Chapter Seven.
The boys came in presently, and Jill and her mother went to bed. The young girl’s head scarcely touched her pillow when she was in the land of dreams, but the older woman stayed awake.
She held tightly clasped in her hand the little bottle which the chemist had given her, and which was to give relief to her suffering. It was in her power to take the cork out of the bottle, and drink off the contents at any moment, but she refrained from doing so.
Cruel as her pain had been all day she did not want to drown it in oblivion now; she wished to stay awake, she did not want the short hours of the summer night to slip away in forgetfulness.
Poll stretched out one hot hand, and laid it softly, with a mother’s tenderness, on the shoulder of the girl who slept so peacefully at her side. It was pleasant to touch that young form; it was such ease to her tortured mind that it was almost as good as ease of body would have been.
Poll had always loved Jill with a curious, passionate, wayward affection. She had married a man whom she had not greatly cared for. He had been cruel to her in his time, and she had looked upon his death as a deliverance. She was the mother of three children, but two of them seemed to Poll to belong to her husband, and one to her. The boys were rough and commonplace; they were just like their father; Jill was beautiful both in mind and body, and Jill with her sweetness and love, her sympathy and tenderness, was Poll’s very own. She was built on her model—the same features, the same dark eyes, the same thick coils of raven-black hair; a trifle more of refinement in the girl than in the mother; a shade or two of greater beauty; added to this the glamour of early youth, but otherwise Jill was Poll over again.
Heart to heart these two had always understood each other; heart to heart their love was returned. Now Jill was giving herself to another. It was all in the course of nature, and Poll would not have wished it otherwise.
Had things been different, had that ache in her breast never been, and in consequence had that craving for strong drink never seized her, she might have been happy with Jill’s children on her knees.
Had everything been different she might have taken Nat into her heart, and loved him for her daughter’s sake.