The Time Machine Chapter 3

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety. The Time Machine, Chapter 3, The Time Traveler returns.

I think that at the time, none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The Fact is, the Time Traveler was one of those men who were too clever to be believed. You never felt that you sought all around them. You always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Philby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveler's words, we would have shown him far less skepticism. For, we should have perceived his motives. A port butcher could understand Philby, but the Time Traveler had more than a touch of women amongst his elements, and we distrusted him. Things that would have been made the fame 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 the Time Traveling in the interval between that Thursday and the next. Though, it's odd potentialities around, no doubt, in most of our minds, it's plausibility, it's practical, incredibleness, the curious possibilities of inlachronisms and the utter confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. But, I remember discussing with the medical man, whom I met on Friday at Lenyon. He said he had seen a similar thing in Turbanon, 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 Travelers most constant guests, and a 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 he's watching the other. I looked round for the Time Traveler, and it's half past seven now, said the medical man. I suppose we'd better have dinner. "Where's," said I, naming eyes. "You've just come, it's rather odd. He's unavoidably detained.

He asked me, in a 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 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, who I didn't know, and who, as far as my observation went, never opened his mouth all evening. There was some speculation at the dinner table about the Time Traveler's absence, and I suggested Time Traveling in a half-jocular spirit. Well, the editor wanted that explained him, and the psychologist volunteered a wooden account of the ingenious paradox in trick. 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. "Hello," I said, "at last," and the door opened wider, and the Time Traveler 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 table from turn towards the door. He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down the sleeves. His hair diswarded, and it seemed to me cry at either with dust or dirt, or because its colour had actually faded. His face was ghastly pale. His chin had a brown cut in it, a cut half-heeled. His expression was haggard and warm, 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 foot-saw tramps. We all 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 around the table, and the ghost of his old smile flickered upon his face. "What on earth have you been up to, man?" said the doctor. The time travel it did not seem to hear. "Don't let me disturb you," he said, with a certain faltering articulation. "I'm alright," he stopped, held out his glass and more, and took it off at drop. "That's good," he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came to his cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces, with a certain dull approval, and then went round the wall and comfort all room. Then he spoke again, still, as if he were feeling his way around 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 alright. The editor began a question, "Tell me present me," said the time traveler. "I'm funny, be alright 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 well-gathering. Then, remarkable behaviour of an eminent scientist I heard the editor say, thinking after his want in his 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 cagure? I don't follow. I met the eyes of the psychologist, and read my own interpretations in his face. I thought, with the time travel, a limping painfully upstairs, I don't think anyone else had noticed his lameness." The first recover completely from this surprise was the medical man, who rang the bell.

The time traveler hated to have servants waiting at dinner for a hot plate. At that, the editor turned to his knife and fork with a cron, and the silent man followed seemed. The dinner was resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while with gasps of wonderment, and then the editor got fervent in his curiosity. "Does our friend e-count his modest income with a crossing? Or, has he, his nebben-shadazer, phrases?" he inquired. "I feel assured at this business of the time machine, I said, and took up the psychologist 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, goodie." And then, as the idea came home to him, he restored it to a caricature. "Had they any clothed brushes in the future?" The journalist, too, would not believe at any price, and joined the editor in the easy work of heaping riddacle upon the whole thing. They were both the new kind of journalist, very joyous, irrevolent young men. Our special correspondence in the day after tomorrow reports, the journalist was saying, "Or rather shouting, when the time traveller came back. He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing, Savius had a look, remained of the change that had startled me." "I say," said the editor hilariously, "those chaps here say you've been travelling into the middle of next week. Tell us all about the little Rosebury, 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 matinee?" said. "What a treat it is to stick a fork into me 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 pep tone into my arteries. Thank you, 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 had been staring at his face, started convulsively and poured in 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 question by telling amic notes of hetty potter. The time traveller devoted his attention to his dinner and displayed the appetite of the tram. The medical man smoked a cigarette and watched the time traveller through his eyelashes. The silent man seemed even more clumsy than usual, and ranked champagne with regularity and determination out of sheer nervousness. At last, the time traveller pushed his plate away and looked round at us.

"I suppose I must apologise," he said. "I was simply starving. I've had the 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 things are mere paradox," said the editor. "I can't argue tonight. I don't mind telling you the story, but I can't argue." 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 all sound like line, 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 has 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 that agreed. "A greed," said the editor, "and the rest of us echoed, agreed. And with that, the time traveler began telling his story as I have set it forth."

He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a wary man. Afterwards, he got more animated.

In writing it down, "I feel with only too much keenness and inadequacy of pen and ink, and above all, my own inadequacy to express its quality." You read, I suppose, attentively enough, but you cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little am, nor hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of this story. Most of us here is, we're in this shadow, for the candles in the smoking room had not been lighted, and only the face of the journalists and the legs of the silent man from the knees downwards were illuminated. First, we glance now and again at each other. After a time, we cease to do that, and looked only at the time traveler's face.