The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 30
I returned to New York. The first of May I left the Johnson's home on 136th Street and moved into a one-room-and-alcove-bedroom apartment in the Hotel La Salle Annex in East 60th Street. I sublet it from a woman whose husband was in Constantinople and whom she was planning to join there. There was a nice private entrance and my apartment was one flight up, on the second floor, rear.
It was on a Friday evening, my second evening in the apartment, when Mr. Harding came over from Washington. As a matter of fact, I had not yet moved into my own apartment, which was not available when I arrived, but was being housed temporarily in a very much superior apartment in the Hotel La Salle itself. This hotel was at that time the home of Mr. and Mrs. Dick (the former wife of John Jacob Astor), as well as Cyril Maude, the English actor. In the annex, on the top floor lived Pearl White, famed in pictures. Of course I told these interesting items to Mr. Harding when he came over. He had first been sent up to my temporary apartment in the hotel, where I had a cozy living-room. But I had been advised that I could move into my own place that evening and Mr. Harding said immediately that he much preferred that we "go where we belonged." So he helped me move my baggage.
I recall my disappointment in hearing his first remark about my little place—our little place—for it was one of marked deprecation. The apartment was so much roomier and so much pleasanter than anything I had ever had that I thought it a veritable palace, and was much hurt at his observations. "Really, Nan, it isn't worth $100 a month!" he said. "Why, dearie, it isn't good enough—I wanted you to have something really fine." I said very little. I knew that he had originally told me about what he thought I ought to have to pay, and I had kept within that figure. I decided I must be a poor picker, yet I had been justified in my decision by having seen other apartments for which a higher rent was asked and which did not compare in my estimation with that one.
However, I remember with satisfaction how he retracted his criticism the second visit he made, after I had had an opportunity to dispense with some of the unnecessary furniture and fix things up a bit. He was quite enthusiastic. "Why, dearie, this is not such a bad place after all!" he smiled, taking in "the effect" with a sweeping glance into bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette. I took his coat and he handed me a big box of dark red cherries, for which he knew I had a weakness. He used to send me five-pound boxes of Martha Washington candies, they being my favorite sweets at that time, but after he knew I was going to have a child he would bring me fruit.
For two months we were very happy with that apartment, the only place we could call our very own during the six and one-half years we were lovers.
I had intimated to Mr. Harding that I would feel more comfortable now if I had a ring, and I expressed, upon his interrogation, my preference for a sapphire surrounded with diamonds. So on one of his trips to our 60th Street apartment he brought me the ring. I remember how he kept quiet about it, not telling me at first that he had brought it, and I confess I was a wee bit disappointed. I wanted a ring so badly. But at a very propitious moment he fished it out of a pocket, threw away the tissue paper in which it was wrapped, and slipped it upon my finger. We performed a sweet little ceremony with that ring, and he declared that I could not belong to him more utterly had we been joined together by fifty ministers. The ring was indeed a great comfort to me, helping to sustain me in the conventional atmosphere I tried to throw about our baby's coming, and, during those days after her birth when I had tried to lie in bed idle when there was much to be done, it was a source of courage and support to me, steadying me in my uncertain plans about the future. It was a material evidence of a relationship which no wedding ceremony could have made more solemn or more sacred than that very own ceremony between ourselves, with God as our witness.