A Haunted House and Other Short Stories

Virginia Woolf

Description

Virginia Woolf’s intention to publish her best short stories was posthumously carried out in this volume shortly after her death, this collection making available Virginia Woolf’s most representative short works of fiction.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Literary

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781774643310
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Haunted House and Other Short Stories
by Virginia Woolf

First published in 1943
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

A HAUNTED HOUSE and Other Short Stories
VIRGINIA WOOLF

A HAUNTED HOUSE
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. Fromroom to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, openingthere, making sure—a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, buthere too!” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in thegarden,” he whispered. “Quietly,” they said, “or we shallwake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’relooking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say,and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” onewould be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. Andthen, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, thehouse all empty, the doors standing open, only the woodpigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshingmachine sounding from the farm. “What did I come inhere for? What did I want to find?” My hands wereempty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were inthe loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, onlythe book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing-room. Not that onecould ever see them. The window panes reflected apples,reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. Ifthey moved in the drawing-room, the apple only turned itsyellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened,spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant fromthe ceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadowof a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells ofsilence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. “Safe,safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasureburied; the room . . .” the pulse stopped short. Oh, wasthat the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the gardenthen? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of [10] sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface thebeam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death wasthe glass; death was between us; coming to the womanfirst, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing allthe windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her,went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southernsky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs.“Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “TheTreasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend thisway and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in therain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from thewindow. The candle burns stiff and still. Wanderingthrough the house, opening the windows, whispering not towake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,” she says. And he adds, “Kisses withoutnumber.” “Waking in the morning—” “Silver between thetrees—” “Upstairs—” “In the garden—” “When summercame—” “In winter snowtime—” The doors go shuttingfar 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; wehear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostlycloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,” he breathes.“Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long theylook and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drivesstraightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlightcross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the facesbent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepersand 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, Icry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
[11]
MONDAY OR TUESDAY
Lazy and indifferent, shaking space easily from his wings,knowing his way, the heron passes over the church beneaththe sky. White and distant, absorbed in itself, endlessly thesky covers and uncovers, moves and remains. A lake?Blot the shores of it out! A mountain? Oh, perfect—thesun gold on its slopes. Down that falls. Ferns then, orwhite feathers, for ever and ever——
Desiring truth, awaiting it, laboriously distilling a fewwords, for ever desiring—(a cry starts to the left, another tothe right. Wheels strike divergently. Omnibuses conglomeratein conflict)—for ever desiring—(the clock asseverateswith twelve distinct strokes that it is midday; light shedsgold scales; children swarm)—for ever desiring truth. Redis the dome; coins hang on the trees; smoke trails from thechimneys; bark, shout, cry “Iron for sale”—and truth?
Radiating to a point men’s feet and women’s feet, blackor gold-encrusted—(This foggy weather—Sugar? No, thankyou—The commonwealth of the future)—the firelight dartingand making the room red, save for the black figures and theirbright eyes, while outside a van discharges, Miss Thingummydrinks tea at her desk, and plate-glass preserves fur coats——
Flaunted, leaf-light, drifting at corners, blown across thewheels, silver-splashed, home or not home, gathered,scattered, squandered in separate scales, swept up, down,torn, sunk, assembled—and truth?
Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square ofmarble. From ivory depths words rising shed their blackness,blossom and penetrate. Fallen the book; in theflame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks—or nowvoyaging, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath andthe Indian seas, while space rushes blue and stars glint—truth?or now, content with closeness?
Lazy and indifferent the heron returns; the sky veils herstars; then bares them.
[12]
AN UNWRITTEN NOVEL
Such an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself tomake one’s eyes slide above the paper’s edge to the poorwoman’s face—insignificant without that look, almost asymbol of human destiny with it. Life’s what you see inpeople’s eyes; life’s what they learn, and, having learnt it,never, though they seek to hide it, cease to be aware of—what?That life’s like that, it seems. Five faces opposite—fivemature faces—and the knowledge in each face. Strange,though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticenceare on all those faces: lips shut, eyes shaded, each one of thefive doing something to hide or stultify his knowledge. Onesmokes; another reads; a third checks entries in a pocketbook; a fourth stares at the map of the line framed opposite;and the fifth—the terrible thing about the fifth is that shedoes nothing at all. She looks at life. Ah, but my poor,unfortunate woman, do play the game—do, for all our sakes,conceal it!
As if she heard me, she looked up, shifted slightly in herseat and sighed. She seemed to apologize and at the sametime to say to me, “If only you knew!” Then she lookedat life again. “But I do know,” I answered silently, glancingat the Times for manners’ sake. “I know the whole business.‘Peace between Germany and the Allied Powers was yesterdayofficially ushered in at Paris—Signor Nitti, the Italian PrimeMinister—a passenger train at Doncaster was in collision witha goods train . . .’ We all know—the Times knows—but wepretend we don’t.” My eyes had once more crept over thepaper’s rim. She shuddered, twitched her arm queerly tothe middle of her back and shook her head. Again I dippedinto my great reservoir of life. “Take what you like,” Icontinued, “births, deaths, marriages, Court Circular,the habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sandhills murder,high wages and the cost of living—oh, take what you like,”I repeated, “it’s all in the Times !” Again with infiniteweariness she moved her head from side to side until, like atop exhausted with spinning, it settled on her neck.
[13]
The Times was no protection against such sorrow as hers.But other human beings forbade intercourse. The best thingto do against life was to fold the paper so that it made aperfect square, crisp, thick, impervious even to life. Thisdone, I glanced up quickly, armed with a shield of my own.She pierced through my shield; she gazed into my eyes asif searching any sediment of courage at the depths of themand damping it to clay. Her twitch alone denied all hope,discounted all illusion.
So we rattled through Surrey and across the border intoSussex. But with my eyes upon life I did not see that theother travellers had left, one by one, till, save for the manwho read, we were alone together. Here was Three Bridgesstation. We drew slowly down the platform and stopped.Was he going to leave us? I prayed both ways—I prayedlast that he might stay. At that instant he roused himself,crumpled his paper contemptuously, like a thing done with,burst open the door, and left us alone.
The unhappy woman, leaning a little forward, palely andcolourlessly addressed me—talked of stations and holidays,of brothers at Eastbourne, and the time of year, which was,I forget now, early or late. But at last looking from thewindow and seeing, I knew, only life, she breathed, “Stayingaway—that’s the drawback of it——” Ah, now weapproached the catastrophe, “My sister-in-law”—the bitternessof her tone was like lemon on cold steel, and speaking,not to me, but to herself she muttered, “nonsense, shewould say—that’s what th