The Project Gutenberg EBook of Monday or Tuesday, by Virginia Woolf

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Title: Monday or Tuesday

Author: Virginia Woolf

Release Date: June 25, 2009 [EBook #29220]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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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

A Haunted House

A Society

Monday or Tuesday

An Unwritten Novel

The String Quartet

Blue and Green

Kew Gardens

The Mark on the Wall

[Pg 1]

MONDAY OR TUESDAY
 [Pg 2]

A HAUNTED HOUSE [Pg 3]

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 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 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. [Pg 4]
"What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps
it's 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
window panes 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 [Pg 5]
for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I
sought always burnt 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 [Pg 6]
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 [Pg 7]
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."
[Pg 8]

A SOCIETY [Pg 9]

This is how it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day after tea. Some
were gazing across the street into the windows of a milliner's shop where the light still
shone brightly upon scarlet feathers and golden slippers. Others were idly occupied in
building little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time, so far as I can
remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to praise men—how strong, how
noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how beautiful they were—how we envied those
who by hook or by crook managed to get attached to one for life—when Poll, who had
said nothing, burst into tears. Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing
her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on condition that she
read all the books in the London Library. We comforted her as best we could; but we [Pg 10]
knew in our hearts how vain it was. For though we like her, Poll is no beauty; leaves her
shoe laces untied; and must have been thinking, while we praised men, that not one of
them would ever wish to marry her. At last she dried her tears. For some time we could
make nothing of what she said. Strange enough it was in all conscience. She told us that,
as we knew, she spent most of her time in the London Library, reading. She had begun,
she said, with English literature on the top floor; and was steadily working her way down
to the Times on the bottom. And now half, or perhaps only a quarter, way through a
terrible thing had happened. She could read no more. Books were not what we thought
them. "Books," she cried, rising to her feet and speaking with an intensity of desolation
which I shall never forget, "are for the most part unutterably bad!"
Of course we cried out that Shakespeare wrote books, and Milton and Shelley.
"Oh, yes," she interrupted us. "You've been well taught, I can see. But you are not [Pg 11]
members of the London Library." Here her sobs broke forth anew. At length, recovering a
little, she opened one of the pile of books which she always carried about with her
—"From a Window" or "In a Garden," or some such name as that it was called, and it
was written by a man called Benton or Henson, or something of that kind. She read the
first few pages. We listened in silence. "But that's not a book," someone said. So she
chose another. This time it was a history, but I have forgotten the writer's name. Our
trepidation increased as she went on. Not a word of it seemed to be true, and the style in
which it was written was execrable.
"Poetry! Poetry!" we cried, impatiently. "Read us poetry!" I cannot describe the
desolation which fell upon us as she opened a little volume and mouthed out the verbose,
sentimental foolery which it contained.
"It must have been written by a woman," one of us urged. But no. She told us that it was [Pg 12]
written by a young man, one of the most famous poets of the day. I leave you to imagine
what the shock of the discovery was. Though we all cried and begged her to read no
more, she persisted and read us extracts from the Lives of the Lord Chancellors. When
she had finished, Jane, the eldest and wisest of us, rose to her feet and said that she for
one was not convinced.
"Why," she asked, "if men write such rubbish as this, should our mothers have wasted
their youth in bringing them into the world?"