บทที่ บทที่ 5 · V. In the Golden Age

In the Golden Age

“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 ninepins. 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 Phœnician 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-coloured 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 recognised 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.

“And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look.

The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern,

were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower

end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the corner of the

marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless, the general effect

was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of

hundred people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to

me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their little

eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same

soft, and yet strong, silky material.

“Fruit, by the bye, was all their diet. These people of the remote

future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of

some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found

afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the

Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful;

one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was

there—a floury thing in a three-sided husk—was especially good, and I

made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits,

and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to perceive their

import.

“However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future

now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make

a resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of mine.

Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a convenient

thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began a series of

interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty

in conveying my meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of

surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but presently a fair-haired

little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name. They

had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each other,

and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their

language caused an immense amount of genuine, if uncivil, amusement.

However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and

presently I had a score of noun substantives at least at my command;

and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb ‘to eat.’

But it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and wanted to

get away from my interrogations, so I determined, rather of necessity,

to let them give their lessons in little doses when they felt inclined.

And very little doses I found they were before long, for I never met

people more indolent or more easily fatigued.

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