The Baron and the Ballroom: Part I
Georg huffed back to his wing of the villa after having broken up the festivities in the Governess' room. The nerve! The girl was told to ensure discipline and order, and instead, he found her dancing around in her room with his children…and in her nightgown! He knew he never should have ended up in her room, it was totally inappropriate! However, he had to bring order back to the house and get the children back to their rooms...storm, or no storm.
All day long she had tested his patience. From the moment she arrived, all she did was cause trouble. Georg scratched his chin pensively: "I think the last governess to cause this much turmoil, #10 aside, was…" he looked into the corner of the ceiling. He shook his head and his eyes widened in exasperation. "I don't think there ever was such a governess. Never before in the history of the Von Trapp family has a governess caused so much commotion in so little time!". He threw himself backwards onto the bed and dug his toes into his heels to remove his slippers.
First the ballroom! That alone should have been cause for dismissal. But the girl wasn't even phased by the fact she had been caught! She had scampered out into the light of the foyer and that is when the misery truly began! Cheeky bugger! "You don't look a'tall like a Sea Captain" he mocked while curling his lips. "Bah! Turn about is fair play, she hardly looked like a governess. Little slip of a girl! And that dress!". Georg pinched his nose in disgust.
The new Governess continued to shock him every time she opened her mouth. "I can make my own clothes! What's wrong with the children, sir? When do they play? I could never answer to a whistle!" Georg could feel his blood boil as he recounted the events. The final straw was that whistle, impertinent, head strong girl! He was so thrown off kilter he had made a beeline to the salon. However, at that point, the anger she had provoked in him had momentarily dissipated while he was left to ponder that look she had just given him.
The little Fraulein was certainly a firecracker. She had such large blue eyes that could likely pry the darkest secrets from the hardest souls. They were so expressive, so inquisitive, so…
"Damn!" Georg mumbled to himself as he crushed his right fist into his left hand. He ran his hand through his hair and tried to shake out the stray thoughts. What was it about this governess that seemed to be so damn captivating? Surely it must just be her methods?
Regardless of the fact she irritated him beyond belief, from the few interactions Georg had witnessed that day between #12 and his children, he held a firm conviction that Agathe would have approved. In fact, it was the first time he had seen someone act motherly towards the children since she was alive. Certainly, no other governess had integrated into the home in this manner. "Ha, the girl's a whirling dervish, but apparently no match for my children !" he chuckled out loud.
But that wasn't entirely true. How had she managed it? The children were all lined up as they should be once he had crashed their little party. How was it that she could send them scurrying off to their beds when necessary, without blinking an eye? Within a few short hours she had managed to assert her authority with care and dignity, yet barely raised her voice. How? Especially when the first hours of her tenure were spent ducking the children's pranks?
The last time he had seen someone interact with the children like that it was….Agathe.
Agathe had that innate ability to mother that left him in awe. She knew just what to say at just the right time. Sometimes all she needed to do was raise an eyebrow and the children knew. He had always chalked that up to the fact that she had carried them all for 9 months and gave birth to them. She had great rapport with the children, a mother's instinct, and she knew how to use it wisely. She knew how to use it on him to great success, as he recalled fondly.
This Fraulein…this governess, she had no children of her own. She's been living in a convent? How? Finally, it dawned on him – Teacher's College! She must have learned it in Teacher's College!
Georg mentally congratulated himself on finding a governess who actually had some skill in working with children. Yet, he remained confused because the woman would not know discipline if it slapped her across the head!
He shook his head in disbelief, Surely it was an act on the part of the children for his benefit. While intrigued by her methods, Georg could not help but think the little Fraulein's influence was something that could only corrupt the children. The children most likely ran off to bed to save themselves from his dark mood, they knew that signing was forbidden. It could not have had anything to do with her, could it?
From the moment he had left her in the foyer to formally meet the children, he was quite convinced that she would not last long. The children would eventually scare her off just like the others. Besides, everything that came out of her mouth was wrong! He could not stand the disorder and chaos that followed her wherever she went. He should have fired her on the spot, but who would look after the children while he went to Vienna? Staying in Aigen any longer was just not an option. He needed to breathe again.
While he was aware of the shortcomings of the previous governesses, it seemed this one was the worst case of them all. How in God's name could she ever be a Nun? Georg knew little of what went on inside Nonnberg Abbey, but he was quite certain that the rules, decorum, and order that he was accustomed to in the Navy had its parallels in the life of the Abbey that was nestled along the edge of the Festungsberg.
Feeling confident that the noise had finally settled for the evening, Georg rose from his bed and tossed a few extra things into this luggage. Once he was satisfied that he would have very little to pack the next morning, he closed his trunk, fastened the latch, and unceremoniously tossed it onto the floor. He fidgeted with his collar and loosened his tie hoping to gain some much-needed oxygen to clear his head.
Georg removed his jacket and hung it neatly in the walk-in closet. Soon after, his tie followed, and it was hung with the others in a row on his tie rack. As was his habit, he stopped to assess the state of order in the closet – running his palm over top of the ties, he adjusted them so that their tips all lined up at the bottoms. With a smug smile of satisfaction, he flipped off the closet light and began to turn down his bed clothes for the night.
Fluffing his pillows, Georg sat on the edge of the bed, staring at his reflection in the window which occasionally dissipated into the sheets of lightning that still danced across the sky as the storm moved on. He recalled the nights when he and Agathe would stand in the window watching the weather move across the mountains and over the lake. Each season had its own personality, and the weather would play with the light in the sky and painted the mountain in glorious colours.
Moving his eyes only, he glanced around the room wistfully. This room still seemed so empty to him, so sterile, so lonely. What he wouldn't give for one more day with his beloved wife. What a gift it would be to have entered the ballroom today to see her there, instead. Perched on the piano bench with her hair swept up in a bun. He could see himself approaching her from behind as she delicately plunked away on the keyboard, the resonating notes of Beethoven's Piano Sonata #14 filling the room. He would stand just far enough behind her so that she could not sense his presence, and he would bend at the waist, stretching his torso to place a long kiss between her ear and her collarbone. He could always feel Agathe's smile as the muscles in her neck would tense as she tried to pretend that she wasn't distracted or remotely interested in his ministrations. Of course, he always knew better.
A tear found its way out of his eye, and he used the back of his hand to wipe it away and to discourage any others from following. Today, instead of finding his beloved wife at the piano, he found her! What in God's name was she thinking? Why would she, practically a stranger, just walk up to a set of closed doors and walk through them? He shook his head, realizing he would never likely know the answer to that question.
He recalled the wave of panic that had come over him when he entered to foyer to meet the new governess, only to find that she was missing. Had the children already scared her off before he even had the chance to meet her? Georg was grasping for something- for what or at what he did not know, and this dreaded feeling of uncertainty lingered in his mind all these hours later. For someone so accustomed to being in control, he found himself in a position where he could not comprehend what was going on! He could not recall a time in his life where he was not in command, not able to chart a way out of the mess he found himself in. Hunting down enemy ships seemed so much easier at that moment!
Bristling at the feelings he encountered when he realized #12 had dared enter the space that held up so much real estate in his heart…they were impossible to describe. Was it anger? Irritation? Devastation and sorrow? Yes, but also strange a sense of self, of calm – almost as though Agathe was sitting at the piano, despite the dust covers and gloom.
Georg had trouble looking into the depths of the room, but it had to be done if he were to track down the elusive governess. As he peered into the amber and dusk of ballroom for the first time in so long, he could not bear to gaze deep into the middle of the room for more than a second. The heaviness of her, Agathe's, presence there, sucked the air from his lungs and sent a sharp pain through his heart. As the realization came to him that Agathe was not there, he began to panic, eyes blown wide.
To save himself, he quickly turned his gaze towards the corner of the door frame, but out of the corner of his eye he could see the governess scampering towards the light. Beyond the whirlwind she left behind her, however, Georg sensed that Agathe was there, somehow imploring him to believe, to take a chance, to love the children with his whole heart. She had made him promise before she died. He was such a failure.
With the appointment of each and every new governess he thought he would finally do better by them and keep his promises to Agathe. Yet, every time someone new came to the villa, the promises were left unfulfilled. However, this one seemed different. None of the previous governesses came with this strange sense of self-awareness. Could this one somehow be the one that makes a difference and fills the hole that his children, and himself for that matter, had fallen into after her passing?
It had been many months since Lucky #7 had left them, and in that intervening time, everything in his life had gotten worse, not better. He could not fathom how #12, this Fraulein…Maria…how could a woman who sent him into a fit of rage also elicit such strange feelings in his soul? It must have been the ballroom! Georg had not dared enter in well over a year. Shouldn't loss and grief get easier over time? However, this time entering her room was worse than before, it was a much deeper pain and the ache it caused in his heart was hard to unravel. Georg hung his head and let out a big sigh.
Shaking his head in frustration, he looked skyward, his eyebrows disappearing into his fringe. Running a shaky hand through his hair, he knew he needed to get out of the house and lose this feeling of weight and dread. To stop the tide from sucking him out to open water. He knew that if he didn't get ahead of the tide, he would be a lost cause. Some things were the same on water as they were in his heart.
As ridiculous as it seemed, Georg was struck with a strange sense that Agathe had lured her into that room, the holiest of spaces in his home and in his heart. It appeared as though Agathe was making her choice, silently approving governess #12. What else could explain how she had ended up there?
The ballroom was a shrine to Agathe that he could not bear to worship at, let alone enter and breathe like a normal man. He felt this burning sense that he needed to believe, to trust, to care…but the truth remained: he was a coward, unable to move on without her. Instead, he ran. Had Agathe sent this little nun to him – a veritable gift from heaven? She had promised him that one day she would send someone. Georg could not put his finger on any of it, and the uncertainty made him crazy. He laughed out loud at the madness of it all: "A gift from heaven- ha! This one was probably sent here to give the sisters a few weeks of respite from her chaos".
In the few short moments when he was brave enough to focus his eyes in the dim light of the ballroom, an aura encircled her as if Agathe had invited her to come in and sit at the piano. At the very moment when he had discovered #12 mid-bow in the middle of that vast room, that was when the sensation hit him. It was like being knocked down by a speeding train. While it lasted only for a few seconds, that feeling rocked him even now. She had stared back at him mutely, unafraid, and seemingly confident for what seemed to be an eternity. She radiated light and energy that was so shocking Georg could not bear to gaze upon it. The aura, coupled with the heavy air left behind during Agathe's last waltz literally took his breath away.
No previous governess had dared enter that room, not even the ones with considerable tenure. Governess #1 had lived in the home when the ballroom was still in use, and even she understood that it was not to be disturbed after Agathe's passing.
"Damn!" Georg said out loud as he threw himself backwards onto the bed yet again. "This is so damn ridiculous! Where is this even coming from?" Georg closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to squeeze out the tension. "Since when did I believe in anything remotely spiritual? It must have something to do with the fact that I asked the Reverend Mother to send someone from the Abbey". The Abbey...he shook his head and wondered for at least the 10th time today how someone so wild, and so undisciplined, could ever be a nun.
"How dare she arrive and confuse the natural order of my life!" Georg pronounced as he pounded both fists into the mattress.
