The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 106
Finally word came from my sister Elizabeth. She wrote that my brother-in-law, Scott Willits, had planned to study with Professor Otakar Sevcik, who was to teach in New York that winter, and it was too late for them to alter their plans. They were, therefore, coming East as arranged, and would stop at my mother's, in Athens, Ohio, where I could meet them. Scott had been studying with Professor Sevcik for some time, having been with him in Europe a year, a season in Ithaca, and a season in Chicago.
So I went immediately to Athens, Ohio, to await their coming. Mother surely sensed the grief I had experienced, and set me to work cleaning house for her and getting meals and otherwise trying to occupy my mind. She was teaching in the Training School of the Ohio University, was busy every minute of the day, and it was a relief for her to come home to prepared meals, she said.
In early September I went to Marion. I had become unbearably nervous waiting for Elizabeth to bring my baby, and anyway I felt if I could see and talk to Daisy Harding it would make me feel a shade better. I telephoned Miss Harding immediately upon my arrival. She still lived with her father on East Center Street. It was from this house that the funeral of President Harding had been conducted. Daisy Harding was surprised to hear my voice and invited me to come out immediately. The last time I had seen her was when she had visited her cousin, Mrs. John Wesener, in Chicago, in the fall of 1922, and I had taken my grandfather there to call upon Dr. Harding.
Everything seemed very quiet as I stepped from the trolley in front of Dr. Harding's and walked across the street to the house. New railings had replaced the old ones which had to be removed from the porch in order to take the President's casket in and out of the door, and when I observed them the full significance of this struck me like a blow.
Miss Harding came to the door in answer to my ring. She had on an all white serge suit and I thought she was truly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The pallor of her lovely face was heightened by the deep lights of her eyes and her black hair was combed back from her forehead. How much she looked like him! The same understanding seriousness in her eyes, the same facial contour, and much the same sad smile.
We sat in the living-room, the same room in which I had, in July of 1922, seen and talked with Mrs. Warren Harding. Daisy Harding told me many details about the passing of her brother. As she talked I thought I should scream with each word. A portrait in colors of President Harding, a "smiling picture," hung in that room above the bookcase and beneath it stood a bouquet of flowers. Just as Mr. Harding used to have flowers on his White House desk beside the miniature of his mother, I thought.
The house seemed very quiet. The East Center Street trolley cars rumbled past at regular intervals, the same street cars I suppose that used to pass our house when the "Brittons" lived farther out on the same street. Everything was the same; but everything to me was tragically different.
"That's the way it is all day long, Nan," said Miss Harding, calling my attention to a car which drove slowly by while the occupants were gazing curiously at the house wherein we sat. "Thousands and thousands passed his coffin, and everybody remarked the expression upon his face—he looked so peaceful and happy." God, how awful to listen as she told it! I sobbed with Miss Harding as she went on. "He loved life so, you know, Nan," she said. Oh, how well I knew! I told her about the strange dream I had had in Dijon, and how I afterwards had counted up the difference in time between France and the United States and had found that the hour of my dream had been the hour of Mr. Harding's passing. She thought this startlingly coincidental.
I longed to go over and put my arms around her, to tell her that her brother had known some joy during the last years of his life, and that I would have given my own life to have had him know more of such joy. But I sat still and silent in my chair.
Even the grief I felt could not overshadow a certain strange comfort I experienced in being there, 'mid the old familiar surroundings, where his body had last lain in perfect rest. And the spirit that had always been Warren Harding seemed to linger near us as we talked.
Miss Harding's fiance, Mr. Ralph Lewis, came for her. They were going to dine at an inn in a nearby country town—Waldo, she said. (I knew the very place, for I had dined there with the Mousers and Gorhams not long before—the last visit I made to Marion.) They invited me to go with them; they were driving, of course. But I told them I preferred to remain there at the house and would try to rest a bit while they were gone.
It seemed like the culmination of a fairy tale that Ralph Lewis should be engaged to Daisy Harding. He had loved her all his life, I knew. When I was a child he had owned a grocery-store, and we children often went there for "sour pickles." I can see him now, in his big white apron, stooping over the pickle barrel and hauling up several pickles with the dipper, dripping with the good-smelling vinegar. He used to let us "pick 'em out," I remember. After a good many years he gave up the grocery business and went in for real estate, and I knew well his reputed success.
Miss Harding told me to go out into the kitchen and help myself to anything I found for luncheon; it was then about eleven-thirty in the morning. Then they left, and I was entirely alone in the house. Miss Harding had told me that her father and his wife had gone away for a rest and visit following the funeral. So I was there alone in the house where my beloved had lain in utter peace, in his father's home, while mourning thousands brought their tributes of affectionate regard.
I was nervously exhausted, and went upstairs, thinking I would lie down for a while. Miss Harding had told me sometime before that when her brother had been elected President his wife had sent some of her furniture back to Marion from their Wyoming Avenue home in Washington, and the room where I went to rest was fitted with Mr. and Mrs. Harding's bedroom suite. Their framed portraits hung above their respective beds. I lay down and looked long at the likeness of my beloved. My second self was watching me, and seemed to say, "Go right ahead, Nan, and have a good cry. It will make you feel stronger." I think I did feel a bit stronger.
I bathed my eyes, put on a dressing-gown Miss Harding had laid out for me, and went down to the kitchen. I prepared a cup of something hot for myself and forced myself to eat some of the fresh things from the ice-box. Then I washed up my dishes and went back into the living-room.
I roamed in and out, visioning the coffin in the front room with my darling lying so peacefully there. I stooped and caressed the carpet above which the coffin had rested, and closed my eyes as I stood above an imaginary casket and looked down at my darling asleep. He had known this house! He had once lived here, as I remembered hearing his sister say, and therefore every inch of the old home was dear to him.
I longed to hold some of his clothes. He used to have an agreeable man-smell all his own, and there was a time when I thought I knew all his suits. I remembered he sometimes had come over to New York looking not as well pressed as usual, seeming to joy in the comfort of old clothes. On one occasion I told him I wished he were a milkman or a postman or somebody who was not at all important. He had smiled then and looked down at his clothes, and I had hastened to assure him that he was quite all right, that he looked good to me, and that I didn't care what he had on. And another time, in Washington, we were walking together down Pennsylvania Avenue, and he looked absolutely stunning. And in the admiring glances of passers-by was also recognition. "I never used to notice the conspicuity of men in public office as I have since coming to Washington," he said to me. And then another time he was chewing gum and asked me if I wanted some, and I took it because I was afraid I would hurt his feelings if I did not. And we walked along together, my arm through his, and were so happy! "We're just a couple of small-towners together, aren't we, Nan?" he said contentedly as he looked down at me with fond eyes. And I nodded happily and said to him, "May I kiss you, darling, all night long?" And to this and other loving queries I made he answered gaily, "You can do any damned thing you want to do to me, dearie. I'm yours!"
I left Miss Harding and her home with a sense of having actually communed with my beloved. I did not allow myself to go up to the cemetery. In fact, though I have been in Marion since, I have never once been near where the coffin rests. For they could never bury the spirit of Warren Gamaliel Harding.