Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till Industry had gradually lost its birthright in the sky.
I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground factories, spending a still-increasing amount of its time therein, till, in the end—! Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural 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 between them and the rude violence of the poor— is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land.
About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion.
And this same widening gulf—which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the 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 along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent.
So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour.
Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, 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 to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.
As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed naturally enough.
“The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape in my mind.
It had been no such triumph of moral education and general co-operation as I had imagined.
Instead, I saw a real aristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the industrial system of to-day.
Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man.
This, I must warn you, was my theory at the time.
I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books.
My explanation may be absolutely wrong.
I still think it is the most plausible one.
But even on this supposition the balanced civilization that was at last attained 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 slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence.
That I could see clearly enough already.
What had happened to the Under-grounders I did not yet suspect; but from what I had seen of the Morlocks—that, by the by, was the name by which these creatures were called—I could imagine that the modification of the human type was even far more profound than among the «Eloi,» the beautiful race that I already knew.
“Then came troublesome doubts.
Why had the Morlocks taken my Time Machine?
For I felt sure it was they who had taken it.
Why, too, if the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me?
And why were they so terribly afraid of the dark?
I proceeded, as I have said, to question Weena about this Under-world, but here again I was disappointed.
At first she would not understand my questions, and presently she refused to answer them.
She shivered as though the topic was unendurable.
And when I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she burst into tears.
They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw in that Golden Age.
When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and was 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 a match.
VI
“It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way.
I felt a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies.
They were just the half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in spirit in a zoological museum.
And they were filthily cold to the touch.
Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks I now began to appreciate.
“The next night I did not sleep well.
Probably my health was a little disordered.
I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt.
Once or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite reason.
I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the little people were sleeping in the moonlight—that night Weena was among them—and feeling reassured by their presence.
It occurred to me even then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant.
And on both these days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty.
I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these underground mysteries.
Yet I could not face the mystery.
If only I had had a companion it would have been different.
But I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness of the well appalled me.