The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and
silently placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon
the little table. Then he resumed his narrative.
"As the hush of evening crept over the world and we
proceeded over the hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to
return to the house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distant pinnacles of
the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to make her understand that
we were seeking a refuge there from her Fear. You know that great pause that
comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me
there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was
clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset.
Well, that night the expectation took the colour of my fears. In that darkling
calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel
the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through
it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the
dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of their
burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my Time 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 another
came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena's fears and her
fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to her and caressed
her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck, and,
closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder. So we went down
a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked into a
little river. This I waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a
number of 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 of the Morlocks, but
it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours before the old moon rose
were still to come.
"From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood
spreading wide and black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to
it, either to the right or the left. Feeling tired--my feet, in particular,
were very sore--I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I halted, and sat
down upon the turf. I could no longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I
was in doubt of my direction. I looked into the thickness of the wood and
thought of what it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one would be
out of sight of the stars. Even were there no other lurking danger--a danger I
did not care to let my imagination loose upon--there would still be all the
roots to stumble over and the tree-boles to strike against.
"I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the
day; so I decided that I would not face it, but would pass the night upon the
open hill.
"Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I
carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the
moonrise. The hillside was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood
there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the stars, for
the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their
twinkling. All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow
movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since
rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me,
was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore. Southward (as I
judged it) was a very bright red star that was new to me; it was even more
splendid than our own green Sirius. And amid all these scintillating points of
light one bright planet shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old
friend.
"Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own
troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their
unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of
the unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the great precessional
cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty times had that silent
revolution occurred during all the years that I 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 as I knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were
these frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white
Things of which I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear that was
between the two species, and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the
clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too horrible!
I looked at little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under
the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought.
"Through that long night I held my mind off the
Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I
could find signs of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept
very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at times. Then, as
my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of
some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white. And
close behind, and overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at
first, and then growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I
had seen none upon the hill that night. And in the confidence of renewed day it
almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up and found my
foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle and 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 and pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit
wherewith to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing
and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such thing in nature as the
night. And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. I felt assured
now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble
rill from the great flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of
human decay the Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had lived on rats
and suchlike vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating and exclusive in
his food than he was far less than any monkey. His prejudice against human
flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman sons of men! I tried to
look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were less human and
more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago.
And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a torment had
gone. Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which
the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon probably saw to the breeding
of. And there was Weena dancing at my side!
"Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that
was coming upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human
selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours
of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the
fullness of time Necessity had come home to him. I even tried a Carlyle-like
scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of mind was
impossible. However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too
much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a
sharer in their degradation and their Fear.
"I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I
should pursue. My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself
such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That necessity was immediate.
In the next place, I hoped to procure some means 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 of bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering-ram. I
had a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light
before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape. I could not imagine
the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. Weena I had resolved to
bring with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over in my mind I
pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling.
