Chapter 12
`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,
travel ing, 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.
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`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 tel ing you the story.
`I know,' he said, after a pause, `that al this wil 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
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upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary stil ness. Then chairs began to
creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Travel er'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 Travel er'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 fel 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
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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 real y 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
travel ed into Time.' He stared round the room. `I'm damned if it isn't al 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 al 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
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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
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childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle. I came back through the
corridor. The Time Travel er met me in the smoking-room. He was coming from the
house. He had a smal 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 real y 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'l 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
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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.