The Witness | Page 4

gray with determination. His yellow hair shone like
a halo about his head. They had taken off his hat and he sat with his
arms folded fiercely across the back of "Andy" Roberts's nifty evening
coat.
"Just one little real cuss to show you are a man," sneered the freshman.
But suddenly a smothered cry arose. A breath of fear stirred through the
house. The smell of smoke swept in from a sudden open door. The
actors paused, grew white, and swerved in their places; then one by one
fled out of the scene. The audience arose and turned to panic, even as a
flame swept up and licked the very curtain while it fell.

All was confusion!
The football team, trained to meet emergencies, forgot their cruel play
and scattered, over seats and railing, everywhere, to fire-escapes and
doorways, taking command of wild, stampeding people, showing their
training and their courage.
Stephen, thus suddenly set free, glanced about him, and saw a few feet
away an open door, felt the fresh breeze of evening upon his hot
forehead, and knew the upper back fire-escape was close at hand. By
some strange whim of a panic-maddened crowd but few had discovered
this exit, high above the seats in the balcony; for all had rushed below
and were struggling in a wild, frantic mass, trampling one another
underfoot in a mad struggle to reach the doorways. The flames were
sweeping over the platform now, licking out into the very pit of the
theater, and people were terrified. Stephen saw in an instant that the
upper door, being farthest away from the center of the fire, was the
place of greatest safety. With one frantic leap he gained the aisle, strode
up to the doorway, glanced out into the night to take in the situation;
cool, calm, quiet, with the still stars overhead, down below the open
iron stairway of the fire-escape, and a darkened street with people like
tiny puppets moving on their way. Then turning back, he tore off the
grotesque coat and vest, the confining collar, and threw them from him.
He plunged down the steps of the aisle to the railing of the gallery, and,
leaning there in his shirt-sleeves and the queer striped trousers, he put
his hands like a megaphone about his lips and shouted:
"Look up! Look up! There is a way to escape up here! Look up!"
Some poor struggling ones heard him and looked up. A little girl was
held up by her father to the strong arms reached out from the low front
of the balcony. Stephen caught her and swung her up beside him,
pointing her up to the door, and shouting to her to go quickly down the
fire-escape, even while he reached out his other hand to catch a woman,
whom willing hands below were lifting up. Men climbed upon the seats
and vaulted up when they heard the cry and saw the way of safety; and
some stayed and worked bravely beside Stephen, wrenching up the
seats and piling them for a ladder to help the women up. More just

clambered up and fled to the fire-escape, out into the night and safety.
But Stephen had no thought of flight. He stayed where he was, with
aching back, cracking muscles, sweat-grimed brow, and worked, his
breath coming in quick, sharp gasps as he frantically helped man,
woman, child, one after another, like sheep huddling over a flood.
Courtland was there.
He had lingered a moment behind the rest in the corner of the
dormitory corridor, glancing into the disfigured room; water, egg-shells,
ruin, disorder everywhere! A little object on the floor, a picture in a
cheap oval metal frame, caught his eye. Something told him it was the
picture of Stephen Marshall's mother that he had seen upon the
student's desk a few days before, when he had sauntered in to look the
new man over. Something unexplained made him step in across the
water and debris and pick it up. It was the picture, still unscarred, but
with a great streak of rotten egg across the plain, placid features. He
recalled the tone in which the son had pointed out the picture and said,
"That's my mother!" and again he followed an impulse and wiped off
the smear, setting the picture high on the shelf, where it looked down
upon the depredation like some hallowed saint above a carnage.
Then Courtland sauntered on to his room, completed his toilet, and
followed to the theater. He had not wanted to get mixed up too much in
the affair. He thought the fellows were going a little too far with a good
thing, perhaps. He wanted to see it through, but still he would not quite
mix with it. He found