mile from
its present position. I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest perhaps
a mile and a half away, from which I could get a wider view of this
our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred
and One A.D. For that, I should explain, was the date the little dials
of my machine recorded.
`As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly
help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I found
the world--for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for instance,
was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of aluminium,
a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps, amidst which
were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants--nettles possibly--but
wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves, and incapable of stinging.
It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure, to what
end built I could not determine. It was here that I was destined, at
a later date, to have a very strange experience--the first intimation
of a still stranger discovery--but of that I will speak in its proper
place.
`Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested
for a while, I realized that there were no small houses to be seen.
Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had vanished.
Here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings, but the
house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features of our
own English landscape, had disappeared.
`"Communism," said I to myself.
`And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the half-dozen
little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash, I perceived
that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless visage,
and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem strange, perhaps,
that I had not noticed this before. But everything was so strange. Now,
I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and in all the differences
of texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other,
these people of the future were alike. And the children seemed to my
eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. I judged, then, that
the children of that time were extremely precocious, physically at least,
and I found afterwards abundant verification of my opinion.
`Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt
that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would
expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution
of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant
necessities of an age of physical force; where population is balanced
and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing
to the State; where violence comes but rarely and off-spring are secure,
there is less necessity--indeed there is no necessity--for an efficient
family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their
children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in
our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I must remind
you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate how
far it fell short of the reality.
`While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by
a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in
a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed
the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings towards
the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently miraculous,
I was presently left alone for the first time. With a strange sense
of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.
`There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize,
corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered in
soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the resemblance of griffins'
heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of our old world
under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and fair a view as
I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below the horizon and the
west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of purple and
crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the river lay
like a band of burnished steel. I have already spoken of the great palaces
dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins and some still
occupied. Here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste
garden of the earth, here and there came the sharp vertical line of
some cupola or obelisk. There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary
rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.
`So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had
seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation
was something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a half-truth--or
only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)
`It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The
ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first
time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which
we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence
enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on
feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life--the true
civilizing process that makes life more and more secure--had gone steadily
on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed
another. Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately
put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!
`After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still in
the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a little
department of the field of human disease, but even so, it spreads its
operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture
destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or
so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance
as they can. We improve our favourite plants and animals --and how few
they are--gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach,
now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient
breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague
and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too,
is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better
organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite
of the eddies. The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating;
things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature.
In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal
and vegetable me 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!
V
`As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full
moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light
in the north-east. The bright little figures ceased to move about below,
a noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the chill of the night.
I determined to descend and find where I could sleep.
`I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to the
figure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing distinct
as the light of the rising moon grew brighter. I could see the silver
birch against it. There was the tangle of rhododendron bushes, black
in the pale light, and there was the little lawn. I looked at the lawn
again. A queer doubt chilled my complacency. "No," said I
stoutly to myself, "that was not the lawn."
`But it WAS the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards
it. Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to me?
But you cannot. The Time Machine was gone!
`At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing
my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world. The bare
thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I could feel it grip
me at the throat and stop my breathing. In another moment I was in a
passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope.
Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost no time in stanching the
blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and
chin. All the time I ran I was saying to myself: "They have moved
it a little, pushed it under the bushes out of the way." Nevertheless,
I ran with all my might. All the time, with the certainty that sometimes
comes with excessive dread, I knew that such assurance was folly, knew
instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach. My breath
came with pain. I suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill
crest to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am
not a young man. I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in
leaving the machine, wasting good breath thereby. I cried aloud, and
none answered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit
world.
`When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a trace of
the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when I faced the empty
space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round it furiously, as
if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly,
with my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphinx, upon the
bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising
moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay.
`I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put
the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not felt assured of their
physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayed me: the
sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose intervention
my invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I felt assured: unless
some other age had produced its exact duplicate, the machine could not
have moved in time. The attachment of the levers--I will show you the
method later-- prevented any one from tampering with it in that way
when they were removed. It had moved, and was hid, only in space. But
then, where could it be?
`I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently
in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling
some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small deer. I
remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched
fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs.
Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, I went down to the great
building of stone. The big hall was dark, silent, and deserted. I slipped
on the uneven floor, and fell over one of the malachite tables, almost
breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty curtains,
of which I have told you.
`There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which,
perhaps, a score or so of the little people were sleeping. I have no
doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, coming suddenly
out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the splutter
and flare of a match. For they had forgotten about matches. "Where
is my Time Machine?" I began, bawling like an angry child, laying
hands upon them and shaking them up together. It must have been very
queer to them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorely frightened.
When I saw them standing round me, it came into my head that I was doing
as foolish a thing as it was possible for me to do under the circumstances,
in trying to revive the sensation of fear. For, reasoning from their
daylight behaviour, I thought that fear must be forgotten.
`Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the people
over in my course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again,
out under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their little feet
running and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all I did
as the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected nature
of my loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind--a
strange animal in an unknown world. I must have raved to and fro, screaming
and crying upon God and Fate. I have a memory of horrible fatigue, as
the long night of despair wore away; of looking in this impossible place
and that; of groping among moon-lit ruins and touching strange creatures
in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the ground near the sphinx
and weeping with absolute wretchedness. I had nothing left but misery.
Then I slept, and when I woke again it was full day, and a couple of
sparrows were hopping round me on the turf within reach of my arm.
`I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how I
had got there, and why I had such a profound sense of desertion and
despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With the plain, reasonable
daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in the face. I saw the
wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I could reason with myself. "Suppose
the worst?" I said. "Suppose the machine altogether lost--perhaps
destroyed? It behooves 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 sepulchre, for instance, I could see no signs of crematoria
nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me that, possibly,
there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere beyond the range
of my explorings. This, again, was a question I deliberately put to
myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely defeated upon the point.
The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a further remark, which
puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm among this people there
were none.
`I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic
civilization and a decadent humanity did not long endure. Yet I could
think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The several big palaces
I had explored were mere living places, great dining-halls and sleeping
apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind. Yet
these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need
renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex
specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things must be made. And the little
people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency. There were no shops,
no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They spent all their
time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a
half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see
how things were kept going.
`Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what, had
taken it into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. Why? For the
life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too, those flickering
pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt--how shall I put it? Suppose
you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in excellent
plain English, and interpolated therewith, others made up of words,
of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? Well, on the third day of
my visit, that was how the world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven
Hundred and One presented itself to me!
`That day, too, I made a friend--of a sort. It happened that, as I was
watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them
was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main current
ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer.
It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these
creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue
the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes.
When I realized this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading
in at a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her safe to
land. A little rubbing of the limbs soon brought her round, and I had
the satisfaction of seeing she was all right before I left her. I had
got to such a low estimate of her kind that I did not expect any gratitude
from her. In that, however, I was wrong.
`This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little woman,
as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre from an exploration,
and she received me with cries of delight and presented me with a big
garland of flowers-- evidently made for me and me alone. The thing took
my imagination. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate. At any rate
I did my best to display my appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated
together in a little stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly
of smiles. The creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's
might have done. We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands.
I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name was
Weena, which, though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate
enough. That was the beginning of a queer friendship which lasted a
week, and ended--as I will tell you!
`She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She
tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and about
it went to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last, exhausted
and calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems of the world
had to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come into the future
to carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I left her
was very great, her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic,
and I think, altogether, I had as much trouble as comfort from her devotion.
Nevertheless she was, somehow, a very great comfort. I thought it was
mere childish affection that made her cling to me. Until it was too
late, I did not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her when I left
her. Nor until it was too late did I clearly understand what she was
to me. For, by merely seeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile
way that she cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave
my return to the neighbourhood of the White Sphinx almost the feeling
of coming home; and I would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold
so soon as I came over the hill.
`It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left the
world. She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest
confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening
grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she dreaded the
dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her was the
one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set
me thinking and observing. I discovered then, among other things, that
these little people gathered into the great houses after dark, and slept
in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put them into a
tumult of apprehension. I never found one out of doors, or one sleeping
alone within doors, after dark. Yet I was still such a blockhead that
I missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of Weena's distress I
insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes.
`It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me triumphed,
and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, including the last night
of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm. But my story slips
away from me as I speak of her. It must have been the night before her
rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I had been restless, dreaming
most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that sea anemones were feeling
over my face with their soft palps. I woke with a start, and with an
odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed out of the chamber.
I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless and uncomfortable.
It was that dim grey hour when things are just creeping out of darkness,
when everything is colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. I got up,
and went down into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in
front of the palace. I thought I would make a virtue of necessity, and
see the sunrise.
`The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor
of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky black,
the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. And up the
hill I thought I could see ghosts. There several times, as I scanned
the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white,
ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near
the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body. They moved
hastily. I did not see what became of them. It seemed that they vanished
among the bushes. The dawn was still indistinct, you must understand.
I was feeling that chill, uncertain, early-morning feeling you may have
known. I doubted my eyes.
`As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on
and its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned
the view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were
mere creatures of the half light. "They must have been ghosts,"
I said; "I wonder whence they dated." For a queer notion of
Grant Allen's came into my head, and amused me. If each generation die
and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded
with them. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight
Hundred Thousand Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four
at once. But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these
figures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them out of my head.
I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had
startled in my first passionate search for the Time Machine. But Weena
was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined
to take far deadlier possession of my mind.
`I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of
this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was
hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that the
sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people, unfamiliar
with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin, forget that the
planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. As
these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze with renewed energy; and
it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate. Whatever the
reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know
it.
`Well, one very hot morning--my fourth, I think--as I was seeking shelter
from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where
I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing: Clambering among
these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side
windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the
brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered
it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour
swim before me. Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous
by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me out of the
darkness.
`The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my
hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was afraid
to turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity
appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I remembered that strange
terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced a
step and spoke. I will admit that my voice was harsh and ill-controlled.
I put out my hand and touched something soft. At once the eyes darted
sideways, and something white ran past me. I turned with my heart in
my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its head held down
in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me. It
blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment
was hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.
`My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a dull
white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen
hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it went too fast
for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all-fours,
or only with its forearms held very low. After an instant's pause I
followed it into the second heap of ruins. I could not find it at first;
but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I came upon one of those
round well-like openings of which I have told you, half closed by a
fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could this Thing have vanished
down the shaft? I lit a match, and, looking down, I saw a small, white,
moving creature, with large bright eyes which regarded me steadfastly
as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like a human spider!
It was clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first time a
number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the
shaft. Then the light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going
out as it dropped, and when I had lit another the little monster had
disappeared.
`I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for
some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I
had seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man
had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct
animals: that my graceful children of the Upper-world were not the sole
descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal
Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.
`I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an underground
ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. And what, I wondered,
was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced organization?
How was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful Upper-worlders?
And what was hidden down there, at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon
the edge of the well telling myself that, at any rate, there was nothing
to fear, and that there I must descend for the solution of my difficulties.
And withal I was absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the
beautiful Upper-world people came running in their amorous sport across
the daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging flowers
at her as he ran.
`They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned pillar,
peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad form to remark
these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried to frame
a question about it in their tongue, they were still more visibly distressed
and turned away. But they were interested by my matches, and I struck
some to amuse them. I tried them again about the well, and again I failed.
So presently I left them, meaning to go back to Weena, and see what
I could get from her. But my mind was already in revolution; my guesses
and impressions were slipping and sliding to a new adjustment. I had
now a clue to the import of these wells, to the ventilating towers,
to the mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a hint at the meaning
of the bronze gates and the fate of the Time Machine! And very vaguely
there came a suggestion towards the solution of the economic problem
that had puzzled me.
`Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was subterranean.
There were three circumstances in particular which made me think that
its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a long-continued
underground habit. In the first place, there was the bleached look common
in most animals that live largely in the dark--the white fish of the
Kentucky caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes, with that capacity
for reflecting light, are common features of nocturnal things-- witness
the owl and the cat. And last of all, that evident confusion in the
sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow,
and that peculiar carriage of the head while in the light--all reinforced
the theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.
`Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and
these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The presence of
ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, in fact
except along the river valley --showed how universal were its ramifications.
What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in this artificial Underworld
that such work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race
was done? The notion was so plausible that I at once accepted it, and
went on to assume the how of this splitting of the human species. I
dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory; though, for myself,
I very soon felt that it fell far short of the truth.
`At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear
as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary
and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer, was the
key to the whole position. No doubt it will seem grotesque enough to
you--and wildly incredible!--and yet even now there are existing circumstances
to point that way. There is a tendency to utilize underground space
for the less ornamental purposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan
Railway in London, for instance, there are new electric railways, there
are subways, there are underground workrooms and restaurants, and they
increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased
till Industry had gradually lost its birthright in the sky. I mean that
it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground
factories, spending a still-increasing amount of its time therein, till,
in the end--! Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial
conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of
the earth?
`Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people--due, no doubt, to the
increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between
them and the rude violence of the poor-- is already leading to the closing,
in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land.
About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut
in against intrusion. And this same widening gulf--which is due to the
length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased
facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the part of
the rich--will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion
by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species
along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in
the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and
comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting
continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were
there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it,
for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would
starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted
as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance
being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions
of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people
were to theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated
pallor followed naturally enough.
`The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape
in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education and general
co-operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy, armed
with a perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the industrial
system of to-day. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature,
but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man. This, I must warn you,
was my theory at the time. I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern
of the Utopian books. My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still
think it is the most plausible one. But even on this supposition the
balanced civilization that was at last attained must have long since
passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay. The too-perfect
security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration,
to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence. That I could
see clearly enough already. What had happened to the Under-grounders
I did not yet suspect; but from what I had seen of the Morlocks--that,
by the by, was the name by which these creatures were called--I could
imagine that the modification of the human type was even far more profound
than among the "Eloi," the beautiful race that I already knew.
`Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time Machine?
For I felt sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too, if the Eloi
were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And why were
they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I have said, to
question Weena about this Under-world, but here again I was disappointed.
At first she would not understand my questions, and presently she refused
to answer them. She shivered as though the topic was unendurable. And
when I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she burst into tears.
They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw in that Golden Age.
When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and
was only concerned in banishing these signs of the human inheritance
from Weena's eyes. And very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands,
while I solemnly burned a match.
VI
`It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up
the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a peculiar
shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the half-bleached
colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological
museum. And they were filthily cold to the touch. Probably my shrinking
was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose disgust
of the Morlocks I now began to appreciate.
`The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little
disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once or twice
I had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite
reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the
little people were sleeping in the moonlight--that night Weena was among
them--and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even
then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its
last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these
unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin
that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And on both these
days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty.
I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly
penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery.
If only I had had a companion it would have been different. But I was
so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness of the
well appalled me. I don't know if you will understand my feeling, but
I never felt quite safe at my back.
`It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further
and further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the south-westward
towards the rising country that is now called Combe Wood, I observed
far off, in the direction of nineteenth-century Banstead, a vast green
structure, different in character from any I had hitherto seen. It was
larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade
had an Oriental look: the face of it having the lustre, as well as the
pale-green tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a certain type of Chinese
porcelain. This difference in aspect suggested a difference in use,
and I was minded to push on and explore. But the day was growing late,
and I had come upon the sight of the place after a long and tiring circuit;
so I resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day, and
I returned to the welcome and the caresses of little Weena. But next
morning I perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the Palace
of Green Porcelain was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to shirk,
by another day, an experience I dreaded. I resolved I would make the
descent without further waste of time, and started out in the early
morning towards a well near the ruins of granite and aluminium.
`Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when
she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely
disconcerted. "Good-bye, Little Weena," I said, kissing her;
and then putting her down, I began to feel over the parapet for the
climbing hooks. Rather hastily, I may as well confess, for I feared
my courage might leak away! At first she watched me in amazement. Then
she gave a most piteous cry, and running to me, she began to pull at
me with her little hands. I think her opposition nerved me rather to
proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment
I was in the throat of the well. I saw her agonized face over the parapet,
and smiled to reassure her. Then I had to look down at the unstable
hooks to which I clung.
`I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent
was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of
the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller
and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the
descent. And not simply fatigued! One of the bars bent suddenly under
my weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath. For a
moment I hung by one hand, and after that experience I did not dare
to rest again. Though my arms and back were presently acutely painful,
I went on clambering down the sheer descent with as quick a motion as
possible. Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in
which a star was visible, while little Weena's head showed as a round
black projection. The thudding sound of a machine below grew louder
and more oppressive. Everything save that little disk above was profoundly
dark, and when I looked up again Weena had disappeared.
`I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go
up the shaft again, and leave the Under-world alone. But even while
I turned this over in my mind I continued to descend. At last, with
intense relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a
slender loophole in the wall. Swinging myself in, I found it was the
aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and
rest. It was not too soon. My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I
was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this, the
unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. The air
was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft.
`I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching
my face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and, hastily
striking one, I saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one
I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light.
Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their
eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of
the abysmal fishes, and they reflected the light in the same way. I
have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity, and they
did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But, so soon
as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing
into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in
the strangest fashion.
`I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different
from that of the Over-world people; so that I was needs left to my own
unaided efforts, and the thought of flight before exploration was even
then in my mind. But I said to myself, "You are in for it now,"
and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the noise of machinery
grow louder. Presently the walls fell away from me, and I came to a
large open space, and striking another match, saw that I had entered
a vast arched cavern, which stretched into utter darkness beyond the
range of my light. The view I had of it was as much as one could see
in the burning of a match.
`Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose
out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim spectral
Morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place, by the by, was very stuffy
and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in the
air. Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal,
laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous!
Even at the time, I remember wondering what large animal could have
survived to furnish the red joint I saw. It was all very indistinct:
the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures lurking
in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to come at me again!
Then the match burned down, and stung my fingers, and fell, a wriggling
red spot in the blackness.
`I have thought since how particularly ill-equipped I was for such an
experience. When I had started with the Time Machine, I had started
with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly
be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I had come
without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke--at times
I missed tobacco frightfully--even without enough matches. If only I
had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Underworld
in a second, and examined it at leisure. But, as it was, I stood there
with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me with--hands,
feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that still remained
to me.
`I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark,
and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store
of matches had run low. It had never occurred to me until that moment
that there was any need to economize them, and I had wasted almost half
the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire was a novelty.
Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand
touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible
of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard the breathing of a
crowd of those dreadful little beings about me. I felt the box of matches
in my hand being gently disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking
at my clothing. The sense of these unseen creatures examining me was
indescribably unpleasant. The sudden realization of my ignorance of
their ways of thinking and doing came home to me very vividly in the
darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could. They started away,
and then I could feel them approaching me again. They clutched at me
more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I shivered violently,
and shouted again rather discordantly. This time they were not so seriously
alarmed, and they made a queer laughing noise as they came back at me.
I will confess I was horribly frightened. I determined to strike another
match and escape under the protection of its glare. I did so, and eking
out the flicker with a scrap of paper from my pocket, I made good my
retreat to the narrow tunnel. But I had scarce entered this when my
light was blown out and in the blackness I could hear the Morlocks rustling
like wind among leaves, and pattering like the rain, as they hurried
after me.
`In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking
that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved
it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman
they looked--those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey
eyes!--as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment. But I did
not stay to look, I promise you: I retreated again, and when my second
match had ended, I struck my third. It had almost burned through when
I reached the opening into the shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the
throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then I felt sideways for
the projecting hooks, and, as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind,
and I was violently tugged backward. I lit my last match . . . and it
incontinently went out. But I had my hand on the climbing bars now,
and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself from the clutches of the
Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while they stayed
peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followed
me for some way, and wellnigh secured my boot as a trophy.
`That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or thirty
feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty
in keeping my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle against
this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I felt all the sensations
of falling. At last, however, I got over the well-mouth somehow, and
staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my
face. Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember Weena kissing
my hands and ears, and the voices of others among the Eloi. Then, for
a time, I was insensible.
VII
`Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto, except
during my night's anguish at the loss of the Time Machine, I had felt
a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was staggered by
these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself impeded
by the childish simplicity of the little people, and by some unknown
forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but there was an
altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks--a something
inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I had felt
as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the
pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose
enemy would come upon him soon.
`The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new
moon. Weena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible
remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now such a very difficult
problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights might mean. The moon was
on the wane: each night there was a longer interval of darkness. And
I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear
of the little Upper-world people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what
foul villainy it might be that the Morlocks did under the new moon.
I felt pretty sure now that my second hypothesis was all wrong. The
Upper-world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and
the Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed
away. The two species that had resulted from the evolution of man were
sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship.
The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful
futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance: since the Morlocks,
subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the
daylit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I
inferred, and maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps through
the survival of an old habit of service. They did it as a standing horse
paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport: because
ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the organism. But,
clearly, the old order was already in part reversed. The Nemesis of
the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations
ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine.
And now that brother was coming back changed! Already the Eloi had begun
to learn one old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted with Fear.
And suddenly there came into my head the memory of the meat I had seen
in the Under-world. It seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred
up as it were by the current of my meditations, but coming in almost
like a question from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I had
a vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was
at the time.
`Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their
mysterious Fear, I was differently constituted. I came out of this age
of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not paralyse
and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend myself. Without
further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness where
I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this strange
world with some of that confidence I had lost in realizing to what creatures
night by night I lay exposed. I felt I could never sleep again until
my bed was secure from them. I shuddered with horror to think how they
must already have examined me.
`I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but
found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All
the buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous
climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then the
tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished gleam
of its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening, taking Weena
like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the hills towards the south-west.
The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or eight miles, but it must
have been nearer eighteen. I had first seen the place on a moist afternoon
when distances are deceptively diminished. In addition, the heel of
one of my shoes was loose, and a nail was working through the sole--they
were comfortable old shoes I wore about indoors--so that I was lame.
And it was already long past sunset when I came in sight of the palace,
silhouetted black against the pale yellow of the sky.
`Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after
a while she desired me to let her down, and ran along by the side of
me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowers to stick
in my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last
she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral
decoration. At least she utilized them for that purpose. And that reminds
me! In changing my jacket I found . . .'
The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently
placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon
the little table. Then he resumed his narrative.
`As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the
hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to return
to the house of grey stone. But I pointed out
Continua
>>>>>
|