Monday or Tuesday
By
VIRGINIA WOOLF
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
CONTENTS
MONDAY OR TUESDAY
A HAUNTED HOUSE
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room theywent, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It'supstairs," 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'redrawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Nowthey've found it," one would be certain, stopping the pencil on themargin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself,the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeonsbubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from[Pg 4]the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" Myhands were empty. "Perhaps it's upstairs then?" The apples were in theloft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book hadslipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever seethem. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaveswere green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the appleonly turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door wasopened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from theceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed thecarpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew itsbubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat softly."The treasure buried; the room ..." the pulse stopped short. Oh, wasthat the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the[Pg 5]trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare,coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behindthe glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; com