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Speaker 1: The readjustment by Mary Hunter Austen. Emma Jeffreys had been

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dead and buried three days. This sister who had come

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to the funeral had taken Emma's child away with her,

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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.

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The neighbor woman who had nursed her was the first

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to know it. It was about seven of the evening,

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in a mellow gloom. The neighbor woman was sitting on

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her own stoop with her arms wrapped in her apron,

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and all at once she found herself going along the

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street under an urgent sense that Emma needed her. She

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was half way down the block before she recollected that

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this was impossible for Missus Jeffreys was dead and buried.

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But as soon as she came opposite the house she

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was aware of what had happened. It was all open

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to the summer, except that it was a little neater,

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not otherwise than the rest of the street. It was

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quite dark, but the presence of Emma Jeffreys streamed from

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it and betrayed it more than a candle. It streamed

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

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mixed with the smell of the damp Mignonette, the neighbor

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woman owned to herself that she had always known Emma

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would come back a sight stranger if she wouldn't, thought

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the woman who had nursed her. She wasn't ever one

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to throw off things easily. Emma Jeffreys had taken death

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as she had taken everything in life. Hard. She had

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met it with the same bright surface competency that she

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had presented to the squalor of the encompassing desertness, to

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the insuperable commonness of sim Jeffreys, to the affliction of

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her crippled child, and the intensity of her wordless struggle

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against it had caught the attention of the townspeople and

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held it in a shocked, curious awe. She was so

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long a dying, lying there in that little low house,

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hearing the abhorred footsteps going about her rooms, and the

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vulgar procedure of the community encroach upon her like the

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advances of the sand wastes on an unwatered field. For

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Emma had always wanted things different, wanted them with a

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fury of intentness that implied offensiveness in things as they were,

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and the townspeople had taken offense, the more so because

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she was not to be surprised in any inaptitude for

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their own kind of success. Do what you could. You

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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

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the child. In a country where so little ever happened

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that even trouble was a godsend if it gave you

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something to talk about. It was reported that she did

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not even talk to Sym. But there the common resentment

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got back at her. If she had thought to effect

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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

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the loins, if she still hoped somehow to get away

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with him to some place for which, by her dress,

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by her manner, she seemed forever an unassailably fit. It

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was foregone that nothing would come of it. They knew

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Sim Jeffreys better than that. Yet so vivid had been

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the force of her wordless dissatisfaction that when the fever

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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,

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and as if she too had felt herself indispensable. Emma

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Jeffreys had come back. The neighbor woman crossed the street,

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and as she passed the far corner of the garden,

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Jeffreys spoke to her. He had been standing, she did

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not know how long a time behind the syringa bush,

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and moved even with her along the fence until they

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came to the gate. She could see in the dusk

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that before speaking he wet his lips with his tongue.

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She's in there, he said at last, Emma. He nodded.

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I've been sleeping at the store since, but I thought

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i'd been more comfortable as soon as I opened the door,

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there she was. Did you see her? No? How do

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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.

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They slipped by the rose tree and the wistaria and

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sat down on the porch at the side. A door

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swung inward behind them. They felt the presence in the

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

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Said Jeffreys. Do you reckon. It's the boy like enough.

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He's better off with his aunt. There was no one

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here to take care of him like his mother wanted.

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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,

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he said, he can go with the best of them.

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He went on at length to explain all the advantage

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that was to come to the boy from living at Pasadena,

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and the neighbor woman bore him out in it. He

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was glad to go, urged Jeffreys to the room. He said,

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it was what his mother would have wanted. They were

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silent then a long time, while the presents seemed to

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swell upon them and encroached upon the garden. Finally, I

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gave Ziegler the order for the monument yesterday, Jeffreys threw

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out appeasingly. It's to cost three hundred and fifty. The

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presence stirred the neighbor thought she could fairly see the

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controlled tolerance with which Emma Jeffreys endured the evidence of

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Sym's ineptitudes. They sat on helplessly without talking after that,

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until the woman's husband came to the fence and called

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her don't go begged sym Hush, she said, do you

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want all the town to know? You had naught but

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good from Emma living and no call to expect harm

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from her? Now, it's natural she should come back if

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if she was lonesome, like in the place where she's

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gone to, Emma wouldn't come back to this place, Jeffreys protested,

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Without she wanted something, Well, then you've got to find out,

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said the neighbor woman. All the next day she saw

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whenever she passed the house that Emma was still there.

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It was shut and barred, but the presence lurked behind

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the folded blinds and fumbled at the doors. When it

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was night and the moths began in the columbine under

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the windows, it went out and walked in the garden.

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Jeffreys was waiting at the gate when the neighbor woman came.

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He sweated with helplessness in the warm dusk, and the

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presence brooded upon them like an apprehension that grows by

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being entertained. She wants something, he appealed. But I can't

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make out what Emma knows. She is welcome to everything

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I've got. Everybody knows I've been a good provider. The

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neighbor woman remembered suddenly the only time she had ever

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drawn close to Emma Jeffrey's touching the boy. They had

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sat up with it together all one night, in some

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childish ailment, and she had ventured a question, what does

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

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hard face of surpassing dreariness. I don't know, she admitted.

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He never says there's more than providing, suggested the neighbor woman. Yes,

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there's feeling, but she had enough to do to put

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up with me. I had no call to be troubling

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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

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gets so war out with feelings he doesn't have them anymore.

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He talked, and presently it grew clear to the woman

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that he was voiding all the stuff of his life,

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

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It was a little soul knowing itself, and not good

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to see. What was singular was that the presence, left

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off walking in the garden, came and caught like a

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gossamer on the ivy tree, swayed by the breath of

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his broken sentences. He talked, and the neighbor woman saw

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him for once as he saw himself, and Emma snared

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and floundering in an inexplicable unhappiness. He had been disappointed too.

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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,

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lest he should make her ashamed among her own kind.

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He was her husband. He could not help that, though

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he was sorry for it, but he could keep the

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offense where least was made of it. And there was

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a child. She had wanted a child, But even then

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he had blundered, begotten a cripple upon her. He blamed

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himself utterly searched out the roots of his youth for

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the answer to that, until the neighbor woman flinched to

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hear him, But the presence stayed. He had never talked

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to his wife about the child. How should he? There

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was the fact, the advertisement of his incompetence, and she

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had never talked to him. That was the one blessed

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and unassailable memory. That she had spread silence like a

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balm over his hurt in return for it. He had

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never gone away. He had resisted her, that he might

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save her from showing among her own kind how poor

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a man he was. With every word of this ran

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the fact of his love for her, as he had

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loved her, with all the stripes of clean and uncleanness.

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He bared himself as a child without knowing, And the

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presence stayed. The talk trailed off at last to the

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commonplaces of consolation between the wretchings of his spirit. The

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presence lessened and streamed toward them on the wind of

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

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of noon that lies sometimes in hollow places after nightfall,

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the neighbor woman rose and went away. The next night.

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She did not wait for him. When a rod outside

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

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owls woo wooed. She hung up her apron and went

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to talk with Emma Jeffrey's. The presence was there, drawn

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in lying close. She found the key between the wistaria

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and the first pillar of the porch. But as soon

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as she opened the door she felt the chill that

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might be expected by one intruding on Emma Jeffreys in

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her own house. The Lord is my shepherd, said the

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neighbor woman. It was the first religious phrase that occurred

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to her. Then she said the whole of the psalm,

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and after that a hymn. She had come in through

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the door and stood with her back to it and

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her hand upon the knob. Everything was just as Missus

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Jeffreys had left it, with the waiting air of a

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room kept for company. M. She said boldly, when the

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chill had abated a little before the sacred words. M. Jeffreys.

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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

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stood duskily at the window. You wouldn't be talked too

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about your troubles when you were here before, and we

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humored you. But now there is Sym to be thought of.

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I guess you heard what you came for last night

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and got good of it. Maybe it would have been

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better if Sym had said things all along instead of

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hoarding them in his heart, but anyway he has said

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them now. And what I want to say is if

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you was staying on with the hope of hearing it again,

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you'd be making a mistake. You was an uncommon woman,

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Emma Jeffreys, and there didn't none of us understand you

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very well, nor do you. Justice may be, but sim

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is only a common man, and I understand him because

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I'm that way myself. And if you think he'll be

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opening his heart to you every night, or be any

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

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that's a mistake too. And in a little while, if

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you stay, it will be as bad as it always was.

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Men are like that. You'd better go now while there's

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understanding between you. She stood, staring into the darkling room

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that seemed suddenly full of turbulence and denial. It seemed

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to beat upon her and take her breath, but she

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held on, You've got to go, m and I'm going

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to stay until you do. She said this with finality,

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

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let her of a broken heart, and repeated the passage

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to the end. Then, as the presence sank before it,

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you better go, Emma, persuasively, and again, after an interval,

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He shall deliver thee in six troubles, yea, in seven

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shall no evil touch thee. The presence gathered itself and

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was still. She could make out that it stood over

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against the opposite corner by the guilt easel with the

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crayon portrait of the child. For thou shalt forget thy misery,

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thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed, concluded

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

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What the presence had wrought upon him in the night

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was visible in his altered mien. He looked more than

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anything else to be in need of sleep. He had

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eaten his sorrow, and that was the end of it,

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as it is with men. I came to see if

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there was anything I could do for you, said the

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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

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I don't know as there is, you see, whispered the

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woman over her shoulder, not even to me. She felt

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the tug of her heart as the presence swept past her.

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The neighbor went out after that and walked in the

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ragged street, past the school house, across the creek, below

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the town, out by the fields, over the head gate,

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and back by the town again. It was full nine

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of the clock when she passed the Jeffreys house. It looked,

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except for being a little neater, no other than the

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rest of the street. The door was open and the

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lamp was lit. She saw Jeffreys black against it. He

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sat reading a book, like a man at ease in

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his own house. And of the Readjustment by Mary Hunter

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Austin