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.
107
I returned to Athens, Ohio. Here Elizabeth, Scott and Elizabeth Ann joined me some days later and soon we were all enroute back East to New York, my younger sister Janet going with us.