While in the city, Miss Harding stopped with a girlhood friend whose father had been a prominent judge in Ohio. They lived at Broadway and 71st Street in an apartment building, and it was there that I took Elizabeth Ann one afternoon to call upon Miss Harding. Helen Anderson, who had always wanted to meet Miss Harding, about whom she had heard me speak so often, went with us.
I was glad it was cold enough to warrant my wearing my winter coat, which was trimmed with the squirrel from the coat Mr. Harding had given me the money to buy back in 1920. Thus I looked as presentable as my child. Pride would not yet allow me to admit to certain people that in less than a year I had found that, in my instance, marriage was a failure. I could not in the same breath confess I had married for a home for my child, and without such explanation I would be stamped mercenary, and rightly so.
I do not know whether the explanation I offered Miss Harding in extenuation of Elizabeth Ann’s separation from her foster parents sufficed to satisfy her natural speculation about the situation. I do remember, however, that we repaired for a little private chat, toward the end of our visit, to the play-room of the little daughter, where she and Elizabeth Ann had been playing together, and I remember distinctly that I made a broad statement to the effect that if I ever for a good reason found I could not live with my husband, I would not hesitate a moment to seek my freedom. And Daisy Harding, standing there before me, not yet a bride, echoed my statement.
When we returned to the other room, I called Elizabeth Ann and told her that we must go, but she and the little girl were having such a gay time that she was loath to leave, much less put on the little kid gloves which meant the final touch for leave-taking. And the joy of the whole visit for me was summed up in seeing her “aunt Daisy”—as unknown to her as such as she herself was unknown to Miss Harding as Warren Harding’s child—coax her little hands into the gloves and talk to her in a low voice which in the quality of its sweetness was much like her brother’s. And I could tell, though Elizabeth Ann’s back was turned to me, that she was looking straight into Miss Harding’s eyes with the same sweet seriousness which was in her father’s eyes when he talked to me about our child.
Facsimile analytical report on Elizabeth Ann at the age of five, while attending the kindergarten of the Training School of the University of Ohio, Athens, Ohio
119
I wanted to be perfectly fair to my husband, the captain, but I wanted more than anything else in the world to be fair to my precious Elizabeth Ann. Therefore, I struggled through the winter until the latter part of January, going in debt in many directions and often using available cash to buy things for Elizabeth Ann, when pressing bills awaited payment. For instance, I could not bear not to get my darling a tricycle when she expressed an ardent wish for one, nor could I stand it to see her go without a bounteous Christmas. My sister Elizabeth sent her many lovely things and I thought, with mingled pride and relief, that she had fared, after all, far better than most children. I felt a great wave of pity and sympathy for the captain when he came home at New Year’s from another trip abroad, and brought the baby a box of toys; ungracious as I was growing toward him, such thoughtfulness toward my baby never failed to arouse my sympathy and a renewed attempt to bear up a little longer.
However, I despatched a letter to Elizabeth the latter part of January and she came East almost immediately. I persuaded my landlady to allow me to break my lease. I advised my family that I was leaving the captain. Mother came in from Long Island where she was teaching, and she, Elizabeth and I, talked things over. Elizabeth said her husband did not approve of sending Elizabeth Ann back and forth from Chicago to New York whenever I found it within my power to take her for a little while, nor could I really blame him for this attitude. However, that had been my first attempt to take her permanently, and I fervently hoped that the next time would be more successful. It broke my heart to see her go, but once more I bade her goodbye from the Pennsylvania platform and watched the train pull out, taking her away from me.