"I must get rid of it," said the man in the corner of the carriage,
abruptly breaking the silence.
Mr. Hinchcliff looked up, hearing imperfectly. He had been lost in
the rapt contemplation of the college cap tied by a string to his
portmanteau handles--the outward and visible sign of his newly-gained
pedagogic position--in the rapt appreciation of the college cap and
the pleasant anticipations it excited. For Mr. Hinchcliff had just
matriculated at London University, and was going to be junior assistant
at the Holmwood Grammar School--a very enviable position. He stared
across the carriage at his fellow-traveller.
"Why not give it away?" said this person. "Give it away! Why not?"
He was a tall, dark, sunburnt man with a pale face. His arms were
folded tightly, and his feet were on the seat in front of him. He was
pulling at a lank black moustache. He stared hard at his toes.
"Why not?" he said.
Mr. Hinchcliff coughed.
The stranger lifted his eyes--they were curious, dark-grey eyes--and
stared blankly at Mr. Hinchcliff for the best part of a minute,
perhaps. His expression grew to interest.
"Yes," he said slowly. "Why not? And end it."
"I don't quite follow you, I'm afraid," said Mr. Hinchcliff, with
another cough.
"You don't quite follow me?" said the stranger quite mechanically,
his singular eyes wandering from Mr. Hinchcliff to the bag with its
ostentatiously displayed cap, and back to Mr. Hinchcliff's downy face.
"You're so abrupt, you know," apologised Mr Hinchcliff.
"Why shouldn't I?" said the stranger, following his thoughts. "You are
a student?" he said, addressing Mr. Hinchcliff.
"I am--by Correspondence--of the London University," said Mr.
Hinchcliff, with irrepressible pride, and feeling nervously at his tie.
"In pursuit of knowledge," said the stranger, and suddenly took his
feet off the seat, put his fist on his knees, and stared at Mr.
Hinchcliff as though he had never seen a student before. "Yes," he
said, and flung out an index finger. Then he rose, took a bag from
the hat-rack, and unlocked it. Quite silently he drew out something
round and wrapped in a quantity of silver-paper, and unfolded this
carefully. He held it out towards Mr. Hinchcliff--a small, very smooth,
golden-yellow fruit.
Mr. Hinchcliff's eyes and mouth were open. He did not offer to take
this object--if he was intended to take it.
"That," said this fantastic stranger, speaking very slowly, "is the
Apple of the Tree of Knowledge. Look at it--small, and bright, and
wonderful--Knowledge--and I am going to give it to you."
Mr. Hinchcliff's mind worked painfully for a minute, and then
the sufficient explanation, "Mad!" flashed across his brain, and
illuminated the whole situation. One humoured madmen. He put his head a
little on one side.
"The Apple of the Tree of Knowledge, eigh!" said Mr. Hinchcliff,
regarding it with a finely assumed air of interest, and then looking
at the interlocutor. "But don't you want to eat it yourself? And
besides--how did you come by it?"
"It never fades. I have had it now three months. And it is ever bright
and smooth and ripe and desirable, as you see it." He laid his hand
on his knee and regarded the fruit musingly. Then he began to wrap it
again in the papers, as though he had abandoned his intention of giving
it away.
"But how did you come by it?" said Mr. Hinchcliff, who had his
argumentative side. "And how do you know that it _is_ the Fruit of the
Tree?"
"I bought this fruit," said the stranger, "three months ago--for a
drink of water and a crust of bread. The man who gave it to me--because
I kept the life in him--was an Armenian. Armenia! that wonderful
country, the first of all countries, where the ark of the Flood
remains to this day, buried in the glaciers of Mount Ararat. This man,
I say, fleeing with others from the Kurds who had come upon them,
went up into desolate places among the mountains--places beyond the
common knowledge of men. And fleeing from imminent pursuit, they
came to a slope high among the mountain-peaks, green with a grass
like knife-blades, that cut and slashed most pitilessly at anyone
who went into it. The Kurds were close behind, and there was nothing
for it but to plunge in, and the worst of it was that the paths they
made through it at the price of their blood served for the Kurds to
follow. Every one of the fugitives was killed save this Armenian and
another. He heard the screams and cries of his friends, and the swish
of the grass about those who were pursuing them--it was tall grass
rising overhead. And then a shouting and answers, and when presently he
paused, everything was still. He pushed out again, not understanding,
cut and bleeding, until he came out on a steep slope of rocks below a
precipice, and then he saw the grass was all on fire, and the smoke of
it rose like a veil between him and his enemies."