The Chamber of Life by Green Peyton (best short novels .TXT) 📖

So to Work

I glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was five minutes to eight: time to leave, if I was to get a decent breakfast before I went to the office. I found an old hat in the closet and put it on. It would do until I had time to buy another.

Last night—and this morning. Last night, after supper, I had dropped by the Club for a drink. And met Melbourne. This morning I woke in the water of the lake, and came home, and dressed. And went to work. Twelve hours—and in that time I had lived two months. I had fallen in love, and died. Now I must go to work.

As I left the apartment, and turned west away from the Drive, toward the street cars, I was whistling over and over a brief snatch of music. Was it Grieg? Or some composer never heard on earth?

There were people on the street now. They went by with frowning, intent faces—on their way to work. And cars rolling[Pg 50] by, pausing at the cross streets with little squealings of brakes.

Everything was so simple now. I went over it all as I waited for the street car, and as I rode down town. It was strange that Melbourne had never foreseen that one possibility among so many.

We had sat down in our chairs, and then the adventure had begun. I had felt the sensation of moving about, of going from place to place. When I was a child I used to have dreams of walking about the house and about the streets. I would wake up on the stairs, or at the door—sleep-walking. Reflexes did it. I had left the chair, under the influence of the story in the Chamber of Life, and gone out of the room. I remembered now all those brief moments, when I had seemed poised on the brink of the real world—the stumbling against some hard object, the face under the street-lamp, the taxi, the voices. I had been going through the dark streets, with closed eyes, going toward the Drive—sleep-walking. And when I slipped over the bank of the river, in the dream, and down into the water—in reality I had gone over the side of the Drive, and down into the cold lake.

It had been dawn.[Pg 51]

I left the car, and walked down the street, lost in the midst of the crowds hurrying about me. It was all over, gone like one of those old dreams of my childhood. I could never forget it—never forget Selda—but it was gone. It had never existed. It had been cruel of Melbourne, cruel and ironic, to put Selda in the dream. But perhaps he had never realized that it would last over into reality.

I had no hope of seeing her again, even in the Chamber. I knew I could never find Melbourne's home: I had paid no attention to the way the taxi-driver took. And I wasn't very much interested now. It was only a dream. I had lost the only girl I had ever loved, in a dream.

I pushed open the door of the Norfolk Lunch. It was late—I had only a little while for breakfast. I sat down at one of the tables, and spoke to the waiter in much the usual manner.

"Hello, Joe. I'm in a hurry—bring me bacon and eggs, as usual."

"Coffee, Mr. Barrett?"

"Yes, coffee too. And hurry it up."

It wouldn't do to be late at the office, where I, too, was a maker of sometimes cruel dreams.

THE END End of Project Gutenberg's The Chamber of Life, by Green Peyton Wertenbaker