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The Time Machine
Chapter 3. The Time Traveller Returns
I think at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine.
The fact is the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed.
You never felt that you saw all round him.
You always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush behind his clear frankness.
Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words we should have shown him far less scepticism.
For we should have seen his motives.
A pork-butcher could understand Filby, but the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements and we distrusted him.
Things that would have made the fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands.
It's a mistake to do things too easily.
The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his behaviour.
They were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with eggshell china.
So I don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the time between that Thursday and the next.
Its odd possibilities ran in most of our minds.
Its plausibility, that's, its practical incredibleness, the curious chances of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested.
For my own part I was particularly busy thinking about the trick of the model.
I remember discussing that with the Medical Man whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean.
He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen and spoke strongly about the candle going out.
But how the trick was done he couldn't explain.
The next Thursday I went again to Richmond.
I suppose I was one of the Time Traveller's most constant guests.
Arriving late I found four or five men already in his drawing-room.
The Medical Man was standing by the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his watch in the other.
I looked round for the Time Traveller.
"It's half-past seven now," said the Medical Man.
"I suppose we'd better have dinner?"
"Where's, ?" said I, naming our host.
"You've just come?"
"It's rather odd."
"He's unavoidably detained."
"He asks me in this note to start dinner at seven if he's not back."
"Says he'll explain when he comes."
"It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil," said the Editor of a well-known daily paper.
Then the Doctor rang the bell, calling the servants to start dinner.
The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and me who had been at the earlier dinner.
The other men were Blank, the Editor I mentioned, and a certain journalist.
There was another quiet, shy man with a beard whom I didn't know, and he never opened his mouth all evening.
There was some talk at the table about the Time Traveller's absence.
I suggested time travelling in a half-joking way.
The Editor wanted that explained to him.
The Psychologist gave a wooden account of the "ingenious paradox and trick" we had seen that day week.
He was in the middle of his speech when the door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise.
I was facing the door and saw it first.
"Hallo!" I said.
"At last!" The door opened wider and the Time Traveller stood before us.
I cried out with surprise, startled by his terrible, unexpected appearance in the doorway.
"Good heavens man what's the matter?" cried the Medical Man who saw him next.
And the whole table turned to the door.
He was in an amazing state, his coat was dusty and dirty and smeared with green down the sleeves.
His hair was loose and seemed to me greyer either from dust and dirt or because the colour had actually faded.
His face was ghastly pale, his chin had a brown cut on it, a cut half-healed.
His expression was haggard and drawn as if from intense suffering.
For a moment he stopped in the doorway as if dazzled by the light.
Then he came into the room, he walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps.
We stared at him in silence, waiting for him to speak.
He said nothing but came painfully to the table and made a movement towards the wine.
The Editor filled a glass of champagne and pushed it to him.
He drained it and it seemed to do him good.
He looked round the table and the ghost of his old smile passed over his face.
"What on earth have you been up to man?" said the Doctor.
The Time Traveller didn't seem to hear.
"Don't let me disturb you," he said with a certain halting way of speaking.
"I'm all right." He stopped, held out his glass for more and drank it off at a gulp.
"That's good," he said.
His eyes became brighter and a faint colour came into his cheeks.
His glance moved over our faces with a certain dull approval and then went round the warm comfortable room.
Then he spoke again still as if feeling his way among his words.
"I'm going to wash and dress and then I'll come down and explain things," he said.
"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 all right, the Editor began a question.
"Tell you presently," said the Time Traveller.
"I'm funny. Be all right in a minute."
He put down his glass and walked towards the staircase door.
Again I noticed his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall.
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 behind him, I had half a mind to follow until I remembered how he hated any fuss about himself.
For a minute perhaps my mind was wandering.
Then "Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist" I heard the Editor say thinking in headlines.
And this brought my attention back to the bright dinner-table.
"What's the game?" said the Journalist.
"Has he been playing the Amateur Cadger? I don't follow." I met the eye of the Psychologist and read my own view in his face.
I thought of the Time Traveller limping painfully upstairs.
I don't think anyone else had noticed his lameness.
The first to recover fully from this surprise was the Medical Man who rang the bell.
The Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at dinner.
At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt and the Silent Man did the same.
The dinner went on, Conversation was full of exclamations for a little while with gaps of wonder.
Then the Editor got eager in his curiosity.
"Does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?" he asked.
"I feel sure it's this business of the Time Machine," I said and took up the Psychologist's account of our previous meeting.
The new guests were openly doubtful, the Editor raised objections.
"What was this time travelling?"
"A man couldn't cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox could he?" Then as the idea struck him he made fun of it.
Hadn't they any clothes-brushes in the Future?
The Journalist also wouldn't believe at any price and joined the Editor in making fun of the whole thing.
They were both the new kind of journalist very joyful irreverent young men.
"Our Special Correspondent in the Day after Tomorrow reports," the Journalist was saying and shouting when the Time Traveller came back.
He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes and nothing but his haggard look remained of the change that had startled me.
"I say," said the Editor loudly, "these chaps here say you have been travelling into the middle of next week."
"Tell us all about little Rosebery, will you, and what will you take for the lot"?
The Time Traveller came to the seat kept for him without a word.
He smiled quietly in his old way.
"Where's my mutton?" he said.
"What a treat it's to stick a fork into meat 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 peptone into my arteries. Thanks. And the salt."
"One word," said I.
"Have you been time travelling?"
"Yes," said the Time Traveller with his mouth full and 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 tapped it with his fingernail.
The Silent Man who had been staring at his face started and poured him wine.
The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable.
For my part sudden questions kept rising to my lips and I dare say it was the same with the others.
The Journalist tried to ease the tension by telling stories of Hettie Potter.
The Time Traveller paid attention to his dinner and showed the appetite of a tramp.
The Medical Man smoked a cigarette and watched the Time Traveller through his eyelashes.
The Silent Man seemed even more awkward than usual and drank champagne with steady determination out of pure 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 a 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." He rang the bell as he left and led the way into the next 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 thing's a mere paradox," said the Editor.
"I can't argue tonight. I don't mind telling you the story but I can't argue. I'll,"
He went on, "Tell you the story of what has happened to me if you like, but you mustn't interrupt."
He added, "I want to tell it badly. I'm nearly worn out, but I won't sleep till I've told this thing to you."
He said, "Most of it'll sound like lying. So be it."
He said, "It's true every word of it all the same. Then I shall go to bed."
"He said, "I was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then I've lived eight days no human has lived before. Is it agreed?
"Agreed," said the Editor and the rest of us answered "Agreed." With that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it down.
He sat back in his chair at first and spoke like a tired man, Later he became more lively.
In writing it down I feel how pen and ink aren't enough and how I'm not enough to show its quality.
You will, I suppose, read it carefully enough and think over every word.
You can't see the speaker's white sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp nor hear the rise and fall of his voice.
You can't know how his face changed with the turns of his story.
Most of us listeners were in shadow because the candles in the smoking-room hadn't been lit.
Only the face of the Journalist and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees down were lit.
At first we looked now and then at one another.
After a time we stopped doing that and looked only at the Time Traveller's face.