"If you realize it, I dare say that's a step in advance."
"What," said Callista, "is the virtue of being in tune with the times when the times are corrupt?"
"Callista, I am rather tired. Must we have one of your—your rather naïve philosophical discussions? All part of the process of adjustment I dare say, but frankly I am not up to it."
The big questions, Callista thought, always break the line and swim away. Too big, and a weak line; who wants the great dangerous things anyhow? Not Mrs. Chalmers nor the Thursday Society. "Mother, do you happen to remember the time I spilled that nitric acid?"
"Happen to remember! Callista, that passes belief." Large gray upturned eyes filled with tears. "I am not a monster. Am I?"
"I'm sorry, I spoke clumsily. I meant, do you remember the details? I was going-on-five—it's difficult—"
"What details? Naturally I remember them all perfectly. What do you want to know?" The sharpness was excusable; yet Callista wondered whether she truly regretted the cruelty of that blurted question. Hamlet, Act III, Scene 4—she had reread the play in the afternoon. A catalytic action, although it had been a seemingly random choice, a turning to Shakespeare for relief, illumination, distraction, and something more, in a time of trouble, as another might have turned to music, or physical exertion, or the warmth of a friend. Her thought still rang with it, reverberated, and she understood now that the choice had not been random at all: "Let me be cruel, not unnatural: I will speak daggers to her, but use none." "Your father was drunk, Callista, otherwise I don't suppose even he could have been so heedless as to leave that bottle where a child could knock it over. Is that what you wanted to know?"
"No. That's only what you've told me before. Drunk?"
"Of course."
"It keeps coming back to me that his face was burning."