Listen! there's some one else
groaning! The Park is full of groans."
What she said was true--the Park was full of groans. From every
direction, borne to them by the gently rustling wind, came the groans
of countless suffering outcasts--legions of homeless, starving men
and women. Some lay right out in the open on their backs, others
under cover of the trees, others again on the seats. They lay
everywhere--these shattered, tattered, battered wrecks of
humanity--these gangrened exiles from society, to whom no one ever
spoke; whom no one ever looked at; whom no one would even own that
they had seen; whose lot in life not even a stray cat envied. Here
were two of them--a man and a woman tightly hugged in each other's
embrace--not for love--but for warmth. Lilian Rosenberg almost fell
over them, but they took no notice of her. Every now and then, one of
them would emerge from the shelter of the trees, and cross the grass
in the direction of the distant, gleaming water, with silent, stealthy
tread. Once a tall, gaunt figure, suddenly sprang up and confronted
the two adventurers; but the moment Kelson raised his stick, it
jabbered something wholly unintelligible, and sped away into the
darkness.
"A scene like this makes one doubt the existence of a good God,"
Lilian Rosenberg said.
"It makes one doubt the existence of anything but Hell," Kelson said.
"Compared with all this suffering--the suffering of these thousands of
hungry, hopeless wretches--the bulk of whom are doubtless tortured
incessantly, with the pains of cancer and tuberculosis, to say nothing
of neuralgia and rheumatism--Dante's Inferno and Virgil's Hades pale
into insignificance.
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