Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea
to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more
deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely,
to confirm—what else was it murmuring—as Lily Briscoe laid her head
on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open
window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly
to hear exactly what it said—but what mattered if the meaning were
plain? entreating the sleepers (the house was full again; Mrs Beckwith
was staying there, also Mr Carmichael), if they would not actually come
down to the beach itself at least to lift the blind and look out. They
would see then night flowing down in purple; his head crowned; his
sceptre jewelled; and how in his eyes a child might look. And if they still
faltered (Lily was tired out with travelling and slept almost at once; but
Mr Carmichael read a book by candlelight), if they still said no, that it
was vapour, this splendour of his, and the dew had more power than he,
and they preferred sleeping; gently then without complaint, or argument,
the voice would sing its song. Gently the waves would break (Lily
heard them in her sleep); tenderly the light fell (it seemed to come
through her eyelids). And it all looked, Mr Carmichael thought, shutting
his book, falling asleep, much as it used to look.
Indeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of dark wrapped themselves
over the house, over Mrs Beckwith, Mr Carmichael, and Lily
Briscoe so that they lay with several folds of blackness on their eyes, why
not accept this, be content with this, acquiesce and resign? The sigh of all
the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night
wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and
the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness, a cart grinding, a
dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains, broke the veil on
their eyes, and Lily Briscoe stirring in her sleep. She clutched at her
blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff. Her eyes
opened wide. Here she was again, she thought, sitting bold upright in
bed. Awake.
120
