To return to the evening in question.
"It's the ghost!" little Jammes had cried.
An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressing-room. Nothing was
heard but the hard breathing of the girls. At last, Jammes, flinging
herself upon the farthest corner of the wall, with every mark of real
terror on her face, whispered: "Listen!"
Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. There was no
sound of footsteps. It was like light silk sliding over the panel.
Then it stopped.
Sorelli tried to show more pluck than the others. She went up to the
door and, in a quavering voice, asked: "Who's there?"
But nobody answered. Then feeling all eyes upon her, watching her last
movement, she made an effort to show courage, and said very loudly: "Is there any one behind the door?"
"Oh, yes, yes! Of course there is!" cried that little dried plum of a
Meg Giry, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt.
"Whatever you do, don't open the door! Oh, Lord, don't open the door!"
But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key
and drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner
dressing-room and Meg Giry sighed: "Mother! Mother!"
Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty; a gas-flame, in
its glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light into the surrounding
darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it. And the dancer slammed
the door again, with a deep sigh.
"No," she said, "there is no one there."
"Still, we saw him!" Jammes declared, returning with timid little
steps to her place beside Sorelli. "He must be somewhere prowling
about. I shan't go back to dress. We had better all go down to the
foyer together, at once, for the 'speech,' and we will come up again
together."
And the child reverently touched the little coral finger-ring which she
wore as a charm against bad luck, while Sorelli, stealthily, with the
tip of her pink right thumb-nail, made a St. Andrew's cross on the
wooden ring which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand. She said
to the little ballet-girls: "Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has ever
seen the ghost."
"Yes, yes, we saw him--we saw him just now!" cried the girls. "He had
his death's head and his dress-coat, just as when he appeared to Joseph
Buquet!"
"And Gabriel saw him too!" said Jammes. "Only yesterday! Yesterday
afternoon--in broad day-light----"
"Gabriel, the chorus-master?"
"Why, yes, didn't you know?"
"And he was wearing his dress-clothes, in broad daylight?"
"Who? Gabriel?"
"Why, no, the ghost!"
"Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. That's what he knew him by.
Gabriel was in the stage-manager's office. Suddenly the door opened
and the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye----"