Fantôme – Chapter 11, Part 1

In which the lovers admit to each other the depth of their feelings.

Catch up with Fantôme from the beginning

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It was the very next day that a ragamuffin child came calling for Viscomte Raoul de Chagny saying he was from the Opera. Shooed away from the front he tried the back, and was given a piece of best bread by the kitchen staff to wait with whilst the Viscomte came down.

The kitchen knew the generosity of the de Chagny heart, and of course neither brother could chastise them for feeding the urchin as the footmen and housekeeper might. The Viscomte sat right down next to the boy, made the little tyke comfortable among all the busy bustle and grand coppers by tearing off his own hunk of bread and eating with his hands just as rude as the lad. He even ducked into the cold store and took a chunk of ham with his pocket-knife, giving the hungry boy the bigger portion by far. The two sat together, chatting about the boys who sailed little boats in the Tuileries Garden, and when their little snacquette had finished and Raoul had corralled the little boy into washing his hands and ears they strode out together towards the 1st Arondissiment for the Tuileries. The kitchen staff, in the warmth they were glad to see in their melancholic young master, quite forgot that the boy was sent by somebody at the Opera. They were none the wiser of the message Raoul had received, which he bade the boy tell him en route – the gardens of the 1st being in the same direction as the 9th, and the Opera being his destination in the 9th. The little boy, belly full of the best food he’d had since Christmas, chatted nineteen-to-the-dozen and readily accepted Raoul’s tips for a homemade sailing vessel that might rival even the richest boys’.

Raoul found Mademoiselle Daaé in her dressing room, as she had said he would. He brought her not delicate pastries or hothouse flowers, but breakfast, just as she liked it – rustic, savoury, and nourishing. She poured him fine tea into her best China and they both felt bashful for a moment, before the conversation began. Somewhat too politely, Christine asked him about his post in the army: “and spare no detail,” she said, “for I am ignorant of officer commissions and regiment structures, not taking the papers in the mornings.”

He smiled. “I can’t say I much enjoy news-reading myself, it somehow makes one less grateful for his eggs to see others’ suffering. I prefer to look out of the windows and help where I can.”

“Oh, but monsieur, you must have seen more of the world than me!”

“One day there will be a great Opera-House in Africa, and then you can travel as much as a soldier, and for better purpose!”

They both laughed gaily, imagining a bright vision where Christine might have wooed the Kanem–Bornu Empire with song, Raoul standing shoulder-to-shoulder with foreign troops trying to catch a glimpse of Great Art instead of face-to-face with them, a bayonet’s distance apart.

“Is there not Opera in Africa?” she asked, surprised.

“None that I saw, though their men were very dedicated to the task of killing us and might have enlisted their singers into the army. We heard much drumming from their encampments, and very tuneful it was too, and I couldn’t help but think how your father would have understood their ways better than me. Of course Königsberg had the kind of entertainments I was used to, in their own way. Their Opera has electric lighting all throughout, and was frequented by the Kaiser and his family, who are a strange bunch but have boundless energy for all things modern. Do you know Herr Wagner’s music? That was the sort of thing they were accustomed to at Prussia – terribly serious, no ballet and even under their electric lights they did not choose bold and gaudy costumes. They fund the sciences, and want even the Arts to be a kind of science.”

Again, she laughed, and professed her knowledge of the composer to be limited even as she thrust her shoulders back and sang some short section of Isolde’s Liebestod.

“I would give anything to be your father,” he said, “Able to see great musicians on every stage and find companionship with all. To travel the world is a fine thing,” he sighed, “but as a soldier I am compelled to turn all the world to France. Vivre la republique! Of course, and I know a Frenchman has greater honour and dignity than any other, we fly the very colours of libertie, equalitie and fraternatie which I fight for with ferocity and pride – but I might learn as much from an African as an Englishman, if I had the conventions in common with them. Your father needed no language, for music surpasses words, and he loved tradition so very much that all respected him when he asked them to share.”

He had been speaking into his teacup sheepishly, and when he looked up he saw Christine’s eyes bright and wet with tears.

“I feel earnestly that you understood his mission,” she said.

“But of course! All those years at his feet, how could I not?”

“Ah, perhaps you misunderstand me – you see, in growing up alongside my father’s mission, hearing tales from all across Europe and Scandinavia and England told in song, that I feared I was the only one who did not simply respect him academically, on a technical level, but saw the world through his eyes. Oh, Viscomte! It means the world to me that you, like I, imbibed the values he proclaimed and saw the possibilities in the life he lived! Papa was lucky to always have patrons, but if only he had been willing to push himself in social circles, be more influential… perhaps I would have travelled to Africa or Persia as an ambassador, and for music’s sake we might know more about the great, wide world!”

Raoul threw himself onto his knees before her.

“Marry me! Christine, I am a humble man, but I am an aristocrat – I could give you the life where you could be that influence, be the ambassador of music! And besides, there is no greater requisite for a happy marriage than a shared outlook and mutual respect. I would give you my life, Christine, and all at my disposal to shape as you will, because I respect your outlook and believe that you are equal to the task. Oh, it is a lucky man who finds a woman he understands, he wants to lavish himself upon, and who is good and kind and virtuous all in one face, one soul, one smile! Oh, Christine, why do you turn away?”

For she had. The young lady was smiling beatifically, her face was wet, her body twisted and her arms closed in before her chest. She held her saucer, still, which caught her fresh tears and the tea that sloshed about as she trembled.

“Oh Raoul! You must be a soldier, for you feel no fear. Did you not hear me say that you will be killed?”

“Christine if I were, and it were in service of making your life into that which you deserve, I might very well consider it a life well lived.”

At this she laughed merrily, her voice twinkling even as tears continued to fall from her eyes.

“I tell you honestly Raoul that I can never be married to you. That contract, solemn in the eyes of God, is not a promise I am at liberty to make. But an engagement – the youthful, honest promise that, should I ever marry, it will be you – that would not be a lie. Raoul, if we were secretly engaged, if you told no soul and I too were quiet, and we simply promise that we love each other, that we shall love each other until death, no matter what Providence has in store… would that satisfy you?”

“No aspect of your love could ever fill me. I solemnly promise that I shall take what you bestow, and simply wait for the rest, even if it shall be the grave for one of us before it comes to fruition. I will take a great satisfaction from knowing that you shall love me ever thus, and I swear before God himself Christine that I shall keep my promise, my childish promise, that I could never marry anyone but you. Yes! An engagement, however secret, would be my joy!”

And she whispered, no longer crying, clasping her hands to his, “Then let it be so, my darling! Let us swear before God our idolatrous love, that He may, in his infinite wisdom, understand, that you might be my idol but our love is as holy as Heaven.”

Raoul laughed like a schoolboy, and the two spent all day proclaiming their love. Her secretive smile lasted all through that evening’s performance, and when he went home he slept soundly for the first time in months.

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