The Road to the Open

by Arthur Schnitzler

She held out her hand sympathetically and George looked into her kind eyes, which were somewhat tired by her nocturnal vigils. The white transparent curtain in front of Anna's window had just been slightly drawn back. Old Doctor Stauber appeared by the window, threw George a friendly reassuring glance, disappeared again and the curtains were drawn. Frau Rosner was sitting in the large centre room by the round table. George could only see from the verandah the outlines of her figure; her face was quite in the shade. Then a whimpering and then a loud groan forced their way from the room in which Anna lay. George stared up at the window, stood still for a while, then turned round and walked for the hundredth time to-day up the path to the top of the garden. It is clear that she is already too weak to shriek, he thought; and his heart pained him. She had lain in labour for two whole days and two whole nights. The third day was now approaching its end,—and now it was still to last until evening came. On the evening of the first day Doctor Stauber had called in the Professor, who had been there twice yesterday and had remained in the house since noon to-day. While Anna had gone to sleep for a few minutes, and the nurse was watching by her bed, he had walked up and down in the garden with George and had endeavoured to explain to him all the peculiar features of the case. For the time being there was no ground for anxiety. They could hear the child's heart beating quite clearly. The Professor was a still fairly young man with a long blonde beard, and his words trickled gently and kindly like drops of some anodyne drug. He spoke to the sick woman like a child, stroked her over the hair and forehead, caressed her hands and gave her pet names. George had learned from the nurse that this young doctor exhibited the same devotion and same patience at every sick-bed. What a profession! thought George, who had once, during these three bad days, fled to Vienna for a few hours, which enabled a man to have a sound dreamless sleep for six good hours up there in the attic this very night while Anna was writhing in pain.

He walked along by the faded lilac-bushes, tore off leaves, crunched them in his hand and threw them on the ground. A lady in a black-and-white striped morning dress was walking in the next garden on the other side of the low bushes. She looked at George seriously and almost sympathetically. Quite so! thought George. Of course she heard Anna's screams the day before yesterday, yesterday and to-day. The whole place in fact knew of what was happening there; even the young girls in the outré Gothic villa, who had once taken him for the interesting seducer; and there was real humour in the fact that a strange gentleman with a reddish pointed beard, who lived two houses away, should have suddenly greeted him yesterday in the village with respectful understanding.

Remarkable, thought George, how one can make oneself popular with people. But Frau Rosner let it be seen that even though she did not regard George as mainly responsible for the seriousness of the position she certainly regarded him as somewhat callous. He did not bear any grudge for this against the poor good woman. She could not of course have any idea how much he loved Anna. It was not long since he had known it himself. She had not addressed any question to him on that morning of his arrival when George had lifted his head off her lap after a long silent fit of weeping, but he had read in the painful surprise of her eyes that she guessed the truth, and he thought he understood why she did not question him. She must realise how completely she possessed him again, how henceforth he belonged to her more than he had ever done before, and when he told her in the subsequent hours and days of the time which he had spent far away from her, and that now fateful name resounded casually but yet insistently out of the catalogue of the women whom he had met, she smiled, no doubt, in her slightly mocking way, but scarcely differently than when he spoke of Else or Sissy, or the little girls in their blue dresses who had peeped into the music-room when he was playing.

He had been living in the villa for two weeks, had been feeling well and in good form for serious work. He spread out every morning on the little table, where Therese's needlework had lain a short time ago, scores, works on musical theory, musical writing-paper, and occupied himself with solving problems in harmony and counterpoint. He often lay down in the meadow by the edge of the forest and read some favourite book or other, let melodies ring within him, indulged in day-dreams and was quite happy, with the rustling of the trees and the brilliance of the sun. In the afternoon, when Anna was resting, he would read aloud or talk to her. They often talked with affectionate anticipation about the little creature that was soon to come into the world, but never about their own future, whether distant or immediate. But when he sat by her bed, or walked up and down the garden with her arm-in-arm, or sat by her side on the white seat under the pear-tree, where the shining stillness of the late summer day rested above them, he knew they were tied fast to each other for all time, and that even the temporary separation with which they were faced could have no power to affect them in view of the certain feeling that they were all in all to each other.

It was only since the pains had come upon her that she seemed removed from him to a sphere where he could not follow her. Yesterday he had sat by her bed for hours and had held her hand in his. She had been patient, as always, had anxiously inquired if he were quite comfortable in the house, had begged him to work and go for walks as he had done before, since after all he could not help her, and had assured him that since she was suffering she loved him even more. And yet she was not the same, George felt, as she had been during these days. Particularly when she screamed out—as she had this morning in her worst pains—her soul was so far away from him that he felt frightened.

He was near the house again. No noise came from Anna's room, in front of the window of which the curtains moved slightly. Old Doctor Stauber was standing on the verandah. George hastened towards him with a dry throat. "What is it?" he asked hastily.

Doctor Stauber put his hand on his shoulder. "Going on nicely."

A groan came from within, grew louder, grew into a wild frenzied scream. George passed his hand over his damp forehead and said to the doctor with a bitter smile: "Is that what you mean by going on nicely?"

Stauber shrugged his shoulders. "It is written, 'With pain shalt thou....'"

George felt a certain sense of resentment. He had never believed in the God of the childishly pious, who was supposed to reveal himself as the fulfiller of the wishes of wretched men and women, as the avenger and forgiver of miserable human sins. The Nameless One which he felt in the infinite beyond his senses, and transcending all understanding, could only regard prayer and blasphemy as poor words out of a human mouth. Not even when his mother had died, after the senseless martyrdom of her suffering, not even when his father had died, passing away painlessly so far as he could understand, had he presumed to indulge in the belief that his own personal misfortunes in the world's progress signified more than the falling of a leaf. He had not bowed down in cowardly humility to any inscrutable solution of the riddle, nor had he foolishly murmured against an ungracious power of whose decrees he was the personal victim.