XII


`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
Time Machine, The 39
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 shaky, 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−−−−'
Time Machine, The 40
`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
Time Machine, The 41
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.

Epilogue


One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among
the blood−drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or
among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now−−if I may use
the phrase−−be wandering on some plesiosaurus−haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes
of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the
riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for
my own part cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord
are indeed man's culminating time! I say, for my own part. He, I know−−for the question had been discussed
among us long before the Time Machine was made−−thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of
Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back
upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to
me the future is still black and blank−−is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his
story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers −−shrivelled now, and brown and flat and
brittle−−to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived