Disclaimers, acknowledgements, notes, warnings, etc: Please see Chapter 01.

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The Sound of Music Chronicles

Part I

The Twelfth Governess

Chapter 39

The Sound of Music

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"Singing I was at peace,
Above the clouds, outside the ring:
For sorrow finds a swift release in song
And pride its poise."

Cecil Day Lewis

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"What passion cannot music raise and quell!"

John Dryden

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"Music, when soft voices die
Vibrates in the memory –"

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Captain von Trapp slowed his pace, as he was about to reach the door to the drawing room, completely oblivious of the fact that the governess was following him a few steps behind. He was greeted with the sight of his seven children, wearing their uniforms, singing for Max and the Baroness.

They were not standing in a straight line, as he would have ordered them to, but as if in a choir. Their hair was still damp from the fall in the lake, but all of them were neatly combed. The girls had satin ribbons in their hair. The boy's posture was flawless enough to make any military father proud. Most importantly, there was no sign of the offending play clothes, they were wearing their impeccably clean uniforms. Liesl had the governess´s guitar, and she was playing a few chords, just enough help them follow the song.

They all looked so… serious.

Disciplined.

It was not the same stance when he made them stand in a straight line. There was an intensity in their little faces, a seriousness, especially in those of the little ones that baffled him. It was almost like they not only enjoyed, but loved what they were doing, like they were completely engaged in the task of doing their best to impress his guests. With him in command, sometimes they looked like if they were facing a firing squad… They usually obeyed him, most of the times without even questioning, but they always looked so miserable, even when the activity he had planned for them was something children would usually enjoy.

Their small audience was also something to see. Max was clearly impressed, his jaw dropped open. Elsa appeared to be somewhat touched by the simple song, and not bored as he would expected her to in a situation like this. He did not recall seeing either of them so fascinated before, certainly not because of a group of children.

"How on earth had she done it?" he had to ask himself. "How?"

The little Fräulein did not have a shred of discipline of her own, and yet she had succeeded in teaching the children a song in at least four voices.

Simple Austrian songs and play clothes instead of whistles and uniforms…

In a crazy, inexplicable way, it had worked. Beautifully so.

Music…

Suddenly, he did not remember the reason why he had banished music from the house, from his life.

Three years without music…

Three years attending concerts across Europe with Max and Elsa – when he could not avoid it – but pretending not to listen, fighting himself in order not to enjoy, focusing his mind in anything else, but in the sounds were coming from the stage. Three years attending musical soirées in the homes of his friends in Vienna, and coming up with the most ridiculous excuses to leave the room as soon as the musical part of the evening began. Three years trying to convince himself that he hated any kind of harmonious sound produced by an instrument, or a human voice.

"What did you think of the Wierner Philharmoniker tonight, my dear Captain? Our young von Karajan was superb, wasn't he? Has Beethoven ever sounded more alive to you?"

And to the poor, misguided, innocent soul who dared to ask a question like that in his worst, bitter days, he would answer with his usual biting irony:

"Oh yes. Alive and certainly glad that he was deaf so that he would not be able to hear it!"

Granted, Beethoven was certainly one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time, but he had never been Georg´s favorite, so that it never so hard to criticize his work, even in such a flawless performance. He certainly would feel a bit of a heavy conscience, because he had been utterly unfair to one of Salzburg's most illustrious conductors and to one of the best orchestras in the world. Nonetheless, he would certainly envy old Ludwig if he were alive. Sometimes he wished he were deaf, in order not to be able to listen.

No, Beethoven wasn't the problem, and least of all Salzburg's own Herbert von Karajan (1).

The music was the problem.

Music…

Something that, in his past, had been as vital to him as breathing, as essential to his being as his wife´s love… Music, the sea and Agathe, the elements upon which his whole life was centered.

For music, he nearly gave up his Naval career. The choice between the sea and his piano had been the most painful decision he ever had to make in his life, although he knew it even then it had been the right one. He loved the sea just as much as he loved music, but he had loved his wife more than anything else. Without the Navy, he would not have met Agathe, he would not have his children. Without Agathe and the children, he would not have been able to keep music a constant presence in his life… at least until the day she died in his arms.

He did not know, could not have known, if he would ever become a musician brilliant enough to please the most demanding of the critics, and he could very well live with that knowledge without any regrets. He knew, however, that he could not imagine his life without Agathe or the children, and the music they used to create and enjoy together. Of all the wrong decisions he had made in the past three years, shutting himself to the sound of music that had to be the stupidest one – he had banished the only thing that was constant in his life, the safe harbor to which he could always return to.

The best part of himself…

Stealing a glance at his own fingers, he flexed them and wondered if it wasn't too late. He wondered if he would be able to play his piano as he used to long ago. When he lost the Navy, it was in music that he would drown his sorrows when Agathe was too busy with the children to keep him company. He used to play for hours and hours. O-ho, the governess would not agree with him, of course. She would certainly come up with some insufferably illuminating, irritatingly optimistical remark she had memorized from one of the Reverend Mother´s many lectures only to tell him that it was never too late to try.

Would she be right, he wondered?

He never played for an audience, except for his family and a close circle of friends. He had never actually played accompanied by an orchestra before, mostly because he would not feel too well performing in public. His von Trapp ancestors would simply start rolling in their graves if he even dared to consider the idea. Still, he wanted to be as accurate and perfect as he could, every wrong note he hit made him wince, sometimes curse loudly. He demanded perfection of himself when he played for himself or his friends, but when he played for Agathe, he did it just for the sake of simply enjoying the music.

Fondly, he recalled the first and only time he had the rare opportunity of playing with an orchestra. Once he had walked into a friend of his who conducted one of the many chamber orchestras in Salzburg, and he was invited to attend a rehearsal. Their pianist had fallen ill at the last minute, and the maestro immediately invited him to play with them - Mozart's Piano Concerto n.o 21. It was a closed rehearsal, and he did not resist the temptation. The result was one of the most exhilarating experiences of his life.

Today, he wondered if he would be able to follow that chamber orchestra without making a complete fool of himself, without stumbling upon the notes that, not so long ago, would come so naturally to him.

Thoughts echoed in his mind.

"I chose all the wrong weapons, I thought wine and women would obliterate my grief, I nearly became the kind of man I despise the most. Elsa saved me from it, but until now I hadn´t realized… I thought music could deepen the hurt. I was wrong."

The wonder of it was that the realization had not come to him in a prestigious concert hall, to the sound of Bach or Mozart. It came with the sound of a simple Austrian mountain tune sung by his seven children. Agathe´s children.

"The hills fill my heart

With the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears
My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds
That rise from the lake to the trees…"

Not wishing to disturb them, and longing to hear some more, he took a small step back, hiding from their sight, by the doorway. He started nodding to the beat, and whispering the lyrics.

He knew that song, and very well. It wasn't one of the songs he used to sing with his wife and the children, since they preferred songs that were related to the life at sea. But he remembered that one well from a past long forgotten, from his early childhood.

"My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies

From a church on a breeze

To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls over

Stones on its way…"

In spite of himself, he smiled and walked into the room. Before the rational part of his brain could take over, he joined in.

"I go to the hills when my heart is lonely…"

Everyone gaped at him, astonishment and awe evident in their faces – even Max's and Elsa´s. The children exchanged amazed glances between then. Their voices died as they stopped singing to listen to him.

They were surrounded by the most beautiful countryside on earth, and all they had been able to enjoy it lately was the grounds of their own house, always marching and breathing deeply.

God, how long had it been, since the last time he had taken the children to the hills at walking distance from the house?

He remembered it well – they had gone on a picnic, just a few days before his wife started to feel ill. She had carried along her inseparable violin, as she always did, and they had spent hours under the sun, singing. They were having so much fun that Agathe simply forgot about her cumbersome hat after a while, and the result had been a badly sunburned nose. His reassurances that she looked absolutely lovely like that had been entirely useless, and later that night she was upset by the fact that she would probably have a few freckles on her delicate English skin.

"My mother is simply going to swoon the next time she sees me," she had exclaimed, gazing forlornly at her image in the mirror. "A lady never ever goes out in public without her hat. That is what she's been telling me ever since I was in the cradle! I should have carried a parasol with me, but even that I forgot. How clumsy of me! It was either a parasol or my violin, and I would not leave my violin behind!"

As for him, the most vibrant memory was how, in that same night after the picnic, he proceeded to show her how much he would certainly not mind a few freckles marring her porcelain skin.

Frau Whitehead, on the other hand, had not exactly swooned, but had been scandalized by the sight of her daughter's sunburned face. The next time she came for a visit, Agathe was already bedridden in the early days of the illness that would end up taking her life. Naturally, his mother in law blamed what they believed in those days to be a minor indisposition on the fact that her daughter had spent an indecent amount of time in the sun.

"You certainly do not look like a lady, Agathe. What have you done to yourself? You look like… like a mountain girl! You look like the wife of a farmer, not like the wife of a hero of Austria!"

She did look like a mountain girl; he smiled inwardly when his mother-in-law said that. Not exactly like the mountain girl who had taught his children to sing, but a mountain girl nonetheless. No, Fräulein Maria did not seem to mind a single one of her freckles, did not seem to care if they made her look less like a lady.

"I know I will hear what I've heard before…"

Yes, since she had died, he knew what he would hear if he climbed up there without her again. He would hear her playing the violin, he would hear her complaining about her sun burned nose and how unladylike it looked…

"My heart will be blessed with the sound of music

And I'll sing once more…"

It occurred to him that maybe he should take his children back to the hill, this time with a mountain girl to guide them. They would be carrying a guitar, decorated with rainbow colored ribbons, instead of an expensive violin. Maybe the sight his children singing and frolicking in the mountains would be a stronger image to him than that of their mother with a sunburned nose, the last time they were up there…

"You already sent your mountain girl packing, you bloody fool!" he cursed inwardly.

He realized that maybe, just maybe, sending the little Fräulein away so quickly, without as much as giving her a good chance of defending herself and her views, had been a decision as stupid as cutting music from his life had been. He still did not fully approve of her methods, he still had strong opinions about her suitability for the job, but he had to admit that she had accomplished something, and he could not let her go before he knew why and how.

He always considered himself to be a fair commander. As far as he knew, he was known as one. He had never dismissed a subordinate, or even a household employee, without as much as giving them at least a chance to explain themselves, or ultimately a second chance to prove him wrong. With Fräulein Maria, it had been the first time he had done that. He had acted passionately and impulsively, allowing a side of him that he believed dead to take over.

All he wanted to do was to give in to another impulse and run to the governess and fix his mistake as quickly and effectively as possible, but Brigitta was already running over to him. The rest of the children soon followed, and for the first time since the day of that picnic, he felt them hugging him. The little ones did to without any hint of fear of rejection, but the older ones hesitated and still held themselves back a little. A few playful nudges solved the problem, and he knew he had won them over when he heard Friedrich´s open laugher – another sound he had not heard in three years!

With the corner of his eye, he detected a motion by the door. When he turned his head to look, it was already too late, but there was time enough for him to see the governess retreating.

"Hah!" he exclaimed. Before he could go after her, his children surprised him, and the guests, once more. The gesture distracted him, and he stopped in his tracks to watch the scene develop. From somewhere behind a chair, Gretl took a small bouquet of wildflowers and gave it to Elsa.

"Edelweiss!" she exclaimed, as Gretl performed a graceful curtsy.

His first immediate reaction had been a brief impatient grimace. Fräulein Maria obviously did not take a simple "no" for an answer. He wondered if she even knew the exact meaning of the word. She had insisted upon the silly little flowers, upon what he had once called a hopelessly romantic gesture.

He forgot all about whatever he was thinking when he saw Elsa's reaction. His eyes widened when the saw his future bride hugging his youngest daughter.

The fact that he was never even able to imagine Elsa at ease with his children used to be a constant source of worry to him, now that he was convinced that she was the best choice for a wife. In fact, he had brought her to Aigen only to see her reaction to the children, and their reaction to her, before he could make his final decision. Now, she was hugging one of them as if Fräulein Maria's song and flowers had awakened in her the motherly instincts she probably never possessed.

"Ask yourself why she is hugging Gretl," he commanded himself.

The music, the flowers… All the answers led back to the governess he once knew as the Black Sheep of Nonnberg.

Elsa's voice brought him back to earth once more. "You never told me how enchanting your children are."

What could he say?

He did not know what to say.

"Neither did I," would be an appropriate answer, perhaps. But all he could do was to shake his head and grin like an idiot. Lately he had heard many adjectives applied to his children, especially by the previous eleven governess. "Enchanting" was certainly never mentioned before.

He looked at the doorway again, and saw that she was no longer there, hiding. He saw her fleeing towards the stairs.

"Don't go away," he whispered to the children, although that some crazy part of him knew that those words were meant for their governess.

"Don´t go. Tell me your secret," his heart whispered. "If it is daffodils that you love, I will cover the ground you walk upon with them if you just tell me… Who are you? What is it about you? What is your secret? How do you do it? I must know…"

He remembered how scathingly he had called her "a gift from heaven" the first time he spoke about his governess to Max. The last thing he would ever have imagined is that those words would come back to haunt him. No, she had far too many faults to be compared to any heavenly creatures, but perhaps his musings when he compared her to mythological nymphs and goddesses had not been that fat fetched at all.

He strode quickly out of the room but saw nothing but an empty foyer. Fräulein Maria was nowhere to be seen.

A/N: (1) According to my brief research, Herbert von Karajan first conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the early 1930´s.