Chapter 2 (The Time Machine)

01CHAPTER II I think that at the time none of us quite believed in the time machine.

02The fact is, the time-traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed.

03You never felt that you saw all round him.

04You always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.

05Had Philby shown the model and explained the matter in the time-traveller's words, we should have shown him far less skepticism, for we should have perceived his motives.

06A pork-butcher could understand Philby.

07But the time-traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him.

08Things that would have made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands.

09It is a mistake to do things too easily.

10The serious people, who took him seriously, never felt quite sure of his deportment.

11They were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with eggshell china.

12So, I didn'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.

13Its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism, and of utter confusion it suggested.

14For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model.

15That I remember discussing with the medical man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean.

16He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out of the candle.

17But how the trick was done, he could not explain.

18The next Thursday, I went again to Richmond.

19I 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.

20The medical man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his watch in the other.

21I looked around for the time-traveller, and— It's half-past seven now, said the medical man.

22I suppose we'd better have dinner.

23Where's—said I, naming our host.

24You've just come?

25It's rather odd.

26He's unavoidably detained.

27He asks me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he's not back.

28Says he'll explain when he comes.

29It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil, said the editor of a well-known daily paper, and thereupon the doctor rang the bell.

30The psychologist was the only person besides the doctor and myself who had attended the previous dinner.

31The 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.

32There was some speculation at the dinner-table about the time-traveler's absence, and I suggested time-traveling, in a half-jocular spirit.

33The 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.

34He was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise.

35I was facing the door and saw it first.

36"'Hello,' I said.

37"'At last!' And the door opened wider, and the time-traveler stood before us.

38I gave a cry of surprise.

39"'Good heavens, man!

40What's the matter?' cried the medical man, who saw him next, and the whole tableful turned towards the door.

41He was in an amazing plight.

42His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down the sleeves.

43His hair disordered, and, as it seemed to me, grayer, either with dust and dirt, or because its color had actually faded.

44His face was ghastly pale.

45His chin had a brown cut on it, a cut half-heeled.

46His expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering.

47For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the light.

48Then he came into the room.

49He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in foot-sore traps.

50We stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.

51He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion towards the wine.

52The editor filled a glass of champagne and pushed it towards him.

53He 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.

54"'What on earth have you been up to, man?' said the doctor.

55The time-traveler did not seem to hear.

56"'Don't let me disturb you,' he said, with a certain faltering articulation.

57"'I'm all right.' He stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off at a draft.

58"'That's good,' he said.

59His eyes grew brighter, and a faint color came into his cheeks.

60His glance flickered over our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round the warm and comfortable room.

61Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words.

62"'I'm going to wash and dress, and then I'll come down and explain things.

63Save me some of that mutton.

64I'm starving for a bit of meat.' He looked across at the editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he was all right.

65The editor began a question.

66"'Tell you presently,' said the time-traveler.

67"'I'm—funny—I'll be right in a minute.' He put down his glass and walked towards the staircase door.

68Again I remarked his lameness, and the soft-patting sound of his footfall, and standing up in my place I saw his feet as he went out.

69He had nothing on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks.

70Then the door closed upon him.

71I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he detested any fuss about himself.

72For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-gathering.

73Then, remarkable behavior of an eminent scientist, I heard the editor say, thinking, after his want, in headlines.

74And this brought my attention back to the bright dinner-table.

75"'What's the game?' said the journalist.

76"'Has he been doing the amateur cadger?

77I don't follow.' I met the eye of the psychologist and read my own interpretation in his face.

78I thought of the time-traveler limping painfully upstairs.

79I don't think anyone else had noticed his lameness.

80The first to recover completely from this surprise was the medical man, who rang the bell.

81The time-traveler hated to have servants waiting at dinner.

82For a hot plate.

83At that, the editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt, and the silent man followed suit.

84The dinner was resumed.

85Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment.

86And then the editor got fervent in his curiosity.

87"'Does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing?

88Or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired.

89"'I feel assured it's this business of the time-machine,' I said, and took up the psychologist's account of our previous meeting.

90The new guests were frankly incredulous.

91The editor raised objections.

92What was this time-traveling?

93A 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.

94Hadn't he any clothes-brushes in the future?

95The journalist, too, would not believe at any price, and joined the editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole thing.

96They were both the new kind of journalist—very joyous, irreverent young men.

97"'Our special correspondent in the day after to-morrow reports,' the journalist was saying, or rather shouting, when the time-traveler came back.

98He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing, save his haggard look, remained of the change that had startled me.

99"'I say,' said the editor hilariously, "'these chaps here say you have been travelling into the middle of next week.

100Tell us all about Little Roseberry, will you?

101What will you take for the lot?' The time-traveler came to the place reserved for him without a word.

102He smiled quietly in his old way.

103"'Where's my mutton?' he said.

104"'What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!' "'Story!' cried the editor.

105"'Story be damned!' said the time-traveler.

106"'I want something to eat.

107I won't say a word until I get some pep-tone into my arteries.

108Thanks, and the salt.' "'One word,' said I.

109"'Have you been time-traveling?' "'Yes,' said the time-traveler, with his mouth full, nodding his head.

110"'I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,' said the editor.

111The time-traveler 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.

112The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable.

113For my own part, sudden questions kept rising to my lips, and I dare say it was the same with the others.

114The journalist tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hetty Potter.

115The time-traveler devoted his attention to his dinner and displayed the appetite of a tramp.

116The medical man smoked a cigarette and watched the time-traveler through his eyelashes.

117The silent man seemed even more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination out of sheer nervousness.

118At last the time-traveler pushed his plate away and looked round us.

119"'I suppose I must apologize,' he said.

120"'I was simply starving.

121I've had a most amazing time.' He reached out his hand for a cigar and cut the end.

122"'But come into the smoking-room.

123It's too long a story to tell over greasy plates.' And ringing the bell in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room.

124"'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.

125"'But the thing's a mere paradox,' said the editor.

126"'I can't argue to-night.

127I don't mind telling you the story, but I can't argue.

128I will,' he went on, "'tell you the story of what has happened to me, if you like.

129But you must refrain from interruptions.

130I want to tell it.

131Badly.

132Most of it will sound like lying.

133So be it.

134It's true.

135Every word of it, all the same.' "'I was in my laboratory at four o'clock.

136And since then I've lived eight days, such days as no human being ever lived before.

137I am nearly worn out, but I shan't sleep till I've told this thing over to you.

138Then I shall go to bed.

139But no interruptions.

140Is it agreed?' "'Agreed,' said the editor, and the rest of us echoed.

141"'Agreed.' And with that, the time-traveller began his story as I've set it forth.

142He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man.

143Afterwards, he got more animated.

144In 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.

145You read, I will suppose, attentively enough.

146But you cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice.

147You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of his story.

148Most 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.

149At first we glanced now and again at each other.

150After a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the time-traveller's face.

151End of chapter 2