"Well, one very hot morning my fourth, I think, as I
was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great
house where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing. Clambering
among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side
windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the brilliancy
outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for
the change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me.
Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against
the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.
"The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me.
I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was
afraid to turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity
appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I remembered that strange
terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced a step and
spoke. I will admit that my voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out my
hand and touched something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways, and
something white ran past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a
queer little ape-like figure, its head held down in a peculiar manner, running
across the sunlit space behind me. It blundered against a block of granite,
staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden in a black shadow beneath another
pile of ruined masonry.
"My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I
know it was a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that
there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But as I say, it went too
fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all fours,
or only with its forearms held very low. After an instant's pause I followed it
into the second heap of ruins. I could not find it at first; but, after a time
in the profound obscurity, I came upon one of those round well-like openings of
which I have told you, half closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to
me. Could this Thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and, looking
down, I saw a small, white, moving creature, with large bright eyes which
regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like a
human spider! It was clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first time
a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the shaft.
Then the light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it
dropped, and when I had lit another the little monster had disappeared.
"I do not know how long I sat peering down that well.
It was not for some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the
thing I had seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man
had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals:
that my graceful children of the Upper-world were not the sole descendants of
our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had
flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.
"I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory
of an underground ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. And what,
I wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced
organization? How was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful
Upper-worlders? And what was hidden down there, at the foot of that shaft? I
sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any rate, there was
nothing to fear, and that there I must descend for the solution of my
difficulties. And withal I was absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of
the beautiful Upper-world people came running in their amorous sport across the
daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as
he ran.
"They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the
overturned pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad form
to remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried to frame a
question about it in their tongue, they were still more visibly distressed and
turned away. But they were interested by my matches, and I struck some to amuse
them. I tried them again about the well, and again I failed. So presently I
left them, meaning to go back to Weena, and see what I could get from her. But
my mind was already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and
sliding to a new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of these wells, to
the ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a hint
at the meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the Time Machine! And very
vaguely there came a suggestion towards the solution of the economic problem that
had puzzled me.
"Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of
Man was subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular which made
me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a
long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there was the bleached
look common in most animals that live largely in the dark, the white fish of
the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes, with that capacity
for reflecting light, are common features of nocturnal things witness the owl
and the cat. And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that
hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar
carriage of the head while in the light, all reinforced the theory of an
extreme sensitiveness of the retina.
"Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled
enormously, and these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The
presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes everywhere, in
fact except along the river valley showed how universal were its ramifications.
What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in this artificial Underworld
that such work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done?
The notion was so plausible that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume
the how of this splitting of the human species. I dare say you will anticipate
the shape of my theory; though, for myself, I very soon felt that it fell far
short of the truth.
"At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age,
it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present
merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer,
was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will seem grotesque enough to
you, and wildly incredible! and yet even now there are existing circumstances
to point that way. There is a tendency to utilize underground space for the
less ornamental purposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway in
London, for instance, there are new electric railways, there are subways, there
are underground workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and multiply.
Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till Industry had gradually
lost its birthright in the sky. I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into
larger and ever larger underground factories, spending a still-increasing
amount of its time therein, till, in the end! Even now, does not an East-end
worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the
natural surface of the earth?
"Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people due, no
doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf
between them and the rude violence of the poor, is already leading to the
closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the
land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in
against intrusion. And this same widening gulf--which is due to the length and
expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and
temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich, will make that
exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at
present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social
stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must
have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the
Havenots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their
labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a
little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they
would starve or be suffocated for arrears.
Such of them as were so constituted
as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being
permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of
underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to
theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor
followed naturally enough.
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