Chapter IV

by Sherwood Anderson

　　Rosalind at work in Walter Sayers' office was from the beginningsomething different, apart from the young woman from Iowa who had beendrifting from office to office, moving from rooming house to roominghouse on Chicago's North Side, striving feebly to find out somethingabout life by reading books, going to the theatre and walking alone inthe streets. In the new place her life at once began to have point andpurpose, but at the same time the perplexity that was later to send herrunning to Willow Springs and to the presence of her mother began togrow in her.

　　Walter Sayers' office was a rather large room on the third floor of thefactory whose walls went straight up from the river's edge. In themorning Rosalind arrived at eight and went into the office and closedthe door. In a large room across a narrow hallway and shut off from herretreat by two thick, clouded-glass partitions was the company'sgeneral office. It contained the desks of salesmen, several clerks, abookkeeper and two stenographers. Rosalind avoided becoming acquaintedwith these people. She was in a mood to be alone, to spend as manyhours as possible alone with her own thoughts.

　　She got to the office at eight and her employer did not arrive untilnine-thirty or ten. For an hour or two in the morning and in the lateafternoon she had the place to herself. Immediately she shut the doorinto the hallway and was alone she felt at home. Even in her father'shouse it had never been so. She took off her wraps and walked about theroom touching things, putting things to rights. During the night anegro woman had scrubbed the floor and wiped the dust off heremployer's desk but she got a cloth and wiped the desk again. Then sheopened the letters that had come in and after reading arranged them inlittle piles. She wanted to spend a part of her wages for flowers andimagined clusters of flowers arranged in small hanging baskets alongthe grey walls. "I'll do that later, perhaps," she thought.

　　The walls of the room enclosed her. "What makes me so happy here?" sheasked herself. As for her employer--she felt she scarcely knew him. Hewas a shy man, rather small--

　　She went to a window and stood looking out. Near the factory a bridgecrossed the river and over it went a stream of heavily loaded wagonsand motor trucks. The sky was grey with smoke. In the afternoon, afterher employer had gone for the day, she would stand again by the window.As she stood thus she faced westward and in the afternoon saw the sunfall down the sky. It was glorious to be there alone during the latehours of the afternoon. What a tremendous thing this city in which shehad come to live! For some reason after she went to work for WalterSayers the city seemed, like the room in which she worked, to haveaccepted her, taken her into itself. In the late afternoon the rays ofthe departing sun fell across great banks of clouds. The whole cityseemed to reach upwards. It left the ground and ascended into the air.There was an illusion produced. Stark grim factory chimneys, that allday were stiff cold formal things sticking up into the air and belchingforth black smoke, were now slender upreaching pencils of light andwavering color. The tall chimneys detached themselves from thebuildings and sprang into the air. The factory in which Rosalind stoodhad such a chimney. It also was leaping upward. She felt herself beinglifted, an odd floating sensation was achieved. With what a statelytread the day went away, over the city! The city, like the factorychimneys yearned after it, hungered for it.

　　In the morning gulls came in from Lake Michigan to feed on the sewagefloating in the river below. The river was the color of chrysoprase.The gulls floated above it as sometimes in the evening the whole cityseemed to float before her eyes. They were graceful, living, freethings. They were triumphant. The getting of food, even the eating ofsewage was done thus gracefully, beautifully. The gulls turned andtwisted in the air. They wheeled and floated and then fell downward tothe river in a long curve, just touching, caressing the surface of thewater and then rising again.

　　Rosalind raised herself on her toes. At her back beyond the two glasspartitions were other men and women, but there, in that room, she wasalone. She belonged there. What an odd feeling she had. She alsobelonged to her employer, Walter Sayers. She scarcely knew the man andyet she belonged to him. She threw her arms above her head, tryingawkwardly to imitate some movement of the birds.

　　Her awkwardness shamed her a little and she turned and walked about theroom. "I'm twenty-five years old and it's a little late to begin tryingto be a bird, to be graceful," she thought. She resented the slowstupid heavy movements of her father and mother, the movements she hadimitated as a child. "Why was I not taught to be graceful and beautifulin mind and body, why in the place I came from did no one think itworth while to try to be graceful and beautiful?" she whispered toherself.

　　How conscious of her own body Rosalind was becoming! She walked acrossthe room, trying to go lightly and gracefully. In the office beyond theglass partitions someone spoke suddenly and she was startled. Shelaughed foolishly. For a long time after she went to work in the officeof Walter Sayers she thought the desire in herself to be physicallymore graceful and beautiful and to rise also out of the mentalstupidity and sloth of her young womanhood was due to the fact that thefactory windows faced the river and the western sky, and that in themorning she saw the gulls feeding and in the afternoon the sun goingdown through the smoke clouds in a riot of colors.