Page:Lord of the World - Benson - 1908.djvu/72

42 There is the same story everywhere. What in the world is happening?"

Percy paused before answering.

"I think these things go in waves," he said.

"Waves, do you think?" said the other.

"What else?"

Father Blackmore looked at him intently.

"It is more like a dead calm, it seems to me," he said. "Have you ever been in a typhoon?"

Percy shook his head.

"Well," went on the other, "the most ominous thing is the calm. The sea is like oil; you feel half-dead: you can do nothing. Then comes the storm."

Percy looked at him, interested. He had not seen this mood in the priest before.

"Before every great crash there comes this calm. It is always so in history. It was so before the Eastern War; it was so before the French Revolution. It was so before the Reformation. There is a kind of oily heaving; and everything is languid. So everything has been in America, too, for over eighty years Father Franklin, I think something is going to happen."

"Tell me," said Percy, leaning forward.

"Well, I saw Templeton a week before he died, and he put the idea in my head Look here, father. It may be this Eastern affair that is coming on us; but somehow I don't think it is. It is in religion that something is going to happen. At least, so I think Father, who in God's name is Felsenburgh?"

Percy was so startled at the sudden introduction of this name again, that he stared a moment without speaking.