The Best Short Stories of 1921 | Page 6

was something of the Iowa girl. One woman
walked as she did, another made a gesture with her hand that reminded
of her. All the women he saw except only his wife and his
mother-in-law were like the girl he had taken inside himself.
The two women in his own house puzzled and confused him. They
became suddenly unlovely and commonplace. His wife in particular
was like some strange unlovely growth that had attached itself to his
body.
In the evening after the day at the factory he went home to his own
place and had dinner. He had always been a silent man and when he did
not talk no one minded. After dinner he, with his wife, went to a picture
show. When they came home his wife's mother sat under an electric
light reading. There were two children and his wife expected another.

They came into the apartment and sat down. The climb up two flights
of stairs had wearied his wife. She sat in a chair beside her mother
groaning with weariness.
The mother-in-law was the soul of goodness. She took the place of a
servant in the home and got no pay. When her daughter wanted to go to
a picture show she waved her hand and smiled. "Go on," she said. "I
don't want to go. I'd rather sit here." She got a book and sat reading.
The little boy of nine awoke and cried. He wanted to sit on the po-po.
The mother-in-law attended to that.
After the man and his wife came home the three people sat in silence
for an hour or two before bedtime. The man pretended to read a
newspaper. He looked at his hands. Although he had washed them
carefully grease from the bicycle frames left dark stains under the nails.
He thought of the Iowa girl and of her white quick hands playing over
the keys of a typewriter. He felt dirty and uncomfortable.
The girl at the factory knew the foreman had fallen in love with her and
the thought excited her a little. Since her aunt's death she had gone to
live in a rooming house and had nothing to do in the evening. Although
the foreman meant nothing to her she could in a way use him. To her he
became a symbol. Sometimes he came into the office and stood for a
moment by the door. His large hands were covered with black grease.
She looked at him without seeing. In his place in her imagination stood
a tall slender young man. Of the foreman she saw only the gray eyes
that began to burn with a strange fire. The eyes expressed eagerness, a
humble and devout eagerness. In the presence of a man with such eyes
she felt she need not be afraid.
She wanted a lover who would come to her with such a look in his eyes.
Occasionally, perhaps once in two weeks, she stayed a little late at the
office, pretending to have work that must be finished. Through the
window she could see the foreman, waiting. When every one had gone
she closed her desk and went into the street. At the same moment the
foreman came out at the factory door.
They walked together along the street, a half-dozen blocks, to where

she got aboard her car. The factory was in a place called South Chicago
and as they went along evening was coming on. The streets were lined
with small unpainted frame houses and dirty-faced children ran
screaming in the dusty roadway. They crossed over a bridge. Two
abandoned coal barges lay rotting in the stream.
He went along by her side walking heavily, striving to conceal his
hands. He had scrubbed them carefully before leaving the factory but
they seemed to him like heavy dirty pieces of waste matter hanging at
his side. Their walking together happened but a few times and during
one summer. "It's hot," he said. He never spoke to her of anything but
the weather. "It's hot," he said; "I think it may rain."
She dreamed of the lover who would some time come, a tall fair young
man, a rich man owning houses and lands. The workingman who
walked beside her had nothing to do with her conception of love. She
walked with him, stayed at the office until the others had gone to walk
unobserved with him, because of his eyes, because of the eager thing in
his eyes that was at the same time humble, that bowed down to her. In
his presence there was no danger, could be no danger. He would never
attempt to approach too closely, to touch her with his hands. She was
safe with him.
In his apartment in the evening the man sat under