Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1912 — The PHANTOM OF THE OPERA [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

by Gaston Leroux

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11 V 3YNOPSIS. Consternation Is caused on the last night that the Opera is managed by Deblenne and Pojlgny because of the appearance of a ghost, said to have been in evidence on several previous occasions. Christine Daae, a member of the opera company, is called upon to fill a very Important part and scores a great success. Coupt de Chagny and his brother Raoul are among those who applaud the singer. Raoul trie's to see Christine In the dressing roofn, but Is unable to do so and later discovers that some one Is making love to her. She emerges alone, and upon entering the room he finds It empty. While the farewell ceremony for the retiring managers Is going on, the Opera • Ghost appears and Informs the new managers that Box No. 5 is reserved for him. Box No. 5 Is sold with disastrous results. The managers receive a letter from the Opera Ghost calling attention to the error. Christine Daae writes Raoul that she had gone to visit the grave of h.er father. He goes also, and in the night follows her to the church. Wonderful violin music is heard. Raoul visits a graveyard. Raoul is found next morning almost frozen. Moncharmln and Richard Investigate Box No. 5 and decide to see the performance of "Faust” from front seats of that box. Carlotta, who sings the leading part In "Faust,” is warned to give the part to Christine. Carlotta, refusing, loses her voice In the middle of a song and the main chandelier crashes down, killing a woman and wounding many. Raoul searches for Christine, who has disappeared. He sees her at last, but does not speak, and later a note is received from her making an appointment for a masked ball. Raoul meets Christine at the ball. He sees a person In the disguise of Red Death. He hears her conversing with some one whom she calls Erik. Raoul visits Christine and tells her he knows the name of the unseen man whom she calls the Angel of Music. CHAPTER XII. (continue^,) "No,” said Raoul, "I heard nothing.” "It is too terrible,” she confessed, "to be always trembling like this! . . . And yet we run no danger here; we are at home, in the sky, in the open air, in the light. The sun is flaming; and night-birds cannot bear to look at the sun. I haye never seen him by daylight . . . it must be awful! , . . Oh, the first time I saw him! . ... I thought that he was going to die.” "Why?” asked Raoul, really frightened at the aspect which this strange confidence was taking. “Because I had seen him!” This time, Raoul and Christine turned round at the same time: “There is some one in pain," said Raoul. “Perhaps some one has been hurt. Did you hear?" “I can’t say,” Christine confessed. “Even when he Is not there, my ears are full of his sighs. Still, if you heard ...” They stood up and looked around them. They were quite alone on the immense lead roof. They sat down again and Raoul said: “Tell me bow you saw him first." “I had heard him for three months without seeing him. The first time 1 heard it, I thought, as you did, that that adorable voice was singing in another room. 1 went out and looked everywhere; but, as you know, Raoul, my dressing-room Is very much by itself;* and I could not find the voice outside my room, whereas it went on steadily inside, v And it not only sang, but it spoke to me and answered my questions, like a real man’s voice, with this difference, that it was as beautiful as the voice of an angel. 1 bad never got the Angel of Music whom my poor father had promised to send me as soon as he was dead. I really think that Mamma Valerius was a little bit to blame. I told her about it; and she at once said, ’lt must be the angel; at any rate, you can do no barm by asking him.’ I did so; and the man’s voice replied that, yes, It was the angel’s voice, the voice which I was expecting and which my father had promised me. From that time onward, the voice and I became great friends. It asked leave to give me lessons every day. 1 agreed and never failed to keep the appointment which it gave me in my dressingroom. You have no idea, though you have heard the voice, of what those lessons were like.” “No, 1 have no idea," said Raoul. “What was your accompaniment?" “We were accompanied by a music which I*do not know; it was behind the wall and wonderfully accurate. The voice seemed to understand mine exactly, to know precisely where my father had left off teaching me. In a few weeks’ time, I hardly knew myself when I sang. I was even frightened. I seemed to dread a sort of witchcraft behind it; but Mampia Valerius reassured me. She said that she knew I was much too simple a girl to give the devil a hold on me. . , . My progress, by the voice’s own order, was kept a secret between the voice, Mamma Valerius and myself. It was a curious thing, but, outside the dressing-room, I sang with my ordinary, every-day voice and nobody noticed anything. I did all that the voice asked. It said, *Wait and see: we shall aßtonish Paris!’ And 1 waited and flTed on in a sort of ecstatic dream. It was then that 1 saw yon for the first time one evening, in the house. I was so glad that 1

never thought of concealing my delight when I reached my dressingroom. Unfortunately, the voice was there before me and soon noticed, by my air, that something had happened. It asked what was the matter and 1 saw no reason for keeping our story secret or concealing the place which you filled in my heart. \ Thfen the voice was silent. I called to It, but it did not reply; I begged and entreated, but in vain. I was terrified lest it had gone for good. I wish to heaven it had, dear! . . . That night, i went home in a desperate condition. I--told- Mamma Valerius, who said, ‘Why, of course, the voice is jealous!’ And that, dear, first revealed to me that I loved you.” Christine stopped and laid her head on Raoul’s shoulder. They sat like that for a moment, in silence, and they did not. see, did not perceive the movement, at a few steps front them, of the creeping shadow of two great black wings, a shadow that came along the roof so near, so near them that it could have stifled them by closing oyer them. ‘The next day,” Christine continued, with a sigh, “I went back to my dressing-room in a very pensive frame of mind. The voice was there, spoke to me with great sadness and told me plainly that, if I must bestow my heart on earth, there was nothing for the voice to do but to go back to heaven. And it said this with such an accent of human sorrow that 1 ought then and there to have suspected and begun to believe that 1 was the victim of my deluded senses. But my faith in the voice, with which the memory of my father was so closely Intermingled, remained undisturbed. I feared nothing so much as that I might never bear it again; 1 had thought about my love for you and realized all the useless danger Of it; and I did not even know if you remembered me. Whatever happened, your position in society forbade me to contemplate the possibility of ever marrying you; and 1 swore to the voice that you were no more than a brother to me nor ever would be and that my heart was incapable of any earthly love. And that, dear, was why I refused to recognize or see you when I met you on the stage or in the passages. Meanwhile, the hours during which the voice taught me were spent in a divine frenzy, until, at last, the voice said to me, ’You can now, Christine Daae, give to men a little of the music of heaven.’ 1 don’t know how it was that Carlotta did not come to the theater that night nor why I was called upon to sing in her stead; but I sang with a rapture 1 had never known before and 1 felt for a moment as if my soul were leaving my body!” , “Oh, Christine,” said Raoul, “my heart quivered that night at every accent of your voice. I Baw the tears stream down your cheeks and 1 wept with you. How could you sing, sing like that while crying?” “I felt myself fainting," said Christine. ‘‘l closed my eyes. When I opened them, you were by my side. But the voice was there also, Raoul! I was afraid for your sake and again I would not recognize you and began to laugh when you reminded me that you had picked up my scarf in the sea! . . . Alas, there is no deceiving the voice! . . . The vdice recognized you and the voice was jealous! ... It said that, if 1 did not love you, I would not avoid you, but treat you like any other old friend. It made me scene upon scene. At last, I said to the voice, ’That will do! t am going to Perros tomorrow, to pray on my father’s grave, and 1 shall ask M. Raoul de Chagny to go with me.' ‘Do as you please,' replied the voice, ‘but I shall be at Perros too, for I am wherever you are, Christine; and, If you are still worthy of me, if you have not lied te me, I will play you The Resurrection of Lazarus, on the stroke of midhlght, on your father’s tomb and on your father’s violin.’ That, dear, was how l came to write you the letter that brought you to Perros. How could I have been so beguiled? How was it. when I saw the personal, the selfish point of view of the-voice, that 1 did not suspect some Impostor? Alas, I was no longer mispress of myself: I had become his thing!” “But, after all,” cried Raoul, “you soon came to know the truth! Why did you not at once rid yourself of that abominable nightmare?” “Know the truth, Raoul? Rid myself of that nightmare? But, my poor boy, V wa * not caught in the nightmare until the day when 1 learned the truth! . . ... Pity me, Raoul, pity me! . . . You remember the terrible evening when Carlotta thought that she had been turned into a toad on the stage and the bouse was suddenly plunged in darkness through the chandelier crashing to the floor? There were killed and wounded that night and the whole theater rang with

terrified screams. My first thought was for you and the voice. I was at once easy, where you were concerned, for I had seen you in your brother’s box and I knew that you, were not in danger. But the voice had told me that It would be at the performance and I was really afraid for it, just as If it had been an ordinary person who was capable of dying. I thought to myself, The chandelier may have come down upon the voice.' I was then on the stage and was nearly running into the house, to look for the voice among the killed and wounded, 'when I thought that, if the voice was safe, it would be sure to be in my dressing-room and I rushed to my room. The voice was not there. 1 locked my door and, with tears in my eyes, besought it/if it were still alive, to manifest itself to me. The voice did not reply, but suddenly I heard a long, beautiful wall which 1 knew well. It is the plaint of Lazarus, when, at the sound of the Redeemer’s voice, he begins to open his eyes and see the light of day. It was the music which you and I, Raoul, heard at Perros. And then the voice began to sing the leading phrase, ‘Come! And believe in me! Whoso believes in me shall live! Walk! Whoso hath believed in me shall never die! . . .' I cannot tell you the effect which that music had upon me. It seemed to command me, personally, to come, to stand Up and come to it. It retreated and I followed. ‘Come! And believe in me!’ I believed in it, 1 came. ... . I came and—this was the extraordinary thing—my dressing-room, as I moved, seemed to lengthen out . . . to lengthen out. , . . Evidently, it must have been aq effect of mirrors . . . for I had the mirror in front of me . . And, suddenly.J_jwas outside the room without knowing how!" “What! , Without knowing how? Christine, Christine, you must really stop dreaming!" “I was not dreaming, dear, 1 was outside my room without knowing how. You, who sato me disappear from my room one evening, may be able to explain it; but I cannot. I can only tell you that, suddenly, there was.no mirror before me and no dress-

ing-room. I was in a dark passage, 1 was frightened and I cried out. it was quite dark, but for a faint red glimmer at a distant corner of the wall. I cried out. My voice was the only sound, for the singing and the violin had stopped. And. suddenly, a hand was laid on mine ... or rather a 'stone-cold, bony thing that seized my wrist and did not let go. I cried out again. An arm took mq, round the waist and supported me. I struggled for a little while and then gave up the attempt. I was dragged toward the little red light and then 1 saw that I was in the hands of a man wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a mask that hid his whole face. 1 made one last effort; my limbs stiffened, my mouth opened to scream, but a hand closed it, a hand which 1 felt on my lips, on my skin ... a hand that smelt of death. Then I fainted away. “When I ftpened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which 1 was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. 1 tried to push them away and asked. •Who are you? Where is the voice T“ His only answer was a sigh. —Suddenly,’ a dot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the man’s black shape, In the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and i

murmured, ’Cesar!’ The animat quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I bad recognized the white horse out of the Profeta, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there waa a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the opera ghost. I believed in the voice, but bad never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost’s prisoner. I called upon the voice to help me, for* I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the opera ghost, have you not, Raoul T* “Yes, but tell me what happened whea you were on the white horse of the Profeta?” made no movement and let myself go The black shape held me up, and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that l must be under the influence of some cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fittui gleams. I calculated that we were In a narrow , circular gaWgry, probably running all round the opera, which Is immense, underground. I had once been down into cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the figures of which 1 caught sighi had made me run away. There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield skovelß and pitchforks and poke up fires and s|ir up flames and, if you come too nea» them, they frighten you by suddenly openlflg the red mouths of their furnaces. . . . Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on his I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces; they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still bolding me up and Cesar walked on, unled and surefooted. I could not tell you, even approximated, how long this ride last-

ed; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into the Very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was turning, but I don’t think so; no, my mind was quite clear. At last, Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened bis pace a little. I felt a moistness in thq air and Cesar stopped. The darkness had

lifted. A sort of bluey light ed us. We were on the edge of • lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!” "A boat!” “Yes, but I knew that all that existed and that there was nothing supernatural about that underground lake and boat. But think of the exceptional conditions in which I arrived upon that shore! I don’t know whether the effects of the cordial bad worn oil when the man’s shape lifted me into the boat, but my terror began all over again. My gruesome escort must have noticed it, for he sent Cesar back and I heard his hoofs trampling up a staircase while the man jumped into the boat, untied the rope that held it and seized the oars. He rowed with a quick, powerful stroke; and his eyes, under the mask, never left me. We slipped across the noiseless water in the bluey light which I told you of; then we were in the dark again and we touched shore. And 1 was once more taken up in the man’s arms, i cried aloud. And then, suddenly, I was silent, dazed by the light. . . Yes, a dazzling light in the midst of which I had been put down. I sprang to my feet. I was in the middle of a drawing-room that seemed to me to be decorated, _ adorned and furnishdd with nothing but flowers, flowers both magnificent and stupid, because of the silk ribbons that tied them to baskets, like those which they sell Jn the shops on the boulevards. They were much too civilized flowers, like those which I used to find in my dressingroom after a first night And, in the midst of all these flowers, stood the black shape of the man in the mask, with arms crossed, and he said: ‘Don’t be afraid, Christine; you are In no danger.’ It was the voice! “My anger equaled my amazement. I rushed at the mask and tried to snatch it away, so as to see the face o? the voice. The man said, ‘You are in no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask.' And, taking me gently by the wrists, he forced me into a chair and then went down on his knees before me and said nothing more! His humility gave me back some of my courage, and the light restored me to the realities of life. However extraordinary the adventure might be, I was now surrounded by mortal, visible, tangible things. The furniture, the hangings, the candles, the vases and the very flowers in their baskets, of which I could almost have '.old whence they came and what they cost, were bound to confine my imagination to the limits of a drawing-room quite as commonplace as any that, at least, had the excuse of not being in the cellars of the opera. I had, no doubt, to do with a terrible, eccentrio person, who, in some mysterious fashion, had succeeded in taking up his abode there, under the opera bouse, five stories below the level of the ground. And the voice, the voice which I had recognized under the mask, was on its knees before me, was a man! And I began to cry. . . The man, still kneeling, must have understood the cause of my tears, for he said, ‘lt is true, Christine! . . . I am not an angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost . . . lam Erik!”’ Christine’s narrative was again interrupted. An echo behind them seemed to repeat the word after her, “Erik!” What echo? . . . They both turned round and saw that night had fallen. Raoul made a movement as though to rise, but Christine kept him beside her. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“I Was in the Hanas of a Man Wrapped in a Large Cloak and Wearing a Mask That Hid His Whole Face.”