90 MEMOIRS OF
later in the evening to go for a drive in the park with the President and Dr. Grayson. About eight o'clock the Doctor arrived alone, looking worried and upset. He said the President had sent him to tell me something which he could not bring himself to write.
It was this. Colonel House was at the White House, having just returned from a conference with Secretary McAdoo. They both had been told in confidence of our engagement and, the Colonel said, they had sounded out a few people, particularly newspaper men, who told them the gossip was that should the rumours concerning our engagement be true, Mrs. Peck was going to come out against the President, saying she had letters from him which would be compromising; and that all the old whispered scandals of the 1912 campaign would be revived. To this the President had replied that it was his duty as a gentleman to protect me from such backstairs gossip. For himself or his political fortunes, it made no difference—that this campaign of slander had been futile before, and if tried would be again. But the publicity would hurt and involve me in a way he had no right to ask. So he had set himself to write and tell me but, to quote Dr. Grayson: "He went white to the lips, and his hand snook as I sat watching him try to write; his jaw set, determined no matter what it cost him, to spare you; but after a long time he put the pen down and said: *I cannot bring myself to write this; you go, Grayson, and tell her everything and say my only alternative is to release her from any promise/ "
The little Doctor choked as he repeated this. For myself I was silent, unable to comprehend such a situation. At last the Doctor rose to go, asking: "What shall I tell him?" I answered: "Tell him I will write."
When he had gone, I sat for hours drinking, thinking, when, as suddenly as the blow had fallen, its weight lifted, and I saw things in their true proportions. It was our lives that mattered, not politics, not scandal. If I did not care