Virginia
Woolf's "A Haunted House"
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."