The Time Machine Read online

  VII

  'Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto,except during my night's anguish at the loss of the Time Machine,I had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope wasstaggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thoughtmyself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, andby some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome;but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality ofthe Morlocks--a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively Iloathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had falleninto a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it.Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon himsoon.

  'The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of thenew moon. Weena had put this into my head by some at firstincomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not nowsuch a very difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark Nightsmight mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longerinterval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree atleast the reason of the fear of the little Upper-world people forthe dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be thatthe Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now thatmy second hypothesis was all wrong. The Upper-world people mightonce have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks theirmechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. The twospecies that had resulted from the evolution of man were slidingdown towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether newrelationship. The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayedto a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth onsufferance: since the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerablegenerations, had come at last to find the daylit surfaceintolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, andmaintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps through thesurvival of an old habit of service. They did it as a standing horsepaws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport:because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on theorganism. But, clearly, the old order was already in part reversed.The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago,thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out ofthe ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming backchanged! Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew.They were becoming reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there cameinto my head the memory of the meat I had seen in the Under-world.It seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up as itwere by the current of my meditations, but coming in almost like aquestion from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I had avague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it wasat the time.

  'Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of theirmysterious Fear, I was differently constituted. I came out of thisage of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does notparalyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defendmyself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and afastness where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I couldface this strange world with some of that confidence I had lost inrealizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I feltI could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. Ishuddered with horror to think how they must already have examinedme.

  'I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, butfound nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. Allthe buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterousclimbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then thetall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polishedgleam of its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening,taking Weena like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the hillstowards the south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven oreight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. I had first seenthe place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptivelydiminished. In addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, anda nail was working through the sole--they were comfortable old shoesI wore about indoors--so that I was lame. And it was already longpast sunset when I came in sight of the palace, silhouetted blackagainst the pale yellow of the sky.

  'Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, butafter a while she desired me to let her down, and ran along by theside of me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowersto stick in my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but atthe last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vasefor floral decoration. At least she utilized them for that purpose.And that reminds me! In changing my jacket I found...'

  The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, andsilently placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large whitemallows, upon the little table. Then he resumed his narrative.

  'As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded overthe hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted toreturn to the house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distantpinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived tomake her understand that we were seeking a refuge there from herFear. You know that great pause that comes upon things before thedusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always anair of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear,remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in thesunset. Well, that night the expectation took the colour of myfears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturallysharpened. I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the groundbeneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlockson their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark.In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion oftheir burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken myTime Machine?

  'So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night.The clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after anothercame out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena's fears andher fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to herand caressed her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put herarms round my neck, and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her faceagainst my shoulder. So we went down a long slope into a valley, andthere in the dimness I almost walked into a little river. This Iwaded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a numberof sleeping houses, and by a statue--a Faun, or some such figure,_minus_ the head. Here too were acacias. So far I had seen nothing ofthe Morlocks, but it was yet early in the night, and the darker hoursbefore the old moon rose were still to come.

  'From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wideand black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end toit, either to the right or the left. Feeling tired--my feet, inparticular, were very sore--I carefully lowered Weena from myshoulder as I halted, and sat down upon the turf. I could nolonger see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was in doubt of mydirection. I looked into the thickness of the wood and thought ofwhat it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one wouldbe out of sight of the stars. Even were there no other lurkingdanger--a danger I did not care to let my imagination looseupon--there would still be all the roots to stumble over and thetree-boles to strike against.

  'I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so Idecided that I would not face it, but would pass the night upon theopen hill.

  'Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped herin my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. Thehill-side was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the woodthere came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone thestars, for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense offriendly comfort in their twinkling. All the old constellationshad gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which isimperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long sincerearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, itseemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust asof yore. Southward (as I judged it) was a very bright red star thatwas new to me; it was even more splendid than our own green Sirius.And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planetshone kin
dly and steadily like the face of an old friend.

  'Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and allthe gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomabledistance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out ofthe unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the greatprecessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only fortytimes had that silent revolution occurred during all the years thatI had traversed. And during these few revolutions all the activity,all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations,languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man asI knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were thesefrail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the whiteThings of which I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fearthat was between the two species, and for the first time, with asudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seenmight be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at little Weena sleepingbeside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, andforthwith dismissed the thought.

  'Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well asI could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I could findsigns of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky keptvery clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed attimes. Then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastwardsky, like the reflection of some colourless fire, and the old moonrose, thin and peaked and white. And close behind, and overtakingit, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first, and thengrowing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I hadseen none upon the hill that night. And in the confidence of renewedday it almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. Istood up and found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankleand painful under the heel; so I sat down again, took off my shoes,and flung them away.

  'I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green andpleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruitwherewith to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones,laughing and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no suchthing in nature as the night. And then I thought once more of themeat that I had seen. I felt assured now of what it was, and fromthe bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble rill from the greatflood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of humandecay the Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had lived onrats and such-like vermin. Even now man is far less discriminatingand exclusive in his food than he was--far less than any monkey. Hisprejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And sothese inhuman sons of men----! I tried to look at the thing in ascientific spirit. After all, they were less human and more remotethan our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago.And the intelligence that would have made this state of things atorment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were merefatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyedupon--probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancingat my side!

  'Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was comingupon me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of humanselfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight uponthe labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchwordand excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home tohim. I even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracyin decay. But this attitude of mind was impossible. However greattheir intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of thehuman form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce asharer in their degradation and their Fear.

  'I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I shouldpursue. My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and tomake myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. Thatnecessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure somemeans of fire, so that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand,for nothing, I knew, would be more efficient against these Morlocks.Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break open the doors ofbronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram. I hada persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze oflight before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape. Icould not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it faraway. Weena I had resolved to bring with me to our own time. Andturning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our way towards thebuilding which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling.