Deformity is daring;
It is its essence to o'ertake mankind
By heart and soul, and make itself the equal—
Ay, the superior of the rest. There is
A spur in its halt movements, to become
All that the others cannot, in such things
As still are free for both, to compensate
For stepdame Nature's avarice at first.
~ Byron
With Madame Giry's help, Erik's plan was unfolding more smoothly than he could have hoped. In just a few hours Christine would take to the stage to perform her début as Carlotta's replacement - a position that would soon become permanent when he managed to usher the shrill old hag out of the opera once and for all. She would be back in a few days; that could not be helped. The jealousy would drive her to madness, and she would storm in with her usual temper and subordinate those preening managers to her will again. No matter. Erik intended that she resign, and anything that Erik intended at the Opera Populaire always happened sooner or later.
He had prepared an outfit especially for the occasion: a high-necked cape over a sleek dress coat and trousers, a white shirt whose collar barely peeked out from the dark silk of his cravat, and a waistcoat of deep purplish red. The mirror before him presented an image he could almost be proud of. Even with the white mask glimmering like half a skull, he looked sophisticated. Worthy of respect. Christine would be impressed. He repeated the words again and again in his mind, gathering confidence. She would be impressed. She would be impressed.
She might even be awed.
Work was beyond him this afternoon. There was nothing to be done but pacing and fidgeting and gazing into that mirror. His fingertips seemed to trace arcs of fire through the air, his skin crawling with life. He put on his gloves, removed them again, then put them back on.
The day had finally come. Now that it was here, he could scarcely believe that this had not all been a dream, a gorgeous dream from which he would wake before its end. As Christine's eyes settled on him all of this would melt away, and he would spiral into darkness. Then he would stir and sit up in the real world, a world of endless solitude and denied desires. That was the world he belonged in. Not here, where his whole being vibrated with anticipation and joy. Not here, where the chance of happiness hovered so close, close enough to touch.
Erik sat at his organ, then rose again and resumed pacing.
Mid-stride, he froze and strained to catch the sound that he was so sure he had heard. Its echoes were already gone, if they had been there at all. For a few moments he remained still, hardly breathing, waiting for the noise to repeat itself.
Sure enough, a voice called to him once again from the far reaches of the cavern. "Erik!"
Only one person in this opera house knew his real name. Swiftly he cranked the lever that would raise the gate and stepped into his boat, propelling it forwards with one smooth push of the pole. It did not take him long to steer through the yawning arches and passageways to the other shore, where Madame Giry awaited him.
As she came into view he suppressed a jolt of alarm, for there was another figure with her, bundled up in a hooded cloak that hid their features entirely from his keen vision. Wariness gave way to a burst of delight as he guessed who the stranger might be. His old friend had brought Christine down to the lake so that he could speak with her before the performance. Delight, however, was quickly overcome by trepidation and anxiety. If Christine was here now... It was so different from the grand presentation he had imagined. What on earth would she think, being smuggled down here by her adopted mother and introduced to him as a real person instead of her Angel of Music? She now knew his real name. She knew of his relationship with Antoinette Giry. She would guess at his secrets, so soon, so soon! He might yet lose her before he had even begun to win her.
Damn her meddling and her kindness, he thought ferociously of his friend. In her attempts to help she would ruin everything. He was debating a retreat to his cavern in the hope that he would seem aloof and superior, and could recover the situation later that night.
Then a pale, delicate hand emerged from the depths of the cloak and slowly drew back the hood. Erik paused in the act of stalling his boat. Christine's image flashed across his mind in that instant - but the wide-spaced, luminous blue eyes that stared back at him did not belong to his protégé. The soft, full mouth was not Christine's, nor the celestial nose, the tangled bronze hair or the heart-shaped face. There was no resemblance whatsoever between the object of his love and this young woman.
"What is the meaning of this?" he managed to hiss, his vessel still floating a few yards from the shore where the pair of women huddled.
"Erik," Antoinette Giry repeated in a much quieter voice, as though afraid the stone around them might be listening. "This is Delia. She needs our help, desperately. Bring the boat - let us step onto it, and we may talk in your house."
The phantom recoiled from her words, his expression clouding over. "Invite a stranger into my home?" he snarled. "You are mad."
"She can do no harm. Please, Erik. Her fate depends on you."
Another cursory glance at the girl revealed that she was not as preened and pretty as he first thought. Dirt had worked its way into her skin, marring its creamy surface and making her seem older than she was. There was a wildness in her look that did not belong to the prim and proper ballerinas of the opera, or the powdered faces of their female audiences. It was a defensive gaze, at once terrified and bold. Should he startle her, Erik was almost certain she would lash out.
"Why?" he spat finally. "Why does she need our help?"
"I will explain, if you welcome us in. If you disagree with my explanation, then you may cast her out again. I cannot stop you. It is, as you say, your home. But you must listen to me first, and to her, if you will."
The girl - Delia - was gaping at Madame Giry with an expression of horror. Presumably she had been told that her stay here was certain, that she was now in safe hands. The thought made Erik quiver with indignation. Antoinette had the audacity to predict his decisions, as though she knew him intimately. Despite all she had done for him, they were not close. How could they be?
"This is not a good time," he growled. "It is not appropriate. Not tonight. Christine's début..."
"No emergencies are appropriately timed, Erik," Antoinette sighed. "You were hardly a convenience to stow away. It did not stop me. You remember the night I brought you here, with that scrap of sacking over your head. Just a boy. Nowhere to go."
Once more he permitted his eyes to travel to that young woman, and guilt slashed at his torso. No matter how much he protested, he could not turn her away now that he had seen her, now that she was imploring him silently with those large eyes, the only clean and bright things in her grimy face. He could not dismiss her - at least, not until he had heard her story. After that he might still be able to wash his hands of this inconvenience in time for the performance. Begrudgingly, he manoeuvred the boat until its bow touched the stone platform that the women stood on.
"Come," Madame Giry commanded the girl as she boarded. Clinging to her protector with that slim, white hand protruding from the cloak, Delia stepped unsteadily into the hull and endeavoured to keep her balance. "Sit," came the next order, and she obeyed once again with clumsy fear.
Turning the vessel about skilfully, Erik set off at an urgent pace. The sooner he heard this story and had done with it, the sooner he could go back to his ritual of pacing and glancing in the mirror. When the gate loomed over their heads and they finally ground to a halt, it took the girl a few seconds to rise with Antoinette's help, and Erik grew impatient and irritable with every wasted moment. Delia was unsteady as she reclaimed solid ground, and stood shivering and staring about her while the older woman waited for Erik to offer them seats. He did not.
"So tell me," he insisted, "what this is about. Is she in danger?"
"Yes," Madame Giry answered slowly.
"Imminent danger? Danger of death?"
"Well, not exactly."
"What, then? What could possibly have driven you to bring her here, to me?" he demanded as his volume rose.
"I was visiting Jules' grave," Antoinette referred hurriedly to her late husband. "I was in the carriage, watching the streets roll by. And peering out of an alleyway, I saw her. Barefoot, bedraggled. It was all I could do to throw my cloak over her and bring her straight here."
"There are a thousand street urchins in Paris," Erik retorted. "She can fend for herself like the others."
"No, she cannot. She has only been there for a few weeks. I feared that if I left her..."
He readied another argument, but bit back his words as his gaze slid over Delia again. Tears glinted at the rims of her blue eyes, threatening to spill over in a cascade of wretched fright and misery. Street urchin or not, who was he to condemn her to the horrors that she had come from? He would be no better than the tyrants at this opera, who would cast him out if they could find him.
No. Christine was all that mattered. He was meeting her tonight, this night of paramount importance. He was so close to his goal. He could not afford to let weakness destroy his chance, not now that his plan had unfolded so smoothly. She was almost his. It was only a matter of hours, and then she would belong to him. At last, he would be freed from his torment of solitude.
Madame Giry seemed to have run out of words, for she looked askance at Delia. "Show him," she said suddenly.
"No," the girl pleaded, "do not make me. He does not want me here - do not add to my humiliation."
"Humiliation?" he repeated, his attention caught for the first time.
"Take me back outside," Delia begged. "I am a burden. I knew I would be."
Her voice was high pitched with barely concealed panic, but sweet nonetheless. A well mannered speech, despite the abruptness of her words. She did not sound like a street urchin. She sounded like an educated young lady, merely stirred into a frenzy by her circumstances. Somehow that was the detail that tipped him towards genuine curiosity. Now he really did want to know why she was here, what she could possibly be hiding.
"Show me," he echoed.
His tone brooked no opposition. Delia's lips trembled slightly, and then - gradually - she brought up her hand to move the cloak aside. Erik was expecting to see the bulge of her belly, swollen with child, her hidden arm wrapped protectively around its shape. Instead he gave a gasp and leapt back, his eyes thrown wide open as though trying to gain clarity, to dispel a vision or trick of the light.
Antoinette helped the girl to remove the cloak entirely, and her body was bared to him in all its distortion, scarcely made modest by the tattered and grubby rags she wore. Her left hand was bent at an odd angle, its fingers hanging useless like so many motionless white sticks. Her elbow was crooked, as was her left leg, which twisted to the side and forced her foot to rest almost on tiptoe. Colour spread across her cheeks like wildfire, and she dropped her head into her good hand, trying to shield herself from his gaze.
"She lived with her aunt," Madame Giry explained in a low voice. "Her parents gave her up when she was three. When the signs began to show. Now her aunt is dead, and there is no-one left to shelter her. She will be beaten to death in the street, or else captured by gypsies."
Erik had no need for the knowing look Antoinette bent towards him with those words.
"So she lived with a relative, did she," he said finally. "Then she was much more fortunate than I. More fortunate than any devil's child could hope to be. What happened to the aunt's money, then? Could she not live comfortably off that?"
"My Aunt Fleur was not rich, Monsieur," Delia whispered, catching him by surprise. "She was taken with a fever, and we could not afford a doctor."
With the breath heaving through his nostrils, he could only glare at the wretched thing with a mixture of pity and loathing. No words came to him. There was only the furious drumming of his heart, and the name still throbbing through his body as it had been all day. Christine. Christine. Christine.
He would not give up his plans for the sake of sympathy. He refused to surrender this opportunity, the chance that he had been waiting for ever since Christine had become a woman. He had been waiting too long. He had suffered too much. Nobody could expect him to sacrifice what little consolation he had, the only thing he had ever treasured in life besides music.
"Can she stay?" Antoinette asked, leaving him no more room for delay. The question was there, plain and simple. "Erik?"
His hands balled into fists, and with a scowl that would have sent brave men running for their lives, he levelled his hard gaze at Delia.
"She can stay," he muttered.