The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie Part 12

WEGRAT

Did he say when he would be back in Vienna?

FELIX

Soon, I think. But he didn't say very definitely.

JOHANNA

I should like to see Mr. Fichtner again. I am fond of that kind of people.

WEGRAT

What do you mean by "that kind of people"?

JOHANNA

Who are always arriving from some far-off place.

WEGRAT

But as a rule he never arrived from far-off places when you knew him, Johanna.... He was living right here.

JOHANNA

What did it matter whether he was living here or elsewhere?--Even when he came to see us daily, it was always as if he had just arrived from some great distance.

WEGRAT

Oh, of course....

FELIX

I had often the same feeling.

WEGRAT

Well, it's strange how he has been knocking about in the world--these last few years at least.

SALA

Don't you think his restlessness goes farther back? Were you not students together in the Academy?

WEGRAT

Yes. And to know him properly, you must have known him then. There was something fascinating about him as a young man, something that dazzled.

Never have I known anybody whom the term "of great promise" fitted so completely.

SALA

Well, he has kept a whole lot of it.

WEGRAT

But think of all he might have achieved!

REUMANN

I believe that what you might achieve you do achieve.

WEGRAT

Not always. Julian was undoubtedly destined for higher things. What he lacked was the capacity for concentration, the inward calm. He could never feel at home for good anywhere. And the misfortune has been that in his own works, too, he has lived only as a transient, so to speak.

FELIX

He showed me a couple of sketches he had made recently.

WEGRAT

Good?

FELIX

To me there was something gripping about them.

MRS. WEGRAT

Why gripping? What kind of pictures were they?

FELIX

Landscapes. And as a rule very pleasant ones at that.

JOHANNA

Once in a dream I saw a Spring landscape, very sunlit and soft, and yet it made me weep.

SALA

Yes, the sadness of certain things lies much deeper than we commonly suspect.

WEGRAT

So he's working again? Then, perhaps, we may expect something out of the ordinary.

SALA

In the case of anybody who has been an artist once you are never safe against surprises.