It had been high time in any case that something was done about Raoul’s education. Philippe had resolved to take the boy in hand himself; discovered all too quickly that beyond reading, writing and figuring, the child was little more than a country bumpkin whose native wit failed to cover a head full of fables and a state of lamentable ignorance. Héloïse, who had always had the run of their father’s library, had volunteered along with Suzanne to help remedy the deficiencies of his governess and to teach him a little social polish. But as winter wore on into spring, the two sisters were soon caught up in lessons of a far more pleasurable kind — a de Chagny match was still a marriage worth having, and the new Comte had acquaintances who were not averse to becoming suitors for such an alliance — and old Tante Marguerite down in Brest had seemed at the time to offer the perfect solution.
Brisk, kindly Tante Marguerite with her musical soirées and her snapping black eyes had always been Philippe’s favourite among his de Chagny aunts; her husband, Roger de Marsèmy, had been a naval officer retired through ill-health, and in childhood memory their home in Brest had always been bustling with visits from old friends freshly returned from the East or refitting with the Fleet. Filled with curios, laughter and tall tales, back then the house had seemed a haven for small boys, and when he’d sent Raoul off to Brittany Philippe had truly meant it all for the best. But their uncle Roger had been dead long since of the recurring fever that had first made him an invalid, and Tante Marguerite’s piano sat silent in the parlour as aging fingers grew weary and stiff... and for a shy child newly-orphaned and bereft of the sisters who had cosseted him since birth, Philippe realised at last and far too late, it had made for a solitary and a lonely existence.
That was why the boy had taken up with the Daaés, of course. Tante Marguerite had taken a house for the summer at Lannion, a few kilometres from the coast, and Raoul and his governess had been sent out to take the air. The good woman had come back indignant, with her charge in borrowed clothes, and a tale of a strolling fiddler, a long walk, and a little girl in a peasant scarf that fluttered into the sea. They’d gone back the next day to retrieve Raoul’s suit... and the next day, and the next. Starved of friendships his own age, brought up in a household of women, Raoul had struck up an instant childish bond with little Christine and with the vagrant fiddler, her father.
Comte Philibert had been distant and ailing, and Philippe, ill at ease with children, had not known how to take his place. Old man Daaé had done so without a moment’s thought, wrapping the boy in the warmth with which he encircled his own beloved daughter, and that summer had proved the happiest of Raoul’s young life. The happiest — the Vicomte had flung back at his brother in their quarrel last night — that he was ever to know again.
Philippe had meant to visit the boy at some point, naturally. But the journey via Paris was a slow one, his sisters were in a fair way to being happily established, with their portions needing to be shared out before the contracts could be drawn up and the wedding date set, and it was not until Tante Marguerite’s letter had reached him with its news of his brother’s new-found preoccupation with Perros-Guirec that he had come post-haste down to Brittany to see for himself.
His aunt, kindly as ever, had seen nothing wrong with the friendship. She’d given him some confused account of an old Swedish couple from Paris and their musical protegés — always the sure way to Tante Marguerite’s heart — which had done nothing at all to mollify Philippe’s disquiet. Raoul, of course, was nowhere to be seen. In the end, cutting his aunt’s expostulations short, the Comte had caught up his hat and gloves and driven straight out unannounced to the inlet at Trestraou to find this fishing-village and, if necessary, bring back his brother whether he liked it or not.
But it hadn’t been some ragged peasant on the beach. It had been Professor Valerius with his dove-coloured waistcoat and his pince-nez and his neat grey beard, watching benignly from the depths of a steamer-chair set up for him on the strand, like the most respectable great-uncle in the world. And the fair-haired boy who’d come pelting head-down along the shining sand with the other child in pursuit — both of them shrieking in excitement — bore so little resemblance to the subdued Raoul he knew that Philippe had wondered for a moment if he’d been mistaken.
“Monsieur mon frère!” Raoul had almost cannoned into him; looked up in astonishment and delight.
“Philippe,” the Comte corrected with a smile, stooping to kiss his brother, and felt the boy’s arms tight about his neck.
“M’sieu le Comte?” The little Daaé had hung back, scraping the sand from one bare foot against the other in a gesture that had nothing of the coquette about it. She’d worn no scarf that day, and her fair plaits were windblown.
“Please don’t take Raoul away, m’sieu.” She’d faltered, and he’d caught a trace of Swedish. “He... he has been so happy.”
That first thought had not been for herself. It was the first thing one noticed about her even as a child, Philippe remembered now, admitting it against his will. She’d thought of others, and she’d been kind.
He hadn’t taken Raoul. He wished— he wished to God now that he had, but he’d let the old Professor talk him out of it.
“These small ones... they should not be always with the old.” Valerius’ soft accent had held self-knowledge and regret. “My Christine, monsieur — she learns now to play as a child. We think to give her all things, but this we cannot.”
But it was not for the sake of the good Professor’s conscience that Raoul had spent the rest of that summer at Perros-Guirec, nor even the thought of Tante Marguerite’s stooped back and the grey hairs of the governess nodding quietly in the sun. It had been the eager delight in the boy’s eyes and the warm unthinking welcome of that embrace that had meant Philippe could deny him nothing... even if that meant hiring a room at the inn in future for the boy and his governess to stay.
“For I might want to see the sunset.” Raoul had been guileless. “And it’s very hard, don’t you think, for the poor lady to walk from Lannion so often?”
From what Philippe had observed of Madame la gouvernante’s ample figure, this last was very probable; but he had forborne to make the obvious rejoinder that perhaps Raoul should come a little less often. Instead, he had made quiet arrangements to reserve accommodation for the rest of the season. No doubt there would be night-time expeditions on the heath and ghost-tales after dark and all the other mischief to which small boys were prone — but such things, in moderation, could only improve the young Vicomte’s character. And Philippe had been ready to give a good deal, by that summer, to see his brother flushed and healthy and laughing, and no longer delicate and forlorn.
He had even unbent far enough, at the Professor’s plea, to speak to old Daaé and request as a humble favour that he should give lessons on his instrument to Raoul. It had been Tante Marguerite’s idea to buy tuition for the boy, but it seemed the old fiddler, to whom music was a sacrament, had in some way taken offence; and it was only with considerable diplomacy on Valerius’ part and assurances from Philippe that no money would change hands that he had been brought to consent.
The Comte had not been accustomed to pay visits to rustic musicians. But Daaé had been respectably dressed, and his playing — Philippe was something of a judge of music — more sophisticated than one would have supposed. According to Tante Marguerite, the daughter performed also: to Philippe’s relief, however, the spectacle of this infant recital, at least, was one to which he had not been subjected.
He had driven back to Lannion that night with the feeling that duty had been done, and with Raoul curled on the seat beside him silent with pure happiness in the dusk. If he had thought of Brittany at all in the hectic months that followed, it had been only to envy the boy his carefree youth and freedom from such arrangements as wedding-breakfasts, bride-portions, and marriage-contracts.
But the summer had ended at last, and with it the final negotiations. Héloïse and Suzanne had been safely married in suitably befitting state, and received their inheritance from their brother’s hands in the form of land in good heart and investments well made. And Raoul had come back for the joint ceremony in the chapel at Chagny with a brown face and bright hair and at least a thumb’s-width of extra height, to be much cosseted by all the dowagers and wept over by the loving brides.
That winter in Brest, he had quietly turned thirteen, and Philippe had engaged him a tutor.
Young Mr. Jackson had been fresh from Oxford University, where he had obtained excellent results and rowed upon the river Thames, and with his coming Tante Marguerite’s household had begun to regain some of its old lively air. The tutor had reported to Philippe that Raoul was applying himself in his studies, that his English was greatly improved, and that he showed interest in going to sea, to which end enquiries might with advantage be pursued. At Tante Marguerite’s request, violin lessons had been arranged for him in the town; but the Vicomte’s enthusiasm had lapsed, and he made only lacklustre progress.
Philippe had shrugged off the latter — music was a fine hobby for a man of leisure, but scarcely a social requirement — and simply written back to cancel the lessons. As for the rest, he was highly pleased with the boy, and had taken pains to let him know it.
He’d given no further thought, then or later, to Perros-Guirec. And if Raoul himself had harboured secret hopes, expectations even, of sitting again at old Daaé’s feet that summer, then he had kept them treasured unspoken in his breast, where they had died. Tante Marguerite, who was feeling her age, had made no further sojourns in Lannion... and the sands at Trestraou were a hundred kilometres away.
| Back | Contents | Continue |
