Comte Philippe looked up, with his fine smile, as his younger brother came rather sleepily into the breakfast-room. They had returned somewhat late from the Duchesse de Montémar’s ball the night before, and despite the Comte’s best attempts Raoul was not yet accustomed to keeping society hours.
His ship had returned to France at the end of September by way of Cape Horn, and the young man had been sent on leave with a commendation from his commanding officer that had been hailed by his brother with an almost embarrassing afflux of pride. But weeks of leave had extended to a month, and then one month into two, before he learned his next posting. The de Chagny influence could not move mountains; but it could, it transpired, achieve miracles where officialdom was concerned, especially when wielded by one so adept in the art as Comte Philippe. The Vicomte had been assigned aboard one of the most sought-after missions of the year: the relief effort in search of the d’Artois expedition, dispatched to explore the Arctic Circle some three years earlier and now overdue.
Raoul had been down to pay his respects to his new commanding officer and observe the work being done on the Requin, the ship that was to carry the rescue party northwards into the ice. But the reinforcements to her timbers could not be made in a hurry — d’Artois’ vessel, the Colombe, was already feared lost to the steely grip of the frozen pack-ice, and the Minister of Marine would not sanction the risk of sending another ship ill-prepared for polar waters — and men and supplies on this scale took time to assemble. It had been made politely apparent to Raoul that inexperienced junior officers were, at this stage of the proceedings, simply in the way.
So he had gone back to Paris on extended furlough to lodge with his brother there; and the Comte, with the calm self-possession of a true Parisian, had set himself to educate his gauche young charge in everything with which a gentleman should be acquainted in the great metropolis. Being both very fond of Raoul and genuinely proud of him, he had taken pains that they should be seen together everywhere, from the course at Longchamps to the most exclusive entertainments, and that the Vicomte should be presented to everyone who mattered.
Whatever his time at sea had done for Raoul’s confidence in commanding men, alas, it had done nothing at all to improve his shyness when dealing with society. Faced with what had at times seemed an endless succession of formidable old dowagers and pertly flirtatious young misses, he had suffered agonies of tongue-tied embarrassment until Philippe took pity on him and steered him away. His brother’s knowing and worldly friends were little better, and the conversation of the young sophisticates of his own generation — polished men-about-town, all of them — left him only with a painful conviction both of his own naïvety and of being a source of general amusement.
It lacked but two days to Christmas, and in the space of the last month he had made the acquaintance of more people than he had ever met before in the whole of his life, but not a single friend. And the one familiar face with whom he had sought to renew acquaintance seemed to want nothing to do with him.
That rejection still hurt. He bit his lip and did his best to return his brother’s smile as the Comte rose from the breakfast table to greet him; it was not a subject he was eager to discuss with an elder brother, however affectionate.
“Come here.” Philippe embraced him briskly on both cheeks, then held him out at arm’s length with a firm grip on his shoulders, surveying him fondly.
“Stand up straight, Raoul; you’re a Chagny, after all, with nothing to be shy about. You’ve got the family good looks — though I say it myself,” he added with the faintest of deprecating smiles—“and all you’re lacking is a bit of breadth across the shoulders to convince Madame de Lael and her fellow old tabbies that you won’t break in half if the wind blows the wrong way. And that’ll come.”
He ran an approving hand across unseen lean muscle that was the relic of a year of shipboard life, and released his brother with a final pat on the shoulder that was more akin to a friendly buffet. Flushing at the compliment, Raoul rocked a little on his feet but withstood the blow.
The years had been kind to Philippe de Chagny, and if he was no longer the golden young Apollo who had won a small brother’s dazzled admiration, he was still a splendidly-built man in his prime. And at present, with his rather forbidding eyes warmed by amusement and appreciation, he showed to his best advantage. Raoul, whose own rather delicate good looks had been nothing but a source of discomfort since adolescence, experienced a familiar envy. It was hard to feel either adult or dignified when you turned twenty-one and all the dowagers of the quarter persisted in mourning over you as a frail blossom not long for this world.
Madame de Lael must have been the stately Roman-nosed matron who had cornered Philippe at last night’s ball; Raoul placed her, with a jolt of memory, as mother-in-law to the Marquis d’Audray. Which made her almost a relative, much to his distaste... for it was the Marquis’ cousin Maurice d’Audray whom Clémence had just married, after three years of widowhood.
Black had undoubtedly suited his sister, Raoul thought with ruefully-acquired worldly wisdom. And with adult hindsight he suspected that in consequence she had worn it rather longer than affection for a wastrel husband would have dictated. But fate — and a drunken fall from an uncontrollable horse — had set her free to reign as a serenely beautiful widow and, in time, to marry again, and Raoul, whom she had done her best to mother despite the cost of his birth, could not begrudge her one moment of her late-found happiness. Still, it had been strange to come to Paris and find he had a whole parcel of new relations he’d only just met...
Her choice of husband wasn’t the only thing he’d found changed in coming to Paris, though. And with that reminder of his own confused unhappiness Raoul’s thoughts came full circle yet again, as so often in the past two weeks. It wasn’t Clémence’s marriage that had hurt — indeed, this wasn’t a question of marriage at all, he told himself adamantly, for that at least was out of the question. But on the stage of the Opéra he’d seen Christine again after all these years, Christine whose memory had haunted him for so long, and in that first unthinking moment of recognition he could have sworn she’d seen him too.
So why would she not speak to him, or even meet his eye? And how had she grown so heartbreakingly beautiful across the years that they had been apart — a beauty that made of his own shyness a hopeless barrier between them?
He’d never forgotten her. But he’d never really expected to see her again; the bittersweet image he’d held of her had been of the pretty, fair-haired child with whom his aunt had permitted him to run wild, or of the slender, half-formed girl to whom he’d made his final goodbyes by the roadside at Perros. He’d pressed a hot clumsy kiss to her hand and fled, to bury himself in his studies and try to forget. And it seemed she’d done the same.
It had always been her father’s dream that some day his daughter would achieve the recognition a fickle public had never accorded him. Old Daaé had been brought to France from Sweden and presented by his sponsor as a self-taught prodigy, but the simple country fiddler had failed to win the hearts of a sophisticated Parisian crowd. When Raoul had known him, he’d been homesick and withdrawn, endlessly retelling the tales of his own country and promising Christine that she, too, would be granted music by a heavenly muse.
They’d been children, young enough to believe without question that success came as a gift from on high... but Raoul was old enough now to understand just how much work and training it took for someone like Christine Daaé to take her place in the cast of the Opéra de Paris, despite the social gulf it set between them. And Christine was no longer the coltish child from whom he’d parted. She was as old as he was, grown to a woman’s stature and beauty, with self-possession of a kind that utterly deserted him when he tried to approach her.
She’d recognised him, Raoul told himself again stubbornly. In that moment when she had looked up from the stage and their eyes had met — surely he was not imagining that their eyes had met? — he’d seen joy there and a share in his own uncomplicated delight. But by the time he had freed himself from Philippe and his brother’s guests in the box that night, it had been too late to go in search of her after the performance.
He’d bought a ticket in the stalls out of his month’s half-pay — meagre enough in all conscience, but then Philippe had always covered everything he might need — and slipped back to the Opéra for the next performance to hear her again. The days between had been spent in a queer half-acknowledged state of excitement; he’d had a hundred questions he wanted to ask her the moment they met, and had spent so long trying to choose between them that even his brother had remarked on his distraction.
And then she’d cut him dead.
Not once, but twice, when he’d tried again last week; she could not possibly have failed to see him, but she’d passed by without so much as a glance, those glorious eyes turned aside without a hint of recognition as if he were no more than the dust beneath her feet.
The first time, he’d thought maybe she’d misunderstood his intentions. Perhaps he’d thrust himself forward too boldly, like other importunates he’d seen crowding at the heels of performers. Perhaps in his evening dress she’d taken him for nothing more than some philandering dandy, and hastened her step to avoid insult. Perhaps it was the moustache, hitherto half-hidden by the darkness of his brother’s box; it made him look older and more sophisticated, he was sure of it, but then perhaps she had not recognised the boy she once knew? He had almost shaved it off on the spot — but that would have drawn Philippe’s attention to the whole affair in a way he could not bring himself to face.
Instead he’d gone back again determined that this time he would speak to her, this time he would end the whole misunderstanding and make everything right between them... and at the last minute his nerve had failed him, and he’d stood there stricken to silence as her eyes slid over him with bruising indifference.
And she no longer sang as he remembered. He tried to suppress that disloyal thought, but it was true. He’d known her as an untutored child who raised her voice in pure joy at the world around them. Now she was a polished artiste from the Conservatoire, and yet somehow her voice no longer spoke to him as it once had. It was as if some long-settled unhappiness had cut her off from the world that had once meant so much, and when she sang she was simply going through the motions.
If only she would talk to him, Raoul told himself disingenuously. They’d once confided all their childish troubles to one another. Surely he could convince her...
“Woolgathering again, Raoul?”
It dawned upon Raoul in a wave of hot embarrassment that he was still standing in the middle of the breakfast-room while his brother had resumed his repast. He had not heard a word of anything that Philippe had been saying.
With a muttered apology, he took his seat opposite the Comte, and let the manservant pour him coffee as Philippe addressed himself to the pile of morning post.
“Barthès, de Tailles, Verger Frères: doesn’t fall due until the ninth...” His brother’s long fingers were sorting missives and bills with practised ease. “Ardmann, de Menerie — frightful woman, I certainly shall not — ah, here’s a note from Clémence.”
He unfolded the sheet with a smile and scanned through for a moment in silence before glancing up again at Raoul. “The d’Audrays are holding a gathering tomorrow for Christmas: a small family affair. Albertine will be there, and the little ones, and Clémence assures me that Maurice d’Audray will be delighted to host us both. Would you care to go?”
To leave Paris, now? And it would be Chagny all over again. A memory of those grim family gatherings caught in Raoul’s throat, and something of what he was feeling must have shown in his face. Philippe swept aside his murmur of reluctant assent, and pinned him with the clear gaze that had always seen too much.
“Forgive me, brother, that was thoughtless. You’ve never cared for this time of year, have you?”
“You know why.” It came out in a graceless mumble that was all Raoul could manage, and he dropped his gaze, anticipating reprimand.
The Comte sighed. “You know I’ve always believed that our father was wrong— very wrong. Raoul—”
But whatever he had been about to say, he cut himself off, evidently recollecting the impassive servants, and went on briskly.
“In any case, it’s time we celebrated your birthday for once. What would you say to dinner at the Café Anglais instead, just the two of us, and then we go on to catch the second act of Aïda? I hear La Carlotta is in splendid form”—the smile in his voice took on an ironic note—“and it seems our trip to the Opéra the other week was quite the success; you’ve scarcely failed to bring every conversation round to it since.”
Raoul could feel himself scarlet to the ears. He dared not look up.
“Could we... is there a chance we could... go backstage?” He had never sought to enquire too closely into Philippe’s private life; but a subscription to an opera box brought with it certain privileges, and it was well known the Comte was no stranger on the stair to the dressing-rooms. If he, Raoul, could just follow Christine one night— get a word with her alone—
He ventured a glance across the table, and caught a fleeting look of surprise on his brother’s face, as if he’d just had a glimpse of silk stocking beneath a nun’s habit.
“If you’re sure...” Philippe said slowly. “Well, we’ll see.”
Raoul made no reply but resolved silently to insist at every opportunity. Why would no-one ever take him seriously? He thought again of Christine, with an alien ache that he could not understand.
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