Time Machine

seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron
bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were
dropping in a shower under the beating of the hail-stones. The
rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove
along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin.
"Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who has travelled innumerable
years to see you."

'Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and
looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white
stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy
downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.

'My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail
grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very
large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white
marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings,
instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so
that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of
bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was
towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the
faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn,
and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood
looking at it for a little space--half a minute, perhaps, or half an
hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it
denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment and
saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was
lightening with the promise of the sun.

'I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full
temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when
that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have
happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion?
What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had
developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly
powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more
dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness--a foul creature to
be incontinently slain.

'Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate
parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping
in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic
fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to
readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the
thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like
the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue
of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into
nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and
distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out
in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. I
felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in
the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear
grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again
grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under
my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One
hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily
in attitude to mount again.

'But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I
looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote
future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer
house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had
seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.

'Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by
the White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of
these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon
which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature--perhaps
four feet high--clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a
leather belt. Sandals or buskins--I could not clearly distinguish
which--were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his
head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm
the air was.

'He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but
indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more
beautiful kind of consumptive--that hectic beauty of which we used
to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence.
I took my hands from the machine.



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