From _The New Decameron_, by Various Hands. Copyright, 1919, by
Robert M. McBride and Company. By permission of the publishers.
When I was a little boy I once went with my father to call on Adrian
Borlsover. I played on the floor with a black spaniel while my father
appealed for a subscription. Just before we left my father said, "Mr.
Borlsover, may my son here shake hands with you? It will be a thing to
look back upon with pride when he grows to be a man."
I came up to the bed on which the old man was lying and put my hand in
his, awed by the still beauty of his face. He spoke to me kindly, and
hoped that I should always try to please my father. Then he placed his
right hand on my head and asked for a blessing to rest upon me. "Amen!"
said my father, and I followed him out of the room, feeling as if I
wanted to cry. But my father was in excellent spirits.
"That old gentleman, Jim," said he, "is the most wonderful man in the
whole town. For ten years he has been quite blind."
"But I saw his eyes," I said. "They were ever so black and shiny; they
weren't shut up like Nora's puppies. Can't he see at all?"
And so I learnt for the first time that a man might have eyes that
looked dark and beautiful and shining without being able to see.
"Just like Mrs. Tomlinson has big ears," I said, "and can't hear at all
except when Mr. Tomlinson shouts."
"Jim," said my father, "it's not right to talk about a lady's ears.
Remember what Mr. Borlsover said about pleasing me and being a good
boy."
That was the only time I saw Adrian Borlsover. I soon forgot about him
and the hand which he laid in blessing on my head. But for a week I
prayed that those dark tender eyes might see.
"His spaniel may have puppies," I said in my prayers, "and he will never
be able to know how funny they look with their eyes all closed up.
Please let old Mr. Borlsover see."
* * * * *
Adrian Borlsover, as my father had said, was a wonderful man. He came of
an eccentric family. Borlsovers' sons, for some reason, always seemed to
marry very ordinary women, which perhaps accounted for the fact that no
Borlsover had been a genius, and only one Borlsover had been mad. But
they were great champions of little causes, generous patrons of odd
sciences, founders of querulous sects, trustworthy guides to the bypath
meadows of erudition.
Adrian was an authority on the fertilization of orchids. He had held at
one time the family living at Borlsover Conyers, until a congenital
weakness of the lungs obliged him to seek a less rigorous climate in the
sunny south coast watering-place where I had seen him. Occasionally he
would relieve one or other of the local clergy. My father described him
as a fine preacher, who gave long and inspiring sermons from what many
men would have considered unprofitable texts. "An excellent proof," he
would add, "of the truth of the doctrine of direct verbal inspiration."
Adrian Borlsover was exceedingly clever with his hands. His penmanship
was exquisite. He illustrated all his scientific papers, made his own
woodcuts, and carved the reredos that is at present the chief feature of
interest in the church at Borlsover Conyers. He had an exceedingly
clever knack in cutting silhouettes for young ladies and paper pigs and
cows for little children, and made more than one complicated wind
instrument of his own devising.
When he was fifty years old Adrian Borlsover lost his sight. In a
wonderfully short time he had adapted himself to the new conditions of
life. He quickly learned to read Braille. So marvelous indeed was his
sense of touch that he was still able to maintain his interest in
botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was
sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would
use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father's
correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was
afflicted with blindness and this in spite of the fact that he exercised
undue economy in the spacing of lines. Towards the close of his life the
old man was credited with powers of touch that seemed almost uncanny: it
has been said that he could tell at once the color of a ribbon placed
between his fingers. My father would neither confirm nor deny the story.
I
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.