Impressions and experiences

by William Dean Howells

It may have been the morning of that day, or the morning of the next, but it was at least some neighboring morning, that I sauntered down to one of the forenoon trains and saw a large detachment of our colored troops departing. They were very gay, as they nearly always are, poor fellows; and they were exchanging humorous and derisive adieux with a detachment of those who were to remain, and who pretended on their part to mock their departing comrades. These helped them off with their baggage, wheeling the heavy truck-loads of the trunks which the porters left to them; and, when all was ready, shaking hands again and again, and telling them to be good to themselves. At the last moment a very short, stout, little black man appeared with a truck heaped high with baggage, and rushed it down the long esplanade to the platform beside the train, amid the wild cheers and wagers of the going and staying spectators. He had all the cry till the train actually started, when a young colored brother burst out of the front door of a car from which it had detached itself, and began to run it down with a heavy grip-sack flying wildly about and beating his legs and flanks. He had taken his place in this car unaware of its fate, and had remained in it, exulting from the open window in his sole possession; and now the secret of his proprietorship had been revealed to his dismay. But it was a very kindly train; when his pursuit became known, the locomotive obligingly slowed to a stand, and he was pulled aboard the rear platform amidst a jubilation which few real advantages inspire in this world.

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.

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!