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H.G. Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
Chapter 2
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.
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