How life can be
"What have you got there?" Christine asked her daughter.
"It's a magic rose. It plays as it opens. Look!" The rose opened its shining metallic red petals as it played a soft enchanting tune. Margurite looked at it fascinated, and so did her mother.
"Where did you get it?" – "It came in the same package as the music sheets which were sent to you. I opened it. It said especially on this one that it was for me. It's a present for my eighteenth birthday."
Christine could very well understand who had made this rose. He took after his father in much. "Will you accept this gift from Charles?" she asked. "Isn't he much too old for you?" – "Mother! He doesn't court me. We are friends. He likes these beautiful things."- "I know."
After a while Christine said "They plan to come to Paris, all of them, this autumn." Margurite's face brightened. "That's wonderful! I know who will like that – Philippe. He wants to see Charlotte again. I know he has thought of her, and he talks of her a lot." – "That's not good. Your father will not like it. He wants Philippe to court the daughter of one of his friends."
"I like her" Margurite said. "We are rather alike, she and I, although she is blond. We like music and we are almost the same age."
'You are alike' Christine thought 'but fortunately not because of the one reason that could not be.' She remembered what Erik had written to her when she and Raoul had announced that they were expecting a second child: "Please tell me, is she mine?" As if he had wanted the child to be the fruit of their only meeting in New York, and as if he knew it was a girl. With relief she could assure him that the child was no doubt Raoul's. Not long afterwards he and Meg revealed that they too expected another child. In time two girls were born, one christened Margurite, after Christine's favourite opera role, the other christened Charlotte Christine. Erik had insisted on the latter and Meg couldn't say no.
While the Giray family stayed in America, de Chagnys made trips to New York and finally they began to meet. Not often, but enough to keep the contact and to let the children get acquainted. Soon it was obvious that Charles and Margurite developed a special contact, even though he was older. Once Christine said to Erik "We should appreciate it now, that Margurite is not your daughter. If she had been, we would always have had to be careful they don't fall in love, for reasons we can't explain." The one meeting at the hotel was their own deep secret.
Margurite told her mother once: "I asked Charles how he could be so handsome when his father is so ugly, at least under his mask. And he told me he has it from his grandfather. You know Erik's father Charles, who died before the son was born. I can't bear to hear about how mean his mother was to him. Perhaps that's why he loves his children so."
They were an odd couple, Erik and his son. There was no end to the fantastic contraptions they constructed. "You have to show this for the world" Christine once said as she came to visit. Meg agreed. "I tell them so all the time." Finally they dared to take the step and open a small amusement park, which soon was very popular.
Charlotte began to dance, like her mother, but soon she had another interest. She wanted to become a tight-rope walker and she had plenty of opportunities to practice among her father's and brother's stuff, so when they opened the park she performed dancing on a rope high above the people's head.
Philippe and Margurite found the life of their friends exciting, themselves having to behave according to what was expected from them, children of a vicomte. But nothing could stop Margurite from singing. When Erik looked at his son, listening to Margurite singing at one of their visits, he fully understood his feelings. "Lots of girls like you" Charlotte told her brother "but you are not interested." – "You know fully well, little sister" her brother told her "that there is only one girl I want. And I will continue sending her little gifts to show my appreciation."