Chapter 18-The Heart Is In Control

15 years later

I was just a young girl, or so I felt. But the world considered me a woman, a woman who had already finished school and now my father wanted me to attend college in Paris. I wouldn't start for another year and a half, but it still was something I wasn't so sure I wanted to do. I wanted to go to college for the arts, music was my passion. I loved composition and playing the piano and violin, but my father already had his mind made up, and he didn't want me to fail at composition and be poor. He wanted me to make something of myself, which was a very hard thing to do in the year of 1896. I wish he wasn't so stubborn and more like my mother.

She was more free spirited and wanted me to do whatever I wanted to do. I wanted to run away with my beau, Jean-Claude. He was 17 and worked in his father's store in town. It was a hardware store, so my father knew his father whenever he had to get something to work on our house. But my father found Jean-Claude to not be good enough for me, and did not realize that things between were a lot more than a friendship. But we were one of the aristocratic families in Nice, and having his first born marry someone who worked in a hardware store was not exactly my father's dream of success. I wondered all the time if that's why he always pushed for me to go to college in Paris. He said I was too smart to let myself get married, pregnant and stay home for the rest of my life. I should have taken that as a compliment, but my heart got in the way.

Emilie Moreau quickly closed her brown, leather bound diary on her desk as her bedroom door opened. Her mother stood in the doorway and said,

"You've been up here most of the afternoon, is everything all right?" She asked standing in the doorway.

"Yes, I've just been thinking a lot today."

"Are you going to go down to the hardware store to see Jean-Claude? Your father won't be home for awhile." As much as Emilie wanted to, there were times that she just didn't understand her mother. She would always be close to her mother and she was able to share things with her that she couldn't talk to her father about. Her father spoiled Emilie and her younger brother their entire lives, but he always seemed to have their entire life planned out for them. He never talked about his own childhood, but she figured that the reason he was so stubborn on how they would turn out had some reason to do with the mask he wore.

"I suppose I will. I just feel so conflicted, I have so many decisions, and whatever decision I make someone will be affected. I don't know what to do."

"Your father is very stubborn."

"I know, I just wish I could tell him about me and Jean-Claude and we could be together. I could still study composition instead of something else and I could have my life exactly the way I want it. Maybe if you talked to him…he listens to you." Christine gave out a little laugh and replied,

"Sometimes he does, don't you remember when you were growing up? He will always be set in his ways on some issues, but maybe on this one I could have a little talk with him. Maybe he would be able to relate in some way."

"How could Father relate to anything that I am going through? Mother, I know his intentions are good, but sometimes it would be easier if he would just understand me a little bit. Erik doesn't seem to have any problem relating to him."

"Erik is also ten years old and goes along with anything your father says. They're like you and me, they have a relationship like you and I have. But I think maybe I should talk to him, he does love you, and he just wants to make sure that his only daughter will be provided for." Emilie gave out a loud sigh and laid her head on her desk, sitting back up she replied,

"All right, I'll let you talk to him." Christine walked from the doorway to Emilie's desk and kneeled down,

"In the end, it's still your life and if you really want something your heart desires, you should go after it before it's too late. Your father might be disappointed at first, but I know for a fact that he would never abandon you for a choice that you made." Christine squeezed her daughter's hand and stood back up. She walked towards the door and turned back around,

"I'll talk to him tonight." She winked at her daughter and shut the door behind her.

An hour later, Emilie emerged from her bedroom and walked down the front stairs to the front door. Seeing her mother reading in the front room, she tied her hat and announced that she would be back in a little while.

"Don't be gone too long, your father called and said that he would be home in time for dinner after all."

"Yes ma'am." Emilie replied walking out the front door. She walked into the outskirts of town and saw the small opera house three blocks down. Her father still was a manager there and had even had her mother perform every now and then. But her mother didn't like to do it all the time when the children were younger, and lately her father had been asking her mother to do another show. She held her breath as she walked by the building, hoping no one would recognize her.

Turning the corner, she made it to the line of shops along the street and finally saw Jean-Claude's father sweeping the front of the hardware store.

"Well if it isn't the wonderful Mademoiselle Moreau!" She smiled and replied,

"Good afternoon Monsieur Merchand."

"Jean-Claude is inside my dear." The older man told her.

"Thank you." She replied opening the door. The little bell above the door rang and Jean-Claude was turned around putting some tools on a shelf. Turning back around, the younger man smiled and walked up to Emilie. His piercing blue eyes stood out with his slightly tanned summer skin.

"Well what do I deserve for such a pleasant visit?"

"I just wanted to see you is all." Emilie's green eyes smiled back at him.

"Well I was thinking about coming by tonight and having one of our lovely talks in whisper in the moonlight." She took his hand and said,

"Tonight might not be so great. My mother is talking to my father tonight about us." Jean-Claude's smile disappeared.

"She is?"

"Yes."

"He's going to murder me." Emilie gave him a hard shove, her hat flying off of her head of brown curls.

"No he won't! My father is not like that! My mother has a very good influence on him and he's not the type of person to physically harm someone! If anything he will yell at me and our life goes back to normal."

"Normal of I have to sneak to see you and soon you will be going off to Paris to pursue his dream for you. There will be no hope Emilie." The two of them were interrupted by Jean-Claude's father.

"Do you want to take a break and spend some time with Madamoiselle Emilie?" He asked. Jean-Claude nodded and replied,

"It won't be long Father." He took Emilie's hand and led her to the back of the store and out the back door. Once the door was closed, they kissed a long kiss knowing that no one would see them.

Later that afternoon, Erik's carriage had just pulled up to the house and Emilie had just made it into the house. Hearing the door to the coach close, she did a full sprint up the stairs and into her bedroom. Taking off her hat and gloves, she tossed them onto her bed and fixed her hair back up. She heard the voices of her mother and father below her room. They sounded rather pleasant so she figured now would be a good time to emerge from her room.

Walking down the back stairs and into the kitchen, she saw her father sitting at the kitchen table with his reading glasses on over his mask staring at a piece of paper. Christine was standing over his shoulder reading the same piece of paper. Looking up from the paper they were reading, Erik said to his daughter,

"We got a letter from your brother. He's doing well so far in his new boarding school. You can read it when we're done." Emilie smiled at the thought of her younger brother doing so well. In the years past he wasn't adjusting to the schools around there, and it was finally decided that he could try boarding school, but it wasn't that far away, maybe a half a day by carriage.

They went back to their intent reading and Emilie grabbed an apple out of the fruit basket. Their maid, Lucie, who had been with them ever since Emilie was 4, was preparing food at the stove.

"Don't eat all of those apples; I am going to use them for something."

"I won't." Emilie responded walking back to the table. Christine gave Emilie a look and put her hand on Erik's shoulder,

"Dear, there is something I would like to talk to you about, if you don't mind." Erik looked up at her, and responded,

"Of course I don't mind to talk to my wife." He gracefully got up from his chair and led his wife into his study where they closed the door. Emilie stood in front of the door and pressed her ear up to it. Lucie turned around from the stove and gave her a knowing look.

"She's going to talk to him about Jean-Claude." Emilie whispered, Lucie smiled and nodded and went back to her cooking.

Gesturing Christine into a chair, Erik sat at his desk in front of her and asked,

"What do we need to talk about?"

"Well it's about Emilie." Christine started.

"Is it about her going to college? Am I being too hard on her?" Erik asked worriedly. As Emilie had grown up, he was always an attentive and caring father, but sometimes his intentions seemed harsh even though he seemed to always have her best interest.

"Well, she is concerned about going to college and being a woman. It is not easy for a woman to get a college education, and she wants to study composition so bad."

"I know she does, but I just don't want her to have to suffer and go through the heartache of someone rejecting her work. She is so smart Christine; she could do anything she wanted."

"She gets that from you."

"I just want her to have a better life than I had. I want that for both of my children."

"Then she needs to do what her heart desires. There is one other thing I want to talk to you about."

"Do I even want to know?" He said smiling and continued,

"If she wants to study composition, then fine, study composition."

"Well there is one more thing, she's in love with Jean-Claude Merchand."

"The hardware store owner's boy?" He asked with a frown. Christine nodded her head.

"I can't let her do that. She'll ruin her life and the intelligence that she has will go to waste." He said standing up. Christine stood up too and walked over to him,

"She wants to be with him. If you don't accept it, she'll run away and marry him and we'll never see her again." He sighed and held his head,

"I need a shot of cognac."

"Not until we're done talking. Listen to me Erik, remember when we got married. Remember that you loved me and how I loved him. You stopped at nothing to get what you wanted, and my darling, it all turned out well. We love each other, and we have two beautiful children. But you know as well as I that the heart knows what it wants and it will stop at nothing to get what it wants."

"How can you compare a situation like ours to this?"

"Because Erik, she's in love. And we can't keep her from being in love." He pulled her close to him and whispered,

"What are we going to do?"

"We are not going to do anything. We can talk to her and that's about it." He kissed her and said,

"Why do our children have to be so difficult?" She smiled and replied

"Because they are yours." He laughed at her remark and headed towards the door.

"Let's go talk to her."

"No, you go talk to her. I'll join you later."