They met rough weather on the last day of the voyage, and were three hours late in docking. Raoul, with the hesitant intimacy of shipboard acquaintance, found himself offering to assist old Groscek with his baggage on the quay: the single case was meagre enough, and the old Jew had less chance than most of catching the eyes of the overworked porters amid the crowd. The docks were rainswept and chill, and the other man was shivering in a too-thin overcoat.
“That’s very kind of you, monsieur.” Groscek yielded his burden with a grimace of relief. “They say there is a good commercial hotel in the rue de Chaverie — there may be rooms enough there—”
He glanced around at the stranded, sullen passengers, and up again at Raoul a little awkwardly. “I have accommodation reserved, monsieur. It’s not much, but if you are in need for the night...”
The old man evidently had a pretty fair idea of the state of his pockets. Raoul overcame a moment of instinctive negation, flushing, and managed a few words of acknowledgement, touched by the gesture.
“Much obliged, but there’s a late train — I’ll wait. I’m expected in town, and...” The words caught unexpectedly in his throat. “My wife’s remains—”
It was the first time he had spoken of it to a stranger. He turned aside to forestall the inevitable pity, the facile words of sympathy that convention would dictate. There would be a long-lost Gretl or Lena, no doubt...
“I had... wondered,” Groscek said quietly from beside him. They walked on for a few minutes towards the gate in silence. “Then I can only give thanks for the strength of your arm, monsieur.”
He laid a hand on Raoul’s sleeve. “If you could set the bag down here, by the side of the road...”
A heavy dray rolled past on the route into town, spattering them both, but the old man did not move. “I can find a conveyance from here... and I would not keep you longer from your duty to your wife.”
Raoul met his gaze at last. There was pity in it, a vast dignified sorrow that somehow did not encroach, and he held out his hand on impulse in sympathy of his own.
Groscek took it with a moment’s brief pressure and released him. “You should go to her, monsieur.”
Raoul bent his head in acknowledgement and turned to go. He glanced back once, halfway down the quayside. But the solitary figure waiting had not moved.
His own possessions, piled haphazardly by the tracks as they had been unloaded, made a pitiful showing in the damp. Of all that hopeful mountain of baggage they’d taken to America, little enough, it seemed, had ever been his.
There’d been a whole trunk of Gustave’s clothes, for all weathers and all occasions, packed up at the last minute when he’d yielded to Christine’s pleading for the boy to come too — oh God, if only he had not. If only...
Cases and cases of costumes for Christine: gala dresses, old hats newly trimmed, last year’s fashions re-cut and stitched to bring them up to date, so that the Vicomtesse de Chagny should not be shamed in the face of the Astors or the Vanderbilts. No: so that the Vicomte should not be shamed.
Christine had not cared. Christine had been happy in an old tea-gown, with her hair tumbling at her throat. Christine’s beauty had graced every jewel he had ever given her, yet she had sold them again for his sake without blame or regret.
And Raoul’s life, stripped from the sum of hers and Gustave’s, amounted now to no more than a few shabby bags... and a lead-lined casket.
Mr. Y’s charity had included a second-class travel warrant for Paris. The late train, when it was finally formed up, proved to have no passenger accommodation.
Raoul, weary to the bone, sought and obtained permission to remain with his consignment due to the nature of the load; the conductor offered hot coffee with a seat in the brake car and garrulous sympathy. The coffee would have been welcome.
He jolted eastwards through the dusk in a half-daze, shivering. Towards midnight, alone with the lantern in the darkened van, he found himself talking to Christine, resting his aching head against the box which held her as if she could hear him there. He was not far enough gone to believe it — yet.
But the words came more and more easily, whispered against that rough wooden pillow: memories of the life he’d promised her, of the future they’d planned, of childhood and friendship and love. A child come too soon, and a child adored. Music had brought her to him and stolen her away; become a mystery where he could no longer follow. And now she was gone further than he could ever hope to find her...
What do I do now, Christine? What are we to do? No answer. There would never be an answer for them again.
Wheels rumbled on, counting kilometres slowly, inexorably away. Raoul drifted into uneasy dreams and woke at last, that rhythm still beating through his brain, as the van door slid open and lantern-light rocked across his face.
“Paris, monsieur.”
Formalities, stumbled through with a sleepy clerk.
The first market wagons — the last stumbling revellers: no-one in the streets spared him a glance. Their house when he came to it was shuttered as if for a funeral, quiet before the dawn.
At the door there was a long wait until Baptiste in hastily-donned livery could pull back the bolts, heavy-eyed. He caught sight of himself in the tall pier-glass behind the manservant’s shoulder, with the same shock he’d seen swiftly veiled beneath the man’s professional mask: it was a face he barely knew. Haggard, unshaven, old.
“If monsieur le Vicomte would like breakfast—”
The man was about to raise the whole household for his convenience, no doubt. Raoul waved the suggestion aside — he couldn’t remember when he had last eaten — seeing his home through new eyes as the auctioneer would assess it. That mirror was tarnished, its frame chipped. The table in the hall was old-fashioned, clumsy in the Louis-Philippe style. The balusters on the half-landing were battered and worn where Gustave’s toy horse had crashed against them too many times; the heavy drapes at the window were threadbare even by gaslight.
It would all have to go, of course. As would the servants: behind Baptiste’s solicitations he could hear the obsequious contempt of three months’ wages still unpaid. Without Christine, the creditors would come swarming. Without Christine, he was no longer sure he even cared.
Without Christine... It swept over him again, and he caught his breath. “Does she know?”
Baptiste was tugging at the buttons of his overcoat; fussing with his scarf. Raoul thrust him off impatiently. “Does she know — Anne? Miss Anne? Has she been told?”
He was halfway to the sweep of the staircase already, not waiting for the answer. Baptiste had moved to detain him, correct and disapproving; he’d never held with his master’s unseemly attitude to Miss Anne, let alone at this hour.
“She’s been told, of course, monsieur. But whether she understands...” A shrug. “One cannot say: Monsieur knows how these things are. She still asks for Madame.”
A moment of softening in that rigid back; even among the servants, Christine had been beloved. It was a gift Raoul too had once possessed. Had lost, as he had lost the right to all else.
He took the steps two at a time, ignoring stiffened limbs and Baptiste’s words of protest. It was his house, after all, and the nursemaids were in his employ. He could enter if he chose.
Old Nounou, vast and mob-capped in her nightrail, started up from her bed, catching at his arm and scolding, as he flung open the nursery door. He held her off with placatory words and turned up the light; but all his thought was only for Anne.
Anne, sitting upright in the little bed by the window, with her mother’s hair, her mother’s eyes. Anne, holding wondering arms out towards him with the confidence of one who has always been most deeply loved. Anne, who was all that remained to him in this life...
Somehow, he had crossed the stumbling distance that separated them and her arms were round his neck as he knelt, hugging tight. Her small body was held close against his, and tangled curls brushed his sleeve. Raoul buried his face in her covers — the child who had stolen his heart from the moment she was born — and felt the dam break at last.
“Don’t cry, Papa — don’t cry.” The little fingers above him touched his hair hesitantly, as her mother used to do. “Maman will make it better. Maman will come soon, you’ll see.”
“Oh, Anne...” He was not sure if his heart would break, or if it had already broken. Please pretend — she will understand, Christine; she will understand in time...
The sun rose, slowly, over the rooftops beyond. Behind shuttered windows Anne-Élisabeth de Chagny held her father in the strange world of adult grief, and waited for him to come back to her.
There would be flowers on the breakfast-table, she thought. There were always flowers when her Papa came home — and he loved her more than anything in the whole world, except Maman. Except, of course, Maman.
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