adrian borlsover was a bachelor. his elder brother george had married late in life, leaving one son, eustace, who lived in the gloomy georgian mansion at borlsover conyers, where he could work undisturbed in collecting material for his great book on heredity.
like his uncle, he was a remarkable man. the borlsovers had always been born naturalists, but eustace possessed in a special degree the power of systematizing his knowledge. he had received his university education in germany, and then, after post-graduate work in vienna and naples, had traveled for four years in south america and the east, getting together a huge store of material for a new study into the processes of variation.
he lived alone at borlsover conyers with saunders his secretary, a man who bore a somewhat dubious reputation in the district, but whose powers as a mathematician, combined with his business abilities, were invaluable to eustace.
uncle and nephew saw little of each other. the visits of eustace were confined to a week in the summer or autumn: long weeks, that dragged almost as slowly as the bath-chair in which the old man was drawn along the sunny sea front. in their way the two men were fond of each other, though their intimacy would doubtless have been greater had they shared the same religious views. adrian held to the old-fashioned evangelical dogmas of his early manhood; his nephew for many years had been thinking of embracing buddhism. both men possessed, too, the reticence the borlsovers had always shown, and which their enemies sometimes called hypocrisy. with adrian it was a reticence as to the things he had left undone; but with eustace it seemed that the curtain which he was so careful to leave undrawn hid something more than a half-empty chamber.
two years before his death adrian borlsover developed, unknown to himself, the not uncommon power of automatic writing. eustace made the discovery by accident. adrian was sitting reading in bed, the forefinger of his left hand tracing the braille characters, when his nephew noticed that a pencil the old man held in his right hand was moving slowly along the opposite page. he left his seat in the window and sat down beside the bed. the right hand continued to move, and now he could see plainly that they were letters and words which it was forming.
"adrian borlsover," wrote the hand, "eustace borlsover, george borlsover, francis borlsover sigismund borlsover, adrian borlsover, eustace borlsover, saville borlsover. b, for borlsover. honesty is the best policy. beautiful belinda borlsover."
"what curious nonsense!" said eustace to himself.
"king george the third ascended the throne in 1760," wrote the hand. "crowd, a noun of multitude; a collection of individuals—adrian borlsover, eustace borlsover."
"it seems to me," said his uncle, closing the book, "that you had much better make the most of the afternoon sunshine and take your walk now." "i think perhaps i will," eustace answered as he picked up the volume. "i won't go far, and when i come back i can read to you those articles in nature about which we were speaking."
he went along the promenade, but stopped at the first shelter, and seating himself in the corner best protected from the wind, he examined the book at leisure. nearly every page was scored with a meaningless jungle of pencil marks: rows of capital letters, short words, long words, complete sentences, copy-book tags. the whole thing, in fact, had the appearance of a copy-book, and on a more careful scrutiny eustace thought that there was ample evidence to show that the handwriting at the beginning of the book, good though it was was not nearly so good as the handwriting at the end.
he left his uncle at the end of october, with a promise to return early in december. it seemed to him quite clear that the old man's power of automatic writing was developing rapidly, and for the first time he looked forward to a visit that combined duty with interest.
but on his return he was at first disappointed. his uncle, he thought, looked older. he was listless too, preferring others to read to him and dictating nearly all his letters. not until the day before he left had eustace an opportunity of observing adrian borlsover's new-found faculty.
the old man, propped up in bed with pillows, had sunk into a light sleep. his two hands lay on the coverlet, his left hand tightly clasping his right. eustace took an empty manuscript book and placed a pencil within reach of the fingers of the right hand. they snatched at it eagerly; then dropped the pencil to unloose the left hand from its restraining grasp.
"perhaps to prevent interference i had better hold that hand," said eustace to himself, as he watched the pencil. almost immediately it began to write.
"blundering borlsovers, unnecessarily unnatural, extraordinarily eccentric, culpably curious."
"who are you?" asked eustace, in a low voice.
"never you mind," wrote the hand of adrian.
"is it my uncle who is writing?"
"oh, my prophetic soul, mine uncle."
"is it anyone i know?"
"silly eustace, you'll see me very soon."
"when shall i see you?"
"when poor old adrian's dead."
"where shall i see you?"
"where shall you not?"
instead of speaking his next question, borlsover wrote it. "what is the time?"
the fingers dropped the pencil and moved three or four times across the paper. then, picking up the pencil, they wrote:
"ten minutes before four. put your book away, eustace. adrian mustn't find us working at this sort of thing. he doesn't know what to make of it, and i won't have poor old adrian disturbed. au revoir."
adrian borlsover awoke with a start.
"i've been dreaming again," he said; "such queer dreams of leaguered cities and forgotten towns. you were mixed up in this one, eustace, though i can't remember how. eustace, i want to warn you. don't walk in doubtful paths. choose your friends well. your poor grandfather——"
a fit of coughing put an end to what he was saying, but eustace saw that the hand was still writing. he managed unnoticed to draw the book away. "i'll light the gas," he said, "and ring for tea." on the other side of the bed curtain he saw the last sentences that had been written.
"it's too late, adrian," he read. "we're friends already; aren't we, eustace borlsover?"
on the following day eustace borlsover left. he thought his uncle looked ill when he said good-by, and the old man spoke despondently of the failure his life had been.
"nonsense, uncle!" said his nephew. "you have got over your difficulties in a way not one in a hundred thousand would have done. every one marvels at your splendid perseverance in teaching your hand to take the place of your lost sight. to me it's been a revelation of the possibilities of education."
"education," said his uncle dreamily, as if the word had started a new train of thought, "education is good so long as you know to whom and for what purpose you give it. but with the lower orders of men, the base and more sordid spirits, i have grave doubts as to its results. well, good-by, eustace, i may not see you again. you are a true borlsover, with all the borlsover faults. marry, eustace. marry some good, sensible girl. and if by any chance i don't see you again, my will is at my solicitor's. i've not left you any legacy, because i know you're well provided for, but i thought you might like to have my books. oh, and there's just one other thing. you know, before the end people often lose control over themselves and make absurd requests. don't pay any attention to them, eustace. good-by!" and he held out his hand. eustace took it. it remained in his a fraction of a second longer than he had expected, and gripped him with a virility that was surprising. there was, too, in its touch a subtle sense of intimacy.
"why, uncle!" he said, "i shall see you alive and well for many long years to come."
two months later adrian borlsover died.
