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The readjustment by Mary Hunter Austen.
Emma Jeffreys had been dead and buried three

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days. This sister who had come
to the funeral had taken Emma's child away

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with her, and the house was
swept and dared. Then, when it

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seemed there was the least occasion for
it, Emma came back. The neighbor

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woman who had nursed her was the
first to know it. It was about

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seven of the evening, in a
mellow gloom. The neighbor woman was sitting

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on her own stoop with her arms
wrapped in her apron, and all at

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once she found herself going along the
street under an urgent sense that Emma needed

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her. She was halfway down the
block before she recollected that this was impossible

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for Missus Jeffreys was dead and buried. But as soon as she came opposite

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the house she was aware of what
had happened. It was all open to

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the summer air, except that it
was a little neat her, not otherwise

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than the rest of the street.
It was quite dark, but the presence

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of Emma Jeffreys streamed from it and
betrayed it more than a candle. It

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streamed out steadily across the garden,
and even as it reached her, mixed

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with the smell of the damp Mignonette, the neighbor woman owned to herself that

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she had always known Emma would come
back a sight stranger if she wouldn't,

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thought the woman who had nursed her. She wasn't ever one to throw off

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things easily. Emma Jeffreys had taken
death as she had taken everything in life.

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Hard. She had met it with
the same bright surface competency that she

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had presented to the squalor of the
encompassing desertness, to the insuperable commonness of

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Sym Jeffreys, to the affliction of
her crippled child, and the intensity of

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her wordless struggle against it had caught
the attention of the townspeople and held it

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in a shocked, curious awe.
She was so long a dying, lying

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there in that little low house,
hearing the abhorred footsteps going about her rooms,

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and the vulgar procedure of the community
encroach upon her like the advances of

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the sand wastes on an unwatered field. For Emma had always wanted things different,

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wanted them with a fury of intentness
that implied offensiveness in things as they

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were, and the townspeople had taken
offense, the more so because she was

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not to be surprised in any inaptitude
for their own kind of success. Do

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what you could. You could never
catch Emma Jeffreys in a wrapper after three

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o'clock in the afternoon, and she
would never talk about the child in a

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country where so little ever happened that
even trouble was a godsend if it gave

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you something to talk about. It
was reported that she did not even talk

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to Sym But there the common resentment
got back at her. If she had

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thought to effect anything with sim Jeffreys, against the benumbing spirit of the place,

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the evasive hopefulness, the large sense
of leisure that ungirt the loins,

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if she still hoped somehow to get
away with him to some place for which,

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by her dress, by her manner, she seemed forever and unassailably fit,

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it was foregone that nothing would come
of it. They knew Sim Jeffrey's

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better than that. Yet so vivid
had been the force of her wordless dissatisfaction

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that when the fever took her and
she went down like a pasteboard figure,

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in the damp. The wonder was
that nothing toppled with her, and as

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if she too had felt herself indispensable. Emma Jeffreys had come back. The

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neighbor woman crossed the street, and
as she passed the far corner of the

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garden, Jeffreys spoke to her.
He had been standing, she did not

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know how long a time behind the
syringa bush, and moved even with her

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along the fence until they came to
the gate. She could see in the

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dusk that before speaking he wet his
lips with his tongue. She's in there,

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he said at last, Emma.
He nodded. I've been sleeping at

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the store since, but I thought
i'd be more comfortable as soon as I

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opened the door, there she was. Did you see her? No?

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How do you know? Then?
Don't you know? The neighbor felt there

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was nothing to say to that.
Come in, he whispered huskily. They

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slipped by the rose tree and the
wisteria and sat down on the porch at

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the side. A door swung inward
behind them. They felt the presence in

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the dusk beating like a pulse.
What do you think she wants? Said

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Jeffreys. Do you reckon. It's
the boy like enough. He's better off

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with his aunt. There was no
one here to take care of him like

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his mother wanted. He raised his
voice unconsciously with a note of justification,

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addressing the room behind. I am
sending fifty dollars a month, he said,

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he can go with the best of
them. He went on at length

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to explain all the advantage that was
to come to the boy from living at

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Pasadena, and the neighbor woman bore
him out in it. He was glad

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to go, urged Jeffreys to the
room. He said, it was what

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his mother would have wanted. They
were silent then a long time, while

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the presents seemed to swell upon them
and encroached upon the garden. Finally,

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I gave Ziagler the order for the
monument yesterday, Jeffreys threw out appeasingly.

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It's to cost three hundred and fifty. The presents stirred. The neighbor thought

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she could fairly see the controlled tolerance
with which Emma Jeffreys endured the evidence of

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Sim's ineptitudes. They sat on helplessly
without talking after that, until the woman's

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husband came to the fence and called
her. Don't go begged, sym Hush,

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she said, do you want all
the town to know? You had

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naught but good from Emma living and
no call to expect harm from her?

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Now, it's natural she should come
back if if she was lonesome, like

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in the place where she's gone to, Emma wouldn't come back to this place,

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Jeffreys protested, without she wanted something, Well, then you've got to

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find out, said the neighbor woman. All the next day she saw whenever

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she passed the house that Emma was
still there. It was shut and barred,

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but the presence lurked behind the folded
blinds and fumbled at the doors.

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When it was night and the moths
began in the columbine under the windows,

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it went out and walked in the
garden. Jeffreys was waiting at the gate

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when the neighbor woman came. He
sweated with helplessness in the warm dusk,

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and the presence brooded upon them like
an apprehension that grows by being entertained.

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She wants something, he appealed,
but can't make out what. Emma knows.

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She is welcome to everything I've got. Everybody knows I've been a good

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provider. The neighbor woman remembered suddenly
the only time she had ever drawn close

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to Emma Jeffrey's touching the boy.
They had sat up with it together all

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one night, in some childish ailment, and she had ventured a question,

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what does his father think? And
Emma had turned her a white, hard

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face of surpassing dreariness. I don't
know, she admitted. He never says

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there's more than providing, suggested the
neighbor woman. Yes, there's feeling,

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but she had enough to do to
put up with me. I had no

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call to be troubling her with such. He left off to mop his forehead

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and began again feelings. He said, there's times a man gets so warre

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out with feelings he doesn't have them
anymore. He talked, and presently it

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grew clear to the woman that he
was avoiding all the stuff of his life,

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as if he had sickened on it
and was now done. It was

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a little soul knowing itself, and
not good to see. What was singular

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was that the presents, left off
walking in the garden, came and caught

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like a gossamer on the ivy tree, swayed by the breath of his broken

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sentences. He talked, and the
neighbor woman saw him for once as he

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saw himself, and Emma snared and
floundering in an inexplicable unhappiness. He had

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been disappointed too. She had never
relished the man he was, and it

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made him ashamed. That was why
he had never gone away, lest he

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should make her ashamed among her own
kind. He was her husband. He

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could not help that, though he
was sorry for it, but he could

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keep the offense where least was made
of it. And there was a child.

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She had wanted a child, But
even then he had blundered, begot

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an a cripple upon her. He
blamed himself utterly searched out the roots of

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his youth for the answer to that, until the neighbor woman flinched to hear

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him, but the presence stayed.
He had never talked to his wife about

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the child. How should he?
There was the fact, the advertisement of

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his incompetence, and she had never
talked to him. That was the one

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blest and unassailable memory. That she
had spread silence like a balmb over his

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hurt in return for it. He
had never gone away. He had resisted

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her that he might save her from
showing among her own kind how poor a

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man he was. With every word
of this ran the fact of his love

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for her, as he had loved
her, with all the stripes of clean

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and uncleanness. He bared himself as
a child without knowing, And the presence

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stayed. The talk trailed off at
last to the commonplaces of consolation between the

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wretchings of his spirit. The presence
lessened and streamed toward them on the wind

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of the garden. When it touched
them, like the warm air of noon

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that lies sometimes in hollow places after
nightfall, the neighbor woman rose and went

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away. The next night. She
did not wait for him. When a

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rod outside the town, it was
a very little one. The burrowing owls

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woo wooed. She hung up her
apron and went to talk with Emma Jeffreys.

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The presence was there, drawn in
lying close. She found the key

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between the wisteria and the first pillar
of the porch. But as soon as

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she opened the door she felt the
chill that might be expected by one intruding

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on Emma Jeffreys in her own house. The Lord is my shepherd, said

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the neighbor woman. It was the
first religious phrase that occurred to her.

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Then she said the whole of the
psalm, and after that a hymn.

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She had come in through the door
and stood with her back to it and

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her hand upon the knob. Everything
was just as Missus Jeffreys had left it,

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with the waiting air of a room
kept for company. M. She

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said boldly, when the chill had
abated a little before the sacred words.

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M. Jeffreys. I've got something
to say to you, and you've got

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to hear, she added with firmness, as the white curtains stood duskily at

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the window. You wouldn't be talked
too about your troubles when you were here

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before, and we humored you.
But now there is sym to be thought

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of. I guess you heard what
you came for last night and got good

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of it. Maybe it would have
been better if sim had said things all

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along instead of hoarding them in his
heart, but any way he has said

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them now. And what I want
to say is if you was staying on

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with the hope of hearing it again, you'd be making a mistake. You

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was an uncommon woman, Emma Jeffreys, and there didn't none of us understand

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you very well, nor do you
justice may be, but sim is only

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a common man, and I understand
him because I'm that way myself. And

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if you think he'll be opening his
heart to you every night, or be

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any different from what he's always been
on account of what's happened, that's a

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mistake too. And in a little
while, if you stay, it will

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be as bad as it always was. Men are like that. You'd better

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go now while there's understanding between you. She stood, staring into the darkling

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room that seemed suddenly full of turbulence
and denial. It seemed to beat upon

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her and take her breath, but
she held on, You've got to go,

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m and I'm going to stay until
you do. She said this with

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finality, and then began again.
The Lord is nigh unto them at her

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of a broken heart, and repeated
the passage to the end. Then,

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as the presents sank before it,
you better go, Emma, persuasively,

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and again, after an interval,
He shall deliver thee in six troubles,

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yea in seven shall no evil touch
thee. The presence gathered itself and was

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still. She could make out that
it stood over against the opposite corner by

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the guilt easel with the crayon portrait
of the child. For thou shalt forget

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thy misery, thou shalt remember it
as waters that are past, concluded the

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neighbor woman, as she heard Jeffreys
on the gravel outside. What the presence

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had wrought upon him in the night
was visible in his altered mien. He

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looked more than anything else to be
in need of sleep. He had eaten

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his sorrow, and that was the
end of it, as it is with

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men. I came to see if
there was anything I could do for you,

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said the woman neighborly, with her
hand upon the door. I don't

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know as there is, said he. I'm much obliged, but I don't

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know as there is, you see, whispered the woman over her shoulder,

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not even to me. She felt
the tug of her heart as the presence

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swept past her. The neighbor went
out after that and walked in the ragged

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street, past the schoolhouse, across
the creek, below the town, out

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by the fields, over the head
gate, and back by the town again.

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It was full nine of the clock
when she passed the Jeffreys house.

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It looked except for being a little
neater her, not other than the rest

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of the street. The door was
open and the lamp was lit. She

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saw Jeffreys black against it. He
sat reading a book, like a man

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at ease in his own house.
End of The Readjustment by Mary Hunter Austin