"Nothing. Is Mrs. Chalmers all right?"
"I don't know," he said, his weariness lending the force of truth to the absent reply. He yawned convulsively, apologizing for it in a mumble. "She's pretty used up of course. Felt she couldn't stay, and I thought that was sensible. I took her home, and maybe she can sleep. It's not as if we could do anything now. For a while. You see, I feel sure that they—" he rubbed large hands over his face and shook his head—"no, God knows I don't feel sure of anything any more. Anything at all."
Herb also had aged. More deeply sunken lines, more gray in the thinning hair. He had evidently cut himself shaving that morning; the scab at the edge of his gaunt jawbone was overlaid by the day's growth of silvery bristle, making a sort of Skid Row shadow across his wan, weak, intelligent face.
"They can't find first degree," Edith said. "It's not possible." Yet she might be only trying to convince herself; she heard no strength in her own voice. "The Judge's summing-up—oh, he had to define all the possible verdicts, but the way he did it, the stress he laid on reasonable doubt—and then even the very fact that she said what she did, at the end—they can't do that."
He mumbled what might have been agreement, then turned to her suddenly, large-eyed, wounded, ineffectual. "They could though, Miss Nolan. Juries ... we have to face the fact, anything's possible from acquittal to—first degree. Law tries to go by logic, but never quite succeeds." More than one way, she thought inconsequently, of facing facts: walk up to a fact and spit in its eye, Callista's way; or, like Herb Chalmers, just stand there. And you could make out a pretty good case for Herb's way, sometimes. My way—my way... "Why didn't he call me, Miss Nolan?"
"Well, he—I think he felt that character witnesses—and that's all I amounted to—couldn't help much. Any more of that would have pointed up the lack of any other kind of evidence. I suppose juries discount the word of friends and relatives; it's natural."
He wasn't listening much. "I would have done anything. I failed her somehow, somewhere along the line. From the start, I guess." He sighed and fidgeted. "But maybe she'd have resented anyone situated in her father's place. I remember when I first met her, a kid of eleven, I said: 'Look, Callie, I'm not your father and couldn't try to be anything like him. I'm just me, a person, and I'd like us to be friends.' Eleven—it never got across, you know? Infantile glowering, and then a kind of frozen politeness that I never could break through." He sat quiet, perhaps aware of her as a listener, gazing aimlessly at the broad knuckles of his bony hands. He said with curious humility and no resentment: "She's always had a good deal of contempt for me, I think. Children grow up so fast, and we grow old so fast. You know, Miss Nolan, a while ago I started something, a piece of writing—nothing very much, but it might prove interesting. A study of the Cavalier and Courtier Lyrists. I want to relate them to certain trends in modern poetry. You know, it's never been done. Oh, I suppose it'll turn out to be just another trifle of academic stuff. But the curious thing—look, I'm afraid I'm boring you or getting on your nerves at a bad time—"
"No, you're not, not in the least." Her impulse toward callous and hopeless laughter ceased of itself, no need to fight it down. Abruptly, there was nothing funny at all about stringy Herb Chalmers having an affair with the saucy music and tenderness of the Lyrists. He was a scholar; he knew his subject; he might even have something to say.
"Well, the curious thing—" he blushed briefly like a schoolboy, and blew his nose, and sighed—"curious thing, when I was getting together some of my notes for it the other day, I kept thinking—imagining Callista reading it. Escape psychology, I suppose."
"Why call it that? 'Escape' is just another one of those two-for-a-nickel derogatory noises that people use in place of thinking. Why not escape from ugliness toward something better? Escaping doesn't mean you've forgotten the ugliness is there."