Chapter Eleven

The children instantly sought comfort from Maria. She let them each read the note left behind, telling them it was his goodbye to everyone. Tearfully they accepted the lie. She couldn't bring herself to be angry at him, not really. After all she was the one to run first, leaving him to figure out the contradiction of her kisses and her flight.

"You'll see," she told the children while the Captain's heavily felt void was still fresh amongst them. "He'll write and tell you that he regrets that he had to leave so quickly." She said this with as much confidence as she could muster, and to her own heart as well as theirs.

"But what happened?" Liesl inquired one day when she was alone with Maria. "Did he get a telegram? No, I would have known…" She smiled sheepishly for a moment before returning to her somber mood.

"I'm sure he had a very good reason," Maria said, struggling to keep the edge out of her voice. She was tired of drying their tears, comforting them and assuring them that they did nothing to make him go away. If only he would write and put their minds at ease.

"If only he would write to us or something," Liesl continued as if reading Maria's mind. "We miss his letters, too."

Maria remained silent. Yes, they came to her for comfort and she truly was glad to offer what she could, not out of duty but sincere affection. Yet it was getting more and more difficult with each day that passed without word or explanation from their father. They were not the only ones wounded by his sudden departure, but unlike the children, Maria had no one who could offer soothing words to her, who could help her sort all the feelings that were swirling inside her. There was only one person who knew what happened between them, who could provide that solace she ached for the moment she learned he was gone. Sadly, he offered only silence.

Two weeks later the children found letters waiting for each of them at lunch. Usually Maria would welcome the silence that came with such an event. She found herself wishing she could ask them to read their letters to her, to share what little of him they could spare but she didn't dare lest her voice reveal her desperation. Instead she urged them to read quickly so they could begin lunch, not that she was hungry anymore.

Friedrich folded his letter neatly and gave Louisa gentle nudge as he placed it in front of him on the table. Louisa looked up from her letter only briefly in response, giggling when she understood his purpose.

"Thank you, Louisa," Liesl added. "You are ever so practical." Seeing her governess's look of confusion, she offered an explanation. "While we were all waiting for Father to write, Louisa wrote to him first. Why didn't we think of it? It certainly would have spared us some grief."

"Yes," Maria mused. "Isn't it funny how we forget the post goes both ways?" After a few quiet moments, the children were happier and ready to eat. As they started, Maria cleared her throat and mustered as much nonchalance as she could. "So. How is the Captain? Did he have anything interesting to share?"

"Nothing particularly interesting, just how he is sorry he left so suddenly and that he misses us. I think he is very busy with the company," Friedrich managed between bites. "I heard that Germany is interested in those ports for their own. I don't think that will make Father very happy."

"No, I suppose you are right about that," Maria nodded, hiding her disappointment.

"He did ask how you are doing," Liesl added.

"He did?" Maria winced inwardly at the way her voice rose at the end, causing all the children to look at her curiously. "Oh, well… that is very kind of him to ask." She smiled and turned her attention back to her lunch after waving at them that they should as well.

"Fraulein Maria?"

"Yes, Liesl."

"Are you… are you going to leave us?" A hum moved across the table and mixed with the sound of forks falling onto plates.

"Leave? No, why would you ask that?"

"Well, um… Father wondered if you seemed unhappy and thought maybe you wanted to leave."

"Oh, I see," Maria mumbled, unable to swallow the food she was caught chewing. "I don't have plans to leave. Don't worry." She offered a smile at the youngest girls who were visibly relieved by her assurance.

Maria found it difficult to sleep that night, just like every night since he left. She decided she was very pleased that the Captain finally sent word to his children, ending half of the battle that waged in her heart. Still, she couldn't help but think about his concern that she might leave. It tore at her how upset it made the children to think that she might go away. Why would he even think…?

Of course, she realized. The arrangement! He confessed in one of his letters that he left so she could come back for the children. After the way she bolted from his embrace, it was no wonder he thought she might go. He wasn't trying to push her away, he was trying to keep her.

"You stupid, foolish, wonderful man," Maria whispered with a laugh.

oOoOoOoOo

Dear Captain,

Today the children received your letters, the first words any of us have heard from you since you went away so suddenly. Of course, I was delighted for them, but I will confess to feeling a bit jealous as well, as I wish I had a few words from you for my own. Just to know that you are all right. Or just to know that you have thought of me a few times if for no reason than to make the many thoughts I have of you seem proper. I take some solace from the fact that you inquired about me in their letters. Oh, Captain, how can you think that I would ever leave? How could you not know that this has become home to me?

I have always dreamed of a place to call home. I've longed for a place where there is always a light, a sign that someone is waiting for me, that I'm expected and welcome, a light banishing the darkness to the world outside it. I knew it would be a place where I was loved forever and a place for my soul to find refuge. For someone who never had one, these images were reflections of heaven. Maybe that is why I decided to be a nun. What place on earth could be more like heaven than a convent?

But then I came here one early summer day and everything changed. Love was all around me. There were smiles tossed to me generously, arms that reached for me kindly and secrets whispered to me with cheery laughter or mournful tears but always with confidence. I began to look back at the Abbey as a divinely orchestrated stop on my quest to find home, wondering if being a nun was God's will for me after all. Then I was reminded that this was not my home for it belonged to another. I was a guest who let herself become an intruder. It was a lesson learned too late and I had to leave.

I'm so glad that you sent for me again. That love was still waiting when I returned and it was a balm to me, soothing the fears and insecurities that told me that there was no safe place for me. Yet when you came home, something was different. The love that was all around me was suddenly also inside me. I didn't know who I was anymore. I found myself seeking you out all day long, if only for a glimpse of you. I would listen with fascination the way you spoke to your children. Your voice made my heart swell like a song sung by a thousand voices. And when you spoke to me, I could barely breathe. It was strange what was happening to me. I couldn't think or speak or make a single move without feeling like a fool before you.

Before I ran out of your arms, you asked me what I wanted. I couldn't answer because I didn't know it then. I didn't know I wanted your touch until you drew your fingers across my arm and took my hand in yours. I didn't know I wanted your kiss until you pressed your lips to mine, so soft and yet so strong. I didn't know I wanted your arms around me until you drew me in and held me close enough to feel our hearts beating together. I didn't know I wanted what was here all along. You are my home, Captain. You are the light, the place where my heart can safely hide. All the dreams I've had for a place to belong were so close to me, but I didn't know it until after you left.

I have never felt like this before in my life, and none of it seems truly possible. You have known a love that I never believed existed outside the imagination of poets and dreamers, and only now am starting to comprehend that it is more than just sentiments. It is flesh and blood and heart and soul. It is faith and hope, it's the agony and the joy. It is everything that makes life worth living. What I have to offer seems like a pittance, even if I knew you wanted it. It is all the love I have, Captain, and it is yours. Somehow I know if you accept it, it will become even more than I can dream to give you.

You told me to keep searching for my life and never give up until I find it. I think I have. I know I have. But until I hear from you, I'm still drifting. The things I write now will change everything once you read them and I'm tossed between terror and elation.

With a heart so full,

Maria

oOoOoOoOo

A few days later, there was only one letter waiting at lunch. As Maria approached her chair, she noted the familiar penmanship and felt her legs start to become liquefied. She picked it up quickly before the children could notice and tucked it quickly into the pocket of her dress. When she finally was alone, she held it in trembling hands and stared at it, fighting the doubt that stirred slowly in the pit of her stomach. She found it hard to believe he received her letter and responded already. It was likely to be orders for the children's care or worse, a letter of dismissal.

She finally slipped her finger under the seal of the envelope. As she removed the contents, a separate piece of paper fell to her lap. Her heart sank. She was right, she was being dismissed. He enclosed a letter of reference for convenience.

She unfolded the paper and began to read. It was not a letter of dismissal. It was a poem:

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

The words of the poem swirled in her brain as she read it again… "follow him"… "yield to him"… "believe in him". They were so familiar to her, the call that led her to the Abbey and a life of religious service. But here they were calling her to be brave and follow after love.

She glanced down at the other piece of paper and opened it. Tears blurred her vision, making it nearly impossible to read on. It may have been the affections of the poem, or it could have been the simple but endearing way he addressed her, but she knew for certain her joy was completed when she looked at the date on his letter. The very day she poured out her heart to him in a letter, he did the same to her.

Dearest Maria,

For days I have been laboring hard to construct an apology, something worthy of all my past misdeeds that have hurt or embarrassed you. Somehow I convinced myself that I needed to make you forget the clumsy words and the bungling overtures. I tried to explain in each attempt to write that none of it meant anything, all because I was afraid that you would leave us. That's why I left, you see. To make everything right again so you would stay, just like in the beginning.

I'm not talking about my original sin against you, Fraulein. I will always tend a little piece of guilt for that until my last breath, but you graciously forgave me and I'm thankful for that and so much more.

Do you remember the journey we talked about in our first letters to each other, about the twists and turns, about searching for the place and person we are meant to be? It isn't a pleasant thing to think that your suffering, some of it at my own hands, was part of a master plan to bring you to me. Nor it is easy to think about the grief I have both endured and inflicted upon my children was in some way necessary. But the sorrows of this world do make the joys of it that much brighter and so much more cherished.

I realized I don't want to go back to the beginning because I cannot regret that something has changed between us. I am hopelessly in love with you, Maria. Love has tested and tried us both and brought us to each other because we are worthy. You are worthy to know love, to be loved. In fact, when I think of you that is all I see.

I'm taunted by the memory of your hand in mine, of the way you felt in my arms when I kissed you as if it were all just a dream. Maybe my heart simply cannot believe what it longs to be the truth, that you love me, too. Can you love a fool who loves you with all his heart?

Always and truly,

GvT

A/N: Thanks for all the reviews and follows and faves. I do not own these characters. I used a song called 'Home' by Michael Card as inspiration for Maria's letter. The poem is 'On Love' by Kahlil Gibran.

I asked everyone at proboards who they thought would write first, Georg or Maria. The unanimous vote was that Maria wrote first. I don't know why I decided to have them write at the same time. I think it seemed incredibly romantic when the idea came to me.

Speaking of proboards, if you don't know about it already, PM me. Or better yet, check out the profile for the collaborative alias called HatOff, the url is there.

I'm thinking three more chapters, or two chapters with an epilogue. At the rate I'm going, I'll be done in… October. Yikes. Goodness, I hope that isn't true. Thanks for sticking with me.

Please leave me your thoughts. Doesn't even have to be about this chapter. If you have a good banana bread recipe, I'm all ears.