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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 was staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely
thought myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people,
and by some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but
there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the
Morlocks—a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them.
Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into 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 him soon. |
|
| ‘The enemy I dreaded may
surprise you. It was the darkness of the new moon. Weena had put this into
my head by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights.
It was not now such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark
Nights might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer
interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at least
the reason of the fear of the little Upper-world people for the dark. I
wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the Morlocks did
under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now that my second hypothesis was
all wrong. The Upper-world people might once have been the favoured
aristocracy, and the Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had long
since passed away. The two species that had resulted from the evolution of
man were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether
new relationship. The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a
mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance:
since the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at
last to find the daylit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made their
garments, I inferred, and maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps
through the survival of an old habit of service. They did it as a standing
horse paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport:
because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the organism.
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 of the ease and the
sunshine. And now that brother was coming back changed! Already the Eloi
had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted
with Fear. And suddenly there came into 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 it were by the current of my meditations, but coming in
almost like a question from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I
had a vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was
at the time. |
|
| ‘Still, however helpless the
little people in the presence of their mysterious Fear, I was differently
constituted. I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human
race, when Fear does not paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at
least would defend myself. Without further delay I determined to make
myself arms and a fastness where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base,
I could face this strange world with some of that confidence I had lost in
realizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I felt I could
never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. I shuddered with
horror to think how they must already have examined me. |
|
| ‘I wandered during the
afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but found nothing that commended
itself to my mind as inaccessible. All the buildings and trees seemed
easily practicable to such dexterous climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by
their wells, must be. Then the tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green
Porcelain and the polished gleam of its walls came back to my memory; and
in the evening, taking Weena like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the
hills towards the south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or
eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. I had first seen the
place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptively diminished. In
addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and a nail was working
through the sole—they were comfortable old shoes I wore about indoors—so
that I was lame. And it was already long past sunset when I came in sight
of the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of the sky. |
|
| ‘Weena had been hugely
delighted when I began to carry her, but after a while she desired me to
let her down, and ran along by the side of me, occasionally darting off on
either hand to pick flowers to stick in my pockets. My pockets had always
puzzled Weena, but at the last she had concluded that they were an
eccentric kind of vase for 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, 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 hill-side 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
such-like 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. |
VIII
'I found the Palace
of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about noon, deserted and falling into
ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of
the green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay
very high upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I
was surprised to see a
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