The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 75
It was upon the occasion of this last-named visit to the White House that I showed Mr. Harding the picture of Elizabeth Ann's "rescue" which had appeared in the Hearst paper in Chicago. I remember we were sitting at his desk, and I can just see his face twitch and the impatient gestures of his hands as he laid the picture upon his desk.
"Oh, Nan, why did you allow it? Why did you allow it?" he exclaimed over and over. I failed to see why it should cause him so much distress, and said so frankly. However, I told him in the same breath that I tried to stop them. I wondered as I looked with him again at the picture whether the headlines immediately above, which referred to another column and read, "Intimate Chat at White House," added to his disconcertion in seeing his daughter's picture below. When I asked him he did not reply; he only shook his head, his expression betraying the perturbation he felt.
However, he had the happy ability to come out of things, and he picked up the picture and looked at it again. This time he studied it and a slow smile lit his face. It was Warren Harding, the man, the father, who spoke next.
"Really, Nan, she's much like you!" he said softly, as he folded up the picture and handed it back to me. "Oh, darling, she's much more like you!" I insisted. "Why, just look at her eyes!" I exclaimed, holding the picture up again for us both to look at. He smiled and nodded acknowledgment of the resemblance so strikingly caught by the Hearst cameraman. "Well, if she's as sweet a baby as her mother is a woman . . ." Mr. Harding concluded, leaving his desk and walking over to the leather couch, where he was evidently not intending to sit alone.
This was on Sunday morning. A tall vase with pink roses stood upon his desk, in memory of his mother. Mr. Harding himself was dressed for church, and, as we dropped down together upon the couch he asked me suddenly, as though it had just occurred to him, if I would care to attend his church that morning. "Have Tim Slade drop you off there," he suggested, when I told him Tim was waiting for me outside with his car. I was delighted. Mr. Harding seemed to be, too. We could at least be in the same building for another hour!
We talked, as usual, of many things and he urged me to tell him everything of interest that had happened to me since he last saw me. Somehow it really was like bringing the outside world inside the prison bars to the one shut in; he seemed so happy to hear of my doings. I remember so well how back in '17 or '18 I used to relate to him my experiences, usually after we had retired and I could lie close in his arms, and, when I suddenly realized I had been talking steadily for quite some time I would interrupt myself and apologize, and he would say so adorably, "Why, Nan, I love to listen to you!" Here in the White House our time was limited, and I gradually learned that if I wanted to touch upon all topics I must jot them down upon a card, and scratch them off the list as I spoke of them to Mr. Harding. Which I invariably did. I told him at this time of a diary I had begun—it was to contain accounts of my visits to him in the White House, as well as the many little cunning things Elizabeth Ann was saying those days in her sweet baby way. Again Mr. Harding shook his head. "Oh, dearie, you mustn't keep such a book around. You must destroy it as soon as you return to Chicago. Promise, Nan, that you will destroy it immediately!" I promised readily, though, of course, presented healthy arguments to disparage such a program. "Why, honey, I paid $11 for that book at Dutton's in New York last fall, and I have it almost over half full now. I didn't think you'd mind a diary!" But he pleaded with me to keep nothing around, in my trunk or elsewhere, that would be evidence of our relationship, and, of course, I said I would not from then on. I felt hurt about having to destroy the pages of that beautiful lavender diary. I have retained the cover and the blank pages that were left. I remember writing him after I returned to Chicago, and telling him that it had been destroyed and that now there existed nothing that could be taken as evidence of our dearness to each other—nothing save my first letters from him, my autographed picture of him, and my Harding book of newspaper clippings to which he never seemed to object because the material was public anyway.
We talked about the baby, about his cousins, the Weseners, who lived scarcely half a block from Elizabeth's and many things, all hurried discussions, but still discussions. Then Mr. Harding stood up to take me in his arms.
"Honestly, darling," I exclaimed as I held out my hand for him to pull me to my feet, "You are the best looking thing that I have ever seen!" His smile was the smile of the little snapshot I have of him, the smile he knew I so adored, the smile our daughter gives me occasionally which stirs me so deeply and moves me to tears, it is so sweetly reminiscent of her father's smile. "Well, dearie," he replied, "that's something I just can't help, you know!" And then for a brief space of time—all too brief—we became oblivious to our surroundings, to his identity as President of the United States, and to all the world. "Why don't you tell me you love me, Nan darling," he coaxed, and I told him over and over again, as I had told him a thousand times, "I love you, darling Warren Harding, I love you."
In low tones Mr. Harding told me again how he dreamed of having me all night with him, which prompted my usual query, "How is Mrs. Harding now?" He lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders and replied in the usual way, "Oh, all right!" There was, as I have said, always a certain deprecatory attitude which he seemed to reserve for Mrs. Harding. I remember in one of my very early letters to him back in 1917, I expressed some concern over the possible greetings he might have for his legal wife when he met her again after his absences from home, and in his reply letter he had written, "You need give yourself no concern over that, sweetheart. My kiss for her is most perfunctory, I can assure you!" Indeed, I have often thought with the pardonable vanity of one who is conscious ever of priority in her sweetheart's thoughts, that likely Mrs. Harding was, as Mr. Harding had stated to me concerning another woman whom we both knew, as safe with him "as though she were in jail, Nan!" And I think his affectional interest in his wife had ceased long, long before Mr. Harding and I met in New York in 1917.
These mental dips back into the recent past occurred as he touched upon possible plans on Mrs. Harding's part which would make possible for us a night together somewhere in Washington. It seemed to me he did not even value her casual companionship. As we sat there that morning on his couch in his private office, I expressed a wish that instead of going to church we might go off somewhere to be alone. "Gee, I do, too, dearie!" was his enthusiastic rejoinder. "Will Mrs. Harding go to church with you?" I inquired. He nodded. "Yes, and I have another appointment this morning before church, and am fifteen minutes late for it now!" I arose. I'm sure that he, too, had forgotten that he was the President of the United States.
He walked over to his desk and selected a lovely pink rosebud for me. Then he unlocked his private drawer and took out the bills he wanted to give me—mainly the money due Elizabeth and Scott for our baby's care. I had tried hard not to complain too much of arrangements then existent in view of the fact that Elizabeth, the baby, and I, were living happily together then, but these partings always stirred up the feeling of incompleteness, and made me long intensely for a happy fulfillment with him whom I loved. I felt the urge to say to him that we must make a change, rescind existing plans for the future, allow me the happy restitution of motherhood, frankly acknowledged, and solve a problem that was becoming growingly more complicated and difficult of permanent solution. . . . But I only kissed him back in purest passion, and to his query, "Are you happy, dearie?" I whispered "Yes!" against a soft lapel.
When I joined Tim Slade outside in his handsome car my eyes were still wet and I fondled the pink rosebud reminiscently. Tim asked me if I cared to drive, and I said yes, but that I intended to go to Mr. Harding's church later on. He directed the chauffeur to take us out along the river, and Tim and I talked. Tim knew so many things of interest to me then because they had a direct bearing upon the President and his tremendous problems, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him.
Our drive lasted too long, for I was unable to secure a front-row balcony-seat, from where Mr. Harding had told me I might see best all over the church. However, I found one three or four rows back and could look over the balcony and down upon the fast-whitening head of the President. It was all strongly reminiscent of the early days in Marion when I, as a child, was wont to go anywhere and everywhere just to be close to my hero. For a whole precious hour my eyes were riveted upon him, and I was unspeakably happy just to look at him. My heart was full of tears. If only I could have him forever—even at a distance like this—just to worship him! I loved him so.
The official car stood outside the church and I hastened down so that I might watch him pass out. He did not see me, because I had to be careful, as he had instructed, that Mrs. Harding did not see me, but I watched him nevertheless from a point of safe vantage. Then I walked slowly back to my hotel, had luncheon, and went to a movie, where I sat through two shows in order to see twice the news event which pictured my darling welcoming delegates, from somewhere, on the White House lawn. Mr. Harding always seemed to know which was the best train to take out of Washington, no matter whether I might be returning west or east, and he had that time told me of a very good train for Chicago which I could get if I wanted to wait until late that afternoon or early evening. That was why I filled in my time going to a movie, when I more naturally would have hastened to leave the city which held him after his disappointing statement that he could not see me again that visit.
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