That evening at nine o’clock we were married in the parsonage of a Swedish Lutheran Church on Lexington Avenue. Helen Anderson and the minister’s wife were our witnesses. We went to the Alamac Hotel for three days. We had driven Miss Anderson home and were alone for the first time since we had become man and wife.
It seemed almost sacrilegious to me to yield to my husband the body which had belonged so completely to Warren Harding, and I appreciated his leaving me for half an hour. It gave me an opportunity to mentally pull myself together. I told myself that I would soon have Elizabeth Ann and it would all be so worth while. But my husband looked to me so much like a million other men.... I just could not feel that I had done the fair thing by either of us.... I did not love him that way.
Monday morning following our marriage on Saturday evening I returned to work. I had not given my employer any notice and I knew I would have to remain at the office until he found someone to take my place. Moreover, Captain Neilsen had told me during the previous day that he would immediately send to Norway and get some money which his legal guardian was holding for him; and he would also start negotiations for the sale of certain property which he, as the eldest child in his family, should have urged the sale of long ago, after the death of his parents. It would amount to $90,000 in all, and $30,000 would come to him as his share.
From the Alamac we moved up to Bretton Hall, and I kept my secretarial position for a couple of weeks. I had not been married more than a week when I discovered, through questioning the captain closely, that he did not actually have sufficient funds in the bank to enable us to live even another month. But he assured me that his next trip to Europe would net him a commission of $20,000 on a ship he expected to sell. It seems to me he must have procured a loan, and with some of this money and $40 of my own salary I bought myself a diamond circlet wedding ring, for which I paid $165 and which I wore on my engagement finger next to the ring given me by Mr. Harding.
I grew fonder of the captain during the two weeks before he sailed for Europe. He was so enthusiastic about taking Elizabeth Ann, and said that just as soon as he returned from Europe we would begin the arrangements.
During his absence abroad, after I had given up my position, a friend of mine from Chicago came on to New York. When I learned she was coming, and realized how little money I had, I borrowed $150 from Helen Anderson, assuring her the captain would return it to her just as soon as he came back from Europe. With part of this I bought new shoes, a new dress, and entertained once for my Chicago friend at a small theatre party. I really felt quite dignified as Mrs. Neilsen.
As soon as the captain stepped into our room at Bretton Hall I asked him what success had attended his trip. He had not sold the boat. Nor had his money come from Norway. He looked very much distressed about it and I felt genuinely sorry for him. He kept telling me to be patient, something would “break soon.” But the weeks passed, and he said he would have to make another trip to Europe, and still nothing had “broken”—except my hopes.
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I planned to go to Athens, Ohio, to visit my mother in early March while Captain Neilsen was in Europe. I had promised my mother that she could come East to be with me that oncoming summer, thinking of course that I was to have an apartment and that I would be fully established in my new home with Elizabeth Ann. I despatched a letter to my sister Elizabeth, asking her to let Elizabeth Ann come to Athens for several weeks, and this she did, my mother going to Chicago for another purpose, but bringing Elizabeth Ann back with her to Athens on her return. I was heartsick to think I could not return to New York with my baby and feel free to become settled permanently. But I knew enough by then of the captain’s financial situation to know this was impossible. I felt I had been trapped all around, though I could not that early accuse the captain of having misrepresented himself to me, and indeed I did not believe he would do such a thing. He had loved me so much, and he had actually thought that he would be able to get the money, I was sure. Still, I could not help remembering that he had told me distinctly that he had sufficient funds to keep us comfortably, and that had been an untruth, for I was not even at liberty to lease an apartment because we could not pay the rent in advance. The whole situation was inexplicable. The captain’s generosity of former days, when he had sent me $200 to Europe and had had $200 awaiting my demand in New York, and had deprecated my repayment of these advances, all pointed to comparative affluence.
The more I thought about it the more distressed I became, and I could not even then admit to my family the truth of the matter. Instead, I found myself lauding the captain on all sides. I felt the situation would surely right itself, if, as he had asked me, I would give him just a little while to “get on his feet.” Like a pendulum I swung from one decision about him to another, and in the night when I reflected that after all I might not be able to have my baby with me, it almost crazed me. No one knew the state of mentality I was in, for I could not admit that I had failed in marriage, and I had not divulged our plans of taking the baby away from my sister and her husband.