“I?” The Baxter girl looked at me oddly. “She read my book. She wrote to me. That’s why Anita took me up. She let me come to the Nights. She started them, you know. Somebody reads a story or a poem, and then it’s talk till the milkman comes. Good times! But now Madala’s married she doesn’t come often. Anita carries on like grim death, of course. But it’s not the same. Last month it was dreary.”
“Is it every month?”
“Yes. It’s tomorrow again. Tomorrow’s Sunday, isn’t it? It’ll amuse you. You’ll come, of course, as you’re in the house.”
“Will she? Herself?” I found myself reproducing the Baxter girl’s eagerness.
“Not now.” The common voice had deepened queerly. “She’s very ill.” She hesitated. “That’s why I came today. I thought Anita might have heard. Not my business, of course, but——” She made an awkward, violent gesture with her hands. “Oh, a genius oughtn’t to marry. It’s wicked waste. Well, so long! See you tomorrow night!”
She left me abruptly.
I found myself marking time, as it were, all through that morrow, as if the evening were of great importance. The Baxter girl was always unsettling, or it may have been Anita’s restlessness that affected me. Anita was on edge. She was writing, writing, all the morning. She was at her desk when I came down. There was a mass of packets and papers in front of her and an empty coffee cup. I believe she had been writing all night. She had that white look round her eyes. But she didn’t need any typing done. Early in the afternoon she went out and at once Great-aunt, in her corner, put down her knitting with a little catch of her breath. But she didn’t talk: she sat watching the door. I had been half the day at the window, fascinated by the fog. I’d never seen a London fog before. I found myself writing a letter in my head to Mother about it, about the way it would change from black to yellow and then clear off to let in daylight and sparrow-talk and the tramp-tramp of feet, and then back again to silence, and the sun like a ball that you could reach up to with your hand and hold. I was deep in my description—and then, of a sudden, I remembered that she wasn’t there to write to any more. It was so hard to remember always that she was dead. I got up quickly and went to Anita’s shelves for a book. Great-aunt hadn’t noticed anything. She was still watching the door.
The little back room that opened on to the staircase was lined to the ceiling with books, all so tidy and alphabetical. Anita lived for books, but I used to wonder why. She didn’t love them. Her books never opened friendlily at special places, and they hadn’t the proper smell. I ran my finger along the ‘G’s’ and pulled out Eden Walls.
I began in the middle of course. One always falls into the middle of a real person’s life, and a book is a person. There’s always time to find out their beginning afterwards when you’ve decided to be friends. It isn’t always worth while. But it was with Eden Walls. I liked the voice in which the story was being told. Soon I began to feel happier. Then I began to feel excited. It said things I’d always thought, you know. It was extraordinary that it knew how I felt about things. There’s a bit where the heroine comes to town and the streets scare her, because they go on, and on, and on, always in straight lines, like a corridor in a dream. Now how did she know of that dream? I turned back to the first page and began to read steadily.
When Anita’s voice jerked me back to real life it was nearly dark. She was speaking to Great-aunt as she took off her wraps—