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CHAPTER II
I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine.
The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be
believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle
reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.
Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we
should have shown him far less scepticism.
For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby.
But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we
distrusted him.
Things that would have made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands.
It is a mistake to do things too easily.
The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment;
they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like
furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china.
So I don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval
between that Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in
most of our minds: its plausibility, that
is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of
utter confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly
preoccupied with the trick of the model.
That I remember discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean.
He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on
the blowing out of the candle.
But how the trick was done he could not explain.
The next Thursday I went again to Richmond- -I suppose I was one of the Time
Traveller's most constant guests--and, arriving late, found four or five men
already assembled in his drawing-room.
The Medical Man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and
his watch in the other.
I looked round for the Time Traveller, and- -'It's half-past seven now,' said the
Medical Man. 'I suppose we'd better have dinner?'
'Where's----?' said I, naming our host.
'You've just come? It's rather odd.
He's unavoidably detained. He asks me in this note to lead off with
dinner at seven if he's not back.
Says he'll explain when he comes.' 'It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,'
said the Editor of a well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the
bell.
The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who had
attended the previous dinner.
The other men were Blank, the Editor aforementioned, a certain journalist, and
another--a quiet, shy man with a beard-- whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my
observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening.
There was some speculation at the dinner- table about the Time Traveller's absence,
and I suggested time travelling, in a half- jocular spirit.
The Editor wanted that explained to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden
account of the 'ingenious paradox and trick' we had witnessed that day week.
He was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor opened slowly
and without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it first.
'Hallo!'
I said. 'At last!'
And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before us.
I gave a cry of surprise.
'Good heavens! man, what's the matter?' cried the Medical Man, who saw him next.
And the whole tableful turned towards the door.
He was in an amazing plight.
His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair
disordered, and as it seemed to me greyer-- either with dust and dirt or because its
colour had actually faded.
His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it--a cut half healed; his
expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering.
For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the light.
Then he came into the room. He walked with just such a limp as I have
seen in footsore tramps.
We stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.
He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion towards the
wine.
The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and pushed it towards him.
He drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he looked round the table, and
the ghost of his old smile flickered across his face.
'What on earth have you been up to, man?' said the Doctor.
The Time Traveller did not seem to hear. 'Don't let me disturb you,' he said, with a
certain faltering articulation.
'I'm all right.' He stopped, held out his glass for more,
and took it off at a draught. 'That's good,' he said.
His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came into his cheeks.
His glance flickered over our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round
the warm and comfortable room.
Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words.
'I'm going to wash and dress, and then I'll come down and explain things ...
Save me some of that mutton.
I'm starving for a bit of meat.' He looked across at the Editor, who was a
rare visitor, and hoped he was all right. The Editor began a question.
'Tell you presently,' said the Time Traveller.
'I'm--funny! Be all right in a minute.'
He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door.
Again I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and standing
up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out.
He had nothing on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks.
Then the door closed upon him.
I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he detested any fuss about
himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-
gathering.
Then, 'Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,' I heard the Editor say,
thinking (after his wont) in headlines. And this brought my attention back to the
bright dinner-table.
'What's the game?' said the Journalist. 'Has he been doing the Amateur Cadger?
I don't follow.' I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read
my own interpretation in his face.
I thought of the Time Traveller limping painfully upstairs.
I don't think any one else had noticed his lameness.
The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man, who rang the
bell--the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at dinner--for a hot
plate.
At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man
followed suit. The dinner was resumed.
Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment; and then
the Editor got fervent in his curiosity.
'Does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his
Nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired.
'I feel assured it's this business of the Time Machine,' I said, and took up the
Psychologist's account of our previous meeting.
The new guests were frankly incredulous.
The Editor raised objections. 'What was this time travelling?
A man couldn't cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?'
And then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature.
Hadn't they any clothes-brushes in the Future?
The Journalist too, would not believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the
easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole thing.
They were both the new kind of journalist-- very joyous, irreverent young men.
'Our Special Correspondent in the Day after To-morrow reports,' the Journalist was
saying--or rather shouting--when the Time Traveller came back.
He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained
of the change that had startled me.
'I say,' said the Editor hilariously, 'these chaps here say you have been
travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about little Rosebery, will
you?
What will you take for the lot?' The Time Traveller came to the place
reserved for him without a word. He smiled quietly, in his old way.
'Where's my mutton?' he said.
'What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!'
'Story!' cried the Editor. 'Story be damned!' said the Time Traveller.
'I want something to eat.
I won't say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries.
Thanks. And the salt.'
'One word,' said I.
'Have you been time travelling?' 'Yes,' said the Time Traveller, with his
mouth full, nodding his head. 'I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim
note,' said the Editor.
The Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang it with his
fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his face, started
convulsively, and poured him wine.
The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden questions kept on
rising to my lips, and I dare say it was the same with the others.
The Journalist tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter.
The Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed the appetite of a
***.
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.