XI. IL FAUT OUBLIER LE NOM DE «LA VOIX D'HOMME»

XI

THE NAME OF 'THE VOICE OF A MAN' MUST BE FORGOTTEN

The day after Christine had vanished from his sight in a kind of dazzlement that still made him doubt his senses, Viscount de Chagny went to Mama Valérius's to inquire after her. He came upon a charming picture.

At the bedside of the old lady, who sat up in bed knitting, Christine was making lace. Never did a more charming oval face, never a purer brow, never a gentler gaze bend over a virgin's work. Fresh color had returned to the young girl's cheeks. The bluish circles around her clear eyes had disappeared. Raoul no longer recognized the tragic face of the previous evening. Had not the veil of melancholy spread over those adorable features appeared to the young man as the last vestige of the unheard-of drama in which this mysterious child was struggling, he might have thought that Christine was not its incomprehensible heroine.

She rose at his approach with no apparent emotion and held out her hand to him. But Raoul's astonishment was such that he remained there, overwhelmed, without a gesture, without a word.

'Well, Monsieur de Chagny,' exclaimed Mama Valérius, 'do you no longer know our Christine? Her "good genius" has given her back to us!'

'Mama!' the young girl interrupted in a curt tone, while a vivid blush rose to her eyes, 'Mama, I thought there would never be any more question of that!... You know very well there is no genius of music!'

'My child, he did give you lessons for three months!'

'Mama, I promised you to explain everything to you one of these days; I hope to... but, until that day, you promised me silence and never to question me again!'

'If only you would promise me, you, never to leave me! But did you promise me that, Christine?'

'Mama, none of this could possibly interest Monsieur de Chagny...'

'That is where you are mistaken, mademoiselle,' the young man interrupted in a voice he tried to make firm and brave and which was still only trembling; 'everything that concerns you interests me to a degree you may perhaps come to understand. I shall not hide from you that my astonishment equals my joy at finding you again at the side of your adoptive mother, and that what passed yesterday between us, what you may have told me, what I may have guessed, nothing led me to foresee so prompt a return. I should be the first to rejoice in it, if you did not obstinately keep a secret over all this which may prove fatal to you..., and I have been your friend too long not to worry, with Mme Valérius, over a baleful adventure which will remain dangerous so long as we have not unraveled its thread and of which you will surely end up the victim, Christine.'

At these words, Mama Valérius stirred in her bed.

'What does that mean?' she cried... 'Is Christine in danger?'

'Yes, madame...,' declared Raoul courageously, despite Christine's signs.

'My God!' exclaimed the good and naive old woman, breathless. 'You must tell me everything, Christine! Why were you reassuring me? And what danger is it, Monsieur de Chagny?'

'An impostor is in the process of abusing her good faith!'

'The angel of music is an impostor?'

'She told you herself there is no angel of music!'

'Well! what is it then, in the name of Heaven?' implored the invalid! 'You will be the death of me!'

'There is, madame, around us, around you, around Christine, an earthly mystery much more to be feared than all ghosts and all genii!'

Mama Valérius turned toward Christine a terrified face, but the latter had already thrown herself toward her adoptive mother and was holding her in her arms:

'Do not believe him! good mama..., do not believe him,' she repeated... and she tried, by her caresses, to console her, for the old lady was uttering heart-rending sighs.

'Then tell me you will never leave me again!' implored the professor's widow.

Christine was silent and Raoul resumed:

'That is what must be promised, Christine... It is the only thing that can reassure us, your mother and me! We pledge ourselves to ask you not a single question about the past, if you promise to remain under our protection in the future...'

'It is an engagement I do not ask of you, and it is a promise I shall not make to you!' pronounced the young girl with pride. 'I am free in my actions, Monsieur de Chagny; you have no right to control them and I beg you to dispense with doing so henceforth. As for what I have done these last fifteen days, there is but one man in the world who would have the right to demand that I account to him for it: my husband! Now, I have no husband, and I shall never marry!'

Saying this with force, she extended her hand toward Raoul, as if to render her words more solemn, and Raoul grew pale, not only because of the words themselves he had just heard, but because he had just caught sight, on Christine's finger, of a gold ring.

'You have no husband, and yet you wear a "wedding ring".'

And he would have seized her hand, but Christine had swiftly withdrawn it.

'It is a gift!' she said, blushing again and vainly striving to hide her embarrassment.

'Christine! since you have no husband, that ring can only have been given you by him who hopes to become one! Why deceive us further? Why torture me more? That ring is a promise! and that promise has been accepted!'

'That is what I told her!' exclaimed the old lady.

'And what did she answer you, madame?'

'What I willed,' cried Christine, exasperated. 'Do you not find, monsieur, that this interrogation has lasted too long?... As for me...'

Raoul, much moved, feared lest she let fall the words of a definitive break. He interrupted her:

'Pardon me for having spoken to you thus, mademoiselle... You know well what honest sentiment makes me meddle, at this moment, in things which doubtless concern me not! But let me tell you what I saw... and I saw more than you think, Christine... or what I thought I saw, for, in truth, it is the least one can do, in such an adventure, to doubt the testimony of one's eyes...'

'What is it you saw, monsieur, or thought you saw?'

'I saw your ecstasy at the sound of the voice, Christine! of the voice that came from the wall, or a box, or an apartment next door... yes, your ecstasy!... And that is what, for you, terrifies me!... You are under the most dangerous of spells!... And yet it seems you became aware of the imposture, since you say today that there is no genius of music... Then, Christine, why did you follow him this time again? Why did you rise, your face radiant, as if you truly heard the angels?... Ah! that voice is dangerous indeed, Christine, since I myself, while I heard it, was so ravished by it, that you vanished from my sight, without my being able to say by where you passed!... Christine! Christine! in the name of heaven, in the name of your father who is in heaven and who loved you so, and who loved me, Christine, you will tell us, your benefactress and me, to whom that voice belongs! And despite yourself, we shall save you!... Come now! the name of that man, Christine?... Of that man who had the audacity to pass a gold ring onto your finger!'

'Monsieur de Chagny,' the young girl declared coldly, 'you shall never know it!...'

Whereupon was heard the shrill voice of Mama Valérius who, suddenly taking Christine's side on seeing with what hostility her ward had just addressed the viscount.

'And if she loves that man, Monsieur le Vicomte, that is still no concern of yours!'

'Alas! madame,' replied Raoul humbly, who could not hold back his tears... 'Alas! I do believe, indeed, that Christine loves him... Everything proves it to me, but that is not alone what makes my despair, for what I am not sure of, madame, is that he who is loved by Christine is worthy of that love!'

'It is for me alone to judge, monsieur!' said Christine, looking Raoul straight in the face and showing him a countenance in the grip of sovereign irritation.

'When one takes,' continued Raoul, who felt his strength abandoning him, 'to seduce a young girl, means so romantic...'

'It must be, must it not, that the man is base or the young girl very foolish?'

'Christine!'

'Raoul, why do you thus condemn a man you have never seen, whom no one knows and of whom you yourself know nothing?...'

'Yes, Christine... Yes... I know at least that name you pretend to hide from me forever... Your angel of music, mademoiselle, is called Erik!...'

Christine betrayed herself at once. She became, this time, white as an altar cloth. She stammered:

'Who told you that?'

'Yourself!'

'How so?'

'In pitying him, the other evening, the evening of the masked ball. On arriving in your box, did you not say: "Poor Erik!" Well! Christine, there was, somewhere, a poor Raoul who heard you.'

'It is the second time you listen at doors, Monsieur de Chagny!'

'I was not behind the door!... I was in the box!... in your boudoir, mademoiselle.'

'Wretched man!' groaned the young girl, who showed all the marks of an unspeakable dread... 'Wretched man! Do you wish then to be killed?'

'Perhaps!'

Raoul pronounced this 'perhaps' with so much love and despair that Christine could not hold back a sob.

She then took his hands and looked at him with all the pure tenderness of which she was capable, and the young man, beneath those eyes, felt his sorrow already soothed.

'Raoul,' she said. 'You must forget the voice of a man and no longer remember even his name... and never attempt to penetrate the mystery of the voice of a man.'

'Is that mystery then so terrible?'

'There is none more frightful on earth!'

A silence parted the young people. Raoul was overwhelmed.

'Swear to me you will do nothing to "know",' she insisted... 'Swear to me you will enter my box no more if I do not call you there.'

'You promise me to call me there sometimes, Christine?'

'I promise you.'

'When?'

'Tomorrow.'

'Then, I swear that to you!'

Those were their last words that day.

He kissed her hands and went away cursing Erik and promising himself to be patient.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”