"Laura!" Christine called after her, jumping to her feet and cracking the library door to peek her head out. Recalling Estelle’s strange description of her tutor, she felt vaguely nervous at the prospect of finally meeting with him. "How did you find him?"
The housekeeper deliberated a moment. "... Unusual," she finally replied; "But there is a gentleness beneath his odd appearance - I could tell from his voice."
Christine smiled, relieved. "Thank you, Laura. I shall go to him presently." Marking her place in her book, she left the library; her footfalls echoed crazily on the hardwood floor of the empty hallway. A large mirror hung on the wall near the study door and she paused there for a moment, smoothing her appearance before taking a deep breath and opening the study door.
A tall and broad-shouldered gentleman stood at the window opposite, his back to Christine as she entered the room. His hair was thick and dark with a honey-toned sheen and was impeccably smoothed over his scalp despite the hat that Christine could see resting on a chair nearby. The dark suit he wore was well-made and fitted, and she found herself having to put down the urge to blush - how long had it been since she had been alone in the company of an attractive man?
But that thought was driven from her mind when she noticed the cloak neatly folded beneath the hat. Fashioned from a fine wool - merino or cashmere, perhaps - it set her heart to pounding crazily. Stop this foolish thinking, she chided herself. There can be more than one man of good taste who prefers a cloak to a coat. Smoothing her voice, she greeted him. "Monsieur Rouen."
Erik’s keen hearing had once memorized the timbre of a woman’s voice, a woman’s voice that had nearly been his undoing. Though he had long ago folded the memory of that sound and packed it gently in the depths of his mind, there would never be any mistaking it - it was as closely tied to his existence as the soft rhythm of the heart that had loved her. But the incredibility of it! Turning swiftly on his heel, he found himself gazing at her back as she closed the study door. And he reveled in that one moment where she was turned away - knowing some unpleasantness would presently ensue, he seized that opportunity to behold her before she beheld him, to treasure the soft cascade of hair down her back, the smooth curve of her elbow in the sleeve that was fitted so well to her forearm ... Oh, he had seen her and trembled at the Opera, but that was nothing to standing so close to her, to breathing in air that was faintly perfumed by her own scent, to spending one peaceful moment in her company where she thought of him only as a normal man and he was free to love her.
But that moment which was so blissful and precious to him could not last. The latch of the study door clicked, and she turned, and their eyes locked in a moment whose impact was measurable only in comparison to earthquakes.
Without speaking, they each saw the whole of the situation in complete clarity; hindsight emphasized the small coincidences, the tiny hints that they had either not seen or chosen to ignore. And as they stood as still as statues, each grappled with a fresh flow of pain and guilt and regret that they had each thought they had felt for the last time years ago.
Finally, Christine broke the crystal-shard-silence. "Erik."
"Christine," he replied as gently as he could over his warring soul; "please believe that, had I known, I would never have come."
"Do you hate to see me so?" she responded, suppressed tears cracking her tone to a rough edge.
Sorry immediately for his words and their misunderstanding, he put up his palms. "Only to disturb you," he said softly; "You have a good, peaceful life here and my trespass is clearly wrong. I am sorry - I shall go."
As he retrieved his hat and cloak, Christine felt as if she would tear in two inside from holding back her tears. How long she had wished for just one more audience with him - and now she had been given that chance, and was blundering it.
He was donning his hat and stepping towards the door - how could she just let him walk away again? This time there would surely be no hope of a future meeting ...
Her voice seemed to speak without her. "And what about Estelle?"
Erik froze. Only moments before he had thought there could be nothing worse than this sorrow, standing at the edge of a distance between him and his beloved that he knew could never be bridged. But with one sentence came the realization that increased the pain tenfold: not only was it Christine he would be leaving as he quitted the room, but Estelle as well would be forevermore lost to him. He was crippled - had his legs been suddenly lopped off there could not have been a more immobilizing pain.
"I don’t know," he choked, tears gathering in his eyes despite his attempts to blink them back.
The tension of the moment - her own anger at herself - to hear him sound so like he had in Venice made Christine frantic, and without meaning to she lashed out. "Of course you do," she cried, "you’ll do just what you always do when the choice is difficult - you’ll turn away, you’ll disappear!" Tears were streaming down her cheeks and she threw the study door open wide. "Don’t let me stop you - go on, leave her without a word! Break her heart as you broke mine!"
Erik could not bear it - the memories, the accusations. The look he fixed her with was rife with intense emotion, intense enough to free his frozen limbs and propel him from the room and from the house and a good distance down the road before he slowed his pace to hail a cab. Where he would go he had no idea; Europe, as kind as it had once been to his broken heart, could never heal a wound such as this.
Christine herself sank to the carpet beside the open study door; he had flown past and, for the briefest of moments, had been the closest to her that he had been since their aborted embrace in Venice. How long she knelt there she did not know, but when suddenly the front door slammed and Estelle stood over her with an expression of concern, the dam within her broke; she succumbed to hysterics, and it took Estelle and Laura’s combined efforts to carry her to bed.
*
Late that evening, long after Christine believed that she was the only soul still awake in the house, a soft knock preceded Estelle’s entrance into her bedroom.
"I thought you had gone to bed," Christine said from her rocking chair, too weak in spirit to protest Estelle’s breaking her bedtime, or not knocking before entering the room.
"Christine," Estelle said, trying but failing to keep reproach and disappointment out of her somber voice, "Laura told me that Erik came to call today."
Christine bit her lower lip but said nothing.
"I don’t understand," Estelle whispered, unable to keep her voice from trembling any longer. She stepped closer to Christine’s chair, stood over her with an expression of supreme sorrow. "I told you he was different from other people ..."
"That isn’t it, Estelle," Christine protested with all the energy she could muster - which was not much, since her reply sounded more like a whine than an emphatic interruption.
"What happened this afternoon?" the young lady demanded, completing the reversal of their roles - Christine was clearly the child now, Estelle the mature adult.
But Christine was indignant. "Don’t speak to me that way, Estelle."
"I deserve to know," she persisted. "I helped to carry you up the stairs."
"Watch your tongue," Christine snapped.
Estelle stared at her for a moment, clearly stung. When she spoke again, her tone was wounded. "You’re not yourself, Christine. We’ve never kept secrets from each other." Christine turned her face away, rested her cheek against her shoulder. Estelle bristled and spoke the first angry words Christine had ever heard escape her lips. "What did you do to drive him away?"
She snapped back to face her surrogate child. "Don’t say that, Estelle - I didn’t ..."
Estelle was weeping openly now, and sank to her knees at Christine’s feet. "Why won’t you let me have him - he made me happy, didn’t you see that? For the first time since Papa died I felt ..." But sobs choked her voice, and Christine sprang from her chair to throw her arms around the girl.
"Oh, Estelle, mon ange, don’t cry ... please don’t cry ... I cannot bear to see you sad ..." Christine was weeping herself now, and the two entangled women sank to the floor, rocking in their sorrow. "I never wanted to hurt you, my beloved ... please don’t cry ..."
"Then let him teach me!" Estelle wailed. "Don’t let the mask prejudice you, Christine - please look past it and trust me! He is good, and kind, and he has helped me so much already ..."
Christine tried to speak, but her voice broke under the weight of the secret she now knew she could not tell her beloved child. She simply hugged Estelle and sobbed into her shoulder; realizing what she must do. She could not break Estelle’s heart, and her own could not be broken any further.
A long time later, when all their tears had been spent, they still knelt together in a heap on the floor. Christine smoothed Estelle’s hair, which had gone all wild in their exchange, back from her forehead. "Forgive me, darling - I will try to make it right again."
Estelle looked like a little girl again as she turned her tearstained face upwards. "You will go and speak to him?"
Christine nodded and hugged her tighter, biting back a fresh wave of tears. "I love you, Estelle," she whispered fiercely into her hair.
*
Erik’s hired hansom had taken him as far as the contents of his pockets would carry him; he had immediately decided against going to Nadir’s, but instead instructed the cabby, "Just drive." When his funds were depleted he left the cab quietly, and found himself several hours’ walk from his flat. He used those hours to turn over his options in his mind; when he finally arrived home, he fell into bed completely clothed, and fitfully slept off his emotional and physical exhaustion.
When he finally woke, the next day was well underway; noontime found him surrounded by trunks and traveling cases. A knock at his door made him suppose his landlord had received the note he had sent earlier, informing him of his intention to depart Paris for a time and requesting a meeting to discuss the payment of several months’ advance rent. He opened to Christine, who was nervously turning over the scrap of paper upon which Estelle had written the address of Erik’s flat.
"Erik," she said hurriedly, as though she expected him to slam the door in her face,"I am sorry to come here uninvited, but I must speak with you."
He stood silently for a moment, shocked and wondering if his unstable state might be causing hallucinations.
Christine tipped her head and peered into his face. "Erik?"
Her voice again - could she be real, really standing at his doorstep? He shook himself; he could not keep her standing there. A difficult choice lay before him ... but his voice, of its own volition, made it for him. "I’m sorry," he stammered; "come in."
Christine had come, like Orpheus, to the very gate of Hades; she had expected a bitter battle with Cerberus, or to at the very least to be unceremoniously turned away. Yet here was the Dark Prince himself admitting her to his sanctum. She drifted through the doorway as vaguely as a shade into that underworld, hardly knowing what to expect. When she found herself in a finely furnished flat, one which might be inhabited by any person of comfortable means, she felt oddly disoriented. But realizing the old mindset into which she was slipping, she reprimanded herself silently and forced her vision to broaden. What she noticed then was the various baggage scattered about the room.
"You are not ... leaving?" she asked, cautiously turning to face him.
He cleared his throat. "I had considered it, on an old friend’s advice."
She dropped her gaze to inspect the tips of her shoes emerging from beneath her dark dress. Erik noticed that she was pale and her eyes lacked their usual clarity. How had she spent the previous night?
"I’m sorry, Erik" she said suddenly, her voice soft but strong beneath that softness. He watched in wonder as she seemed to gather poise; she lifted her chin and continued, "The things I said to you yesterday were cruel and uncalled for, and I offer you my humblest apology."
He was struck, not only by her words, but by their undeniable ring of sincerity. His surprise made his voice easy. "What brought this on?" he asked gently.
Christine blinked quickly several times, willing her eyes not to well. "Estelle," she replied after a pause. "The thought of losing your lessons upset her so, and I could not bear to allow my selfishness be the cause of her tears. I need you to forgive me, Erik - and to come and teach her the piano, as you wanted to before I received you with such rudeness."
A moment passed where he simply watched her, waiting for the mirage of her to disappear. He could barely stand to believe himself awake - it seemed too much to believe, that she should suddenly come to him, apologetic, with the extended olive branch. But when she did not waver or dissolve into mist, he took a deep breath. "Christine," he said frankly, "we both know how things have happened between us ..."
"I know," Christine interrupted, "but..."
He held up one hand. "Please," he said softly, "let me speak. These meetings - they are distressing to us both, and we both know that." Christine bowed her head, silently assenting. "Can you really want to see me, in your own home no less, under the pretext of piano lessons for a child who is not even yours?"
Christine jerked her chin up, her eyes suddenly lively again. "She is mine," she replied intensely, "and I love her as dearly as any mother loved any child. Do not question that, Erik - do not believe me so incapable of devotion." It was his turn to cast his gaze downward; but he looked up again a moment later, for he had felt her take a step nearer to him.
"I will do anything to make her happy, Erik; swallowing my pride and admitting my wrongs is a small price to pay for that." Her features were smooth and resolute now, and she drew still nearer, her mien conciliatory. "Please, Erik. It must be worth the trouble if you were willing to leave her school and tutor her privately."
"I left the school because I wanted to tutor her privately," he replied; she looked at him questioningly and he elaborated, "The headmistress actually had the nerve to reprimand me for spending more time with Estelle than with the other pupils. She failed to acknowledge that the other pupils were talentless lumps." Christine smiled and reveled for a moment in a normal conversation with Erik.
"Then you must think she has potential," she prompted.
"She is gifted," he answered; "and she will go far with training."
"Then train her," Christine implored quietly. He sighed, and she could sense his resistance weakening. "Please, Erik - she will be heartbroken if you refuse."
The thought of dear Estelle weeping! It was too much to be borne ... and this change in Christine was disconcerting but persuasive. If she could bring herself to come to him as she had, could he not make a similar gesture? And he recalled her words in Venice, her insistence that she had always loved him ... he derailed this train of thought, knowing how dangerous it could be to allow himself to hope. Better to close that door soundly, and think of Estelle - it was not a lie, exactly. He wanted so much to teach her, to see the musician she would become ...
"Very well," he said gently.
Christine’s eyes went wide. "You will teach her?" she breathed.
"I will teach her," he echoed, a tiny smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
"Oh!" she cried, clasping her hands before her. "You shall not regret it - and I shall make it worth your while."
"Christine," he demurred, "You know I cannot accept your money."
"It is not mine, though - it was left by her father for her education. And you will teach her more than that pompous Madame Blèdurt ever will," she chuckled. Erik could not help but join her. "Come then; are we agreed?" Before she realized what she was doing, she extended her hand.
A brief tension descended, where Christine wondered whether he would accept her offered palm, and Erik wondered if he had the courage to touch her. But the heavens did not part - the ground beneath their feet did not rend - and they clasped hands.
For a moment Christine was without words, and when the contact ended she found herself studying the bare floorboards that protruded from beneath his rich Persian rug. But, catching this foolish display of coyness, she forced her chin upwards and met his eyes. "Thank you, Erik," she said simply, and with her expression tried to betray the true depth of her gratitude. She was thankful that he could forgive her enough to agree to teach Estelle - it meant so much to the child. She told herself she could admit how much it meant to her once she was safely out of his presence.
He watched her turn and move towards the door and he felt like a child, not knowing how to swim and yet suddenly finding himself thrown into a pond. "Christine," he managed as her hand lit on the doorknob, "perhaps you and ..." He trailed off, wanting but not wanting to pair himself with her even in words. " ... perhaps we can be friends again."
She looked at him over her shoulder, frantic to be away from him before her resolve crumbled and she fell to his feet to beg for his love, and yet unable to resist this offer - this indication that he, too, had sorrowed and suffered during their separation. He must still care for me ... on some level - and perhaps he can be brought ... No, she must stop these thoughts; but the unchanged beauty of his voice transformed his words to manna from the very hands of God. "Yes," she whispered, her voice dry and strained, "I would like that."
Her emotion could not be overlooked and Erik paced his floor into the wee hours of that morning, his mind strolling through sudden and intoxicating landscapes of hope. Once safely home again, and the news related to the now-ecstatic Estelle, Christine pled a headache and retreated to her bedchamber, where she sat rocking in her chair all night with tears of abject misery slipping down her cheeks. He could be brought to teach music to her adopted daughter, true; but experience had shown her he could not be brought to love her.
*
At first, Erik came once a week; he was loath to press his presence upon Christine, yet he wanted to test the waters. He found them friendly but at the same time distant, as though she was holding him at arms’ length. Still, Estelle saw only pleasantness pass between them, though there were no hints given as to the history that lay concealed between the two.
Christine especially was very concerned with keeping the past a secret from Estelle. "Forgive me if I seem cool," she whispered frantically to Erik one afternoon when the young musician was out of earshot; "I don’t want her to know ..." But she trailed off and looked away, wishing sadly that there were no need for silence. There were so many things she wanted to say to Estelle ... so many more she wished she could make known to Erik ...
She raised her eyes to his and, for one brief and tortured moment, could have sworn he already knew. Luckily, Estelle returned and once again commandeered his attention.
Little could she perceive that she did not really hold her tutor’s undivided attention as she played or chattered on. His ear was hers, of course; but his eyes were ever fixed on Christine - provided that hers were fixed elsewhere. That she was immersed in some emotional turmoil was obvious to him; but whether that turmoil provided him with a true right to hope, he feared to guess.
He increased his visits to twice a week, and they came to be friendly even in Estelle’s company; the young lady, once so distraught over the prospect of them disliking each other, seemed to find no faults with the world now that her beloved guardian and her beloved teacher had been brought to like one another. Erik and Estelle’s lessons often ended with Christine serving tea for three in the drawing room; the little musician would chatter vivaciously about her schoolmates, the books Erik brought her to read, the odd things she was being taught at Madame Blèdurt’s. She never noticed that the grown-ups who seemed to hang on her every word were in reality trapped in their own silent cycles of emotion. Christine forced a smile to her lips despite the misery that grew each day with the growing of her friendship with Erik - friendship, when she ached with all her heart to hear once more the words of love she had so flippantly discarded all those years ago; but she bore it, for Estelle’s sake, and for his. He seemed so happy sitting at tea with them, listening to Estelle’s fantastic daydreams - and he was, but it was not his pupil that brought him the purest moments of happiness while in the de Jardin home. It was, oddly enough, that strange expression in Christine’s face: her strangled smile whose meaning seemed lost on Estelle but to him so clearly denoted her inner struggle. He wondered if she remembered the things she had said to him in Venice as clearly as he did: he had tried to pretend that he had forgotten them, but sitting in the parlour with her as he did now tore to ribbons all these foolish fantasies. Her words then were seared upon his memory, and the light she radiated illuminated all their scars. He wondered that she could not see them plainly.
He waited several weeks before finally confiding in Nadir about his new-found situation. It came out in degrees - first he admitted to having left the school; later he confessed he had taken on a private pupil of some talent. Finally, goaded by Nadir’s persistent questions and his own guilt at concealing such a secret from such an old friend, he told all.
The daroga, who never lost his composure, dropped his cut-glass tumbler to the floor where it shattered into a thousand pieces.
"God in Heaven, Nadir," Erik chided him humorously, dropping to one knee to mop up the mess. "Don’t you think that was a bit dramatic?"
"Erik!" Nadir knelt before him and seized him by both shoulders. Giving him a hard shake, he cried, "How can you tell me, so matter-of-factly, that you have entered the employ of Christine Daaé?"
With a shrug, he replied, "Because it is a simple matter of fact."
"Did you seek her out after our night at the Opera? Erik, you promised me ..."
"I assure you, Nadir," he interrupted his agitated friend, "that it was an utter coincidence. I began working with the child while I was still working for that dreadful headmistress - she was the star pupil there. When I left the school, I wanted to continue with Estelle - so I sought an audience with her guardian, and found myself standing face-to-face with Christine."
It took Nadir several days to come to terms with the situation; he was like a man in a trance. But finally, as he began to accept the workings of fate, he also began to notice a change in his friend. At first he believed it was just his own eyes playing tricks on him, that he was seeing Erik differently because of his bizarre revelation. But soon he realized he was not mistaken; there was something different. It was as if a seedling of hope had been planted in his friend’s mind - and watching it sprout filled Nadir with the deepest of foreboding.
"Erik, I do believe that it is more than child that draws you there," he said carefully one afternoon over chess.
Erik’s eyes moved over the board, making no indication that Nadir’s remark had make any impression upon him. His right hand drifted to his chin, the index finger hovering near his lips as he considered his next move.
"Erik?" Nadir leaned closer, thinking his friend had not heard him.
In one swift motion, Erik slew Nadir’s queen with a well-moved bishop. "Check," he said quietly, removing the captured piece from the board. "Your thinking, Nadir, is as faulty as your strategy."
Cross at the loss of the useful piece, Nadir mulled over the board for a moment. "You are impossible, Erik - toying with me like this. Here, I concede."
"No," he protested, "you cannot give up - bad form! You must go forward with the situation you have visited upon yourself." When Nadir’s frowning countenance did not change, he sighed. "Block me with your knight, and tell me why you said that."
Grudgingly, Nadir made the move that he had not noticed before Erik pointed it out. "Do you really need me to tell you, Erik? It is Christine Daaé, for the love of Allah! And after the way you behaved at the Opera, what else am I to think?"
Erik was quiet again, thinking out another move. Once he had made it, he replied softly, "Old adversaries can become friends, Nadir. Look at us together."
"We are hardly comparable to you and Mademoiselle Daaé, Erik, and you know it."
"Do I?" he asked wryly. With a merry glint to his eye, he asked, "Would you care to be trained to be a great diva, Nadir? I am sure it could be accomplished ..."
"Your humor is in poor taste," Nadir snapped.
"And your accusation is without basis," Erik replied smoothly, leaning back in his chair. "Do you still not trust me, old friend?"
It always pained Nadir when Erik lobbed this comment his way - and unfortunately, because Nadir could tend to be a bit oppressive and nosy in his friendship, this happened from time to time. He did trust Erik, with his life in fact; but when it came to Christine Daaé, he could not shake a feeling of uneasiness. It seemed to him that there was too much history between them for a simple friendship to result; some quagmire must lurk beneath the surface, waiting to subsume his friend. And he was concerned for Erik, knowing how fragile his heart could be despite his impermeable exterior façade.
And recalling the conversation he had had with Christine at the Opera, about which he had never told his friend, Nadir realized exactly where it was his skepticism lay. "I do trust you, Erik," he replied softly. "But Mademoiselle Daaé ..."
Erik was surprised with his own indignation at these words. He had not realized the extent to which Christine had re-entered his heart; but to hear her accused of anything gave rise to a protective urge. "What has Christine done to make you mistrust her?"
"What has she done?" Nadir cried. "She only wounded you so deeply that you left the country for years! She only hurt you more profoundly than I knew a woman could hurt a man! Erik, I was afraid for you all those years - did you know that? I wrote you so often, all those letters that I’m sure brought you untold annoyance since you answered them so infrequently, so you would still feel some connection to this world. I worried that, in your despair and heartbreak, you might feel so detached from human love that you might simply give up, disappear - or kill yourself!" Erik was staring at Nadir, having never seen him so agitated - or candid about his own feelings. Nadir himself leaned over the chess table. "Do not rebuke me for caring for you, Erik. I have been your friend - what, these thirty years at least? - and I cannot sit idly by and watch you reconcile with a woman who might as well have been your murderess. Not without having something to say about it - I’m sorry, Erik, but I do not trust her."