IV.
I have to accuse myself of giving no just idea of the constant flowing and dribbling away of the guests, who never ceased departing. The trains that bore them and their baggage brought no others to replace them, and the house gradually emptied itself until not more than a poor three hundred remained. With each defection of a considerable number of guests there followed a reduction of the helping force, who now no longer departed laughing, but with a touch of that loneliness falling upon us all. It must be understood that we were all staying on in our closing hotel by sufferance. It closed officially on the 10th, but the landlord was to remain, and such guests as wished might remain too. This made us eager to linger till the very last moment we were allowed.
Ever since the elevator had ceased to run, there had been a sense of doom in the air. One day we noted a fine reluctance in the elevator; when people crowded it full, it would not go up. Then it began to waver under a few; it made false starts and stops. A placard presently said, “Elevator not running.” Then this was removed, and the elevator ran again for a day or two. At last it ceased to run so finally that no placard was needed. The elevator boys went away; it was as if the elevator were extinct.
I think it was on the same day that the hall clock stopped. The clock was started again by the head porter, but after that the hotel ran on borrowed time. Once it borrowed the time of me, whose watch has not once been right in thirty-three years, a whole generation!
The temperature of the water ceased to be reported even before the end of August; the hours of high and low tide were no longer given. Twice when the reporters came down to see the yacht-race off our beach the bulletin-board was covered with yellow telegrams from the coast where it was really seen, boasting the victory and triumphant defeat of the Defender. This quickened our pulses for the moment; and one night the ladies all put on their best dresses, and assembled for a progressive euchre party in the vast acreage of the parlor. It was a heroic but perhaps desperate act of gayety.