The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux (mystery books to read .TXT) 📗

kiss her…alive…It was the first…time, daroga, the first…time I ever kissed a woman…. Yes, alive….I kissed her alive …and she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!”

The Persian shook Erik by the arm:

“Will you tell me if she is alive or dead.”

“Why do you shake me like that?” asked Erik, making an effort to speak more connectedly. “I tell you that I am going to die. ...Yes, I kissed her alive….”

“And now she is dead?”

“I tell you I kissed her just like that, on her forehead… and she did not draw back her forehead from my lips!...Oh, she is a good girl!...As to her being dead, I don’t think so; but it has nothing to do with me….No, no, she is not dead! And no one shall touch a hair of her head! She is a good, honest girl, and she saved your life, daroga, at a moment when I would not have given twopence for your Persian skin. As a matter of fact, nobody bothered about you. Why were you there with that little chap? You would have died as well as he! My word, how she entreated me for her little chap! But I told her that, as she had turned the scorpion, she had, through that very fact, and of her own free will, become engaged to me and that she did not need to have two men engaged to her, which was true enough.

“As for you, you did not exist, you had ceased to exist, I tell you, and you were going to die with the other!...Only, mark me, daroga, when you were yelling like the devil, because of the water, Christine came to me with her beautiful blue eyes wide open, and swore to me, as she hoped to be saved, that she consented to be MY LIVING WIFE!...Until then, in the depths of her eyes, daroga, I had always seen my dead wife; it was the first time I saw MY LIVING WIFE there. She was sincere, as she hoped to be saved. She would not kill herself. It was a bargain….Half a minute later, all the water was back in the lake; and I had a hard job with you, daroga, for, upon my honor, I thought you were done for!... However!...There you were!...It was understood that I was to take you both up to the surface of the earth. When, at last, I cleared the Louis-Philippe room of you, I came back alone….”

“What have you done with the Vicomte de Chagny?” asked the Persian, interrupting him.

“Ah, you see, daroga, I couldn’t carry HIM up like that, at once. ...He was a hostage….But I could not keep him in the house on the lake, either, because of Christine; so I locked him up comfortably, I chained him up nicely—a whiff of the Mazenderan scent had left him as limp as a rag—in the Communists’ dungeon, which is in the most deserted and remote part of the Opera, below the fifth cellar, where no one ever comes, and where no one ever hears you. Then I came back to Christine, she was waiting for me.”

Erik here rose solemnly. Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by all his former emotion and began to tremble like a leaf:

“Yes, she was waiting for me…waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride…as she hoped to be saved….And, when I…came forward, more timid than…a little child, she did not run away…no, no…she stayed…she waited for me….I even believe…daroga…that she put out her forehead…a little…oh, not much…just a little… like a living bride….And…and…I…kissed her!... I!...I!...I!...And she did not die!...Oh, how good it is, daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead!...You can’t tell!... But I! I!...My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never …let me kiss her….She used to run away…and throw me my mask! ...Nor any other woman…ever, ever!...Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And I fell at her feet, crying …and I kissed her feet…her little feet…crying. You’re crying, too, daroga…and she cried also…the angel cried!...” Erik sobbed aloud and the Persian himself could not retain his tears in the presence of that masked man, who, with his shoulders shaking and his hands clutched at his chest, was moaning with pain and love by turns.

“Yes, daroga…I felt her tears flow on my forehead…on mine, mine!...They were soft…they were sweet!...They trickled under my mask…they mingled with my tears in my eyes…yes …they flowed between my lips….Listen, daroga, listen to what I did….I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears…and she did not run away!...And she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer!”

And Erik fell into a chair, choking for breath:

“Ah, I am not going to die yet…presently I shall…but let me cry!...Listen, daroga…listen to this….While I was at her feet…I heard her say, `Poor, unhappy Erik!’ ... AND SHE TOOK MY HAND!...I had become no more, you know, than a poor dog ready to die for her….I mean it, daroga!... I held in my hand a ring, a plain gold ring which I had given her …which she had lost…and which I had found again… a wedding-ring, you know….I slipped it into her little hand and said, `There!...Take it!...Take it for you…and him! ...It shall be my wedding-present a present from your poor, unhappy Erik…..I know you love the boy…don’t cry any more! ...She asked me, in a very soft voice, what I meant…. Then I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her…but that she could marry the young man when she pleased, because she had cried with me and mingled her tears with mine!...”

Erik’s emotion was so great that he had to tell the Persian not to look at him, for he was choking and must take off his mask. The daroga went to the window and opened it. His heart was full of pity, but he took care to keep his eyes fixed on the trees in the Tuileries gardens, lest he should see the monster’s face.

“I went and released the young man,” Erik continued, “and told him to come with me to Christine….They kissed before me in the Louis-Philippe room….Christine had my ring…. I made Christine swear to come back, one night, when I was dead, crossing the lake from the Rue-Scribe side, and bury me in the greatest secrecy with the gold ring, which she was to wear until that moment. ...I told her where she would find my body and what to do with it. ...Then Christine kissed me, for the first time, herself, here, on the forehead—don’t look, daroga!—here, on the forehead…on my forehead, mine—don’t look, daroga!—and they went off together. ...Christine had stopped crying….I alone cried….Daroga, daroga, if Christine keeps her promise, she will come back soon!...”

The Persian asked him no questions. He was quite reassured as to the fate of Raoul Chagny and Christine Daae; no one could have doubted the word of the weeping Erik that night.

The monster resumed his mask and collected his strength to leave the daroga. He told him that, when he felt his end to be very near at hand, he would send him, in gratitude for the kindness which the Persian had once shown him, that which he held dearest in the world: all Christine Daae’s papers, which she had written for Raoul’s benefit and left with Erik, together with a few objects belonging to her, such as a pair of gloves, a shoe-buckle and two pocket-handkerchiefs. In reply to the Persian’s questions, Erik told him that the two young people, at soon as they found themselves free, had resolved to go and look for a priest in some lonely spot where they could hide their happiness and that, with this object in view, they had started from “the northern railway station of the world.” Lastly, Erik relied on the Persian, as soon as he received the promised relics and papers, to inform the young couple of his death and to advertise it in the EPOQUE.

That was all. The Persian saw Erik to the door of his flat, and Darius helped him down to the street. A cab was waiting for him. Erik stepped in; and the Persian, who had gone back to the window, heard him say to the driver:

“Go to the Opera.”

And the cab drove off into the night.

The Persian had seen the poor, unfortunate Erik for the last time. Three weeks later, the Epoque published this advertisement:

“Erik is dead.”

Epilogue.

I have now told the singular, but veracious story of the Opera ghost. As I declared on the first page of this work, it is no longer possible to deny that Erik really lived. There are to-day so many proofs of his existence within the reach of everybody that we can follow Erik’s actions logically through the whole tragedy of the Chagnys.

There is no need to repeat here how greatly the case excited the capital. The kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Comte de Chagny under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of his brother, the drugging of the gas-man at the Opera and of his two assistants: what tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine!...What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again?...She was represented as the victim of a rivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really happened, nobody understood that, as Raoul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count Philippe….They took the train one day from “the northern railway station of the world.” ...Possibly, I too shall take the train at that station, one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia, for the perhaps still living traces of Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valerius, who disappeared at the same time!...Possibly, some day, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music!...

Long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of M. le Juge d’Instruction Faure, the newspapers made efforts, at intervals, to fathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the gossip of the theaters, said:

“We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost.”

And even that was written by way of irony.

The Persian alone knew the whole truth and held the main proofs, which came to him with the pious relics promised by the ghost. It fell to my lot to complete those proofs with the aid of the daroga himself. Day by day, I kept him informed of the progress of my inquiries; and he directed them. He had not been to the Opera for years and years, but he had preserved the most accurate recollection of the building, and there was no better guide than he possible to help me discover its most secret recesses. He also told me where to gather further information, whom to ask; and he sent me to call on M. Poligny, at a moment when the poor man was nearly drawing his last breath. I had no idea that he was so very ill, and I shall never forget the effect which my questions about the ghost produced upon