The Forger’s Wife

The night was rainy and dark. The ceaseless patter of rain drops broke dismally on the quiet streets, and mingled with a weird echo to the sound of the rushing tide as it came from the river. Out into the darkness came, too, a wail—low—sad—despairing. It was not the echo of passionate grief, but as if the heart cried out in cruel pain at its sense of hope bereft and life made desolate. It was such a cry as sometimes breaks above the coffin-lid, or mingles with the rattling clods when love and life have parted.

It was a low, ruinous room, ill-kept and damp. The spider wove his web on the bare walls, and the glare of the lightning flashed through the shutterless windows. There was a pile of straw on the fireless hearth, and an infant’s cradle beside it. But it was not this that made the salt tears come in my eyes. Above the cradle a woman sobbed her life away. The lips of the mother pressed like an angel’s caress the brow of the child, and then cried out in agony.

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