The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 161
Again Daisy Harding and I went over the ground we had already covered in our talk the previous June, and on into uncommented territory as well.
The Marion High School, where Miss Harding had taught for perhaps twenty years, had voted some time back to change its name to the "Harding High School," and I knew Miss Harding had taken great pride in this. But Miss Harding's statement to me, in a voice that betrayed apprehension, "If this should get out, Nan, they would take the Harding name away from the high school!" only made me realize more keenly how pitifully narrow was the thinking which would place the fear of revealment above the desire to do the right thing by their brother's child.
And the possibility itself was ridiculous. Had not hundreds of public men been unconventional, and with far less justification than Warren Harding, and were not their names and deeds written on the calendar of achievement? Would a handful of people—even the home-town friends of Warren Harding—decree that because he had become a father he was unfit for namable perpetuation through any medium whatsoever? If this be the test of true worth, of real manhood, pray what would become of many of the statues and memorials and foundations which stand for the names of world-heroes and benefactors? The strongest of men are weak, and the weakest are strong, but the fact remains that "a man's a man for a' that"!
And what inescapable torment of the mind must my friends be suffering to pin their fears to another remote possibility—that disclosure would bring in its wake the condemnation of certain outsiders where their religion was concerned! Else what prompted Miss Harding to inquire anxiously, perhaps at the instigation of her missionary sister, "You don't think your Aunt Dell knows this, do you Nan?" Poor child! What if my Baptist missionary aunt did know that the brother of her one-time friend, Mrs. Votaw, a Seventh Day Adventist, had followed his heart and as a consequence had become a father out of wedlock? Granted that petty criticism would ensue, Mr. Harding himself was a Baptist, and it seemed to me that that would cross the fingers of both churches! But was one religion and its accomplishments advanced at the expense of another? Do churches capitalize upon each other? Is this the spirit that Jesus exemplified? "Do unto others as ye would that they should do to you." Would not true Christians tend their own flock, nor heed the strayings of their neighbors?
And well did I ponder the source of inspiration which led Miss Harding to insist that in her opinion the safest way out for me was to marry again. Though I heartily agreed that this would be a way, and possibly the easiest way, of solving my problem; though I discussed with her the several eligible possibilities in my life at that time, and my frank appraisement of each; still, as I told her, the fact remained that such a course was cowardly unless I were prompted by genuine love of the man himself, and not by a superficial, blind acceptance of him for the sake of using his name. And Miss Harding agreed that love would be the only right basis.
Miss Harding and I discussed the talk I had had that afternoon with her brother, and I repeated in as much detail as time permitted my interview with Dr. Harding. I told her that if the matter could not be settled in a reasonable length of time by the Hardings, I thought I should be so advised, because, as I had told her brother, I intended in that event to approach in all seriousness the man in Washington who had volunteered to raise a fund from the anticipated generosity of Mr. Harding's closest friends.
"Why, Nan!" exclaimed Miss Harding in amazement, "you would not approach strangers, would you?"
What rightful thing would I not do for the daughter of Warren Harding? What would I not give of pride to have her with me, in her rightful place? Ah, even then did the last vestige of pride die within me, and the mother spirit to assert itself, it seemed for all time, when I declared with almost arrogant fervor, "I would do anything to obtain fair treatment for Elizabeth Ann!"
"But, Nan," Daisy Harding exclaimed in astonishment, "the money was not left to you nor to Elizabeth Ann!"
Is justice the result of a few pen scratches? Was not my story in itself ample proof that provision must have been made somehow, even though the written word of my daughter's father had not been found? Wherefore would a real man lovingly care for his sweetheart and child during his lifetime and pass on, intentionally leaving a broken-hearted and destitute love-family behind? And, even granted that his sudden passing had made impossible the provision he had so often spoken of to me, did the responsibility cease with his demise? Did not this responsibility rest upon the shoulders of those whom he had been able to publicly include in a will whose liberal bequests certainly indicated his probable generosity to his own daughter?
"My dear," I replied to Miss Harding, "you do not know what was left, nor do I, and he would not be the sweetheart I have known had he passed on without making some kind of provision for our baby."
Daisy Harding kissed me goodbye as the taxi honked outside, and wished me a safe journey. As I whirled down Church Street, past scene after scene so familiar yet so strangely remote, this thought occurred to me: No one, to my knowledge, except the Lewises and Dr. Harding, knew I was in Marion, Ohio, on April 1st, 1926.