Part 25

When we returned to the other room, I called Elizabeth Ann and told her that we must go, but she and the little girl were having such a gay time that she was loath to leave, much less put on the little kid gloves which meant the final touch for leave-taking. And the joy of the whole visit for me was summed up in seeing her “aunt Daisy”--as unknown to her as such as she herself was unknown to Miss Harding as Warren Harding’s child--coax her little hands into the gloves and talk to her in a low voice which in the quality of its sweetness was much like her brother’s. And I could tell, though Elizabeth Ann’s back was turned to me, that she was looking straight into Miss Harding’s eyes with the same sweet seriousness which was in her father’s eyes when he talked to me about our child.

_119_

I wanted to be perfectly fair to my husband, the captain, but I wanted more than anything else in the world to be fair to my precious Elizabeth Ann. Therefore, I struggled through the winter until the latter part of January, going in debt in many directions and often using available cash to buy things for Elizabeth Ann, when pressing bills awaited payment. For instance, I could not bear not to get my darling a tricycle when she expressed an ardent wish for one, nor could I stand it to see her go without a bounteous Christmas. My sister Elizabeth sent her many lovely things and I thought, with mingled pride and relief, that she had fared, after all, far better than most children. I felt a great wave of pity and sympathy for the captain when he came home at New Year’s from another trip abroad, and brought the baby a box of toys; ungracious as I was growing toward him, such thoughtfulness toward my baby never failed to arouse my sympathy and a renewed attempt to bear up a little longer.

However, I despatched a letter to Elizabeth the latter part of January and she came East almost immediately. I persuaded my landlady to allow me to break my lease. I advised my family that I was leaving the captain. Mother came in from Long Island where she was teaching, and she, Elizabeth and I, talked things over. Elizabeth said her husband did not approve of sending Elizabeth Ann back and forth from Chicago to New York whenever I found it within my power to take her for a little while, nor could I really blame him for this attitude. However, that had been my first attempt to take her permanently, and I fervently hoped that the next time would be more successful. It broke my heart to see her go, but once more I bade her goodbye from the Pennsylvania platform and watched the train pull out, taking her away from me.

After all, Captain Neilsen was not, in spite of his seeming misrepresentations, such a “bad fellow,” for he had simply loved me so much that he had thrown a veil over realities and had refused to accept true facts, preferring to pour all of his hopes into the scale of optimism, fancying perhaps he could in some miraculous manner clap his hands, and fortune, hitherto so elusive, would appear. So I didn’t really want to hurt him, but I wanted to rid myself of him now and start anew, never again to jump into matrimony with closed eyes. I had learned a very dear lesson. I was sure he had learned one also. And I had no wish to incur his enmity.

I moved into a hotel in West 55th Street the first part of February. I was working at The Town Hall Club, as you will remember, and the Club is on West 43rd Street, so my hotel was conveniently within walking distance of my place of business. My work at the Club was quite absorbing, especially because the executive secretary, whose assistant I was, was occasionally ill, which threw her work upon my shoulders in addition to my own routine work. I had been far from well myself all winter, and it was only by observing early-to-bed hours that I was able to carry on. I liked the atmosphere of the Club and came in contact with interesting people, and, for the period which I planned to go through in my immediate endeavor to seek a divorce, it was conventionally a good place for me to be employed.

_120_

I had, as I have stated, always felt that there had been some provision made by Mr. Harding for me to care for our daughter, and, after my failure in marriage, it seemed to me I ought, for Elizabeth Ann’s sake, to ascertain whether or not such a bequest existed. But even so it did not occur to me to go then to the Hardings, feeling that, since Mr. Harding had not chosen to confide his long-continued relations with me to any member of his family during his health-time, it was not likely he had done so just before his death. The most logical person, in my opinion, and the man who most likely could tell me to whom to go if he himself did not know about such a bequest, was Tim Slade. He it was who had met me so many times and had escorted me to the White House, and had come to Eagle Bay and Chicago with funds from Mr. Harding. I knew Tim Slade had long since made a change from the governmental secret service to the brokerage business, but I did not know of any further changes he had made. So, not knowing where to address him now, I merely sent my letter to him at Washington, and apparently this address was sufficient.

My first note simply greeted him after the stretch of more than two years since I had last seen him, and I wrote that if he ever came to New York I would be glad to see him. To this letter, which I had signed of course with my married name, I had an early reply. Tim wrote that he would give me a ring on the phone the next time he was in the city; that he was glad to hear from me; and that I should address him in the future at his residence, giving the number and street. Very shortly thereafter he came over to New York, called me on the telephone at The Town Hall Club, and invited me to have dinner with him at the Waldorf, where, he told me later on, he always stopped. I do not remember that I accepted his invitation for dinner that time, but I do remember very well the talk I had with him there which was the first talk I had ever had with anybody about any money Mr. Harding might have left for our daughter and me.

We sat in the lounge which one enters beyond the lobby from 33rd Street, on a couch in the north-east corner. It seemed strange indeed to be sitting with Tim Slade discussing my sweetheart in the past tense. Heretofore Tim had been merely the messenger to take me to Mr. Harding. Tim really knew very little about me. I proceeded to tell him that I had been married since I had seen him, which accounted for my new name which he told me he had not understood. It was easy to talk to Tim Slade for he knew everybody connected with the Harding Administration, and our conversation gradually bordered upon the very topic I had been apprehensively waiting for an opportunity to broach. Tim was not so aggressively curious as to give me reason to feel his curiosity was other than that any man might display toward a girl who had apparently had certain claims upon the time and attention of the President of the United States. So I thought I should proceed to elucidate certain mystifying past actions on the part of both Mr. Harding and myself which must have excited speculation on Tim’s part. I tried to lead up to such explanation by first re-establishing in his mind certain facts which he very readily recalled--his first trip to Eagle Bay in the Adirondacks in 1920 with the packet of money from President-elect Harding, his many subsequent trips to Chicago, and the times he had escorted me to the White House. Also, I reminded him of the many letters I had sent in his care to Mr. Harding previous to the latter’s arrangement whereby I sent them all in care of his colored valet, Major Arthur Brooks.

Even then I shied at a direct revelation. I merely parried with the issue in such a manner as to hint at it strongly. I said since Mr. Harding’s death there was but one thing in all the world that I wanted. I found the tears coming into my voice as I talked, and oh, how distasteful it was to me to think of speaking of such a sordid thing as money in confessing why I could not have this one thing I wanted.

“What _is_ it you want more than anything else in this world?” Tim asked me kindly, avoiding my eyes because he felt my sensitiveness.

And somehow I found great relief in confessing to him that _I wanted the daughter of Warren Harding who was also my daughter_. And when Tim turned to look at me there were tears in his own eyes as he said, “_I thought so!_”

After that I talked much and at random, explaining this and that, and Tim seemed genuinely interested in hearing the whole story. I told him how I had married Captain Neilsen with the idea of being able to take Elizabeth Ann, and how that marriage had been a failure from the standpoint of fulfilling this promise. And when I observed that it just did not seem possible that Mr. Harding could have entrusted money to someone for me who would deliberately fail to hand it on to me after his death, Tim ejaculated in great surprise, “Didn’t he leave you anything at all?” I said I would never, never believe that he had failed to do so, but I _was_ convinced that the manner in which he had done so had been such as to make it a very simple thing for the person entrusted with the money to withhold it from me.

Tim’s assertion was spontaneous and emphatic, “Well, he didn’t leave anything with _me_, that’s a cinch!” I told him I had thought such a thing was possible, but that inasmuch as he did not hold the fund I wondered if he would have any suggestions as to who might have been chosen by Mr. Harding as confidential messenger to me after his death. He volunteered to make guarded inquiry in Washington in my behalf.

I was interested to hear Tim say that he had always felt I had a very deep claim on Warren Harding, “the boss,” as he called him. He said he had half concluded that I must be his daughter by some alliance of long ago. One of the first things he said, and one which led me to believe that he was honestly sincere, was his statement that if he had known the facts he and Mrs. Slade would themselves have taken Elizabeth Ann immediately. I explained to him that I never would have consented to such a thing anyway, that discussion had occurred in other directions along this same line, but that the adoption which had actually eventuated was the whole source of my present unhappiness. _I wanted my child myself._

_121_

It will avail nothing to go into detail concerning the many points upon which we touched in our later conversations. I related during the many interviews I had subsequently with Tim Slade much of the story as it stands in this book. Tim had, of course, a slant upon many angles of Mr. Harding’s life as President which were amazingly revealing to me, and which grieved me beyond words to hear. I knew pitifully little about politics in general, and next to nothing about the inside workings of the “machine” which is apparently an indispensable part of both of our great political parties. Tim said he had gone to “the boss” and had warned him that even his closest friends were double-crossing him at every turn. He said Mr. Harding had replied, “Why, Tim, you’re crazy!” And Tim had answered, “All right, maybe I am,” and had found Mr. Harding adamant where his trust in his friends was concerned.

Tim was frank to say that he had no use for anybody coming out of the State of Ohio except President Harding. “But I certainly did feel sorry for the boss,” he said. He said many of those connected with the Harding Administration had been no less than cut-throats and that “the Chief” had really had mighty few friends.

Tim related to me his own experiences in Marion, Ohio, where he was for several months the President-elect’s bodyguard. I was sorry to hear him say frankly that he had never met such a “bunch” in all his life, and I assured him that I was certain the streak of social madness of which he spoke had developed in Marion only since the birth of the excitement surrounding Mr. Harding’s nomination for the presidency. I knew all or nearly all of the people of whom he spoke and I had known them from childhood, and the wildness to which they might have inclined as the result of a misdirected patriotic stimulus was condoned by me who knew the genuineness of my home town people. I could not believe as Tim believed, that “The whole bunch out there is rotten.” No town which could produce Warren Harding could be fundamentally wrong in any respect. It was only a temporary social dementia from which they would recover with the passing of time.

Tim said Mr. Harding had instructed him that in case of “anything happening” to him, Tim should get from his private secretary, George Christian, the President’s little black notebook in which the latter had kept private memoranda. Tim said Mr. Harding had told him he was to tear out immediately the sheets containing my several addresses and my name. I moved around, you will remember, quite frequently, and likely if Mr. Harding kept these addresses they had filled several sheets of such a notebook. However, it did seem to me, as I told Tim, that Mr. Harding would have felt it important enough to see that each time I moved he himself blotted out or destroyed my previous address, and it also seemed entirely unlikely that he would have my real name written in this notebook. Any fictitious name would have sufficed, and he and I had many secret initials which meant something to us and which he might have used for such purpose. Nevertheless, Tim said, those were his orders. It seems to me Tim said that when he had gone to Mr. Christian for the notebook the latter told him it had already been destroyed.

When I left Tim Slade after our first interview I felt sure he would be able to trace the fund I felt had been left by Mr. Harding for Elizabeth Ann and me, and Tim had spoken of his intention to speak also to Major Brooks, the President’s valet, who was with the President, Tim said, shaving him, only a short time before he passed away.

I felt very sure I could depend upon Tim, and was confident that his own expressed opinion of the terrible injustice to Elizabeth Ann would incite him to immediate action in my behalf. When he apologized for his financial position, telling me he had only recently acquired a new country home in Maryland and was shy of money, I hastened to assure him that I didn’t expect any help from him. I was merely intensely anxious to hunt down the fund which I felt sure had been left for Warren Harding for our child and me.

_122_

The Town Hall Club, through its executive offices, issued invitations for two Club dinners, the first they had ever given since the opening of their new club rooms, and the designing of these invitations as well as the supervision of their issuance was left to my execution, under the direction and approval of the Program Committee. This Committee consisted of Miss Rachel Crothers, who was also a Vice-President of the Club at that time, and Mrs. Francis Rogers. I was proud to find that I was capable of assuming many executive responsibilities, and the success of the First Club Dinner on April 27th, 1925, was a source of great satisfaction to me personally. There were seven hundred and fifty people in attendance.

I had, as you will remember, always wanted to “write,” and in my position at The Town Hall Club I was constantly meeting men and women who had actually accomplished things in the literary world. I was chafing under physical strain and nightly fatigue which were far from conducive to creative writing. But I struggled over what I thought might some day be a play, writing it around my own experiences with my beloved Mr. Harding, disguising it, of course, and making our daughter the central figure. In connection with my work under the approval of the Program Committee of The Town Hall Club, I was obliged one evening to go up to Miss Rachel Crothers’ apartment to submit to her the proofs of the First Club Dinner invitations. I adored Miss Crothers, and I longed to say to her, “Oh, I would give the world to put what I know into a play!” As it was I merely said, “I admire your work tremendously, Miss Crothers. It is the work I want some day to be doing.” “Have you ever written anything?” she asked me. “No, nothing much,” shaking my head. “Well, what you need to do is to have a _child_, and some _experience_. _Then_ you can write!” I wondered whether even Rachel Crothers could match out of the fecundity of her imagination a drama equal to mine. And she had written so many successful plays!

_123_

When the next Club dinner was held, on May 19th, 1925, a prominent New York attorney introduced himself to me as one of our Club members. In the days that followed we became friends, and, after telling him that I was merely separated from Captain Neilsen and not yet divorced from him, he was kind enough to wish to help me in this respect.

I have been told that each phase of my experience seemed a needful one, and certainly the manner in which my experience has worked itself out appears to have been providentially directed. I had not a cent with which to obtain a divorce. Moreover, the only legal grounds I had for such obtaining were the grounds of misrepresentation, and divorces in New York are obtainable only upon statutory grounds, and I would not impose upon the captain even the suggestion of collusion. Therefore I had decided that only by going to Reno would I be able to untangle the matrimonial knot which I had precipitated for my child’s sake.

Tim Slade had offered to go to a friend in Washington, who, he said, was a prominent lawyer, and who would advise me how I might best obtain a divorce and the most quickly. Tim said he thought likely it would have to be upon grounds of desertion, and for this purpose I could establish a residence in Virginia across the Potomac, commuting daily to Washington, where, Tim said, he would see to it that I obtained a position as secretary. Furthermore, he said that this lawyer was a particularly good friend of his and that he was sure he would handle my divorce as a favor to him, Tim, and charge no fee whatever.

It seemed to me that fate had helpfully intervened when I met the New York lawyer who became my friend, and, after he had sympathetically extracted from me my real reason for wanting a divorce, and the one contributing factor which had led to compulsory abandonment of cherished plans in behalf of my daughter, he stated that in his opinion I had sufficient grounds for a complete _annulment_ of my marriage, with restitution of my maiden name. This pleased me immensely. He immediately drew up what was in effect a mutual agreement between Captain Neilsen and me bearing no legal significance beyond our own promise to each other to respect each other’s rights, as though a state of marriage did not exist, until such time as I could obtain absolute legal severance. We both signed this agreement, which also specified an amount of money which the captain was to pay to me monthly, and which he did in good faith pay until my annulment the following February had been legally consummated. But this amount of money was not even sufficient to cover the rent I had been paying, and so of course would not have kept me had I not supplemented it with my own salary.

_124_

Tim Slade came over to New York about once a month, and the second or third time I met him at the Waldorf he advised me that he had spoken to Major Brooks as well as to George Christian, of course talking to them hypothetically. He said Major Brooks remembered very well indeed having received letter from “E. Baye” enclosing letters for President Harding, but he knew of no money having been left for anyone at all outside of those who were mentioned in Mr. Harding’s will. And nothing had been left with _him_. Nor had Tim’s talk with George Christian, the President’s secretary, revealed knowledge of such a bequest.

Tim seemed very sure that he could go further in his investigations. He spoke of various people who had benefitted by the Harding Administration, and who would, he said, undoubtedly be glad to interest themselves in my situation. He said he was very sure, from what he knew about the Harding family outside of the President, that it would be difficult to persuade them to part with any of their money, and his characterizations of particular members of Mr. Harding’s family were distinctly severe. But I felt sure they would come immediately to my rescue with as much eagerness to do the right thing as Elizabeth Ann’s father had always shown. I said to Tim Slade that I would prefer not to go to Harding family until we had exhausted other channels of effort, especially until he had definitely determined in his own mind that the money which I believed had been left for us by Mr. Harding could not be traced.

When I next saw Tim Slade he had not accomplished anything so far as I could see except to have further confided the facts of the situation to certain individuals of his own choosing. I did not try to advise him, feeling he ought to know the right method of procedure if his desire to help me was truly genuine.

He said there were so few men who were really Mr. Harding’s friends that the situation was a difficult one. When I met him every month at the Waldorf the time was not spent entirely with discussions about my own affair. On the other hand, Tim would tell me long stories about individuals in Washington. I was learning surprising things about such people as George Christian, Brigadier-General Sawyer (Mrs. Harding’s personal physician), Mr. Brush, who bought _The Marion Daily Star_, Harry Daugherty, his son Draper, and many, many others, some of whose names were familiar with me, and others of whom I had not heard and therefore have forgotten. The one man above all others who escaped critical mention was Charles G. Dawes, who, Tim said, was “his best friend,” and who, he was sure, would “go a long way” in helping to solve my problem about Elizabeth Ann and my rightful expectations for her.

I asked Tim if he had ever heard about the lost letter I had sent to Mr. Harding the first month of his term as President, and I explained how I had addressed it and how I had enclosed many snapshots of Elizabeth Ann, and some of myself with our daughter. This letter was not received. Tim said that he himself had assisted George Christian until the latter had got onto things, but that some one else had opened all of the President’s mail at that time. He said he did not think this particular letter had reached there for he was confident it would have been given to the President.

I told Tim about having met a friendly New York attorney and about his volunteering to assist me, for a nominal fee, to free myself from the captain, and Tim thought that would be wise.

The latter part of May I talked to my New York lawyer friend again about my matter and I put my case to him hypothetically, in the light of the natural responsibility a family ought to assume toward the maintenance of their brother’s only child despite the fact that that child could claim no _legal_ relationship to the family. I did not say of course who the father of my child was, but his answer to my question was both direct and emphatic. He was of the opinion that there did exist a moral responsibility toward such a child and that _the right thing to do for the child_ was to approach the family direct. “You have apparently tried to ‘cut corners’ by making a marriage for Elizabeth Ann’s sake. You found it has proven a failure. Now the thing to do is to do the _right_ thing, which is to go to her father’s people.”