Chapter X

The day after Christine had vanished before his eyes, M. le Vicomte de Chagny came to visit her little flat. Christine herself was seated by the bedside of the old lady, who was sitting up against the pillows, knitting. The pink and white had returned to the young girl’s cheeks. The dark rings round her eyes had disappeared. Raoul no longer recognized the tragic face of the day before.

She rose, without showing any emotion, and offered him her hand. But Raoul’s stupefaction was so great that he stood there dumfounded, without a gesture, without a word.

“Well, M. de Chagny,” exclaimed Mamma Valerius, “here is our Christine. Her good genius has sent her back to us!”

“Mamma!” the girl broke in promptly. “I thought, mamma, that there was to be no more question of that! You know there is no such thing as the Angel of Music!”

“But, child, he gave you lessons for three months!”

“Mamma, I have promised to explain everything to you one of these days; and I hope to do so but you have promised me, until that day, to be silent and to ask me no more questions whatever!”

“Provided that you promised never to leave me again! But have you promised that, Christine?”

“Mamma, all this can not interest M. de Chagny.”

“On the contrary, mademoiselle,” said the young man, in a voice which he tried to make firm and brave, but which still trembled, “anything that concerns you interests me to an extent which perhaps you will one day understand. I hardly expected to see you here so soon. Your secrecy may be fatal to you, Christine.”

At these words, Mamma Valerius tossed about in her bed.

“What does this mean?” she cried. “Is Christine in danger?”

“Yes, madame,” said Raoul courageously, notwithstanding the signs which Christine made to him.

“My God!” exclaimed the, simple old woman. “You must tell me everything, Christine! And what danger is it, M. de Chagny?”

“An impostor is abusing her good faith.”

“Is the Angel of Music an impostor?”

“She told you herself that there is no Angel of Music.”

“But then what is it, in Heaven’s name?”

“There is a terrible mystery around us, madame, around you, around Christine, a mystery much more to be feared than any number of ghosts!”

Mamma Valerius turned a terrified face to Christine.

“Don’t believe him, mummy, don’t believe him,” she repeated.

“Then tell me that you will never leave me again,” implored the widow.

Christine was silent and Raoul resumed.

“That is what you must promise, Christine. It is the only thing that can reassure your mother and me. We will undertake not to ask you a single question about the past, if you promise us to remain under our protection in future.”

“That is an undertaking which I have not asked of you and a promise which I refuse to make you!” said the young girl haughtily. “I am mistress of my own actions, M. de Chagny: you have no right to control them. As to what I have done during the last fortnight, there is only one man in the world who has the right to demand an account of me: my husband! Well, I have no husband and I never mean to marry!”

She threw out her hands to emphasize her words and Raoul turned pale, not only because of the words which he had heard, but because he had caught sight of a plain gold ring on Christine’s finger.

“You have no husband and yet you wear a wedding-ring.”

He tried to seize her hand, but she swiftly drew it back.

“That’s a present!” she said.

“Christine! As you have no husband, that ring can only have been given by one who hopes to make you his wife! Why deceive us further? Why torture me still more? That ring is a promise; and that promise has been accepted!”

“That’s what I said!” exclaimed the old lady.

“And what did she answer, madame?”

“Don’t you think, monsieur,” said Christine, “that this cross-examination has lasted long enough? As far as I am concerned…”

Raoul was afraid to let her finish her speech. He interrupted her:

“I beg your pardon for speaking as I did, mademoiselle. You know my good intentions. But allow me to tell you what I have seen—and I have seen more than you suspect, Christine—or what I thought I saw, for, to tell you the truth.”

“Well, what did you see, sir, or think you saw?”

“I saw your ecstasy at the sound of the voice, Christine: the voice that came from the wall or the next room to yours. Yes, your ecstasy! And that is what makes me alarmed on your behalf. You are under a very dangerous spell. Ah, it is a very dangerous voice, Christine, for I myself, when I heard it, was much fascinated by it. Christine, Christine, in the name of Heaven, in the name of your father who is in Heaven now and who loved you so dearly and who loved me too, Christine, tell us, tell your benefactress and me, to whom does that voice belong? Come, Christine, the name of the man! The name of the man who had the audacity to put a ring on your finger!”

“M. de Chagny,” the girl declared coldly, “you shall never know!”

Mamma Valerius suddenly took Christine’s part.

“And, if she does love that man, Monsieur le Vicomte, even then it is no business of yours!”

“Alas, madame,” Raoul humbly replied, unable to restrain his tears, “alas, I believe that Christine really does love him! But it is not only that which drives me to despair; for what I am not certain of, madame, is that the man whom Christine loves is worthy of her love!”

“It is for me to be the judge of that, monsieur!” said Christine, looking Raoul angrily in the face.

“Raoul, why do you condemn a man whom you have never seen, whom no one knows and about whom you yourself know nothing?”

“Yes, Christine. Yes, I at least know the name that you thought to keep from me for ever. The name of your Angel of Music, mademoiselle, is Erik!”

Christine turned as white as a sheet and stammered:

“Who told you?”

“You yourself!”

“How do you mean?”

“By pitying him the other night, the night of the masked ball. When you went to your dressing-room, did you not say, ‘Poor Erik?’ Well, Christine, there was a poor Raoul who overheard you.”

“This is the second time that you have listened behind the door, M. de Chagny!”

“I was not behind the door. I was in the dressing-room, in the inner room, mademoiselle.”

“Oh, unhappy man!” moaned the girl, showing every sign of unspeakable terror. “Unhappy man! Do you want to be killed?”

“Perhaps.”

Christine took his hands and looked at him with all the pure affection of which she was capable:

“Raoul,” she said, “forget the man’s voice and do not even remember its name. You must never try to fathom the mystery of the man’s voice.”

“Is the mystery so very terrible?”

“There is no more awful mystery on this earth. Swear to me that you will make no attempt to find out,” she insisted. “Swear to me that you will never come to my dressing-room, unless I send for you.”

“Then you promise to send for me sometimes, Christine?”

“I promise.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Then I swear to do as you ask.”

He kissed her hands and went away, cursing Erik and resolving to be patient.

Chapter XI

The next day, he saw her at the Opera. She was still wearing the plain gold ring. She was gentle and kind to him. She talked to him of the plans which he was forming, of his future, of his career.

He told her that the date of the Polar expedition had been put forward and that he would leave France in three weeks, or a month at latest. She suggested, almost gaily, that he must look upon the voyage with delight, as the first step toward his fame. And when he replied that fame without love was no attraction in his eyes, she treated him as a child whose sorrows were only short-lived.

“How can you speak so lightly of such serious things?” he asked. “Perhaps we shall never see each other again! I may die during that expedition.”

“Or I,” she said simply.

She no longer smiled or jested.

“What are you thinking of, Christine?”

“I am thinking that we shall not see each other again.”

“And does that make you so radiant?”

“And that, in a month, we shall have to say good-bye for ever!”

“Unless, Christine, we wait for each other for ever”.

She put her hand on his mouth.

“Hush, Raoul! You know there is no question of that. And we shall never be married: that is understood!”

She clapped her hands with childish glee. Raoul stared at her in amazement.

“But… but,” she continued, holding out her two hands to Raoul, “but if we can not be married, we can… we can be engaged! Nobody will know but ourselves, Raoul. There have been plenty of secret marriages: why not a secret engagement? We are engaged, dear, for a month! In a month, you will go away, and I can be happy at the thought of that month all my life long!”

Then she became serious again.

“This,” she said, “is a happiness that will harm no one”.

Raoul jumped at the idea. He bowed to Christine and said:

“Mademoiselle, I have the honor to ask for your hand.”

“Why, you have both of them already, my dear! Oh, Raoul, how happy we shall be! We shall play at being engaged all day long!”

It was the prettiest game in the world and they enjoyed it like the children that they were. Oh, the wonderful speeches they made to each other and the eternal vows they exchanged!

One day, about a week after the game began, Raoul’s heart was badly hurt and he stopped playing and uttered these wild words:

“I shan’t go to the North Pole!”

Christine, who, in her innocence, had not dreamed of such a possibility, suddenly discovered the danger of the game. She did not say a word in reply to Raoul’s remark and went straight home.

This happened in the afternoon, in the singer’s dressing-room, where they met every day. In the evening, she did not sing; and he did not receive his usual letter. The next morning, he ran off to Mamma Valerius, who told him that Christine had gone away for two days. She had left at five o’clock the day before. Raoul was distracted.

Christine returned on the following day. She returned in triumph. She renewed her extraordinary success of the gala performance. Since the adventure of the “toad,” Carlotta had not been able to appear on the stage. The terror of a fresh “co-ack” filled her heart and deprived her of all her power of singing; and the theater that had witnessed her incomprehensible disgrace had become odious to her. She cancelled her contract. Daae was offered the vacant place for the time. She received thunders of applause in the Juive.

The viscount, who, of course, was present, was the only one to suffer on hearing the thousand echoes of this fresh triumph; for Christine still wore her plain gold ring. A distant voice whispered in the young man’s ear:

“She is wearing the ring again tonight; and you did not give it to her. She gave her soul again tonight and she did not give it to you. If she doesn’t tell you what she has been doing the past two days, you must go and ask Erik!”

He ran behind the scenes. She saw him. She said:

“Quick! Quick! Come!”

And she dragged him to her dressing-room.

Raoul at once threw himself on his knees before her. He swore to her that he would go. She let her tears flow.

When he was on the threshold, she said, in so low a voice that the viscount guessed rather than heard her words:

“My dear betrothed, be happy! Raoul, I sang for you tonight!”

He returned the next day. They looked at each other, in the dressing-room, with their sad eyes, without exchanging a word. Raoul had to restrain himself not to cry out:

“I am jealous! I am jealous! I am jealous!”

But she heard him all the same. Then she said:

“Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good.”

On another day, she wandered with him, along the deserted paths of a garden.

She took him to the wardrobe and property-rooms, took him all over her empire, inhabited by an army of subjects.

Once, when they were passing before an open trapdoor on the stage, Raoul stopped over the dark cavity.

“You have shown me over the upper part of your empire, Christine, but there is the lower part. Shall we go down?”

In a trembling voice, she whispered:

“Never! We will never go there! Besides, it’s not mine. Everything that is underground belongs to him!”

Raoul looked her in the eyes and said roughly:

“So he lives down there, does he?”

“I never said so. Who told you a thing like that? Come away! I sometimes wonder if you are quite sane, Raoul. Come along! Come!”

He wanted to remain by the trap-door; that hole attracted him. Suddenly, the trap-door was closed and so quickly that they did not even see the hand that worked it; and they remained quite dazed.

“Perhaps he was there,” Raoul said, at last.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“No, no, it was a trap-door-shutter. The trap-door-shutters must do something, you know. They open and shut the trap-doors without any particular reason. They must spend their time somehow. He has shut himself up, he is working”.

“Oh, really! He’s working, is he?”

“Yes, he can’t open and shut the trap-doors and work at the same time.” She shivered.

“What is he working at?”

“Oh, something terrible! When he’s working at that, he sees nothing; he does not eat, drink, or breathe for days and nights. He becomes a living dead man and has no time to amuse himself with the trap-doors.”

She shivered again.

“Are you afraid of him?”

“No, no, of course not,” she said.

For all that, on the next day and the following days, Christine was careful to avoid the trap-doors. Raoul said that he would not go on the North Pole expedition unless she first told him the secret of the man’s voice.

“Hush! Hush, in Heaven’s name! Suppose he heard you, you unfortunate Raoul!”

And Christine’s eyes stared wildly at everything around her.

“I will remove you from his power, Christine, I swear it. And you will not think of him any more.”

“Is it possible?”

“I shall hide you in some unknown corner of the world, where he can not come to you. You will be safe; and then I shall go away as you have sworn never to marry.”

Christine seized Raoul’s hands and squeezed them with incredible rapture.

“Higher!” was all she said. “Higher still!”

And she dragged him up toward the summit.

He had a difficulty in following her. They were soon under the very roof. And, despite the care which she took, she failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own shadow, which stopped when she stopped, which started again when she did and which made no more noise than a shadow should.

As for Raoul, he saw nothing either; for, when he had Christine in front of him, nothing interested him that happened behind.