The Governess and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig, Anthea Bell Read Free Book Online

called from the upper terrace, which was in the shade of the veranda, to tell us that tea was ready. Limpley spoke soothingly to the baby as if she could understand him, “There, there, we’ll be back in a minute!” We left the pram with the baby in it on the lawn, shaded from the hot sunlight by a cool canopy of leaves above, and strolled slowly to the usual place in the shade where the Limpleys drank afternoon tea. It was about twenty yards from the lower to the upper terrace of their garden, and you could not see one terrace from the other because of the rose-covered pergola between them. We talked as we walked, and I need hardly say what we talked about. Limpley was wonderfully cheerful, but his cheerfulness did not seem at all out of place today, when the sky was such a silky blue, it was such a peaceful Sunday, and we were sitting in the shade in front of a house full of blessings. Today, his mood was like a reflection of that fine summer’s day.
    Suddenly we were alarmed. Shrill, horrified screams came from the canal, voices of children and women’s cries of alarm. We rushed down the green slope with Limpley in the lead. His first thought was for the child. But to our horror the lower terrace, where the pram had been standing only a few minutes ago with the baby dozing peacefully in it in perfect safety, was empty, and the shouting from the canal was shriller and more agitated than ever. We hurried down to the water. On the opposite bank several women and children stood close together, gesticulating and staring at the canal. And there was the pram we had left safe and sound on the lower terrace, now floating upside down in the water. One man had already put out in a boat to save the child, another had dived in. But it was all too late. The baby’s body was not brought up from the brackish water, which was covered with green waterweed, until quarter-of-an-hour later.
    I cannot describe the despair of the wretched parents. Or rather, I will not even try to describe it, because I never again in my life want to think of those dreadful moments. A police superintendent, informed by telephone, turned up to find out how this terrible thing had happened. Was it negligence on the part of the parents, or an accident, or a crime? The floating pram had been fished out of the water by now, and put back on the lower terrace on the police officer’s instructions, just where it had been before. Then the Chief Constable himself joined the superintendent, and personally tested the pram to see whether a light touch would set it rolling down the slope of its own accord. But the wheels would hardly move through the thick, long grass. So it was out of the question for a sudden gust of wind, perhaps, to have made it roll so suddenly over the terrace, which itself was level. The superintendent also tried again, pushing a little harder. The pram rolled about a foot forward and then stopped. But the terrace was at least seven yards wide, and the pram, as the tracks of its wheels showed, had been standing securely some way from the place where the land began to slope. Only when the superintendent took a run up to the pram and pushed it really hard did it move along the terrace and begin to roll down the slope. So something unexpected must have set the pram suddenly in motion. But who or what had done it?
    It was a mystery. The police superintendent took his cap off his sweating brow and scratched his short hair ever more thoughtfully. He couldn’t make it out. Had any object, he asked, even just a ball when someone was playing with it, ever been known to roll over the terrace and down to the canal of its own accord? “No, never!” everyone assured him. Had there been a child nearby, or in the garden, a high-spirited child who might have been playing with the pram? No, no one! Had there been anyone else in the vicinity? Again, no. The garden gate had been closed, and none of the people walking by the canal had seen anyone coming or going.