September 15th 1892: Raoul
"Never?" Jacqueline repeated, her usually omnipresent smile fading. "What do you mean? Did you have an argument and she ran away?"
"Yes… no… not really," I stammered. I had no idea what to tell her, whether to tell her anything. I didn't even know what to think myself, so what should I say to another person? "Actually that's none of your concern," I muttered weakly, hoping against hope that I'd feel better if I didn't talk about it.
The maid straightened up again.
"You're right, Monsieur," she said, her compassionate voice growing a little colder. "It's none of my concern what your wife and you do. But it becomes my concern as soon as it's about Antoinette and Philippe as well. At the moment I have two worried and frightened children sitting in the kitchen with the cook, and of course they want to know why neither their Maman nor their Papa slept in their bed. So if you prefer being silent, I'll go to them now and tell them to wait for you to explain everything. But I refuse to lie for you."
She turned around and marched away. I made up my mind in a split-second. Jumping up from the armchair I caught her by the hand before she could reach the door.
"No, wait!" I exclaimed. "I will tell you. But you have to help me with the children." The thought of seeing Antoinette's and Philippe's faces while I revealed that their Maman would never come back to them was truly frightening.
Yet that was not the only reason why I wanted Jacqueline to stay. Her words had made me realise that I couldn't simply close my eyes and wait for everything to be over soon. Christine wasn't here, and somehow I had to deal with it. The best method seemed to be talking things over with somebody. Never in my life had I envied my wife that much for Meg. Her best friend was always willing to listen to her. But I had no one like that. I'd have rather swallowed my tongue than discussing private matters with my business partners, and I rarely met my sisters, who had married and moved away from Paris years ago. So all who remained were the servants. And now that I had one of them here, I wouldn't let her go.
All those things were on my mind as I led her back to the window and made her sit down in my armchair, whereas I remained standing. Only now did she have the chance to reply. "Of course I'll help you," she said. "But you have to be honest with me. You don't have to give me any details, just a basic outline of what happened."
Suddenly one of my brother's countless pieces of advice appeared on my mind. Never entrust a servant with something important or private. You'll only end up regretting it. Impatiently I pushed the words aside. Jacqueline wasn't the kind of person who liked gossip. She was with us for more than nine years, and we had never had reason to complain. Besides, she was a woman. Maybe she'd be able to explain what was going on in Christine's head.
"Well, it's a rather long story, but I'll try to make it short," I began, thinking hard about what I could leave out. It wasn't an easy task, summarising more than ten years in a few sentences for a person who had probably never been exposed to such things before. But then, maybe she had been. After all, I had learned yesterday that her sister was a chorus girl. So she could have mentioned a few things every now and then. "Have you ever heard of my wife's history with the Opera Ghost, the man we've seen with Philippe last night?" I asked her. If I hadn't known better, I could have sworn the question made her blush.
JacquelineI inhaled sharply. I was aware that his question was perfectly innocuous, and still it made my heart beat more quickly and my cheeks flush – like every remark about him, my other master. Would this lead to the conflict I had always dreaded? No, certainly not. All I had to do was stay calm and be careful. Then nothing could happen to me.
"Yes, I have heard about the story," I replied slowly. "One of the older chorus girls told it to my sister, and she told me." That wasn't even a lie. At the beginning, however, I hadn't been able to draw the connection between the man who paid for my sister's training and the murderer who had wreaked havoc at the opera years ago. It had taken me a while to understand how those things depended on each other.
The Comte breathed a sigh of relief. He seemed to be glad that he didn't have to explain everything from the beginning. I couldn't blame him. From what I had heard, he hadn't exactly been the winner in that strange relationship game they had played ten years ago. Maybe I wasn't the best-informed person to judge it, but I doubted there had been a winner at all. Madame's sudden mood swings were legendary even today, her husband appeared to be miserable most of the time, and he… well, how happy could a person be who had lost the love of his life and was living all alone beneath an opera house?
"Good," the man standing in front of me said after a few moments, as if to remind himself that he wanted to speak. "In a way you were right: My wife and I had an argument last night. There were certain… signs indicating that she still has feelings for the Phantom, and I… sent her to him, so that she could find out what exactly those feelings are. She promised to be back by nine…" His voice trailed off as he stared out of the window.
His words had clearly contained too much information for me to take in at once. I had to split it up into smaller pieces in order to understand it. At first all I felt was guilt. They had had an argument, and I didn't know about it? That was not good, not good at all. Usually I'd have sneaked down to the living room after making sure the children were sleeping, but this time I had fallen asleep myself. The evening at the opera had been very exhausting. My other master wouldn't be pleased if he found out about it.
But then, if Madame had really gone to him and had stayed there for the night, he'd probably be so happy that he'd forget about my failure. I shook my head in disbelief. How could she have chosen him over her husband? It was true that I hardly knew anything about my other master. Yes, I had heard some gossip, but I wasn't foolish enough not to know that most of it were exaggerations, combined with a few lies and just a little bit of the truth. All I had found out about the man the Comte referred to as ´the Phantom´ was that he was very generous when I did what he wanted and very angry when I didn't.
Still I couldn't believe she'd rather be with him than with the Comte. He was such a gentle man, and he always had a friendly word for me and the other servants. Admittedly he wasn't home very often, yet as far as I knew, that was true for most men in his position. So why should that make her angry?
My analysis ended abruptly when I heard a soft sniffing sound. Looking up I realised that the Comte had started crying. My initial reaction was shock. Being a maid for almost a decade I had seen children cry countless times, but never a grown-up man. It gave me a very strange feeling, as if I was intruding in his privacy without meaning to do so. If I could have made myself vanish from the room in this moment, I'd have done so. Yet standing up would have reminded him of the fact that I was there at all.
So I stayed where I was, pulled out a handkerchief and nudged his hand with it softly. It was only then that he seemed to notice my presence.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, dabbing his eyes awkwardly. "You shouldn't see me like this. It's just… What shall I do if Christine… if she doesn't come back to me?"
"She will come back," I assured him. "It's not even ten o'clock. Perhaps she has problems finding a coach or she simply slept too long –"
"Because she has been in bed with the Phantom all night!" he suddenly exclaimed, his voice breaking. I gave him an incredulous glance. This story was getting more delicate by the second.
"Yes, she has been sleeping too long," he mumbled. "She has to be exhausted, after doing all those things with him. And it's all my fault… my fault. Am I such a terrible person?" he suddenly addressed me. "Am I so bad that my wife has to go and seek comfort in the arms of a madman and murderer?"
It was amazing how much he looked like his son in this moment. Philippe had just the same way of throwing disappointed and hurt glances that made me want to take him into my arms and protect him from all evils in the world.
"No, you're not," I said simply. Following a sudden impulse I stood up and pulled him into an embrace. It only lasted a moment, but it was enough to make us break apart in shock as someone coughed politely.