Before I reached Utah, my friends, Ben Rich and James Devine, met me, on the train. The news of President Woodruff's "revelation" had percolated through the whole community. The Gentiles were alarmed for themselves. My friends were anxious for me. All the old enmities that had so long divided Utah were arranging themselves for a new conflict. And Rich and Devine had come to urge me to remember my promise that I would hold to my candidacy no matter who should appear in the field against me.
Of my father's stand in the crisis Rich could give me only one indication: after a conference in the offices of the Presidency, Rich had said to President Woodruff: "Then I suppose I may as well close up Frank's rooms at the Templeton"—the hotel in which my friends had opened political headquarters for me—and my father, accompanying him to an anteroom, had hinted significantly: "I think you should not close Frank's rooms just yet. He may need them."
Rich brought me word, too, that the Church authorities were expecting to see me; and soon as I arrived in Salt Lake City, I hastened to the little plastered house in which the Presidency had its offices.
President Woodruff, my father, and Joseph F. Smith were there, in the large room of their official apartments. We withdrew, for private conference, into the small retiring room in which I had consulted with "Brother Joseph Mack" when he was on the underground—in 1888—and had consulted with President Woodruff about his "manifesto," in 1890. The change in their circumstances, since those unhappy days, was in my mind as I sat down.
President Woodruff sat at the head of a bare walnut table in a chair so large that it rather dwarfed him; and he sank down in it, to an attitude of nervous reluctance to speak, occupied with his hands. Smith took his place at the opposite end of the board, with dropped eyes, his chair tilted back, silent, but (as I soon saw) unusually alert and attentive. My father assumed his inevitable composure—firmly and almost unmovingly seated—and looked at me squarely with a not unkind premonition of a smile.
President Woodruff continued silent. Ordinarily, anything that came from the Lord was quite convincing to him and needed no argument (in his mind) to make it convincing to others. I could not suppose that the look of determination on my face troubled him. It was more likely that something unusual in the mental attitudes of his councillors was the cause of his hesitation; and with this suspicion to arouse me I became increasingly aware (as the conference proceeded) of two rival watchfulnesses upon me.
"Well?" I said. "What was it you wanted of me?"
Smith looked up at the President. And Smith had always, hitherto, seemed so unseeing of consequences, and, therefore, unappreciative of means, that his betrayal of interest was indicative of purpose. I thought I could detect, in the communication which his manner made, the plan of my father's ecclesiastical rivals to remove him from the scene of his supreme influence over the President, and the plan of ambitious church politicians to remove me from their path by the invocation of God's word appointing father to the Senate.
"Frank," the President announced, "it is the will of the Lord that your father should go to the Senate from Utah."
As he hesitated, I said: "Well, President Woodruff?"