Such Is Life

by Tom Collins

  “Next, morning, as I was going toward my horse-bell, I gave my patient a purely professional call, and found his eye worse than ever. I subjected him to another examination; and, this time having the advantage of full daylight, I discovered that the cause of his trouble wasn’t a flake of rust, after all; but a small, barbed speck of clean iron, embedded in the white of the eye. I discovered something else. Alf’s eyes are as blue as those of Zola’s Nana; and in the iris of the affected one there is, or rather, was, a brown spot. I had often noticed this before; but, in the defective light, and the hurry of the operation, I had never thought of the thing, and had wasted time and skill on it, as I tell you. I have often laughed to remember”—

  “You were badly off for something to laugh at!” Again I recalled Moriarty’s remark; for the boundary man’s voice trembled as he spoke, and his splendid eye blazed with sudden resentment. But the fit passed away instantly, and he asked, in his usual subdued tone, “When did you see this—this Alf Morris last?”

  “About two months ago,” I replied. “He was camped at that time in the Dead Man’s Bend, at the junction of Avondale and Mondunbarra.”

  “When are you likely to see him again?” asked the boundary man. “But, of course, you can’t tell. It’s a foolish question. I don’t know what’s come over me to-night.”

  Ignorance is bliss, in that instance, poor fellow! thought I, glancing out at the weirdly beautiful moonlight; and I replied, “Most likely I’ll never see him again. These wool-tracks, that knew him so well, will know him no more again for ever. He’s gone to a warmer climate.”

  “That decides it!” muttered the lunatic, swaying on his seat, whilst he clutched the edge of the table.

  “Alf! Alf!” I remonstrated, laying my hand on his shoulder. He shrank from the touch, and immediately recovered himself. “Let me explain,” I continued soothingly. “He has gone four or five months’ journey due north, in charge of three teams loaded with lares and penates, and tools, and cooking utensils, and rations, and other things too numerous to particularise, belonging once to Kooltopa, but now to a new station in South-western Queensland. Hence I say he’s gone to a warmer climate. Not much of a joke, I admit.”

  “And what’s—what’s become of Kooltopa?” asked the boundary man, panting under his effort at self-control.

  “Old times are changed, old manners gone; a stranger fills the Stewart’s throne,” I replied, with real sadness. “Kooltopa’s sold to a Melbourne company, and is going to be worked for all it’s worth. And I’m thinking of the carrier, coming down with the survivors of a severe trip, and the penniless pedestrian, striking the station at the eleventh hour. These people will miss Stewart badly.

  For the guest flies the hall, and the vassal from labour,

  Since his turban was cleft by the infidel’s sabre.”

  “Whose turban?” asked Alf, with a puzzled look.

  “Stewart’s. I spake but by a metaphor. As with Antony, ’tis one of those odd tricks that sorrow shoots out of the mind.”

  There was a few minutes’ silence. I was thinking of the Christian squatter, and so, no doubt, was many another wanderer at the same moment.

  “But he’ll come back to Riverina when he delivers the loading?” suggested the boundary man.

  “Who?”

  “This—Alf Morris.”

  “I don’t think so. I know he doesn’t intend it.”

  Another pause. Glancing at my companion, as he sat with his elbows on the table, and one hand, as usual, across the middle of his face, I noticed his chest heaving unnaturally, and his shapely lips losing their deep colour.

  “Are you sick, Alf?”

  “Yes—a little,” he whispered.

  I filled a cup at the water-bag, and set it before him. He drank part of it.

  “Quakers’ meeting!” he remarked at length, with a slight laugh. “Why don’t you say something? I’m not much of a talker myself, but I’m a good listener. Tell us some yarn to pass the time. Anything you like. Tell us all about that camp on the Lachlan, and what passed between you and your friend, Morris.”

  Upon this hint I spake. I recounted consecutively the incidents which form the subject of an earlier chapter, whilst an occasional inquiry, or an appreciative nod, proved my eccentric auditor in touch with me from first to last.

  “Three or four weeks afterward,” I continued, “I met this Bob Stirling in Mossgiel. He had a bit of a head on him at the time, having just got through five notes—three from Stewart, and two from Alf. I got a bob’s worth of brandy to straighten him up; and we had a drink of tea together, while my horses went through a small feed of bad chaff at sixpence a pound.

  “His account was, that Stewart, after parting from me, drove straight to Alf’s camp, and deposited him there to look after things. Stewart himself only stayed a few minutes, and then drove to Avondale, to see Mr. Wentworth St. John Ffrench, Terrible Tommy’s boss. Next morning, a wagonette came from Avondale, with a few parcels of eatables, and a few bottles of drinkables, and other sinful lusts of the flesh. Four days after that, again, Stewart drove round on his way back to Kooltopa. By this time, Alf was able to crawl about, trying his best to be civil to Bob, and succeeding fairly well for a non-smoker.

  “However, when Stewart called, he got into a yarn with Alf, and had a drink of tea while Bob held the horses. Presently, according to Bob’s account, the conversation grew closer; and, after an hour or so, Stewart told Bob to unharness the horses, and hobble them out where they could get a bite of grass. Altogether, Stewart stayed about half a day. In a few days more, Alf was able to yoke and unyoke a few quiet bullocks; then he and Bob started for Kooltopa together. Arrived at their destination, Stewart and Alf each paid Bob, as already hinted; and Bob, having urgent business in Mossgiel, hurried away to transact it. He had just completed the deal when I met him.”

  Here I paused to light my pipe.

  “And what makes you think he has left Riverina for good?” asked the boundary man absently.

  “Catch him leaving Riverina. He knows he has a good character as a quiet, decent, inoffensive sundowner—nobody’s enemy but his own—and experience has taught him that any kind of tolerable! reputation is better than no reputation at all.”

  “I don’t mean him,” said the boundary man constrainedly.

  “Of course not. I beg your pardon. Well, I heard it from himself. I met him about three weeks ago—that would be about three weeks after my interview with Bob Stirling. He’s fairly in love with what he saw of Queensland, before last shearing; and, between bad seasons and selectors—not to mention his own presentiment of a rabbit-plague—he’s full-up of Riverina. But that reminds me that I haven’t brought Alf Morris’s story to a proper conclusion. I heard the rest of it from Stewart, on the occasion I speak of. Stewart has bought his plant, and engaged him permanently. His first business is to take Stewart’s teams to their destination—no easy matter at this time of the year, and such a year as this; but if any man can do it, that man is Alf. He started some weeks ago, a little shaky after his sickness, but recovering fast. Entirely changed in disposition, Stewart tells me; and those who know him will agree that a change wouldn’t be out of place. But Stewart speaks of him as one of the noblest-minded men he ever knew. He says he just wants a man like Alf, and he doesn’t intend to part with him. I fancy our love of paradox makes us prone to associate noble-mindedness with cantankerousness—at all events, nobody ever called me noble-minded. But such is life.”

  “Then this new situation is a permanent thing for him?” suggested the boundary man.

  “For Alf? No; I’m sorry to say, it’s not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Stewart’s about sixty, and Alf’s somewhere in the neighbourhood of thirty-seven. The Carlisle-tables would give Stewart an actuarial expectation of ten or fifteen years, and Alf one of twenty-five or thirty. And there will be old-man changes in the personnel of the station staff when the grand old Christian sleeps with his fathers, and
his dirty-flash son reigns in his stead. Such, again, is life. But this won’t affect Alf’s interests to any ruinous extent. He has a stockingful of his own. It’s a well-known fact that few carriers of Riverina cleared as much money as he did, and probably not one spent less. Stewart gave him £200 for his plant, and he never broke the cheque; posted it whole; Stewart himself took charge of it, as he told me in his gossiping way. Let Alf alone. He knows how to come in out of the wet; in fact, the rainy day is his strong point. Such, for the third and last time, is life.”

  Whilst I spoke, my unfortunate companion was persistently trying to light his empty pipe, his hands trembling, and his breath quickening. The Maroo fly was at him again. I tried to divert his attention.

  “By the way,” said I; “didn’t you blame Thompson and Cunningham for duffing in your horse-paddock, ten or twelve months ago?”

  “I didn’t make any song about it,” replied the boundary rider half-resentfully.

  “Of course not. Still you owe them an apology—which I shall be happy to convey, if you wish it. Alf Morris was the depredator. He was hovering about your hut that night like a guardian angel, while his twenty bullocks had their knife-bars going double-speed on your grass, and you slept the sleep of the unsuspecting. Ask old Jack; he’ll give you chapter and verse, without much pressing. He told me about it this afternoon.”

  But the fit came on, after all. The boundary man stared at me with a wild, shrinking look, and the same paling of the lips I had noticed before; then he drank the remaining water out of the cup, and, rising from his seat, walked slowly to his bed, and lay down with his face toward the wall.

  Far gone, i’ faith, thought I. Presently I went to the door, and, shoring up one of the posts with my shoulder, looked out upon the cool, white moonlight, flooding the level landscape.

  Strange phenomena follow the footsteps of Night. It has long been observed that avalanches and landslips occur most frequently about midnight, and especially on moonless midnights, when the sun and moon are in conjunction at the nadir. This is the time when mines cave in; when loose bark falls from trees; when limbs crash down from old, dead timber; when snow-laden branches break; when all ponderable bodies, of relatively slight restraint, are most apt to lose their hold. This may be definitely and satisfactorily accounted for by the mere operation of Newton’s Law. At the time, and under the conditions, specified, the conjoined attraction of sun and moon—an attraction sufficient to sway millions of tons of water, in the spring tides—is superadded to the centric gravity of the earth, the triple force, at the moment of midnight, tending toward the nadir, or downward. So that, when these midnight phenomena are most observable at one point of the globe, they will be least likely to make mid-day manifestation at the antipodes to that point.

  And, though changes of the moon—as copiously proved by meteorological statistics—have no relation whatever to rainfall, the illuminated moon, on rising, will rarely fail to clear a clouded sky. This singular influence is exercised solely by the cold light of that dead satellite producing an effect which the sunlight, though two hundred times as intense, is altogether powerless to rival in kind. When we can explain the nature of this force adherent to moonlight, and to no other light, we may inquire why, in all ages and in all lands, the verdict of experience points to moonlight as a factor in the production and aggravation of lunacy. An empirical hypothesis, of course; but in the better sense, as well as in the worse. For the perturbing influence of moonlight, if it be a myth, is about the most tenacious one on earth. This anomalous form of Force may or may not be observable in asylums, where the patients are not directly subjected to it; but anyone who has lived in the back country, camping out with all sorts and conditions of oddities, need not be accounted credulous if he holds the word ‘lunatic’ to rest on a sounder derivation than ‘ill-starred,’ or ‘disastrous.’

  But the sub-tropical moonlight—strong, chaste, and beautiful as its ideal queen—soothes and elevates the well-balanced mind. I took from my pack-saddle the double-tongued jews-harp I always carry; and, sitting on the floor with my back against the door-post, unbound the instrument from its square stick, and began to play. It is not the highest class of music, I am well aware; and this paragraph is dictated by no shallow impulse of self-glorification. But I never had opportunity to master any more complicated instrument; and even if I had, it wouldn’t be much use, for I know only about three tunes, and these by no means perfectly.

  So I played softly and voluptuously, till my scanty repertory was exhausted, and then drifted into a tender capriccio. I noticed Alf move uneasily on his bed; but, knowing the effect of music on my own mind, and remembering Moriarty’s and Montgomery’s independent panegyrics on the boundary man’s skill, I felt put on my mettle, and performed with a power and feeling which surprised myself.

  “Do you like music?” asked Alf, at length.

  “Like it!” I repeated. “I would give one-fourth of the residue of my life to be a good singer and musician. As it is, I’m not much of a player, and, still less of a vocalist; but I’ll give you a song if you like. How sweetly everything sounds to-night.” Bee-o-buoy-bee-o-buoy-bee-o-buoy—

  “Do you like jews-harp music?” interrupted Alf, sitting up on the bed.

  “Not if I could play any better instrument—such as the violin, or the concertina; though I should in any case avoid the piano, for fear of flattening the ends of my fingers. Still, the jews-harp is a jews-harp; and this is the very best I could find in the market. Humble as it looks, and humble as it undeniably is, it has sounded in every nook and corner of Riverina. Last time I took it out, it was to give a poor, consumptive old blackfellow a treat; and now, you see, I tune, to please a peasant’s ear, the harp a king had loved to hear.” Bee-o-buoy-bee-o-buoy-bee-o-bee-o-bee-o-buoy—

  “I’ll give you a tune on the violin, if you like,” exclaimed my companion, rising to his feet.

  “Thank-you, Alf.”

  I carefully re-packed my simple instrument, while the boundary man took from its case a dusky, dark-brown violin. Then he turned down the lamp till a mere bead of flame showed above the burner, resumed his seat by the table, and, after some preliminary screwing and testing, began to play.

  Query: If the relation of moonlight to insanity is a thing to be derided, what shall we say of the influence of music on the normal mind? Is it not equally unaccountable in operation, however indisputable in effect? Contemplate music from a scientific standpoint—that is, merely as a succession of sound-waves, conveyed from the instrument to the ear by pulsations of the atmosphere, or of some other intervening medium. Music is thus reduced to a series of definite vibrations, a certain number of which constitute a note. Each separate note has three distinct properties, or attributes. First, its intensity, or loudness, which is governed by the height, depth, amplitude—for these amount to the same thing—of the waves produced in the medium. Second, the timbre, or quality, which is regulated by the shape, or outline, of these waves. Third, the pitch, high or low, which is controlled by the distance from crest to crest of the sound-waves—or, as we say, from node to node of the vibrations.

  To the most sensitive human ear, the highest limit of audibleness is reached by sound-waves estimated at twenty-eight-hundredths of an inch from node to node—equal to 48,000 vibrations per second. The extreme of lowness to which our sense of hearing is susceptible, has been placed at 75 feet from node to node—or 15 vibrations per second. This total range of audibleness covers 12 octaves; running, of course, far above and far below the domain of music. The extreme highness and lowness of sounds which convey musical impression are represented, respectively, by 2,000 and by 30 vibrations per second—or by sound-waves, in the former case, of 6½ inches, and in the latter, of 37½ feet.

  Therefore, there are not only sounds which by reason of highness or lowness are unmusical, but, beyond these, others to which the tympanum of the human ear is insensible. Nature is alive with such sounds, each carrying its three distinct properties of inten
sity, timbre and pitch; but whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close us in, we can no more hear them than we can hear the ‘music of the spheres’—apt term for that celestial harmony of motion which guides the myriad orbs of the Universe in their career through Space. But, to take an illustration from the visual faculty: any sound beyond the highest limit of audibleness would resemble a surface lined so minutely and closely as to appear perfectly plain; whilst a sound too low in pitch to be heard would be represented by superficial undulations of land or water so vast in extent that the idea of unevenness would not occur. We have fairly trustworthy evidence that whales communicate with each other by notes so low in pitch—by sound-vibrations so long in range, so few per second—that no human ear can detect them. Bats, on the other hand, utter calls so high—producing such rapid pulsations—as to be equally inaudible to us.

  Unison of musical notes is attained when the respective numbers of pulsations per second admit a low common-divisor. For instance, the note produced by 60 vibrations per second will chord with one produced by 120—each node of the former coinciding with each alternate node of the latter. 60 and 90 will also chord; 60 and 70 will produce discord; 60 and 65, worse discord. And so on. The science of musical composition lies in the management of sound-pulsation, and is governed by certain rigid mathematical laws—which laws the composer need not understand.

  Air-movement may, of course, take place without sound-vibration, for air is only incidentally a sound-conductor. Earth, metal, water, and especially wood (along the grain), are better media than the atmosphere, for transmission of sound. But sound may be transmitted without vibration of intervening sound-media. The electric current, passing along the telephone wire, picks up the sound waves at one end, and instantaneously deposits them, in good order and condition, at the other end—say, a couple of hundred miles away.

  So that the brilliant pianist of the concert hall; the cornet-player of the ‘Army’ ring; the blind fiddler at the corner; the mother, singing her angel-donation to sleep; Clancy, thundering forth something concerning his broken heart, whilst tailing up the stringing cattle; the canary in its cage; the magpie on the fence—are each setting in motion the complex machinery of music, and with about equal scientific knowledge of what they are doing. To the philosophic mind, however, they are not playing or singing; they are producing and controlling sound-vibrations, arbitrarily varied in duration and quality; a series of such pulsations constituting a note; a series of notes constituting an air. These vibrations are diffused from the instrument or the lips, at a speed varying with temperature, media, and other conditions; they ripple, spread, percolate, everywhere; they penetrate and saturate all solids and gases, yet are palpable corporeally only to the tympanum of the ear, and mechanically (as yet) only to the diaphragm of the phonograph.