’So I came back. For a
long time I must have been insensible upon the machine.
The blinking succession of the days and nights was
resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue.
I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating
contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands
spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again
the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent
humanity. These, too, changed and passed, and
others came. Presently, when the million dial
was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognize
our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands
hand ran back to the starting-point, the night and
day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls
of the laboratory came round me. Very gently,
now, I slowed the mechanism down.
’I saw one little thing that
seemed odd to me. I think I have told you that
when I set out, before my velocity became very high,
Mrs. Watchett had walked across the room, travelling,
as it seemed to me, like a rocket. As I returned,
I passed again across that minute when she traversed
the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared
to be the exact inversion of her previous ones.
The door at the lower end opened, and she glided quietly
up the laboratory, back foremost, and disappeared
behind the door by which she had previously entered.
Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment;
but he passed like a flash.
’Then I stopped the machine,
and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory,
my tools, my appliances just as I had left them.
I got off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon
my bench. For several minutes I trembled violently.
Then I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop
again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept
there, and the whole thing have been a dream.
’And yet, not exactly!
The thing had started from the south-east corner of
the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the
north-west, against the wall where you saw it.
That gives you the exact distance from my little lawn
to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, into which the
Morlocks had carried my machine.
’For a time my brain went stagnant.
Presently I got up and came through the passage here,
limping, because my heel was still painful, and feeling
sorely begrimed. I saw the Pall Mall Gazette
on the table by the door. I found the date was
indeed to-day, and looking at the timepiece, saw the
hour was almost eight o’clock. I heard
your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated I
felt so sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome
meat, and opened the door on you. You know the
rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am telling
you the story.
‘I know,’ he said, after
a pause, ’that all this will be absolutely incredible
to you. To me the one incredible thing is that
I am here to-night in this old familiar room looking
into your friendly faces and telling you these strange
adventures.’
He looked at the Medical Man.
’No. I cannot expect you to believe it.
Take it as a lie or a prophecy. Say
I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have
been speculating upon the destinies of our race until
I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion
of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its
interest. And taking it as a story, what do you
think of it?’
He took up his pipe, and began, in
his old accustomed manner, to tap with it nervously
upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary
stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes
to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes off
the Time Traveller’s face, and looked round
at his audience. They were in the dark, and little
spots of colour swam before them. The Medical
Man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host.
The Editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar the
sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch.
The others, as far as I remember, were motionless.
The Editor stood up with a sigh.
’What a pity it is you’re not a writer
of stories!’ he said, putting his hand on the
Time Traveller’s shoulder.
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘Well ’
‘I thought not.’
The Time Traveller turned to us.
‘Where are the matches?’ he said.
He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. ’To
tell you the truth ... I hardly believe it myself....
And yet...’
His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon
the withered white flowers upon the little table.
Then he turned over the hand holding his pipe, and
I saw he was looking at some half-healed scars on his
knuckles.
The Medical Man rose, came to the
lamp, and examined the flowers. ‘The gynaeceum’s
odd,’ he said. The Psychologist leant forward
to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.
‘I’m hanged if it isn’t
a quarter to one,’ said the Journalist.
‘How shall we get home?’
‘Plenty of cabs at the station,’
said the Psychologist.
‘It’s a curious thing,’
said the Medical Man; ’but I certainly don’t
know the natural order of these flowers. May I
have them?’
The Time Traveller hesitated.
Then suddenly: ‘Certainly not.’
‘Where did you really get them?’ said
the Medical Man.
The Time Traveller put his hand to
his head. He spoke like one who was trying to
keep hold of an idea that eluded him. ’They
were put into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled
into Time.’ He stared round the room.
’I’m damned if it isn’t all going.
This room and you and the atmosphere of every day
is too much for my memory. Did I ever make a
Time Machine, or a model of a Time Machine? Or
is it all only a dream? They say life is a dream,
a precious poor dream at times but I can’t
stand another that won’t fit. It’s
madness. And where did the dream come from? ...
I must look at that machine. If there is one!’
He caught up the lamp swiftly, and
carried it, flaring red, through the door into the
corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering
light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat,
ugly, and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and
translucent glimmering quartz. Solid to the touch for
I put out my hand and felt the rail of it and
with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits
of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail
bent awry.
The Time Traveller put the lamp down
on the bench, and ran his hand along the damaged rail.
‘It’s all right now,’ he said.
’The story I told you was true. I’m
sorry to have brought you out here in the cold.’
He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we
returned to the smoking-room.
He came into the hall with us and
helped the Editor on with his coat. The Medical
Man looked into his face and, with a certain hesitation,
told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he
laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the
open doorway, bawling good night.
I shared a cab with the Editor.
He thought the tale a ‘gaudy lie.’
For my own part I was unable to come to a conclusion.
The story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling
so credible and sober. I lay awake most of the
night thinking about it. I determined to go next
day and see the Time Traveller again. I was told
he was in the laboratory, and being on easy terms
in the house, I went up to him. The laboratory,
however, was empty. I stared for a minute at the
Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the lever.
At that the squat substantial-looking mass swayed
like a bough shaken by the wind. Its instability
startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence
of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to
meddle. I came back through the corridor.
The Time Traveller met me in the smoking-room.
He was coming from the house. He had a small
camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other.
He laughed when he saw me, and gave me an elbow to
shake. ‘I’m frightfully busy,’
said he, ‘with that thing in there.’
‘But is it not some hoax?’
I said. ’Do you really travel through time?’
‘Really and truly I do.’
And he looked frankly into my eyes. He hesitated.
His eye wandered about the room. ’I only
want half an hour,’ he said. ’I know
why you came, and it’s awfully good of you.
There’s some magazines here. If you’ll
stop to lunch I’ll prove you this time travelling
up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you’ll
forgive my leaving you now?’
I consented, hardly comprehending
then the full import of his words, and he nodded and
went on down the corridor. I heard the door of
the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and
took up a daily paper. What was he going to do
before lunch-time? Then suddenly I was reminded
by an advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson,
the publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and
saw that I could barely save that engagement.
I got up and went down the passage to tell the Time
Traveller.
As I took hold of the handle of the
door I heard an exclamation, oddly truncated at the
end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air whirled
round me as I opened the door, and from within came
the sound of broken glass falling on the floor.
The Time Traveller was not there. I seemed to
see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling
mass of black and brass for a moment a figure
so transparent that the bench behind with its sheets
of drawings was absolutely distinct; but this phantasm
vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The Time Machine
had gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the
further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane
of the skylight had, apparently, just been blown in.
I felt an unreasonable amazement.
I knew that something strange had happened, and for
the moment could not distinguish what the strange
thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into
the garden opened, and the man-servant appeared.
We looked at each other. Then
ideas began to come. ’Has Mr.
gone out that way?’ said I.
’No, sir. No one has come
out this way. I was expecting to find him here.’
At that I understood. At the
risk of disappointing Richardson I stayed on, waiting
for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps
still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs
he would bring with him. But I am beginning now
to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The Time
Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as everybody
knows now, he has never returned.