Chapter X: Part 10

Things as they stood were not harmonious. It all affected _me_ like a poison, and I am sure was the direct cause of my so slow return to normal health. And when I visited the baby at my sister’s and heard Elizabeth Ann speak of what “daddy” or “mamma” did, even her manifestations of love for me only made me the more unspeakably miserable. I used to want to pick her up and fly away with her. And, oh, how I longed to shout to the world, “She’s mine! She’s _mine_!”

The knowledge of this state of affairs and of the equal dissatisfaction on the part of Elizabeth and Scott, experienced as a result of my unrelenting attitude, told me, even as my brother-in-law was informing me of my sister’s departure for Ohio, that she had _really_ also gone on to _Washington_. My high-strung nervous system made my perceptive abilities all the keener, and I had scarcely hung up the receiver when I saw very plainly the whole picture. Either Mr. Harding, his greater fears aroused by my first frank confession to him in January of utter dissatisfaction with the present adoption arrangement, had sent for Elizabeth, or she, tossed about mentally by the hurricane of my own expressed sentiments and then by the more direct tornado of refusals by Scott to longer suffer interference from me where the baby was concerned, had written to him and asked for an appointment. To this day I do not know how it came to be arranged that Elizabeth went down. In any event, I knew intuitively, without being told, where she had gone.

When Elizabeth returned from Washington, she told me she had talked with Mr. Harding, and I learned that she had left the baby at my mother’s in Athens, Ohio, while she went on to the White House.

But what passed between Mr. Harding and my sister Elizabeth is to this day almost a closed book to me. I was shaken with fury to think that she would go to see him and not advise me of it beforehand. And I was wroth with him I loved so dearly for inviting or permitting an interview without my knowledge.

I will admit the possibility at that time of actual mental impairment on my part where Elizabeth Ann was concerned, and perhaps it would not be too much to say, that only by offsetting the effect that my too-concentrated thinking wrought in me physically, by vigorous mental application to my studies, was I able to appear the normal, fairly healthy individual I had to be in order to keep going. But I so powerfully discounted the wisdom and right of a mother’s having to give up her love-child simply because stupid convention held a Damocletian sword over her head, that I had developed a decided complex on the subject, to apply the modern phrase.

And, instead of pressing Elizabeth to tell me what had been said by Mr. Harding to her and what she had said to Mr. Harding, I sat down and poured out to my sweetheart in a letter, which I fain would have recalled as soon as it was mailed, my angry resentment at what I termed being “double-crossed.” I wrote unkindly, I wrote hysterically, I wrote intolerantly, I wrote pleadingly.

And, as always, my answer from him was characteristic. He wrote kindly, he wrote calmly, he wrote tolerantly, and he, too, wrote pleadingly.

And, as always, my subsequent letter to him was one of apology for a hasty temper indulged. I remember back in 1917, when I had shown anger for a moment over something, Mr. Harding wrote to me afterward, “I love you, Nan, darling, as much when you are angry as any other time.” Indeed, I have never had anything _but_ love displayed by him toward me.

And even in late years when my sister has intimated to me that “Mr. Harding was not as loyal to _you_, Nan, as you were to _him_, believe me!” I have recognized that whatever Mr. Harding said to my sister Elizabeth in that interview, he said not because he didn’t love or trust _me_, but because, as he told me so often, he “couldn’t be expected” to trust anybody beyond or outside of me, because he knew that in all the world nobody loved him as devotedly or as passionately as Nan Britton. And when he talked to Elizabeth, even though she was my own sister, he was talking to a comparative outsider.

_87_

And so there continued to be dissension in the Willits household whenever the mother of their adopted daughter appeared on the scene, and I continued to cast about in my mind for a plan which would make it possible for me to take my daughter. As the spring advanced, and I realized another summer was drawing near, I grew more panicky than ever. In June my school would be out and I knew Elizabeth and Scott intended to go down on the Illinois farm that summer as early possibly as July. That meant Elizabeth Ann would be away from me for one month, two months, and perhaps longer. Oftener than ever, as a result of contemplating another whole season away from her, would steal over me the old, sinister suggestion of taking a husband. “Get married and you can have her, get married and you can have her, get married and you can have her.” The wordy little demons danced in my brain like mad until sometimes I wanted to scream, “Stop! _Stop!_” But in the dead of night, when I could reason more sanely, the idea itself would recur and it seemed to grow less and less obnoxious in proportion to the recompense it alluringly offered.

I grabbed at the following unexpected straw which was suddenly floated before my sinking mind. In late April or early May I received a letter from Helen Anderson, who was my teacher in New York when I took my secretarial course.

“You have a way of getting things you want, Nan, why don’t you go to Europe with me? I’m sailing on June 21st with the Armstrong Tour, and enclose circular,” Miss Anderson wrote.

My unhappiness inclined me to try anything that would, even temporarily, take my mind off the situation as it existed, and, knowing that soon my sister, her husband and my baby would be gone, and having made no plans whatever for myself for the summer, the trip to Europe seemed a real Godsend. I had never been abroad, and the novelty itself would surely occupy my thoughts and relieve me mentally, as well as doubtless improve me physically. According to the circular the entire trip, including six weeks of university study in Dijon, France, would cost but $525. I had been studying French at Northwestern University that semester and looked with favor upon continuing my study abroad and at the same time, as was contemplated in the tour, seeing various parts of France.

But the deciding element was that it gave promise of getting me away from myself, and from the too exhaustive thinking about my baby girl. It was certain I could not continue to survive the present mental maelstrom. The get-a-husband program was not as easy at it had seemed, and though I was accepting casual attentions from two or three young men, one an instructor at Northwestern, I could see in none of them enough of the desirable qualities needful in the enactment of the program I had been considering.

I wrote Mr. Harding immediately upon receiving the letter from Miss Anderson, and told him exactly why I thought the trip would benefit me. He himself was to be away in Alaska, I reminded him, which would mean that I could not see him at all, and the baby would be on the Willits farm most of the summer. I told him it would help to make me a little bit more happy if he could let me go to Europe.

Mr. Harding had met Helen Anderson, you will remember, when he first came over to New York, and he knew her to be a gentlewoman. Therefore, in his reply he endorsed heartily my plans and enclosed $200 or $300 as a deposit to be placed with the Armstrong Tour people. He advised me to go ahead immediately and get my passport.

I remember very well that, even as enormously busy as he must have been, he went quite into detail, telling me how I would have to have my picture taken for the passport, and so on, and every succeeding letter I had from him until I sailed contained advices. Advices and expressions of how he “would love to be going” with me! “I would love to see your face when you see London, Nan!” he wrote, and though our plans did not contemplate London, I knew that Miss Anderson who had been abroad about a dozen times, knew London well, for she often visited a friend there, and I thought we would probably break away from the regular tour and go for a brief time to London. Mr. and Mrs. Harding had been abroad but once, I think, during their entire married life, but evidently London had impressed Mr. Harding beyond Paris. He wrote, “I wish _I_ might take you, dearie; I wish we might make the trip together; I wish we might make it our second honeymoon trip!” Instead, he said, he would be journeying in the opposite direction, to Alaska. But not in spirit, for he would be thinking of me every hour, he wrote. And I! Ah, he was never out of my thoughts, try as I did to forget things.

_88_

One night I had Elizabeth Ann with me out at the dormitory. It was about two weeks or so before I was to leave Chicago. We went to bed and I talked things over with Elizabeth Ann. I would talk with her as though she were an older person, and I swear I do believe she understood many of the serious things I used to talk about. I don’t know that I had mentioned to her up to this time that I was going away. She was lying very close in my arms when I said, “Sweetheart, Nan is going away for a little while--on a big boat!” There was silence for a second, then she uttered a scream; it was not the scream of a child except as an older voice might speak through a child. How often have I thought of it! It was a cry of alarm, of premonition.

“No, no!” she cried. I had explained it to her so quietly and in what I thought was a cheerful voice that her cry seemed almost to presage tragedy. And all through the days of preparation following, that cry sounded and resounded in memory.

She was so adorable that year--just three and a half years old. She had all of her mother’s impulsiveness with periods of her father’s reserve, and she was the most affectionate child I have ever seen. A true love-baby like Nancy Hanks, Lincoln’s mother.

In this connection I am reminded of an incident which occurred during Miss Daisy Harding’s first visit to her cousin Mrs. Wesener, in Chicago, in the fall of 1921, I think. I was in New York, but my sister Elizabeth related it to me. Miss Harding had come to call upon Elizabeth. During her visit, Elizabeth Ann, who had been presented to Miss Harding, walked up to her and, with charming frankness and with the Harding smile, said, “Miss Harding, I jus’ _love_ you!” Elizabeth said that her husband remarked after Miss Harding had left, “Well, blood certainly tells!” Elizabeth Ann may possibly have felt that here was her kin, at least in spirit, for she immediately decided that she loved Daisy Harding.

So again I parted from my baby, and a few days before the 21st of June, 1923, I was in New York. I stopped at the Bretton Hall Hotel. This was right around the corner from Helen Anderson’s apartment, on West 86th Street.

_89_

I had met, when I was going to Columbia University in 1921, and living in the studio apartment building on 72nd Street, a Norwegian sea captain whom I shall refer to in this book as Captain Angus Neilsen. According to the girl on my floor who had introduced him to me, Captain Neilsen had until recently been a very wealthy man. She said he had lost heavily through Charles W. Morse, in ship matters, but even so he was reputed to be substantially wealthy if he could convert his properties into cash. The girl who introduced me to the captain told me, in a grandiloquent manner, that she had known Captain Neilsen when he lived in his apartment on Central Park West and had a couple of cars at his disposal. She claimed to have helped him enormously mentally to recover from the terrific shock it had been to him to lose his money through Charles W. Morse. He was at that time very lovely to me and I judged him to be a fine man.

We remained friendly, and Captain Neilsen even came to Chicago during the spring of 1923 to see us, staying at my sister’s. I spared a little time from my lessons at Northwestern to come to Chicago from Evanston to see him. When Scott had sailed for Europe the captain had been greatly in evidence, taking us all, including Elizabeth Ann, who had taken quite a fancy to him, to the theatre and so on, and helping me to box some of my belongings when I returned later on with Elizabeth and the baby to Chicago. He had quite a way with children.

Now, before I sailed for Europe, he helped me with last-minute errands, and, in fact, took Helen Anderson and me down to the boat on the morning of June 21st, 1923. It was much like having a big brother around, and I could not help being sympathetic toward a man who showed, as Captain Neilsen had always shown, such a deep regard for me.

Helen Anderson and I sailed on the _Roussillon_, of the French Line, the same day, if I remember correctly, that the Harding party set out upon its ill-fated Alaskan trip.

I had received several letters from Mr. Harding at the Bretton Hall Hotel, in which he continued his advices and his wishes that he were going with me. I tried to be happy. Now, at least, he could relax and recuperate. I had retained a very vivid picture of him as he looked in January, and I knew that the strain of Mrs. Harding’s illness had greatly worn him.

In a letter from him, received Tuesday (I sailed on Thursday), he wrote, “Don’t spend any money in New York, dearie; there will be many things you will see in Paris which you will want to buy.” But already I had, as a matter of fact, bought clothes, and I was indeed taking very little of the extra $400 or so he had provided, in addition to the regular tour expense of $525. When Captain Neilsen asked me frankly if I was taking plenty of extra money, knowing all about how money goes on the Continent, and I replied “not much,” he offered to lend me some, and I accepted an extra $50, telling him I would repay him upon my return. When Scott, my brother-in-law, returned from Europe the captain had met him at the dock, as I had written and requested him to do, and Scott, being broke, had accepted a loan of $100 from the captain then and was grateful for the offer. This brotherly consideration on Captain Neilsen’s part did not go unappreciated by me, either.

Mr. Harding had told me in his letter of Tuesday, which came to Bretton Hall, that he would send me a steamer letter, and no sooner was I on board than I sought the mail department in search of my message. I found Mr. Harding’s letter and about twenty other pieces of mail--letters, telegrams and specials. I hugged my sweetheart’s letter and put it inside my dress next to my heart. Then I joined Helen Anderson on deck, and bade her nephew and Captain Neilsen goodbye.

_90_

I think the sensations experienced when one leaves the shores of America for the first time are indescribable. I stood alone at the railing and looked back at the skyline of New York, gradually becoming hazy with lengthening distance. Soon the Statue of Liberty was shrouded in mist. Miss Anderson had gone downstairs for her luncheon. To leave New York was, for her, an old story. I still had in my arms some American Beauties I had received from the Northwestern University instructor, as well as gorgeous flowers from Captain Neilsen. In my hand I held my packet of letters, and next to my heart was my farewell note from my beloved. I took my flowers into our cabin, and went back to the rail to read my letters. Even as I drew out Mr. Harding’s letter and gazed fondly at the familiar handwriting, I felt a shock. I could not account for it, but it was the same uncanny feeling I had experienced upon my last visit to him, which had been the January before--six long months ago. Mr. Harding’s own preparations for his Alaska trip had made it inexpedient for me to stop in Washington, and we had in our letters spoken of the grand reunion we would have in the fall when we both returned from our respective journeyings.

“Nan, darling,” Mr. Harding wrote, “how I wish I might be going with you! To think of spending the days in glorious idleness with you, lolling in comfy deck chairs, holding you all through the nights in my arms, seeing strange lands with _you_, Nan!” Then, more fatherly, he wrote, “Try to save out enough money so that you will not be entirely broke when you land back in New York, because it may be difficult for me to see you immediately upon your return.” His farewell letter had contained no money. It was just full of love. “Darling Nan, I’d love to go to the end of the world with you,” he wrote, and the old oft-written message, “I love you more than all the world,” was repeated in that letter. The postscript was sweet, and fairly long, and for me alone. I could not, however, help feeling an inexplicable tone of finality, of foreboding, unconsciously expressed by him. Was it all over? How _could_ I know?--then!

In September of 1923, about a month after Mr. Harding’s death, when I went to Marion, Miss Daisy Harding told me that Carrie Harding Votaw had passed through her brother’s office in the White House shortly before the Harding party started for Alaska, and Mr. Harding had called out to her, “Carrie, I’m making my will!” “Your _will_, Warren! Why, what for?” asked Mrs. Votaw in amazement. “Oh, I don’t expect to come back from Alaska,” Mr. Harding replied in a semi-offhand manner. I have often considered the last letter which he sent me when I sailed, in connection with that statement my sweetheart made to his sister about his will.

I kept Mr. Harding’s farewell letter several days, loath to part with the latest and only love-letter I then possessed from him. But, finally, one evening, just before dark, when the deck was almost deserted and the passengers in their cabins dressing for dinner, I took my letter to the railing. I read it over slowly, then kissed it and tore it into bits. I tossed the bits out upon the billowing waves and watched the little white floating pieces as our boat sped along. I foolishly thought to myself, “They may be here when I come back and I shall pass them again.” It reminded me of the summer of 1919, when I was in Asbury Park awaiting my baby’s coming and used to take Mr. Harding’s precious love-letters over to Spring Lake, a resort town near Asbury, to a favorite grove where I spent many an afternoon. There, after reading and re-reading the latest letter from Mr. Harding, I destroyed it, scattering the tiny bits all through the grove. To know that his letters were strewn all through that wood made it a very sacred place to me. I would sit down and write him from there, and sometimes I would stoop to pick up a wee scrap of the letter destroyed perhaps the previous day, and find written there parts of the word “darling” or “bliss” or “ultimate,” and often they would recall his entire sentence of endearment to me. Now, as I dropped this last letter into the sea, I thought that hereafter the sea, like the grove, would always seem sacred to me, would seem almost to belong to me--even as _he did_ belong to me!

_91_

On board the _Roussillon_, and subsequently when I reached Paris and Dijon, I tried ardently to plunge into gaiety. I summoned all the light-heartedness I could muster. After all, I had come to lose myself, to try to find a temporary new existence, even to briefly forgetting, if possible, the problem of how to obtain my daughter for myself.

I had gay clothes and plenty of them, and I put wine in my water as everyone else did, and tried to act the part I suppose I actually did look--a modern flapper. Certainly with the short skirts everybody wore then, and with bobbed hair, I could not have looked as old as I was--twenty-six.

But all the superficial gaiety in which I indulged could not make me forget the problem paramount in my mind, and I found myself actually reverting to the study of this man and that man, and wondering whether I would consider him fitted for the role of foster father, in name only. However, the men on board were for the most part very young, and there was but one who looked fairly good to me in this respect. I found out he had a responsible position in a bank, and from his own remarks he evidently had known wealth all his life. He might do, I thought drearily. Then I would shake myself out of this mood and join the young people in their games or talk. But when we landed at Havre, the one man I had quietly been making a study of proceeded to follow his own divergent itinerary, and I forget all about _him_ as a husband possibility.

There were about twenty-five in the Armstrong Party, in which Helen Anderson seemed to be the star traveler. Being with her, I always had the best accommodations. In Dijon, therefore, after ten days in Paris and its environs, we were given separate rooms at M. and Mme. Lachat’s very picturesque little home. We were to be in Dijon for several weeks, attending the University of Dijon, and going on sight-seeing trips into the adjacent mountain country. The Lachat home had a perfectly charming little garden, shut in all around by a high wall common to many French neighborhoods. Our rooms overlooked the garden, that of Miss Anderson being on the second floor and mine on the first.

Everything thus far had been of absorbing interest to me, and I found Dijon none the less so, with its quaint, narrow streets, quainter homes and smugly contented people. The inhabitants were more than willing to talk French with us struggling foreigners, and I managed to learn more of their language during the few weeks I was there than in the previous six months at Northwestern University in Evanston.

And I was gradually learning other things I had not known well when I landed--for instance, the value of the franc, both to them and to me. At Havre the porter had been bold to ask me for “an American dollar bill, _s’il vous plaît_,” and I had handed him one, for I really felt he meant to give me back some change. But he did not, and I determined that if that was what they charged us Americans for carrying a bag down one flight of stairs, I would do the tipping in my own way after that! I found that the servant class over there was more than Americanized in this respect, and I gradually “caught on.”

Miss Anderson and I, as well as several of the other members of the Armstrong Party, were assigned for our meals to the boarding house of Mme. Daillant, a rosy-cheeked woman whose husband dealt in wines and who herself kept up the expenses of the home, I perceived, chiefly by taking boarders. Around our table sat an interesting group: an Italian _avocat_, several Norwegians, four Americans, including Miss Anderson and myself, and M. and Mme. Daillant, their attractive young daughter of about eighteen, and one other, a French lady. The Italian and I struck up a friendship, and often we took long walks, carrying our own dictionaries and consulting them quite frequently along the road to make ourselves understood to each other in the French language.

_92_

The latter part of July, having grown quite a bit bored with Dijon and not taking seriously the course offered the students at the University, I, as well as others in the Armstrong Party, decided upon going into Switzerland. Miss Anderson remained in Dijon, saying she did not wish to incur the additional expense inasmuch as she had been many times to Switzerland.

Geneva was our destination, and there was rare beauty in the mountain scenery enroute there from Dijon and later in the city itself. I stopped at the Hotel de la Paix, and my room, from the small balcony of which I could view the lake and afar off the snowy-capped Mt. Blanc, was both French in artistry and American in practical comforts.

I had noted in the morning paper, which was a Paris edition of a New York paper, the progress the Harding party was making through Alaska. I felt here in Switzerland, almost by myself, as though I were in another world. I felt as though I were walking through a picture-book. Even the friendships I was making seemed of the picture-book sort. I was more real to myself when I dreamed, for when I dreamed I was invariably taken back to more familiar surroundings, oftentimes spending whole nights either with my sweetheart or with our daughter.

I had promised my sister Elizabeth I would try to get fat, and she had made her appeal on the ground of keeping my appearance, telling me I was not at all presentable when so thin. So I had endeavored to eat as much as possible and the traveling around had not made it difficult. And the food here at the Hotel de la Paix was fine, _par excellence_. Mr. Harding used to tell me that to him it was a real pleasure just to sit and watch me eat when I was hungry, for I seemed to so enjoy my food. He used to order things he thought perhaps would tempt me or things I told him I had never eaten; I remember he taught me to eat artichokes, things I had never heard of until then. I was quite a hick. Mr. Harding himself could with ease carry considerable weight. He was very tall--fully a head taller than I. Nevertheless, I used to tease him, when, upon observing that he was not eating as heartily as usual, he would confess that he was on a self-imposed diet, “to keep his stomach down.” “Why, you’re not too fat to suit me, darling,” I would say. “What d’yuh mean, ‘keep down your stomach’?” Then, with head on one side and the adorable smile I loved, he would lean over the table and whisper, “So I can hold you closer, you darling!”

_93_

I remember it was on a Saturday, the 28th of July, that I went, by myself, up Lake Geneva to Territet. The others had planned a mountain trip to Chamonix, but I preferred the water trip. As our tidy little white steamer glided slowly away from Geneva it scattered before it flocks of snowy pigeons that find a welcome home, there along the lake front, and from my chair against the railing I watched dreamily their fluttering escape far away on the turquoise surface of the water. There was the delightful coolness of mountain air and the clear blue of the skies to make it a day among days for sight-seeing.

In my English Literature class at Northwestern I had, that spring, been studying Lord Byron’s _The Prisoner of Chillon_, and I was looking forward eagerly to seeing the Chateau of Chillon, which is at Territet, the last stop our tiny steamer would make.

Some of the seats on the observation deck were arranged so that they faced each other, as in a train, and my heart suddenly jumped as I stared at the front page of a foreign graphic sheet which the man opposite me held at a visible angle. Mr. Harding was pictured on his trip with some Indians, and the pose was so natural, with his straw hat, and cane in his hand, that I felt the hot tears come in my eyes and a great heaviness in my throat. The man lowered the paper just in time to find me straining toward it, and thereupon offered it to me. But I shook my head and thanked him. I determined, however, to buy a copy immediately upon my return to Geneva.

At the Chateau of Chillon I strolled through the maze of big stone rooms, and finally found myself down in the dungeons where stand “the seven pillars of Gothic mould.” I met very few other tourists in my roaming, and the sense of mediaeval days crept over me realistically there in the stillness.... I imagined I was the daughter of an indulgent but uncompromising father, living there in a great lonely castle, shut off from the whole world. The room of the Duchess So-and-So was my own room now, and it was my window which gave out onto the glassy waters of Lake Leman. Here, tonight, my Prince Warren would come to get me! I would jump from this window into his arms, into his boat which would carry us both away, away forever, where my beloved prince and I could live happily ever after! Then, finding myself in the tower, I planned my escape in case my angry old father should imprison me. But this escape was difficult to devise and so I dropped out of the make-believe world and my roving mind took me back to the newspaper picture I had seen a few hours before on the lake steamer. He had looked a little tired, and I hoped they would not drag him all over Alaska to speak and to shake hands with people. I wondered if he were not perhaps thinking about me at that very moment, and the great love I felt for him surged through my being. How good it would be to get back to him! Already it seemed to me I had been away from him and from my precious baby girl an eternity. And it was still three weeks until we should sail on our return to America!

_94_

I shall never forget that night in my room at the Hotel de la Paix. It was yet early when I reached Geneva from my day’s trip, and after I had eaten my dinner and bought the paper containing Mr. Harding’s picture, I retired to my room for early sleep. But my thoughts were too full of Mr. Harding and I could not sleep. His face seemed very near to me, and I switched on my light again and studied the picture in the graphic sheet. The more I studied it the more tired he looked to me, until I thought in terror, “Heavens! I wish they would let him alone!” I slipped into my negligee and walked out upon the tiny balcony and drank in the loveliness of a moonlight night on Lake Geneva.

Across the lake, beyond Mt. Blanc Bridge which connects the two sections of the city, sounded the gay laughter of late diners. “Winers” I thought, absent-mindedly. There is considerable difference in time between Alaska and Switzerland, and I wondered where Mr. Harding was then and what he was doing. It was nine o’clock by the little watch he had given me in 1917. Perhaps he was thinking of me, too, and that was what brought him so vividly before me.

I stood there thus meditating, when over the waters, clear in the mountain air, floated to me a familiar song, an old-time favorite from a musical comedy, “The Prince of Luxemburg.” The words, which I remembered quite distinctly, at first seemed a reassuring answer to my fears, and I mentally fitted them to the air as it was played and replayed by the little cafe orchestra:

“Say not love is a dream, say not that hope is vain!
Say not that cruel fate will redeem
Perfect joy with pain.
Look, oh, look not beyond--joy so near!
True hearts may ne’er despond, for love knows naught of fear.
Love breaks every bond, and love, true love, is here!”

But instead of happy “Say not” negations the lines seemed to sing themselves into positive affirmations of ill, and I struggled vainly to banish the prophetic sadness that pervaded the atmosphere of my thoughts just as it had during my last talk with Mr. Harding in the White House in January. Persistently this line haunted me, “Cruel fate will redeem perfect joy with pain,” until it seemed like a sinister night-song as I lay in my bed longing for merciful sleep. I had come over here to forget, certainly not lugubriously to anticipate a future which, in spite of every unfavorable circumstance, held promise of much happiness. “Perfect joy with pain, perfect joy with pain--perfect joy--perfect pain--perfect joy--pain”; the words droned themselves into my drowsy consciousness until at last I must have fallen asleep. When I awoke it was very early morning. I remembered with a sense of shrinking terror my own thoughts of the night before, and the haunting imaginings from which I fain would flee before they gripped me hard again. Something told me I should have prayed for Mr. Harding instead of spending my time in worry, and it seemed strange I had not thought of it the night before. So I turned my face toward the pillow now and tried to ask God to protect him from all harm and take good care of my baby and him for me until I returned to both of them. Then I slept a while longer.

_95_

I wakened to find a brilliant day awaiting me, and I was to spend it with my Italian friend who was to arrive in Geneva that morning. We hired a taxi and drove up through the mountains, listening with amusement to the very informative guide as he pointed out this estate or that peak with all the flourish of a proud possessor. He spoke alternately in English to me and in French to both of us. We viewed the Rhone and Arve Rivers from a topmost peak and marvelled how they retained their own colors of brown and turquoise blue even as they flowed far out into Lake Geneva.

It occurred to me that this fellow, this guide, seemed almost too typical of other loquacious guides I had observed, and after our return to Geneva, I said to him as we got out of the taxi, “You speak very much like an American.” He answered with embarrassment, “Well, I am kind of an American. You see, I was born in _St. Louis_.” Unfortunately I could not repeat this to my escort in French accurately enough for his full appreciation.

During my stay in Geneva, remembering that Mr. Harding had assigned Angela Arnold’s husband to a post in Switzerland, and that they were supposed to be living in Geneva then, I endeavored to locate Angela. I could not remember her husband’s name, however, and the American consul with whom I talked over the telephone said there were so many attaches there that it would be almost impossible to locate them unless I could definitely identify them by the husband’s surname. So I did not get to see her. The following day we all returned to Dijon.

_96_

I heard very rarely from my sister Elizabeth about Elizabeth Ann. This worried me quite a bit, but then, I thought, impatient with myself, worry was my very mind’s shadow, and likely she was fine and having a good time on the farm. My mother was a faithful correspondent, however, and I was continuing to correspond with other friends, even keeping up a desultory sort of correspondence with the Northwestern University instructor, so I hung around the little apartment of the Dijon University _concierge_ almost hourly to get my mail. As a matter of fact, Elizabeth had a good reason for not being able to write oftener, for I learned afterward what I had not known before I sailed, and what, if I had known, would have kept me from sailing at all. That was that my sister had undergone in my absence a severe operation in Chicago, and had entrusted the baby to her husband’s father and mother on the farm while she was in the hospital.

I had promised Mr. Harding that I would write to him. Indeed, he did not have to ask me, for I knew I would want to anyway. Letters were a medium of expression of my love for him which I could not lightly abandon. But I could not, obviously, _mail_ any of them. I kept them in my trunk, adding a little each night to what I knew, from experience, he would term a veritable feast when I gave them to him in the fall. Little wonder, staying so close to him in this way, and being unable to banish fears about him, that I was torn mentally in what had been my serious resolve to forget!

The Italian was very attentive and, I discovered, was highly intelligent. How would it be, I thought, if I married _him_ instead of an American, and made him the convenience-father of my child? He spoke often of coming to America, where he might very likely settle permanently. He was manifestly fond of children. And he was a gentleman. It was a thought, anyway.

_97_

In Dijon, Madame Daillant’s little garden behind the house provided a gathering place for her boarder-guests as they dropped in for meals, but the evening of August 1st, 1923, it was conspicuously deserted. I found it so when I, going on ahead of Helen Anderson, entered; so I threw myself down into one of the empty chairs and picked up a newspaper. It was very warm and I fanned myself with the paper before opening it. A curious country this, I thought, looking around at the graveled walks, the rickety benches, and the walls surmounted by overturned glass jars on sticks. In parts of the country where I had been it was very beautiful, and it had proven rather diverting. But oh, where could one find a country to equal our own United States! How really shabbily the middle classes here lived! The daughter of Mme. Daillant, a pretty girl, with abundant dark hair and creamy skin, and cheeks pinked by nature to an enviable glow, a pianist, too, of marked ability--what prospects had she in this place? An American girl of her class might rise to fame with like beauty and equal talent. But, it seemed to me, I could see this pretty creature growing old and fat like her mother, with nothing save a drab fate awaiting her. One of the young men in our Armstrong party who also dined at Mme. Daillant’s _pension_ had pleaded with me to stay close by when Mlle. Daillant was in the vicinity for, he said, she attached herself to him with leechlike persistency, and he knew how these French people tried to rope one in. Poor girl! No doubt my American friend provided for her the most romance she had ever known.

I opened the paper. My heart stopped; then pounded. My head swam and I went limp. “HARDING HAS PNEUMONIA, BUT WORST FEARS ALLAYED.” I read the headlines over and over--_over and over again_. As the words gradually sunk meaningfully into my consciousness an indescribable terror seized me. I crushed the paper in my hands and let myself out the little gate into the wider, freer space beyond the garden. My lips were dry; I put my hand to my forehead to steady myself. I wondered why I did not faint. I never fainted, no matter how badly I felt. I have never to this day fainted. So I did not faint then. I only paced up and down, experiencing a mental anguish I had hitherto never known. A thousand suggestions of action came to me. They tumbled about in my poor brain in utter confusion, but from among them I was able to choose the first to be acted upon: I would rush back to Paris immediately, and thence to America by the first boat.... No, that would not do.... I must “act natural” before these people and get out of the city without arousing any suspicions. “Now is the time to summon all your courage, Nan,” Mr. Harding had said to me over the telephone when I pleaded with him to see me in New York shortly after the baby’s birth. I seemed to hear him say it now. I tried to shake myself into common sense; to tell myself everything was all right; he was ill but he would recover!

I seemed to go over, during those brief moments, my years with Mr. Harding--our whole love-life together, even up to the time I had seen him last, suffering from a terrible cold and looking, oh, so tired and miserable. I remembered hearing Mrs. Harding one time tell how “Warren” was pathetically afraid of pneumonia, above all other ills. I remembered so dearly the things that had seemed to throw such an atmosphere of finality over our last visit in the White House--his little parting advises, our lingering kisses, his general despair. And vividly did I recall my forebodings just five evenings before in Geneva. And the memory of each dark thought added terror to my heart.

Miss Anderson found me a few minutes later, having followed the lead of the open gate. I read the headlines to her through dry lips and held the partially crushed paper up for her to see. “All paper talk,” she said shortly. She bade me come in, as dinner was being served. I could not tell her why I was so vitally concerned over the illness of the President of the United States, and she, of course, thought it was but natural sympathy for a man who had been a family friend. “You’re silly to take paper talk so seriously,” she reproved. I followed her into the house and found my place at the table. “‘Just paper talk,’ as Helen says,” I told myself in desperate hope. “Now go on and eat your dinner or you’ll be ill yourself from worry and lack of food.” So I forced food down and passed dishes to and fro and listened to voiced speculations from those around the table, particularly those in our American party, about the probable severity of President Harding’s illness.

Mlle. Daillant was endeavoring as usual to dazzle the American at her right with charms and conversation, and part of me listened apathetically to this babble of French while the other part continued the contemplation of the newspaper report and an advisable course of action ... the Italian shot solicitous glances my way throughout the meal, but I could only raise dull eyes to him ... maybe I ought to marry him, I thought ... he was a nice fellow ... maybe if I married him, or somebody, it might relieve Mr. Harding’s mind of much worry even though we both would suffer in other ways as a consequence of such marriage ... the Norwegian professor’s wife looked as though she had been weeping, though her eyes were always red, I thought ... a cold, maybe, for she kept wiping her nose ... what did these people know of tears, anyway! Mlle. Daillant’s laugh rang out and she repeated in rapid French to the rest of the boarders something her American had said which had amused her.... I wondered how it would seem to have no care beyond an ardent wish to capture an attractive blond American boy.... Good heavens! I hadn’t even enough money left for a passage!... I would borrow ... yes, I must go ... these meals were interminable.... I looked at Helen Anderson and she understood. I excused myself, and I even had enough presence of mind to nod to my hostess and murmur the customary “_Bonsoir, Madame; à demain!_” as I passed out.

It seemed good to be able to walk fast, and as I directed my steps toward Mme. Lachat’s, I tried to reason sanely with myself. Why, Mr. Harding had a superb constitution! It was only the physical drag of responsibility and worry which had overcome him. Maybe he did not even have pneumonia! When he was inaugurated Brigadier-General Sawyer, Mrs. Harding’s personal physician, had issued a statement something like this: “President Harding represents the finest there is today in America--morally and physically and mentally.” Although I did not credit Dr. Sawyer with being a particularly good physician, I knew that Mr. Harding’s general health had been excellent before he went into the presidency, except for a few minor ailments now and then. I remembered how strong he was, how he used to pick me up and carry me about the room in his arms. I remembered how I grew to think he was made of iron and was surprised if he expressed a wish to sleep occasionally! I expected him to stay awake and talk with me all night.

I remembered one night how he had come into New York from a speaking engagement up in New England somewhere and had closed his eyes almost as soon as he touched the pillow, and how I, piqued to tears, had lain away from him, silently, wordlessly, hurt, until he whispered, “Nan, darling, come close to me! Why, Nan, you’re not crying?” And how sweetly he had gathered me into his arms, and how ashamed I had been when he confessed, with his usual embarrassment over indisposition of any character, “I have a ripping headache, dearie; please forgive me!” And I had rubbed his head with my finger-tips until he went off to sleep, and then I had stayed very close to him and just looked at his dear face and worshipped him. Oh, God, how sweet he was! How I wished now I might fly to him over this hopeless space between us, and take him away from _every_body, and nurse him to strength and smiles again!

That night I dreamed fitfully. I arose in the morning, unrested, and hastened immediately to the Dijon railroad station, where I knew I could obtain the latest papers from Paris.

_98_

The papers dated August 1st, which I bought on the morning of the 2nd, caused me to take hope. The headlines were reassuring. “PRESIDENT MUCH BETTER; GIVES PREPARED SPEECH; HIS SECRETARY HANDS TO PRESS HIS ADDRESS HE PREPARED FOR DELIVERY IN SAN FRANCISCO.” That was more like _news_, I thought joyously. I hurried back to Helen Anderson with the paper. My Italian friend met me on the way. I translated into French as best I could the good news. Helen Anderson had explained to the people at the boarding house the evening before that I had come from the President’s home town and had known him from childhood. My Italian friend smiled broadly. _Now_ would I go to the theatre with him that evening? he asked. Yes, I said, I would go.

I felt as though I ought to be gay. Mr. Harding would want me to. Maybe my prayers were of avail, after all, and I breathed another prayer, this time one of thankfulness. I went to school that day. I laughed with the others at the funny mistakes we all made. I could have shouted all the day long, so relieved did I feel, and so thankful.

That evening my friend called for me and we dined together, and drank more wine than usual, and afterwards laughed with sheer joy at strange French comedy which I did not at all understand. We sat in a box. My friend was most agreeable; his face reminded one of some of the heroic bronze faces on plaques. He called me “Ninon,” which he informed me was French for Nan. I giggled to myself when I reflected how funny it would really be to marry a man who knew but two or three words in my language. Yet when I thought about it I decided this very fact might prove an important factor in making him desirable for my peculiar marriage purposes. But he was, after all, a very likable man, and some girl might marry him for love of him alone. On our walk home after the theatre, he proposed marriage to me again, for the severalth time, and, as he bent to kiss my hand, I said to myself audibly in English, “It would be a crime when he seems so genuinely fond of me.” He looked up at me pleadingly. “_S’il vous plaît, Ninon, parlez en français!_” I smiled softly and shook my head. “_Je vous a dit, simplement, ‘vous êtes un bon ami.’_”

_99_

That night, Thursday, the 2nd of August, 1923, I dreamed a strange and terrible dream. I had retired about twelve; I had not been long in bed, and _surely_ had not even closed my eyes, though when I seemed to come to my senses I realized I _must_ have been dreaming. My room, in the corner where my bed stood, was dark, and when I realized what a horrible nightmare I had experienced, I sprang out of bed like a shot and over to the wall to turn on the electric light. I looked at my watch. Why, I had been in bed for three whole hours! Seven o’clock in America--Elizabeth Ann’s bed-hour. My heart was beating violently and I shook all over. I passed an icy hand across my hot forehead. Yes, I was awake, all right, now. God! What a ghastly dream! I opened my shutters and breathed deeply of the sweet-scented garden air. A million stars blinked down at me.... Peace, peace, there was peace everywhere but in my heart. I turned off my light and crept back into bed. Strange how really cold it got here at night; I should not have stood those few moments at the window. I was trembling like a leaf; my teeth chattered and my heart was still pounding up into my throat. My mother had taught us children at home many things to repeat before we fell asleep and mechanically I whispered these things now to myself--the Lord’s Prayer, the 91st Psalm, the 23rd Psalm. I repeated them all, over and over, but I knew not what I was repeating. My conscious mind was reviewing my dream in minute detail for the morbid satisfaction of the mental devils which seemed to possess me. I was conscious again of _a something_ above me, to the left. It seemed to be floating through the air. It was shrouded about with white clouds which seemed not to hide it from view but rather to protect it in its slow mount upward. _What_ was I seeing! God! A coffin! A coffin draped with, and trailing about it, American flags, and heaped with red, red roses! A coffin, ascending on my left, rising so slowly that it seemed suspended in mid-air, yet ever moving upward and away from me. How blood-red were the roses! And the crimson stripes of the trailing flags stained the clouds! The whole, mounting majestically, lifted by an invisible force, upward, onward, protectingly shrouded by white, white clouds!