Three John Silence Stories by Algernon Blackwood
page 29 of 236 (12%)
page 29 of 236 (12%)
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in the air before me. I saw the sounds of the tinkling bell. And in
precisely the same way I heard the colours in the room, especially the colours of those books in the shelf behind you. Those red bindings I heard in deep sounds, and the yellow covers of the French bindings next to them made a shrill, piercing note not unlike the chattering of starlings. That brown bookcase muttered, and those green curtains opposite kept up a constant sort of rippling sound like the lower notes of a wood-horn. But I only was conscious of these sounds when I looked steadily at the different objects, and thought about them. The room, you understand, was not full of a chorus of notes; but when I concentrated my mind upon a colour, I heard, as well as saw, it." "That is a known, though rarely obtained, effect of _Cannabis indica_," observed the doctor. "And it provoked laughter again, did it?" "Only the muttering of the cupboard-bookcase made me laugh. It was so like a great animal trying to get itself noticed, and made me think of a performing bear--which is full of a kind of pathetic humour, you know. But this mingling of the senses produced no confusion in my brain. On the contrary, I was unusually clear-headed and experienced an intensification of consciousness, and felt marvellously alive and keen-minded. "Moreover, when I took up a pencil in obedience to an impulse to sketch--a talent not normally mine--I found that I could draw nothing but heads, nothing, in fact, but one head--always the same--the head of a dark-skinned woman, with huge and terrible features and a very drooping left eye; and so well drawn, too, that I was amazed, as you may imagine--" |
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