THE ROAD TO THE OPEN
BY
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION
BY HORACE SAMUEL
LONDON: HOWARD LATIMER LIMITED
GREAT QUEEN STREET, KINGSWAY
1913
I
George von Wergenthin sat at table quite alone to-day. His elderbrother Felician had chosen to dine out with friends for the first timeafter a longish interval. But George felt no particular inclinationto renew his acquaintance with Ralph Skelton, Count Schönstein or anyof the other young people, whose gossip usually afforded him so muchpleasure; for the time being he did not feel in the mood for any kindof society.
The servant cleared away and disappeared. George lit a cigaretteand then in accordance with his habit walked up and down the bigthree-windowed rather low room, while he wondered how it was that thisvery room which had for many weeks seemed to him so gloomy was nowgradually beginning to regain its former air of cheerfulness. He couldnot help letting his glance linger on the empty chair at the top end ofthe table, over which the September sun was streaming through the openwindow in the centre. He felt as though he had seen his father, whohad died two months ago, sit there only an hour back, as he visualisedwith great clearness the very slightest mannerisms of the dead man,even down to his trick of pushing his coffee-cup away, adjusting hispince-nez or turning over the leaves of a pamphlet.
George thought of one of his last conversations with his father whichhad occurred in the late spring before they had moved to the villaon the Veldeser Lake. George had just then come back from Sicily,where he had spent April with Grace on a melancholy and somewhatboring farewell tour before his mistress's final return to America.He had done no real work for six months or more, and had not evencopied out the plaintive adagio which he had heard in the plashingof the waves on a windy morning in Palermo as he walked along thebeach. George had played over the theme to his father and improvisedon it with an exaggerated wealth of harmonies which almost swampedthe original melody, and when he had launched into a wildly modulatedvariation, his father had smilingly asked him from the other end ofthe piano—"Whither away, whither away?" George had felt abashed andallowed the swell of the notes to subside, and his father had begun adiscussion about his son's future with all his usual affection, butwith rather more than his usual seriousness. This conversation ranthrough his mind to-day as though it had been pregnant with presage. Hestood at the window and looked out. The park outside was fairly empty.An old woman wearing an old-fashioned cloak with glass beads sat ona seat. A nursemaid walked past holding one child by the hand whileanother, a little boy, in a hussar uniform, with a buckled-on sabreand a pistol in his belt, ran past, looked haughtily round and saluteda veteran who came down the path smoking. Further down the groundswere a few people sitting round the kiosk, drinking coffee and readingthe papers. The foliage was still fairly thick, and the park lookeddepressed and dusty and altogether far more summer-like than usual forlate September.
George rested his arms on the window-sill, leant forwards and looked atthe sky. He had not left Vienna since his father's death, though he hadhad many opportunities of so doing. He could have gone with Felician tothe Schönstein estate; Frau Ehrenberg had written him a charming letterinviting him to come to Auhof; he could easily have found a companionfor that long-planned cycl