The Phantom of the Opera
went up to her and kissed her. She asked him a few questions,
performed her duties as hostess prettily, took up the tray again and
left the room. Then she ran into the garden and took refuge on a
bench, a prey to feelings that stirred her young heart for the first
time. Raoul followed her and they talked till the evening, very shyly.
They were quite changed, cautious as two diplomatists, and told each
other things that had nothing to do with their budding sentiments.
When they took leave of each other by the roadside, Raoul, pressing a
kiss on Christine's trembling hand, said:
"Mademoiselle, I shall never forget you!"
And he went away regretting his words, for he knew that Christine could
not be the wife of the Vicomte de Chagny.
As for Christine, she tried not to think of him and devoted herself
wholly to her art. She made wonderful progress and those who heard her
prophesied that she would be the greatest singer in the world.
Meanwhile, the father died; and, suddenly, she seemed to have lost,
with him, her voice, her soul and her genius. She retained just, but
only just, enough of this to enter the CONSERVATOIRE, where she did not
distinguish herself at all, attending the classes without enthusiasm
and taking a prize only to please old Mamma Valerius, with whom she
continued to live.
The first time that Raoul saw Christine at the Opera, he was charmed by
the girl's beauty and by the sweet images of the past which it evoked,
but was rather surprised at the negative side of her art. He returned
to listen to her. He followed her in the wings. He waited for her
behind a Jacob's ladder. He tried to attract her attention. More than
once, he walked after her to the door of her box, but she did not see
him. She seemed, for that matter, to see nobody. She was all
indifference. Raoul suffered, for she was very beautiful and he was
shy and dared not confess his love, even to himself. And then came the
lightning-flash of the gala performance: the heavens torn asunder and
an angel's voice heard upon earth for the delight of mankind and the
utter capture of his heart.
And then ... and then there was that man's voice behind the door--"You
must love me!"--and no one in the room...
Why did she laugh when he reminded her of the incident of the scarf?
Why did she not recognize him? And why had she written to him? ...
Perros was reached at last. Raoul walked into the smoky sitting-room
of the Setting Sun and at once saw Christine standing before him,
smiling and showing no astonishment.
"So you have come," she said. "I felt that I should find you here,
when I came back from mass. Some one told me so, at the church."
"Who?" asked Raoul, taking her little hand in his.
"Why, my poor father, who is dead."
There was a silence; and then Raoul asked:
"Did your father tell you that I love you, Christine, and that I can
not live without you?"
Christine blushed to the eyes and turned away her head. In a trembling
voice, she said:
"Me? You are dreaming, my friend!"
And she burst out laughing, to put herself in countenance.
"Don't laugh, Christine; I am quite serious," Raoul answered.
And she replied gravely: "I did not make you come to tell me such
things as that."
"You 'made me come,' Christine; you knew that your letter would not
leave me indignant and that I should hasten to Perros. How can you
have thought that, if you did not think I loved you?"
"I thought you would remember our games here, as children, in which my
father so often joined. I really don't know what I thought... Perhaps
I was wrong to write to you ... This anniversary and your sudden
appearance in my room at the Opera, the other evening, reminded me of
the time long past and made me write to you as the little girl that I
then was..."
There was something in Christine's attitude that seemed to Raoul not
natural. He did not feel any hostility in her; far from it: the
distressed affection shining in her eyes told him that. But why was
this affection distressed? That was what he wished to know and what
was irritating him.
"When you saw me in your dressing-room, was that the first time you
noticed me, Christine?"
She was incapable of lying.
"No," she said, "I had seen you several times in your brother's box.
And also on the stage."
"I thought so!" said Raoul, compressing his lips. "But then why, when
you saw me in your room, at your feet, reminding you that I had rescued
your scarf from the sea, why did you answer as though you did not know
me and also why did you laugh?"
The tone of these questions was so rough that Christine stared at Raoul
without replying. The young man himself was aghast at the sudden
quarrel which he had dared to raise at the very moment when he had
resolved to speak words of gentleness, love and submission to
Christine. A husband, a lover with all rights, would talk no
differently to a wife, a mistress who had offended him. But he had
gone too far and saw no other way out of the ridiculous position than
to behave odiously.
"You don't answer!" he said angrily and unhappily. "Well, I will
answer for you. It was because there was some one in the room who was
in your way, Christine, some one that you did not wish to know that you
could be interested in any one else!"
"If any one was in my way, my friend," Christine broke in coldly, "if
any one was in my way, that evening, it was yourself, since I told you
to leave the room!"
"Yes, so that you might remain with the other!"
"What are you saying, monsieur?" asked the girl excitedly. "And to
what other do you refer?"
"To the man to whom you said, 'I sing only for you! ... to-night I gave
you my soul and I am dead!'"
Christine seized Raoul's arm and clutched it with a strength which no
one would have suspected in so frail a creature.
"Then you were listening behind the door?"
"Yes, because I love you everything ... And I heard everything ..."
"You heard what?"
And the young girl, becoming strangely calm, released Raoul's arm.
"He said to you, 'Christine, you must love me!'"
At these words, a deathly pallor spread over Christine's face, dark
rings formed round her eyes, she staggered and seemed on the point of
swooning. Raoul darted forward, with arms outstretched, but Christine
had overcome her passing faintness and said, in a low voice:
"Go on! Go on! Tell me all you heard!"
At an utter loss to understand, Raoul answered: "I heard him reply,
when you said you had given him your soul, 'Your soul is a beautiful
thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a
gift. The angels wept tonight.'"
Christine carried her hand to her heart, a prey to indescribable
emotion. Her eyes stared before her like a madwoman's. Raoul was
terror-stricken. But suddenly Christine's eyes moistened and two great
tears trickled, like two pearls, down her ivory cheeks.
"Christine!"
"Raoul!"
The young man tried to take her in his arms, but she escaped and fled
in great disorder.
While Christine remained locked in her room, Raoul was at his wit's end
what to do. He refused to breakfast. He was terribly concerned and
bitterly grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet,
slip past without the presence of the young Swedish girl. Why did she
not come to roam with him through the country where they had so many
memories in common? He heard that she had had a mass said, that
morning, for the repose of her father's soul and spent a long time
praying in the little church and on the fiddler's tomb. Then, as she
seemed to have nothing more to do at Perros and, in fact, was doing
nothing there, why did she not go back to Paris at once?
Raoul walked away, dejectedly, to the graveyard in which the church
stood and was indeed alone among the tombs, reading the inscriptions;
but, when he turned behind the apse, he was suddenly struck by the
dazzling note of the flowers that straggled over the white ground.
They were marvelous red roses that had blossomed in the morning, in the
snow, giving a glimpse of life among the dead, for death was all around
him. It also, like the flowers, issued from the ground, which had
flung back a number of its corpses. Skeletons and skulls by the
hundred were heaped against the wall of the church, held in position by
a wire that left the whole gruesome stack visible. Dead men's bones,
arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the
walls of the sacristy had been built. The door of the sacristy opened
in the middle of that bony structure, as is often seen in old Breton
churches.
Raoul said a prayer for Daae and then, painfully impressed by all those
eternal smiles on the mouths of skulls, he climbed the slope and sat
down on the edge of the heath overlooking the sea. The wind fell with
the evening. Raoul was surrounded by icy darkness, but he did not feel
the cold. It was here, he remembered, that he used to come with little
Christine to see the Korrigans dance at the rising of the moon. He had
never seen any, though his eyes were good, whereas Christine, who was a
little shortsighted, pretended that she had seen many. He smiled at
the thought and then suddenly gave a start. A voice behind him said:
"Do you think the Korrigans will come this evening?"
It was Christine. He tried to speak. She put her gloved hand on his
mouth.
"Listen, Raoul. I have decided to tell you something serious, very
serious ... Do you remember the legend of the Angel of Music?"
"I do indeed," he said. "I believe it was here that your father first
told it to us."
"And it was here that he said, 'When I am in Heaven, my child, I will
send him to you.' Well, Raoul, my father is in Heaven, and I have been
visited by the Angel of Music."
"I have no doubt of it," replied the young man gravely, for it seemed
to him that his friend, in obedience to a pious thought, was connecting
the memory of her father with the brilliancy of her last triumph.
Christine appeared astonished at the Vicomte de Chagny's coolness:
"How do you understand it?" she asked, bringing her pale face so close
to his that he might have thought that Christine was going to give him
a kiss; but she only wanted to read his eyes in spite of the dark.
"I understand," he said, "that no human being can sing as you sang the
other evening without the intervention of some miracle. No professor
on earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel
of Music, Christine."
"Yes," she said solemnly, "IN MY DRESSING-ROOM. That is where he comes
to give me my lessons daily."
"In your dressing-room?" he echoed stupidly.
"Yes, that is where I have heard him; and I have not been the only one
to hear him."
"Who else heard him, Christine?"
"You, my friend."
"I? I heard the Angel of Music?"
"Yes, the other evening, it was he who was talking when you were
listening behind the door. It was he who said, 'You must love me.' But
I then thought that I was the only one to hear his voice. Imagine my
astonishment when you told me, this morning, that you could hear him
too."
Raoul burst out laughing. The first rays of the moon came and shrouded
the two young people in their light. Christine turned on Raoul with a
hostile air. Her eyes, usually so gentle, flashed fire.
"What are you laughing at? YOU think you heard a man's voice, I
suppose?"
"Well! ..." replied the young man, whose ideas began to grow confused
in the face of Christine's determined attitude.
"It's you, Raoul, who say that? You, an old playfellow of my own! A
friend of my father's! But you have changed since those days. What are
you thinking of? I am an honest girl, M. le Vicomte de Chagny, and I