The day was sullen, stormy, and dark. Gray, leaden clouds were
scourged through the sky by a howling southeastern gale, and the
lashed waters of the bay broke along the shore with a solemn,
continued boom. The rain fell drearily, and sheet lightning, pale
and constant, gave a ghastly hue to the scudding clouds. It was one
of those lengthened storms which, during the month of August, are so
prevalent along the Gulf coast. Clara Sanders sat near a window,
bending over a piece of needlework, while, with her hands clasped
behind her, Beulah walked up and down the floor. Their countenances
contrasted vividly; Clara's sweet, placid face, with drooped eyelids
and Madonna-like serenity; the soft, auburn hair curled about her
cheeks, and the delicate lips in peaceful rest.
And Beulah!--how shall I adequately paint the gloom and restlessness written in her
stormy countenance? To tell you that her brow was bent and lowering,
that her lips were now unsteady and now tightly compressed, and that
her eyes were full of troubled shadows, would convey but a faint
impression of the anxious discontent which seemed to have taken
entire possession of her. Clara glanced at her, sighed, and went on
with her work; she knew perfectly well she was in no humor for
conversation. The rain increased until it fell in torrents, and the
hoarse thunder muttered a dismal accompaniment. It grew too dark to
see the stitches; Clara put by her work, and, folding her hands on
her lap, sat looking out into the storm, listening to the roar of
the rushing wind, as it bowed the treetops and uplifted the white-
capped billows of the bay. Beulah paused beside the window, and said
abruptly: "It is typical of the individual, social, moral, and intellectual
life. Look which way you will, you find antagonistic elements
fiercely warring. There is a broken cog somewhere in the machinery
of this plunging globe of ours. Everything organic, and inorganic,
bears testimony to a miserable derangement. There is not a
department of earth where harmony reigns. True, the stars are
serene, and move in their everlasting orbits, with fixed precision,
but they are not of earth; here there is nothing definite, nothing
certain. The seasons are regular, but they are determined by other
worlds. Verily, the contest is still fiercely waged between Ormuzd
and Ahriman, and the last has the best of it, so far. The three
thousand years of Ahriman seem dawning."
She resumed her walk, and, looking after her anxiously, Clara
answered: "But remember, the 'Zend-Avesta' promises that Ormuzd shall finally
conquer and reign supreme. In this happy kingdom I love to trace the
resemblance to the millennium which was shown St. John on lonely
Patmos."