Virginia Woolf

Monday or Tuesday Virginia Woolf

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand inhand, lifting here, opening there, making sure-a ghostly couple."Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "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 foroneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling withcontent and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come inhere for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps it's upstairs then?" Theapples were in the loft. 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 see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they movedin the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if thedoor 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 deepestwells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of thehouse beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room ..." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was thatthe buried treasure