BOOK IV
RUTH BOAM
CHAPTER XXVII
THE HOHENZOLLERN HOTEL
The Hohenzollern Hotel was both physically and spiritually remote from all the other hotels in Beachbourne.
The respectable Grand, facing the Wish, the ponderous Talbot opposite the band-stand, the perky Hydropathic perched on the rise of the hill, the Dudley by the pier, the Cecil, the Bentinck, and all the other hotels with aristocratic names and a middle-class clientele, were at the West-end of the town, interspersed among boarding-houses the whole length of the sea-front from the pier to Beau-nez.
The Hohenzollern stood aloof at the East-end on the edge of the Crumbles, as the Levels here were called.
An immense, modern caravanserai of pretentious neogothic style, it had been dumped down on the shore beyond the long-deserted Redoubt of Napoleonic times.
In front of it was the sea. On its flank, beyond the Fishing Station, stretched the marshes. Behind it, at a respectful distance, crouching in the dust, the mass of mean houses and crowded streets that constituted the East-end.
On these the Hohenzollern, aloof and lordly in its railed-off pleasure grounds, turned an unheeding back. It was unaware of their presence; or rather recognized them only to patronize.
It was a drab area, unfrequented by the fashionable and redolent of the atmosphere of cheap lodging-houses.