But as things were, Poll felt that she could never love Nat; for although he little guessed it, he was the means of separating her from Jill.
Poll lay awake all night close to the girl; she could not possibly waste the precious hours in sleep, because she meant to go away from her for ever in the morning. Poll felt that it would be utterly impossible for her to keep sober always, and it was part of Nat’s creed that sobriety was godliness.
She had made up her mind what to do with the quick, fierce tenacity which was peculiar to her, when she heard the young man speak.
The chemist had told her only too plainly that she must go into a hospital or die. Poll preferred death to the hospital; but Jill should not witness her dying tortures, and Jill’s husband should never know that her mother had been one of those base, low women who get rid of their miseries in drink.
Jill did not want Poll any longer now, and because she loved her, the poor soul determined to go away and leave her.
“I’ll drink the stuff in the little bottle to-morrow night,” murmured Poll. “I’ll want it then, but I like to lie wide-awake and close to the child to-night. When the light comes in I’ll look well at all her features. I know ’em, of course—none better; but I’ll take a good filling look at ’em when the light comes in.”
She lay still herself, great pulses throbbing all over her body, the pain without becoming gradually less in intensity, by reason of the greater pain which surged and surged within.
There was one creature whom she loved with the fierce, hungry intensity of an untutored, a wild and yet in some ways a noble nature. The bond between her and her daughter was about to be severed. She herself, through her own deed, would cut the cord which bound them.
The light stole in at the window, at first faintly, then with more and more glad beams of sunshine and joy. Poll heard a neighbouring clock strike three. She said to herself:
“I’ll lie and look at the child until the half-hour sounds, then I’ll get up.”