Chapter IX: Part 9

We found that Mr. Harding had gone off with the Dr. Carl Sawyers, Sr. and Jr., and Brigadier-General Charles G. Dawes to play golf, but Mrs. Warren Harding was receiving informally in the living-room of Dr. Harding’s home. With her we found Mr. and Mrs. “Ed” Uhler, and it seems to me another person whom I cannot recall now was there also.

If I had any personal misgivings as to the spirit of Mrs. Harding’s greeting they were entirely without foundation, for, after shaking hands with Mrs. Mouser, she held out her hand to me with a smile. “Why, how-do-you-do, Nan? How are you?” she inquired pleasantly. If I had ever had reason to doubt that Warren Harding’s love for another woman was suspected by his legal wife, I was with this meeting disarmed of all further semi-pleasurable apprehension that I was the person Florence Harding would name! As a matter of frank truth, it was never that I particularly cared whether or not she did discover it, but Mr. Harding’s statement to me that “she’d raise hell, Nan!” had been my cue for guarding well a situation which Mr. Harding had termed his “greatest joy.” In the past year and a half, Tim Slade has stated to me that if Florence Harding had known the love Warren Harding and I bore to each other, the qualities latent in her temperament would not have released him but might very possibly have sought some form of retaliation. What a strange love, I thought, that would hold the happiness of one’s husband in a vise! But my solicitude for Mr. Harding’s peace of mind insured every cautionary measure on my part.

There in the familiar atmosphere of Dr. Harding’s home, it occurred to me that perhaps now Mrs. Warren Harding might drop her patronizing manner and become natural; certainly the Uhlers, genuine people, inspired such naturalness, for I knew them to be as good friends as the Hardings had in Marion. In my Harding book I have a clipping which says of Warren Harding, “President Harding has one of those rare temperaments which can keep aloof and cool at close range,” and I know that even from my own experience of greeting him in public places where it seemed wise for us to maintain a certain dignity, I was ever conscious of his “close range” and felt the sincere warmth of his smile and hand pressure sufficient to assure me that he was not above, but one with, me. Mrs. Harding was looking particularly well on that occasion and I am sure that her general hauteur of manner was felt by her to be in keeping with the position in which she had found herself.

“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Harding continued what had become a monologue, “I keep Warren the best dressed man in Washington.”

I could not help remembering how happy Mr. Harding was when he could just lounge around in his old clothes. Moreover, Mr. Harding had said to me, “Brooks is my valet; responsible for my clothes,” when we had discussed him in connection with sending my letters to Mr. Harding through Brooks.

“That’s right, Florence!” laughed Mr. Uhler, “don’t let anyone get ahead of you!”

_78_

The afternoon following Mr. Harding’s speech at the Fairgrounds was an exciting one also. I was visiting that day with Ellen Lucile Mezger Stoll, whose brother, Roscoe Mezger, was married to Florence Harding’s daughter-in-law, Mrs. Esther DeWolfe. Ellen Lucile’s little twin girls were about five years old and Ellen and I took them with us, it seems to me, when we went down to witness the program scheduled for that afternoon in honor of President Harding. It was to include a parade of many organizations, which would file past the Presbyterian Church at the corner of Church and Prospect Streets, where a temporary grandstand, gayly beflagged, had been erected for the President and his party.

Ellen Lucile, the babies, and I found a good place to stand on the steps of the house next door to the church, and cheered lustily with the crowd as President Harding, Miss Daisy Harding, and other members of the President’s party descended from their automobiles and mounted the steps of the grandstand. President Harding looked stunning, and Ellen Lucile turned to me and said, “Isn’t he just the sweetest thing?” I told Miss Daisy Harding afterwards that _she_ was beautiful, too, and it seemed to me a real pity that _she_, who typified everything lovely in American womanhood, could not grace the social throne of the First Lady of the Land, instead of Florence Harding. She had once written to me about her brother, “He _looks_ like a real President, Nan,” and I simply extended that expression to her when I hold her she herself _looked_ like a real First Lady.

One segment of the parade consisted of a number of Civil War veterans, and I observed from my post where I stood on tiptoe that the President was shaking hands with these dear old fellows. When they passed where Ellen Lucile and I were standing I suddenly spied my own Grandfather Williams, whom I had not even known was in town for the celebration. I broke through the ranks of people and ran out into the street to greet him. The dear old darling! I thought. He was probably as staunch a Republican as there is in the United States. The day was exceedingly warm and the heavy military belt Grandfather was wearing had become irksome and he had removed it and was now carrying it over his arm. He kissed me before the crowd and said, “Did you see me shake hands with the President? He even remembered me! He said, ‘Oh, yes, I know you all right, you needn’t tell me your name!’” Grandfather beamed his pride. I thought to myself as I patted affectionately the arm of this proud member of the G. A. R., “Probably my sweetheart was thinking, ‘This is Nan’s grandfather. I’d like to be especially nice to him!’” That would be just like my sweetheart.

I returned to Chicago after that trip just as soon as I knew Warren Harding was enroute to Washington. I had not seen him in private at all, nor even attempted to advise him of my presence in Marion, but somehow I cannot tell anyone how inexpressibly happy it always made me just to be near him. I did not need to be sharing with him an embrace or kiss in order to feel ecstatic happiness. Just to be near him satisfied me.

In my next letter I told him all about my visit to Marion, how I had listened to his speech at the Fairgrounds, and even in detail of how I had gone with Mrs. Mouser to Dr. Harding’s to call upon him and Mrs. Harding and had found him gone, but had talked briefly with Mrs. Harding. But, as I felt, letters didn’t amount to much those days. Washington was such a long way off!

_79_

In August of that same year, 1922, I accepted a position as secretary to Walter Dill Scott, President of Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. With the exception of severe spells of weakness I felt much stronger, even equal to the daily trips back and forth on the elevated to work. There were several girls under consideration for the position and I, feeling always a certain sense of independence, because I was not really leaning financially upon any position, grew impatient with President Scott for not deciding immediately upon one of us. Finally he narrowed his selection to two of us, and we both were requested to take the famous psychology Scott Test. This we did one morning sitting on either side of Dr. Scott’s desk, and, though my grade was below the other girl’s, we were both considerably above average, and for some reason President Scott chose me. I enjoyed being out there. The natural beauty of the campus comforted me. And I think it pleased Mr. Harding immensely to have me there. I remember he wrote, “Gee, Nan, I think that’s just fine!” when I had apprised him of my new job.

But even with this comparatively perfect arrangement--living right with my baby and working in a congenial atmosphere--I was not happy. The constant shock of realizing that I must _do_ something immediately if I would claim Elizabeth Ann as mine fairly dogged my mental footsteps. My mind was ever at work trying to formulate a plan whereby I might cancel the adoption altogether and proclaim my rightful motherhood.

I was, however, willing that the present regime should, while I thus meditated upon a course of action, justify itself, though I knew that when my brother-in-law returned from abroad the resumption of a three-cornered parentage would leave me still unsatisfied.

Elizabeth lovingly approved of Elizabeth Ann’s calling me “Mamma Nan,” which she did for quite a while. I never encouraged or approved of her calling me “Aunt Nan,” because I am not her aunt and do not wish to be so called by her. She calls me plain “Nan” now, which is better than prefixing it with “Aunt.” Often during those days when Elizabeth Ann called me “Mamma Nan” someone would remark about it and I would have to brush it aside with an explanation. This never failed to cause a wave of weakness to pass over me as I faced the blunt truth that practically I had made myself her aunt by submitting to an adoption by my sister and her husband.

People remarked her fondness for me, and my most unnatural fondness for her who was not supposed to be related to me. Elizabeth had taken in two girls as roomers, finding it difficult even with Mr. Harding’s generous allowance to keep up the expenses in connection with the household, send Scott a specified amount monthly for his expenses abroad where he was studying, and keep her own piano lessons paid for. Both of these girls were very fond of Elizabeth Ann. I remember I was jealous of their attention to her, not wanting anyone to have her but myself, fiercely resenting references to her as my sister’s “daughter,” even with the love I bore my sister. My daughter was a passion with me and I simply worshipped her. She and I would retire early, nearly every night, even as early as six-thirty sometimes, immediately after dinner, and I would have her in my bed with me until seven o’clock or so when she had to go to sleep in her crib. Oftentimes I kept her with me all night, and I lay awake thinking, planning, my face against her silken hair, her hand in mine, long after she had gone to sleep.

_80_

During the summer, Grace Cunningham, who had been my eighth grade teacher back in Marion, Ohio, came to Chicago to attend normal school. My sister Elizabeth, who had always been particularly fond of Miss Cunningham, entertained her at our home for a couple of days. Miss Cunningham occupied my bedroom while she was at our apartment. One whole side of my wall was devoted to photographs of the Harding family. On the other side hung a picture of me as a child, the picture Vail’s had taken when I was five and which Mr. Harding had published in his paper, _The Marion Daily Star_.

“Nan,” remarked Grace Cunningham to me one morning, “I wouldn’t know whether this picture was of you or of Elizabeth Ann--which is it?” Which was certainly eloquent proof to me that she had recognized in me the mother of the baby, even though she had not said so in so many words.

I wondered how she would react to the actual truth. I had always felt that Grace Cunningham, though a maiden lady, was thoroughly romantic, and she had given me during that visit reason to feel she would view broad-mindedly certain situations not condoned by the general run of people.

However, I was forced to conclude to myself that perhaps what people might think of the child of Warren Harding was not the usual opinion held in regard to the children-of-love-alone. As the days passed, I was beginning to realize, from sententious remarks of certain people, that in no wise would there be universal condonation where Elizabeth Ann and I were concerned if the situation were not protected _legally_. Mr. Harding’s statement to me when I went to Asbury Park, “Pay your way, Nan; money is power,” seemed not to appear so all-inclusive to me now as then.

In other words, in my own case, not being able to divulge the identity of my child’s father, which might place her above the ordinary run of love-children, the great love I had for the man himself whose child I had borne would be self-stamped with the brand of commonplaceness--yea, of a monstrous sin committed against society! And all the money in the world could not blot out the significance of such expression. And millions of safely married women nightly deplored the indulgence which threw them into an intense state of worriment from month to month! Love-children! The very words are beautiful and rightly belong only where the impulse itself has been lovely.

But even though I myself were willing, for the sake of having my child, to bear the stings such a stigma would inevitably carry, could I, in fairness to my little girl, suffer her to be placed in a position where she would receive at best more of critical sympathy than understanding love? Of her love for me I was as sure as I was of that of her father, and never for a moment entertained the idea that she might turn against me, as was suggested to me by certain ones to whom I dared to confide my longing to proclaim my motherhood. My own case was simple, and when she grew older she would understand. I had, before I gave Mr. Harding the full measure of love, loved no man in a degree even approachable to the love I had for one smile from Mr. Harding. As his sister, Mrs. Votaw, had laconically said to me upon the occasion of one of my visits to Marion, though she knew not whereof she spoke: “You never really loved anybody but Warren, Nan.” Therefore, to be relegated to the list of possible wrong-doers would be to impute wrong motives to the one beautiful impulse of my life, and the only impulse I had ever experienced which carried with it the sacred instinct to which my mind had given birth under the breath of Warren Harding’s love long before my body had known its realization in motherhood. Knowing so well my own heart, it would have been but the crowning glory of my experience to tell the world that Warren Harding was the father of my child, to dwell with others in open admiration upon her smile which is the smile of her father, or upon her lovely eyes which are lighted with the lights of his eyes.

But, if my sweetheart, the father of my child, had been of lowly estate, what then? Ah, then indeed, from what I could see of the hypocrisy of mankind, I would suffer the unjust criticism of slanderous charges--that I had “sold myself cheaply,” or, indulging an unbridled passion, had been unable to escape the penalty. This would be the inevitable result, and might in a measure attach itself to human opinion even if a frank declaration from her father revealed his fatherhood. But in either event, the stains of ignominy would attach themselves _to the child and mother_--and why? Simply because that mother did not seek to strike his existing legal bonds asunder. As Warren Harding said to me the last visit I had with him in the White House, “If you had been _born earlier_, Nan!...” If I had been born earlier Warren Harding would have undoubtedly chosen me for his _legal_ bride. But I was never even so much as tempted to try to destroy a legal yoke which had existed thirty years merely for the sake of bending my head under a similar one, thereby legalizing with man-made law that love which was already God-given.

In her own way Florence Harding may have loved her husband, and I am glad today that I do not have upon my conscience the remembrance of marital interference which would have added not a whit to the love Warren Harding and I had for each other and might possibly have succeeded only in precipitating sordid gossip. Yet I say this with the full knowledge of my own influence over the man I loved and who loved me, and had I exerted that influence selfishly in my own behalf I might early in our sweetheart days have solved the problem which remains unsolved and which has led me to write this book.

How then, I pondered, could I save the good name of my child if I acknowledged my motherhood? Where lay the possibility of a continued sharing of sweet intimacies with her father? And where, oh, where, lay my own peace of mind? Certainly no good result could come from my constant mental pandemonium!

My sweetheart, in the very nature of his position, had sacrificed what would have been to him and me the culminating happy years of our love, by the political victory which would doubtless eventuate in claiming four or eight years of his life. Could our present personal regime survive over a period of eight years? It could not, I decided, if I were to keep my right mind and continue ever-alert vigilance in Mr. Harding’s behalf. No human being, I argued to myself in despair, could withstand the devastating mental effects of a problem so seemingly unsolvable, so shattering from the very method in which a solution had been effected. A cowardly, covering adoption of the daughter of the President of the United States!

And so on and on ... and the days passed, and months were behind me, and still my mind continued to go round and round, evolving no workable plan, however, and I continued to support to the best of my ability the regime as it stood.

_81_

But I never for one moment ceased searching for a plan, and I wonder now as I write just when the plan which I decided definitely to follow after Mr. Harding’s death, really took form in my mind. It may even as early as that summer--1922--have been latent within my consciousness, and my subconscious thinking might very possibly have directed a course of action which would have received vigorous opposition from my conscious thought.

I began to perceive the _easy way out_ was to find myself a husband. It would be comparatively easy then to take Elizabeth Ann, give her my married name, and, having her thus _legalized_ as mine, confess to the man that I would never love him except for the fact that he had made it possible for me to have my child with me. Some may think that this was a most unworthy contemplation, even as it was admittedly a subconscious consideration, but it must be remembered that my child was growingly dearer to me than life itself, and I did not even so much as dwell upon the sacrifice of mind and body which such an arrangement would mean to me. Somehow, I thought _that_ was possible of working out by “_paying my way_,” and I would choose to marry someone whom I could easily dominate, with whom my secret, if I elected to tell him my secret, would be safe, and who withal had sufficient worldly goods to put up a front consistent with being Elizabeth Ann’s father. I was even willing for the sake of having her myself to eliminate certain demands I had made when submitting to the adoption by my sister and her husband, viz., that Scott attain for himself as soon as possible music prestige which would becomingly fit him to fill the role of foster father to Warren Harding’s and my child. I would dispense with this requirement in any man I might choose to marry because I did not mean, down in my heart, that he should fill much of a role in that way. Who knows? Maybe I intended to leave him after I had taken his name for myself and my child! I know I would then have been capable of just such procedure had I determined to act upon it. Or perhaps those same fates which had so generously guarded Warren Harding and me during our earlier days would intervene later on to make possible the great miracle of our own marriage!

Thereupon, with provisionary intent, I began to consider this one and that as a husband possibility. My acquaintance among men was limited. I dabbled unhappily however in friendships, trying to see this one or that in the role of step-father to our child, and recoiling ever unless my subject of concentration seemed to display conspicuous ability in the matter of winning Elizabeth Ann’s affection; this at least, I thought, would be desirable.

I even went so far as to confess to Mr. Harding, upon my next trip to the White House, that such a course of action had suggested itself to me, and the memory of the disappointment and hurt in his expression should have been sufficient to cause me not only to immediately abandon further thoughts along this line as unworthy, but to be heartily ashamed that I had ever voiced such thoughts to him.

But my confession was made only because I sought, in mental desperation, a way to make my child my very own. I even mentioned one man who at that time seemed logical for my own peculiar marriage purposes. Mr. Harding faced me on the couch in his private office.

“Don’t you think he would be a safe person to marry?” I asked him earnestly.

“Well, Nan, do you think you could _love_ this fellow?” Mr. Harding inquired of me gently. I did not look directly at him, though I answered him quickly.

“Of course _not_, but _that_ wouldn’t matter!”

Mr. Harding’s voice was firm and I knew he was looking at me searchingly.

“Oh, yes, dearie, it would!” It was as though he were reasoning with a small child, I felt, one who did not know what was good for her to do.

“That would be grossly unfair to the man, Nan darling,” he went on very gently, as I continued to avoid his eyes, looking down at my hand which played with my “wedding ring” from Mr. Harding.

“Well,” I said finally with emphasis, raising my eyes now to my sweetheart, “You _know_ I never _shall_ love anybody but you!”

What relief and joy overspread his face! The exclamation that escaped his lips seemed almost a sob as he crushed me to him. How I loved him for wanting me so! But how I also loved my child and wanted her!

_82_

During the interim between this and my next visit, which must have been in late August or early September, Tim Slade came to Chicago to deliver a package from Mr. Harding which contained money and a letter to me. Tim Slade came several times to Chicago, and I always met him at the Congress Hotel. He was frank to express to me his feeling toward Mrs. Harding, which amounted to much more than mere dislike, and on one occasion revealed his resentment toward her which had been aroused by the occasion of one of his visits to me. He said Mrs. Harding, knowing he was going to make a trip to Chicago, but not of course knowing why, had said to him, “Tim, where are you going?” His resentment because of her curiosity prompted a reply which Tim said simply enraged her, and she _demanded_ to know why he was going to Chicago. He said he told her it was to meet some member of his family who was to be in Chicago on the day he planned to see me. It was Tim Slade himself who recently reminded me that Mr. Harding had one time sent another man to Chicago because he, Tim, could not go, and I recalled then that I did meet someone other than Tim, at our usual meeting-place, the Congress Hotel. I did not, you see, go to Washington every time Mr. Harding would have liked to have me come. There were times when he could not have me, and I went only when he wrote that it would be all right. Mr. Harding’s letters expressed more and more his fear about our situation, and more and more cautioned me to be guarded both in speech and action. And my perturbation and dissatisfaction grew apace with his concern.

It seems to me it was the fall of 1922 when Miss Daisy Harding came again to Chicago to visit her cousin, Mrs. John Wesener. She had visited there in 1921, but at that time I was in New York. This time her father, Dr. Harding, was there (with his wife by his third marriage) and it so happened that my Grandfather Williams was visiting at my sister Elizabeth’s at the same time.

Dr. Harding, Daisy’s father, and my grandfather were both Civil War veterans and therefore old friends. So I took my grandfather to call upon his friend, Dr. Harding. Grandfather Williams was usually careless about his appearance, and I knew Dr. Harding had been kept carefully groomed ever since his son’s election to the presidency, so I tactfully suggested to Grandfather that he have his shoes shined, and upon that occasion I myself brushed his coat and prepared him otherwise for his call upon his old friend, the President’s father. My grandfather’s pride was his uniform, and this he wore then, though I am sorry to say it was sadly in need of cleaning and pressing, albeit he reserved this dress for his G. A. R. encampments and other state occasions.

I remember I had not seen Dr. Harding except briefly since his son had been made President, and it occurred to me he looked far different from the man I used to see back in Marion driving around with his “horse and buggy.” Then his shoes were as dusty as my grandfather’s, and I have been in his home when it was futile for his daughter Daisy to urge him not to pin his coat together with a safety-pin. He just would do it.

The two dear old fellows had a lovely confab over the Civil War, while I, off in Miss Harding’s bedroom, visited with her. I have often recalled that visit, for to me Daisy Harding was not quite the same Daisy Harding I had known in high school. But perhaps this was only natural. The world’s spotlight had fallen upon her, and she talked about how she had to avoid the reporters who, as she said, literally camped about wherever she went. I could readily appreciate this, but I could not understand the change in her otherwise; and when one is sister to the President one naturally takes for granted that one’s friends know that one is subjected to reporters and even false news items.

One reason why Miss Harding had come to Chicago was to purchase some new clothes and these she showed me upon that visit with her. They were lovely, but she needed nothing elaborate, in my estimation, to accentuate the natural loveliness which was hers.

_The President and his father_, DR. GEORGE T. HARDING

Dr. Harding with his horse and buggy on East Centre Street, Marion, Ohio, in front of the _Star_ office ]

I could not help deploring the change in her which was not a becoming change. I remember when I was a child, in Grace Cunningham’s eighth grade class, I was given a poem by her to recite upon Lincoln’s birthday. It was known as Lincoln’s favorite poem, and begins, “Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!” The changed Daisy Harding brought this poem to my mind. I thought of the visits with her brother Warren in the White House--the President of the United States--yet to me he had not been changed a whit by this great honor; rather had he been made nobler and more humble. And it grieved me to see this instance of woman-change in Daisy Harding. But I loved her none the less.

I remember a passing remark which Miss Harding made to me upon the occasion of that visit. We were talking about my sister Elizabeth and Miss Harding remarked her surprise that Elizabeth and Scott with their music careers ahead of them (Scott a violinist and Elizabeth a pianist) should have taken a baby. It occurred to me then, as it has occurred to me dozens of times since in the distress of my own dilemma, that a more admirable thing they could not have done, even though the baby were taken from an orphan’s home, even though they had taken a child as a means of preventing their too deep engrossment in themselves and their “careers.” However, perhaps I am prejudiced in favor of taking care of the babies in this world.

_83_

Winter--the last winter Warren Harding was ever to know on this earth--was fast coming on. My letters from him spoke his disappointment that he had not seemed able as yet to have me with him intimately in Washington. Around Christmas time he wrote and sent me $250 with which to buy my own Christmas present, besides having provided me liberally with other Christmas money. With $225 of that $250 I bought myself a little diamond and sapphire link bracelet, having indulged again in the erroneous belief that a new trinket might help to make me forget--at least while its newness lasted. This idea had become somewhat of a mania with me. Whenever I found myself eaten to distraction with too much thinking I would go out to purchase a gaily colored gown or a hat or a pretty pin, eventually giving it away perhaps, but easing myself at least during the moment of buying. I used to drag my darling baby around with me on these mad hunts for happiness, which, alas, never sparkles for the desolate even in caskets of diamonds and rubies.

I surfeited Elizabeth Ann with toys; there was nothing she wanted that I did not immediately buy for her, often to my sister’s disgust. But somehow I felt that my sorrow must also be Elizabeth Ann’s and that I must assuage her grief, in advance, by heaping frivolous toys upon her then, for I was sure she would be ultimately saddened by the knowledge that I could not have her for my own. It is easy to see that my mind was not functioning normally. I was becoming unable to view things evenly, and the slightest mental upheaval brought on magnified mental distortion, and a pronouncement of inevitable disaster; I rushed madly about to find a method of forestalling the doom which seemed to impend. But it was all so vain. Happiness for myself and my baby could not be bought in stores. I could not escape the thing that was to come.

_84_

In my position at Northwestern University, as President Walter Dill Scott’s secretary, which position I filled for six months, I was being thrown into a social element I might have enjoyed had it not been for my preoccupation in my own trying matter. Acting on impulse, I decided to give up my work with President Scott and go into the University as a student. I set about to gain Mr. Harding’s consent and approval. I wrote him I wanted to see him on a matter, and he set the date of my coming. It was in January, 1923, and the second semester of school would begin in February.

Mr. Harding’s latest letter had inclined me to think that perhaps we might be able to have more than a formal visit, and so I invested in a lovely orchid neglige and ostrich-befeathered mules. These I hoped I might have occasion to need upon my visit to Mr. Harding, and you may be sure this intimation from him had set my heart beating wildly. Perhaps I needed this intimate nearness to re-affix a certain sanity I seemed to have lost; perhaps he needed me to help banish the harassing fears besetting him on all sides.

Mrs. Warren G. Harding, wife of the President of the United States, was a very sick woman. According to the bulletins she was still in a critical condition at the time I saw Mr. Harding, despite the fact that she had, I think, passed the crisis of her illness. Brigadier-General Sawyer, personal physician to Mrs. Harding, headed the list of doctors in attendance upon her. But Mrs. Harding had, as far back as I could remember, been ill or ailing most of the time, and one time in particular, when Mr. Harding was Senator, he had come over to New York to see me during her illness and told me very calmly that they had been “sure she would die.” So the credence given by most people at that time to the unusual severity of her illness was somewhat discredited by those of us who knew the chronic character of her sickness. And when Mr. Harding wrote thus hopefully to me in very early January, I felt sure that the papers had grossly exaggerated the First Lady’s illness, and that likely by the time I reached Washington she would be on her way to Florida, or some other place, for a period of recuperation.

_85_

I recall for many reasons that visit to the White House in January of 1923. Sometimes it recurs to me with such vividness that I long with all my heart to be able to forget it. Mr. Harding’s letter conflicted greatly with the situation as I actually found it, and I had not been long with him when I saw that what I had taken literally as high hope on his part to be able to have me as of our old sweetheart days was really a dreamy lapse on his part into contemplation in writing of what he would _love_ to do, rather than what he _could_ do.

My reaction to his unwitting deception was such as to sink me immediately into a state of weeping, a bitter railing against fate, and complaint such as I had never allowed myself to voice on any previous visit to the White House no matter how low my spirits had been.

My preparations for this visit had been quite elaborate and extended not only to the purchase of a new neglige, but also to a lovely hat and dress and slippers. The dress was a stunning grey thing, and with it I wore a hat which I had purchased at Joseph’s and for which I had paid $55. My slippers were high-heeled patent leather trimmed with grey suede. Mr. Harding helped to remove my squirrel coat and, as always, remarked in an adorably off-hand manner which was really intimate, “That’s a very good-looking outfit, Nan!” Then he looked at me and said almost fiercely with that look which I always knew foretold a tremendous hug and many kisses, “You pretty thing!” But I did not feel in a dressy mood now that I knew the real situation with him.

We sat first in his private office, on the leather couch. I had brought with me, to show to Mr. Harding, a cunning doll which I had bought myself for Christmas, in company with the many dolls I had bought for Elizabeth Ann. It was really a doll’s head mounted upon a stick, and for the doll’s bodice there was a round music box, covered with a frock which came down nearly to the end of the stick. When one twirled the stick the frock stood out very stiffly and the doll appeared to be dancing and humming a tune. The tune was a little German folk-song, and it was this rather mournful melody which had attracted me; it somehow chimed in with my spirit of persistent melancholy.

“What ’ave y’ got there, dearie?” asked Mr. Harding, looking down at the doll. The day, I remember, was not particularly bright, and he strained his eyes to look. I stopped crying and smiled wanly as I slowly twirled the dancing doll. The sweet sadness of the music seemed to fill the silent room. Mr. Harding smiled and took the doll out of my hands. “Sh! darling,--they can hear out there in the hall.”

I suggested that we go into the ante-room. There Mr. Harding sat in the corner of the couch and faced the window. I could observe his face here, and I exclaimed, “Why, honey, what a terrible cold you have!” His eyes and nose were red from it, his face was deeply lined as I had never before seen it, and his drooping body expressed a dejection which was shocking to see. “Believe me,” I told him, “if I had my way I’d see that you got into bed until you are rid of that cold.” “Can’t do it, dearie,” he said briefly, “got to keep going--why, right _now_ I am the cynosure of the whole world--‘the President of the United States, with a sick wife’!”

“How is Mrs. Harding, anyway?” I inquired. But, though the First Lady of the Land lay not a block away, the subject of discussion, as Mr. Harding said, of the whole world, in my world her fate did not even seem to touch me. You see, my own problems eclipsed those of anybody and everybody.

“About the same,” Mr. Harding replied to my query.

“Oh, dear!” I exclaimed, “I do hope she gets better and is able to go to Florida!” Mr. Harding smiled and bent over to kiss me. “I do, too, dearie!” he replied with an attempt at cheeriness. But the attempt was a failure. In truth, the whole atmosphere of that visit was one of finality. I felt a presentiment of much evil. I could not shake off the uncanny feeling I was experiencing. And I know something of that feeling communicated itself to Mr. Harding, if indeed he had not already experienced it with me from the beginning of our visit.

“Nan,” Mr. Harding took my hand, “our matter worries me more than the combined worries of the whole administration. It is on my mind continually. Why, dearie,” he continued with something akin to shame, “sometimes in the night I think I shall lose my mind worrying over it.” Strange as it may seem, I could not then see why it should worry him so much. Had we not passed through the most critical stages of possible exposure? And had I not engineered the thing to the point of safety thus far? I asked him, with rather a spirit of resentment. _I_ worried, _too_. I told him, but it was not from fear of exposure, but from the daily ghostly fear of living the rest of my life in such unhappiness as that adoption had brought to me. It harassed me almost to the point of insanity. _I wanted my baby_, I told him, bursting into tears.

Seeing me so distressed, Mr. Harding again tried to get hold of himself.

“Why, listen, darling, you are foolish to worry on that score. I have told you that after I am out of office I myself will take her--you’d give her to _me_, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?” His attempt at a smile was pathetic. I crept over closer to him, heedless of the stalking guard outside the window.

“Oh, if you only could!” I breathed. But, I hastened to remind him, how could he when Mrs. Harding....

“You must remember, dearie, that Mrs. Harding is older than I, and very probably will pass on before I go, and if she goes first, remember, I myself will adopt Elizabeth Ann and make her a _real_ Harding!” But, I argued, Elizabeth and Scott had already adopted her. Would they? ... could he?... I was anxious to have him banish _all_ my doubts.

“You leave that to me, Nan! I’ll manage all that when the time comes. And in the meantime, you are to have ample funds, for them and for yourself. _I expect to provide amply, in any event, for you and our little girl as long as you both live._”

“Honey, why do you have Dr. Sawyer?” I asked him, as he used his handkerchief. “My father used to make fun of him, really!” I informed him frankly. Mr. Harding’s mouth twitched and registered a faint smile. Seeing I had not offended him, I continued. “I don’t see why you have to consult the same doctor Mrs. Harding consults, anyway. If he were much of a doctor, he would put _you_ to bed!”

“_You’d_ take good care of me, wouldn’t you, Nan?” he asked fondly. He bent over to kiss me. “I’m selfish to kiss you with this cold,” he said, drawing back. “I don’t want to give it to you!” and the semblance of a smile lighted his dear, tired face.

I kissed him very long in reply. “Say, sweetheart, I never got _any_thing from you that wasn’t good!” I told him, kissing him again. He stood up and took me in his arms in the corner away from the window. He used to draw his mouth into a certain shape when he made ready to kiss me, which somehow gave him and me the fullest rapture of the kiss. I have never read or heard of anyone else doing it. After we had returned to the couch he turned again to voicing his troubles.

“Nan,” he confided to me, “I’m in debt right now $50,000, and I just can’t seem to get out!” It occurred to me even then that this was a small amount for a President to owe, but I simply said how sorry I was, and that I would economize, and help a little bit that way. Somehow this promise seemed to amuse him, and his tone indicated that what he gave me was the least of his worries. “I don’t care _how_ much I give you, dearie,” he said, with a caressing smile, “so long as you can account plausibly for it. I want you to have everything to make you comfortable. I only tell you these things that you may know what I’m up against down here.” He rose and paced the little room. Somehow I had a feeling that he was not telling me the whole of his troubles. “Really, dearie,” he said, slowly coming back to the couch, “my burdens are more than I can bear!” The tired face was lifted to the window and the tired eyes gazed wearily at the wintry vista outside.

The misery of that picture! The haggard face, the bent figure, the white head! Surely this was not the man who had come, at the call of a nation, to serve, and to “give all of heart, and mind, and abiding love of country to service in our common cause.” My heart ached for him. Plainly, the disillusionments suffered in the Presidency of these United States were cruel. I said that I wished he might get out of it, resign, anything that would get him away from his worries, anything that would relieve this darling man who was being tortured with the slow stabs of disappointment and disillusionment. And they called this the greatest position in the land--this nerve-wrecking, energy-sapping job,--the Presidency of the United States!

President Harding shook his head sadly. “No, I’m in jail, Nan, and can’t _get_ out!”

He opened wider the door leading into his own office and we went in there again. The darkness of the day made our figures less visible over near the grate fireplace than they were in the ante-room, which was small and therefore quite light. Mr. Harding said his stenographer was at liberty to come in and ask about anything, but we’d “take a chance,” anyway.

“Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart,” I cried in his arms, “tell me, what constitutes happiness for me? What constitutes _our_ happiness, darling?”

He kissed me tenderly.

“Work, dearie, _work_!” he whispered.

“But I _do_ work! I want _you_! And I want our baby as _mine_! And I don’t believe I can ever have you again in the same way. I can’t stand it, darling! It is breaking my heart. My baby lost to me, and the world has my sweetheart!”

Then something within me suddenly rebelled at the irony of a fate which would give us so much and then make us both suffer with separation and denial. And I saw more clearly than ever before the real depths of my heart, and the real urge of my subconscious mind.

“There have lived some men who have given up _every_thing for their sweethearts!” I challenged, standing away from him with head held high.

A cruel thing to say! And a cowardly demand! He _had_ given everything he could, everything, in fact, I had asked him to give within reason and within his power, and it was not now immediately within his power to give me our baby and to take me for his wife. And he had promised what he would do in the future. I was only making it very difficult for him, for him whose burdens were already, as he said, “more than he could bear.” I began to regret that speech as soon as it was uttered. Even as the words escaped my lips, there flashed into memory the picture of my sweetheart, when he spoke at the Fairgrounds in Marion the previous summer, and warned a nation against this very sort of thing in words made immortal to me by him:

“Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds,
But you can’t do that way when you’re flying words;
Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead,
But God Himself can’t kill ’em once they’re said.”

I am sure I did not imagine it; there was rebuke in his tones when he answered.

“Nan, I’m tied. I can do no more. And I cannot desert my party!” Then, in a softer tone, he added, “We can’t retract--if you had been _born earlier_, Nan!” he sighed. I loved him for that and put my arms around his neck again. “Nan, darling, you must help me; our secret must not come out. Why, I would rather die than disappoint my party!” were his words. Then, seeing he had hurt me a bit by emphasizing his loyalty to a political party instead of to his sweetheart there in his arms, he smiled sadly and pleaded brokenly, “Oh, dearie, try!”

We went back to the couch.

I told Mr. Harding about my wish to quit working for President Walter Dill Scott and to go to school at Northwestern University instead. He said, “Fine!” immediately. “You _like_ to study don’t you, Nan?” he asserted rather than asked, and nodded his head approvingly. He said he’d keep me in school all of the time if I thought I could explain it satisfactorily. “What will your mother say, for instance?” he queried. I told him I didn’t even try to explain things to mother. She was busy teaching, and I thought it would be entirely safe. “All right, you’re the boss!” he said playfully.

Mr. Harding was in knickers, and I told him for about the dozenth time how stunning he looked. He smiled and said he thought maybe getting out into the open air after luncheon would help him to get rid of his cold. I told him it would very likely do him much more good than Dr. Sawyer’s prescriptions. “Oh, well,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders, “he doesn’t doctor _me_ much, you know; Mrs. Harding has lots of faith in him. Gee, Nan,” and he shook his head in the I-give-it-up-it’s-too-much-for-me-to-solve way, “they bother me to death as it is, looking at my tongue and feeling my pulse; why, a fellow can’t be alone a minute! Now, what I _really_ need is _your_ treatment!” and he finished with a big hug and kiss.

Mr. Harding said it was time for him to go to luncheon and time for me to go, anyway, and I, pouting as usual when I had to leave him, rose with reluctance. For some reason which I do not remember, I was to meet my secret service escort on the conservatory side of the White House instead of outside Mr. Harding’s office. So Mr. Harding said I could walk over with him, down the passage known as the “secret passage,” I believe, and under the pergola. We lingered long inside the closed door, however, before we left the executive office. Little would I have actually believed, in spite of the chills of premonition I had experienced during that visit, that never again would we stand thus together upon this earth. Perhaps that was why we clung so to each other in our farewell embrace. And Mr. Harding’s eyes, as well as my own, were wet. I shall never forget how he looked down at me, in the dim light of that room, and asked, as he so often did, that I say to him that I was happy now. “Are you happy now, dearie?” he asked softly, and with quivering lips and brimming eyes I bravely lied, “I am happy, sweetheart!”

We went out. Several feet behind us as we passed through the pergola came Brooks, returning evidently from an errand to the offices. I asked Mr. Harding who he was and he told me. In my brief glance backward I saw that his valet was a very good-looking light colored man. This was the one and only time I ever saw the trustworthy servant in whose care I addressed so many letters to my sweetheart.

Laddie Boy came bounding out to meet his master as we reached the entrance to the White House proper, and Mr. Harding stooped to pat him. It seemed this was the kitchen entrance. Just inside the door a guard was stationed. The kitchen maids peered through the partly opened door upon us with curious glances. Mr. Harding indicated that his private elevator was on the left and turned to shake hands with me. I thanked him for the “conference” in quite audible tones and he bowed slightly over my hand. Then he left me and I proceeded to the conservatory.

That was the last time I ever saw Warren Gamaliel Harding, my sweetheart.

_86_

I returned to Chicago on an early train. The following day or so after that President Walter Dill Scott was confined to his home with a severe cold, and sent for me to take some work. It was up in his den that I told him of the change I intended to make--to go to school instead of being his secretary. He expressed himself as glad that I wished to attend the University, but said he would be sorry to lose my services, and suggested that I try to combine studies with secretarial work. But this I knew I could not do, for I was still under Dr. Barbour’s care, making two trips to him weekly for iron inoculations. This President Scott knew nothing about and I explained it to him and said I knew I could not undertake to do both things.

My brother-in-law, Scott Willits, returned home from abroad about this time and I changed my residence to one of the girls’ dormitories in Evanston. This was on Sherman Avenue, Evanston, and Mr. Harding wrote me at that address during the next six months instead of at my sister’s. He kept me well funded, also, during that spring, and I found my studies more absorbing than I had found the secretarial work with the President of the University.

But I was far from happy. I had Elizabeth Ann out at the dormitory with me many times, and frequently stayed in the city all night at my sister’s. Elizabeth Ann was the most lovable child imaginable. The girls at school adored her and I never saw a child who could adapt herself more quickly to playmates than Elizabeth Ann, even though those playmates were, like the girls in the dormitory, eighteen and nineteen years old. Of course, I was much older than the others there, being twenty-six years old.

It was, I think, about the middle of March, when I, one day, called up my sister’s apartment from Evanston to learn from my brother-in-law that she had taken the baby and gone to Ohio. I had exhibited my growing dissatisfaction with the arrangement as it stood, and to Elizabeth, my sister, I had not hesitated to express, in all the fierceness of my desire, my opinion that matters would have to undergo a change. I might even have intimated that I myself knew of one way which would give me my child, and in moments when the bars were let down entirely I probably told her very bluntly how it hurt me to hear Elizabeth Ann call Scott “daddy.” I never had as strong feeling about Elizabeth Ann’s calling my sister “mamma,” although I objected to her calling her “mother.”