A letter from Christine. Erik sat utterly still and felt the eyes of both women on him. He wanted to rip the letter from Meg's hand. He wanted to run from the room. But he would not let himself fall into madness again. The letter would be a wedding invitation, of course. He would know that she was happy.
"May I hear it?" he asked, and he did not miss Meg's glance to her mother, nor Giry's slight nod. He smiled to himself. Had his control always been a sham? Regardless. Meg read the letter.
It was astonishing—a bare ten lines, most of which were hopes for Meg's and her mother's safety. And then the shocking bit: "I am going to the country," she wrote. "I'm not exactly sure where. As kind as they are, I don't think that they'll let me marry Raoul. If this finds you, darling Meg, please send a reply through Mme. Henri, the Chagny cook. Oh, I hope to find you!"
Erik and Giry sat back and stared at one another. Not marry the boy? What would become of her, poor girl? He could not imagine what would have happened. He had to remind himself to breathe calmly.
"Bah," Giry said after a moment. "I should have known." Erik stared at her in surprise.
"What do you mean, Maman?" Meg asked.
Giry scowled. "It's the parents, of course. Oh Meg, you and she were bound to learn that lesson soon, but I did hope it would be different for poor Christine. And for you," she added, tapping her daughter's cheek. She sighed. "But the world is what it is, and Christine was an opera singer who is now penniless, and her Vicomte is nobility. I'm sure that if he wanted her for a mistress it would be fine"—Erik gripped the arms of his chair so fiercely that the wood creaked—"but marriage? In all my years, I have seen that happen once, and it did not end happily." Meg made a miserable little sound in the back of her throat. "She was a chorus girl too, and the man in question was barely noble. He was a Chevalier whose father had bought his title. But society is not kind to usurpers. She was snubbed everywhere they went. After a year, she gave birth to a stillborn son and followed him quickly. Poor girl. I lost my taste for gentlemen after that."
"When was that, Maman?"
"I was seventeen, my dear, and she was my good friend. They made her give us all up, you know, after the wedding. But she still wrote to me sometimes. I think it was a relief to her to follow her dead son." Giry stared hard into the fire. "Her name was Jeanne." Then she shook herself slightly and smiled down at her daughter. "Once I stopped looking for flash, I began to see goodness, which was how I first noticed your father."
Erik was amazed. He had known none of this. When she was seventeen, he had still been a boy, living on a heap of pilfered sacks and curtains, reading any book he could nab and still painfully teaching himself to read music, to write, and to understand the set designs that were his door to architecture. He remembered dimly that Giry had visited him first more often than usual, then less, and that he had responded to missing her by ever more study. He had worn a rag tied around his face since he took up residence in the cellars—it was during this period that he constructed his first masks. The search for materials led him upstairs to the Opéra and sparked his habit of lurking in the flies. He had thought that he knew all the workings of his home, that he had a keen eye for detail. Yet he had missed all of this. He had never once thought to ask Giry what lay behind the sadness or joy in her face or to be curious about her thoughts. He told her this and tried to ignore the open shock on Meg's face.
Giry smiled at him. "This is just as we argued earlier, is it not? You were a child—we were both children. Besides, had anyone once been interested in your own thoughts?" Erik shook his head. "So it is no surprise that you did not think of it." The weight of all he did not know seemed enormous.
"Has anyone still?" Meg asked. Erik stared at her. "I mean—even now, has anyone asked you such things?"
Erik opened his mouth, then closed it. Giry was a very picture of consternation. He opened his mouth again, closed it again. He had kept Giry at a distance with his bullying; he had kept Christine away through sheer admiration. He had told himself that the mirror tricks and mystery were part of a scheme of seduction, when really they were to protect him against rejection.
It was a sight neither woman had ever expected to see: the Phantom laughed.