Intermezzo I - Ignorance is bliss
Part Two
A/N: Here it is, part 2 of 5. I must give credit for the ideas in the following chapters to my "inspiring muses" from our fan fiction forum: lovethisstuff, emmaliesl, adda, odie, Maria´s Georg, silverwhitewinters... Oh dear, I hope I remembered everybody! I could not have written any of this without you, so THANK YOU!
Disclaimer: See chapter 1.
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Where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
Thomas Gray
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Georg von Trapp´s boredom with life seemed to have reached its limits. How else could explain that almost pathological need to taunt the governess of his children at every chance he got? What other explanation could he possibly have for the fact that he had been brooding about the woman ever since he had left the dinner table? And for the second time – he had done exactly the same after the pine cone incident.
After the meal was over, he had retired to his study, saying to Max and Elsa that he had some naval engineering problem he needed to solve before it drove him crazy. As soon as he was alone, however, it was not the intricacies of submarine design that had occupied his mind, but Fräulein Maria.
Why had he not resisted the temptation of provoking her, just a little?
That was what he did at the dinner table, even though that earned him the most curious looks from Max and Elsa. The fact is that it was much too hard to resist, and the little Fräulein usually rose to the bait, and said something completely unexpected. At first, being thrown off balance by her words annoyed him, but now he almost craved that feeling. In the back of his mind, he wondered what he would have to do or say to push her too far.
He remembered the look in her face when Marta voiced her question out loud. Her reaction had been completely unexpected to him. Ever since her arrival, he had witnessed her suffer his children's pranks with stoical dignity, had seen her sit on a silly pine cone and promptly come up with an excuse, no matter how ridiculous it had been. She had even fallen on top of him, from a tree, while attempting to recover her hat (1). He had surprised her in the middle of a pillow fight with the children, that same night, wearing that tent of a nightgown that he assumed was the standard nightwear at Nonnberg. In none of those occasions she had reacted with any embarrassment – when she had, the moment was so brief that he had barely detected it, so immediate that was her recovery. He had never seen her confused or at a loss for words until dinner tonight, and that was what it looked like.
So, there was a crack in her armor, she did have an Achilles heel after all. He should have guessed. He had been so tempted, so incredibly tempted, to tease her further... but something kept him from doing that, and he was not sure he would enjoy causing her further distress, at least not in front of his family and friends, and certainly not about such a delicate subject.
Georg von Trapp was a man after all. An experienced man who apparently had no idea that innocence could be so… alluring? Charming? Intriguing? Puzzling? He found that any adjective he could use to describe the feeling was, at least… disturbing.
Maybe that was the lure that drove men like one of his old acquaintances, the notorious Count András von Szaratay (2), to pursue young and even not so young females of any social standards with such determination. Was he about to succumb to the same temptation his friend apparently found it impossible to resist? He imagined that András would waste no time if he saw Maria. He would immediately see her as something to be conquered, properly seduced, deflowered, and kept until he stumbled upon the next innocent ingénue stupid enough to cross his path. The picture worked well with the Count on one side, but when he added Maria in the other end, the idea was utterly repulsive. Revolting enough to make him wish to scratch András´s eyes out, even though the Hungarian had never met the Fräulein, and would probably never meet. No, never – he would see that it did not happen, if he could help it. And if it did happen, he would make sure to keep an eye on Fräulein Maria – for her protection, of course, he told himself. He had, after all, made a promise to the Mother Abbess of Nonnberg that he would keep her safe.
Certainly he would be able to guard her virtue against the rakes and scoundrels of European aristocracy, but would he keep her safe from himself?
No, he would never think of her that way. What was he thinking? – He would never think of any woman that way. His wild days were long gone, he had put an end to them the day he had first met the woman he would end up marrying. He certainly had never seen his wife under that light, even though, not unlike his governess, her innocence had been quite obvious.
No, no - not quite. Agathe Whitehead had been different.
"Why am I comparing her to Agathe?" He punched his desk.
Yet, somehow, he could not help it. Although as prim and proper as a young lady of her station and upbringing was expected to be, the first Baroness von Trapp had been raised and prepared for matrimony and childbearing. Fräulein Maria, on the other hand, did not seem to want or care for any of those things. A man, marriage, children… all seemed not to be a part of her world. He remembered her falling from that tree on top of him the very first day she arrived – he had little doubt that it had been the first and only time in her life she had been less than one arm's length from a man.
As for children, she obviously cared for them, but that was only a natural consequence of her religious vocation. She had chosen Nonnberg, where the nuns dedicated themselves to teaching. She certainly never even considered becoming a mother herself. That gave her an ethereal aura, of a woman unattainable, a woman whose body might be conquered, but never her soul – not if she did not want to.
"Would she ever want to?" he asked himself.
"Captain, may I have a word with you?"
The very subject of his reveries had just committed the mortal sin of barging into his private domains, unannounced.
"Try knocking first the next time," he answered irritably, annoyed by the fact that the governess had interrupted him just as he was brooding about her, wondering if she had ever, would ever... "Please," he added, reminding himself that he could not simply allow a mere slip of a girl to be the cause of him forgetting his good manners.
She stopped cold at the door to his study, her face paled a bit. "Oh, I'm sorry." Before he could accept or refuse her apology, she did something that nearly drove to the edge – she knocked on the door. "There," she said.
He decided to ignore her jibe – if he did not ignore it, he would be loosing control, like he had at the lake, and he knew now what the consequences of it would be. "If this is about the subject of our dinner conversation today, Fräulein, I must say…" he his voice died.
"Say what?"
His slips twitched, as if he wanted to smile, but did not dare to. "It must have been the first time I saw you completely unable to talk your way out of a problem."
"Oh, I wouldn't call that a problem, exactly Captain. As for being… stuck with words, it happens, from time to time, I assure you. So much that I would not be working for you if I were any good at winning arguments."
"Carry on…"
"You see, I've been meaning to discuss the matter with you, in fact…"
"What matter exactly, Fräulein?"
"Erhm… permission to speak freely, Captain!"
He shook his head, impatiently. "I see that you picked some military jargon from my children already."
"It would be impossible not to, wouldn't it?"
"You no not need to ask permission to do that. You may do so, at your own will and according to your better judgment."
She looked aghast. "Captain!"
"Fräulein?"
"If you knew me, just a little bit, you would know that this might not be the wisest thing to say to me."
"I don't understand," he said, although he did know exactly what she meant.
"Well, you just gave me permission to speak, and generally all the nuns wanted to do was to find a way to shut me up! So much that they sent me away."
"Uhm… Point taken, Fräulein. However, I am fully aware of the risks in your case, and as the man of strategy that I am I do not take unnecessary risks. Most especially where my children are concerned."
"Very well, Captain, you did say that I could speak freely."
"I did. And I wonder how many times you want me to repeat that. Say whatever is on your mind, Fräulein. You are usually more forward than this, aren't you?"
Her hands fidgeted in her lap, and his attention was drawn to them. "Very well. I've been living in a convent since I was…"
"When is it that you will be telling me something I don't know?" he asked, annoyed.
"I also warned the Reverend Mother when she sent me to you that I had no experience dealing with chil…"
"To the point, Fräulein!"
"Yes, Captain?" He was scowling now. "Errr… oh well, Sir. The point is that I am hardly qualified to answer… Marta's question. In any way."
"Hmmm…" He considered the problem for a moment.
"I know that it is a completely normal question coming from a child her age, but I just would not… I wouldn't know what to say." He frowned at her, his eyes narrowing into slits. He could almost see the words dancing around her brain, while she tried to keep them under control. "At least I would not know the right thing to say. What if I said the wrong thing and… and scarred your daughter for life?"
"What were you told when you asked that same question?" he asked, slowly, his eyes never leaving her face, as he watched the fascinating play of colors in her skin, as she went from pale white to bright red, to white again.
"Well, I… I…"
"Yes?"
"I didn't! I mean, I don't even remember asking, Reverend Baron Captain!"
"Are you trying to convince me that someone as naturally curious as you obviously are, someone I found snooping in a room of my house which was to be kept closed, never had any curiosity about one of the basic and most fascinating mysteries of life?"
"You would understand if you knew my foster parents," she replied, and her tone was hurtful. He had indeed hit another sore spot. To his surprise, she continued. "They were not very… talkative, they did not like… questions. Since there was no money for books, I learned very early in life what a library was and how to use it properly. That is where I found my own answers, to anything I ever wanted to know."
"Hmmm," he frowned. So, she had found all her answers in a library. He wondered what kinds of books she had researched on, he wondered what the books of the religious schools she had attended all her life had to say about such a delicate subject. "Then may I ask, did that scar you for life? Is that why you ended up locked in a convent?"
She squirmed a little bit under his scrutiny, and he averted his gaze. "No, hardly that. I just did not believe it. I never believed everything I read."
"That is very wise of you!" he said.
"Why?" he ached to ask her. What drove anyone so flamboyant, so boisterous, to choose a life of seclusion? "What happened to you, Fräulein?" he wanted to ask. "You should be out there, driving a man crazy, giving him babies, instead of wasting your life away inside the medieval walls of Nonnberg Abbey," he thought. Well, at least he had to admit she had been driving him crazy, ever since he…
"What am I thinking!"
Maria's fidgeted uncomfortably, after he had been silent for a few seconds. Suddenly it hit him that he was discussing the facts of life with the governess of his children. That led him to think about her in a way that he was sure no employer things about a governess. At least he had never thought about a governess that way. Not any of the governesses he had himself while he was a child, not any of the previous eleven governesses he had hired for his children.
He closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again.
Fräulein Maria, had remained where she was, her wide eyes and moving fidgeting hand betraying her disquietedness. It was she, however, who was the first to speak.
"I think it would be better for the children if you handled the… the delicate subjects from now on, Captain. You are their father. I am not…" she spoke, very seriously now, her voice at least an octave lower than it usually was.
"I know, you are not qualified, you don't have any experience. I think we have established that quite clearly, Fräulein."
"My point exactly," she agreed, in the same low, almost husky tone.
"However, if Marta wanted to hear it from me, she would have asked me, don't you think?" was his logical statement.
"But…"
"Fräulein, I said I trust your better judgment, and I still do, even though at times it appears to me that you have none whatsoever." She let out a little shocked, offended moan. "Everything else is irrelevant, including your practical knowledge of certain… aspects of life. I am sure… no, I know you will know the right thing to say."
"Do you really trust me, Captain?" He glared at her. "Now, would Sister Berthe like to hear about that one. That may not be very wise, Captain."
"Yes, you already stated that very clearly before. Please, remind me to have a few words with Sister Berthe one of these days."
"But… but if I…"
"You will not, Fräulein. You won't. Now, will you please return to your charges?" he said, putting an end to one of the most bizarre conversations he ever had with a governess in his life.
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A/N: (1) See my story The 12th Governess. (2) Character in my story Austrian Folk Dances – The Ländler.