The Wanderers

by Mary Johnston

Upon the platform, on the bench behind the president, sat, with those who had earlier spoken, a man and a woman. Behind them gleamed the flags and the Patriots’ busts and the great monument of black marble. The man and woman seemed about of an age, just this side perhaps of thirty-five. They were well-made, fair to look upon, light and strong, dressed, needfully, with simplicity, but here, where that was not required, with a clean simplicity. They sat looking into the hollow of the Jacobins, into the resounding shell.

The president’s bell rang. Standing, he was speaking of these two whom he himself had brought here to-night, of Jean and Espérance Merlin. It seemed that they had come from Brittany, from the sea, drawn to Paris, as others were drawn, because it announced itself soil for the sowing of Ideas. It seemed that Jean Merlin was a teacher who taught in a way that was not usual—a way that he and his wife had worked out together—Espérance Merlin no less than Jean. It seemed also that they were good, if quiet, lovers of France and that they had long and heroically relieved misery in their town by the sea. It seemed that once they had done the speaker a kindness—a kindness that he had never forgotten. If their ideas should ring strange to some.... Still, in that beautiful future that all might plainly see, many ideas that once rang strange.... “Citoyens, citoyennes, the Society of the Jacobins is hospitable to Ideas! They come to us upon the clouds, from east and west and north and south. And some we will take to heart and some we will not, but we will give to all a hearing. We shall not be afraid of strangeness.... Jean and Espérance Merlin!”

Speakers to-night to the Jacobins had each but short time. When the tribune was done, the floor, the galleries, the circles must speak. Now the red caps moved about, the voices strongly murmured like a turbulent sea. Then the sea settled to hear Jean and Espérance Merlin.

The two mounted together the tribune stair. The man stood first in the speaker’s place, the woman sat down upon the topmost stair, awaiting her turn. A few in the hall of the Jacobins knew them, or knew of them, of what they did and thought in their country by the sea. These applauded. Jean Merlin began to speak.

Presently he motioned to the seated woman. She rose and stood beside him. She spoke, he resting from speech. Her voice was a deep bell, carrying through the Jacobins’ amphitheatre. She spoke of the Freeing of Women. The sweet and deep bell sound of her voice ceased; she stood silent while the man took the word. Again, the Freeing of Women. Freedom of Man and Freedom of Woman. The two speakers had simplicity, largeness, and strength; they had holding power. Deep and wide by now was their wisdom-garden, and beautiful, at times, the light that played there.

What they had come to say was said. They quitted the tribune, descended the tribune stair. In the hall of the Jacobins those travellers abreast with them, or close behind them, gave them applauding recognition. But very many disagreed, and some gave fierce expression to that disagreement. The two reached the floor, stood there among the throng. The president’s bell rang and rang again.... Here was a Patriot, urging from the tribune Fêtes and Demonstrations. The poppy circles were giving ear. On went the night in the Society of the Jacobins.

Continuously persons entered or quitted the amphitheater. The coming and going received no especial attention. On went the voices, the emotional heat, rapturous agreements, sudden and violent disagreements.... Jean and Espérance Merlin rose at last from a bench in the shadow of that monument of black marble and, unobserved by most, went out of the Church of the Jacobins. Near the door stood together a woman and a man. As Espérance approached, the woman stepped forward; she put out her hand and touched the hand of Espérance. “I am an Englishwoman,” she said. “Mary Wollstonecraft. I cry ‘yea’ to what you said!”

Forth from the Society of the Jacobins, in the street, the two looked up to the heavens and the round moon. After heat and noise within here seemed infinite stillness and balm. The next moment the fevered heart beats, the fevered breathing of the city made themselves felt; the outward stillness and balm were gone. The fancy of each turned to their house by the sea, the cliffs and the sand and the sea and the world behind the sea. “Shall we go back soon?”

“Shall we?... This sea also calls for sailors.”

They had rented a clean, topmost floor in a house by the Seine. Now they made their way thither through the unsolitary, the still sounding streets. Up many steps they climbed, past doors of other occupants of the house. They unlocked and went in at their own door. Only the roof stood now between them and the sky of night. Moreover, there stretched a lower and jutting bit of roof, parapetted, and reached by a door opening from one of their two rooms. They lighted a candle; seated at a clean, bare table they ate a little bread, drank a little wine, then, rising, put out the candle and stepped from that other door out upon the guarded bit of roof. Here they had placed a bench. Now they sat down upon this, their arms upon the parapet, above and around them the splendour of the night. They were up so high that the sound of the streets came muted, coalesced, like an ever running, even running stream. For a time they kept silence, then they talked, though with silences between their words.