The Space Trilogy, Omnibus Edition by C. S. Lewis

Author:C. S. Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

2

Dinner with the Sub-Warden

“This is a blow!” said Curry standing in front of the fireplace in his magnificent rooms which overlooked Newton. They were the best set in College.

“Something from NO?” said James Busby. He and Lord Feverstone and Mark were all drinking sherry before dining with Curry. NO, which stood for Non-Olet, was the nickname of Charles Place, the Warden of Bracton. His election to this post, some fifteen years before, had been one of the earliest triumphs of the Progressive Element. By dint of saying that the College needed “new blood” and must be shaken out of its “academic grooves,” they had succeeded in bringing in an elderly civil servant who had certainly never been contaminated by academic weaknesses since he left his rather obscure Cambridge college in the previous century, but who had written a monumental report on National Sanitation. The subject had, if anything, rather recommended him to the Progressive Element. They regarded it as a slap in the face for the dilettanti and Diehards, who replied by christening their new Warden Non-Olet. But gradually even Place’s supporters had adopted the name. For Place had not answered their expectations, having turned out to be a dyspeptic with a taste for philately, whose voice was so seldom heard that some of the junior Fellows did not know what it sounded like.

“Yes, blast him,” said Curry, “wishes to see me on a most important matter as soon as I can conveniently call on him after dinner.”

“That means,” said the Bursar, “that Jewel and Co. have been getting at him and want to find some way of going back on the whole business.”

“I don’t give a damn for that,” said Curry. “How can you go back on a Resolution? It isn’t that. But it’s enough to muck up the whole evening.”

“Only your evening,” said Feverstone. “Don’t forget to leave out that very special brandy of yours before you go.”

“Jewel! Good God!” said Busby, burying his left hand in his beard.

“I was rather sorry for old Jewel,” said Mark. His motives for saying this were very mixed. To do him justice, it must be said that the quite unexpected and apparently unnecessary brutality of Feverstone’s behavior to the old man had disgusted him. And then, too, the whole idea of his debt to Feverstone in the matter of his own fellowship had been rankling all day. Who was this man Feverstone? But paradoxically, even while he felt that the time had come for asserting his own independence and showing that his agreement with all the methods of the Progressive Element must not be taken for granted, he also felt that a little independence would raise him to a higher position within that Element itself. If the idea “Feverstone will think all the more of you for showing your teeth” had occurred to him in so many words, he would probably have rejected it as servile; but it didn’t.

“Sorry for Jewel?” said Curry wheeling round. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what he was like in his prime.

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