THE GHOST MUSIC

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 276, 18 May 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE GHOST MUSIC

He knew that to bo '" haunted" by a tunp, or fragment of one, was a frequent and almost commonplace experience. Many times lie had come away ironi a concert or a theatre with half a dozen bars of melody drumming through his head, and had been unable to get rid of the irritating musical phrase tor a week or more. But when he was sent back from the din of heavy explosives and the general shock <x battle to rest for a while and found a senseless series of notes running in h:s brain hour after hour with terrible regularity, pervading every actual sound all day long and beating themselves with miserable monotony even through the silence of each night, he l>egan to wonder where they had come from and when they would finish. Ho liad never read Gabon's theories on the relation between sound and colour, but it seemed to him that each noto possed its distinctive hue. The high, top notae was thin, wiry, and white, like the scream of a locomotive's whistle or the prolonged shriek of a bitter north wind through a keyhole; the next note was hard, bright, and yellow, like the stentorian call of a bugle; the third, clrar and full and red, suggesting a voice, was like t.ie stronger notes cf a violincello or the tuba mirabilis stop of some mighty organ; tho fourth was loud and "woolly" and purple, like the humming of a huge dynamo or the desolate moaning of a liner's horn across the sea at night; and the last, low note was deep, dull, and nearly black, like tho vibration of a thousand spinning wheels or tne thudding boom of a" distant barrage. Thus these five wretched notes formed before his mental vision a strange and eerie pattern, a sharp zigzag of coloured light, which glowed and glared without ceasing, to add its distraction to the worry of the endless, brain-racking fan. tasia of the invisible musician. • * • Ho bogan to study this dreadful thing that haunted him, and found that its emphasis varied from day to day. At times the shrill note would almost deafen him, the keen top line of the zigzag being ablaze like 9 strip of dazzling magnesium, while the others droned along with it. scarcely heard and hardly "seeqe 4 ' "Occasionally the middle note, resonant and crimson, would throb and flame, while the remaining lines of light flickered and faded like burntout filaments in a bulb. But if the fifth tono of the phrase, deep and dismal, burst into cruel, mysterious fire, and its roaring sign stood out like a thick phosphorescent bar sparkling against tho background of his consciousness, he suffered agonies. Ho could boar the others; but this seemed to be charged with a throat from the unknown.

He discovered also that the speed of the performer with such a limited repertory was increasing. From a deliberate slowness, as though the player tested the quality of .each note before passing to the next —the visible counterpart corresponding as long lines —it concentrated to almost a chord, struck off swiftly with th.;> fingers of one hand —the zigzag shrinking to mere brilliant hyphenlike dashes, maddening to watch.

At the end of a week he was obviously ill, and the regimental doctor, hearing his story, packed him off to England.

"I can do some pretty little operations,"' he observed, " but I'm hanged if I can take half a dozen factory buzzers and a yard of forked lightning out of people's heads.'' And with a cheery, encouraging word, he wished th? young man good-bye and good luck. To the doctor at home whose delight it was to frustrate such mental tortures at their fiendish business lie described his symptoms, and the good man spent a day or two pondering this new and baffling manifestation. Deciding at last 011 a method of treatment that seemed feasible in a case where the balance of the mind had been so dangerously disturbed, he s*»nt for his patient 011 a tine, clear day and, seated oppositeto him, spoke commanding!}*. " "Look straight into my eyes," he s:uid slowly; "look steadily and bston . . . and listen. I shall take you with me ths evening and show you your music, your mjrsterious chord, note by note,"and as I do I shall tell you when each note will cease sounding and when its corcsponding symbol wiU disappear . . . You hear me, and understand? - ' Tho young man's gaze seemed fascinate, and as though under a spell he repeated the last words. "Each note will cease sounding," he whispered, " and its corresponding symbol will disappear.'' * * * As twilight fell, together they climbed a grassy hill that overlooked the city. A brilliant lane of purest gold stretched across tiie western sky, overhung by a dark barmr of cloud. There is the yellow note that haunts you. Consider it w,ell. As it fades into the gloom of night that sound will die awav. ..."

A searchlight sprang into the cool evening air from the shrouded valley, lis pale, vivid streamer travelling to and fro like a sentient thing.

"There is the white note that troubles you. Watch it closely. When it vanishes that sound will coase. .

Crimson rays from the sun berveath the horizon illuminated a fleet of cloudlets overhead with ro6y magic.

" There is the red note of your chord. Already it is broken. When those clouds turn dull and grev tliat sound will d'.e . .

Below them the great city lay outspread like an enormous sombre pool, folding to itself sullenly in the dusk its flock of shadows. "There is the black fundamental note —tiie ono you most dread to h"ar. When tlie lilv of dawn flowers over it that note will leave you. And then your illosory chord and its sign will have vanished utterly, for ever. To-night you will sleep—perhaps to the booming of that single sound; when you wake you will be free." It was a bold but artistic and wellconsidered idea on the part of the doctor. half hypnotism and "suggestion,'' halt h<Toi(s but he had the faculty of summing up possibility* in patients whose cases were more tragic than this, and he had his reward. As night came down the crooked line fell away front his patient's inward vision like a disintegrated puzzle, the [taunting sounds drifted into qtuetness, and thore remained only that thick, darkly glowing, thunderous bar the fifth note of the phrase. Amid its horlrd roar he slumbered uneasily; but in the light of morning he wok/ to a wonderful, happy silence. His brain was clear: no mystic, meaningless vision struck across his tired eyes, and the haunting tune that he would never hear again had shivered into a million fragments —a dust of music scattered about the world.