CHAPTER IV
"In another moment we were standing face to face, I and
this fragile thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into
my eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at once.
Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a
strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.
"There were others coming, and presently a little group
of perhaps eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them
addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh
and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears, shook it
again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand. Then I felt
other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. They wanted to make
sure I was real. There was nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was
something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence, a graceful
gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I
could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins. But I
made a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling at
the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger
I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed
the little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket. Then
I turned again to see what I could do in the way of communication.
"And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw
some further peculiarities in their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their
hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek;
there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were
singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips,
and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and this may
seem egotism on my part I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the
interest I might have expected in them.
"As they made no effort to communicate with me, but
simply stood round me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other,
I began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then
hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the sun. At once a
quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white followed my
gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.
"For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his
gesture was plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were
these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see I had
always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand
odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one
of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual
level of one of our five-year-old children asked me, in fact, if I had come
from the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon
their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of
disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the
Time Machine in vain.
"I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid
rendering of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and
bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful flowers
altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was received with
melodious applause; and presently they were all running to and fro for flowers,
and laughingly flinging them upon me until I was almost smothered with blossom.
You who have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and
wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created. Then someone
suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building, and
so I was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all
the while with a smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of
fretted stone. As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of
a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible
merriment, to my mind.
"The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of
colossal dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of
little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me shadowy and
mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw over their heads was a
tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long neglected and yet
weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers,
measuring a foot perhaps across the spread of the waxen petals. They grew
scattered, as if wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not
examine them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the
turf among the rhododendrons.
"The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally
I did not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions
of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me that they
were very badly broken and weather- worn. Several more brightly clad people met
me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century
garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by
an eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white limbs, in a
melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.
"The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall
hung with brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with
coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The floor was
made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not plates nor slabs,
blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the going to and fro of past
generations, as to be deeply channelled along the more frequented ways.
Transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished
stone, raised perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of
fruits. Some I recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but
for the most part they were strange.
"Between the tables was scattered a great number of
cushions. Upon these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do
likewise. With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with
their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round openings in
the sides of the tables. I was not loath to follow their example, for I felt
thirsty and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hall at my leisure.
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