The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux (bill gates best books .TXT) 📗

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 don’t lock myself up in my dressing-room with men’s voices. If you had opened the door, you would have seen that there was nobody in the room!”

“That’s true! I did open the door, when you were gone, and I found no one in the room.”

“So you see!⁠ ⁠… Well?”

The viscount summoned up all his courage.

“Well, Christine, I think that somebody is making game of you.”

She gave a cry and ran away. He ran after her, but, in a tone of fierce anger, she called out: “Leave me! Leave me!” And she disappeared.

Raoul returned to the inn feeling very weary, very low-spirited and very sad. He was told that Christine had gone to her bedroom saying that she would not be down to dinner. Raoul dined alone, in a very gloomy mood. Then he went to his room and tried to read, went to bed and tried to sleep. There was no sound in the next room.

The hours passed slowly. It was about half-past eleven when he distinctly heard someone moving, with a light, stealthy step, in the room next to his. Then Christine had not gone to bed! Without troubling for a reason, Raoul dressed, taking care not to make a sound, and waited. Waited for what? How could he tell? But his heart thumped in his chest when he heard Christine’s door turn slowly on its hinges. Where could she be going, at this hour, when everyone was fast asleep at Perros? Softly opening the door, he saw Christine’s white form, in the moonlight, slipping along the passage. She went down the stairs and he leaned over the baluster above her. Suddenly he heard two voices in rapid conversation. He caught one sentence: “Don’t lose the key.”

It was the landlady’s voice. The door facing the sea was opened and locked again. Then all was still.

Raoul ran back to his room and threw back the window. Christine’s white form stood on the deserted quay.

The first floor of the Setting Sun was at no great height and a tree growing against the wall held out its branches to Raoul’s impatient arms and enabled him to climb down unknown to the landlady. Her amazement, therefore, was all the greater when, the next morning, the young man was brought back to her half frozen, more dead than alive, and when she learned that he had been found stretched at full length on the steps of the high altar of the little church. She ran at once to tell Christine, who hurried down and, with the help of the landlady, did her best to revive him. He soon opened his eyes and was not long in recovering when he saw his friend’s charming face leaning over him.

A few weeks later, when the tragedy at the Opera compelled the intervention of the public prosecutor, M. Mifroid, the commissary of police, examined the Vicomte de Chagny touching the events of the night at Perros. I quote the questions and answers as given in the official report pp. 150 et seq.:

Q.

Did Mlle. Daaé not see you come down from your room by the curious road which you selected?

R.

No, monsieur, no, although, when walking behind her, I took no pains to deaden the sound of my footsteps. In fact, I was anxious that she should turn round and see me. I realized that I had no excuse for following her and that this way of spying on her was unworthy of me. But she seemed not to hear me and acted exactly as though I were not there. She