Edith’s Diary Read Online Free Page A

with us,’ Edith said.
    Cliffie groaned, the first sound from him since he had attacked his food.
    ‘There were hints in that direction,’ Brett said.
    Edith said nothing. Brett’s old uncle – he was seventy at least – was a bit of a worry to Brett. He had something wrong with his back, just what no doctor had been able to find out, but he had pains, and he subsisted on his hospitalization money in an old people’s resthome-
cum
-nursing-service in the East Sixties. Edith suspected him of malingering, though of course people of seventy had the right to retire and even malinger, if they could afford it. George seemed to be practically bedridden, though he still got up to go to the bathroom, Edith had been told by Brett. George Howland had been a successful lawyer in Chicago and New York, had never married, and was well-to-do, with a sum of money which he had said – though this wasn’t definite as far as Edith knew – would go to Brett.
    ‘And what did you say?’ Edith asked finally. She was smiling a little.
    ‘Oh, I was suitably evasive, I think. He was complaining about expenses where he is. Boredom et cetera.’
    ‘If he’s got enough tucked away, why doesn’t he use it?’ Edith said. ‘Put himself up in a better —’
    ‘Yeah!’ Cliffie interrupted. ‘Starting with a bicycle for me. I wouldn’t mind a
bicycle
!’
    ‘You’ll get a bike and not from Uncle George,’ Brett said, wiping his lips on a napkin stretched between his hands. Suddenly Brett grinned and slapped his son on the back. ‘Cheer up, Cliffie. We’re going to have a great life in Pennsylvania. Maybe some fishing. Maybe a little boat of our own to sail on the Delaware! How about that?’
    That night, just as Edith was walking toward the bed in her nightgown, she remembered a dream she had had. In the dream, she had closed the refrigerator door, into which Mildew had been poking her head, and cut the cat’s head off. Either she had fainted in the dream or not realized what had happened, because later she had seen the cat walking around the house headless, and when she had rushed to the refrigerator and opened it, the cat’s head had been in there, eating the remains of a chicken, eating everything. Often Mildew stuck her head into the fridge, and Edith had to push her away with her foot before closing the door. Would Cliffie some day slam the fridge door on Mildew’s neck and say it was an accident? Edith found herself clenching her teeth. It hadn’t happened. It wasn’t true. But in her dream,
she
had done it.

2
    Edith sat at her worktable (a flush door on trestles) which was pleasantly set to catch the maximum light from a north bay window. The curving window, some fourteen feet in width, was framed by white curtains, transparent enough for the willows, the green of the box hedges to be visible, and now a light breeze stirred the hems of the curtains. It was a fine November afternoon. They had been in the house nearly two months.
    Beyond her worktable, on the wall facing her and above the bench seat hung a framed quotation from Tom Paine which Edith loved.
     
… These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.
 
 
The Crisis
    She had told Cliffie about Tom Paine, the English-born corset-maker who had become a journalist, whose words had rallied the not always enthusiastic volunteer soldiers of Washington’s army – which had brought their nation into being. She and Brett had taken Cliffie to see the cracked Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and had in general tried to introduce him to his new Home State, which also included the battlefield of Gettysburg.
    Now her diary lay open before her on the table. Last month she had written:
     
    Our Brunswick Corner house – I would like to call it Peace – is as wonderful as