The Time Machine Chapter 2

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety The Time Machine Chapter 2 I think that at all the time none of us quite believed the time machine. The fact is, the time travel was one of those men who were too clever to be believed. You never felt that you saw all around them. You always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush behind his lucid frankidness.

Had the medical man for instance shown us a thing, we would have accepted it with less skepticism. But the medical man was a matter of fact person with a lot of solid gravity. But there was an inkling of the trickster about the time traveller and we distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame of a less clever man seem tricks in his hands.

It is a mistake for a man to have more cleverness than he needs for everyday use. We say a man is too clever by half in England. We never say he is too good by half or too wise by half. The truth is, the time travel is intellect was so far ahead of us that his most serious statements often struck us as mere brilliant flashes of wit or elaborate jokes.

So we sat round the table and discussed the model and the principles of the thing and laughed at it all. And yet we were all of us a little bit fascinated by it. We could not quite let it go. The next Thursday I went to Dine with him again for he kept an open house on Thursdays and his dinners were always worth eating.

There was a different company this time. The medical man was there again, but the psychologist was absent. In his place was the editor of a well known daily paper, a journalist, a quiet man with a beard and a blank page or rather a blank man who might never seen before.

We sat down to dinner at the usual hour, 7 o'clock, but the time traveler was not in the room. He had left the note for the medical man, asking him to take the chair if he would not be back in time and saying that he would follow us as soon as he could. He waited till half past 7 and then as he did not appear, the medical man took the head of the table. We were all the little surprised at his absence, for he was usually very punctual, but the medical man explained that he had a very busy, over an experiment that afternoon and had probably lost count of the time.

We did a went on and we talked of all kinds of things, all the latest politics of a new play of the weather, but underneath our talk there was a certain feeling of expectation. We could not help wondering what the time traveler was doing or whether he had really made any progress with his machine. The editor was rather inclined to be cynical about the whole thing and made several jokes at the expense of the fourth I mentioned, but the medical man took it more seriously and said he believed there was more in what we thought. The journalist too was interested and asked a lot of questions about the model we had seen the week before.

At eight o'clock, just as we were finishing our dinner, the door opened and the time traveler came into the room, but what had changed there wasn't him. He was not the neat, well-dressed man who had left us the week before. His coat was covered with dust and dirt, his hair was tangled and matted, his face was pale, and there was a strange, wild look in his eyes. He looked like a man who had been through some terrible experience.

He didn't say a word, but walked straight to the sideboard, poured a large glass of wine and drank it off at a draft. Then he sat down in the empty chair and looked around at us with a dazed expression. For a moment nobody spoke. We were all too shocked by his appearance.

Then the medical man said, "My dear fellow, what on earth is the matter? Where have you been? What have you been doing?" The time traveler did not answer at once.

He passed his hand over his forehead as if to clear his thoughts, then he said in a low, husky voice, "I've been to the future." The editor laughed, "But it was a rather force laugh." "Come come," he said. "You don't expect us to believe that.

You've been having a joke with us." "It's no joke," said the time traveler with sudden energy. "I tell you, I have been into the future. I've seen things that no man has ever seen before, things you wouldn't believe if I told you."

He looked down at his clothes and then at his hands which were dirty and scratched. Look at me, he said, "Do I look if I were joking?" We all looked at him and certainly he did not look like a man who is playing a trick. There was an air of grim reality about him that silenced even the editor.

The medical man got up and went over to him. Let me feel your peltz," he said. "But the time traveler pushed him away. I'm alright," he said, "only very tired and starving.

Give me something to eat and then I'll tell you everything. But don't ask me any questions until I've finished my dinner. I must have some food or I shall faint." He began to eat, with a kind of a ravenous hunger, devouring everything that was put before him.

He sat and watched him in silence, wondering what strange story he was going to tell us. The journalist took out his notebook, but the editor shook his head at him and he put it away again. It was a strange dinner party. The silent, dirty man eating like a wolf at the head of the table and the rest of the sitting around, watching him with mixed feelings of curiosity and alarm.

When he had finished, he pushed his plate away, took another glass of wine and leaned back in his chair. The wild look had gone out of his eyes and he looked more like his usual self, though he was still very pale. He looked round at us, one by one and smiled. A rather tired sad smile.

"Now," he said, "I'm ready. If you want to hear my story, you must promise not to interrupt me. It's a long story and a strange one and I don't want to lose the thread of it. Promise me that and I'll tell you from the very beginning."

We all promised and the time traveller began his narrative. He told us how, after we had left him the week before, he had spent every spare moment in completing the machine. He described the final adjustments he had made, the difficulties he had encountered and how, at last that very morning, the machine was finished and ready for the trial. He told us how he had sat in the saddle with his hand on the starting lever, feeling a strange mixture of excitement and dread.

He knew that he was about to venture into the unknown, into an origin where no human being had ever gone before. He didn't know what danger he may encounter or whether he would ever be able to return. But the spirit of adventure was strong in him and he determined to make the plunge. He pulled the lever and at first nothing seemed to happen.

The room remained exactly as it was. But then a strange sensation came over him, a feeling of dizziness, a falling through space. The walls of the room seemed to blur and fade. The furniture disappeared and everything became dark.

He was moving through time. He described the sensation of time travel, the rapid alternation of day and night, the sun rushing across the sky like a streak of fire, the stars spinning in their courses. He felt as if he were all becured along by a mighty torrent, helpless and irresistible. It was a terrifying experience, but it was also exhilarating.

He felt a sense of power, of freedom such as he had never known before. As he went on, the speed increased. The sensation of motion became less painful, the darkness disappeared and he found himself in a strange, beautiful world. The sun was shining brightly, the air was warm and fragrant and all around him was splendid buildings and beautiful gardens.

He had arrived in the future. He stopped the machine and got out to explore this new world. He told us of his first impressions of the strange, gentle people he met who seemed to live a life of perfect ease and happiness, of the wonderful flowers and fruits that grew in the abundance and of the absence of all signs of toil or care. It seemed like a paradise, a golden age realised.

But as he looked deeper, he began to see that everything was not as it appeared on the surface. There were strange mysteries hidden dangers that he had to uncover. He told us how he found that his machine had disappeared and now he had to search for it, facing unknown perils in the dark recesses of the future world. He told us of the morelocks, the strange, eight light creatures that lived underground and who came out at night to pray upon the gentle inhabitants of the surface.

He described his fight with them, his escape and how at last, after many adventures, he had found his machine and managed to return to his own time. It was a wonderful story, told with such a wealth of detail, such an air of truth that we listen spellbound. When he finished, there was a long silence. No one knew what to say.

The story seemed too incredible to be true and yet looking at the man before us, dirty, exhausted with the marks of conflict upon him, it was impossible to disbelieve him entirely. The editor was first to speak. It's an extraordinary story, he said, a very extraordinary story. But of course, you don't expect us to take it literally.

It's a romance, a brilliant piece of imagination. The time traveler didn't argue. He just smiled, that tired smile again and pointed to his feet. We looked down and we saw that his shoes were gone and that his socks were torn and stained with blood.

Is that imagination he asked? Of those stains, imagination. No one answered. The evidence was there, plain to see.

But our minds refused to accept the full meaning of it. It was too vast, too revolutionary. We preferred to doubt, to look for some other explanation rather than face the tremendous truth that this man had actually travelled through time.