To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey Read Free Book Online Page B

Toby Tullis reminding them that he spoke for the English Theatre. As Marta had said: everything that Toby did was a little off-key. There was a murmur of amusement, but if anything his speech added to the village's embarrassment.
    The landlord mopped Searle's shoulder with a glass-cloth, and begged him to come in behind and his missus would take some clean water to his suit and get the smell of the beer off it before it dried in. But Searle refused. He was quite amiable about it but seemed to want to get out of the place. Walter thought that he was looking a little sick.
    They said good-evening to Toby, who was still explaining Serge's temperament in terms of the Theatre, and went out into the sweet evening.
    'Does he often sound off like that?' Searle asked.
    'Ratoff? He has made scenes before, yes, but never such a violent one. I've never known him use physical means before.'
    They met Arthur, returning to his interrupted beer, and Walter asked what had become of the disturber.
    'He run away home,' Arthur said with his large smile. 'Went off like an arrow from a bow. He could beat a hare, that one.' And went back to his drink.
    'It's early for dinner yet,' Walter said. 'Let us walk home by the river and up by the field-path. I am sorry about the row, but I expect that in your job you are used to temperaments.'
    'Well, I have been called things, of course, but so far nothing has actually been flung at me.'
    'I dare swear no one ever thought of calling you a middle-west Lucifer before. Poor Serge.' Walter paused to lean on the bridge below the Mill House, and look at the reflection of the afterglow in the waters of the Rushmere. 'Perhaps the old saying is true and it is not possible to love and be wise. When you are as devoted to anyone as Serge is to Toby Tullis, I expect you cease to be sane about the matter.'
    'Sane,' said Searle sharply.
    'Yes; things lose their proper proportions. Which, I take it, is a loss of sanity.'
    Searle was quiet for a long time, staring at the smooth water as it flooded so slowly towards the bridge and then was flicked under it with the sudden hysteria of water sucked round obstacles in its path.
    'Sane,' he repeated, watching the place where the water lost control and was sucked under the culvert.
    'I'm not suggesting the fellow is mad,' Walter said. 'He has just lost hold of common sense.'
    'And is common sense so desirable a quality?'
    'An admirable quality.'
    'Nothing great ever came out of common sense,' Searle said.
    'On the contrary. Lack of common sense is responsible for practically every ill in life. Everything from wars to not moving up in the bus. I see there is a light in the Mill House. Marta must be back.'
    They looked up at the pale bulk of the house glowing in the half-dark as a pale flower glows. A single light, still bright yellow in what was left of the daylight, starred the side that looked on the river.
    'A light the way Liz likes them,' Searle said.
    'Liz?'
    'She likes them golden like that in the daylight. Before the dark turns them white.'
    For the first time Walter was forced into considering Searle in relation to Liz. It had not crossed his mind until now to consider them in relation to each other at all, since he was not in the least possessive about Liz. This unpossessiveness might have been accounted to him for virtue if it had not sprung directly from the fact that he took her for granted. If by some method of hypnotism the last dregs of Walter's subconscious could have been dragged to the surface, it would have been found that he thought that Liz was doing very well for herself. Even the shadow of such a thought would have shocked Walter's conscious mind, of course; but since he was entirely unself-analytical and largely unselfconscious (a quality that enabled him to perpetrate the broadcasts which so revolted Marta and endeared him to the British public), the farthest his conscious mind went was to hold it gratifying and proper that Liz should love him.
    He had