Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (56 page)

As I
took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation, oddly truncated at
the end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round me as I opened the
door, and from within came the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The
Time Traveller was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure
sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment—a figure so
transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was absolutely
distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The Time Machine had
gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the further end of the laboratory was
empty. A pane of the skylight had, apparently, just been blown in.

I
felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened, and
for the moment could not distinguish what the strange thing might be. As I
stood staring, the door into the garden opened, and the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then ideas began to
come. "Has
Mr.
-----
gone out that way?"
said I.

"No,
sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him here."

At
that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson, I stayed on,
waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger
story, and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him. But I am
beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The Time Traveller vanished
three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he has never returned.

EPILOGUE

One
cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back
into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of
Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among the
grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He may
even now—if I ma)'
use
the
phrase—be
wandering
on
some
plesiosaurus-haunted
Oolitic coral
reef,
or
beside
the
lonely
saline
lakes
of
the
Triassic
Age.
Or did
he
go
forward,
into
one
of
the
nearer
ages,
in
which
men
are
still men,
but
with
the
riddles
of
our
own
time
answered
and
its
wearisome
problems
solved?
Into
the
manhood
of
the
race:
for
I,
for
my own
part,
cannot
think
that
these
latter
days
of
weak
experiment, fragmentary
theory,
and
mutual
discord
are
indeed
man's
culminating
time!
I
say,
for
my
own
part.
He,
I
know—for
the
question
had been
discussed
among
us
long
before
the
Time
Machine
was
made—
I
bought
but
cheerlessly
of
the
Advancement
of
Mankind,
and
saw in
the
growing
pile
of
civilisation
only
a
foolish
heaping
that
must inevitably
fall
back
upon
and
destroy
its
makers
in
the
end.
If
that is
so,
it
remains
for
us
to
live
as
though
it
were
not
so.
But
to
me
I
he
future
is
still
black
and
blank—is
a
vast
ignorance,
lit
at
a
few casual
places
by
the
memory
of
his
story.
And
I
have
by
me,
for
my comfort,
two
strange
white
flowers—shrivelled
now,
and
brown
and
flat
and
brittle—to
witness
that
even
when
mind
and
strength
had gone,
gratitude
and
a
mutual
tenderness
still
lived
on
in
the
heart of
man.

From
Shocks,
by
Algernon Blackwood, reprinted by permission of £. P. Dutton
&
Co.,
Inc.,
and
a.
P. Watt & Son.

iHlsewhere
and Otherwise

By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

A
mong
the genuinely strange stories of the world the strang-
cst
are
those
concerned
with
total
disappearance.
Apart
from
murders and
destruction,
where
bodies
are
variously
done
away
with,
these "total
disappearances"
stand
by
themselves.
Hi
presto!
and
the fellow
is
gone,
leaving
not
a
wrack
behind.
The
class,
naturally,
is small.
Sydney
Mantravers
certainly
belonged
to
it.

His
case
is
interesting
because,
after
a
total
disappearance
of
four years
or
so,
he
re-appeared.
Not
only
did
he
re-appear,
but
he
tried hard
to
tell
me
where
he
had
been
and
what
he
had
been
doing during
his
long
absence.
He
failed.
Such
experiences
apparently
seem uncommunicable
in
any
language
at
the
disposal
of
humanity,
since they
transcend
anything
humanity
has
undergone.
The
necessary words
have
not
yet
been
coined.
Before
he
could
satisfy
the
thousand
questions
I
burned
to
ask
him,
questions,
too,
he
might
in time
have
partly
answered,
he
was
gone
again,
this
time,
as
we
say, for
good.