XII. AU-DESSUS DES TRAPPES

XII

ABOVE THE TRAPS

The next day, he saw her again at the Opera. She still wore the gold ring on her finger. She was sweet and kind. She spoke to him of the plans he was forming, of his future, of his career.

He told her that the departure of the polar expedition had been moved up and that, in three weeks, or at the latest a month, he would be leaving France.

She urged him, almost gaily, to look upon this voyage with joy, as a step toward his future glory. And when he answered that glory without love held no charm for him, she treated him like a child whose sorrows must be fleeting.

He said to her:

--How can you, Christine, speak so lightly of things so serious? We may never see each other again!... I may die during this expedition!...

--And so may I, she said simply...

She no longer smiled, she no longer jested. She seemed to be thinking of a new thing that was entering her mind for the first time. Her gaze was illuminated by it.

--What are you thinking of, Christine?

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

--And is that what makes you so radiant?

--And that, in a month, we must say farewell... forever!...

--Unless, Christine, we pledge our faith to one another and belong to each other forever.

She put her hand over his mouth:

--Hush, Raoul!... That is not the question, you know it well!... And we shall never marry! It is understood!

She seemed all at once to have difficulty containing an overflowing joy. She clapped her hands with childlike lightness... Raoul looked at her, troubled, not understanding.

--But... but..., she went on, striking her two hands together at the young man, or rather giving them to him, as if suddenly she had resolved to make him a gift of them. But if we cannot marry, we can... we can become engaged!... No one will know but us, Raoul!... There have been secret marriages!.. There can well be secret engagements!... We are engaged, my friend, for a month!... In a month, you will depart, and I shall be able to be happy, with the memory of that month, all my life!

She was delighted with her idea... And she became grave again.

--This, she said, _is a happiness that will harm no one._

Raoul had understood. He seized upon this inspiration. He wanted to make it a reality at once. He bowed before Christine with unparalleled humility and said:

--Mademoiselle, I have the honor of asking for your hand!

--But you already have both of them, my dear fiancé!... Oh! Raoul, how happy we shall be!... We shall play at being the little future husband and the little future wife!...

Raoul said to himself: the reckless girl! within a month, I shall have had time to make her forget, or to pierce and destroy, "the mystery of the man's voice," and within a month Christine will consent to become my wife. Meanwhile, let us play!

It was the prettiest game in the world, and they took to it like the pure children they were. Ah! what marvelous things they said to each other! and what eternal vows were exchanged! The thought that there would be no one to hold those vows once the month had passed left them in a turmoil they savored with dreadful delight, between laughter and tears. They played "at hearts" as others play "at ball"; only, since it was indeed their two hearts they were tossing back and forth, they had to be very, very skillful, to catch them without hurting themselves. One day--it was the eighth of the game--Raoul's heart hurt very badly and the young man stopped the game with these extravagant words: "I am no longer leaving for the North Pole."

Christine, who in her innocence had not thought of the possibility of that, suddenly discovered the danger of the game and bitterly reproached herself for it. She did not answer Raoul a word and went home.

This took place in the afternoon, in the singer's dressing room where she gave him all their rendezvous and where they amused themselves with true little dinners around three biscuits, two glasses of port, and a bouquet of violets.

That evening, she did not sing. And he did not receive the customary letter, though they had given each other permission to write every day of that month. The next morning, he ran to Mama Valérius's, who told him that Christine was away for two days. She had left the evening before, at five o'clock, saying she would not be back before the day after next. Raoul was devastated. He detested Mama Valérius, who informed him of such news with a stupefying calm. He tried to "get something out of her," but, quite evidently, the good lady knew nothing. She merely consented to answer the young man's frantic questions:

--It is Christine's secret!

And she raised a finger, saying that with a touching unction that commended discretion and that, at the same time, pretended to reassure.

--Ah! well, Raoul exclaimed spitefully, descending the stairs like a madman, ah! well! young girls are well guarded with that Mama Valérius!

Where could Christine be?... Two days... Two days less in their so brief happiness! And this was his fault!... Had it not been understood that he must leave?... And if his firm intention was not to leave, why had he spoken so soon? He accused himself of clumsiness and was the most unhappy of men for forty-eight hours, at the end of which Christine reappeared.

She reappeared in triumph. She found at last the unheard-of success of the gala evening. Since the "toad" adventure, Carlotta had not been able to appear on stage. The terror of a new "croak" dwelt in her heart and took away all her means; and the place, witness to her incomprehensible defeat, had become hateful to her. She found a way to break her contract. Daaé, temporarily, was asked to fill the vacant post. A veritable delirium greeted her in _La Juive_.

The viscount, present at that evening, naturally, was the only one to suffer in listening to the thousand echoes of this new triumph; for he saw that Christine still wore her gold ring: A distant voice murmured in the young man's ear: "Tonight, she still has the gold ring, and it was not you who gave it to her. Tonight, she has given her soul again, and it was not to you."

And still the voice pursued him: "If she will not tell you what she has done, for two days..., if she hides from you the place of her retreat, you must go ask it of Erik!"

He ran onto the stage. He placed himself in her path. She saw him, for her eyes were seeking him. She said to him: "Quick! Quick! Come!" And she drew him into the dressing room, no longer caring about all the courtiers of her young glory who murmured before her closed door: "It is a scandal!"

Raoul at once fell to his knees. He swore to her that he would leave and begged her never again to subtract an hour from the ideal happiness she had promised him. She let her tears flow. They kissed each other like a brother and sister in despair who have just been struck by a common bereavement and who find each other again to weep over a dead person.

Suddenly, she tore herself from the sweet and timid embrace of the young man, seemed to listen to something no one knew... and, with a brusque gesture, she pointed Raoul to the door. When he was on the threshold, she said to him, so low that the viscount guessed her words more than he heard them:

--Tomorrow, my dear fiancé! And be happy, Raoul..., it was for you that I sang this evening!...

So he went away.

But, alas! those two days of absence had broken the charm of their agreeable lie. They looked at each other, in the dressing room, without saying anything more, with their sad eyes. Raoul held himself back from crying out: "I am jealous! I am jealous! I am jealous!" But she heard it all the same.

Then she said: "Let us go for a walk, my friend, the air will do us good."

Raoul thought she was going to propose some country outing, far from this monument, which he hated like a prison and whose jailer he furiously felt walking within the walls... the jailer Erik... But she led him onto the stage, and made him sit on the wooden curb of a fountain, in the peace and doubtful freshness of a first set piece planted for the next spectacle; another day, she wandered with him, holding him by the hand, in the abandoned paths of a garden whose climbing plants had been cut out by the skillful hands of a set designer, as if the true skies, the true flowers, the true earth were forever forbidden her and she were condemned to breathe no other atmosphere than that of the theater! The young man hesitated to put the least question to her, for, as it at once appeared to him that she could not answer it, he dreaded making her suffer uselessly. From time to time a fireman passed, who watched over their melancholy idyll from afar. Sometimes, she courageously tried to deceive herself and him as to the lying beauty of this setting invented for the illusion of men. Her ever-lively imagination adorned it with the most dazzling colors and such, she said, as nature could not provide to compare. She grew enthusiastic, while Raoul, slowly, pressed her feverish hand. She said: "See, Raoul, these walls, these woods, these bowers, these painted canvas images, all that has seen the most sublime loves, for here they have been invented by poets, who surpass the stature of men by a hundred cubits. Tell me then that our love is well placed there, my Raoul, since it too has been invented, and it is, it too, alas! but an illusion!"

Desolate, he did not answer. Then:

--Our love is too sad on earth, let us walk it in the sky!... See how easy it is here!

And she drew him higher than the clouds, into the magnificent disorder of the grid, and she delighted in making him dizzy by running before him on the fragile bridges of the fly gallery, among the thousands of ropes that attached to pulleys, windlasses, drums, in the midst of a veritable aerial forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said to him with an adorable pout: "You, a sailor!"

And then, they came back down to solid ground, that is to say into some sturdy corridor that led them to laughter, to dancing, to youth scolded by a severe voice: "Loosen up, young ladies!... Watch your points!"... It is the class of the little girls, of those who have just ceased to be six or who are going on nine or ten... and they already have the low-cut bodice, the light tutu, the white trousers and the pink tights, and they work, they work with all their little aching feet in the hope of becoming quadrille pupils, compilées, little subjects, first dancers, with lots of diamonds around... Meanwhile, Christine distributes candies to them.

Another day, she had him enter a vast hall of her palace, all full of tinsel, of knights' cast-off rags, of lances, of shields and of plumes, and she reviewed all the ghosts of warriors motionless and covered with dust. She addressed good words to them, promising them they would see again the evenings ablaze with light, and the musical processions before the resounding footlights.

She thus led him through all her empire, which was factitious, but immense, extending over seventeen floors from the ground floor to the summit and inhabited by an army of subjects. She passed among them like a popular queen, encouraging the work, sitting in the shops, giving wise counsel to the workwomen whose hands hesitated to cut into the rich fabrics that were to clothe heroes. The inhabitants of this country practiced all trades. There were cobblers and goldsmiths. All had learned to love her, for she took interest in the troubles and little quirks of each. She knew unknown corners secretly inhabited by old couples.

She knocked at their door and presented Raoul to them as a charming prince who had asked for her hand, and both seated on some worm-eaten prop listened to the legends of the Opera as formerly, in their childhood, they had listened to the old Breton tales. These old people remembered nothing but the Opera. They had lived there for innumerable years. The vanished administrations had forgotten them there; the palace revolutions had ignored them; outside, the history of France had passed without their noticing, and no one remembered them.

Thus the precious days flowed by and Raoul and Christine, by the excessive interest they seemed to bring to outward things, clumsily strove to hide from each other the unique thought of their heart. One certain fact was that Christine, who had until then shown herself the stronger, suddenly became nervous beyond all expression. In their expeditions, she would take to running without reason or else stop abruptly, and her hand, grown icy in an instant, held back the young man. Her eyes sometimes seemed to pursue imaginary shadows. She cried: "This way," then "this way," then "this way," laughing, with a panting laugh that often ended in tears. Raoul then wanted to speak, to question despite his promises, his engagements. But, before he had even formulated a question, she answered feverishly: "Nothing!... I swear to you there is nothing."

Once, when, on the stage, they passed before an open trap, Raoul leaned over the dark gulf and said: "You have shown me the upper parts of your empire, Christine... but strange tales are told of the lower parts... Will you that we go down there?" Hearing that, she took him in her arms, as if she feared to see him disappear into the black hole, and she said to him very low, trembling: "Never!... I forbid you to go there!... And besides, it is not mine!... _All that is under the earth belongs to him!_"

Raoul plunged his eyes into hers and said to her in a harsh voice:

--So he lives down there?

--I did not tell you that!... Who ever said such a thing to you? Come! come! There are moments, Raoul, when I wonder if you are not mad?... You always hear impossible things!... Come! Come!

And she literally dragged him, for he wanted obstinately to remain near the trap, and that hole attracted him.

The trap suddenly closed, and so abruptly, without their even having seen the hand that operated it, that they remained quite stunned.

--It was perhaps _him_ who was there? he finally said.

She shrugged her shoulders, but she seemed in no way reassured.

--No! no! those are the "trap-closers." The "trap-closers" must do something... They open and close the traps for no reason... It is like the "door-closers"; they must "pass the time."

--And if it were _him_, Christine?

--But no! But no! _He_ has locked himself in! _He_ is working.

--Ah! really, _he_ is working?

--Yes, _he_ cannot open and close the traps and work at the same time. We are quite safe.

Saying that, she shivered.

--What then is _he_ working at?

--Oh! at something terrible!... So we are quite safe!... When _he_ works at that, _he_ sees nothing; _he_ neither eats, nor drinks, nor breathes... for days and nights... he is a living dead and _he_ has no time to amuse himself with the traps!

She shivered again, she leaned listening toward the trap... Raoul let her do and say. He fell silent. He now dreaded that the sound of his voice would suddenly make her reflect, stopping her in the still so fragile course of her confidences.

She had not left him... she still held him in her arms... she sighed in her turn:

--If it were _him!_

Raoul, timid, asked:

--You are afraid of _him?_

She made:

--But no! but no!

The young man involuntarily gave himself the attitude of pitying her, as one does with an impressionable being still prey to a recent dream. He looked as if to say: "because you know, I am here!" And his gesture was, almost involuntarily, threatening; then Christine looked at him with astonishment, as at a phenomenon of courage and virtue, and she seemed, in her thought, to measure at its true worth so much useless and audacious chivalry. She kissed poor Raoul like a sister who would reward him, by a burst of tenderness, for having closed his little fraternal fist to defend her against the always possible dangers of life.

Raoul understood and blushed with shame. He found himself as weak as she. He said to himself: "She claims she is not afraid, but she draws us away from the trap trembling." It was the truth. The next day and the following days, they lodged their curious and chaste loves, almost in the attics, far from the traps. Christine's agitation only increased as the hours passed. Finally, one afternoon, she arrived very late, her face so pale and her eyes so red with certain despair, that Raoul resolved upon all extremities, upon that, for example, which he expressed to her outright, "_of not leaving for the North Pole: unless she confided to him the secret of the Man's Voice_."

--Hush! For heaven's sake, hush. If _he_ heard you, unhappy Raoul!

And the wild eyes of the young girl made the tour of things around them.

--I will carry you off from his power, Christine, I swear it! And you will not even think of him anymore, which is necessary.

--Is it possible?

She permitted herself this doubt which was an encouragement, drawing the young man up to the top floor of the theater, "to the altitude," there where one is very far, very far from the traps.

--I will hide you in an unknown corner of the world, where he will not come to seek you. You will be saved, and then I will leave since you have sworn never to marry.

Christine threw herself on Raoul's hands and pressed them with incredible transport. But, anxious again, she turned her head.

--Higher! she said only... still higher!... And she drew him toward the summits.

He could hardly follow her. They were soon under the roofs, in the labyrinth of the timberwork. They slipped between the buttresses, the beams, the struts, the slopes, the inclines and the rafters; they ran from beam to beam as, in a forest, they would have run from tree to tree, to the formidable trunks...

And, despite the precaution she took to look behind her at every instant, she did not see a shadow that followed her like her shadow, that stopped with her, that set off again when she set off again and that made no more noise than a shadow should. Raoul, he, noticed nothing, for, when he had Christine before him, nothing that happened behind interested him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”