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The Flaming Cross
by
Both Marion and Thornton glanced upward. “I see nothing,” said Marion.
“I see a Cross, but it is black and repellant-looking,” said Thornton. “Come, Marion, let us go at once.”
Orville, alarmed, called out: “Marion, you will surely come with me.”
The frown on her face changed to a look of awful sadness, but she put her hand into Thornton’s while saying to Orville: “I can not go there with you–not upward. I must enter the valley with him.” She moved away, her hand still in Thornton’s. Orville watched them go, only wondering why he had no regrets.
“Michael,” he said, “I loved her on earth. Why am I unmoved to see her leave me?”
But Michael answered, “It is not strange in The Land of the Dead. There are stranger partings here; but all of them are like yours–tearless for those who see the Cross.”
Thornton and Marion by this time had entered the valley road and were on the other side of the rock gateway. But when their feet touched the road they turned and looked their terror. Suddenly they recoiled and struck viciously at each other. Then they parted. With the wide road between them they went down into the valley and the haze together.
Orville read the words on the rock gateway, for now they stood out so that he could see plainly, and they were: “THE ROAD WITHOUT ENDING.” “Michael,” he said, “what does it mean?”
Michael answered, “She could not see the Cross here, who would not see it on earth. It repelled him, who so often had repelled it in life.”
III.
Neither Orville nor Callovan was at all moved by the tragedy each had witnessed. Orville’s love for Marion was as if it had never existed. The friendship of both for Thornton did not in the slightest assert itself. They felt moved to sorrow, but the overpowering sense of another feeling–a feeling of victory for some Great Friend or Cause–left the vague sorrow forgotten in an instant. Both men knew that Thornton and Marion had passed out of their ken forever, and in the future would be to them as if they had not been. All three made haste to go toward the road which led up to the Flaming Cross. Then upon Orville’s shoulders he felt a heavy burden, but still heavier was one which was bending Callovan down. Michael alone stood straight, without a weight upon him.
“It will be hard to climb to the Cross with these burdens, Michael,” said Orville.
“Yes, sir, it will,” said Michael, “but you must carry them. You brought them here. They are the burdens of your wealth. They will hamper you; but you saw the Cross, and in the end all will be well.”
“Then these burdens, Michael, are our riches?” asked both Orville and Callovan in the same breath.
“They are your riches,” replied Michael. “I have no burden, for I had no riches. Poor was I on earth, and unhampered am I now for the climb to the Cross. Look yonder.” He pointed to a man standing at the fork of the roads. His burden was weighing him to the earth. “He brought it all with him, sir,” continued Michael; “in life he gave nothing to God. Now he must carry the burden up to the Cross, or leave it and go the other road. He sees the Cross, too; but it will take ages for him to reach it.”
The man had thrown down the burden and now started to climb without it. But unseen hands lifted it back to his shoulders. Men and women going to the other road beckoned him to throw it away again and come with them; but he had seen the Cross and, keeping his eyes fixed upon it, he crawled along with his burden upon him, inch by inch, up the mountain.
“In life he was good and faithful, but he did not understand that riches were given him to use for a purpose and that he was not, himself, the purpose,” said Michael. “It was a miracle of grace that he could see the Cross at all.”