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Chapter 5 – A Man Like Any Other
The manicured gardens of the Tuileries looked impressive even by day. By night, with the wide avenue leading to the palace lit by a hundred torches borne by liveried footmen, the grandeur of the place was magnified a thousandfold. The façade of the palace rose in the distance, every window ablaze with golden light.
"It's spectacular," Christine said, peering out the window of their carriage. She ducked back, "And kind of frightening. Like an opening night gala."
Raoul slipped an arm lightly around her waist. "Nothing of the sort. Only some old men jumping for joy because the people voted to keep the Empire. They'll all want to dance with you, you know. I shall be forced to dance with my mother and torment myself by watching you flirt shamelessly with a terribly distinguished rich marquis who will be in every respect my superior."
Christine grinned. "Now look who is frightened! You have my solemn promise," she said seriously, "that I shall contrive to be a terrible dancer, and so repel the other gentlemen that they will gladly allow you to dance with me all night, and even through supper."
Raoul gave her one look of perfect mortification, before they both dissolved into helpless laughter.
"You couldn't be a terrible dancer if you tried, Little Lotte."
"I wish Madame Giry shared your confidence! My ears are still ringing from the talking-to Meg and I got after the opening night at the Variétés. Apparently we are out of shape, out of time, too fond of smiling ridiculously, and in sum, two of the most unconvincing sylphs to ever land gracelessly on the stage."
"I'm glad to hear it."
"Glad! Raoul..."
"Certainly. I have always wanted to dance with a graceless sylph."
Christine attempted to kick his ankle, but it proved impossible through the layers of gown.
Raoul caught her lips in a kiss. "Here is our cue."
The carriage rolled to a halt at the palace entrance, and a footman was immediately at the door. He helped Raoul down and then stood aside politely while Christine took Raoul's white-gloved hand and descended the lowered steps to the marble forecourt.
Behind them, more carriages were pulling up, more gentlemen and ladies were descending onto the marble, like a swarm of tropical butterflies in the firelit brilliance of the night. The sound of violins floated from within the opened double doors.
"It really is like a theatre set," Christine whispered, as Raoul took her arm. "The largest theatre I have ever seen, with the most pompous corps de ballet on earth."
She felt the tug of Raoul's arm as he tried to stifle his laughter.
"Ah! Here they are," said a female voice behind them.
Raoul and Christine were joined by a tall, elegant lady in a crimson gown, and her stern, preoccupied-looking husband, both no longer young but still attractive with the easy, unselfconscious bearing of the born aristocracy.
"Bon soir, darling." The Comtesse de Chagny kissed Raoul's cheek, simultaneously fixing a button on his jacket.
"Bon soir, maman. Please stop that." He looked so embarrassed that Christine could not help a small grin. "Bon soir, Father."
The Comtesse turned to Christine with a smile while Raoul exchanged a few terse words with his father.
"Bon soir, Mademoiselle Daaé. You're looking lovely, my dear, rose is such a pretty colour on you."
Christine curtseyed politely. "I could never hope to have your elegance, Comtesse. That is a splendid gown."
The Comtesse laughed, pleased.
"Don't flatter me, mademoiselle, I'm much too old to believe it, especially from one as young and pretty as yourself. I trust my son has been taking good care of you so far this evening?"
Christine smiled up at Raoul as he again took her arm. "Always, Comtesse."
The Comtesse turned to her son: "See that it remains that way, Raoul darling. Shall we go inside? Do try to enjoy yourselves, you are looking so dour these days!"
Christine and Raoul fell in behind the de Chagnys and the other couples making their way towards the open doors of the palace. Christine noticed the glances exchanged by other women as they eyed each other's gowns avidly, without the barest attempt to disguise their competitive curiosity. For her part, she wished the dress Raoul had commissioned for her had a smaller crinoline and a more modest décolletage, but it seemed the favoured style here, and she did not feel out of place.
'Dress' was, in fact, a sadly inadequate term for this elaborate tulle confection, which had required both Meg's and Madame Giry's aid in lacing her into the corset, strapping on the steel frame of the crinoline, and arranging over it the voluminous skirts of the gown. Everywhere else in Paris this lampshade look was becoming passé, but in the rarified atmosphere of the Tuileries, where fashion was not dictated by the width of the omnibus benches, it seemed to be holding its own.
Christine had to admit that she was enjoying it. It reminded her of the extravagant costumes of the Opéra, the slightly ludicrous but magnificent dresses in which even a skinny ballet girl in her very first singing role could feel like a star.
Then they were inside, where the butler was announcing the guests:
"Mademoiselle Christine Daaé, and the Vicomte de Chagny!"
Christine caught a few curious stares from other guests, no doubt occasioned by the scandal of her name in the papers.
"Ignore them," Raoul said under his breath, as they continued into the foyer.
He was right, Christine thought; the only thing to do was to ignore them, and soon enough new and more exciting scandals would replace hers. Already, their interest had been caught by another woman's gown of shockingly bright green silk, and the stares were diverted from her.
The immense foyer, with its lavishly painted ceiling and glittering chandeliers, once again put Christine in mind of the Opéra, but she stopped those thoughts and resolved to follow the advice of Comtesse and simply enjoy herself. She had to learn to close the door on the past.
She hurried to join the Comtesse and other ladies in the dressing-room, where servants helped them remove their wraps and fix their hair, while they cast a few more appraising looks at each other's outfits. Here, too, Christine noticed a few unsubtle glances in her direction, and a few whispers, but the Comtesse firmly took her arm and engaged her in a conversation about the new house she and the Comte were building in the lovely fashionable town of Saint-Cloud outside Paris.
"Really, Mademoiselle Daaé, you must impress upon my son that he is not to allow you to spend the entire summer in Paris; it is in every way unhealthy. Two months by the sea would do both of you a world of good."
"Nothing would please me more, Comtesse – but I have been engaged at the Variétés for this season. I'm afraid it would be impossible for me to leave Paris until November."
"The Variétés? I see." The Comtesse gave her a long look. The expression on her fine-boned face did not change, save for a slight quirk of her eyebrows, yet it said everything.
"Well, my dear. We all decide on our own priorities. Ah, here is my son now. And as usual, no sign of my husband."
Raoul met them outside, having deposited his own hat, cloak and cane at the gentlemen's cloakroom.
"I left Father with Monsieur Ollivier, maman. They are off on Prussia and the throne of Spain and Bismarck."
The Comtesse sighed, "I had best find him, darling, or he will spend the entire evening with the other gentlemen from the Assembly, talking politics and being dreadfully unsociable. The two of you go on inside, I believe they are starting."
And she was off, gliding through the crowd to where she had spotted the Comte, just as the sound of the trumpet came to announce the start of the dancing.
Christine hurried inside with Raoul, through a pair of ceiling-high ornamented doors and into the grand ballroom.
"What did she say to you?" Raoul murmured as they found their set for the first quadrille. "You're frowning."
"Nothing. I am merely concentrating on my plan to be a terrible dancer."
"Indeed? I had thought you meant to be a terrible dancer only with other men."
Christine gave him a teasing look. "But I need to bring my skills down to your level."
"Ah," Raoul grinned at her covertly just as the music started. "I shall have to show you just how wrong you are about that, Mademoiselle Daaé." He clasped her hand and led her forward. "Prepare to be swept off your feet, Little Lotte."
And for the next two dances, Christine gladly allowed him to do just that. It was easy to dance with Raoul, they had danced together so many times, both as children and over the past year, that it seemed the most natural thing in the world. They made polite conversation with the others in their set while awaiting their turn, and more polite conversation when the quadrille was finished. She accepted dancing engagements from a few other young men, most of whom she recalled meeting at one time or another in the de Chagny salon before the disaster of the Opéra. Then the waltz began and, as she and Raoul whirled around the room, Christine could almost forget the look the Comtesse had given her when she mentioned the Variétés, and the flash of irrational anger she had felt at this disapproval. She abandoned herself to the dance.
The evening wore on, interrupted only once, briefly, by a surprisingly low-key entrance of the Emperor and Empress. They were older than Christine had expected from having seen the photographs in newspapers, and while she curtseyed deeply as the royal procession made its way towards their seats, she could not help but notice that the Emperor seemed pale and in some pain. Vaguely, she recalled rumours that he was ill and in constant unremitting agony, but somehow it had seemed ridiculous that Emperor Napoleon III could be subject to the same ravages of nature as anybody else.
Yet when they broke up the dancing for supper, and the entire party followed the Emperor and Empress into the adjoining hall, Christine saw once again, and at much closer quarters, the cautious way the Emperor held himself and the unnatural sallowness of his complexion. Even the Emperor, it seemed, for all his power, was just a man like any other. Christine could not say why she found the thought so oddly comforting.
When the night ended, she was grateful to be back in the carriage, leaning tiredly against Raoul, with his arm around her shoulders. She nodded absently to his attempts to involve her in conversation, until he gave up and only held her quietly as they both watched the lighted boulevards roll by.
"Christine?"
She stirred sleepily. "Mm?"
"Father wanted to know why I have not yet bought you a ring."
Christine went very still.
She felt wide awake now, her heart pounding against her chest.
"I explained to him that you had one," Raoul went on. "And about it being stolen from you."
Christine was silently grateful for the semi-darkness of the carriage, which hid her burning face. "I... I see."
"I was hardly going to tell him this, but as it happens..." He took something out of his pocket. "I had been meaning to ask you before, but we never seemed to get a chance. So, I went ahead and just got one."
He held the jewellery box open before her. Christine felt herself turning to marble, in a cold wave from the tips of her hair down to her feet. She had known. She had expected it.
It was a diamond, on a delicate gold band. In the thin scattered light of the boulevard outside, the stone burned with a black fire.
"Is it too plain?"
"Plain? No, Raoul... No. It's beautiful. But I can't take it, you know I can't!"
"You can! God, Christine, why not?" He looked stricken but also somehow determined. "You cannot keep punishing us both like this!"
Christine understood suddenly why he had not asked her earlier, before the ball. He had known she would not take it.
"Have you changed your mind about marrying me?"
"Of course not!"
"Then what is it?"
"Please, Raoul. I want nothing more than for us to be happy, but I cannot, I will not, take another ring. Not after all that happened last time."
"For Heaven's sake, Christine..." Raoul looked at the ring and then back to her. "It is only a ring. It cannot bring back the past."
She could see the words forming in his mind, the things they never spoke about. The Phantom had disappeared, the opera house had burned, there was nothing left to haunt their courtship but their memories. And yet, she knew why Raoul needed her to take this ring. She had to kill the ghost inside.
The carriage had stopped. They sat, looking at one another, the ring lying between them in its box: such a small, such an impossible request.
After a moment, Raoul snapped the box shut and put it back into his pocket.
They left the carriage without speaking. The concierge let them into the apartment building and they went upstairs, their shoes echoing loudly on each step.
They were outside the door when Christine turned around.
"Give me time, Raoul."
He said nothing, but he looked at her for a moment, and in his eyes Christine saw a glimpse of the first and last performance of Don Juan, his hurt and his fear and knowledge.
Then he left.