Fantôme – Chapter 10, Part 1

Catch up with Fantôme from the beginning

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In Raoul’s journal from that night, I can only assume (for it is not an artefact I have found) that there were tear-stains and ruminations on who Erik might have been, for the servants who lay above him or crept around the great house hoping to anticipate their master’s needs heard stifled sobs, periodically punctured with great, heavy sighs and sniffs, and endless scratching like pen to paper. One maid, on lighting the fire in Philippe’s study the morning after, found the crystal inkwell missing, but saw it quietly replaced by breakfast-time. Had Raoul written enough to exhaust his own paltry supply of ink?

In the weeks that followed, it seemed that the young master was sick: he preferred the company of his sister-in-law, who acted almost as a nurse, and eschewed society more widely to stay at home. It took three weeks for Élise to persuade him to attend her salon, where he was charming and polite, but her eyebrow arched as Raoul stared out of the window when music was played, and she noted that his laugh, though given freely, was a little hollow.

Servants noticed the almost-but-not-quite edge to Raoul’s behaviour, too: he came to every meal and ate hardly anything, but sneaking to the kitchen like a little boy later he would request heavy English-style puddings, or cheese on toast, and ate those in large, animalistic bites that might almost be called hearty. He told Charlotte, the aging scullery maid who shared the room with his old nurse, that taste had almost completely gone from him, but heft and sweetness caused something approximating pleasure. She suggested that a little sunlight and a walk would cure most things, but Raoul went pale at the suggestion. Indeed, the only exercise he got those days was pacing in the library, which he did for hours at a time, and it was noted that the young master had not put his outdoor shoes on for weeks now.

As Élise contemplated asking her servants, with whom Raoul was spending more time than was quite proper, what the matter was – a matter of several days’ thought for her – Raoul’s trance seemed to end miraculously when he received a letter in an old-fashioned feminine hand, heavily scented of violet to quite an off-putting degree, and promptly went calling that very afternoon. Though she did not know quite who it was from, she assumed this was a love matter and was quite relieved it was not the singer-girl, who would not afford such expensive perfumes or be capable of writing copperplate, who had summoned him. The servants, too, were glad that there was something forcing their master’s hand: there had been quiet back-stairs debates about how they might tell the young man to become himself again, with care and delicacy, before he did damage to his reputation and his body that would take some time to undo. Unlike the Countess, though, they were sure the sudden success of the letter was in some way connected to Christine Daaé.

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