"People talk about unemployment!" he mused--"There's enough human material in this one street to make wealth for themselves and the whole community, yet they are idle by their own choice. If they had anything to do they wouldn't be here!"
He laughed grimly,--the utter stodginess and stupidity of humanity EN MASSE had of late struck him very forcibly, and he found every excuse for the so-called incapacity of Governments, seeing the kind of folk they are called upon to govern. He realised, as we all who read history, must do, that we are no worse and no better than the peoples of the past,--we are just as hypocritical, fraudulent, deceptive and cruel as ever they were in legalised torture-times, and just as ineradicably selfish. The pagans practised a religion which they did not truly believe in, and so do we. All through the ages God has been mocked;--all through the ages Divine vengeance has fallen on the mockers and the mockery.
"And after all," thought Gwent--"wars are as necessary as plagues to clear out a superabundant population, only most unfortunately Nature adopts such recklessness in her methods that it most often happens the best among us are taken, and the worst left. I tried to impress this on Seaton, whose system of destruction would involve the good as well as the bad--but these intellectual monsters of scientific appetite have no conscience and no sentiment. To prove their theories they would annihilate a continent."
Here a sudden ugly rush of the crowd, dangerous to both life and limb, pushed him back against the church portal with the force of a tidal wave,--it was not concerned with the bridal pair who had already driven away in their automobile, nor with the wedding guests who were following them to the great hotel where the bride's reception was held--it was caused by the wild dash of half a dozen or so of unkempt men and boys who tore a passage for themselves through the swaying mob of sightseers, waving newspapers aloft and shouting loudly with voices deep and shrill, clear and hoarse-"Earthquake in California! Terrible loss of life! Thousands dead! Awful scenes! Earthquake in California!"
The people swayed again--then stopped in massed groups,--some clutching at the newsboys as they ran and buying the papers as fast as they could be sold, while all the time above the muffled roar of the city they sent their cries aloft, echoing near and far-"Thousands dead! Awful scenes! Towns destroyed! Terrible Earthquake in California!"
Sam Gwent stepped out from the church portal, elbowing his way through the confusion,--the yells of the news vendors rang sharply in his ears and yet for the moment he scarcely grasped their meaning; "California" was the one word that caught him, as it were, with a hammer stroke,--then "Thousands dead!" Finding at last an open passage through the dispersing crowd, he went at something of a run after one of the newsboys, and snatched the last paper he had to sell out of his hand.