Part 26
I did not see Tim Slade again before I left at the beginning of June on a vacation of a month to be spent in the West with my people. But I remember distinctly that I made up my mind that if Tim Slade could, as he said, influence certain persons to help Warren Harding’s child, then the members of the Harding family would surely see it in the same way, and, in justice to them, they should be approached immediately. My lawyer’s assertion of the justice of such procedure strengthened me in the step I was deliberating upon, and I felt there was really but one thing _for_ me to do--make my plea in my own way to Daisy Harding on behalf of her brother’s child.
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My mother, who had been teaching on Long Island, and my brother John, fifteen years of age, went West with me the first of June, 1925. Elizabeth and Scott were teaching music at the Ohio University, and so we proceeded straight to Athens, Ohio.
How my darling little girl had grown even in the four months since I had been obliged to return her to my sister and her husband! How much she looked like her father, and how happy I was to be with her again! How long and straight her legs! How lovely her eyes! And she had lost a tooth. Oh, I told her, I was so happy to see her! “Well, Nan dear, I’m happy to see you, too!” she answered, her head to one side like her father, her lips drawn into the semi-serious smile of a grown-up, as she took one of my hands in both of hers. How dear she was! And what a peach my sister Elizabeth was to take such good care of her! Nor was I unappreciative of the fact that Scott had not been unwilling to take her back even after I had taken her away with the full and expressed intention of keeping her permanently. Scott and I never agreed where Elizabeth Ann was concerned, but I conceded much appreciation to him for having been won over to accepting her back uncomplainingly in that instance.
Elizabeth said they were planning to motor back to Chicago and from there to the Willits farm for the summer, and would I not like to motor with them? This I decided to do, and in that way remain a little longer with my precious baby girl before proceeding back to New York. So about the middle of June we left Athens, by motor, for Chicago.
I continued to think about the task to which I had set myself: telling my friend and my sweetheart’s sister, Daisy Harding, about Elizabeth Ann. Our route to Chicago took us through Marion, Ohio, and Elizabeth Ann and I shared the same bed at the Harding Hotel where we spent the night. An oil painting of Mr. Harding hangs in the lounging room of the hotel, and Elizabeth Ann spied it immediately and recognized it. “Oh, there is our dear Mr. Harding,” she said, pulling my hand, and we both stood in front of the portrait silently. In our bedroom were all the needed evidences to make one know that it had been Mr. Harding who had inspired the building. Even in the bedspreads was woven the likeness of the 29th President of the United States.
That night, or early the next morning, I telephoned Miss Harding, who was, by the way, Mrs. Ralph T. Lewis now, and told her we were passing through Marion to Chicago and I would likely return that way enroute East. I had previously written of my intended trip West and Miss Harding had advised me by letter when it would be most convenient for her to have me at her home. I told her over the phone I was making arrangements to be there at the time she suggested.
We went on to Gary, Indiana, where we were obliged to spend the night because of tire trouble. The following day we were in Chicago. That afternoon, after a short rest, Elizabeth, Scott and the baby went on down to the farm, and I, after visiting with friends for a couple of days, went back to Marion, Ohio.
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On my trip from Chicago to Marion I went very carefully over the whole situation as it affected and might affect everybody concerned. I decided it was paramountly _my_ problem, to solve for Elizabeth Ann, and, regardless of the shock which the revelation of my secret might cause, there did exist an obligation in the Harding family toward Elizabeth Ann, and I owed it to my child to apprise the Hardings of her true identity and parentage.
Of course, it would be difficult for me to tell Daisy Harding. It would mean for me the retracing of a word-for-word picture of that part of my life which I would fain recall only by sad-sweet memories unspoken, and the indelible imprint upon my character. Miss Harding’s cordial, “Why, come right on out, Nan!” when I telephoned her from the Marion railroad station, brought me face to face with my promise to myself: that I would not postpone the telling, but have it over with.
I had scarcely seated myself when I said, “Miss Harding, I have something which I want you to know and I am going to proceed to tell you immediately.”
I sat on the couch in the living-room. This was the first time I had been in Daisy Harding’s new home since her marriage to Ralph Lewis. On the table stood a picture of my darling, taken with Laddie Boy, and it was the first time I had seen this particular picture of Mr. Harding. I looked closely at it when I sat down. Its presence bolstered me in the ordeal I must go through.
I plunged into my story and followed it as best I could from beginning to end. Neither nervous tension nor tears stopped me until I had pretty well covered the ground. Daisy Harding’s face was a study. As I talked it expressed kaleidoscopically the varied emotions she must truly have experienced--amazement, pity, hurt, sorrow,--all there, _but never for one moment incredulity_.
The very first thing she said was, “Why, Nan, I’ll bet that was brother Warren’s greatest joy!” I said I thought it _had_ been. Then she added, “If Carrie Votaw knew this she would want to go right out there and get that baby right away. She’d just love her!” I knew Carrie Votaw’s fondness for children exceeded even Daisy’s. The Votaw’s had no children of their own. I told Daisy in tears that that was exactly what _I_ had been wanting to do ever since Elizabeth Ann was born, and especially was it unbearable for me not to have her, since I no longer had _him_.
I shall not attempt to give the details of our conversation, for it was inclusive of every phase of my situation and would be a mere repetition of my story thus far told. I showed her letters I had, and pictures of Elizabeth Ann, and she, too, saw the likeness which her brother’s child bore to him.
Miss Harding was understanding and kind, never once criticising her brother, even though she made a brave attempt to convince me that Mr. Harding’s legal wife was fond of him. Though it seemed futile to me to expend so much time discussing this point upon which no one in the world was probably as intimately informed as I, I took occasion to remark that I had fully appreciated her _rights_, imposed by the long-standing union between her and Mr. Harding, and that this recognition on my part and my respect above everything else for my sweetheart’s peace of mind, had resulted in the tragic situation I was today attempting to face.
It was pitifully plain to me that Miss Harding’s immediate concern was for the Harding name, to preserve it conventionally intact, although the very method she chose to employ in her endeavor to impress me with my own duty toward my child and her brother’s, only made her alarm the more apparent. It would be unfair to Elizabeth Ann, she said, to tell her who she was until she became twenty-five years of age--and perhaps had had a love-affair of her own. Miss Harding asserted that there was every probability that Elizabeth Ann might turn against me, her own mother, if she were told before that time. But this I would not admit for one second. I said that it might be a shock to Elizabeth Ann, but that I knew my child well enough to know that I could never lose her, because she was too much like her father and mother, both, ever to be unduly swayed emotionally by such a revelation.
“How many people know this, Nan?” Daisy Harding asked me.
I told her each one of them, not forgetting to include Tim Slade. At the mention of Tim Slade’s name, Miss Harding seemed greatly distressed, and questioned very much the wisdom of my having made Tim a confidant, telling me a story in which Tim figured and which I had heard from Tim himself, though in an entirely different version. It had to do with an alleged indebtedness left unpaid by Mr. Harding in the amount of $90,000, so Miss Harding said, which amount was due a brokerage firm for stocks of some kind to which Mr. Harding had supposedly subscribed, but for which he had failed to pay previous to his passing. The firm had sued the Harding Estate and Miss Harding said that their lawyers had advised them that, inasmuch as there remained no proof that Mr. Harding did _not_ owe it, they might better strike a compromise than have it made a matter of public knowledge. This they had done, settling for $40,000. I cannot repeat Tim’s version of the same story, but it had been colored throughout with resentment frankly expressed, for it had been the brokerage firm for which Tim had acted as Washington manager, and he therefore said that he knew whereof he spoke when he said Mr. Harding actually owed the money.
I told Miss Harding, as I had told Tim Slade, that Mr. Harding had said to me upon my last visit to the White House that he was then in debt $50,000, and I suggested that perhaps this was the very indebtedness to which he referred, although it seemed to me I did remember hearing him add something about “campaign expenses.” However, I had never been interested in remembering those things verbatim which pertained to business, though I knew by heart the sweet things he had said which affected our personal relations, and it was the amount of $50,000 which had stayed in my mind and the fact that the poor darling had said he just could not seem to get out of debt.
I would not be disloyal to Tim, who was, I was sure, trying to help me in his own way, and so I tried not to bring his name into our discussions after that, except in a general way. Miss Harding suggested to me later on that I might try in an off-hand way to get Mrs. Votaw’s opinion of Tim. Her sister from Washington was then in Marion, and Miss Harding said she thought it would be fine if the friends who had driven through from Washington to Battle Creek, Michigan, and had dropped Mrs. Votaw off in Marion, would invite me to drive back East with them when they stopped in Marion again in a day or two to pick up Mrs. Votaw, and that it would save me that much carfare. I said I would be delighted.
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That evening Mrs. Votaw came over to her sister Daisy’s. I had not seen Carrie Votaw for several years, but I observed that she had lost none of her regal beauty, and she, too, had certain facial expressions which reminded me strongly of her brother. Early in our conversation, Mrs. Votaw found occasion to inquire about my Aunt Dell, who, you will remember, had been a missionary to Burma at the same time Mrs. Votaw and her husband, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been engaged in work of the same character, and it was plain to be seen that the old feeling toward my Aunt Dell was still smoldering in the heart of her whose religion, as a Seventh Day Adventist, was not generally concordant with that of my Aunt Dell, who was a Baptist.
Mrs. Votaw said to me that she had felt very bitter when my Aunt Dell had taken occasion to have published in a certain paper an article, written by my aunt, which voiced the hope of her church that Mr. Harding, now the most distinguished member of the Baptist Church, as President of the United States, might see fit to exert his influence in the direction of promoting the very worthy work which the Baptists were carrying on so admirably in Burma. I knew my Aunt Dell’s sense of humor, and it would have been too much for her to refrain from making capital of a situation such as this, and I could not help being secretly amused. But it saddened me to realize how this given instance of Mrs. Votaw’s resentment proved that the work which should be so universally missionary in spirit and never pettily denominational, was, after all, permeated with the spirit of sect jealousy.
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The following afternoon I walked with Miss Harding (I never called her Mrs. Lewis, having gained her consent to continue addressing her in the old way) to the home of a friend where she was having tea. From there I went over to my friends’, the Mousers. I remember the queer sense of detachment I felt toward old landmarks which since my childhood had grown strangely unfamiliar to me. Here in my own home town, the same feeling of unreality, of walking through the picture-book, possessed me as it had in France, and it was difficult for me to realize that I was alive and not dreaming dreams. In current slang, I wondered “what it was all about.”
Yet all the time Miss Harding and I were discussing my problem. I was telling her how deeply in debt I was, and she was telling me how she had invested in real estate until she and Ralph were both frightened lest they should lose heavily. I was a bit sensitive about even discussing money, feeling assured that now that one of the Hardings knew my story, she would set about to right things for Elizabeth Ann.
Miss Harding said she herself would tell Carrie Votaw the facts about their brother’s child, but that Mrs. Votaw had not been particularly well and it would be such a shock that she would prefer to wait until later on, perhaps the following month, when she expected to see her sister again. I agreed very readily to this, and told Miss Harding I would leave the matter entirely in her hands, as she asked me to do.
When Mrs. Votaw came to the Lewis home the next time, Miss Harding suggested to her that she and her friends take me along back as far as Washington with them, and to this Mrs. Votaw heartily agreed, saying that there was ample room in their Hudson car. She said the car belonged to her friend, Mr. Cyrus Simmons, who, with his brother-in-law, would be the only other two occupants on the return trip. Mrs. Votaw remained over night at her father’s, Dr. Harding’s, on East Center Street, the night before we were to leave Marion, and I, staying at the Lewis home, slept that night in Miss Harding’s room. Her husband had left that day for Florida to attend to some business down there.
I remember well how it stormed that night. It occurred to me, as we lay there talking in our beds across from each other, that the frequent flashes of lightning and peals of thunder were possibly symbolic of Miss Harding’s mental state. I felt so sorry for her. She seemed to be so full of fear. I had passed all through the stage of fear of exposure, and did not fear anything except my inability to get Elizabeth Ann and to _keep_ her.
The question of the $90,000 came up again and I said to Miss Harding that I could not see the awfulness of her brother’s speculation, for most big men played the market, and just because the President had had no cash with which to cover his pledge, likely they had volunteered to go ahead and “play” _for_ him. Miss Harding took the attitude that her brother was above gambling. I was not, however, at all in agreement with her views that he would not have been capable of “taking chances.” He and the fellows in Marion with whom he had played cards had always played for stakes. I told her about one night when Mr. Harding had come over to see me in New York. He related how three men had approached him on the train with an invitation to play cards. They had all repaired to the end compartment. He said that he did not seem to “catch on” to them at first, but very soon he found himself deeply in debt--that is, as I remember, to the extent of something over $100, which was a considerable amount for a train card game I suppose--and he told me how he had said to them, “Gentlemen, I always pay my just indebtednesses, but in this instance I am going to give you only as much as I can spare.” Thereupon he gave them $50 and his personal card, and told them they could look him up in Washington if they desired to collect the balance. He said to me that it had been a plain “hold-up game” and that he never expected to see them in Washington at all. So, even though the $90,000 in question, which Miss Harding felt her brother did not owe, was nine hundred times the amount of the indebtedness he incurred in playing cards, _I_ was quite sure in my own mind that he had very possibly “taken chances” in this instance as well. I decided he might even have done it for Elizabeth Ann and me, knowing how he so frequently talked of “taking out some kind of a policy,” or setting aside some money for me in some way.
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When finally, after discussing my problem, Daisy Harding went off to sleep, I lay there thinking, trying to recall anything of importance that I had failed to relate to her. I heard Miss Harding in her sleep mutter the word “child” several times, and I knew that the subject-matter of our conversation had drifted into slumberland with her, and wondered what she was dreaming. I was sorry, too, very sorry, that I had been obliged to tell her, for I knew the whole thing was worrying her tremendously. She had said to me that she had not known good health for quite some time, and I confess she did look tired. I felt so sorry for her and I loved her deeply; but I loved my daughter far more. In the shadows, as she lay there sleeping, she looked so much like her brother, more perhaps than any of the others in the family save the father, Dr. Harding, in whom I have more than once seen Mr. Harding so strongly that I could just hug him.
It was in fact during that very visit to Marion that I had gone over to the Dr. Harding home on East Center Street one afternoon to join Mrs. Votaw, and be there so Mrs. Mouser could pick us both up and take us for a drive. Passing through the house out to the garden I had come across Dr. Harding, lying down on the couch in the living-room. I had not seen him before on that particular visit, and I went over and leaned down and kissed him on the cheek and spoke to him. His eyes were closed but I knew he was not asleep. He opened them and recognized me immediately. I doubt very much whether I have ever encountered Dr. Harding even in passing greeting that he did not remark in the same exclamatory fashion, “Oh, yes,--Nan, _Nan_! Yes, I remember how your father used to tell me how you stood up for Warren! He said you thought Warren was the finest man in the country--yes, your father used to say....” And I have known Daisy Harding to interrupt more than once and say, “Yes, dad, you’ve told Nan that before,” or, “Yes, dad, Nan knows.” And when I bent and touched his cheek with my lips and took his dear old wrinkled hand in mine, he spoke to me immediately of his son Warren. But now the voice was the far-away voice of a grief-stricken aged man, and so pitifully weak that I bent over him and listened intently to catch the words. Bless him! He was trying to recall to me my father’s words to him about my love for his son. But the feeble voice trailed off and I felt more than heard his whispered heart-cry, “Too bad Warren had to die!” My heart was so full of love and sympathy for him whose son I worshipped that something which must have been the maternal in me longed to stoop and take the snow-white head on my arm and mingle my tears with his against the wrinkled cheek. But, instead, I stood looking down upon him and seeing in the deep-set faded eyes of the father the eyes of the other, the younger man, his son and my beloved.
I have yet to see, however, except in the eyes of my baby, who is the soul of Warren Harding, the spiritual lights of understanding, gladness, and sorrow that shone from the eyes of him whose gaze was ever fixed beyond the pale of the material. I recall how one time Mr. Harding and I were motoring in New York, in a car hired by him for the purpose by the hour, and were passing under the elevated bridge at Broadway and 64th Street, when I said to him, “Darling, you have such beautiful eyes. Somehow I never can really see _into_ them.” And he smiled and answered, “Aren’t they too sad, Nan?” Yes, I told him, they were sad, but beautifully and spiritually sad.
He, in turn, seemed to delight in telling me how he loved my eyes, my lips, my teeth, my woman’s body, my voice, and my nose. It was when he said he loved my nose that I would interrupt him. “Oh, now I _know_ you must be fooling,” I would say, “because I have always heard from my family how big my nose is!” But he would shake his head and smile and plant a kiss right upon the end of that emphasized feature and swear over and over again, “I love your nose!”
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It was with a great sense of relief that I looked now to my return to New York. Daisy Harding was my friend, she knew the whole story, she loved her brother dearly, and I was sure she would act quickly in acquainting her family with a situation which needed immediately to be righted for the sake of her brother’s child.
The motor trip to Washington with Carrie Votaw and her friends was, for me at least, a lark. Not since my early days in France, before the tragic news of Mr. Harding’s death reached me, had I experienced such comparative relaxation, mentally. We were a jolly four, singing songs, reciting pieces, and talking about everything--everything except those things which lay nearest my heart. I was thankful that there would be no more mental metastasis to shock and hurt me. My answer to all fears henceforth would be, “Daisy knows; _Daisy_ knows!” And I would soon, through the goodness which I knew was as inherent a quality in the Hardings as was their knowledge of right, have my baby with me permanently.
Many and many a time I thought to myself, as my eyes drank in every move Carrie Votaw made, “What a wonderful family, these Hardings! Each superlative in individual ways!” I visualized Mrs. Votaw with her brother’s child on her lap, and thought within myself that God always compensated in His own beautiful way for the things we longed for but which were not always within His will. I had so prayed that I might see our child with her father, on his knee, but instead I was to see her with his sisters whom I also loved.
Our first night enroute to Washington was spent in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Votaw and I shared the same room, and, after we had retired, it occurred to me to inquire casually concerning her opinion of Tim Slade. She answered very briefly, and said she thought that he, like a good many others, had been “roped in” unconsciously, and that he was very probably not a bad sort of man at all. I explained my curiosity in some way which did not at all arouse her suspicions or lead her to think I knew him personally, and it was very gratifying to me to know that she held no unfavorable opinion of him.
Proceeding on our way, the following day we had luncheon in the mountains at the log cabin of Mrs. Votaw’s friend, Miss Barnett. The only knowledge I had ever had of log cabins was through conversations with Mr. Harding. I think it was his friend, Senator Weeks, who had many times entertained fellow senators and friends at his camp, which was in New Hampshire. And Mr. Harding’s final exclamation, when he described for me the beauty of the country up there and the comforts of the lodge in the mountains, always was, “I wish I might have _you_ up there, Nan, way off in the woods!” He longed, he said, to carry me away to some spot like that for “weeks at a stretch.”