“An hour or two more and God is so kind
The day will be blue in the window blind.”
“Thank the kind God the carts come in.”
They come in so early in London.—Only an hour or two is quiet in the night, and you would know that the world is alive again, one would not have to keep the darkness long at bay; but here the night is day-long. Brandy—what is the good? The smell is nauseating; but it is at his lips, and he drinks. Has he slept? but it is black and still and dark, the dogs howl and scuffle past the window. Hours more to come, hours of the blackness. One of these people who is about the room sits down by the bed. She is not terrifying. She is only an old lady with grey hair, but she expects something. She must be told to go away; they will not tell her, and he is angry with urging. But of course she was not really there, it was only a dream; so he must have slept again, and the minutes must have passed.
There is a hint of grey in the sky, the whisper of a breeze in the palm leaves—dawn is coming. Now there is one hour of horror to go through, for the windows must be shut; he cannot breathe—he cannot live like this for an hour. The door into the passage may be opened, and the nurse’s step falls cold and echoing on the stone outside; no one else is moving, it is all grey and cold; he knows how that empty passage must look. This is better, for the blackness is going.
He sees the palm-trees outside above the muslin blinds; all the world is still and dead, its light gone out, but it can be rekindled. From the other window nothing can be seen but colourless sky, but the sky itself begins to kindle into life.
Suddenly something falls across the muslin blind; a bar, and a dot of sunlight, of that molten gold of Egyptian sunshine before the day has dried it into dust of gold. Oh the extraordinary beauty of that gold! Has sunshine been always in the world before, and yet we never knew it was like that? The darkness has passed, the light shines, the rapture and the beauty of the light spreads and broadens; the sky is awake, the garden is alive, the night is gone—and now the window towards the south is thrown open, and very faint and fair, a delicate violet light lies on the hills beyond the river. The air is blown in sweet, fragrant, unspeakably pure; and that carob-tree on which the birds sat yesterday is green and fresh, and below is the blue-green of the corn into which they dropped.
An Arab is riding on his camel along the dyke, they are outlined against that purple hill. So people still live and move outside; they can move then, they can go where they wish. But he sees the sun, and the breath of heaven comes in, and the night is passed. He is tired with this warring against the night, but the light has come and the clearer, brighter river is flowing again. This is day.
What is this land where the spirit has been living? Is it the land of Beulah or the Valley of the Shadow? Which is most real? He knows which is most substantial, but why is it most real? The instrument is more substantial than the melody and infinitely less real. Yet when the veil grows thin which hides the glory of the vision, agonizing we entreat that it may not be removed and show the glory of the face.