Alice sits crooning on the veranda in the dusk. She tells her mother she is happier than she ever dreamed, though they are not engaged. But she has spoiled things in a thousand small ways. Russell is so honestly what he is that she feels a tricky mess beside him, and she fears he would not like her if he really knew her. Her mother says it is time they asked him to dinner. Doing nothing looks queer, she says, and poverty-stricken. Malena Burns, a cook who goes out by the day, can bring a waitress. Alice does not want it, but agrees to ask him for tomorrow.
Around the side of the house Adams is almost shouting at Walter. Walter has not come to ask for a place at the plant. Quietly, he says he must have three hundred and fifty dollars. He will not say what for. 'I got to have it,' he repeats. He adds that Lamb spoke to him yesterday, by name, and asked about his work. Adams has no money to spare; he must go to the bank just to meet his payroll. Walter says flatly that neither of them ever did much for him, and walks off into the dark. His mother wonders aloud if he has bad associates. Then she asks for money for the dinner. Adams protests about the fuss, the old dress suit and the pretence. Does she want Russell to think this is how they live every night? He will learn otherwise soon enough. In the end she gets fifteen dollars.
Next morning Alice stands in the living-room staring at the hideous plush chairs. Her thoughts tumble: the soot on the columns, the long crack, what he will think of papa. She knows she is responsible for what he expects; her own airs have made him expect it. She never told him she had not been to the Sainte-Chapelle. She goes to wake Walter and finds his bed slept on and his closet empty. She decides he has taken his suits to be pressed, without noticing that his shoes are gone too.
Her mother comes home with a basket and a menu: caviar sandwiches, soup, sweetbread pâtés, larded fillet, Brussels sprouts because they are fashionable, chicken salad, ice-cream and angel cake. Alice asks whether it is too much. Better too much than too little, her mother says; they do not want him to think they skimp. Alice arranges the cheap roses to look like more, then scrubs the floors on her hands and knees. At noon her mother finds her pale and asks why she does not look happy. Of course she is looking forward to it, Alice says, and tries to smile.
Coming Up in Chapter 20
Alice is not the only one dreading the evening. Russell, the guest for whom all the cooking and scrubbing is being done, has his own unease. In his mind every picture of Alice stops at the closed door behind her on the veranda, and her constant pleas about gossip have made him nervous of ever hearing her name.
