Ch 4 – The Silent Role

I still don't know how I had the courage to do it.

The initial idea was Meg's – she was always braver than I. We had been talking, as usual, late into the night (a practice which made Mme Giry shake her head; but she allowed us much more freedom than she had in the old days), when Meg fell quiet.

Finally, she said, "If you really want to get into the old Opera House, I can think of a method. But it will be dangerous. That entire area is dangerous now."

"Tell me," I begged, and she did, though hesitantly.

The following day, Meg and I went out shopping. We purchased some secondhand boys' clothes from a rag-and-bone man, passing them off as a gift for the poor. We also purchased a waterproof box of matches and a folding pocket-knife. As we had many parcels that day, these went unremarked by Mme Giry.

On the next night when there was no moon, I stayed awake until long after the rest of the household was fast asleep. I dressed myself in the boys' clothes we had purchased, tucking my long hair up under a cap and pulling the brim down over my face. The matches and knife went into my pocket, along with one of the spare candles from the drawer of the bedside table.

Cautiously I crept down the stairs, being careful to make no noise, and let myself out. Once outside, I smudged my face and hands with dirt so that my clean white skin would not be remarked. Nice girls of decent breeding, especially those engaged to Vicomtes, did not go abroad at night, alone and on foot.

Except for this one. I was desperate to get Raoul's ring back, to prove my love to him, and to myself, and to put to rest my fancies and imaginings. A dose of reality was what I was in search of, but reality does not always provide the answers we expect.

I moved quickly and silently, keeping to the shadow; no one remarked me. Just another street urchin. I kept the pocketknife open and one hand clenched around it, in case I met with any trouble. I was nearly fainting with fear, but tried to move as if I belonged there.

I managed to avoid other people, who were mainly about their own business of drunkenness and debauchery; the fighting of a few months prior was thankfully over, for now, and the mood of the populace was generally subdued.

Presently, I arrived at the burnt-out shell of the Opera House.

I felt tears start into my eyes at the sight of it. What a terrible change in the place I had called home for more than a decade. And he had done this – though I somehow felt that Raoul and I had been partly to blame. It was all so wrong.

I don't know what I was expecting to find. In those days I was not in the habit of examining the motivations or reasons behind my feelings; I just acted. Whatever my expectations, however, the sight of the Opera House would have been a shock.

In the old days, she was a living thing – full of light and warmth; color and movement. Her light was darkened now; her frame cold and still. No matter how splendid the new Opera House was to be, it could never replace this one in my heart.

The main front doors and some of the windows were boarded up, but it would have been impossible to block every manner of ingress. I kept away from the openings which were obviously in use; I knew that there would be strays living inside, both animal and human, and I realized that such desperate creatures would be best avoided.

I found a blocked-up window near the old stable entrance, pried off the boards with the help of the knife, and slipped inside.

Darkness. I let my eyes adjust to the gloom, deeper than that of the moonless night outside.

The interior landscape was much changed, but I found familiar landmarks and made my way gradually to Carlotta's old dressing room.

The dressing room was in shambles. Most of the furniture was gone – looted or broken up for firewood, presumably. The wallpaper was peeling and in tatters; yet the room, even in decay, maintained some of its former air of luxury and grandeur.

I went to the mirror, my heart beating quickly in my chest. I half-expected him to appear. Only three months ago, yet it seemed a lifetime.

I slid the mirror aside, with some difficulty, for the mechanism stuck; and trod on something which I at first took for a ridge in the carpet, but which, on examination, proved to be a single red rose, withered and faded, with the fragments of a tattered black ribbon still tied around its stem.

How had this remained when so much else was gone or destroyed?

Hardly thinking what I did, I tucked the rose inside my vest and stepped through the mirror.