The young man appeared to choose his words carefully. “I’m sorry. You see, you know all about the bicycle, and ... and ... I couldn’t quite see what your clothes were....” He slurred over the last remark, perhaps feeling it to be ill-mannered, and went on hastily: “I asked because in the village I’ve come from, just a couple of miles down the road, the blacksmith is dead and....” He paused and looked at Jeremy expectantly.
Jeremy on his side realized that the moment had come when he must either tell his amazing story or deliberately shirk it. But while he had been bending over the bicycle a likely substitute had occurred to him, a substitute which, however, he would have hesitated to offer to any one less intelligent and kindly in appearance than his new acquaintance. He hesitated a moment, and decided on shirking, or, as he excused it to himself, on feeling his way slowly.
“I don’t know,” he said with an accent of dull despair. “I don’t know who or what I am. I think I must have lost my memory.”
The young man gave a sympathetic exclamation. “Lost your memory?” he cried. “Then,” he went on, his face brightening, “perhaps you are a blacksmith. I can tell you they want one very badly over there....” But he caught himself up, and added, “Perhaps not. I suppose you can’t tell what you might have been.” He ceased, and regarded Jeremy with benevolent interest.
“I can’t,” Jeremy said earnestly. “I don’t know where I came from, or what I am, or where I am. I don’t even know what year this is. I can remember nothing.”
“That’s bad,” the young man commented with maddening deliberation. “I can tell you where you are, at any rate. This is called Whitechapel Meadows—just outside London, you know. Does that suggest anything to you?”
“Nothing ... nothing ... I woke up just over there”—he swung his arm vaguely in the direction of the ruins of the warehouse—“and that’s all I know.” He suppressed an urgent desire to emphasize again his ignorance of what year it was. Something told him that a man who had just lost his memory would be concerned with more immediate problems.
“Well,” said the young man pleasantly at last, “do you think you came from London? If you do, you’d better let me take you there and see you safe in one of the monastery hospitals or something of that sort. Then perhaps your family would find you.”
“I think so.” Jeremy was uncertain whether this would be a step in the right direction. “I seem to remember.... I don’t know....” He paused, feeling that he could not have imagined a situation so difficult. He had read a number of books in which men had been projected from their own times into the future, but, by one lucky chance or another, none of them had any trouble in establishing himself as the immediate center of interest. Yet he supposed it would be more natural for such an adventurer to be treated as he was going to be treated—that is to say as a mental case. It would be tragically absurd if he in his unique position were to be immured in a madhouse, regarded as a man possessed by incurable delusions, when he might be deriving some consolation for his extraordinary fate in seeing how the world had changed, in seeing, among other things, what was the current theory of the Viscosity of Liquids, and whether his own name was remembered among the early investigators into that fascinating question.
While he still hesitated his companion went on in a soothing tone, “That will be much the best way. Come with me if you think you’re well enough to walk.”