Days came when she needed all the comfort she could get. There were other women in the house who were apparently in the same case as herself, but they were haggard, furtive creatures, holding converse with none, shutting doors swiftly at the approach of anyone but Nurse Selton, creeping out for air under the cloak of night.
Sometimes the woman in the adjoining room moaned all night, railing at Fate and God that she should have been brought to this pass.
Once through an open door Poppy heard haggling going on about the premium to be paid with a baby that was to be "adopted."
The sordidness of life, and the meanness of human nature, pressed around her. It was hard to keep ideals in such an atmosphere; hard to flaunt the green flag of love and hope, when there were so many hands eager to pull it down and trample it in the mire. A joyful spirit seemed out of place here. To the people she had got among, the thing that she thought wonderful and lovely was a curse and a bane! The mean house in the back street and the common-minded people seemed in a conspiracy to make her feel low, and shameful, when she wished only to be proud and happy.
"This must be part of the terror that comes of breaking the moral law," she whispered to herself. "One's act can bring one into contact with sordid people, and squalor and vice—one may become degraded and soiled in spite of oneself." She looked around her with hunted eyes. "There is nothing fine or noble anywhere here, except Watts's picture!" she thought; but when she opened her window and saw the grand old Abbey, she could think it no longer. There it lay in the gloom, grand and silent, standing for great, proud things: the long pile with the hunch at one end of it and at the other the stately twin pinnacles facing Palace Yard, where Raleigh's head fell, and where London goes rolling by to East and to West.
Yes: it stood for all high and noble things and thoughts! All grand ideals! Nothing squalid there, or shameful! Surely it belonged to her—belonged to everyone who loved it, and loved what it meant. But did it? Was she cut off from it because—? She drew in her breath, and thought for a long time with closed eyes and clasped hands.
"... I suppose morality is one of the high things—and I am not moral. I am one of the Magdalenes of the earth now!... whoever knows, will call me an immoral woman! I think I am only a mistaken one. I can see that now, thinking not of myself, but of my son to be. I should, if I had no moral instincts, at least have thought of consequences to my child! Well-brought-up girls are trained to think of these things, I suppose. But I was not well brought up—I was never brought up at all. I was a child of Nature. A poppy, blowing and flaming in the field—and plucked. If I had been anything else I should not have been in the garden that night at a time when well-brought-up girls were in bed! And I should have flown at the first sound of danger—but I didn't. Not because I did not recognise danger; but because I did recognise something I had been looking for all my life—Love. And I put out both arms and embraced it. Now it seems revealed to me that I should not have done this ... I should have fenced and fended ... guarded myself ... given nothing ... until he had asked for me and taken me, before all the world ... and made a nest for me somewhere away from the squalor of the world where no begriming thoughts could touch me and smirch the mother of his son. Then I suppose the Abbey would have been for me too!—--"
She twisted her lips and flung out her fingers.
"And I wouldn't change a thing that is done. Not for all the world could give would I forget or have undone that radiant hour!... And yet ... and yet ... how I should love the nest for my child ... the peace and fine honour of a wife's bed to lay his son upon! Oh! why does life tear the hearts of women in half like this?" She rested her head on her hands and shed passionate tears for herself and for all women like her. At last she said:
"Good-night, old Abbey! You are mine all the same—mine because, moral or immoral, I love the things you stand for. You cannot rob even bad people of the love of beauty. And no one can rob me of the peace you have put into my heart night after night."