At first the mental frame of us lingerers in the closing hotel was one
of heroic self-applause. We wore a brave and smiling front; we said it
was so much nicer than when the house was full, than when there were
a thousand or even a hundred in it; and we all declared that we were
going to stay as long as the landlord would let us. But from time to
time there were defections; one table after another was dismantled;
face after face vanished; first a white face, then a black face. I do
not think we were so smiling after four of the beach trains were taken
off; secretly, I think each of us wondered, What if we should stay till
the last train was taken off, and we could not get away! What should
we do then?
We have become rather more serious; we do not talk trivially when we
talk, and we scarcely talk at all; we have traversed each other’s
conversable territory so often that there is no longer the hope of
discovery in it. We have not only become serious; I have reached the
point where I have asked in thought if we are not a little absurd. Why
should we stay? What is keeping us? The waves of autumn will soon reach
the kitchen fires; and then?
Last night, our waiter said he was going on Monday. This morning the
newsboy passed through the office on his way to serve the cottagers
with the papers. Asked if he were not going to serve the hotel guests,
he went on without answering. It may be because he is an officer of a
railroad, whose officers reluctantly answer questions; but perhaps he
has come to feel a ghostly quality in us, and regards us as so many
simulacra incapable of interest in the affairs of real men.
The gas was not lighted in the ballroom after dinner yesterday; the
halls gloomed like illimitable caverns late in the gathered dusk.
Shall I be able to stay till Friday? We shall see.