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THE TIME MACHINE
H. G. Wells
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 runs 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 movement. 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 fire-place. 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 traveling 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.
THE TIME MACHINE
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 tonight. 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.
THE TIME MACHINE
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 bands 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
hailstones. 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.
THE TIME 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
checkered 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 colored 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 these 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 so 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 watchful 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
crumbled 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 favorite 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!
THE TIME MACHINE
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 northeast. 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 moonlit 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 friends--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 every where, 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, apelike 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 apelike 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 knew 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 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 Under-world 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 today. 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.
THE TIME MACHINE
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
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