Читать книгу Polly the Pagan: Her Lost Love Letters - Isabel Anderson - Страница 4

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These letters and the journal of a young American girl travelling in Europe came to me under circumstances as strange as they themselves were unusual. Some of the letters were written on heavy blue stationery without monogram or heading; some bore the names of various continental hostelries: many were written on the embossed paper of the United States Embassy at Rome. All were faded with age and were without envelopes, definite dates, or identifying signatures.

They came into my possession in the following manner. I was in Paris on leave that terrible Good Friday night of 1918, when the spring drive was on. The Red Cross had ordered me to start for the front next morning with some other nurses, and we were to leave at an early hour, so I had paid my hotel bill, packed my bag, and gone to bed, partly-clad, as was the custom in those exciting times.

But I had hardly got settled for sleep when the shrieking siren announced an air raid. My room was on the top floor, and offered too good a target, so I jumped out of bed, slipped into my uniform, seized my bag, and ran out into the hall. It was in darkness, save for flashes from pocket-torches. Half-dressed people were hurrying through the corridor and groping their way down the staircase to the cellar for safety.

As I passed an open door, I heard a woman call loudly, “Oh, won’t somebody come and help me?” I went in to find, as I turned my flashlight about the room, a pretty, golden-haired lady, an American, with big deep blue eyes, struggling to get into a black dress. One of her arms was in a sling and she was having trouble. She looked ill and weak, but seemed a perfectly plucky and determined little person. I slipped her heavy coat over her shoulders, wondering, at the time, where I had seen her before. As we started for the door, she remembered something she had left, and said, “Wait—take this,” putting a small morocco bag into my hands, while she ran back to find something she wanted.

“Hurry!” I begged, for the air raid was a bad one and I was alarmed.

“I will, I will,” she assured me. “You go down and I will join you in a minute.”

“We’ll meet in the hotel cellar,” I answered.

Barely had I reached the first floor when there was a terrific crash; the front door flew open and several panic-stricken people rushed in from the street, seeking shelter. A bomb had struck near by.

Forgetting the woman upstairs (but still carrying the bags, hers and my own) I ran out to see if I could be of any use to those who had been hurt. Someone remarked as I passed, “Crazy American—imagine going out now!”

Airplanes were buzzing overhead; searchlights were meeting in the sky while anti-aircraft guns banged away. Bombs were bursting and shrapnel was falling. It was the worst raid I had seen. “‘Crazy American’ was right,” I told myself, and ducked into a low entrance marked “Cave.” It led into a wine-cellar, and a number of people were already there, all as unconcerned as if nothing had happened. The walls were lined with dusty bottles and the place was dimly lighted by candles stuck round here and there. Some of the people sat at tables playing cards, while others, wrapped in blankets, were making themselves comfortable on mattresses that lay about. The crashes continued, so I stayed there till the dawn crept into a small window before I ventured back to the hotel.

The building was still standing, but a great jagged opening had been ripped through the upper stories. A watchman was on guard. Several people had been killed, he said. The ambulance and police had come and gone. The guests had scattered. It was clear that the owner of the little bag was not there, and I had no time to search for her. The sun was rising, and I was under orders to be at the railway station to take a train that would leave in fifteen minutes. So I jumped into the Metro and set off on my journey to the front, taking the stranger’s bag with me.

During the days that followed, so busy that we could not believe anything lay outside our crowded wards, I forgot both property and owner. Only when I reached Paris several months later did I make an effort to discover her. After consulting the police and the American Embassy officials without result, I decided to break open the lock and see if there was any clue inside to her identity.

The bag proved to be full of papers which I felt obliged to read. What might they contain?—romance, scandals, and maybe military secrets? There was a clipping about a mysterious Russian Prince masquerading under the name of Kosloff, and a Red Cross badge and some secret service insignia. Did these badges belong to the blonde lady herself or to the Prince, or to her friend, the diplomat mentioned in the letters? Well, we will see. I searched the lists of American Embassy officials for the diplomat, but without success; I discovered that their names were legion, and the Prince, too, I was unable to trace.

The difficulties lay in the fact that all the letters were signed with nicknames—and with the death of so many people in the war and the length of time which had evidently passed since they were written, most of the avenues of identification had been blocked.

Nevertheless I put notices in several of the Paris papers asking for information regarding a little fair-haired American woman who had disappeared from the Grande Hotel du Nord during the night of the air raid, leaving a black morocco bag in charge of a stranger. The only three letters which I received in answer were as follows:

Dear Madame,

In reply to your advertisement in Le Matin, I would say that I think I saw the woman you refer to at the Café Russe on the Rue des Capuchins one evening in February. She was dining with a big blonde foreigner whom she addressed as Prince. Catching a word or two of their conversation that implied they knew more of the military situation than ordinary civilians should, my suspicions were aroused so when they left, I followed them. The man evidently noticed me and knew my game, for he put the lady in a taxi, telling the driver to go to the Grande Hotel du Nord, and then led me a chase, round corners and down alley ways, finally dodging into a crowded music hall where I lost him.

She was so charming that I could not believe her guilty, and yet, her companion awakened deep distrust in me. I have often wondered if by chance she were a member of our own American secret service and he a German spy. I never saw her again, though if I did, I should know her at once. Since the hotel you mentioned was her destination, it may be that your lady and mine are one and the same. This is all the information I am able to give you, but I hope that even this faintest of clues may lead you a little farther in your search. I beg to remain

Very truly yours,

T—— F——.

Captain of —— Regiment,

—— Division of Infantry.

The second reply came from an American Y. M. C. A. worker who wrote:

I think that I talked with the little lady described in the Paris Herald while I was travelling by train from Amiens to Paris. She was in my compartment and carried a black morocco bag, like the one mentioned. She was dressed as a Salvation Army girl, but I could get nothing from her about her work or where she had been stationed, and though at the time this impressed me only as ordinary discretion, yet when I ran across her later in Paris, and found her wearing the Y. uniform, I stopped and spoke to her, and asked her if she had left off being a Sally, and why. She pretended not to know what I was talking about, and assured me she had never been anything but a Y. worker, and that she had never seen me before to her knowledge.

I was convinced that she remembered me perfectly, for all her denials, and looked her up only to find that no one answering to her description was either on the Y. books or on the Salvation Army’s. The only surmise possible is that she was in disguise for some reason. With apologies for troubling you with this trifling information, I am

Sincerely,

S—— B——.

The last letter was even more unsatisfactory, and came from a clerk in the Grande Hotel du Nord. Translated, it runs as follows:

Madame,

I have seen your notice in the papers about the woman very fair-haired and petite, who disappeared from our hotel during the disaster of Good Friday night. She had arrived that evening. I remember thinking it was very late for a pretty woman to come alone, but as she was tired and her arm was in a sling, I admitted her without looking at her papers, although I took them to my room to go over in the morning. They were destroyed in the fire caused by the bomb, so I can give you no more information.

I have, madame, the honor, etc., etc.

Joseph M——.

Since surely somewhere in this great world there is a man or woman to whom these letters will have poignant meaning, I have come to the conclusion that it will be well, on the whole, to publish extracts from them, hoping they will be claimed. I am doing so, leaving them much as they were written, with some excisions and few changes, but yet so no one except those concerned could possibly recognize them.

If by some miracle the little lady, who perhaps was Polly herself, and who gave me her old love letters, still lives, I believe she will want them. If she perished on that Good Friday night, or if for reasons of her own, she wishes to remain silent, I hope to be forgiven for publishing them but I feel that I have done only what was my duty.

Isabel Anderson.