The next morning Adams takes a cab, and by noon he has what he wants. For years he swore he would never take this step, yet when he did yield, his plans were ready in every detail. On long walks looking for a cheap rental property, he had often eyed a ruined factory in a run-down industrial quarter, and the long brick shed in the muddy lot opposite. It would suit someone making glue, he told himself, if that were not out of the question. Now he leases the shed for almost nothing, without seeing that some dreary part of his mind had planned this all along. He drives the workmen so hard that one quits on the spot, calling him a capitalist.
On Sunday he gives Charley Lohr the letter. On Monday evening he comes to hear the result. Lamb said nothing, Lohr reports. He read it slowly, then turned back and read it again. Adams walks home so slowly that he stops on his own path, whispering that he wishes he knew what Lamb thought. A laugh comes from the veranda. Alice introduces Mr. Russell. Adams sees a strong, gentle young man. Russell sees a dried little old businessman with worried eyes and shapeless clothes. Adams remarks that it is a nice evening and goes indoors.
On the veranda Alice tells Russell she can see ahead: their summer evenings will not last, because someone will say something spiteful and it will change him. He says he is not made of such soft material. If she wants the evenings to end, she will have to drive him away herself. She is quiet, then says softly that she won't. In the dim light she is beautiful. She calls herself sadly happy. Only small children are happily happy, she says; grown people's happiest moments have minor music running through them. Perhaps it is foreboding, or perhaps it is poor papa, who walks far too much at his new plant now that he means to be a multi-millionaire. Upstairs, that multi-millionaire is pacing his room in his nightgown and slippers, unable to sleep, still wishing he knew how Lamb feels about it.
Coming Up in Chapter 18
The question will not leave Adams. Even while showing his men where the vats should go, he catches himself almost saying aloud that it is funny he hears nothing from J. A. Lamb. His wife, gentle with him for the first time in years, tells him it will wear off. He tells her it does not.
