"Герберт Уэллс. The Time Machine (Машина времени, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

this a trick-like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?'

`Upon that machine,' said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, `I
intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in my
life.'

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he winked
at me solemnly.



II



I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine.
The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to
be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always
suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid
frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time
Traveller's words, we should have shown HIM far less scepticism. For we
should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby.
But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements,
and we distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame of a less
clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too
easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of
his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for
judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china. So I
don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval
between that Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no
doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical
incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter
confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied
with the trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the Medical
Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar
thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out of the
candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.

The next Thursday I went again to Richmond-I suppose I was one of the
Time Traveller's most constant guests-and, arriving late, found four or
five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical Man was
standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his watch in
the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller, and-`It's half-past seven
now,' said the Medical Man. `I suppose we'd better have dinner?'

`Where's--?' said I, naming our host.

`You've just come? It's rather odd. He's unavoidably detained. He asks