Beulah - Page 237/348

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."