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  • CHAPTER I

  • The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding

  • a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his

  • usually pale face was flushed and animated.

  • The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the

  • lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses.

  • Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat

  • upon, and there was that luxurious after- dinner atmosphere when thought roams

  • gracefully free of the trammels of precision.

  • And he put it to us in this way--marking the points with a lean forefinger--as we

  • sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his

  • fecundity.

  • 'You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas

  • that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you

  • at school is founded on a misconception.'

  • 'Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?' said Filby, an

  • argumentative person with red hair. 'I do not mean to ask you to accept

  • anything without reasonable ground for it.

  • You will soon admit as much as I need from you.

  • You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real

  • existence.

  • They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane.

  • These things are mere abstractions.' 'That is all right,' said the Psychologist.

  • 'Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real

  • existence.' 'There I object,' said Filby.

  • 'Of course a solid body may exist.

  • All real things--' 'So most people think.

  • But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?'

  • 'Don't follow you,' said Filby.

  • 'Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?'

  • Filby became pensive.

  • 'Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any real body must have extension in four

  • directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration.

  • But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a

  • moment, we incline to overlook this fact.

  • There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space,

  • and a fourth, Time.

  • There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three

  • dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves

  • intermittently in one direction along the

  • latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.'

  • 'That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over

  • the lamp; 'that ... very clear indeed.'

  • 'Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,' continued the Time

  • Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness.

  • 'Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk

  • about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it.

  • It is only another way of looking at Time.

  • There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except

  • that our consciousness moves along it. But some foolish people have got hold of

  • the wrong side of that idea.

  • You have all heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?'

  • 'I have not,' said the Provincial Mayor. 'It is simply this.

  • That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions,

  • which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by

  • reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others.

  • But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly--

  • why not another direction at right angles to the other three?--and have even tried to

  • construct a Four-Dimension geometry.

  • Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a

  • month or so ago.

  • You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a

  • figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of

  • three dimensions they could represent one

  • of four--if they could master the perspective of the thing.

  • See?'

  • 'I think so,' murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows, he lapsed

  • into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats mystic words.

  • 'Yes, I think I see it now,' he said after some time, brightening in a quite

  • transitory manner.

  • 'Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry of Four

  • Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are curious.

  • For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at fifteen,

  • another at seventeen, another at twenty- three, and so on.

  • All these are evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional representations of

  • his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.

  • 'Scientific people,' proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the

  • proper assimilation of this, 'know very well that Time is only a kind of Space.

  • Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record.

  • This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of the barometer.

  • Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose again,

  • and so gently upward to here.

  • Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space generally

  • recognized?

  • But certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was

  • along the Time-Dimension.'

  • 'But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, 'if Time is really

  • only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why has it always been, regarded as

  • something different?

  • And why cannot we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?'

  • The Time Traveller smiled. 'Are you sure we can move freely in Space?

  • Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough, and men always have

  • done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions.

  • But how about up and down?

  • Gravitation limits us there.' 'Not exactly,' said the Medical Man.

  • 'There are balloons.'

  • 'But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the inequalities of

  • the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement.'

  • 'Still they could move a little up and down,' said the Medical Man.

  • 'Easier, far easier down than up.' 'And you cannot move at all in Time, you

  • cannot get away from the present moment.'

  • 'My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong.

  • That is just where the whole world has gone wrong.

  • We are always getting away from the present moment.

  • Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along

  • the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.

  • Just as we should travel down if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's

  • surface.' 'But the great difficulty is this,'

  • interrupted the Psychologist.

  • 'You can move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot move about in Time.'

  • 'That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot

  • move about in Time.

  • For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of

  • its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say.

  • I jump back for a moment.

  • Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a

  • savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground.

  • But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect.

  • He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that

  • ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-

  • Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?'

  • 'Oh, this,' began Filby, 'is all--' 'Why not?' said the Time Traveller.

  • 'It's against reason,' said Filby.

  • 'What reason?' said the Time Traveller. 'You can show black is white by argument,'

  • said Filby, 'but you will never convince me.'

  • 'Possibly not,' said the Time Traveller.

  • 'But now you begin to see the object of my investigations into the geometry of Four

  • Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling of a

  • machine--'

  • 'To travel through Time!' exclaimed the Very Young Man.

  • 'That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as the driver

  • determines.'

  • Filby contented himself with laughter. 'But I have experimental verification,'

  • said the Time Traveller. 'It would be remarkably convenient for the

  • historian,' the Psychologist suggested.

  • 'One might travel back and verify the accepted account of the Battle of Hastings,

  • for instance!' 'Don't you think you would attract

  • attention?' said the Medical Man.

  • 'Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.'

  • 'One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,' the Very Young

  • Man thought.

  • 'In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go.

  • The German scholars have improved Greek so much.'

  • 'Then there is the future,' said the Very Young Man.

  • 'Just think!

  • One might invest all one's money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and hurry on

  • ahead!' 'To discover a society,' said I, 'erected

  • on a strictly communistic basis.'

  • 'Of all the wild extravagant theories!' began the Psychologist.

  • 'Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until--'

  • 'Experimental verification!' cried I.

  • 'You are going to verify that?' 'The experiment!' cried Filby, who was

  • getting brain-weary.

  • 'Let's see your experiment anyhow,' said the Psychologist, 'though it's all humbug,

  • you know.' The Time Traveller smiled round at us.

  • Then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he

  • walked slowly out of the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long

  • passage to his laboratory.

  • The Psychologist looked at us. 'I wonder what he's got?'

  • 'Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,' said the Medical Man, and Filby tried to tell us

  • about a conjurer he had seen at Burslem; but before he had finished his preface the

  • Time Traveller came back, and Filby's anecdote collapsed.

  • The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic framework,

  • scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately made.

  • There was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline substance.

  • And now I must be explicit, for this that follows--unless his explanation is to be

  • accepted--is an absolutely unaccountable thing.

  • He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room, and set

  • it in front of the fire, with two legs on the hearthrug.

  • On this table he placed the mechanism.

  • Then he drew up a chair, and sat down. The only other object on the table was a

  • small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell upon the model.

  • There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks upon the

  • mantel and several in sconces, so that the room was brilliantly illuminated.

  • I sat in a low arm-chair nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so as to be almost

  • between the Time Traveller and the fireplace.

  • Filby sat behind him, looking over his shoulder.

  • The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched him in profile from the right, the

  • Psychologist from the left.

  • The Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist.

  • We were all on the alert.

  • It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however subtly conceived and

  • however adroitly done, could have been played upon us under these conditions.

  • The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism.

  • 'Well?' said the Psychologist.

  • 'This little affair,' said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon the

  • table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, 'is only a model.

  • It is my plan for a machine to travel through time.

  • You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd twinkling

  • appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way unreal.'

  • He pointed to the part with his finger.

  • 'Also, here is one little white lever, and here is another.'

  • The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing.

  • 'It's beautifully made,' he said.

  • 'It took two years to make,' retorted the Time Traveller.

  • Then, when we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: 'Now I want

  • you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends the machine

  • gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion.

  • This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller.

  • Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go.

  • It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear.

  • Have a good look at the thing.

  • Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery.

  • I don't want to waste this model, and then be told I'm a quack.'

  • There was a minute's pause perhaps.

  • The Psychologist seemed about to speak to me, but changed his mind.

  • Then the Time Traveller put forth his finger towards the lever.

  • 'No,' he said suddenly.

  • 'Lend me your hand.' And turning to the Psychologist, he took

  • that individual's hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger.

  • So that it was the Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its

  • interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn.

  • I am absolutely certain there was no trickery.

  • There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped.

  • One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung

  • round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of

  • faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone--vanished!

  • Save for the lamp the table was bare. Everyone was silent for a minute.

  • Then Filby said he was damned.

  • The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under the table.

  • At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully.

  • 'Well?' he said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist.

  • Then, getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us

  • began to fill his pipe.

  • We stared at each other. 'Look here,' said the Medical Man, 'are you

  • in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine

  • has travelled into time?'

  • 'Certainly,' said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the fire.

  • Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist's face.

  • (The Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and

  • tried to light it uncut.)

  • 'What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there'--he indicated the

  • laboratory--'and when that is put together I mean to have a journey on my own

  • account.'

  • 'You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?' said Filby.

  • 'Into the future or the past--I don't, for certain, know which.'

  • After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration.

  • 'It must have gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,' he said.

  • 'Why?' said the Time Traveller.

  • 'Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled into the future

  • it would still be here all this time, since it must have travelled through this time.'

  • 'But,' I said, 'If it travelled into the past it would have been visible when we

  • came first into this room; and last Thursday when we were here; and the

  • Thursday before that; and so forth!'

  • 'Serious objections,' remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of

  • impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.

  • 'Not a bit,' said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: 'You think.

  • You can explain that. It's presentation below the threshold, you

  • know, diluted presentation.'

  • 'Of course,' said the Psychologist, and reassured us.

  • 'That's a simple point of psychology. I should have thought of it.

  • It's plain enough, and helps the paradox delightfully.

  • We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the

  • spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air.

  • If it is travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we

  • are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it

  • creates will of course be only one-fiftieth

  • or one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in time.

  • That's plain enough.' He passed his hand through the space in

  • which the machine had been.

  • 'You see?' he said, laughing. We sat and stared at the vacant table for a

  • minute or so. Then the Time Traveller asked us what we

  • thought of it all.

  • 'It sounds plausible enough to-night,' said the Medical Man; 'but wait until to-morrow.

  • Wait for the common sense of the morning.' 'Would you like to see the Time Machine

  • itself?' asked the Time Traveller.

  • And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty

  • corridor to his laboratory.

  • I remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the

  • dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there

  • in the laboratory we beheld a larger

  • edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes.

  • Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of

  • rock crystal.

  • The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished

  • upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better

  • look at it.

  • Quartz it seemed to be. 'Look here,' said the Medical Man, 'are you

  • perfectly serious? Or is this a trick--like that ghost you

  • showed us last Christmas?'

  • 'Upon that machine,' said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, 'I

  • intend to explore time. Is that plain?

  • I was never more serious in my life.'

  • None of us quite knew how to take it. I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of

  • the Medical Man, and he winked at me solemnly.

  • >

  • CHAPTER II

  • I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine.

  • The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be

  • believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle

  • reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.

  • Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we

  • should have shown him far less scepticism.

  • For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby.

  • But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we

  • distrusted him.

  • Things that would have made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands.

  • It is a mistake to do things too easily.

  • The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment;

  • they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like

  • furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china.

  • So I don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval

  • between that Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in

  • most of our minds: its plausibility, that

  • is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of

  • utter confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly

  • preoccupied with the trick of the model.

  • That I remember discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean.

  • He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on

  • the blowing out of the candle.

  • But how the trick was done he could not explain.

  • The next Thursday I went again to Richmond- -I suppose I was one of the Time

  • Traveller's most constant guests--and, arriving late, found four or five men

  • already assembled in his drawing-room.

  • The Medical Man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and

  • his watch in the other.

  • I looked round for the Time Traveller, and- -'It's half-past seven now,' said the

  • Medical Man. 'I suppose we'd better have dinner?'

  • 'Where's----?' said I, naming our host.

  • 'You've just come? It's rather odd.

  • He's unavoidably detained. He asks me in this note to lead off with

  • dinner at seven if he's not back.

  • Says he'll explain when he comes.' 'It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,'

  • said the Editor of a well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the

  • bell.

  • The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who had

  • attended the previous dinner.

  • The other men were Blank, the Editor aforementioned, a certain journalist, and

  • another--a quiet, shy man with a beard-- whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my

  • observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening.

  • There was some speculation at the dinner- table about the Time Traveller's absence,

  • and I suggested time travelling, in a half- jocular spirit.

  • The Editor wanted that explained to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden

  • account of the 'ingenious paradox and trick' we had witnessed that day week.

  • He was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor opened slowly

  • and without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it first.

  • 'Hallo!'

  • I said. 'At last!'

  • And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before us.

  • I gave a cry of surprise.

  • 'Good heavens! man, what's the matter?' cried the Medical Man, who saw him next.

  • And the whole tableful turned towards the door.

  • He was in an amazing plight.

  • His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair

  • disordered, and as it seemed to me greyer-- either with dust and dirt or because its

  • colour had actually faded.

  • His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it--a cut half healed; his

  • expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering.

  • For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the light.

  • Then he came into the room. He walked with just such a limp as I have

  • seen in footsore tramps.

  • We stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.

  • He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion towards the

  • wine.

  • The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and pushed it towards him.

  • He drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he looked round the table, and

  • the ghost of his old smile flickered across his face.

  • 'What on earth have you been up to, man?' said the Doctor.

  • The Time Traveller did not seem to hear. 'Don't let me disturb you,' he said, with a

  • certain faltering articulation.

  • 'I'm all right.' He stopped, held out his glass for more,

  • and took it off at a draught. 'That's good,' he said.

  • His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came into his cheeks.

  • His glance flickered over our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round

  • the warm and comfortable room.

  • Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words.

  • 'I'm going to wash and dress, and then I'll come down and explain things ...

  • Save me some of that mutton.

  • I'm starving for a bit of meat.' He looked across at the Editor, who was a

  • rare visitor, and hoped he was all right. The Editor began a question.

  • 'Tell you presently,' said the Time Traveller.

  • 'I'm--funny! Be all right in a minute.'

  • He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door.

  • Again I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and standing

  • up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out.

  • He had nothing on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks.

  • Then the door closed upon him.

  • I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he detested any fuss about

  • himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-

  • gathering.

  • Then, 'Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,' I heard the Editor say,

  • thinking (after his wont) in headlines. And this brought my attention back to the

  • bright dinner-table.

  • 'What's the game?' said the Journalist. 'Has he been doing the Amateur Cadger?

  • I don't follow.' I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read

  • my own interpretation in his face.

  • I thought of the Time Traveller limping painfully upstairs.

  • I don't think any one else had noticed his lameness.

  • The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man, who rang the

  • bell--the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at dinner--for a hot

  • plate.

  • At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man

  • followed suit. The dinner was resumed.

  • Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment; and then

  • the Editor got fervent in his curiosity.

  • 'Does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his

  • Nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired.

  • 'I feel assured it's this business of the Time Machine,' I said, and took up the

  • Psychologist's account of our previous meeting.

  • The new guests were frankly incredulous.

  • The Editor raised objections. 'What was this time travelling?

  • A man couldn't cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?'

  • And then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature.

  • Hadn't they any clothes-brushes in the Future?

  • The Journalist too, would not believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the

  • easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole thing.

  • They were both the new kind of journalist-- very joyous, irreverent young men.

  • 'Our Special Correspondent in the Day after To-morrow reports,' the Journalist was

  • saying--or rather shouting--when the Time Traveller came back.

  • He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained

  • of the change that had startled me.

  • 'I say,' said the Editor hilariously, 'these chaps here say you have been

  • travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about little Rosebery, will

  • you?

  • What will you take for the lot?' The Time Traveller came to the place

  • reserved for him without a word. He smiled quietly, in his old way.

  • 'Where's my mutton?' he said.

  • 'What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!'

  • 'Story!' cried the Editor. 'Story be damned!' said the Time Traveller.

  • 'I want something to eat.

  • I won't say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries.

  • Thanks. And the salt.'

  • 'One word,' said I.

  • 'Have you been time travelling?' 'Yes,' said the Time Traveller, with his

  • mouth full, nodding his head. 'I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim

  • note,' said the Editor.

  • The Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang it with his

  • fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his face, started

  • convulsively, and poured him wine.

  • The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden questions kept on

  • rising to my lips, and I dare say it was the same with the others.

  • The Journalist tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter.

  • The Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed the appetite of a

  • tramp.

  • The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched the Time Traveller through his

  • eyelashes.

  • The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity

  • and determination out of sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller pushed his plate

  • away, and looked round us.

  • 'I suppose I must apologize,' he said. 'I was simply starving.

  • I've had a most amazing time.' He reached out his hand for a cigar, and

  • cut the end.

  • 'But come into the smoking-room. It's too long a story to tell over greasy

  • plates.' And ringing the bell in passing, he led the

  • way into the adjoining room.

  • 'You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?' he said to me, leaning

  • back in his easy-chair and naming the three new guests.

  • 'But the thing's a mere paradox,' said the Editor.

  • 'I can't argue to-night. I don't mind telling you the story, but I

  • can't argue.

  • I will,' he went on, 'tell you the story of what has happened to me, if you like, but

  • you must refrain from interruptions. I want to tell it.

  • Badly.

  • Most of it will sound like lying. So be it!

  • It's true--every word of it, all the same. I was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and

  • since then ...

  • I've lived eight days ... such days as no human being ever lived before!

  • I'm nearly worn out, but I shan't sleep till I've told this thing over to you.

  • Then I shall go to bed.

  • But no interruptions! Is it agreed?'

  • 'Agreed,' said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed 'Agreed.'

  • And with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth.

  • He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man.

  • Afterwards he got more animated.

  • In writing it down I feel with only too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and

  • ink--and, above all, my own inadequacy--to express its quality.

  • You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker's

  • white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of

  • his voice.

  • You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of his story!

  • Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the smoking-room had not been

  • lighted, and only the face of the Journalist and the legs of the Silent Man

  • from the knees downward were illuminated.

  • At first we glanced now and again at each other.

  • After a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the Time Traveller's face.

  • >

  • CHAPTER III

  • 'I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine, and showed

  • you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the workshop.

  • There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the ivory bars is

  • cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it's sound enough.

  • I expected to finish it on Friday, but on Friday, when the putting together was

  • nearly done, I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and

  • this I had to get remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning.

  • It was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began its career.

  • I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the

  • quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle.

  • I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at

  • what will come next as I felt then.

  • I took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the

  • first, and almost immediately the second.

  • I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I

  • saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened?

  • For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me.

  • Then I noted the clock.

  • A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was

  • nearly half-past three!

  • 'I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands, and went

  • off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark.

  • Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards the

  • garden door.

  • I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to

  • shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme

  • position.

  • The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow.

  • The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter.

  • To-morrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster

  • still.

  • An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my

  • mind. 'I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar

  • sensations of time travelling.

  • They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one

  • has upon a switchback--of a helpless headlong motion!

  • I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash.

  • As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing.

  • The dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me, and I saw

  • the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute

  • marking a day.

  • I supposed the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air.

  • I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be

  • conscious of any moving things.

  • The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast for me.

  • The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye.

  • Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her

  • quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars.

  • Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day

  • merged into one continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a

  • splendid luminous color like that of early

  • twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the

  • moon a fainter fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now

  • and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.

  • 'The landscape was misty and vague.

  • I was still on the hill-side upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder

  • rose above me grey and dim.

  • I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown, now green; they grew,

  • spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge buildings rise up faint and

  • fair, and pass like dreams.

  • The whole surface of the earth seemed changed--melting and flowing under my eyes.

  • The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster and

  • faster.

  • Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in

  • a minute or less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute

  • by minute the white snow flashed across the

  • world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring.

  • 'The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now.

  • They merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration.

  • I remarked indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to account.

  • But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind of madness growing upon

  • me, I flung myself into futurity.

  • At first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new

  • sensations.

  • But presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind--a certain curiosity and

  • therewith a certain dread--until at last they took complete possession of me.

  • What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary

  • civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to look nearly into the dim

  • elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes!

  • I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any

  • buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist.

  • I saw a richer green flow up the hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry

  • intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion the

  • earth seemed very fair.

  • And so my mind came round to the business of stopping.

  • 'The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space

  • which I, or the machine, occupied.

  • So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; I

  • was, so to speak, attenuated--was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of

  • intervening substances!

  • But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into

  • whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those

  • of the obstacle that a profound chemical

  • reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion--would result, and blow myself

  • and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions--into the Unknown.

  • This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I was making the machine;

  • but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk--one of the risks a man

  • has got to take!

  • Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light.

  • The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly

  • jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had

  • absolutely upset my nerve.

  • I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I resolved to stop

  • forthwith.

  • Like an impatient fool, I lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went

  • reeling over, and I was flung headlong through the air.

  • 'There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears.

  • I may have been stunned for a moment.

  • A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the

  • overset machine.

  • Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears

  • was gone. I looked round me.

  • I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron

  • bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower

  • under the beating of the hail-stones.

  • The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove along the

  • ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin.

  • "Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see

  • you." 'Presently I thought what a fool I was to

  • get wet.

  • I stood up and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in

  • some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy

  • downpour.

  • But all else of the world was invisible. 'My sensations would be hard to describe.

  • As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly.

  • It was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder.

  • It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings,

  • instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to

  • hover.

  • The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris.

  • It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me;

  • there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips.

  • It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of

  • disease. I stood looking at it for a little space--

  • half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour.

  • It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it denser or thinner.

  • At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment and saw that the hail curtain had worn

  • threadbare, and that the sky was lightening with the promise of the sun.

  • 'I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage

  • came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy curtain

  • was altogether withdrawn?

  • What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common

  • passion?

  • What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had developed into

  • something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful?

  • I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for

  • our common likeness--a foul creature to be incontinently slain.

  • 'Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall

  • columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening

  • storm.

  • I was seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine,

  • and strove hard to readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote

  • through the thunderstorm.

  • The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a

  • ghost.

  • Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud

  • whirled into nothingness.

  • The great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of

  • the thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along

  • their courses.

  • I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the

  • clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop.

  • My fear grew to frenzy.

  • I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee,

  • with the machine. It gave under my desperate onset and turned

  • over.

  • It struck my chin violently. One hand on the saddle, the other on the

  • lever, I stood panting heavily in attitude to mount again.

  • 'But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered.

  • I looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote future.

  • In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house, I saw a group of

  • figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and their faces were

  • directed towards me.

  • 'Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the White

  • Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running.

  • One of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which I

  • stood with my machine.

  • He was a slight creature--perhaps four feet high--clad in a purple tunic, girdled at

  • the waist with a leather belt.

  • Sandals or buskins--I could not clearly distinguish which--were on his feet; his

  • legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare.

  • Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was.

  • 'He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail.

  • His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive--that hectic

  • beauty of which we used to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained

  • confidence.

  • I took my hands from the machine.

  • >

  • CHAPTER IV

  • 'In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile thing out of

  • futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into

  • my eyes.

  • The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at once.

  • Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a

  • strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.

  • 'There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of

  • these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them addressed me.

  • It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them.

  • So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears, shook it again.

  • He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand.

  • Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders.

  • They wanted to make sure I was real.

  • There was nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty

  • little people that inspired confidence--a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike

  • ease.

  • And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen

  • of them about like nine-pins.

  • But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling

  • at the Time Machine.

  • Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto

  • forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the little levers

  • that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket.

  • Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of communication.

  • 'And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities

  • in their Dresden-china type of prettiness.

  • Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there

  • was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly

  • minute.

  • The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran

  • to a point.

  • The eyes were large and mild; and--this may seem egotism on my part--I fancied even

  • that there was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.

  • 'As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling and

  • speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the conversation.

  • I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself.

  • Then hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the sun.

  • At once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white followed my

  • gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.

  • 'For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough.

  • The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these creatures fools?

  • You may hardly understand how it took me.

  • You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two

  • Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything.

  • Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the

  • intellectual level of one of our five-year- old children--asked me, in fact, if I had

  • come from the sun in a thunderstorm!

  • It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their clothes, their frail light

  • limbs, and fragile features. A flow of disappointment rushed across my

  • mind.

  • For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain.

  • 'I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a

  • thunderclap as startled them.

  • They all withdrew a pace or so and bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying

  • a chain of beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck.

  • The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they were all

  • running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I

  • was almost smothered with blossom.

  • You who have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and

  • wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created.

  • Then someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest

  • building, and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch

  • me all the while with a smile at my

  • astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone.

  • As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly

  • grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment, to my mind.

  • 'The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions.

  • I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of little people, and with

  • the big open portals that yawned before me shadowy and mysterious.

  • My general impression of the world I saw over their heads was a tangled waste of

  • beautiful bushes and flowers, a long neglected and yet weedless garden.

  • I saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps

  • across the spread of the waxen petals.

  • They grew scattered, as if wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not

  • examine them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the

  • turf among the rhododendrons.

  • 'The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not observe the carving

  • very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions of old Phoenician decorations

  • as I passed through, and it struck me that

  • they were very badly broken and weather- worn.

  • Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed

  • in dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with

  • flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass

  • of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of

  • laughter and laughing speech. 'The big doorway opened into a

  • proportionately great hall hung with brown.

  • The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with coloured glass and

  • partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light.

  • The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not plates nor

  • slabs--blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the going to and fro of past

  • generations, as to be deeply channelled along the more frequented ways.

  • Transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone,

  • raised perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits.

  • Some I recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for

  • the most part they were strange. 'Between the tables was scattered a great

  • number of cushions.

  • Upon these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise.

  • With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with their hands,

  • flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round openings in the sides of the

  • tables.

  • I was not loath to follow their example, for I felt thirsty and hungry.

  • As I did so I surveyed the hall at my leisure.

  • 'And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look.

  • The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern, were broken in

  • many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower end were thick with dust.

  • And it caught my eye that the corner of the marble table near me was fractured.

  • Nevertheless, the general effect was extremely rich and picturesque.

  • There were, perhaps, a couple of hundred people dining in the hall, and most of

  • them, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their

  • little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating.

  • All were clad in the same soft and yet strong, silky material.

  • 'Fruit, by the by, was all their diet.

  • These people of the remote future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with

  • them, in spite of some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also.

  • Indeed, I found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the

  • Ichthyosaurus into extinction.

  • But the fruits were very delightful; one, in particular, that seemed to be in season

  • all the time I was there--a floury thing in a three-sided husk--was especially good,

  • and I made it my staple.

  • At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by the strange flowers I saw,

  • but later I began to perceive their import. 'However, I am telling you of my fruit

  • dinner in the distant future now.

  • So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make a resolute

  • attempt to learn the speech of these new men of mine.

  • Clearly that was the next thing to do.

  • The fruits seemed a convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I

  • began a series of interrogative sounds and gestures.

  • I had some considerable difficulty in conveying my meaning.

  • At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but

  • presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a

  • name.

  • They had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each other, and

  • my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their language caused an

  • immense amount of amusement.

  • However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and presently I

  • had a score of noun substantives at least at my command; and then I got to

  • demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb "to eat."

  • But it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and wanted to get away from my

  • interrogations, so I determined, rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons

  • in little doses when they felt inclined.

  • And very little doses I found they were before long, for I never met people more

  • indolent or more easily fatigued.

  • 'A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of

  • interest.

  • They would come to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like

  • children they would soon stop examining me and wander away after some other toy.

  • The dinner and my conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that

  • almost all those who had surrounded me at first were gone.

  • It is odd, too, how speedily I came to disregard these little people.

  • I went out through the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger was

  • satisfied.

  • I was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who would follow me a little

  • distance, chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a

  • friendly way, leave me again to my own devices.

  • 'The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great hall, and the

  • scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun.

  • At first things were very confusing.

  • Everything was so entirely different from the world I had known--even the flowers.

  • The big building I had left was situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but the

  • Thames had shifted perhaps a mile from its present position.

  • I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest, perhaps a mile and a half away, from

  • which I could get a wider view of this our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two

  • Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D.

  • For that, I should explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded.

  • 'As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly help to

  • explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I found the world--for ruinous it

  • was.

  • A little way up the hill, for instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by

  • masses of aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps,

  • amidst which were thick heaps of very

  • beautiful pagoda-like plants--nettles possibly--but wonderfully tinted with brown

  • about the leaves, and incapable of stinging.

  • It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure, to what end built I

  • could not determine.

  • It was here that I was destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience--

  • the first intimation of a still stranger discovery--but of that I will speak in its

  • proper place.

  • 'Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested for a while, I

  • realized that there were no small houses to be seen.

  • Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had vanished.

  • Here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings, but the house and

  • the cottage, which form such characteristic features of our own English landscape, had

  • disappeared.

  • '"Communism," said I to myself. 'And on the heels of that came another

  • thought. I looked at the half-dozen little figures

  • that were following me.

  • Then, in a flash, I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft

  • hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb.

  • It may seem strange, perhaps, that I had not noticed this before.

  • But everything was so strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough.

  • In costume, and in all the differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the

  • sexes from each other, these people of the future were alike.

  • And the children seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents.

  • I judged, then, that the children of that time were extremely precocious, physically

  • at least, and I found afterwards abundant verification of my opinion.

  • 'Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt that this

  • close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength

  • of a man and the softness of a woman, the

  • institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere

  • militant necessities of an age of physical force; where population is balanced and

  • abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil

  • rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and off-spring

  • are secure, there is less necessity--indeed there is no necessity--for an efficient

  • family, and the specialization of the sexes

  • with reference to their children's needs disappears.

  • We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was

  • complete.

  • This, I must remind you, was my speculation at the time.

  • Later, I was to appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.

  • 'While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a pretty little

  • structure, like a well under a cupola.

  • I thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then

  • resumed the thread of my speculations.

  • There were no large buildings towards the top of the hill, and as my walking powers

  • were evidently miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time.

  • With a strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.

  • 'There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize, corroded in

  • places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered in soft moss, the arm-rests cast

  • and filed into the resemblance of griffins' heads.

  • I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of

  • that long day.

  • It was as sweet and fair a view as I have ever seen.

  • The sun had already gone below the horizon and the west was flaming gold, touched with

  • some horizontal bars of purple and crimson.

  • Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the river lay like a band of

  • burnished steel.

  • I have already spoken of the great palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery,

  • some in ruins and some still occupied.

  • Here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth,

  • here and there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk.

  • There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of

  • agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.

  • 'So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had seen,

  • and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation was something in this

  • way.

  • (Afterwards I found I had got only a half- truth--or only a glimpse of one facet of

  • the truth.) 'It seemed to me that I had happened upon

  • humanity upon the wane.

  • The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind.

  • For the first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in

  • which we are at present engaged.

  • And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough.

  • Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness.

  • The work of ameliorating the conditions of life--the true civilizing process that

  • makes life more and more secure--had gone steadily on to a climax.

  • One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another.

  • Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and

  • carried forward.

  • And the harvest was what I saw! 'After all, the sanitation and the

  • agriculture of to-day are still in the rudimentary stage.

  • The science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human

  • disease, but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently.

  • Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate

  • perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a

  • balance as they can.

  • We improve our favourite plants and animals--and how few they are--gradually by

  • selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter

  • and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle.

  • We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our

  • knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands.

  • Some day all this will be better organized, and still better.

  • That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies.

  • The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things will

  • move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature.

  • In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and

  • vegetable life to suit our human needs.

  • 'This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done indeed for all

  • Time, in the space of Time across which my machine had leaped.

  • The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and

  • sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither.

  • The ideal of preventive medicine was attained.

  • Diseases had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of any contagious

  • diseases during all my stay.

  • And I shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and

  • decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.

  • 'Social triumphs, too, had been effected.

  • I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found

  • them engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither

  • social nor economical struggle.

  • The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of

  • our world, was gone.

  • It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social

  • paradise.

  • The difficulty of increasing population had been met, I guessed, and population had

  • ceased to increase. 'But with this change in condition comes

  • inevitably adaptations to the change.

  • What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human

  • intelligence and vigour?

  • Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle

  • survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the

  • loyal alliance of capable men, upon self- restraint, patience, and decision.

  • And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce

  • jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their

  • justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young.

  • Now, where are these imminent dangers?

  • There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against connubial jealousy, against

  • fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts; unnecessary things now, and things

  • that make us uncomfortable, savage

  • survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant life.

  • 'I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of intelligence, and

  • those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my belief in a perfect

  • conquest of Nature.

  • For after the battle comes Quiet. Humanity had been strong, energetic, and

  • intelligent, and had used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under

  • which it lived.

  • And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.

  • 'Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy,

  • that with us is strength, would become weakness.

  • Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, are a

  • constant source of failure.

  • Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no great help--may even

  • be hindrances--to a civilized man.

  • And in a state of physical balance and security, power, intellectual as well as

  • physical, would be out of place.

  • For countless years I judged there had been no danger of war or solitary violence, no

  • danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength of constitution, no

  • need of toil.

  • For such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong,

  • are indeed no longer weak.

  • Better equipped indeed they are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for

  • which there was no outlet.

  • No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw was the outcome of the last

  • surgings of the now purposeless energy of mankind before it settled down into perfect

  • harmony with the conditions under which it

  • lived--the flourish of that triumph which began the last great peace.

  • This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism,

  • and then come languor and decay.

  • 'Even this artistic impetus would at last die away--had almost died in the Time I

  • saw.

  • To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sunlight: so much was left

  • of the artistic spirit, and no more. Even that would fade in the end into a

  • contented inactivity.

  • We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and, it seemed to me, that

  • here was that hateful grindstone broken at last!

  • 'As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple explanation I

  • had mastered the problem of the world-- mastered the whole secret of these

  • delicious people.

  • Possibly the checks they had devised for the increase of population had succeeded

  • too well, and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary.

  • That would account for the abandoned ruins.

  • Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough--as most wrong theories

  • are!

  • >

  • CHAPTER V

  • 'As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full moon,

  • yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light in the north-east.

  • The bright little figures ceased to move about below, a noiseless owl flitted by,

  • and I shivered with the chill of the night. I determined to descend and find where I

  • could sleep.

  • 'I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to the figure

  • of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing distinct as the light of

  • the rising moon grew brighter.

  • I could see the silver birch against it. There was the tangle of rhododendron

  • bushes, black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn.

  • I looked at the lawn again.

  • A queer doubt chilled my complacency. "No," said I stoutly to myself, "that was

  • not the lawn." 'But it was the lawn.

  • For the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards it.

  • Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to me?

  • But you cannot.

  • The Time Machine was gone! 'At once, like a lash across the face, came

  • the possibility of losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new

  • world.

  • The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation.

  • I could feel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing.

  • In another moment I was in a passion of fear and running with great leaping strides

  • down the slope.

  • Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost no time in stanching the blood, but

  • jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin.

  • All the time I ran I was saying to myself: "They have moved it a little, pushed it

  • under the bushes out of the way." Nevertheless, I ran with all my might.

  • All the time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread, I

  • knew that such assurance was folly, knew instinctively that the machine was removed

  • out of my reach.

  • My breath came with pain. I suppose I covered the whole distance from

  • the hill crest to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes.

  • And I am not a young man.

  • I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the machine, wasting good

  • breath thereby. I cried aloud, and none answered.

  • Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit world.

  • 'When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized.

  • Not a trace of the thing was to be seen.

  • I felt faint and cold when I faced the empty space among the black tangle of

  • bushes.

  • I ran round it furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then

  • stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair.

  • Above me towered the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous,

  • in the light of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay.

  • 'I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put the mechanism in

  • some shelter for me, had I not felt assured of their physical and intellectual

  • inadequacy.

  • That is what dismayed me: the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose

  • intervention my invention had vanished.

  • Yet, for one thing I felt assured: unless some other age had produced its exact

  • duplicate, the machine could not have moved in time.

  • The attachment of the levers--I will show you the method later--prevented any one

  • from tampering with it in that way when they were removed.

  • It had moved, and was hid, only in space.

  • But then, where could it be? 'I think I must have had a kind of frenzy.

  • I remember running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the

  • sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small

  • deer.

  • I remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched fist until my

  • knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs.

  • Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, I went down to the great building of

  • stone. The big hall was dark, silent, and

  • deserted.

  • I slipped on the uneven floor, and fell over one of the malachite tables, almost

  • breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty

  • curtains, of which I have told you.

  • 'There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which, perhaps, a score

  • or so of the little people were sleeping.

  • I have no doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, coming suddenly

  • out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the splutter and flare of a

  • match.

  • For they had forgotten about matches. "Where is my Time Machine?"

  • I began, bawling like an angry child, laying hands upon them and shaking them up

  • together.

  • It must have been very queer to them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorely

  • frightened.

  • When I saw them standing round me, it came into my head that I was doing as foolish a

  • thing as it was possible for me to do under the circumstances, in trying to revive the

  • sensation of fear.

  • For, reasoning from their daylight behaviour, I thought that fear must be

  • forgotten.

  • 'Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the people over in my

  • course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again, out under the moonlight.

  • I heard cries of terror and their little feet running and stumbling this way and

  • that. I do not remember all I did as the moon

  • crept up the sky.

  • I suppose it was the unexpected nature of my loss that maddened me.

  • I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind- -a strange animal in an unknown world.

  • I must have raved to and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate.

  • I have a memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of looking

  • in this impossible place and that; of groping among moon-lit ruins and touching

  • strange creatures in the black shadows; at

  • last, of lying on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute

  • wretchedness. I had nothing left but misery.

  • Then I slept, and when I woke again it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were

  • hopping round me on the turf within reach of my arm.

  • 'I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how I had got there, and

  • why I had such a profound sense of desertion and despair.

  • Then things came clear in my mind.

  • With the plain, reasonable daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in the

  • face. I saw the wild folly of my frenzy

  • overnight, and I could reason with myself.

  • "Suppose the worst?" I said.

  • "Suppose the machine altogether lost-- perhaps destroyed?

  • It behoves me to be calm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clear

  • idea of the method of my loss, and the means of getting materials and tools; so

  • that in the end, perhaps, I may make another."

  • That would be my only hope, perhaps, but better than despair.

  • And, after all, it was a beautiful and curious world.

  • 'But probably, the machine had only been taken away.

  • Still, I must be calm and patient, find its hiding-place, and recover it by force or

  • cunning.

  • And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked about me, wondering where I could

  • bathe. I felt weary, stiff, and travel-soiled.

  • The freshness of the morning made me desire an equal freshness.

  • I had exhausted my emotion.

  • Indeed, as I went about my business, I found myself wondering at my intense

  • excitement overnight. I made a careful examination of the ground

  • about the little lawn.

  • I wasted some time in futile questionings, conveyed, as well as I was able, to such of

  • the little people as came by.

  • They all failed to understand my gestures; some were simply stolid, some thought it

  • was a jest and laughed at me. I had the hardest task in the world to keep

  • my hands off their pretty laughing faces.

  • It was a foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of fear and blind anger was ill

  • curbed and still eager to take advantage of my perplexity.

  • The turf gave better counsel.

  • I found a groove ripped in it, about midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the

  • marks of my feet where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.

  • There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow footprints like those I

  • could imagine made by a sloth. This directed my closer attention to the

  • pedestal.

  • It was, as I think I have said, of bronze. It was not a mere block, but highly

  • decorated with deep framed panels on either side.

  • I went and rapped at these.

  • The pedestal was hollow. Examining the panels with care I found them

  • discontinuous with the frames.

  • There were no handles or keyholes, but possibly the panels, if they were doors, as

  • I supposed, opened from within. One thing was clear enough to my mind.

  • It took no very great mental effort to infer that my Time Machine was inside that

  • pedestal. But how it got there was a different

  • problem.

  • 'I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes and under some

  • blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turned smiling to them and beckoned them

  • to me.

  • They came, and then, pointing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to

  • open it. But at my first gesture towards this they

  • behaved very oddly.

  • I don't know how to convey their expression to you.

  • Suppose you were to use a grossly improper gesture to a delicate-minded woman--it is

  • how she would look.

  • They went off as if they had received the last possible insult.

  • I tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next, with exactly the same result.

  • Somehow, his manner made me feel ashamed of myself.

  • But, as you know, I wanted the Time Machine, and I tried him once more.

  • As he turned off, like the others, my temper got the better of me.

  • In three strides I was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe round the

  • neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx.

  • Then I saw the horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.

  • 'But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels.

  • I thought I heard something stir inside--to be explicit, I thought I heard a sound like

  • a chuckle--but I must have been mistaken.

  • Then I got a big pebble from the river, and came and hammered till I had flattened a

  • coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came off in powdery flakes.

  • The delicate little people must have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away

  • on either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon the slopes,

  • looking furtively at me.

  • At last, hot and tired, I sat down to watch the place.

  • But I was too restless to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil.

  • I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours--that

  • is another matter.

  • 'I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes towards the

  • hill again. "Patience," said I to myself.

  • "If you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone.

  • If they mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their bronze

  • panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it.

  • To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless.

  • That way lies monomania. Face this world.

  • Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning.

  • In the end you will find clues to it all."

  • Then suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years

  • I had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of

  • anxiety to get out of it.

  • I had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man

  • devised. Although it was at my own expense, I could

  • not help myself.

  • I laughed aloud. 'Going through the big palace, it seemed to

  • me that the little people avoided me.

  • It may have been my fancy, or it may have had something to do with my hammering at

  • the gates of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably sure of the avoidance.

  • I was careful, however, to show no concern and to abstain from any pursuit of them,

  • and in the course of a day or two things got back to the old footing.

  • I made what progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed my

  • explorations here and there.

  • Either I missed some subtle point or their language was excessively simple--almost

  • exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs.

  • There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative

  • language.

  • Their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey or

  • understand any but the simplest propositions.

  • I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze doors

  • under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory, until my growing

  • knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural way.

  • Yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a circle of a few miles

  • round the point of my arrival.

  • 'So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as

  • the Thames valley.

  • From every hill I climbed I saw the same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly

  • varied in material and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same

  • blossom-laden trees and tree-ferns.

  • Here and there water shone like silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating

  • hills, and so faded into the serenity of the sky.

  • A peculiar feature, which presently attracted my attention, was the presence of

  • certain circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth.

  • One lay by the path up the hill, which I had followed during my first walk.

  • Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a

  • little cupola from the rain.

  • Sitting by the side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness, I

  • could see no gleam of water, nor could I start any reflection with a lighted match.

  • But in all of them I heard a certain sound: a thud--thud--thud, like the beating of

  • some big engine; and I discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady

  • current of air set down the shafts.

  • Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of one, and, instead of fluttering

  • slowly down, it was at once sucked swiftly out of sight.

  • 'After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and

  • there upon the slopes; for above them there was often just such a flicker in the air as

  • one sees on a hot day above a sun-scorched beach.

  • Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of

  • subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was difficult to imagine.

  • I was at first inclined to associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these

  • people. It was an obvious conclusion, but it was

  • absolutely wrong.

  • 'And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains and bells and modes of

  • conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my time in this real future.

  • In some of these visions of Utopias and coming times which I have read, there is a

  • vast amount of detail about building, and social arrangements, and so forth.

  • But while such details are easy enough to obtain when the whole world is contained in

  • one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveller amid such

  • realities as I found here.

  • Conceive the tale of London which a negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take back

  • to his tribe!

  • What would he know of railway companies, of social movements, of telephone and

  • telegraph wires, of the Parcels Delivery Company, and postal orders and the like?

  • Yet we, at least, should be willing enough to explain these things to him!

  • And even of what he knew, how much could he make his untravelled friend either

  • apprehend or believe?

  • Then, think how narrow the gap between a negro and a white man of our own times, and

  • how wide the interval between myself and these of the Golden Age!

  • I was sensible of much which was unseen, and which contributed to my comfort; but

  • save for a general impression of automatic organization, I fear I can convey very

  • little of the difference to your mind.

  • 'In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs of crematoria nor

  • anything suggestive of tombs.

  • But it occurred to me that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria)

  • somewhere beyond the range of my explorings.

  • This, again, was a question I deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at

  • first entirely defeated upon the point.

  • The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a further remark, which puzzled me still

  • more: that aged and infirm among this people there were none.

  • 'I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic

  • civilization and a decadent humanity did not long endure.

  • Yet I could think of no other.

  • Let me put my difficulties. The several big palaces I had explored were

  • mere living places, great dining-halls and sleeping apartments.

  • I could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind.

  • Yet these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal,

  • and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork.

  • Somehow such things must be made.

  • And the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency.

  • There were no shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them.

  • They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making

  • love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping.

  • I could not see how things were kept going.

  • 'Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what, had taken it

  • into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx.

  • Why?

  • For the life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too, those

  • flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue.

  • I felt--how shall I put it?

  • Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in excellent plain

  • English, and interpolated therewith, others made up of words, of letters even,

  • absolutely unknown to you?

  • Well, on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight Hundred and Two

  • Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to me!

  • 'That day, too, I made a friend--of a sort.

  • It happened that, as I was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one

  • of them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream.

  • The main current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate

  • swimmer.

  • It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when

  • I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little

  • thing which was drowning before their eyes.

  • When I realized this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point

  • lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land.

  • A little rubbing of the limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction of

  • seeing she was all right before I left her.

  • I had got to such a low estimate of her kind that I did not expect any gratitude

  • from her. In that, however, I was wrong.

  • 'This happened in the morning.

  • In the afternoon I met my little woman, as I believe it was, as I was returning

  • towards my centre from an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and

  • presented me with a big garland of flowers- -evidently made for me and me alone.

  • The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate.

  • At any rate I did my best to display my appreciation of the gift.

  • We were soon seated together in a little stone arbour, engaged in conversation,

  • chiefly of smiles.

  • The creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might have done.

  • We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands.

  • I did the same to hers.

  • Then I tried talk, and found that her name was Weena, which, though I don't know what

  • it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough.

  • That was the beginning of a queer friendship which lasted a week, and ended--

  • as I will tell you! 'She was exactly like a child.

  • She wanted to be with me always.

  • She tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and about it went to my

  • heart to tire her down, and leave her at last, exhausted and calling after me rather

  • plaintively.

  • But the problems of the world had to be mastered.

  • I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation.

  • Yet her distress when I left her was very great, her expostulations at the parting

  • were sometimes frantic, and I think, altogether, I had as much trouble as

  • comfort from her devotion.

  • Nevertheless she was, somehow, a very great comfort.

  • I thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me.

  • Until it was too late, I did not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her when I

  • left her. Nor until it was too late did I clearly

  • understand what she was to me.

  • For, by merely seeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile way that she

  • cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave my return to the

  • neighbourhood of the White Sphinx almost

  • the feeling of coming home; and I would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold

  • so soon as I came over the hill. 'It was from her, too, that I learned that

  • fear had not yet left the world.

  • She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me;

  • for once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening grimaces at her, and she simply

  • laughed at them.

  • But she dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things.

  • Darkness to her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate emotion, and

  • it set me thinking and observing.

  • I discovered then, among other things, that these little people gathered into the great

  • houses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to

  • put them into a tumult of apprehension.

  • I never found one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark.

  • Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of that fear, and in

  • spite of Weena's distress I insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering

  • multitudes.

  • 'It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me triumphed, and for

  • five of the nights of our acquaintance, including the last night of all, she slept

  • with her head pillowed on my arm.

  • But my story slips away from me as I speak of her.

  • It must have been the night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn.

  • I had been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that

  • sea anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps.

  • I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed

  • out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt

  • restless and uncomfortable.

  • It was that dim grey hour when things are just creeping out of darkness, when

  • everything is colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal.

  • I got up, and went down into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in

  • front of the palace. I thought I would make a virtue of

  • necessity, and see the sunrise.

  • 'The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were

  • mingled in a ghastly half-light.

  • The bushes were inky black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and

  • cheerless. And up the hill I thought I could see

  • ghosts.

  • There several times, as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures.

  • Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up

  • the hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body.

  • They moved hastily.

  • I did not see what became of them. It seemed that they vanished among the

  • bushes. The dawn was still indistinct, you must

  • understand.

  • I was feeling that chill, uncertain, early- morning feeling you may have known.

  • I doubted my eyes.

  • 'As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and its vivid

  • colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned the view keenly.

  • But I saw no vestige of my white figures.

  • They were mere creatures of the half light. "They must have been ghosts," I said; "I

  • wonder whence they dated." For a queer notion of Grant Allen's came

  • into my head, and amused me.

  • If each generation die and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get

  • overcrowded with them.

  • On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight Hundred Thousand

  • Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four at once.

  • But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these figures all the morning,

  • until Weena's rescue drove them out of my head.

  • I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled in my

  • first passionate search for the Time Machine.

  • But Weena was a pleasant substitute.

  • Yet all the same, they were soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind.

  • 'I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age.

  • I cannot account for it.

  • It may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun.

  • It is usual to assume that the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future.

  • But people, unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger

  • Darwin, forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the

  • parent body.

  • As these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze with renewed energy; and it may be

  • that some inner planet had suffered this fate.

  • Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know

  • it.

  • 'Well, one very hot morning--my fourth, I think--as I was seeking shelter from the

  • heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I slept and fed, there

  • happened this strange thing: Clambering

  • among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side windows

  • were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it

  • seemed at first impenetrably dark to me.

  • I entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour

  • swim before me. Suddenly I halted spellbound.

  • A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching

  • me out of the darkness. 'The old instinctive dread of wild beasts

  • came upon me.

  • I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs.

  • I was afraid to turn.

  • Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity appeared to be living

  • came to my mind. And then I remembered that strange terror

  • of the dark.

  • Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced a step and spoke.

  • I will admit that my voice was harsh and ill-controlled.

  • I put out my hand and touched something soft.

  • At once the eyes darted sideways, and something white ran past me.

  • I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its head

  • held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me.

  • It blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden

  • in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.

  • 'My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a dull white,

  • and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head

  • and down its back.

  • But, as I say, it went too fast for me to see distinctly.

  • I cannot even say whether it ran on all- fours, or only with its forearms held very

  • low.

  • After an instant's pause I followed it into the second heap of ruins.

  • I could not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I came upon

  • one of those round well-like openings of which I have told you, half closed by a

  • fallen pillar.

  • A sudden thought came to me. Could this Thing have vanished down the

  • shaft?

  • I lit a match, and, looking down, I saw a small, white, moving creature, with large

  • bright eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated.

  • It made me shudder.

  • It was so like a human spider! It was clambering down the wall, and now I

  • saw for the first time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of

  • ladder down the shaft.

  • Then the light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped,

  • and when I had lit another the little monster had disappeared.

  • 'I do not know how long I sat peering down that well.

  • It was not for some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing

  • I had seen was human.

  • But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man had not remained one species, but

  • had differentiated into two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the

  • Upper-world were not the sole descendants

  • of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed

  • before me, was also heir to all the ages. 'I thought of the flickering pillars and of

  • my theory of an underground ventilation.

  • I began to suspect their true import. And what, I wondered, was this Lemur doing

  • in my scheme of a perfectly balanced organization?

  • How was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful Upper-worlders?

  • And what was hidden down there, at the foot of that shaft?

  • I sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any rate, there was nothing

  • to fear, and that there I must descend for the solution of my difficulties.

  • And withal I was absolutely afraid to go!

  • As I hesitated, two of the beautiful Upper- world people came running in their amorous

  • sport across the daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging

  • flowers at her as he ran.

  • 'They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned pillar, peering down

  • the well.

  • Apparently it was considered bad form to remark these apertures; for when I pointed

  • to this one, and tried to frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still

  • more visibly distressed and turned away.

  • But they were interested by my matches, and I struck some to amuse them.

  • I tried them again about the well, and again I failed.

  • So presently I left them, meaning to go back to Weena, and see what I could get

  • from her.

  • But my mind was already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and

  • sliding to a new adjustment.

  • I had now a clue to the import of these wells, to the ventilating towers, to the

  • mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and

  • the fate of the Time Machine!

  • And very vaguely there came a suggestion towards the solution of the economic

  • problem that had puzzled me. 'Here was the new view.

  • Plainly, this second species of Man was subterranean.

  • There were three circumstances in particular which made me think that its

  • rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a long-continued underground habit.

  • In the first place, there was the bleached look common in most animals that live

  • largely in the dark--the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance.

  • Then, those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, are common features

  • of nocturnal things--witness the owl and the cat.

  • And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling

  • awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head while in

  • the light--all reinforced the theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.

  • 'Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and these tunnellings

  • were the habitat of the new race.

  • The presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, in

  • fact, except along the river valley--showed how universal were its ramifications.

  • What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in this artificial Underworld that such

  • work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done?

  • The notion was so plausible that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the how

  • of this splitting of the human species.

  • I dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory; though, for myself, I very soon

  • felt that it fell far short of the truth.

  • 'At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to

  • me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference

  • between the Capitalist and the Labourer, was the key to the whole position.

  • No doubt it will seem grotesque enough to you--and wildly incredible!--and yet even

  • now there are existing circumstances to point that way.

  • There is a tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental purposes of

  • civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway in London, for instance, there are

  • new electric railways, there are subways,

  • there are underground workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and

  • multiply.

  • Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till Industry had gradually lost

  • its birthright in the sky.

  • I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground

  • factories, spending a still-increasing amount of its time therein, till, in the

  • end--!

  • Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as

  • practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?

  • 'Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people--due, no doubt, to the increasing

  • refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude

  • violence of the poor--is already leading to

  • the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the

  • land.

  • About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against

  • intrusion.

  • And this same widening gulf--which is due to the length and expense of the higher

  • educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards

  • refined habits on the part of the rich--

  • will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage

  • which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social

  • stratification, less and less frequent.

  • So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort

  • and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to

  • the conditions of their labour.

  • Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it,

  • for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be

  • suffocated for arrears.

  • Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and,

  • in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted

  • to the conditions of underground life, and

  • as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.

  • As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed naturally

  • enough.

  • 'The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape in my

  • mind.

  • It had been no such triumph of moral education and general co-operation as I had

  • imagined.

  • Instead, I saw a real aristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a

  • logical conclusion the industrial system of to-day.

  • Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and

  • the fellow-man. This, I must warn you, was my theory at the

  • time.

  • I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books.

  • My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is the most plausible one.

  • But even on this supposition the balanced civilization that was at last attained must

  • have long since passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay.

  • The too-perfect security of the Upper- worlders had led them to a slow movement of

  • degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence.

  • That I could see clearly enough already.

  • What had happened to the Under-grounders I did not yet suspect; but from what I had

  • seen of the Morlocks--that, by the by, was the name by which these creatures were

  • called--I could imagine that the

  • modification of the human type was even far more profound than among the "Eloi," the

  • beautiful race that I already knew. 'Then came troublesome doubts.

  • Why had the Morlocks taken my Time Machine?

  • For I felt sure it was they who had taken it.

  • Why, too, if the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me?

  • And why were they so terribly afraid of the dark?

  • I proceeded, as I have said, to question Weena about this Under-world, but here

  • again I was disappointed.

  • At first she would not understand my questions, and presently she refused to

  • answer them. She shivered as though the topic was

  • unendurable.

  • And when I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she burst into tears.

  • They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw in that Golden Age.

  • When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and was only

  • concerned in banishing these signs of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes.

  • And very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands, while I solemnly burned a match.

  • >

  • CHAPTER VI

  • 'It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new-found

  • clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a peculiar shrinking from those

  • pallid bodies.

  • They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in

  • spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch.

  • Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi,

  • whose disgust of the Morlocks I now began to appreciate.

  • 'The next night I did not sleep well.

  • Probably my health was a little disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt.

  • Once or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite

  • reason.

  • I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the little people were

  • sleeping in the moonlight--that night Weena was among them--and feeling reassured by

  • their presence.

  • It occurred to me even then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass

  • through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these

  • unpleasant creatures from below, these

  • whitened Lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant.

  • And on both these days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable

  • duty.

  • I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating

  • these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery.

  • If only I had had a companion it would have been different.

  • But I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness of the well

  • appalled me.

  • I don't know if you will understand my feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my

  • back.

  • 'It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further and further

  • afield in my exploring expeditions.

  • Going to the south-westward towards the rising country that is now called Combe

  • Wood, I observed far off, in the direction of nineteenth-century Banstead, a vast

  • green structure, different in character from any I had hitherto seen.

  • It was larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade had

  • an Oriental look: the face of it having the lustre, as well as the pale-green tint, a

  • kind of bluish-green, of a certain type of Chinese porcelain.

  • This difference in aspect suggested a difference in use, and I was minded to push

  • on and explore.

  • But the day was growing late, and I had come upon the sight of the place after a

  • long and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over the adventure for the following

  • day, and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of little Weena.

  • But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the Palace of

  • Green Porcelain was a piece of self- deception, to enable me to shirk, by

  • another day, an experience I dreaded.

  • I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time, and started out in

  • the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium.

  • 'Little Weena ran with me.

  • She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and look

  • downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted.

  • "Good-bye, little Weena," I said, kissing her; and then putting her down, I began to

  • feel over the parapet for the climbing hooks.

  • Rather hastily, I may as well confess, for I feared my courage might leak away!

  • At first she watched me in amazement.

  • Then she gave a most piteous cry, and running to me, she began to pull at me with

  • her little hands. I think her opposition nerved me rather to

  • proceed.

  • I shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was in the throat

  • of the well. I saw her agonized face over the parapet,

  • and smiled to reassure her.

  • Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks to which I clung.

  • 'I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards.

  • The descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of

  • the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller and

  • lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent.

  • And not simply fatigued!

  • One of the bars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the

  • blackness beneath.

  • For a moment I hung by one hand, and after that experience I did not dare to rest

  • again.

  • Though my arms and back were presently acutely painful, I went on clambering down

  • the sheer descent with as quick a motion as possible.

  • Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in which a star was

  • visible, while little Weena's head showed as a round black projection.

  • The thudding sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive.

  • Everything save that little disk above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again

  • Weena had disappeared.

  • 'I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the

  • shaft again, and leave the Under-world alone.

  • But even while I turned this over in my mind I continued to descend.

  • At last, with intense relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a

  • slender loophole in the wall.

  • Swinging myself in, I found it was the aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in

  • which I could lie down and rest. It was not too soon.

  • My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I was trembling with the prolonged terror of

  • a fall. Besides this, the unbroken darkness had had

  • a distressing effect upon my eyes.

  • The air was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft.

  • 'I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching my

  • face.

  • Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and, hastily striking one, I saw

  • three stooping white creatures similar to the one I had seen above ground in the

  • ruin, hastily retreating before the light.

  • Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their eyes were

  • abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they

  • reflected the light in the same way.

  • I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to

  • have any fear of me apart from the light.

  • But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently,

  • vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the

  • strangest fashion.

  • 'I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different from that

  • of the Over-world people; so that I was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and

  • the thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind.

  • But I said to myself, "You are in for it now," and, feeling my way along the tunnel,

  • I found the noise of machinery grow louder.

  • Presently the walls fell away from me, and I came to a large open space, and striking

  • another match, saw that I had entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into

  • utter darkness beyond the range of my light.

  • The view I had of it was as much as one could see in the burning of a match.

  • 'Necessarily my memory is vague.

  • Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black

  • shadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare.

  • The place, by the by, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of

  • freshly shed blood was in the air.

  • Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal, laid with what

  • seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous!

  • Even at the time, I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish

  • the red joint I saw.

  • It was all very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the

  • obscene figures lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to come at me

  • again!

  • Then the match burned down, and stung my fingers, and fell, a wriggling red spot in

  • the blackness. 'I have thought since how particularly ill-

  • equipped I was for such an experience.

  • When I had started with the Time Machine, I had started with the absurd assumption that

  • the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their

  • appliances.

  • I had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke--at times I

  • missed tobacco frightfully--even without enough matches.

  • If only I had thought of a Kodak!

  • I could have flashed that glimpse of the Underworld in a second, and examined it at

  • leisure.

  • But, as it was, I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had

  • endowed me with--hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that still

  • remained to me.

  • 'I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark, and it was only

  • with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store of matches had run low.

  • It had never occurred to me until that moment that there was any need to economize

  • them, and I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom

  • fire was a novelty.

  • Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine,

  • lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant

  • odour.

  • I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me.

  • I felt the box of matches in my hand being gently disengaged, and other hands behind

  • me plucking at my clothing.

  • The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably unpleasant.

  • The sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing came home

  • to me very vividly in the darkness.

  • I shouted at them as loudly as I could. They started away, and then I could feel

  • them approaching me again. They clutched at me more boldly, whispering

  • odd sounds to each other.

  • I shivered violently, and shouted again-- rather discordantly.

  • This time they were not so seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing

  • noise as they came back at me.

  • I will confess I was horribly frightened. I determined to strike another match and

  • escape under the protection of its glare.

  • I did so, and eking out the flicker with a scrap of paper from my pocket, I made good

  • my retreat to the narrow tunnel.

  • But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and in the blackness I could

  • hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among leaves, and pattering like the rain, as

  • they hurried after me.

  • 'In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they

  • were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in

  • their dazzled faces.

  • You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked--those pale, chinless

  • faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!--as they stared in their blindness

  • and bewilderment.

  • But I did not stay to look, I promise you: I retreated again, and when my second match

  • had ended, I struck my third. It had almost burned through when I reached

  • the opening into the shaft.

  • I lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy.

  • Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and, as I did so, my feet were

  • grasped from behind, and I was violently tugged backward.

  • I lit my last match ... and it incontinently went out.

  • But I had my hand on the climbing bars now, and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself

  • from the clutches of the Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while

  • they stayed peering and blinking up at me:

  • all but one little wretch who followed me for some way, and well-nigh secured my boot

  • as a trophy. 'That climb seemed interminable to me.

  • With the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me.

  • I had the greatest difficulty in keeping my hold.

  • The last few yards was a frightful struggle against this faintness.

  • Several times my head swam, and I felt all the sensations of falling.

  • At last, however, I got over the well-mouth somehow, and staggered out of the ruin into

  • the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my face.

  • Even the soil smelt sweet and clean.

  • Then I remember Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of others among the

  • Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.

  • >

CHAPTER I

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