III.
An indefinable gloom settled upon me as the train curved out into the marsh, and the laughing, chattering, cheering, hat-waving remnant came back to the hotel and dispersed about their work. There were still a great many of them, and there were still a great many of us, but I felt that the end had begun. I do not know whether I felt this fact more keenly or not when the dentist, whose presence I had been tacitly proud of all through August, abandoned the house which he had helped to render metropolitan. But I am sure that it was a definite shock to lose him; and that the tooth which his presence had held in abeyance asserted itself in a wild throe at his going. Once as I passed the door of his office his name was on it and his hours; when I returned fifteen minutes later to ask an appointment with him his name was gone, and the useless hours alone remained. On his way to take passage in his cat-boat for the farthermost parts of the Great South Bay, he kindly stopped and advised about the grumbling tooth. Then he passed out of the hotel, and left it to ache if it must, with an unrequited longing for the filling fatally delayed.
The doctor went a week later, but before this other changes had taken place, among which the most cataclysmal was the passing of the band, which vanished as it were in a sudden crash of silence. The whole month long I had heard it playing in the afternoon midway of the long veranda, and in the evening on its platform in the ballroom, and with my imperfect knowledge of music had waited each day and night till it came to that dissolute, melancholy melody to which the Eastern girls danced their wicked dance at the World’s Fair; not because I like dissolute and melancholy things, but because I was then able to make sure what tune the band was playing. I had in this way become used to the band, and I missed it poignantly, if one can miss a thing poignantly; which I doubt. Other people seemed to enjoy it, and I like to see people enjoying themselves. Besides, its going brought the dancing to a close, which I enjoyed myself.
I mean that I enjoyed looking at the dancing. This was for the most part, even at the height of our gayety, performed by boys and girls, and very young children, whom I saw led away to bed heart-broken at nine o’clock. One small couple of these I loved very much. I fancied them a little brother and sister, and I delighted in their courage and perseverance in taking the floor for every dance, and through all changes of tune and figure turning solemnly round and round with their arms about each other’s waists. One night there came a bad, bad boy, who posted himself in front of them, and plagued them, jumping up and down before them and hindering their serious gyration. Another evening the little brother was cross and would not dance, and the little sister had to pull him out on the floor and make him.
Sometimes, however, there were even grown people on the floor. Then I chose a very pretty young couple, whom I called my couple, and shared their joy in the waltz without their knowing it. We were by all odds the best dancers and the best looking. We stayed long enough to poison the others with jealousy, but we always went away rather early. When the band left, all this innocent pleasure ended. There was one delirious evening, indeed, when the floor-manager, in default of other music, whistled a waltz, and the young ladies, in default of young men, trod a mad measure with each other to his sibilation. But this was a dying burst of gayety: it did not and could not happen again.