The Time
Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding
a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his
usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly,
and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver
caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs,
being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to
be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when
thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put
it to us in this way--marking the points with a lean forefinger--as
we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as
we thought it:) and his fecundity.
`You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two
ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance,
they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.'
`Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?' said
Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.
`I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground
for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of
course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness NIL, has no real
existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These
things are mere abstractions.'
`That is all right,' said the Psychologist.
`Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
real existence.'
`There I object,' said Filby. `Of course a solid body may exist. All
real things--'
`So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an INSTANTANEOUS cube
exist?'
`Don't follow you,' said Filby.
`Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?'
Filby became pensive. `Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, `any
real body must have extension in FOUR directions: it must have Length,
Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration. But through a natural infirmity of
the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook
this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the
three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency
to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and
the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently
in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our
lives.'
`That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his
cigar over the lamp; `that . . . very clear indeed.'
`Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,'
continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness.
`Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people
who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is
only another way of looking at Time. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
TIME AND ANY OF THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF SPACE EXCEPT THAT OUR CONSCIOUSNESS
MOVES ALONG IT. But some foolish people have got hold of the wrong side
of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say about this Fourth
Dimension?'
`_I_ have not,' said the Provincial Mayor.
`It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken
of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and
Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each
at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been
asking why THREE dimensions particularly--why not another direction
at right angles to the other three?--and have even tried to construct
a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this
to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know
how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent
a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that
by models of thee 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 fireplace. Filby sat behind
him, looking over his shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor
watched him in profile from the right, the Psychologist from the left.
The Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were all on the
alert. It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however subtly
conceived and however adroitly done, could have been played upon us
under these conditions.
The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. `Well?'
said the Psychologist.
`This little affair,' said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon
the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, `is only
a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time. You will
notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd twinkling
appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way unreal.' He
pointed to the part with his finger. `Also, here is one little white
lever, and here is another.'
The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing. `It's
beautifully made,' he said.
`It took two years to make,' retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when
we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: `Now I want
you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends
the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion.
This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently I am
going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish,
pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the thing.
Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery.
I don't want to waste this model, and then be told I'm a quack.'
There was a minute's pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to
speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth
his finger towards the lever. `No,' he said suddenly. `Lend me your
hand.' And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual's hand
in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it was the
Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its interminable
voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain there was
no trickery. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped.
One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine
suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second
perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was
gone--vanished! Save for the lamp the table was bare.
Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.
The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under
the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully. `Well?' he
said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then, getting up, he
went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began
to fill his pipe.
We stared at each other. `Look here,' said the Medical Man, `are you
in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine has
travelled into time?'
`Certainly,' said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the
fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist's
face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped himself
to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.) `What is more, I have a big
machine nearly finished in there'--he indicated the laboratory--`and
when that is put together I mean to have a journey on my own account.'
`You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?' said
Filby.
`Into the future or the past--I don't, for certain, know which.'
After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. `It must have
gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,' he said.
`Why?' said the Time Traveller.
`Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled
into the future it would still be here all this time, since it must
have travelled through this time.'
`But,' I said, `If it travelled into the past it would have been visible
when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we were here;
and the Thursday before that; and so forth!'
`Serious objections,' remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of
impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.
`Not a bit,' said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: `You
think. You can explain that. It's presentation below the threshold,
you know, diluted presentation.'
`Of course,' said the Psychologist, and reassured us. `That's a simple
point of psychology. I should have thought of it. It's plain enough,
and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate
this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or
a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling through time fifty
times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute
while we get through a second, the impression it creates will of course
be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it would make if it were
not travelling in time. That's plain enough.' He passed his hand through
the space in which the machine had been. `You see?' he said, laughing.
We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the Time
Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.
`It sounds plausible enough to-night,' said the Medical Man; 'but wait
until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.'
`Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time Traveller.
And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the
long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly the flickering
light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of the shadows,
how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the
laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which
we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts
of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal.
The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay
unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took
one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.
`Look here,' said the Medical Man, `are you perfectly serious? Or is
this a trick--like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?'
`Upon that machine,' said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft,
`I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in
my life.'
None of us quite knew how to take it.
I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he winked
at me solemnly.
II
I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine.
The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever
to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always
suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his
lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter
in the Time Traveller's words, we should have shown HIM far less scepticism.
For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand
Filby. But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his
elements, and we distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame
of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to
do things too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never
felt quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting
their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery
with egg-shell china. So I don't think any of us said very much about
time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and the next,
though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its
plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities
of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested. For my own part,
I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. That I remember
discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean.
He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable
stress on the blowing out of the candle. But how the trick was done
he could not explain.
The next Thursday I went again to Richmond--I suppose I was one of the
Time Traveller's most constant guests--and, arriving late, found four
or five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical Man was
standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his watch
in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller, and--`It's half-past
seven now,' said the Medical Man. `I suppose we'd better have dinner?'
`Where's----?' said I, naming our host.
`You've just come? It's rather odd. He's unavoidably detained. He asks
me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he's not back. Says
he'll explain when he comes.'
`It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,' said the Editor of a well-known
daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.
The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who
had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the Editor
aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another--a quiet, shy man
with a beard--whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my observation
went, never opened his mouth all the evening. There was some speculation
at the dinner-table about the Time Traveller's absence, and I suggested
time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that explained
to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden account of the `ingenious
paradox and trick' we had witnessed that day week. He was in the midst
of his exposition when the door from the corridor opened slowly and
without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it first. `Hallo!' I said.
`At last!' And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before
us. I gave a cry of surprise. `Good heavens! man, what's the matter?'
cried the Medical Man, who saw him next. And the whole tableful turned
towards the door.
He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared
with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to
me greyer--either with dust and dirt or because its colour had actually
faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it--a
cut half healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense
suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been
dazzled by the light. Then he came into the room. He walked with just
such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps. We stared at him in silence,
expecting him to speak.
He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion
towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and pushed
it towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he
looked round the table, and the ghost of his old smile flickered across
his face. `What on earth have you been up to, man?' said the Doctor.
The Time Traveller did not seem to hear. `Don't let me disturb you,'
he said, with a certain faltering articulation. `I'm all right.' He
stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off at a draught.
`That's good,' he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came
into his cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces with a certain
dull approval, and then went round the warm and comfortable room. Then
he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words. `I'm
going to wash and dress, and then I'll come down and explain things.
. . Save me some of that mutton. I'm starving for a bit of meat.'
He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he
was all right. The Editor began a question. `Tell you presently,' said
the Time Traveller. `I'm--funny! Be all right in a minute.'
He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again
I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall,
and standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had nothing
on them but a pair of tattered blood-stained socks. Then the door closed
upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he detested
any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-gathering.
Then, 'Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,' I heard the Editor
say, thinking (after his wont) in headlines. And this brought my attention
back to the bright dinner-table.
`What's the game?' said the Journalist. `Has he been doing the Amateur
Cadger? I don't follow.' I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read
my own interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time Traveller limping
painfully upstairs. I don't think any one else had noticed his lameness.
The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man,
who rang the bell--the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting
at dinner--for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his knife and
fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The dinner was
resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps
of wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. `Does
our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his
Nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired. `I feel assured it's this business
of the Time Machine,' I said, and took up the Psychologist's account
of our previous meeting. The new guests were frankly incredulous. The
Editor raised objections. `What WAS this time travelling? A man couldn't
cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?' And then,
as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature. Hadn't they
any clothes-brushes in the Future? The Journalist too, would not believe
at any price, and joined the Editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule
on the whole thing. They were both the new kind of journalist--very
joyous, irreverent young men. `Our Special Correspondent in the Day
after To-morrow reports,' the Journalist was saying--or rather shouting--when
the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes,
and nothing save his haggard look remained of the change that had startled
me.
`I say,' said the Editor hilariously, `these chaps here say you have
been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about little
Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?'
The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a word.
He smiled quietly, in his old way. `Where's my mutton?' he said. `What
a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!'
`Story!' cried the Editor.
`Story be damned!' said the Time Traveller. `I want something to eat.
I won't say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries. Thanks.
And the salt.'
`One word,' said I. `Have you been time travelling?'
`Yes,' said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his head.
`I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,' said the Editor. The
Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang it with
his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his
face, started convulsively, and poured him wine. The rest of the dinner
was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden questions kept on rising
to my lips, and I dare say it was the same with the others. The Journalist
tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter.
The Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed
the appetite of a tramp. The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched
the Time Traveller through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even
more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination
out of sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller pushed his plate
away, and looked round us. `I suppose I must apologize,' he said. `I
was simply starving. I've had a most amazing time.' He reached out his
hand for a cigar, and cut the end. `But come into the smoking-room.
It's too long a story to tell over greasy plates.' And ringing the bell
in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room.
`You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?' he said
to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new guests.
`But the thing's a mere paradox,' said the Editor.
`I can't argue to-night. I don't mind telling you the story, but I can't
argue. I will,' he went on, `tell you the story of what has happened
to me, if you like, but you must refrain from interruptions. I want
to tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like lying. So be it! It's
true--every word of it, all the same. I was in my laboratory at four
o'clock, and since then . . . I've lived eight days . . . such days
as no human being ever lived before! I'm nearly worn out, but I shan't
sleep till I've told this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed.
But no interruptions! Is it agreed?'
`Agreed,' said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed `Agreed.' And with
that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat
back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he
got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only too much keenness
the inadequacy of pen and ink --and, above all, my own inadequacy--to
express its quality. You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but
you cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle
of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot
know how his expression followed the turns of his story! Most of us
hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the smoking-room had not
been lighted, and only the face of the Journalist and the legs of the
Silent Man from the knees downward were illuminated. At first we glanced
now and again at each other. After a time we ceased to do that, and
looked only at the Time Traveller's face.
III
`I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine,
and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the workshop.
There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the ivory bars
is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it's sound enough.
I expected to finish it on Friday, but on Friday, when the putting together
was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one
inch too short, and this I had to get remade; so that the thing was
not complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to-day that the
first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap, tried
all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and
sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to
his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt
then. I took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in
the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed
to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round,
I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a
moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the
clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so
past ten; now it was nearly half-past three!
`I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both
hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark.
Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards
the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the
place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket.
I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like
the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. The
laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. To-morrow
night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and
faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb
confusedness descended on my mind.
`I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling.
They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that
one has upon a switchback--of a helpless headlong motion! I felt the
same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I put on pace,
night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. The dim suggestion
of the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me, and I saw the
sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every
minute marking a day. I supposed the laboratory had been destroyed and
I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression of scaffolding,
but I was already going too fast to be conscious of any moving things.
The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling
succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye.
Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly
through her quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the
circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the
palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness; the
sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous color
like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire,
a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and
I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle
flickering in the blue.
`The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hill-side upon
which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me grey and
dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown,
now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge
buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole surface
of the earth seemed changed--melting and flowing under my eyes. The
little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster
and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and down,
from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that consequently
my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the white snow
flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright,
brief green of spring.
`The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They
merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked indeed
a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to account.
But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind of madness
growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I scarce thought
of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. But
presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind--a certain
curiosity and therewith a certain dread--until at last they took complete
possession of me. What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful
advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear
when I came to look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and
fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising
about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet,
as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up
the hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. Even
through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so
my mind came round to the business of stopping,
`The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance
in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled
at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; I was, so to
speak, attenuated--was slipping like a vapour through the interstices
of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming
of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant
bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle
that a profound chemical reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion
--would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible
dimensions--into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again
and again while I was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully
accepted it as an unavoidable risk-- one of the risks a man has got
to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same
cheerful light. The fact is that insensibly, the absolute strangeness
of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above
all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve.
I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance
I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over
the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was
flung headlong through the air.
`There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been
stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was
sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still
seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears
was gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn
in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their
mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating
of the hail-stones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over
the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was
wet to the skin. "Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man
who has travelled innumerable years to see you."
`Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and looked
round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white stone,
loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour.
But all else of the world was invisible.
`My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew
thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very large,
for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble,
in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being
carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover.
The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris.
It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to
watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was
greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of
disease. I stood looking at it for a little space--half a minute, perhaps,
or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove
before it denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment
and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky
was lightening with the promise of the Sun.
`I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity
of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy
curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men?
What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval
the race had lost its manliness and had developed into something inhuman,
unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world
savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common
likeness--a foul creature to be incontinently slain.
`Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate parapets
and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping in upon me
through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned
frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As
I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey
downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of
a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint
brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The great buildings
about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm,
and picked out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their
courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may
feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop.
My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and
again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under
my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One
hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily
in attitude to mount again.
`But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I
looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote
future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house,
I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me,
and their faces were directed towards me.
`Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the
White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of these
emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which
I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature--perhaps four feet
high--clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt.
Sandals or buskins--I could not clearly distinguish which--were on his
feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing
that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was.
`He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably
frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive--that
hectic beauty of which we used to hear so much. At the sight of him
I suddenly regained confidence. I took my hands from the machine.
IV
`In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile
thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my
eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at
once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke
to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.
`There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight
or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them addressed
me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh
and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears, shook
it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand.
Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders.
They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in this at all
alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty little people
that inspired confidence--a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike
ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging
the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins. But I made a sudden motion
to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling at the Time
Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger
I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine
I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and put these
in my pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way
of communication.
`And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further
peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness. Their hair,
which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek;
there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears
were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather
thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large
and mild; and--this may seem egotism on my part--I fancied even that
there was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.
`As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round
me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began
the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then
hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the sun. At
once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white followed
my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.
`For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was
plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these
creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see I
had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and
Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art,
everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed
him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children--
asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! It
let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their clothes, their frail
light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of disappointment rushed across
my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain.
`I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering
of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and
bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful
flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was
received with melodious applause; and presently they were all running
to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I
was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like
can scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless years
of culture had created. Then someone suggested that their plaything
should be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the
sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with
a smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone.
As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly
grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment,
to my mind.
`The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions.
I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of little people,
and with the big open portals that yawned before me shadowy and mysterious.
My general impression of the world I saw over their heads was a tangled
waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long neglected and yet weedless
garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring
a foot perhaps across the spread of the waxen petals. They grew scattered,
as if wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine
them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the
turf among the rhododendrons.
`The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not
observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions
of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me
that they were very badly broken and weather- worn. Several more brightly
clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in
dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded
with flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-colored
robes and shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of laughter and
laughing speech.
`The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with
brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with
coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The
floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not
plates nor slabs--blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the
going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along
the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable
tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised perhaps a foot from the
floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognized as a kind
of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they were
strange.
`Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon these
my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise. With
a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with their
hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round openings
in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to follow their example,
for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hall at my
leisure.
`And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look.
The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern,
were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower
end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the corner of the
marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless, the general effect
was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of
hundred people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near
to me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their little
eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same
soft and yet strong, silky material.
`Fruit, by the by, was all their diet. These people of the remote future
were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of some
carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found afterwards
that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the Ichthyosaurus into
extinction. But the fruits were very delightful; one, in particular,
that seemed to be in season all the time I was there--a floury thing
in a three-sided husk --was especially good, and I made it my staple.
At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by the strange
flowers I saw, but later I began to perceive their import.
`However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future
now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make
a resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of mine. Clearly
that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a convenient thing
to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began a series of interrogative
sounds and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty in conveying
my meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable
laughter, but presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp
my intention and repeated a name. They had to chatter and explain the
business at great length to each other, and my first attempts to make
the exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immense amount
of amusement. However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and
persisted, and presently I had a score of noun substantives at least
at my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the
verb "to eat." But it was slow work, and the little people
soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations, so I determined,
rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons in little doses
when they felt inclined. And very little doses I found they were before
long, for I never met people more indolent or more easily fatigued.
`A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was
their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of astonishment,
like children, but like children they would soon stop examining me and
wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my conversational beginnings
ended, I noted for the first time that almost all those who had surrounded
me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how speedily I came to disregard
these little people. I went out through the portal into the sunlit world
again as soon as my hunger was satisfied. I was continually meeting
more of these men of the future, who would follow me a little distance,
chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a
friendly way, leave me again to my own devices.
`The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great
hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun. At
first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely different
from the world I had known--even the flowers. The big building I had
left was situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but the Thames
had shifted perhaps a
Continua
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