บทที่ บทที่ 15 · XV. The Time Traveller’s Return

e 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.

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