The Mask and Mirror

Chapter 13

Meg Giry stared at the closed door, possibly for the first time in her life utterly silenced. She was still in a state of shock. Not from Christine's kidnapping – which would have been understandable – but at the fact she had just been little short of pushed out of the way by a nobleman, who, for all her liking of him, she secretly hadn't considered to possess the will to order anyone around. Then again, she thought in a rare moment of reflection, there had to be a resourceful and resolute mind behind the mild-mannered exterior for him to manage an estate as smoothly as he did without any prior training. The girl tugged absently at a wayward strand of blonde hair, her quick mind racing, incredulity turning rapidly to annoyance.

Had Meg been less conceited and wilful in spirit, and had Raoul been less gentle-natured than he had always appeared, then his actions a few moments ago would have come as less of a surprise. But the fact that she, Antoinette Giry's daughter, outspoken and popular in everything she said and did, had been treated so callously – even by a nobleman – was almost unthinkable. How had he dared dismiss her so easily? And with such coldness – such inconsiderate coldness! It was not shock that had fired her up so much as stung vanity and pride. It left her jittery and wanting, burning to confront him, to challenge the man who had subdued her with nothing more than a cold flash of his eyes and a stern tone. The latent animal courage she possessed flared to life, arousing her from a light-hearted and frivolous girl to the fierce young woman who had fearlessly led the expedition beneath the cellars of the Opera.

His anger had been unexpected. She had never seen him lose the carefree and even-tempered serenity in his smooth features, or thought that his unassuming voice could take on the tones of cruelty. His face had become callous and almost frightening in its lack of sympathy – if she had been easily frightened. But the courageous and headstrong girl had risen to the fore, and along with it, the passionate conviction that she was in the right. Without stopping to think, she had impulsively moved with light steps to the door. She didn't call her mother first. Likely it would lead to questions and explanations and waste yet more time when every precious moment counted. Meg did not stop to consider that all those things she was so annoyed by in her mother – the short temper, the stubbornness, the refusal to be cowed into submission – were the very traits that she herself possessed in equal measure.

There was no question in her mind that if Raoul continued in his intent to find Christine by blindly charging into the cellars of the Opera, that he was going to get himself killed. That was even if he got so far. Reconstruction had started on the Opera House but much of the building was still unsafe. She had been following the papers closely and knew that there were problems finding contractors. Consequently, work had been haphazard and there was ever the threat of unstable masonry. But Meg knew that such risks would not deter him – no more than the prospect of a crazed murderer whose very house was a chamber of horrors. If the past year had taught her anything, it was that there was no man more determined than a fool in love. Raoul might want to die trying in the attempt to save Christine, but she wasn't about to let him.

The door slammed shut behind her and Meg ran down the front steps into the cold November afternoon. She shivered violently – in her haste, she had not thought to put on a coat or scarf. The chill wind whipped against her bones like knives edged with crystalline frost. She tilted her head back, eyes narrowed against that inexplicable brightness of winter, at the cold silvery-grey sky, heavy clouds edged with piercing fringes of light. It had started to snow, the roads already becoming covered in the swiftly escalating drifts. Meg began to move at a run, staring intently through the swirling, eddying flakes, trying to distinguish among the many young men walking past whether one of them was Raoul. The icy air made breathing painful, as though her lungs had contracted, but it was the seeping chill of anxiety that she was most aware of, that sent cold bolts zinging through her veins. Even through her steel-pointed boots, the cold pinched into her feet. Others may have paused to appreciate the aesthetic picture of the snowfall, the houses coated as though by white sugar icing, but practical-minded Meg was immune to such considerations.

Muffled figures pushed past her, and with the white mist and dark houses dominating her vision, she almost lost her bearings. Someone called out a lewd comment, and she wished again that she had worn something more appropriate. This was no place to be unchaperoned. A church clock tower struck three o'clock and a shiver, unconnected to the cold, lanced through her body. It was later, much later, than she had realised. How much time had already been wasted? She never normally worried about anything – worrying was for people like Christine, people so locked away in their own thoughts they didn't really seem to live in the real world at all. At times she had wanted to shake Christine out of her dreamy reveries, sometimes she wanted to confess that she barely understood a word her friend said when she had one of her thoughtful fits on. But for all her unsentimentality of mind, she had a warm heart, fierce in its loves and hatreds.

Even before circumstances had forced them to live side by side as sisters, Meg had always preferred Christine to the other girls at the Opera Garnier. Christine was not as popular, nor as sociable, nor as exciting to be around, but then neither did she descend to the rivalries and scandalous gossip that went on in the dormitories. The other girls could be such spiteful cats and Meg herself had been guilty of several fierce altercations when she perceived herself the target of slights real or imagined. But Christine always rose above such pettiness; and Meg was sensible enough to see the worth of such virtues. And Christine, who had always seemed so alone and out of place among the other actresses and ballet rats, had blossomed like a rare flower under Meg's warm and sincere friendship and never failed to show her gratitude, even when preoccupied with –

Raoul.

Meg had caught sight of him at last – a tall figure moving with swift purposeful strides, head lowered slightly against the cold.

"Monsieur!"

Raoul turned around and saw Meg Giry running towards him. She was looking very pretty; cheeks flushed with cold and exertion; the spun-gold hair starting to come loose around her face and glowing brown eyes all formed a warm contrast to the street shrouded in snow. Raoul stiffened and felt a wistful pang as a memory returned to him of a few weeks before when his carriage had dropped Christine off at her house and she had come running back moments later to pick up her muff that she had forgotten. He clearly recalled how he had smiled at the sight of her; the paleness of her skin startling against her dark hair and eyes, riotous curls stirred by the frozen winds and the wintry beauty of the white dress that clung to her slender figure like a snowdrop. He had thought she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.

His eyes stung – the air was icy cold. "What are you doing here?" he asked harshly.

"Looking for you," Meg retorted over the wailing of the wind. She wrapped her arms around her small waist, trying to suppress the tremors of her body, and noted how her hands were reddening with cold. She clenched her fists, stubbornly ignoring her own discomfort.

Raoul seemed not to notice her shivering, or if he did, gave no indication of it. He himself seemed unaffected by the freezing temperature; she studied the profile of his face, turned away from her slightly. The hard grey of his eyes, like shards of ice, was not purely reflected from the snowscape around them. The line of his cheekbone seemed strangely hollowed in the silvery light and the severe upward tilt of the chin cut such a forbidding line it was almost painful to look at him. Meg shivered again. It was not only the icy air that stuck a sudden chill through her.

"Go back to the house," said Raoul, and although the remark was clearly addressed to her – for who else could he have been talking to? – she had the strangest sensation that he wasn't even seeing her. Certainly, the distant tone conveyed no warmth of former acquaintance. Unaccustomed to being ignored, Meg threw her hair back from her face, her small, pointed chin set forward. It was cold, and her patience was wearing thin.

"Not without you," she said firmly.

He turned to face her fully now, a slightly annoyed expression on his face. "You're not going to change my mind. It's far too late for that. I'm going to find Christine and give Erik the vengeance he deserves."

"Yes," she returned, with a scathing derision that had once reduced chorus girls to tears. "No food and barely any sleep, you stand an excellent chance against a professional assassin. You are no good to anyone like this; you need to go home." She was rubbing her hands together, trying to restore circulation to her numbed fingers.

"We've had this discussion. And you're wasting my time." He had turned away and was already battling through the snow that was falling fast and thick, near obliterating him from her sight altogether. Meg stood a moment, alone in a white-shrouded world, before sudden anger flared within her. She ran after him, her booted feet leaving small tracks in the snowy street.

"Listen to me. You are being foolish –"

"Foolish?" he repeated in a low dangerous voice, his eyes glinting. Meg refused to let it daunt her.

"Yes," she snapped, "You are. And you'd realise that if you stopped to think for just one second."

"Better to be a fool and do something than just stand by and do nothing," he retorted, his tone colder than the blizzard assaulting them.

"You are not doing nothing!" Meg fought the urge to shake him. She didn't know why she was feeling this so intensely, but it seemed an insignificant thing in the face of the overwhelming urge to convey the compulsion burning within her. "We are all going to get Christine back, but this isn't the way to do it! Getting yourself killed will help no one. Let it go."

"I can't," he said through gritted teeth. "You don't understand. You don't know how it feels –"

"Oh, don't I?" she said fiercely. She took a couple of steps forward, eyes flashing. She suddenly looked uncannily like her mother. "You're worried. I understand that. You're afraid. I understand that, too. But if you think that crawling inside yourself and wallowing in guilt justifies you storming off on this personal crusade of yours, let me tell you something. I was at the head of the search party that tried to find Erik. I was the first one to go down into that lair. I was the one who said there was nothing left, that he must be dead. If I'd not been so naïve, so overconfident, the police could have found him that night, and none of this would have happened! So you might want to indulge in this prima donna tantrum, Monsieur de Chagny, but trust me, there's blame enough to go around!"

She broke off, breathing fast, her face very flushed. Raoul was staring at her, startled out of his despairing apathy. Throughout their acquaintance, this girl had never been anything other than merry and smiling, chatting about a thousand and one different things with the bold, playful confidence that had probably attracted no insignificant number of admirers. He had thought that nothing could shake her sunny disposition. He certainly hadn't expected to be scolded – no, shouted at. In all his memory, no one had ever shouted at him. He was too self-assured, too authoritative and too sensible to warrant it. He thought suddenly of Christine. Christine certainly possessed a dash of fire when the occasion demanded it and had his behaviour been out of line, she would have told him so at once. The difference between them, Raoul noted with mild interest, was that Christine would not have shouted.

It took several moments for him to gather his stunned wits. He seemed to have been stranded in his own isolated world for the last few hours and had just been brought down to earth with a jolt. It was impossible to remain aloof when assaulted with such blunt assessment. He was still looking severe but the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed his amusement, the good humour of former days momentarily restored.

"Anything else you want to say?"

She set her chin. "I think that'll do to be going along with."

Raoul looked at her with a new awareness in his eyes. He had been so buried in the depths of his own guilt and misery that it had never occurred to him before that anyone else might feel responsible for what had happened to Christine. And Meg Giry of all people, who always appeared so confident and never doubted herself –

"Why didn't you say any of this before? Had I known how you felt –"

Meg shrugged carelessly. "I'm not the self-indulgent type."

Self-indulgent? Is that what you think of me? Raoul hesitated, questioning himself for the first time since all this had happened. Was he being self-indulgent? Were his own fears, sense of guilt and desire for vengeance clouding his judgement? He wasn't sure which was more unexpected, Meg Giry speaking to him in such a manner, or the fact that he was allowing her to. Certainly, he would not have taken such a verbal lashing from anyone else. He wondered why he was not more offended. Perhaps it was the kindness he glimpsed in those hazel eyes that softened the edge of her impassioned outburst. Raoul had always imagined that kindness and gentleness went hand-in-hand; now, for the first time he saw that it could also be found in boldness and strength, and was aware of a feeling of admiration. Not many people would have succeeded in talking him out of his firm resolution (not even his brother, but he forced down that lingering pain, unwilling to re-tread old ground). "You're not going to let me intimidate you, are you?"

"No," she said simply, "I'm going to walk you home."

She slipped a slender arm through his, steering them back in the direction they had come. He resisted slightly at first, then she felt him fall into pace with her, taking care that his long strides were measured enough for her to walk alongside him. He had fallen silent, locked away in his own thoughts.

Raoul stared thoughtfully down at the pistol he had unconsciously tightened his grip on; the light glinted dully off its smooth metal surface. His gloved fingers ran over it in something like a deadly caress. The weapon sat easily in his hand – too easily. The idle days spent shooting on the estate had trained his hand to aim with a much more sinister purpose.

"Do you realise," he said in a low voice, the gravity of the situation returning to him, "That if you hadn't followed me and I'd found Erik, that I would have killed him? I came so close in the cemetery that night. People read about murders all the time, but only when you're in that situation do you finally know if you can truly take another life." He looked at her seriously. "I believe I can."

"What stopped you?" she whispered. "In the cemetery?"

"Christine," he said shortly.

He glanced sidelong, saw the unease in her expression and seemed to come back to himself. Like shutters snapping down, the haunted lingering emotion in his eyes dispersed as he said quickly, indicating the conversation was closed, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be telling you this –"

"No!" said Meg quickly. "I mean – don't stop. Not if you don't want to." She didn't tell him what she was really thinking; that it made such a change for someone to place complete trust in her, not to treat her like some foolish little girl who needed to be protected from the world. She knew that she fell far short of the paragon of idealised femininity that was preached from the pulpits: the delicate and fragile creature that needed to be treated with care, shielded and cosseted. She wasn't that girl. Christine maybe. But not her.

She leaned towards him to reinforce her words and as she did so, felt a comforting warmth emanating from his body, which seemed to thaw the cold fringes of ice that were forming along her bare skin. She had a sudden desire to reach out and touch him, to offer him comfort, solace, something –

"Stop?" said Raoul vaguely. "I don't know where to begin."

Meg had moved in front of him, powder-blue skirts spreading around her in a silky fan. She was looking different from her usual self, very quiet, very serious. She was probably, he thought in a detached manner, just as pretty as Christine, and her spirit and vitality was far more likely to attract suitors than Christine's wistful reserve. She had that bold and high-spirited air that could not help but demand attention. But Meg's features were lacking in the heart-breaking vulnerability and sincerity that shone through Christine's every word and deed. Her bright and vivacious looks didn't haunt him the way Christine's transparent and otherworldly beauty did. Yet her very being here caused him a strange ethereal pain, as her qualities merely served as a sharp reminder of Christine's absence. Raoul frowned. Why must he insist on making comparisons?

"I'm not forcing you to tell me anything," she said quietly. "But you're deliberately isolating yourself from us. Maman may not see it – but I can. There's something more, isn't there? Something you're not saying."

He frowned at how clearly she saw through him. "When did you become so perceptive?"

She smiled slightly. "About the same time you became so reckless."

"It's so terrible of me…" he said hoarsely. "I can't even bring myself to think it."

"Think what?" said Meg gently.

The headache Raoul had felt earlier had begun prodding at his temples again. He could hear the howling of the wind in his ears. The snow blurred the landscape around him, taking him back to those days at the Opera, the days of opulent and dizzying splendour and the nights of darkness and terror. It had been many months ago, one of his conversations with Philippe…

"Raoul, I would give you the world if you asked for it – but this! Are you really so green? Can you not see what's happening to you? This wench has you wrapped around her little finger –"

Raoul's hand shot out and grabbed hold of his brother's silk-clad arm; his blue eyes were cold and glittering with barely restrained fury.

"Don't," he said tightly, "ever refer to Christine that way in my presence again."

"I'll refer to her as I wish," responded the older man harshly, "And more besides. Do you realise what you are doing by persisting in this foolish manner? The name de Chagny used to mean something; it commanded respect. I am not going to let you turn it into a laughing stock."

"I turn it into a laughing stock? What about you and your sordid encounters with that dancer – what is her name? La Sorelli?"

Philippe's expression tightened, his handsome features displaying a hardness that rendered his face at once masklike: something cold and cruel. "You would do well to find such a diversion yourself, Raoul, and get this silly infatuation out of your head."

"This is not an infatuation," said Raoul, very quietly.

Philippe snorted to indicate his disbelief, turning away with a derisive smile.

Raoul slammed his hands down on the table and noted with a vague sense of satisfaction that for once, he had succeeded in shocking his brother. "I love her," he said, his voice shaking. "More than life, death – do you think I care about wealth or title? It's nothing compared to this. I'd give up everything I have in an instant to be with her."

"How poetic of you. And she feels the same way, does she?"

"Of course she does," he responded fiercely.

Philippe examined an ebony cigar case with a semblance of idleness, before remarking coolly, "So it doesn't bother you that she's been rumoured to be spending time with a strange man, unchaperoned?"

"The man's a lunatic! He's stalking her!"

"She told you that, did she?"

Raoul's voice rose in anger. "Are you suggesting –!"

"Think about it! What was she, Raoul? Nothing but some obscure ballet rat. She had no prospects until you came along. So she – shall we say – entertains this 'Opera Ghost', this Phantom of hers. All's well and good until she sets her mind on a more rewarding endeavour. Then a few pretty smiles and she's ensnared one of the richest men in Paris!" He looked contemptuous. "Raoul de Chagny, the gullible nobleman."

Meg saw a flush of colour staining Raoul's pale face and wondered if it was due to the cold or some unnamed emotion. Her own teeth were chattering but she had long since ceased to notice. The chill wind had ripped her ears to rawness, and she almost missed his quiet words.

"This is going to sound so disloyal… even now, she's probably terrified and praying for me to come and find her, but I can't prevent myself from wondering…"

Raoul turned away wearily and stared into the distance. The sky had darkened since he had set out; the grey clouds had gathered more ominously, though the snow had not abated. There was still light; piercing fringes of it that dispelled the rapidly growing gloom. The day too, it seemed, was in mourning. He quickly banished the thought. Mourning. It made it sound as though Christine was –

He turned back to Meg, and it suddenly occurred to him she had been outside all this time in nothing but a thin gown. "You're frozen," he murmured, his look changing from preoccupation to one of concern. Even at such a time, his upbringing did not fail him, and he shrugged off his greatcoat, swathing the heavy garment around her small shoulders with a gentleman's gallantry. Meg glanced down. Fragments of icicles still clung to the ruffled bosom of her dress; she could see them glinting like shards of glass. So why did she not feel cold? She shook her head in distraction, pulling his coat more tightly around her, burying herself in the refined scents of cigarette smoke and waxed brocade. "Don't worry about me. You were saying –"

Raoul closed his eyes, bracing himself to say the terrible words he had confessed to no one. "Is it possible to love someone and not know if you can trust them?"

Meg thought of her encounters with her – admittedly numerous – admirers at the Opera; the stifled laughter in stolen moments, the amorous glances between scenes and teasing flirtations backstage, the hothouse flowers and macaroons sent after each performance. She remembered the ballet rats eagerly hanging on every word as she later confided the details of those interludes with an air of knowing superiority. How she had smiled to herself at their admiring looks! How vainly she had regarded her reflection, powdered and pink-lipped and saccharine, thinking herself a queen surrounded by courtiers. Then she looked at Raoul's pale figure illumined by the wintry scene, all love and pain and eternity – and knew this was one instance where her worldly experience failed her.

She looked up, meeting his entreating gaze with all her customary directness. "I wouldn't know," she said flatly. "I haven't loved like that – not in the way you mean."

And she didn't want to. Not if love was like this.

Raoul sighed, an overwhelming sadness filling his face. "I'm sorry. I just – I can't believe I'm even saying this... Christine's gone, and a part of me is simply concentrating all my strength on keeping myself together and not going out of my mind or breaking down completely… and there is this other part of me that feels Christine has been gone for a long time. Like she was never here in the first place. As though she was never with me at all."

"Of course she was with you. She always will be."

"Will she? Even when we are together, she's never really with me. Sometimes she gets this distant look in her eyes… and I know it's because of him."

"Yes, but it's because she dreads him! Fears him!"

"It doesn't matter!" Raoul cried, with all the despair of unrequited love. "He's still in her head. She still thinks about him!"

"And if she does? Can you blame her?"

"No," he said softly. "I don't blame her. But I find myself questioning her. I can't help it. It all seems too coincidental, somehow. Perhaps – although I feel I am betraying her by even saying this aloud – but what if she wanted to leave? What if this was what she had really wanted all along?"

He drew a sharp gasp as an elbow painfully met his ribs. He was beginning to realise the hard way that Meg Giry was perhaps not the person to go to when requiring sympathy – though for practical advice she was clearly indispensable. And, he reflected with a flash of intuition, probably exactly what he needed right now. "What was that for?"

"You," retorted Meg. "For being so blind. Christine loves you, Raoul, she always has." She felt an unexpected ache in her chest as she said the words, but ignored it in her haste to convince him. "Do you know how often she used to talk about you at the Opera before she even saw you again? You might not have seen her that day you arrived with Monsieurs Firmin and Andre, but I did. She couldn't take her eyes off you. She was so disappointed when she thought you didn't remember her."

Raoul looked down at her glowing in his furs, aware of an odd, touching affection. Although he had seen her frequently over the last nine months, he had never gotten to know her, never thought of getting to know her. A pleasant girl, yes, cheerful and good-humoured, but he had never taken the time to see if there was anything of substance beneath the light-hearted exterior. In truth, he had dismissed her as rather vain and shallow, likely prone to the same giggling silliness he had witnessed so often in other girls (always comparing them to Christine, and always, always finding them lacking). She was entirely different to Christine. Where Christine was all gentle dreaminess, Meg was earthy practicality. Probably didn't have an imaginative bone in her body. He had privately wondered what common ground these very different girls could have found to form such a close friendship. But he saw now that both shared a value for honesty that must have formed a bond between them.

"I'm still going to find her," he said. "You don't need to worry about that part of it. I'll use everything in my power." His eyes darkened to a stormy blue, reflecting the slate grey clouds above them. "Even if I find what I've been fearing all this time." He swallowed hard, and looked back at her, and a softness crept into his expression, a softness that had been absent for too long. "I won't forget what you've done for me today."

Meg smiled teasingly, although she felt oddly like crying. "A hefty barrage of insults and a pain in the side. I don't blame you."

She was rewarded by a faint quirk of the mouth that couldn't quite be called a smile, though it came fairly close. Once, he had been all smiles. He was not gone yet, that nobleman of gentle courtesies who always held himself with such quiet dignity. Yet there was something, something, an underlying current of danger that lingered beneath the calm exterior…

"The truth is… I can't confront him in his own lair and the villain knows it, damn him. Just as you did. He would know I was coming before I'd even know I was approaching myself. He has the devil's cunning, and he's had nine months to calculate and plan for every eventuality. I can't even begin to imagine what traps or snares might be lying in wait down there. There is probably not a man alive who could navigate those tunnels. We three – you, me and Madame Giry – aren't enough to take him. I know I dismissed the police, but what other option do we have?"

Someone behind him cleared their throat.

"I may be able to help you there," said Madame Giry.