“Two,” she slapped a dime down before the ticket-taker, quite ignoring Eva, who silently laid a nickel beside the dime.
The place was one of the best of its kind, well ventilated and spaced and, though the lights were turned down, it was by no means dark within. Lena guided the old woman into a seat and sat down beside her, and Eva, after a quick searching glance that revealed none of her acquaintances present, took the next seat.
For the hour that followed Nancy Rextrew was in Fairyland. With breathless interest, her eyes glued to the pictures, her mouth half open, she followed the quick-moving figures through scenes pathetic or ludicrous with an absorbed attention that would not miss the smallest detail. When that popular idol—the Imp—was performing her antics, the old woman’s quick cackling laugh made Eva drop her head that her big hat might hide her face. When the “Drunkard’s Family” were passing through their harrowing experiences, tears rolled unheeded down old Nancy’s wrinkled cheeks as she sat with her knobby fingers tight clasped.
When, at last, Lena whispered in her ear, “I guess we’ll go now,” Nancy exclaimed,
“Oh! Is it over? I thought it had just begun. But it was beautiful—beautiful! I’ll never——”
A loud sharp explosion cut through her sentence and instantly the whole place was in an uproar. Suffocating fumes filled the room with smoke as the lights went out. Then somebody screamed, “Fire! Fire!” and pandemonium reigned. Women shrieked, children wailed, and men and boys fought savagely to get to the doors. Lena was swept on by the first mad rush of the crowd, crazy with fear, but catching at a seat, she tried to slip into it and climb back to Nancy and Eva. Before she could reach them, she saw Eva thrown down in the aisle by a big woman frantic with terror, who tried to walk over her prostrate body, but a pair of bony hands grabbed the woman’s hair and yanked her back, holding her, it seemed, by sheer force of will, for the few precious seconds that gave Lena a chance to pull Eva up and out of the aisle.
“You fools!” The old woman’s voice, shrill and cracked, but steady and unafraid, cut through the babel of shrieks and cries, “You fools, there ain’t no fire! If you’ll stop yellin’ an’ pushin’ and go quiet you’ll all get out in a minute. It’s jest a step to the doors.”
She was only a little old woman—a figure of fun, if they could have seen her clearly, with her old bonnet tilted rakishly over one ear and her shawl trailing behind her—but through the smoke, in that tumult of fear and dread, the dauntless spirit of her loomed large, and dominated the lesser souls craven with terror.
A draught of air thinned the smoke for a moment, and as those in front rushed out, the pressure in the main aisle lessened. Climbing over the back of a seat, Lena caught the old woman’s arm.
“Come,” she shouted in her ear, “we can get through to the side aisle now—that’s almost clear. Come, Eva, buck up—buck up, I say, or we’ll never get out of this!” for Eva, terrified, bruised, and half fainting, was now hanging limp and nerveless to Lena’s arm.