"
And she seemed to grasp firmly the back of a chair, and compressed her
lips--an attitude she maintained like a statue all the time occupied by
the departure of her son. The door closed--he was gone; and she still
stood, the _vivum cadaver_--the image of a petrified creature of misery.
Yet, overcome as her very calmness was, and enchanted for the moment
into voicelessness and utter inaction, she was not that kind of women
who sit and bear the stripes without an effort to ward them off. If
Jeannie was as quick as lightning, she was sure as that which follows
the flash. She thought for a moment, "God does not absolutely and for
ever leave his servants." Some thought had struck her. She put on her
bonnet and cloak deliberately, even looking into the glass to see if she
was tidy enough for where she intended going, and for whom she intended
to see.
And now this quiet woman is on her way down Broughton Street at twelve
o'clock of a cold winter night, which, like her own mind, had only that
calmness which results from the exhaustion of sudden biting gusts from
the north, and therefore right in her face. She drew her cloak round
her. She had a long way to go, but her son was in danger of the gallows;
and thoughtless, and as it now seemed, wicked as he was, he was yet her
_son_. The very word is a volume of heart language--not the fitful
expression of passion, but that quiet eloquence which bedews the eye and
brings deep sighs with holy recollections of the child-time, and
germinating hopes of future happiness up to the period when he would
hang over her departing spirit.
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