Lydie whimpered as Journey pulled her along, her much shorter legs unable to cope with her elder sister's long-legged, furious strides. At last, the blind girl picked her little sister up in one arm, using the other to guide herself along.
"Come along, Lydie," Journey encouraged. "We'll find a place at the Opera to stay for the night and I'll take you home to Mama in the morning, while that drunkard is still asleep." That is, if Maman is still alive when morning comes… The thought chilled her down to her very bones and she shivered, glad of the cloak she had grabbed out of habit off the hook by the door.
Completely blind, Journey Du Chagney had had to rely on objects never moving from a certain place for all of her life, and she had been lucky that the servants were kind enough to remember her limitations.
"But I want to go to Mama now…" Lydie whimpered through a mouthful of her left thumb. "Papa hurts her ears when he yells."
"He hurts a great deal more than that, ma soeur," thought Journey grimly, but she did not voice her concerns to her little sister. "We'll go back soon, Lydie. For now, wouldn't you like to see Uncle André?"
The diversionary tactic worked its charm; the little girl squirmed and giggled in her arms. "Oui, oui, je veux voir M'sieu André!"
Journey laughed. "Then off we shall go to see him. Read me the next street sign, Lydie." Her mother had faithfully taught her the layout of Paris by using a map written in Braille and teaching her to count her steps from one location to the other. Experimenting, she had once walked with her mother down to the dress shop that was just past the famous Opera House and remembered the number of steps then had been five hundred and ten and that the number of steps to the Opera house had been twenty less. She had just reached the count of four hundred steps in her mind when she heard Lydie gasp in delight. "Journey, Journey, see the Opera! See how pretty it is! Oh, there is a showing tonight, see the pretty ladies in their dresses!"
Smiling gently, knowing her sister did not understand that she could not see, she nodded and set Lydie down. "Take me to the front steps, Lydie and we'll see the pretty women together." She prayed André would be there and fervently hoped that he could at least give her a place to stay until Raoul calmed down somewhat.
Tugged on by her sister, hoping that she would not collide with anything or anyone as she was pulled along, she didn't stop until Lydie had pulled her to the steps and they had caught their breaths.
"Is that little Journey Du Chagney I spy, taking her pretty sister Lydie out for a walk?" André's kindly voice startled her by being so close; in the noise of the day, she hadn't heard him come up behind her.
She turned and smiled brilliantly at him, her accuracy in pinpointing the position of his body in relation to his voice quite astounding. "Not so little any more, M'sieu André."
He laughed and swung Lydie into his arms for a tickle. "Ah, you grow so fast. I remember when you were as small as this one here and called me oncle instead of stuffy old M'sieu."
She laughed and curled her arm in his when she felt him take it. "All right, mon oncle, you win. Lydie here wants to see the pretty women. Is there a showing tonight?"
"Yes, but not for another hour. Those are the actors and actresses you see going in, cherie," he informed Lydie as he nuzzled her, his moustache making her giggle. "Come, I'll let you watch the ballerinas dance if you promise to stay very quiet."
Lydie's eyes lit up and she turned to her sister, deferring to her judgment faithfully. "May I, Journey? Please, please? S'il te plait?"
Journey laughed, curling her arm a little tighter into André's as she felt him guide her up the imposing stone stairs of the Opera. "So long as you do exactly as Oncle André says and stay very quiet while you watch."
"I will, I will! Je promets!"
"Then of course you may," André replied for Journey. "Madame Giry?" He called out in the cacophonous tumult of excited voices and half-sung notes cascading through the halls of the Opera, which they were now easily traversing.
"Oui, M'sieu?" A young-featured woman possessing hair as soft and golden in hue as Journey's appeared nearby, dressed in rehearsal leotards and body suit. Her glance slid over the young girl in his arms and froze at the sight of Journey, but André was already speaking.
"I'd like for you to allow this charming one to watch your girls rehearse and prepare for the show tonight. Her name is Lydie Du Chagney, and she promises to be very, very good and not make a sound to bother you or any of your girls, isn't that right, Lydie?"
The little girl, proud at having her own opinion asked, sat straighter in her uncle's arms and nodded most seriously. "Oui, c'est vrai."
Meg Giry smiled indulgently and offered her arms to the little girl, who willingly went to them. "Then come along. I'll even show you where you may watch the show, if you like." She carried Lydie off down the hall, smiling at her squeal of delight.
Journey looked blindly after the two until André laid a hand on her arm and steered her wordlessly into the quiet of his shared office. He had taken on a new partner some years ago, after the previous one, M'sieu Firman had died of a heart attack. The opera had been hard enough to control with a partner financially after the escapade with Journey's mother and the mob, which he had persuaded to leave the underground lair after some fast talking. Something had told him to forget avenging the deaths of a drunkard wings man and a pompous, off-key Italian tenor, and he had led the mob off after they had destroyed half the house they had found so far below.
Shaking off the dreamy memories that often found themselves coupled with a beautiful woman possessing haunting light green eyes, he seated Journey across from him and sat behind his desk, reaching out his hand to touch hers. "Now, what brings you here, cherié?"
Journey looked down for an instant, feeling suddenly hopeless and very foolish. She had no right to barge in here like some starry-eyed diva and demand a post in the most famed Opera House in Paris! She, a blind cripple, who had no formal training to boast of, a diva? Impossible… "I…" She faltered, and André gently squeezed her hand.
"It's all right, Journey. You can tell me anything. Go on," he encouraged when she seemed about to stop.
"I – I need a place to stay for a while… F – Raoul has been increasingly unkind to me…"
André's fingers twitched slightly in startlement. The young Vicomte that had been the Opera's most highly-regarded patron for many years along with the rest of his family had never seemed able to perform an unkind act towards anyone. But, as André knew well from experience, times changed a man. However, he had never heard such condemning hatred in a girl's voice towards her father. There had been rumours that the Vicomte had become abusive and vile-tempered following the birth of his first daughter – some of the rumours said that he had even caused Journey's blindness. But André had thought them to be only slander; not worthy of a moment's more attention. Surely, this was only a case of a young, rebellious daughter forbidden something she wanted dearly… "Unkind in what way, Journey?" He had to hear the words himself.
"More to Maman than to me," she admitted, and André felt his heart give a lively, startled jump in his chest.
"Your mother, how is she doing?" Fondness entered his voice, for over the years since she had left the Opera, André had grown increasingly closer to the child-woman who had caused such a fuss twenty years ago with her thrilling voice and dark love affair. "I usually see her in the market every week, but she wasn't there this week. How is she?"
"Probably in l'hopital by now," Journey replied flatly. "Raoul hurts her for no reason other than his pigheaded stupidity."
André paled. Raoul Du Chagney an abuser? Unthinkable! And yet… He remembered the lines around Christine's eyes, the fading marks on her arms and the bruises below her eyes. "Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?"
Journey exhaled a shuddering breath of relief and sorrow. "Perhaps not for her, but for me…"
"Anything, Journey, you know that… You have only to ask." He covered her tiny hands with his again and squeezed gently.
"A… a place to stay for a while…" She faltered again. "And, if you can, a job here, something to support me away from home…" There, she'd said it. Nervously awaiting his answer, she twisted her hands beneath his, unconsciously imitating her mother in such a way as to soften André's heart further towards her.
He smiled, and she could hear it in his voice. "You know, it is times like these that remind me there is a good God watching down on me. Just today, I have sent out an advertisement in the paper for a soprano chorus girl – you are still in that range, is that true?"
Her blind eyes shining, she nodded her head excitedly. "Yes, yes, I am! Maman has been training me whenever…" Here, she faltered again. "Whenever she can." Her tone told André that there were too many times when Christine Daaé had been incapable of doing so.
"And she received the best training in all of Paris, so you will be head and shoulders above the others who apply," André put in smoothly, wondering for a moment what Erik's reaction would be, and then chiding himself for caring. Since Carlotta's niece Suzette had been cast as diva when the distraught opera singer, her aunt, had resigned after her husband's death, André hadn't seen much of his old friend. And since that last meeting in the office when André had secured for him his normal apartment nearby the Populaire in Paris three weeks ago, he hadn't seen him at all.
Journey fell silent for a few moments. "She used to tell me tales of her Angel… And whenever I asked her why she left the Opera, she would always begin to cry and beg me not to ask any more questions…"
"Some things are better left unexplained, Journey…" André's kindly voice was sad. "But," and he released her hands here to clap his sharply, "first things first. I shall commission for you a room to sleep in, and I'll see to it that you've food and clothes for a few days until we can set up a rehearsal for you."
She gasped softly, bringing her delicate hands to her mouth in a gesture so like her mother that André had to smile. "You truly mean it? I may stay here? Oh, oncle André, thank you, thank you!" She rose and blindly groped her way towards him, he stepping quickly around his desk to prevent her from doing any harm to herself. "Anytime, my dear, any time… After the show, I shall take you to see what room we have in this sprawling old place for you… Will you sister be staying here as well?"
"Only for tonight, if that is all right? I can't take her home in the dark, and it would be frightening for her if Raoul is still angry…"
"That's perfectly all right, my dear… I'll have Phillipe take her home in the morning." He smiled as he spoke of his eldest son, then glanced towards his desk where a letter lay from another man, whom he considered as much of a son as either of his boys. "Now, would you like to come listen to the show? I'll let you take Richard's seat, as he isn't here anyway."
"M'sieu Richard is ill?" She asked, entwining her arm with his when he took her hand.
"No, simply lazy." André laughed at the startlement she exuded. "Well, he is. As point of fact…" He paused, having been about to say how little Erik thought of him as well, and curtailed it. "I must remember to speak with him about this. He's not to miss performances."
She laughed and the beauty of it, like the giggling of a happy brook, made him smile and shiver in delight. "Ever the businessman."
"Well, someone must be. Come along, or we'll miss the opening act." Arm in arm, they walked down the halls into the vast auditorium where the Opera's lights were just dimming.
As Journey lost herself in the music and voices flowing forth from the stage, André found his mind returning to the letter on his desk and to the man who had written it.
Angels in the Opera once more… He shook off his thoughts and settled in to enjoy the show.
