm near dead!"

"Let me take that tray in for you. I want to get word to my boss."

The waiter nodded and, sinking into Jonas' chair, closed his eyes.

Jonas carried the tray into a handsome, smoke filled room, where four men with intent faces were gathered around a card table. Enoch, in his shirt sleeves, was dealing as Jonas set a steaming cup at his elbow. Perhaps the intensity of the colored man's gaze distracted Enoch's attention for a moment from the cards. He looked up and when he met Jonas' eyes he deliberately laid down the deck, rose, took Jonas by the arm and led him to the door.

"Don't try this again, Jonas," he said, and he closed the door after his steward.

Once more Jonas took up his vigil. He left his chair at nine o'clock to telephone Charley Abbott that the Secretary had gone to New York, then he returned to his place. Noon came, afternoon waned. As dusk drew on again, Jonas went once more to the telephone.

"That you, Miss Allen? . . . This is Jonas. . . . Yes, ma'am, I'm well, but the boss is in a dangerous condition. . . . Yes, ma'am, I thought you'd feel bad because you see, it's your fault. . . . No, ma'am, I can't explain over the telephone, but if you'll come to the station and meet me at the news-stand on the corner, I'll tell you. . . . Miss Allen, for God's sake, just trust me and come along. Come now, in a cab, and I'll pay for it. . . . Thank you! Thank you, ma'am! Thank you!"

He banged up the receiver and flew out the basement door. When he reached the news-stand, he stood with his hands twitching, talking to himself for a half hour before Diana appeared. She walked up to him as directly as a man would have done.

"What's happened, Jonas?"

"You and the boss must have quarreled last night. When anything strikes the boss deep, he wants to gamble. Of late years he's mostly fought it off, but once in a while it gets him. He's been at it since last night over yonder, and for the first time in years I can't do anything with him. And if it gets out, you know, Miss Allen, he's ruined. I don't dast to leave him long, that's why I got you to come here."

Diana's chin lifted. "Do you mean to tell me that a man of Mr. Huntingdon's reputation and ability, still stoops to that sort of thing?"

"Stoop! What do you mean, stoop? O Lord, I thought, seeing he sets the world by you, that you was different from the run of women and would understand." Jonas twisted his brown hands together.

"Understand what?" asked Diana, her great eyes fastened on Jonas with pity and scorn struggling in them.

"Understand what it means to him. How it's like a conjur that Luigi wished on him when he was a little boy. How he's pulled himself away from it and he didn't have anybody on earth to help him till I come along. What do you women folks know about how a strong man like him fights Satan? I've seen him walk the floor all night and win, and I've seen him after he's given in, suffer sorrow and hate of himself like a man the Almighty's forgot. That's why he's so good, because he sins and then suffers for it."

As Jonas' husky voice subsided, a sudden gleam of tears shone in
Diana's eyes.

"I'll send him a note, Jonas, and wait here for the answer. If that doesn't bring him, I'll go after him myself."

"The note'll bring him," said Jonas, "and he'll give me thunder for telling."

"Let me have a pencil and get me some paper from the news-stand." She wrote rapidly.

"Dear Mr. Huntingdon:

"I must see you at once on urgent business. I am in the railway station. Could you come to me here?

"DIANA ALLEN."

Jonas all but snatched the note and dashed away. Enoch was scowling at the cards before him when Jonas thrust the note into his hand. Enoch stared at the address, laid the cards down slowly, and read the note.

"All right, gentlemen," he said quietly. "I've had my fun! Good night!" He took his hat from Jonas and strode out of the room. He did not speak as the two walked rapidly to the station. Diana was standing by a cab near the main entrance.

"This is good of you, Mr. Huntingdon," she said gravely, shaking hands.
"Thank you, Jonas!" She entered the cab and Enoch followed her.

"Let me have your suitcase check, boss." Jonas held out a black hand that still shook a little.

"I'll get Miss Allen to drop me at the house, Jonas," said Enoch.

Jonas nodded and heaved a great sigh as the cab started off.

"How did you come to do it?" asked Enoch, looking strangely at Diana.

"I heard you were in New York, Mr. Secretary. Jonas called me up!"

"Jonas had no business to do so. I am humiliated beyond words!"

Enoch spoke with a dreary sort of hopelessness.

"I thought we were friends," said Diana calmly. "It isn't as if we hadn't known each other and all about each other since childhood. You must not say a word against Jonas."

"How could I? He is my guardian angel," said Enoch.

Diana went on still in the commonplace tone of the tea table. "I want to apologize for my fit of temper, Mr. Secretary. I was very stupid and I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself. You may tell me anything you please!"

"I don't deserve it!" Enoch spoke abruptly.

Diana's voice suddenly deepened and softened. "Ah, but you do deserve it, dear Mr. Secretary. You deserve all that grateful citizens can do for you, and even then we cannot expect to discharge our full debt to you. Here's my house. Perhaps when you're not too busy, you'll ask me to dine again with you."

Enoch did not reply. He stood with bared head while she ran up the steps. Then he reentered the cab and was driven home. But it was not till two weeks later that Enoch sent a note to Diana, asking her to take dinner with him. Even his diary during that period showed no record of his inward flagellations. He did not receive an answer until late in the afternoon.

It had been an exceptionally hectic day. Enoch had been summoned before the Senate Committee on appropriations, and with the director of the Reclamation Service had endured a grilling that had had some aspects of the third degree.

After some two hours of it the Director had lost his temper.

"Gentlemen!" he had cried, "treat me as if I were a common thief, attempting to loot the public funds, if you find satisfaction in it, but at least do not humiliate the Secretary of the Interior in the same manner!"

"These people can't humiliate me, Whipple." Enoch had spoken quietly.

The blow had struck home and the Senator who was acting as chairman had apologized.

Enoch had nodded. "I know! You are in the position of having to appropriate funds for the carrying on of a highly specialized business about which you are utterly ignorant. You are uneasy and you mistake impertinent questioning for keen investigation."

"I move we adjourn until to-morrow," a member had said hastily. The motion had carried and Enoch, as though it was already past six o'clock, had started for his office, Whipple accompanying him.

"After all this howl over the proposed Paloma Dam," said Whipple, "we may not be able to build it. There's a bunch of Mexicans both this and the other side of the border that have made serious trouble with the preliminary survey, and I have the feeling that there is some power behind that wants to start something."

"Is that so?" asked Enoch with interest. "Come in and talk to me a few moments about it."

Whipple followed to the Secretary's office. A sealed letter was lying on the desk. Enoch opened it, and read it without ceremony.

"Dear Mr. Huntingdon: I find that some old friends are starting for the Grand Canyon this afternoon and they have given me an opportunity to make one of their party. I have been able to arrange my work to Mr. Watkins' satisfaction and so, I'm off. I want to thank you very deeply for the wonderful openings you have made for me and for the very great personal kindness you have shown me. When I return in the winter, I hope I may see you again.

"Very sincerely yours,

"DIANA ALLEN."

Enoch folded the note and slipped it into his pocket, then he looked at the waiting Director. "I hope you'll excuse me, Whipple, but this is something to which I must give my personal attention," and without a word further, he put on his hat and walked out of the office. He did not go to his waiting carriage but, leaving the building by another door, he walked quickly to the drug store on the corner and, entering a telephone booth, called the railroad station. The train connecting for the Southwest had left an hour before. Enoch hung up the receiver and walked out to the curb, scowling and striking his walking stick against his trouser leg. Finally he got aboard a trolley.

It was a little after three o'clock in the morning when Jonas located him. Enoch was leaning against the wall watching the roulette table.

"Good evening, boss," said Jonas.

Enoch looked round at him. "That you, Jonas? I haven't touched a card or a dollar this evening, Jonas."

Jonas, who had already ascertained this from the owner of the gambling house, nodded.

"Have you had your supper yet, boss?"

Enoch hesitated, thinking heavily. "Why, no, Jonas, I guess not." Then he added irritably, "A man must rest, Jonas. I can't slave all the time."

"Sure!" returned the colored man, holding his trembling hands behind him. "But how come you to think this was rest, boss? You better come back now and let me fix you a bite to eat."

"Jonas, what's the use? Who on earth but you cares what I do? What's the use?"

"Miss Diana Allen," said Jonas softly, "she told Mr. Abbott this noon, at lunch, that you was one of the great men of this country and that he was a lucky dog to spend all his time with you."

Enoch stood, his arms folded on his chest, his massive head bowed.
Finally he said, "All right, old man, I'll try again. But I'm lonely,
Jonas, lonely beyond words, and all the greatness in the world, Jonas,
can't fill an empty heart."

"I know it, boss! I know it!" said Jonas huskily, as he led the way to the street. There, Enoch insisted on walking the three or four miles home.

"All right," agreed Jonas, cheerfully. "I guess ghosteses don't mind travel, and that's all I am, just a ghost."

Enoch stopped abruptly, put a hand on Jonas' shoulder and hailed a passing night prowler. Once in the cab, Jonas said:

"The White House done called you twice to-night. Mr. Secretary. I told 'em you'd call first thing in the morning."

"Thanks!" replied Enoch briefly.

The house was silent when they reached it. Jonas never employed servants who could not sleep in their own homes. By the time the Secretary was ready for bed, Jonas appeared with a tray, Enoch silently and obediently ate and then turned in.

The White House called before the Secretary had finished breakfast.

"You saw last night's papers?" asked the President.

"No! I'm sorry. I—I took a rest last evening."

"I'm glad you did. Well, I think you'd better plan—come up here, will you, at once? I won't try to talk to you over the telephone."

Enoch, in the carriage, glanced over the paper. The Brown paper of the evening before contained a nasty little story of innuendo about the work of the Survey near Paloma. The morning paper declared in glaring headlines that the President by his pacifist policy toward Mexico was tainting the nation's honor and that it would shortly bring England, France and Germany about our ears.

The President was still at breakfast when Enoch was shown in to him.
The chief executive insisted that Enoch have a cup of coffee.

"You don't look to me, my boy, like a man who had enjoyed his rest. And I'm going to ask you to add to your burdens. Could you leave next week for a speaking trip?"

The tired lines around Enoch's mouth deepened. "Yes, Mr. President.
Have you a general route planned?"

"Yes, New York, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and in between as can be arranged. Take two months to it."

"I shall be glad to be free of office routine for a while," said Enoch.
He sipped his coffee slowly, then rose as he added:

"I shall stick strictly to the work of my department, Mr. President, in the speech making."

"Oh! Absolutely! And let me be of any help to you I may."

"Thank you," Enoch smiled a little grimly. "You might come along and supply records for the phonograph."

"By Jove, I would if it were necessary!" said the President.

Jonas and Abbott each was perfect in his own line. In five days' time Enoch was aboard the private car, with such paraphernalia as was needed for carrying on office work en route. The itinerary had been arranged to the last detail. A few carefully chosen newspaper correspondents were aboard and one hot September evening, a train with the Secretary's car hitched to it, pulled out of Washington.

Of Enoch's speeches on that trip little need be said here. Never before had he spoken with such fire and with such simple eloquence. The group of speeches he made are familiar now to every schoolboy. One cannot read them to-day without realizing that the Secretary was trying as never before to interpret for the public his own ideals of service to the common need. He seemed to Abbott and to the newspaper men who for six weeks were so intimately associated with him to draw inspiration and information from the free air. And there was to all of his speeches an almost wistful persuasiveness, as if, Abbott said, he picked one listener in each audience, each night, and sought anew to make him feel the insidious peril to the nation's soul that lay in personal complacency and indifference to the nation's spiritual welfare. Only Jonas, struggling to induce the Secretary to take a decent amount of sleep, nodded wisely to himself. He knew that Enoch made each speech to a lovely, tender face, that no man who saw ever forgot.

Little by little, the newspapers of the country began to take Enoch's point of view. They not only gave his speeches in full, but they commented on them editorially, at great length, and with the exception of the Brown papers, favorably. By the time Enoch was on his way home, with but two weeks more of speech making before him, it looked as though the thought of war with Mexico had been definitely quashed. And Enoch was tired to the very marrow of his bones.

But the Brown papers were not finished. One evening, in Arizona, shortly after the train had pulled out of a station, Enoch asked for the newspapers that had been brought aboard from the desert city. Charley Abbott, who had been with the newspaper men on the observation platform for an hour or so, answered the Secretary's request with a curiously distraught manner.

"I—that is—Mr. Huntingdon, Jonas says you slept worse than ever last night. Why not save the papers till morning and try to sleep now?"

Enoch looked at his secretary keenly. "Picked up some Brown papers here, eh! Nothing that bunch can say can hurt me, old man."

"Don't you ever think it!" exclaimed Charley vehemently. "You might as well say you were immune to rattler bites, Mr. Huntingdon—" here his voice broke.

"Look here, Abbott," said Enoch, "if it's bad, I've got to fight it, haven't I?"

"But this sort of thing, a man—" Charley suddenly steadied himself. "Mr. Secretary, they've put some nasty personal lies about you in the paper. The country at large and all of us who know you, scorn the lies as much as they do Brown. In a day or so, it we ignore them, the stuff will have been forgotten. I beg of you, don't read any newspapers until I tell you all's clear."

Enoch smiled. "Why, my dear old chap, I've weathered all sorts of mud slinging!"

"But never this particular brand," insisted Charley.

"Let's have the papers, Abbott. I'm not afraid of anything Brown can say."

Charley grimly handed the papers to the Secretary and returned to the observation platform.

A reporter had seen Enoch in the gambling house on the evening of Diana's departure for the Canyon. He had learned something from the gambling house keeper of the Secretary's several trips there. The reporter had then, with devilish ingenuity, followed Enoch back to Minetta Lane, where he had found Luigi. Then followed eight or ten paragraphs in Luigi's own words, giving an account of Enoch and Enoch's mother. The whole story was given with a deadly simplicity, that it seemed to the Secretary must carry conviction with it.

As Enoch had told Abbott, he had weathered much political mud slinging, but even his worst political enemies had spared him this. His adherents had made much of the fact that Enoch was slum bred and self made. That was the sort of story which the inherent democracy of America loved. But the Brown account made of Enoch a creature of the underworld, who still loved his early haunts and returned to them in all their vileness. And in all the years of his political life, no newspaper but this had ever mentioned Enoch's mother. The tale closed with a comment on the fact that Enoch, who shunned all women, had been seen several times in Washington giving marked attention to Miss Diana Allen. Diana and her work were fully identified.

Enoch read the account to the last word, a flush of agonizing humiliation deepening on his face as he did so. When he had finished, he doubled the paper carefully, and laid it on the chair next to his. Then he lighted a cigarette and sat with folded arms, unseeing eyes on the newspaper. When Jonas came in an hour later, the cigarette, unsmoked, was cold between the Secretary's lips. With trembling hands, the colored man picked up the paper and with unbelievable venom gleaming in his black eyes, he carried it to the rear door, spat upon it and flung it out into the desert night. Then he returned to Enoch.

"Mr. Secretary," he said huskily, "let me take your keys."

Mechanically Enoch obeyed. Jonas selected a small key from the bunch and, opening a large leather portfolio, he took out the black diary. This he placed carefully on the folding table which stood at Enoch's elbow. Then he started toward the door.

The Secretary did not look up. Nor did he heed the colloquy which took place at the door between Jonas and Abbott.

"How is he, Jonas?"

"I ain't asked him. He's a sick man."

"God! Let me come in, Jonas."

"No, sir, you ain't! How come you think you kin talk to him when even
I don't dast to?"

"But he mustn't be alone, Jonas."

"He ain't alone. I left him with his Bible. Ain't nobody going to trouble him this night."

"I didn't know he read the Bible that way." Abbott's voice was doubtful.

"I don't mean the regular Lord's Bible. It's a book he's been writing for years and he always turns to it when he's in trouble. I don't know nothing about it. What he don't want me to know, I don't know," and Jonas slammed the door behind him.

It was late when Enoch suddenly straightened himself up and, with an air of resolution, opened the black book. He uncapped his fountain pen and wrote:

"Diana, how could I know, how could I dream that such a thing could happen to you, through me! You must never come back to Washington. Perhaps they will forget. As for myself, I can't seem to think clearly just what I must do. I am so very tired. One thing is certain, you never must see me again. For one wild moment the desire to return to the Canyon, now I am in its neighborhood overwhelmed me. I decided to go up there and see if I could find the peace that I found in my boyhood. Then I realized that you were at home, that all the world would see me go down Bright Angel, and I gave up the idea. But somehow, I must find rest, before I return to Washington. Oh, Diana, Diana!"

It was midnight when Enoch finally lay down in his berth. To Jonas' delight, he fell asleep almost immediately, and the faithful steward, after reporting to the anxious group on the platform, was soon asleep himself.

But it was not one o'clock when the Secretary awoke. The train was rumbling slowly, and he looked from the window. Only the moonlit flats of the desert were to be seen. Enoch rose with sudden energy and dressed himself. He chucked his toilet case, with his diary and a change of underwear, into a satchel, and scrawled a note to Abbott:

"Dear Charley: I'm slipping off into the desert for a little rest. You'll hear from me when I feel better. Give out that I'm sick—I am—and cancel the few speaking engagements left. Tell Jonas he is not to worry. Yours, E. H."

He sealed this note, then he pulled on a soft hat and, as the train stopped at a water tank, he slipped off the platform and stood in the shadow of an old shed. It seemed to him a long time before the engine, with violent puffing and jolting, started the long train on again. But finally the tail lights disappeared in the distance and Enoch was alone in the desert. For a few moments he stood beside the track, drawing in deep breaths of the warm night air. Then he started slowly westward along the railway tracks. He had noted a cluster of adobe houses a mile or so back, and toward these he was headed. In spite of the agony of the blow he had sustained Enoch, gazing from the silver flood of the desert, to the silver arch of the heavens, was conscious of a thrill of excitement and not unpleasant anticipation. Somewhere, somehow, in the desert, he would find peace and sufficient spiritual strength to sustain him when once more he faced Washington and the world.