The readjustment by Mary Hunter Austen. Emma Jeffreys had been dead and buried three
days. This sister who had come to the funeral had taken Emma's child away
with her, and the house was swept and dared. Then, when it
seemed there was the least occasion for it, Emma came back. The neighbor
woman who had nursed her was the first to know it. It was about
seven of the evening, in a mellow gloom. The neighbor woman was sitting
on her own stoop with her arms wrapped in her apron, and all at
once she found herself going along the street under an urgent sense that Emma needed
her. She was halfway down the block before she recollected that this was impossible
for Missus Jeffreys was dead and buried. But as soon as she came opposite
the house she was aware of what had happened. It was all open to
the summer air, except that it was a little neat her, not otherwise
than the rest of the street. It was quite dark, but the presence
of Emma Jeffreys streamed from it and betrayed it more than a candle. It
streamed out steadily across the garden, and even as it reached her, mixed
with the smell of the damp Mignonette, the neighbor woman owned to herself that
she had always known Emma would come back a sight stranger if she wouldn't,
thought the woman who had nursed her. She wasn't ever one to throw off
things easily. Emma Jeffreys had taken death as she had taken everything in life.
Hard. She had met it with the same bright surface competency that she
had presented to the squalor of the encompassing desertness, to the insuperable commonness of
Sym Jeffreys, to the affliction of her crippled child, and the intensity of
her wordless struggle against it had caught the attention of the townspeople and held it
in a shocked, curious awe. She was so long a dying, lying
there in that little low house, hearing the abhorred footsteps going about her rooms,
and the vulgar procedure of the community encroach upon her like the advances of
the sand wastes on an unwatered field. For Emma had always wanted things different,
wanted them with a fury of intentness that implied offensiveness in things as they
were, and the townspeople had taken offense, the more so because she was
not to be surprised in any inaptitude for their own kind of success. Do
what you could. You could never catch Emma Jeffreys in a wrapper after three
o'clock in the afternoon, and she would never talk about the child in a
country where so little ever happened that even trouble was a godsend if it gave
you something to talk about. It was reported that she did not even talk
to Sym But there the common resentment got back at her. If she had
thought to effect anything with sim Jeffreys, against the benumbing spirit of the place,
the evasive hopefulness, the large sense of leisure that ungirt the loins,
if she still hoped somehow to get away with him to some place for which,
by her dress, by her manner, she seemed forever and unassailably fit,
it was foregone that nothing would come of it. They knew Sim Jeffrey's
better than that. Yet so vivid had been the force of her wordless dissatisfaction
that when the fever took her and she went down like a pasteboard figure,
in the damp. The wonder was that nothing toppled with her, and as
if she too had felt herself indispensable. Emma Jeffreys had come back. The
neighbor woman crossed the street, and as she passed the far corner of the
garden, Jeffreys spoke to her. He had been standing, she did not
know how long a time behind the syringa bush, and moved even with her
along the fence until they came to the gate. She could see in the
dusk that before speaking he wet his lips with his tongue. She's in there,
he said at last, Emma. He nodded. I've been sleeping at
the store since, but I thought i'd be more comfortable as soon as I
opened the door, there she was. Did you see her? No?
How do you know? Then? Don't you know? The neighbor felt there
was nothing to say to that. Come in, he whispered huskily. They
slipped by the rose tree and the wisteria and sat down on the porch at
the side. A door swung inward behind them. They felt the presence in
the dusk beating like a pulse. What do you think she wants? Said
Jeffreys. Do you reckon. It's the boy like enough. He's better off
with his aunt. There was no one here to take care of him like
his mother wanted. He raised his voice unconsciously with a note of justification,
addressing the room behind. I am sending fifty dollars a month, he said,
he can go with the best of them. He went on at length
to explain all the advantage that was to come to the boy from living at
Pasadena, and the neighbor woman bore him out in it. He was glad
to go, urged Jeffreys to the room. He said, it was what
his mother would have wanted. They were silent then a long time, while
the presents seemed to swell upon them and encroached upon the garden. Finally,
I gave Ziagler the order for the monument yesterday, Jeffreys threw out appeasingly.
It's to cost three hundred and fifty. The presents stirred. The neighbor thought
she could fairly see the controlled tolerance with which Emma Jeffreys endured the evidence of
Sim's ineptitudes. They sat on helplessly without talking after that, until the woman's
husband came to the fence and called her. Don't go begged, sym Hush,
she said, do you want all the town to know? You had
naught but good from Emma living and no call to expect harm from her?
Now, it's natural she should come back if if she was lonesome, like
in the place where she's gone to, Emma wouldn't come back to this place,
Jeffreys protested, without she wanted something, Well, then you've got to
find out, said the neighbor woman. All the next day she saw whenever
she passed the house that Emma was still there. It was shut and barred,
but the presence lurked behind the folded blinds and fumbled at the doors.
When it was night and the moths began in the columbine under the windows,
it went out and walked in the garden. Jeffreys was waiting at the gate
when the neighbor woman came. He sweated with helplessness in the warm dusk,
and the presence brooded upon them like an apprehension that grows by being entertained.
She wants something, he appealed, but can't make out what. Emma knows.
She is welcome to everything I've got. Everybody knows I've been a good
provider. The neighbor woman remembered suddenly the only time she had ever drawn close
to Emma Jeffrey's touching the boy. They had sat up with it together all
one night, in some childish ailment, and she had ventured a question,
what does his father think? And Emma had turned her a white, hard
face of surpassing dreariness. I don't know, she admitted. He never says
there's more than providing, suggested the neighbor woman. Yes, there's feeling,
but she had enough to do to put up with me. I had no
call to be troubling her with such. He left off to mop his forehead
and began again feelings. He said, there's times a man gets so warre
out with feelings he doesn't have them anymore. He talked, and presently it
grew clear to the woman that he was avoiding all the stuff of his life,
as if he had sickened on it and was now done. It was
a little soul knowing itself, and not good to see. What was singular
was that the presents, left off walking in the garden, came and caught
like a gossamer on the ivy tree, swayed by the breath of his broken
sentences. He talked, and the neighbor woman saw him for once as he
saw himself, and Emma snared and floundering in an inexplicable unhappiness. He had
been disappointed too. She had never relished the man he was, and it
made him ashamed. That was why he had never gone away, lest he
should make her ashamed among her own kind. He was her husband. He
could not help that, though he was sorry for it, but he could
keep the offense where least was made of it. And there was a child.
She had wanted a child, But even then he had blundered, begot
an a cripple upon her. He blamed himself utterly searched out the roots of
his youth for the answer to that, until the neighbor woman flinched to hear
him, but the presence stayed. He had never talked to his wife about
the child. How should he? There was the fact, the advertisement of
his incompetence, and she had never talked to him. That was the one
blest and unassailable memory. That she had spread silence like a balmb over his
hurt in return for it. He had never gone away. He had resisted
her that he might save her from showing among her own kind how poor a
man he was. With every word of this ran the fact of his love
for her, as he had loved her, with all the stripes of clean
and uncleanness. He bared himself as a child without knowing, And the presence
stayed. The talk trailed off at last to the commonplaces of consolation between the
wretchings of his spirit. The presence lessened and streamed toward them on the wind
of the garden. When it touched them, like the warm air of noon
that lies sometimes in hollow places after nightfall, the neighbor woman rose and went
away. The next night. She did not wait for him. When a
rod outside the town, it was a very little one. The burrowing owls
woo wooed. She hung up her apron and went to talk with Emma Jeffreys.
The presence was there, drawn in lying close. She found the key
between the wisteria and the first pillar of the porch. But as soon as
she opened the door she felt the chill that might be expected by one intruding
on Emma Jeffreys in her own house. The Lord is my shepherd, said
the neighbor woman. It was the first religious phrase that occurred to her.
Then she said the whole of the psalm, and after that a hymn.
She had come in through the door and stood with her back to it and
her hand upon the knob. Everything was just as Missus Jeffreys had left it,
with the waiting air of a room kept for company. M. She
said boldly, when the chill had abated a little before the sacred words.
M. Jeffreys. I've got something to say to you, and you've got
to hear, she added with firmness, as the white curtains stood duskily at
the window. You wouldn't be talked too about your troubles when you were here
before, and we humored you. But now there is sym to be thought
of. I guess you heard what you came for last night and got good
of it. Maybe it would have been better if sim had said things all
along instead of hoarding them in his heart, but any way he has said
them now. And what I want to say is if you was staying on
with the hope of hearing it again, you'd be making a mistake. You
was an uncommon woman, Emma Jeffreys, and there didn't none of us understand
you very well, nor do you justice may be, but sim is only
a common man, and I understand him because I'm that way myself. And
if you think he'll be opening his heart to you every night, or be
any different from what he's always been on account of what's happened, that's a
mistake too. And in a little while, if you stay, it will
be as bad as it always was. Men are like that. You'd better
go now while there's understanding between you. She stood, staring into the darkling
room that seemed suddenly full of turbulence and denial. It seemed to beat upon
her and take her breath, but she held on, You've got to go,
m and I'm going to stay until you do. She said this with
finality, and then began again. The Lord is nigh unto them at her
of a broken heart, and repeated the passage to the end. Then,
as the presents sank before it, you better go, Emma, persuasively,
and again, after an interval, He shall deliver thee in six troubles,
yea in seven shall no evil touch thee. The presence gathered itself and was
still. She could make out that it stood over against the opposite corner by
the guilt easel with the crayon portrait of the child. For thou shalt forget
thy misery, thou shalt remember it as waters that are past, concluded the
neighbor woman, as she heard Jeffreys on the gravel outside. What the presence
had wrought upon him in the night was visible in his altered mien. He
looked more than anything else to be in need of sleep. He had eaten
his sorrow, and that was the end of it, as it is with
men. I came to see if there was anything I could do for you,
said the woman neighborly, with her hand upon the door. I don't
know as there is, said he. I'm much obliged, but I don't
know as there is, you see, whispered the woman over her shoulder,
not even to me. She felt the tug of her heart as the presence
swept past her. The neighbor went out after that and walked in the ragged
street, past the schoolhouse, across the creek, below the town, out
by the fields, over the head gate, and back by the town again.
It was full nine of the clock when she passed the Jeffreys house.
It looked except for being a little neater her, not other than the rest
of the street. The door was open and the lamp was lit. She
saw Jeffreys black against it. He sat reading a book, like a man
at ease in his own house. End of The Readjustment by Mary Hunter Austin