“Oh, don’t look at THEM!” Bordenave furiously whispered to her. “Go on the stage; go on, do! It’s no business of yours! Why, you’re missing your cue!”
And with a push from the manager, Rose stepped over the prostrate bodies and found herself in the flare of the footlights and in the presence of the audience. She had quite failed to understand why they were fighting on the floor behind her. Trembling from head to foot and with a humming in her ears, she came down to the footlights, Diana’s sweet, amorous smile on her lips, and attacked the opening lines of her duet with so feeling a voice that the public gave her a veritable ovation.
Behind the scenery she could hear the dull thuds caused by the two men. They had rolled down to the wings, but fortunately the music covered the noise made by their feet as they kicked against them.
“By God!” yelled Bordenave in exasperation when at last he had succeeded in separating them. “Why couldn’t you fight at home? You know as well as I do that I don’t like this sort of thing. You, Mignon, you’ll do me the pleasure of staying over here on the prompt side, and you, Fauchery, if you leave the O.P. side I’ll chuck you out of the theater. You understand, eh? Prompt side and O.P. side or I forbid Rose to bring you here at all.”
When he returned to the prince’s presence the latter asked what was the matter.
“Oh, nothing at all,” he murmured quietly.
Nana was standing wrapped in furs, talking to these gentlemen while awaiting her cue. As Count Muffat was coming up in order to peep between two of the wings at the stage, he understood from a sign made him by the stage manager that he was to step softly. Drowsy warmth was streaming down from the flies, and in the wings, which were lit by vivid patches of light, only a few people remained, talking in low voices or making off on tiptoe. The gasman was at his post amid an intricate arrangement of cocks; a fireman, leaning against the side lights, was craning forward, trying to catch a glimpse of things, while on his seat, high up, the curtain man was watching with resigned expression, careless of the play, constantly on the alert for the bell to ring him to his duty among the ropes. And amid the close air and the shuffling of feet and the sound of whispering, the voices of the actors on the stage sounded strange, deadened, surprisingly discordant. Farther off again, above the confused noises of the band, a vast breathing sound was audible. It was the breath of the house, which sometimes swelled up till it burst in vague rumors, in laughter, in applause. Though invisible, the presence of the public could be felt, even in the silences.
“There’s something open,” said Nana sharply, and with that she tightened the folds of her fur cloak. “Do look, Barillot. I bet they’ve just opened a window. Why, one might catch one’s death of cold here!”
Barillot swore that he had closed every window himself but suggested that possibly there were broken panes about. The actors were always complaining of drafts. Through the heavy warmth of that gaslit region blasts of cold air were constantly passing—it was a regular influenza trap, as Fontan phrased it.
“I should like to see YOU in a low-cut dress,” continued Nana, growing annoyed.