We went back to the couch.
I told Mr. Harding about my wish to quit working for President Walter Dill Scott and to go to school at Northwestern University instead. He said, “Fine!” immediately. “You like to study don’t you, Nan?” he asserted rather than asked, and nodded his head approvingly. He said he’d keep me in school all of the time if I thought I could explain it satisfactorily. “What will your mother say, for instance?” he queried. I told him I didn’t even try to explain things to mother. She was busy teaching, and I thought it would be entirely safe. “All right, you’re the boss!” he said playfully.
Mr. Harding was in knickers, and I told him for about the dozenth time how stunning he looked. He smiled and said he thought maybe getting out into the open air after luncheon would help him to get rid of his cold. I told him it would very likely do him much more good than Dr. Sawyer’s prescriptions. “Oh, well,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders, “he doesn’t doctor me much, you know; Mrs. Harding has lots of faith in him. Gee, Nan,” and he shook his head in the I-give-it-up-it’s-too-much-for-me-to-solve way, “they bother me to death as it is, looking at my tongue and feeling my pulse; why, a fellow can’t be alone a minute! Now, what I really need is your treatment!” and he finished with a big hug and kiss.
Mr. Harding said it was time for him to go to luncheon and time for me to go, anyway, and I, pouting as usual when I had to leave him, rose with reluctance. For some reason which I do not remember, I was to meet my secret service escort on the conservatory side of the White House instead of outside Mr. Harding’s office. So Mr. Harding said I could walk over with him, down the passage known as the “secret passage,” I believe, and under the pergola. We lingered long inside the closed door, however, before we left the executive office. Little would I have actually believed, in spite of the chills of premonition I had experienced during that visit, that never again would we stand thus together upon this earth. Perhaps that was why we clung so to each other in our farewell embrace. And Mr. Harding’s eyes, as well as my own, were wet. I shall never forget how he looked down at me, in the dim light of that room, and asked, as he so often did, that I say to him that I was happy now. “Are you happy now, dearie?” he asked softly, and with quivering lips and brimming eyes I bravely lied, “I am happy, sweetheart!”
We went out. Several feet behind us as we passed through the pergola came Brooks, returning evidently from an errand to the offices. I asked Mr. Harding who he was and he told me. In my brief glance backward I saw that his valet was a very good-looking light colored man. This was the one and only time I ever saw the trustworthy servant in whose care I addressed so many letters to my sweetheart.
Laddie Boy came bounding out to meet his master as we reached the entrance to the White House proper, and Mr. Harding stooped to pat him. It seemed this was the kitchen entrance. Just inside the door a guard was stationed. The kitchen maids peered through the partly opened door upon us with curious glances. Mr. Harding indicated that his private elevator was on the left and turned to shake hands with me. I thanked him for the “conference” in quite audible tones and he bowed slightly over my hand. Then he left me and I proceeded to the conservatory.
That was the last time I ever saw Warren Gamaliel Harding, my sweetheart.
86
I returned to Chicago on an early train. The following day or so after that President Walter Dill Scott was confined to his home with a severe cold, and sent for me to take some work. It was up in his den that I told him of the change I intended to make—to go to school instead of being his secretary. He expressed himself as glad that I wished to attend the University, but said he would be sorry to lose my services, and suggested that I try to combine studies with secretarial work. But this I knew I could not do, for I was still under Dr. Barbour’s care, making two trips to him weekly for iron inoculations. This President Scott knew nothing about and I explained it to him and said I knew I could not undertake to do both things.
My brother-in-law, Scott Willits, returned home from abroad about this time and I changed my residence to one of the girls’ dormitories in Evanston. This was on Sherman Avenue, Evanston, and Mr. Harding wrote me at that address during the next six months instead of at my sister’s. He kept me well funded, also, during that spring, and I found my studies more absorbing than I had found the secretarial work with the President of the University.