Townley liked Mrs. Gower, and did not wish her to be humbled. Socially, she helped him still. Should he say Lenox? He thought a moment; and the upshot of his deliberations was a resolve to do nothing for a day at least. Whereupon he went to bed, and, let us hope, to pleasant dreams.
For he could not quite account for Tamms’s virtuous refusal to sell their own bonds before the coming default.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SLAVES OF THE LAMP.
YOU had better not go back to-day,” said Mr. Tamms to Charlie when he came down in the morning. “They can get along without you at the office; besides, I should like you to drive with me to Ocean Grove.” Charlie was always ready enough to get along without the office, even if the converse of that proposition had not been unusual enough upon the lips of Mr. Tamms to excite his curiosity. So the long-tailed fast horses were brought out in the trotting-buggy, and, well provided with cigars and morning papers, the two set forth upon their journey. It was a piping hot day; the glaring surface of the sea lay still beside them, and the straight, unshaded, red-clay road seemed to be rapidly baking into brick. Mrs. Haberman came to see them off, robed still in a sort of gorgeous bedchamber arrangement of pale silk and laces, the inevitable large diamonds still in her ears. For some miles their way was the same they had taken the day before, along the rows of shadeless villas, each “cottage” more ornate and ramifying than the last; then they came to a long rise of the sweltering fields, past a thin grove of pines, a few cheaper boarding-houses, and a swamp with an artificial pond. Beyond this the hotels began again; and they crossed a long lagoon that looked like some breeding-place for fevers and lay between two great wooden cities; these were Asbury Park and Ocean Grove; and in front of them was still the sea.
Many of the cottages were here the merest little wooden boxes, some of them put together still more informally, of canvas and of poles, so that one looked through the whole domestic range, from the front part, which was a parlor, through the open family bed-room to the kitchen behind. These were the abodes of those who (not like the dwellers at Long Branch) came here in search of religious experiences; but Charlie saw, save a Bible text or two in chromo, no visible evidence of the higher life. Paterfamilias was usually lolling, unbuttoned as to waistcoat, in the front part of the establishment; materfamilias, in an indescribable white gown that seemed but a shapeless covering for divers toilet sins, was busied with housewifely duties; and the filia pulchrior was commonly set forth in a hammock upon the little piazza, lost in some novel of “The Duchess” or of “Bertha Clay,” but not too lost in those entrancing pages to cast some very collected glances at Charlie and his patron’s handsome equipage.
There were fewer “saloons” than at Long Branch; but even more confectioners’ shops and summer circulating libraries; and plenty of hotels. Before the largest of these, Mr. Tamms drew up his steaming horses, and asked of the sable yet proud young porter if Mr. Remington were in. “Deacon Remington is down at the beach, sah,” was the reply; and Mr. Tamms gave orders for his horses to be rubbed and cared for, while they sought the Deacon (who seemed a person of much prominence at Ocean Grove) on foot.
Plank-walks led in all directions through the streets, which otherwise would have been heavy walking, in the heaped-up sand; for there was no turf nor other vegetation, except where an artificial platebande of red leaves and greenhouse plants was fostered at the street corners. They took the walk which led seaward, passing one or two huge wooden tabernacles where sermons, meetings, or other Methodist functions were performed every day, as frequent wooden placards informed them. But they were empty now; and Charlie could see the theatre of rows of rising seats, much like the band-pavilion at a beach less sacred than was this. They crossed the end of the freshwater lagoon, passed a flotilla of pleasure boats, and ascended to the sandy shore; here, from the crest of the beach, the walk led upward still, supported on piles, to the great ocean pier, a sort of sublimated piazza, double or triple decked, roofed, and extending far along the beach before them, with a pier projecting far out over the sea. Here was the population of the place assembled, knitting, reading, or doing nothing to the music of a brass band which, stationed at the outer end of the pavilion, was performing revival hymns. It seemed to Charlie that there must be some thousands of people on this pier alone; and he saw that there was another deck below, and still below that the beach was strewn, like drift-wood, with humanity. The task of finding Deacon Remington seemed hopeless, and Charlie made bold to ask why they should look further.
“The Deacon is the leader of our church,” said Tamms, “and a very shrewd man. He is one of the largest stockholders in Starbuck Oil.”
Charlie said nothing more; and in a moment a gaunt man rose up from a little table they were passing by and addressed Tamms eagerly. His upper lip was shaven, but otherwise his beard was unkempt; his sallow face had a worn and weary look which even the perfunctory smile that continually gleamed across it, like sheet-lightning, did not permanently relieve. “How’s the madam?” said Tamms.