A Haunted House
by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Approximate Word Count: 710
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From
room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making
sure--a ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added,
"Oh, but here tool" "It's upstairs," she murmured.
"And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said,
"or we shall wake them."
But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're
looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read
on a page or two. "Now they've found it,' one would be certain, stopping
the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see
for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood
pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding
from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to
find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The
apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the
book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that
one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all
the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the
apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was
opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the
ceiling--what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet;
from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound.
"Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The
treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the
buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden
then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so
rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind
the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman
first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the
rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars
turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the
Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. 'The
Treasure yours."
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend
this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam
of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still.
Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us,
the ghostly couple seek their joy.
"Here we slept," she says. And he adds,
"Kisses without number." "Waking in the morning--"
"Silver between the trees--" "Upstairs--" 'In the
garden--" "When summer came--" 'In winter snowtime--"
"The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse
of a heart.
Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind
falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps
beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the
lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their
lips."
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long
they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame
stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and,
meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the
sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house
beats proudly. "Long years--" he sighs. "Again you found
me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading;
laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure--"
Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!"
the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your
buried treasure? The light in the heart."
The Author.
With affection,
Ruben
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