Chapter II

by Sherwood Anderson

　　The story of Rosalind's six years in Chicago is the story of thousandsof unmarried women who work in offices in the city. Necessity had notdriven her to work nor kept her at her task and she did not think ofherself as a worker, one who would always be a worker. For a time aftershe came out of the stenographic school she drifted from office tooffice, acquiring always more skill, but with no particular interest inwhat she was doing. It was a way to put in the long days. Her father,who in addition to the coal and lumber yards owned three farms, senther a hundred dollars a month. The money her work brought was spent forclothes so that she dressed better than the women she worked with.

　　Of one thing she was quite sure. She did not want to return to WillowSprings to live with her father and mother, and after a time she knewshe could not continue living with her brother and his wife. For thefirst time she began seeing the city that spread itself out before hereyes. When she walked at the noon hour along Michigan Boulevard or wentinto a restaurant or in the evening went home in the street car she sawmen and women together. It was the same when on Sunday afternoons inthe summer she walked in the park or by the lake. On a street car shesaw a small round-faced woman put her hand into the hand of her malecompanion. Before she did it she looked cautiously about. She wanted toassure herself of something. To the other women in the car, to Rosalindand the others the act said something. It was as though the woman'svoice had said aloud, "He is mine. Do not draw too close to him."

　　There was no doubt that Rosalind was awakening out of the WillowSprings torpor in which she had lived out her young womanhood. The cityhad at least done that for her. The city was wide. It flung itself out.One had but to let his feet go thump, thump upon the pavements to getinto strange streets, see always new faces.

　　On Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday one did not work. In thesummer it was a time to go to places--to the park, to walk among thestrange colorful crowds in Halsted Street, with a half dozen youngpeople from the office, to spend a day on the sand dunes at the foot ofLake Michigan. One got excited and was hungry, hungry, always hungry--for companionship. That was it. One wanted to possess something--a man--to take him along on jaunts, be sure of him, yes--own him.

　　She read books--always written by men or by manlike women. There was anessential mistake in the viewpoint of life set forth in the books. Themistake was always being made. In Rosalind's time it grew morepronounced. Someone had got hold of a key with which the door to thesecret chamber of life could be unlocked. Others took the key andrushed in. The secret chamber of life was filled with a noisy vulgarcrowd. All the books that dealt with life at all dealt with it throughthe lips of the crowd that had newly come into the sacred place. Thewriter had hold of the key. It was his time to be heard. "Sex," hecried. "It is by understanding sex I will untangle the mystery."

　　It was all very well and sometimes interesting but one grew tired ofthe subject.

　　She lay abed in her room at her brother's house on a Sunday night inthe summer. During the afternoon she had gone for a walk and on astreet on the Northwest Side had come upon a religious procession. TheVirgin was being carried through the streets. The houses were decoratedand women leaned out at the windows of houses. Old priests dressed inwhite gowns waddled along. Strong young men carried the platform onwhich the Virgin rested. The procession stopped. Someone started achant in a loud clear voice. Other voices took it up. Children ranabout gathering in money. All the time there was a loud hum of ordinaryconversation going on. Women shouted across the street to other women.Young girls walked on the sidewalks and laughed softly as the young menin white, clustered about the Virgin, turned to stare at them. On everystreet corner merchants sold candies, nuts, cool drinks--

　　In her bed at night Rosalind put down the book she had been reading."The worship of the Virgin is a form of sex expression," she read.

　　"Well what of it? If it be true what does it matter?"

　　She got out of bed and took off her nightgown. She was herself avirgin. What did that matter? She turned herself slowly about, lookingat her strong young woman's body. It was a thing in which sex lived. Itwas a thing upon which sex in others might express itself. What did itmatter?

　　There was her brother sleeping with his wife in another room near athand. In Willow Springs, Iowa, her father was at just this momentpumping a pail of water at the well by the kitchen door. In a moment hewould carry it into the kitchen to set it on the box by the kitchensink.

　　Rosalind's cheeks were flushed. She made an odd and lovely figurestanding nude before the glass in her room there in Chicago. She was somuch alive and yet not alive. Her eyes shone with excitement. Shecontinued to turn slowly round and round twisting her head to look ather naked back. "Perhaps I am learning to think," she decided. Therewas some sort of essential mistake in people's conception of life.There was something she knew and it was of as much importance as thethings the wise men knew and put into books. She also had found outsomething about life. Her body was still the body of what was called avirgin. What of it? "If the sex impulse within it had been gratified inwhat way would my problem be solved? I am lonely now. It is evidentthat after that had happened I would still be lonely."