e, nursery-maids
in fast colors, boys in knickerbockers racing on the beach, people lying
on the sand, resolute walkers, whose figures loomed tall in the evening
light, doing their constitutional. People were passing to and fro on the
long iron pier that spider-legged itself out into the sea; the two rooms
midway were filled with sitters taking the evening breeze; and the large
ball and music room at the end, with its spacious outside promenade-yes,
there were dancers there, and the band was playing. Mr. King could see
the fiddlers draw their bows, and the corneters lift up their horns and
get red in the face, and the lean man slide his trombone, and the drummer
flourish his sticks, but not a note of music reached him. It might have
been a performance of ghosts for all the effect at this distance. Mr.
King remarked upon this dumb-show to a gentleman in a blue coat and white
vest and gray hat, leaning against a column near him. The gentleman made
no response. It was most singular. Mr. King stepped back to be out of
the way of some children racing down the piazza, and, half stumbling, sat
down in the lap of a dowager--no, not quite; the chair was empty, and he
sat down in the fresh varnish, to which his clothes stuck fast. Was this
a delusion? No. The tables were filled in the dining-room, the waiters
were scurrying about, there were ladies on the balconies looking dreamily
down upon the animated scene below; all the movements of gayety and
hilarity in the height of a season. Mr. King approached a group who were
standing waiting for a carriage, but they did not see him, and did not
respond to his trumped-up question about the next train. Were these,
then, shadows, or was he a spirit himself? Were these empty omnibuses
and carriages that discharged ghostly passengers? And all this
promenading and flirting and languishing and love-making, would it come
to nothing-nothing more than usual? There was a charm about it all--the
movement, the color, the gray sand, and the rosy blush on the sea--a
lovely place, an enchanted place. Were these throngs the guests that were
to come, or those that had been herein other seasons? Why could not the
former "materialize" as well as the latter? Is it not as easy to make
nothing out of what never yet existed as out of what has ceased to exist?
The landlord, by faith, sees all this array which is prefigured so
strangely to Mr. King; and his comely young wife sees it and is ready for
it; and the