THE WANDERERS
You will find in the chronicle of Matthew of Paris (and a reference to
it somewhere in the Apocrypha) a legend of a Jew who refused a resting
place on the bench by his door to the Friend of the World as He passed
on His way to Calvary. And as He walked on He said:
"I go to My rest in My Father's house but thou shalt wander o'er the
earth till I come again."
Many great writers have loved to believe the strange old tale, and it
has been immortalized in prose and verse.
As the curse was launched, try to imagine that the ancient Jew felt in
his heart a great dread and unrest, and he rose from the seat that he
denied the Saviour and struck out across the desert.
Then--who knows?--for his further punishment the wind piled sand-dunes
in his path, and as he toiled over them new ones rose, and ever in
the form of the Cross. The palm trees were as crosses through the
heat-haze. A hundred times he was near death from thirst and heat but
he could not die.
And when he came to the mountains the torrents were crosses and the
snow drifts and the crags. He turned and sought death in the frozen
North and the icebergs rose in cold and shining crosses. And southward
in the trackless jungles, in the creepers at his feet and the vines
overhead he saw the sign of him who walked on to Calvary.
Wandering over the face of the earth in suffering of the body and
misery of the soul, praying daily for the death that is denied him, he
must go on and on, and always about his path the hated symbol of his
curse.
Louis Floriot thought often of the queer old legend in the dark years
that followed that night in the house at Passy. Some one once said that
the greatest hell on earth is reserved for the man who returns to his
empty house from his wife's funeral and begins to ask himself whether
he was or was not responsible for her death. But there is one even more
terrible than that--believing that he is in a large measure responsible
for her shame. And Louis Floriot stretched himself on that bed of
torture every night of his life.
When he and Noel set out on their search they fully expected to find
her within forty-eight hours at the longest. They learned at the Passy
station that a woman answering Jacqueline's description had taken a
train for Paris a short time before they arrived! so that simplified
the hunt. They roamed through the cafés of the better sort and examined
the registers of the larger hotels all through the night, planning to
get help in the morning.
There was one dread in the hearts of both that neither dared speak
until after daylight. They had found no clue after seeing the man at
the Passy station, and when they took breakfast together they were
avoiding each other's eyes as they talked.
Floriot would not eat, but his friend insisted that he drink several
cups of coffee and two small glasses of brandy. When he saw his eye
brighten and a faint touch of color return to his pale cheeks, Noel
suggested as gently as possible:
"There is one more place that we ought to visit before we do anything
else, Louis."
Floriot glanced at him with questioning dread. Noel read his thoughts
and nodded.
"I don't think she would do it--as long--as long--as the boy is
alive, and I don't want to alarm you needlessly. But we might as well
be sure," he continued.
Both had feared all night that when Jacqueline reached Paris and
realized that she was alone! in the world with no place to go and
no one to turn to for aid, comfort or advice, she might have thrown
herself in the Seine. They were going to the morgue to see if her body
had been found.
They walked through the rows of the silent figures wrapped in white
sheets, and as the face of every woman was uncovered, Floriot gave a
gasp and closed his eyes before he dared to look. The body they dreaded
to find was not there, and they silently thanked God as they came out
into the sunlight again.
Then they hastily formed a plan of campaign. Noel went out to the house
in Passy to get a photograph of Jacqueline that he had in his bag. It
was six years old, but it was better than none. He was to meet Floriot
at the office of the Chief of the Parisian police.
The chief knew the young Deputy Attorney very well, and had a deep
admiration and respect for him. He did not ask any useless or
embarrassing questions when Floriot told him what he wanted. Being a
good policeman he already knew much of the private life of the man,
and it was easy for him to fill in the gaps in Floriot's story. Noel
returned with the photograph and he promised that he would have a
number of reproductions made and put his best men on the search.
Leaving the office of the police chief they made the rounds of all the
hospitals without learning anything of a woman answering Jacqueline's
description. Then Noel insisted that they could do nothing more that
day and that they had better go out to Passy, have a good dinner and a
night's rest.
All the way home, at dinner, and throughout the evening Noel talked
to his friend with a buoyancy he did not feel. As the day wore on he
realized what a task they had undertaken, and already he began to feel
that if they succeeded in finding her it must be due more to chance
than otherwise. But he had no idea of abandoning the search. In his
heart he told himself that he would devote his life to it if necessary.
And Floriot? Like the Jew of the legend the spirit of unrest had
already entered his soul. He made a hundred vain and impracticable
suggestions in the course of the evening, each one involving useless
activity on the part of himself and his friend. But the manifest
futility of adopting any of his plans did not weigh with him. He wanted
to be doing something. Noel finally drugged him with Burgundy and
persuaded him to go to bed with many assurances that the Chief would
have her or be on the trail in the morning.
"Noel, old man, I don't want to sleep!" was his last protest. "What do
you think about going, as I suggested, down to----"
"Tut! Tut!" interrupted Noel, testily. "What have you employed the
police for? Go to sleep, old man! It'll be all right by to-morrow
night!"
And with a final hand-shake he left him.
In spite of his protest that he did not want to sleep, a mine explosion
would not have stirred Floriot two minutes after he touched the bed.
Exhausted Nature seized the opportunity to make up for the drains of
more than two weeks, and he was still sleeping heavily when Noel came
to call him shortly after noon.
"I've just come from the Chief's office," said Noel, brightly, after
he had listened to and put aside Floriot's reproaches for not calling
him. He did not mention that he had been to the morgue again.
"And what does he say?" demanded the other sitting up with eager
anxiety. Noel avoided his eyes.
"He hasn't anything definite to report but he assures me that it is
only a question of hours," he replied, cheerfully. "He has telegraphed
to the frontiers and all the seaports, and unless Jacqueline has left
France we have her just as surely as if she were in the next room now!"
"Left France! She can't have done that!" exclaimed Floriot.
"It's hardly possible in that length of time," agreed the other, "and
for that reason I think that our friend the chief will have news for us
by to-morrow night--_sure_!"
But there was no news "to-morrow night" nor the next night. The nights
grew to weeks and the weeks to months and the months to years, and
there was never a trace of the missing woman from the moment she left
the Passy station.
Noel, true to the vow he had sworn the day after she left, spent his
life in the search for her. He had ample funds, and Floriot was well
provided for in the goods of the world. All the capitals of Europe and
the larger cities he searched, aided by the police. He made friends
with the demi-monde and the "submerged" of many races. The painted
women of St. Petersburg and the belles of, the Tenderloin knew him
equally well. But it! was all in vain. Jacqueline had disappeared.
Floriot could not abandon his work, for the sake of his boy, but he
took from it all the time that he could spare. He labored now without
soul and without ambition. The one thing in his life that seemed worth
while was to find his wife.
He and Noel wrote to each other constantly when the latter was
away--advising, suggesting, planning. All the time that he could take
from the courts he employed in roaming about Europe while Noel was on
the other side of the world. And like the sign of the cross to the
ancient Jew, a hundred times a year he thought that in the glimpse of a
profile or the sound of a woman's voice behind him, he had reached the
end of his quest. And each disappointment was more bitter than the last.
Even in his home there was no escape. For as Raymond grew up it became
more evident every year that his dark, passionate eyes, smooth forehead
and dark curly hair were his mother's. The firmly cut jaw and mouth
and straight, high-bred nose came from his father.
He was growing into a splendid young man, as clean mentally as he was
physically. He was the one joy of his father's life and he tried to
make up in his love what the boy missed in not having the mother that
had been driven away.
He had an inherited taste for the law and at school he was a source of
constant pride to his father. He was prouder when the young man--just
turned twenty-four--was admitted to practice in the courts of France.
Floriot had been transferred from Paris to Dijon and from there to
Bordeaux. He was appointed President of the Toulouse Court just before
Raymond became a full-fledged advocate. This made it necessary for
father and son to part because the son could not practise in his
father's court. It was therefore decided that Raymond should remain in
Bordeaux with Rose as housekeeper. She had been the nurse of the boy's
babyhood, had raised him, and grown gray hair in the service. She was a
fixture for life in the Floriot establishment.
About this time two men who had never even heard of any of the
characters in this story-excepting M. Floriot, for whom they
entertained a marked respect and hearty dislike, although he did not
know of their existence--sat down one morning and wrote a letter, the
effect of which was far beyond their foresight or wildest imaginings.