XV.
The Time Traveller's Return
"So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the
machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed,
the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater
freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The
hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows
of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and
passed, and others came. Presently, when the million dial was at zero,
I slackened speed. I began to recognise our own pretty and familiar
architecture, the thousands hand ran back to the starting-point, the
night and day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls of the
laboratory came round me. Very gently, now, I slowed the mechanism
down.
"I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you
that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett
had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a
rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when she
traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to be the
exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower end opened,
and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost, and
disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered. Just
before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a
flash.
"Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar
laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got off
the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several minutes
I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was my old
workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept there, and
the whole thing have been a dream.
"And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east corner
of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the north-west, against
the wall where you saw it. That gives you the exact distance from my
little lawn to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, into which the
Morlocks had carried my machine.
"For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came through
the passage here, limping, because my heel was still painful, and
feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the _Pall Mall Gazette_ on the table by
the door. I found the date was indeed today, and looking at the
timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices
and the clatter of plates. I hesitated--I felt so sick and weak. Then I
sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the door on you. You know the
rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you the story.
[ END OF CHAPTER, MOVE TO CHAPTER XVI ]