The Road to the Open by Arthur Schnitzler
George von Wergenthin sat at table quite alone to-day. His elder brother Felician had chosen to dine out with friends for the first time after a longish interval. But George felt no particular inclination to renew his acquaintance with Ralph Skelton, Count Schönstein or any of the other young people, whose gossip usually afforded him so much pleasure; for the time being he did not feel in the mood for any kind of society.
The servant cleared away and disappeared. George lit a cigarette and then in accordance with his habit walked up and down the big three-windowed rather low room, while he wondered how it was that this very room which had for many weeks seemed to him so gloomy was now gradually beginning to regain its former air of cheerfulness. He could not help letting his glance linger on the empty chair at the top end of the table, over which the September sun was streaming through the open window in the centre. He felt as though he had seen his father, who had died two months ago, sit there only an hour back, as he visualised with great clearness the very slightest mannerisms of the dead man, even down to his trick of pushing his coffee-cup away, adjusting his pince-nez or turning over the leaves of a pamphlet.
George thought of one of his last conversations with his father which had occurred in the late spring before they had moved to the villa on the Veldeser Lake. George had just then come back from Sicily, where he had spent April with Grace on a melancholy and somewhat boring farewell tour before his mistress's final return to America. He had done no real work for six months or more, and had not even copied out the plaintive adagio which he had heard in the plashing of the waves on a windy morning in Palermo as he walked along the beach. George had played over the theme to his father and improvised on it with an exaggerated wealth of harmonies which almost swamped the original melody, and when he had launched into a wildly modulated variation, his father had smilingly asked him from the other end of the piano—"Whither away, whither away?" George had felt abashed and allowed the swell of the notes to subside, and his father had begun a discussion about his son's future with all his usual affection, but with rather more than his usual seriousness. This conversation ran through his mind to-day as though it had been pregnant with presage. He stood at the window and looked out. The park outside was fairly empty. An old woman wearing an old-fashioned cloak with glass beads sat on a seat. A nursemaid walked past holding one child by the hand while another, a little boy, in a hussar uniform, with a buckled-on sabre and a pistol in his belt, ran past, looked haughtily round and saluted a veteran who came down the path smoking. Further down the grounds were a few people sitting round the kiosk, drinking coffee and reading the papers. The foliage was still fairly thick, and the park looked depressed and dusty and altogether far more summer-like than usual for late September.
George von Wergenthin sat at table quite alone to-day. His elder brother Felician had chosen to dine out with friends for the first time after a longish interval. But George felt no particular inclination to renew his acquaintance with Ralph Skelton, Count Schönstein or any of the other young people, whose gossip usually afforded him so much pleasure; for the time being he did not feel in the mood for any kind of society.
The servant cleared away and disappeared. George lit a cigarette and then in accordance with his habit walked up and down the big three-windowed rather low room, while he wondered how it was that this very room which had for many weeks seemed to him so gloomy was now gradually beginning to regain its former air of cheerfulness. He could not help letting his glance linger on the empty chair at the top end of the table, over which the September sun was streaming through the open window in the centre. He felt as though he had seen his father, who had died two months ago, sit there only an hour back, as he visualised with great clearness the very slightest mannerisms of the dead man, even down to his trick of pushing his coffee-cup away, adjusting his pince-nez or turning over the leaves of a pamphlet.
George thought of one of his last conversations with his father which had occurred in the late spring before they had moved to the villa on the Veldeser Lake. George had just then come back from Sicily, where he had spent April with Grace on a melancholy and somewhat boring farewell tour before his mistress's final return to America. He had done no real work for six months or more, and had not even copied out the plaintive adagio which he had heard in the plashing of the waves on a windy morning in Palermo as he walked along the beach. George had played over the theme to his father and improvised on it with an exaggerated wealth of harmonies which almost swamped the original melody, and when he had launched into a wildly modulated variation, his father had smilingly asked him from the other end of the piano—"Whither away, whither away?" George had felt abashed and allowed the swell of the notes to subside, and his father had begun a discussion about his son's future with all his usual affection, but with rather more than his usual seriousness. This conversation ran through his mind to-day as though it had been pregnant with presage. He stood at the window and looked out. The park outside was fairly empty. An old woman wearing an old-fashioned cloak with glass beads sat on a seat. A nursemaid walked past holding one child by the hand while another, a little boy, in a hussar uniform, with a buckled-on sabre and a pistol in his belt, ran past, looked haughtily round and saluted a veteran who came down the path smoking. Further down the grounds were a few people sitting round the kiosk, drinking coffee and reading the papers. The foliage was still fairly thick, and the park looked depressed and dusty and altogether far more summer-like than usual for late September.
