The Witness. Grace Livingston Hill
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Paul Courtland never knew how he had been saved from that perilous position high up on a ledge in the top of the theater, with the burning, fiery furnace below him. Whether his senses came back sufficiently to guide him along the narrow footing that was left, to the door of the fire-escape, where some one rescued him, or whether a friendly hand risked all and reached out to draw him to safety.
He only knew that back there in that blank daze of suspended time, before he grew to recognize the whiteness of the hospital walls and the rattle of the nurse's starched skirt along the corridor, there was a long period when he was shut in with four high walls of smoke. Smoke that reached to heaven, roofing him away from it, and had its foundations down in the burning fiery pit of hell where he could hear lost souls struggling with smothered cries for help. Smoke that filled his throat, eyes, brain, soul. Terrible, enfolding, imprisoning smoke; thick, yellow, gray, menacing! Smoke that shut his soul away from all the universe, as if he had been suddenly blotted out, and made him feel how stark alone he had been born, and always would be evermore.
He seemed to have lain within those slowly approaching walls of smoke a century or two ere he became aware that he was not alone, after all. There was a Presence there beside him. Light, and a Presence! Blinding light. He reasoned that other men, the men outside of the walls of smoke, the firemen perhaps, and by-standers, might think that light came from the fire down in the pit, but he knew it did not. It radiated from the Presence beside him. And there was a Voice, calling his name. He seemed to have heard the call years back in his life somewhere. There was something about it, too, that made his heart leap in answer, and brought that strange thrill he used to have as a boy in prep. school, when his captain called him into the game, though he was only a substitute.
He could not look up, yet he could see the face of the Presence now. What was there so strangely familiar, as if he had been looking upon that face but a few moments before? He knew. It was that brave spirit come back from the pit. Come, perhaps, to lead him out of this daze of smoke and darkness. He spoke, and his own voice sounded glad and ringing:
"I know you now. You are Stephen Marshall. You were in college. You were down there in the theater just now, saving men."
"Yes, I was in college," the Voice spoke, "and I was down there just now, saving men. But I am not Stephen Marshall. Look again."
And suddenly he understood.
"Then you are Stephen Marshall's Christ! The Christ he spoke of in the class that day!"
"Yes, I am Stephen Marshall's Christ. He let me live in Him. I am the Christ you sneered at and disbelieved!"
He looked and his heart was stricken with shame.
"I did not understand. It was against reason. But had not seen you then."
"And now?"
"Now? What do you want of me?"
"You shall be shown."
The smoke ebbed low and swung away his consciousness, and even the place grew dim about him, but the Presence was there. Always through suspended space as he was borne along, and after, when the smoke gave way, and air, blessed air, was wafted in, there was the Presence. If it had not been for that he could not have borne the awfulness of nothing that surrounded him. Always there was the Presence!
There was a bandage over his eyes for days; people speaking in whispers; and when the bandage was taken away there were the white hospital walls, so like the walls of smoke at first in the dim light, high above him. When he had grown to understand it was but hospital walls, he looked around for the Presence in alarm, crying out, "Where is He?"
Bill Ward and Tennelly and Pat were there, huddled in a group by the door, hoping he might recognize them.
"He's calling for Steve!" whispered Pat, and turned with a gulp while the tears rolled down his cheeks. "He must have seen him go!"
The nurse laid him down on the pillow again, replacing the bandage. When he closed his eyes the Presence came back, blessed, sweet—and he was at peace.
The days passed; strength crept back into his body, consciousness to his brain. The bandage was taken off once more, and he saw the nurse and other faces. He did not look again for the Presence. He had come to understand he could not see it with his eyes; but always it was there, waiting, something sweet and wonderful. Waiting to show him what to do when he was well.
The memorial services had been held for Stephen Marshall many days, the university had been draped in black, with its flag at half-mast, the proper time, and its mourning folded away, ere Paul Courtland was able to return to his room and his classes.
They welcomed him back with touching eagerness. They tried to hush their voices and temper their noisiness to suit an invalid. They told him all their news, what games had been won, who had made Phi Beta Kappa, and what had happened at the frat. meetings. But they spoke not at all of Stephen!
Down the hall Stephen's door stood always open, and Courtland, walking that way one day, found fresh flowers upon his desk and wreathed around his mother's picture. A quaint little photograph of Stephen taken several years back hung on one wall. It had been sent at the class's request by Stephen's mother to honor her son's chosen college.
The room was set in order, Stephen's books were on the shelves, his few college treasures tacked up about the walls; and conspicuous between the windows hung framed the resolutions concerning Stephen the hero-martyr of the class, telling briefly how he had died, and giving him this tribute, "He was a man!"
Below the resolutions, on the little table covered with an old-fashioned crocheted cotton table-cover, lay Stephen's Bible, worn, marked, soft with use. His mother had wished it to remain. Only his clothes had been sent back to her who had sent him forth to prepare for his life-work, and received word in her distant home that his life-work had been already swiftly accomplished.
Courtland entered the room and looked around.
There were no traces of the fray that had marred the place when last he saw it. Everything was clean and fine and orderly. The simple saint-like face of the plain farmer's-wife-mother looked down upon it all with peace and resignation. This life was not all. There was another. Her eyes said that. Paul Courtland stood a long time gazing into them.
Then he closed the door and knelt by the little table, laying his forehead reverently upon the Bible.
Since he had returned to college and things of life had become more real, Reason had returned to her throne and was crying out against his "fancies." What was that experience in the hospital but the phantasy of a sick brain? What was the Presence but a fevered imagination? He had been growing ashamed of dwelling upon the thought, ashamed of liking to feel that the Presence was near when he was falling asleep at night. Most of all he had felt a shame and a land of perplexity in the biblical-literature class where he faced "FACTS" as the professor called them, spoken in capitals. Science was another force which mocked his fancies. Philosophy cooled his mind and wakened him from his dreams. In this atmosphere he was beginning to think that he had been delirious, and was gradually returning to his normal state, albeit with a restless dissatisfaction he had never known before.
But now in this calm, rose-decked room, with the quiet eyes of the simple mother looking down upon him, the resolutions in their chaplet-of-palm framing, the age-old Bible thumbed and beloved, he knew he had been wrong. He knew he would never be the same. That Presence, Whoever, Whatever it was, had entered into his life. He could never forget it; never be convinced that it was not; never be entirely satisfied without it! He believed it was the Christ! Stephen Marshall's Christ!
By and by he lifted up his head and opened the little worn Bible, reverently, curiously, just to touch it and think how the other boy had done. The soft, much-turned leaves fell open of themselves to a heavily marked verse. There were many marked verses all through the book.
Courtland's eyes followed the words:
He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.
Could it be that this strange