The Time Machine - Chapter 5

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Episode Transcript

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Chapter five of The Time Machine byH. G. Wells. As I
stood there musing over this too perfecttriumph of man, the full moon,
yellow and Ghibbius came up out ofan overflow of silver light in the northeast.
The bright little figure ceased to moveabout below. A noiseless owl flitted

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by, and I shivered with thechill of the night. I determined to
descend and find where I could sleep. I looked for the building I knew.
Then My eye traveled along to thefigure of the white sphinx upon the
pedestal of bronze, growing distinct.As the light of the rising moon grew
brighter, I could see the silverbirch against it. There was the tangle

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of rhododendron bushes, black in thepale light. And there was the little
lawn. I looked at the lawnagain. A queer doubt chilled my complacency.
No, said I stoutly to myself. That was not the lawn.
But it was the lawn, forthe white, leprous face of the sphinx

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was towards it. Can you imaginewhat I felt as this conviction came home
to me? But you cannot.The Time Machine was gone at once,
like a lash across the face.Came the possibility of losing my own age,
of being left helpless in this strangenew world. The bare thought of

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it was an actual physical sensation.I could feel it grip me at the
throat and stop my breathing. Inanother moment, I was in a passion
of fear and running with great leapingstrides down the slope. Once I fell
headlong and cut my face, Ilost no time in stanching the blood,

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but jumped up and ran on,with a warm trickled down my cheek and
chin. All the time I ran, I was saying to myself, they
have moved it a little, pushedunder the bushes, out of the way.
Nevertheless, I ran with all mymight, all the time, with
the certainty that sometimes comes with excessivedread. I knew that such assurance was

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folly. Knew instinctively that the machinewas removed out of my reach. My
breath came with pain. I supposeI covered the whole distance from the hillcrest
to the little lawn, two miles, perhaps in ten minutes. And I
am not a young man. Icursed aloud as I ran at my confident

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folly in leaving the machine, wastinggood breath. Thereby, I cried aloud,
and none answered. Not a creatureseemed to be stirring in the moonlit
world. When I reached the lawn, my worst fears were realized. Not
a trace of the thing was tobe seen. I felt faint and cold

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when I faced the empty space amongthe black tangle of bushes. I ran
round it furiously, as if thething might be hidden in a corner,
and then stopped abruptly, with myhands clutching my hair. Above me towered
the sphinx upon the bronze pedestal,white, shining lepros in the light of
the rising moon. It seemed tosmile in mockery of my dismay. I

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might have consoled myself by imagining thelittle people had put the mechanism in some
shelter for me, had I notfelt assured of their physical and intellectual inadequacy.
That is what dismayed me, thesense of some hitherto unsuspected power through
whose intervention my invention had vanished.Yet for one thing, I felt assured,

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unless some other age had produced itsexact duplicate, the machine could not
have moved in time. The attachmentof the levers I will show you the
method later, prevented anyone from tamperingwith it in that way. When they
were removed, it had moved andwas hid only in space. But then

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where could it be? I thinkI must have had a kind of frenzy.
I remember running violently in and outamong the moonlit bushes all round the
sphinx, and startling some white animalthat, in the dim light I took
for a small deer. I rememberedtoo late that night, beating the bushes
with my clenched fist until my knuckleswere gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs.

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Then, sobbing and raving in myanguish of mind, I went down
to the great Building of Stone.The big hall was dark, silent,
and deserted. I slipped on theuneven floor and fell over one of the
malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on
past the dusty curtains of which Ihave told you. Then I found a

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second great hall, covered with cushions, upon which perhaps a score or so
of the little people were sleeping.I have no doubt I found my second
appearance strange enough, coming suddenly outof the quiet darkness, with inarticulate noises
and the sputter and flare of amatch. For they had forgotten about matches.

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Where is my time machine? Ibegan bawling like an angry child,
laying hands upon them and shaking themup together. I must have been very
queer to them. Some laughed,most of them looked sorely frightened. When
I saw them standing round me,it came into my head that I was
doing as foolish a thing as itwas possible for me to do under the

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circumstances, in trying to revive thesensation of fear. For reasoning from their
daylight behavior, I thought that fearmust be forgotten. Abruptly, I dashed
down the match, and, knockingone of the people over in my course,
went blundering across the big dining hallagain. Out under the moonlight.

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I heard cries of terror, andtheir little feet running and stumbling this way.
And that I do not remember allI did as the moon crept up
the sky. I suppose it wasthe unexpected nature of my loss that maddened
me. I felt hopelessly cut offfrom my own kind, a strange animal
in an unknown world. I musthave raved to and fro screaming and crying

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upon God and fate. I havea memory of horrible fatigue, as the
long night of despair wore away,of looking in this impossible place, and
that of groping among moonlit ruins andtouching strange creatures in the black shadows.
At last, of lying on theground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute

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wretchedness. I had nothing left butmisery. Then I slept, and when
I woke again it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping
round me on the turf, withinreach of my arm. I sat up
in the freshness of the morning,trying to remember how I had got there,
and why I had such a profoundsense of desertion and despair. Then

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things came clear in my mind.With the plain, reasonable daylight, I
could look my circumstances fairly in theface. I saw the wild folly of
my frenzy overnight, and I couldreason with myself. Suppose the worst,
I said, suppose the machine altogetherlost, perhaps destroyed. It behooves me

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to be calm and patient, tolearn the way of the people, to
get a clear idea of the methodof my loss and the means of getting
materials and tools, so that inthe end, perhaps I may make another
That would be my only hope.Perhaps but better than despair. And after

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all it was a beautiful and curiousworld. But probably the machine had only
been taken away. Still, Imust be calm and patient, find its
hiding place, and recover it byforce or cunning. And with that I
scrambled to my feet and looked aboutme, wondering where I could bathe.

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I felt weary, stiff, andtravel soiled. The freshness of the morning
made me desire an equal freshness.I had exhausted my emotion. Indeed,
as I went about my business,I found myself wondering at my intense excitement.
Overnight. I made a careful examinationof the ground about the little lawn.

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I wasted some time in futile questionings, conveyed as well as I was
able to such of the little peopleas came by. They all failed to
understand my gestures. Some were simplystolid, some thought it was a jest
and laughed at me. I hadthe hardest task in the world to keep
my hands off their pretty laughing faces. It was a foolish impulse, but

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the devil begotten of fear and blindanger was ill curbed and still eager to
take advantage of my perplexity. Theturf gave better counsel. I found a
groove ripped in it, about midwaybetween the pedestal of the sphinx and the
marks of my feet, where onarrival I had struggled with the overturned machine.

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There were other signs of removal about, with queer, narrow footprints,
like those I could imagine made bya sloth. This directed my closer attention
to the pedestal. It was,as I think I have said of bronze.
It was not a mere block,but highly decorated, with deep framed
panels on either side. I wentand wrapped at these. The pedestal was

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hollow. Examining the panels with care, I found them discontinuous with the frames.
There were no handles or keyholes,but possibly the panels if they were
doors, as I supposed, openedfrom within. One thing was clear enough
to my mind. It took novery great mental effort to infer that my
time machine was inside that pedestal.But how it got there was a different

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problem. I saw the heads oftwo orange clad people coming through the bushes
and under some blossom covered apple treestowards me. I turned smiling to them
and beckoned them to me. Theycame, and then, pointing to the
bronze pedestal, I tried to intimatemy wish to open it. But at
my first gesture towards this, theybehaved very oddly. I don't know how

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to convey their expression to you.Suppose you were to use a grossly improper
gesture to a delicate minded woman,it is how she would look. They
went off as if they had receivedthe last possible insult. I tried a
sweet looking little chap in white next, with exactly the same result. Somehow,

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his manner made me feel ashamed ofmyself. But as you, I
wanted the time machine, and Itried him once more. As he turned
off like the others, my tempergot the better of me. In three
strides, I was after him,had him by the loose part of his
robe round the neck, and begandragging him towards the sphinx. Then I

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saw the horror and repugnance of hisface, and all of a sudden I'd
let him go, but I wasnot beaten yet. I banged with my
fist at the bronze panels. Ithought I heard something stir inside. To
be explicit, I thought I hearda sound like a chuckle. But I
must have been mistaken. Then Igot a big pebble from the river and

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came and hammered till I had flatteneda coil in the decorations, and the
verdigris came off in powdery flakes.The delicate little people must have heard me
hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile awayon either hand, but nothing came of
it. I saw a crowd ofthem upon the slopes, looking furtively at
me. At last, hot andtired, I sat down to watch the

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place. But I was too restlessto watch long. I am too occidental
for a long vigil. I couldwork at a problem for years, But
to wait inactive for twenty four hours, that is another matter. I got
up after a time and began walkingaimlessly through the bushes towards the hill again.

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Patience, said I to myself.If you want your machine again,
you must leave that sphinx alone.If they mean to take your machine away,
it's little good. You're wrecking theirbronze panels. And if they don't,
you will get it back as soonas you can ask for it.
To sit among all those unknown thingsbefore. A puzzle like that is hopeless.
That way lies monomania. Face thisworld, learn its ways, watch

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it, be careful of too hastyguesses at its meaning. In the end
you will find clues to it all. Then suddenly the humor of the situation
came into my mind, the thoughtof the years I had spent in study
and toil to get into the futureage, and now my passion of anxiety
to get out of it. Ihad made myself the most complicated and the

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most hopeless trap that ever a mandevised. Although it was at my own
expense, I could not help myself. I laughed aloud going through the big
Palace. It seemed to me thatthe little people avoided me. It may
have been my fancy, or itmay have had something to do with my

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hammering at the gates of bronze.Yet I felt tolerably sure of the avoidance.
I was careful, however, toshow no concern and to abstain from
any pursuit of them. And inthe course of a day or two things
got back to the old footing.I made what progress I could in the
language, and in addition I pushedmy explorations here and there. Either I

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missed some subtle point, or theirlanguage was excessively simple, almost exclusively composed
of concrete substantives and verbs. Thereseemed to be few, if any,
abstract terms, or little use offigurative language. Their sentences were usually simple
and of two words, and Ifailed to convey or understand any but the

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simplest propositions. I determined to putthe thought of my time machine and the
mystery of the bronze doors under thesphinx, as much as possible, in
a corner of memory, until mygrowing knowledge would lead me back to them
in a natural way. Yet acertain feeling you may understand, tethered me
in a circle of a few milesround the point of my arrival. So

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far as I could see, allthe world displayed the same exuberant richness as
the Thames Valley. From every hillI climbed, I saw the same abundance
of splendid buildings, endlessly varied inmaterial and style, the same a clustering
thickets of evergreens, the same blossomladen trees and tree ferns. Here and

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there water shone like silver, andbeyond the land rose into blue, undulating
hills, and so faded into theserenity of the sky. A peculiar feature
which presently attracted my attention was thepresence of certain circular wells, several as
it seemed to me of a verygreat depth. One lay by the path

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up the hill which I had followedduring my first walk. Like the others,
it was rimmed with bronze, curiouslywrought, and protected by a little
cupula from the rain. Sitting bythe side of these wells and peering down
into the shafted darkness, I couldsee no gleam of water, nor could
I start any reflection with a lightedmatch. But in all of them I

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heard a certain sound, a thud, dud, dud, like the beating
of some big engine, and Idiscovered from the flaring of the matches that
a steady current of air set downthe shafts. Further, I threw a
scrap of paper into the throat ofone, and instead of fluttering slowly down,
it was at once sucked swiftly outof sight. After a time too,

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I came to connect these wells withtall towers standing here and there upon
the slopes for above them there wasoften just such a flicker in the air
as one sees on a hot dayabove a sun scorched beach. Putting things
together, I reached a strong suggestionof an extensive system of subterranean ventilation,

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whose true import it was difficult toimagine. I was at first inclined to
associate it with the sanitary apparatus ofthese people. It was an obvious conclusion,
but it was absolutely wrong. Andhere I must admit that I learned
very little of drains and bells,and modes of conveyance and the light conveyances

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during my time in this real future. In some of these visions of Utopia's
and coming times which I have read, there is a vast amount of detail
about building and social arrangements and soforth. But while such details are easy
enough to obtain when the whole worldis contained in one's imagination, they are
altogether inaccessible to a real traveler.Amid such realities as I found here,

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conceive the tale of London, whicha Negro fresh from Central Africa would take
back to his tribe. What wouldhe know of railway companies, of social
movements, of telephone and telegraph wires, of the parcels delivery company, and
postal orders and the like. Yetwe at least should be willing enough to
explain these things to him. Andeven of what he knew, how much

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could he make his untraveled friend eitherapprehend or believe? Then? Think how
narrow the gap between a Negro anda white man of our times, and
how wide the interval between myself andthese of the golden age. I was
sensible of much which was unseen,and which contributed to my comfort. But

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say, for a general impression ofautomatic organization, I fear I can convey
very little of the difference to yourmind. In the matter of sepulcher,
for instance, I could see nosigns of crematoria, nor anything suggestive of
tombs. But it occurred to methat possibly there might be cemeteries or crematoria

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somewhere beyond the range of my explorings. This again was a question I deliberately
put to myself, and my curiositywas at first entirely defeated. Upon the
point the thing puzzled me, andI was led to make a further remark,
which puzzled me still more, thataged and infirm among these people there

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were none. I must confess thatmy satisfaction with my first theories of an
automatic civilization and a decadent humanity didnot long endure. Yet I could think
of no other let me put mydifficulties. The several big palaces I had
explored were mere living places, greatdining halls and sleeping apartments. I could

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find no machinery, no appliances ofany kind. Yet these people were clothed
in pleasant fabrics that must at timesneed renewal, and their sandals, though
undecorated, were fairly complex specimens ofmetalwork. Somehow, such things must be
made, and the little people displayedno vestige of a creative tendency. There

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were no shops, no workshops,no sign of importations among them. They
spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in
making love in a half playful fashion, in eating fruit, and sleeping.
I could not see how things werekept going. Then again about the time

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machine. Something I knew not whathad taken it into the hollow pedestal of
the White Sphinx. Why, forthe life of me, I could not
imagine those waterless wells, too,those flickering pillars. I felt I lacked
a clue. I felt, howshall I put it? Suppose you found

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an inscription with sentences here and therein excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith
others made up of words of letterseven absolutely unknown to you. Well,
on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of eight
hundred and two thousand, seven hundredand one presented itself to me. That
day too, I made a friendof a sort. It happened that,

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as I was watching some of thelittle people bathing in a shallow one of
them was seized with a cramp andbegan drift downstream. The main current ran
rather swiftly, but not too stronglyfor even a moderate swimmer. It will
give you an idea, therefore,of the strange deficiency in these creatures,
when I tell you that none madethe slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying

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little thing which was drowning before theireyes. When I realized this, I
hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down,
I caught the poor mite and drewher safe to land. A little
rubbing of the limb soon brought herround, and I had the satisfaction of
seeing she was all right. BeforeI left her, I had got to

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such a low estimate of her kindthat I did not expect any gratitude from
her in that however, I waswrong. This happened in the morning.
In the afternoon, I met mylittle woman, as I believe it was,
as I was returning towards my centerfrom an exploration, and she received
me with cries of delight and presentedme with big garland of flowers, evidently

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made for me and me alone.The thing took my imagination very possibly I
had been feeling desolate. At anyrate, I did my best to display
my appreciation of the gift. Wewere soon seated together in a little stone
arbor, engaged in conversation, chieflyof smiles. The creature's friendliness affected me

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exactly as a child's might have done. We passed each other flowers, and
she kissed my hands. I didthe same to hers. Then I tried
talk and found that her name wasWeena, which, though I don't know
what it meant, somehow seemed appropriateenough. That was the beginning of a
queer friendship, which lasted a weekand ended. As I will tell you,

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she was exactly like a child.She wanted to be with me always.
She tried to follow me everywhere,and on my next journey out and
about, it went to my hearttire her down and leave her at last,
exhausted and calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems of the world
had to be mastered. I hadnot, I said to myself, come

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into the future to carry on aminiature flirtation. Yet her distress when I
left her was very great. Herexpostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic,
and I think altogether I had asmuch trouble as comfort from her devotion.
Nevertheless, she was somehow a greatcomfort. I thought it was a mere

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childish affection that made her cling tome. Until it was too late.
I did not clearly know what Ihad inflicted upon her when I left her,
Nor until it was too late didI clearly understand what she was to
me. For by merely seeming fondof me and showing in her weak,
feutile way that she cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently

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gave my return to the neighborhood ofthe whites faces almost the feeling of coming
home, and I would watch forher, tiny figure of white and gold
so soon as I came over thehill. It was from her, too
that I learned that fear had notyet left the world. She was fearless
enough in the daylight, and shehad the oddest confidence in me. For

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once, in a foolish moment,I made threatning grimaces at her, and
she simply laughed at them. Butshe dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows,
dreaded black things. Darkness, toher was the one thing dreadful. It
was a singularly passionate emotion, andit set me thinking and observing. I

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discovered, then, among other things, that these little people gathered into the
great houses after dark and slept indroves. To enter upon them without a
light was to put them into atumult of apprehension. I never found one
out of doors, or one sleepingalone withindoor after dark. Yet I was

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still such a blockhead that I missedthe lesson of that fear, And in
spite of Weena's distress, I insistedupon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes.
It troubled her greatly, but inthe end her odd affection for me triumphed,
and for five of the nights ofour acquaintance, including the last night
of all, she slept with herhead pillowed on my arm. But my

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story slips away from me as Ispeak of her. It must have been
the night before her rescue that Iwas awakened about dawn. I had been
restless, dreaming most disagreeably that Iwas drowned, and that sea anemones were
feeling over my face with their softpalps. I awoke with a start,
and with an odd fancy that somegrayish animal had just rushed out of the

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chamber. I tried to get tosleep again, but I felt restless and
uncomfortable. It was that dim grayhour when things are just creeping out of
darkness, when everything is colorless andclear cut and yet unreal. I got
up and went down into the GreatHall, and so out upon the flagstones

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in front of the palace. Ithought I would make a virtue of necessity
and see the sunrise. The moonwas setting, and the dying moonlight and
the first pallor of dawn were mingledin a ghastly half light. The bushes
were inky black, the ground asomber gray, the sky colorless and cheerless.

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And up the hill I thought Icould see ghosts. There were several
times, as I scanned the slopeI saw white figures. Twice I fancied
I saw a solitary, white,apelike creature running rather quickly up the hill,
and once near the ruins, Isaw a leash of them carrying some
dark body. They moved hastily.I did not see what became of them.

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It seemed that they vanished among thebushes. The dawn was still indistinct.
You must understand I was feeling thatchill, uncertain early morning feeling you
may have known. I doubted myeyes as the eastern sky grew brighter,
and the light of the day cameon, and its vivid coloring returned upon

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the world. Once more, Iscanned the view keenly, but I saw
no vestige of my white figures.They were mere creatures of the half light.
They must have been ghosts, Isaid, I wonder whence they dated.
For a queer notion of grand Ellen'scame into my head and amused me.

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If each generation die and leave ghosts, he argued, the world at
last will get overcrowded with them.On that theory, they would have grown
innumerable some eight hundred thousand years since, and it was no great wonder to
see four at once. But thejest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking
of these figures all the morning untilWeena's rescue drove them out of my head.

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I associated them, in some indefiniteway with the white animal I had
startled in my first passionate search forthe time machine. But Weena was a
pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined to take far
deadlier possession of my mind. Ithink I have said how much hotter than
our own was the weather of thisGolden age. I cannot account for it.

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It may be that the Sun washotter, or the Earth nearer the
Sun. It is usual to assumethat the Sun will go on cooling steadily
in the future, But people unfamiliarwith such speculations as those of the younger
Darwin forget that the planets must ultimatelyfall back one by one into the parent
body. As these catastrophes occur,the Sun will blaze with renewed energy,

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and it may be that some innerplanet had suffered this fate. Whatever the
reason, the fact remains that thesun was very much hotter than we know
it well. One very hot morning, my fourth I think, as I
was seeking shelter from the heat andglare in a colossal ruin near the Great
House where I slept and fed,there happened this strange thing. Clambering among

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these heaps of masonry, I founda 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 tome. I entered it, groping for
the change from light to blackness madespots of color swim before me. Suddenly

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I halted, spellbound. A pairof eyes, luminous by reflection against the
daylight without was watching me. Outof the darkness. The old instinctive dread
of wild beasts came upon me.I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked into
the glaring eyeball I was afraid toturn. Then the thought of the absolute

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security in which humanity appeared to beliving came to my mind, and then
I remembered that strange terror of thedark 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 outmy hand and touched something soft. At

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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 downin a peculiar manner, running across the
sunlit space behind me. It blunderedagainst a block of granite, staggered aside,
and in a moment was hidden ina black shadow beneath another pile of

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ruined masonry. My impression of itis, of course imperfect, but I
know it was a dull white andhad strange, large, rayish red eyes,
also that there was flaxen hair onits head and down its back.
But as I say, it wenttoo fast for me to see distinctly,

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I cannot even say whether it ranon all fours or only with its forearms
held very low. After an instant'spause, I followed it into the second
heap of ruins. I could notfind it at first, but after a
time in the profound obscurity, Icame upon one of those round well like
openings of which I have told you, half closed by a fallen pillar.

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A sudden thought came to me,could this thing have vanished down the shaft?
I lit a match, and lookingdown, 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.

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It was clambering down the wall.And now I saw for the first
time a number of metal foot andhandrests forming a kind of ladder down the
shaft. Then the light burned myfingers and fell out of my hand,
going out as it dropped, Andwhen I lit another the little monster had
disappeared. I do not know howlong I sat peering down that well.

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It was not for some time thatI 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 upperworld were not the sole descendants of our

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generation, but that this bleached,obscene, nocturnal thing which had flashed before
me was also heir to all theages I thought of the flickering pillars,
and of my theory of an undergroundventilation. I began to suspect their true
import And what I wondered was thislemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly

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balanced organization? How was it relatedto the indolent serenity of the beautiful upper
worlders? And what was hidden downthere at the foot of that shaft.
I sat upon the edge of thewell, telling myself that at any rate,
there was nothing to fear, andthat there I must descend for the

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solution of my difficulties, and withalI was absolutely afraid to go. As
I hesitated, two of the beautifulupper 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

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against the overturned pillar peering down thewell. Apparently it was considered bad form
to remark these apertures, for whenI pointed to this one and tried to
frame a question about it in theirtongue, they were still more visibly distressed
and turned away. But they wereinterested by my matches, and I struck
some to amuse them. I triedthem again about the well, and again

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I failed. So presently I leftthem, meaning to go back to Weena
and see what I could get fromher. But my mind was already in
revolution. My guesses and impressions wereslipping and sliding to a new adjustment.
I had now a clue to theimport of these wells, to the ventilating
towers, to the mystery of theghosts, to say nothing of a hint

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at the meaning of the bronze gatesand the fate of the time machine.
And very vaguely there came a suggestiontowards the solution of the economic problem that
had puzzled me. Here was thenew view. Plainly, this second species
of man was subterranean. There werethree circumstances in particular, which made me

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think that its rare emergence above groundwas 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 thedark, the white fish of the Kentucky
Caves, for instance. Then thoselarge eyes with that capacity for reflecting light

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are common features of nocturnal things.Witness the owl and the cat. And
last of all, that evident confusionin the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling,
awkward flight towards dark shadow, andthat peculiar carriage of the head while
in the light, all reinforced thetheory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina

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beneath my feet. Then the earthmust be tunneled enormously, and these tunnelings
were the habitats 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

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to assume that it was in thisartificial underworld that such work as was necessary
to the comfort of the daylight racewas 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

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of my theory, though for myselfI 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 daylightto me that the gradual widening of the
present merely temporary, and social differencebetween the capitalist and the laborer was the

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key to the whole position. Nodoubt, it will seem grotesque enough to
you, and wildly incredible, Andyet even now there are existing circumstances to
point that way. There is atendency to utilize underground space for the less
ornamental purposes of civilization. There isthe Metropolitan Railway in London, for instance.

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There are the new electric railways.There are subways, There are underground
workrooms and restaurants, and they increaseand multiply. Evidently, I thought this
tendency had increased till industry had graduallylost its birthright in the sky. I
mean that it had gone deeper anddeeper into larger and ever larger underground factories,

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spending a still increasing amount of itstime therein till in the end,
even now, does not an EastEnd worker live in such artificial conditions as
practically to be cut off from thenatural 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 betweenthem and the rude violence of the poor,

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is already leading to the closing intheir interest of considerable portions of the
surface of the land about London,for instance, perhaps half the prettier country
is shut in against intrusion. Andthis same widening gulf, which is due
to the length and expense of thehigher educational process, and the increased facilities

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for and temptations towards refined habits onthe 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 alonglines of social stratification, less and less
frequent. So in the end,above ground you must have the halves pursuing

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pleasure and comfort and beauty, andbelow ground the have knots, the workers
getting continually adapted to the conditions oftheir labor. Once they were there,
they would no doubt have to payrent, 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

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to be miserable and rebellious would die, And in the end, the balance
being permanent, the survivors would becomeas well adapted to the conditions of underground
life, and as happy in theirway as the upper world people were to
theirs. As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor

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followed. Naturally enough, the greattriumph of humanity I had dreamed of took
a different shape in my mind.It had been no such triumph of moral
education and general cooperation as I hadimagined. Instead, I saw a real
aristocracy, armed with a perfected scienceand working to a logical conclusion the industrial

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system of today. Its triumph hadnot been simply a triumph over nature,
but a triumph over nature and thefellow man. This, I must warn
you, was my theory at thetime. I had no convenient cicerone in
the pattern of the utopian books.My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I

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still think it is the most plausibleone. But even on this supposition,
the balanced civilization that was at leastattained must have long since passed its zenith
and was now far fallen into decay. The too perfect security of the upper
worlders had led them to a slowmovement of degeneration, to a general dwindling

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in size, strength, and intelligencethat I could see clearly enough already what
had happened to the underworlders. Idid not yet suspect, but from what
I had seen of the Morlocks that, by the way, was the name
by which the creatures were called,I could imagine that the modification of the
human type was even far more profoundthan among the Eloi, the beautiful race

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that I already knew. Then cametroublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken
my time machine? For I feltsure it was they who had taken it.
Why, too, if the eloywere masters, could they not restore
the machine to me? And whywere they so terribly afraid of the dark.

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I proceeded, as I have said, to question Weena about this underworld,
But here again I was disappointed.At first she would not understand my
questions, and presently she refused toanswer them. She shivered, as though
the topic was unendurable, and whenI pressed her, perhaps a little harshly,
she burst into tears. They werethe only tears except my own I

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ever saw in that golden age.When I saw them, I ceased abruptly
to trouble about the Morlocks, andwas only concerned in banishing these signs of
the human inheritance from Weena's eyes,and very soon she was smiling and clapping
her hands while I solemnly burned amatch. End of Chapter five,