A Consuming Fire

Bertram’s death on the slopes of Mount-Blanc and his cremation in Geneva had delayed my return to business by nearly a week. I was much preoccupied, for Bertram’s death necessitated a reshuffling of the affairs of the firm, besides the routine work that needed to be caught up after an absence. But, as I passed through the outer office, it struck me that my collaborators looked at me with an odd mixture of fear and concern. I paid little attention, putting it down to the exaggerated awe, mingled with a sense of personal importance which takes hold of certain people when one is brought in contact with death  I bade them “good morning - will talk to you later,” without stopping, and went up the stairs to my own  office.

As I entered it, as I always did when I returned after an absence, I felt some pride in the happy combination, which its appearance suggested, of practical up-to-date utility, complete with the latest computers, laptops and laser printers.

I sat down at the desk and started looking at the messages and mails. My hand was on the telephone for the purpose of summoning the office manager, when I heard footsteps in the adjoining room formerly occupied by Bertram. I stopped to listen, thinking that if the manager were there, as was probable, I should be saved the trouble of using the telephone. 

The steps approached. I put down the phone and turned to face the incomer. The communicating door was pushed open and Michael Bertram walked into my office!

…..

For a very short time I felt no surprise. Something had happened which had been a daily experience for the last ten years of my life and, for a fraction of time, I accepted it without emotion. It is possible that this brief interlude only served to increase the severity of the shock when the real and appalling nature of what occurred broke upon my mind. For it was followed, before Bertram had taken two steps within the room, not by amazement, not by stupefaction, but by fear, fear in a measure beyond my power to express – cold, debilitating terror.  It was as if all my knowledge and sense of things were torn from me, as if the very ground which supported my feet were swept away, and I were suddenly naked and helpless in universe of trembling mystery and awe.

Among all the instincts common to humanity, the fear of the presence of death is alone inexplicable. Why do we feel this universal fear of the dead? Whatever the answer, some response there must be, for there nothing purposeless in Nature under God.

I can testify at least, from the effect produced in me when Bertram walked quietly into my office, both to the reality and the force of this instinct of fear. Had it been possible to escape, I would have run from him, run till I dropped from exhaustion.

He was speaking as he came in. “I thought I heard your step,” he muttered, and then broke out: “What on earth is the matter? Everybody looks at me today as if I were some new species of prehistoric beast. Why? Good heavens man, you are going to faint!”

He went to a low table, took a bottle of water and pored some into a glass. He put it to my lips. His hand felt warm, it was solid, and that evidence of his materiality, so far from reassuring me only added to my horror.

I closed my eyes for a while. The room was silent. I could hear, from some other part of the office, the ringing of a phone and, from the outside world, the muffled but insistent roar of  traffic along Interstate 95. I hoped that, when I looked again, the figure of Bertram would have vanished, that it would prove to  be a delusion of my senses, some phantasmagoric product of my own mind.

But when I opened my eyes, he was still standing in front of me, the bottle and glass in his hands, an expression of some anxiety on his face. He seemed to have lost weight, his features were paler and less rugged. He had as one may say, thinned down. Even his hands struck me as whiter and more delicate. His hair had become distinctly less gray and seemed smoother. It was as if he had passed through some consuming fire!