Out Of The Silent Planet Read Free

merely social embarrassment was now being added, turned with the idea of making
some remark. But Weston was now speaking to the boy.
    'You have given enough trouble for one night, Harry,' he said. 'And in a properly governed country
I'd know how to deal with you. Hold your tongue and stop snivelling. You needn't go into the
wash-house if you don't want -'
    It weren't the wash-house,' sobbed the halfwit, 'you know it weren't. I don't want to go in
that thing again.'
    'He means the laboratory,' interrupted Devine. 'He got in there and was shut, in by accident for
a few hours once. It put the wind up him for some reason. Lo, the poor Indian, you know.' He turned
to the boy. 'Listen, Harry,' he said 'This kind gentleman is going to take you home as soon as he's
had a rest. If you'll come in and sit down quietly in the hall. I'll give you something you like.'
He imitated the noise of a cork being drawn from a bottle. Ransom remembered it had been one of
Devine's tricks at school and a guffaw of infantile knowingness broke from Harry's lips.
    'Bring him in,' said Weston as he turned away and disappeared into the house. Ransom hesitated
to follow, but Devine assured him that Weston would be very glad to see him. The lie was
barefaced, but Ransom's desire for a rest and a drink were rapidly overcoming his social scruples.
Preceded by Devine and Harry, he entered the house and found himself a moment later seated in an
armchair and awaiting the return of Devine, who had gone to fetch refreshments.
     

II
----
    THE ROOM into which he had been shown revealed a strange mixture of luxury and squalor. The
windows were shuttered and curtainless, the floor was uncarpeted and strewn with packing cases,
shavings, newspapers and books, and the wallpaper showed the stains left by the pictures and
furniture of the previous occupants. On the other hand, the only two armchairs were of the
costliest type, and in the litter which covered the tables, cigars, oyster shells and empty
champagne bottles jostled with tins of condensed milk and opened sardine tins, with cheap
crockery, broken bread, teacups a quarter full of tea and cigarette ends.
    His hosts seemed to be a long time away, and Ransom fell to thinking of Devine. He felt for him
that sort of distaste we feel for someone whom we have admired in boyhood for a very brief period
and then outgrown. Devine had learned just half a term earlier than anyone else that kind of humour
which consists in a perpetual parody of the sentimental or idealistic cliches of one's elders.
For a few weeks his references to the Dear old Place and to Playing the Game, to the White Man's
Burden and a Straight Bat, had swept everyone, Ransom included, off their feet. But before he
left Wedenshaw Ransom had already begun to find Devine a bore, and at Cambridge he had avoided
him, wondering from afar how anyone so flashy and, as it were, ready-made could be so successful.
Then had come the mystery of Devine's election. to the Leicester fellowship, and the further
mystery of his increasing wealth. He had long since abandoned Cambridge for London, and was
presumably something 'in the city'. One heard of him occasionally and one's informant usually ended
either by saying, 'A damn clever chap, Devine, in his own way', or else by observing plaintively,
'It's a mystery to me how that man has got where he is.' As far as Ransom could gather from the
brief conversation in the yard, his old schoolfellow had altered very little.
    He was interrupted by the opening of the door Devine entered alone, carrying a bottle of whiskey
on a tray with glass, and a syphon.
    'Weston is looking out something to eat,' he said as he placed the tray on the floor beside Ransom's
chair, and addressed himself to opening the bottle. Ransom, who was very thirsty indeed by now,
observed that his host was one of those irritating people who forget to use their hands when they
begin talking. Devine started to prise up the