Chapter 11
The Phantom, for of course, that is who Marianne's mysterious teacher was, gazed through the mirror at his youthful protégée. The last few weeks had awoken feelings in him which he thought had died forever. On the night that he had first heard her sing; the night so fateful for the young dancer, he had been stalking the Opera house, desolate at the prospect of Christine's pregnancy, and miserable at the fact that the opera he had written for her, in secret, would have another woman playing the leading role. He knew that there was nothing he could do. None of the company knew that it was he, the infamous phantom, that was the composer whose work they admired so. There was no way he could alter the performance's timing, thus allowing Christine to play the part he meant for her, without revealing his continued inhabitance of the catacombs beneath the theatre. Pacing the stalls and the circle morosely, he had heard shuffling footsteps on the stage. He had started, and looked up to see a young girl, of no more than seventeen years old, collapse with apparent exhaustion. Absorbed as he was in his own sorrow, the phantom could not see a girl so young and vulnerable in this state without feeling a wave of concern. Making his way quietly towards the door, which would lead him out of the dress circle, and nearer to the stage a sound had halted his footsteps. It was a sound such as he had never heard before: A song; a requiem, but one which spoke of such destitution and sadness that even in he, who had been forced to bear so much sorrow in his life, it drew tears. Her voice spoke to him of a kindred spirit and of a soul which understood his own. Even when his love and obsession with Christine had been in its most fiercesome depths, the music she had made had not conveyed and understanding such as this. Her voice had induced in him wonder, admiration and love, but the voice of this girl - only just leaving childhood - evoked something more.
The Phantom had imagined that this girl, Marianne, would temporarily fill the desire for beauty which Christine's temporary absence from the Opera House would create. As her lessons continued, however, and her soulful voice grew ever stronger in its intensity and sublime beauty, he found himself thinking of his Christine less and less. As he wondered the theatre after hours now, his mind was more want to be filled with dreams of his new pupil than his old. This surprising change frightened the phantom. He cursed himself for being inconstant, and for clouding his mind once again with dreams which had deceived him once before. He had tried repeatedly to detach himself from his ingénue, and yet whenever she began to sing, or gazed up to him with her arresting yet gentle eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of her great tutor, he felt helpless to resist the feelings towards her which grew increasingly acute.
As he watched his Marianne through the mirror, weeping with disappointment and misdirected anger, he suddenly felt a white-hot anger burning inside him. How could they not allow his angel, his little ingénue to sing for them? This girl who had got the part was nobody! A charming little dancer, with a future in opera she may be, but the phantom knew that she was not fit to play his beloved Lolita. This opera was his magnum opus. He could never write another like it, for his very soul was woven through its music. Christine had been snatched from the part, by his one-time rival, Raoul and their baby, and now the gods were trying to steal the role from the only other person on earth that he knew would sing it as it was meant to be sung. He had to do something, anything, to put Marianne in that part.