The stranger paused. “Yes?” said Mr. Hinchcliff. “Yes?”
“There he was, all torn and bloody from the knife-blades of the grass, the rocks blazing under the afternoon sun,–the sky molten brass, –and the smoke of the fire driving towards him. He dared not stay there. Death he did not mind, but torture! Far away beyond the smoke he heard shouts and cries. Women screaming. So he went clambering up a gorge in the rocks–everywhere were bushes with dry branches that stuck out like thorns among the leaves–until he clambered over the brow of a ridge that hid him. And then he met his companion, a shepherd, who had also escaped. And, counting cold and famine and thirst as nothing against the Kurds, they went on into the heights, and among the snow and ice. They wandered three whole days.
“The third day came the vision. I suppose hungry men often do see visions, but then there is this fruit.” He lifted the wrapped globe in his hand. “And I have heard it, too, from other mountaineers who have known something of the legend. it was in the evening time, when the stars were increasing, that they came down a slope of polished rock into a huge, dark valley all set about with strange, contorted trees, and in these trees hung little globes like glow-worm spheres, strange, round, yellow lights.
“Suddenly this valley was lit far away, many miles away, far down it, with a golden flame marching slowly athwart it, that made the stunted trees against it black as night, and turned the slopes all about them and their figures to the likeness of fiery gold. And at the vision they, knowing the legends of the mountains, instantly knew that it was Eden they saw, or the sentinel of Eden, and they fell upon their faces like men struck dead.
“When they dared to look again, the valley was dark for a space, and then the light came again–returning, a burning amber.
“At that the shepherd sprang to his feet, and with a shout began to run down towards the light; but the other man was too fearful to follow him. He stood stunned, amazed, and terrified, watching his companion recede towards the marching glare. And hardly had the shepherd set out when there came a noise like thunder, the beating of invisible wings hurrying up the valley, and a great and terrible fear; and at that the man who gave me the fruit turned–if he might still escape. And hurrying headlong up the slope again, with that tumult sweeping after him, he stumbled against one of these stunted bushes, and a ripe fruit came off it into his hand. This fruit. Forthwith, the wings and the thunder rolled all about him. He fell and fainted, and when he came to his senses, he was back among the blackened ruins of his own village, and I and the others were attending to the wounded. A vision? But the golden fruit of the tree was still clutched in his hand. There were others there who knew the legend, knew what that strange fruit might be.” He paused. “And this is it,” he said.
It was a most extraordinary story to be told in a third-class carriage on a Sussex railway. lt was as if the real was a mere veil to the fantastic, and here was the fantastic poking through. “Is it?” was all Mr. Hinchcliff could say.
“The legend,” said the stranger, “tells that those thickets of dwarfed trees growing about the garden sprang from the apple that Adam carried in his hand when he ‘and Eve were driven forth. He felt something in his hand, saw the half-eaten apple, and flung it petulantly aside. And there they grow, in that desolate valley, girdled round with the everlasting snows; and there the fiery swords keep ward against the Judgment Day.”
“But I thought these things were–” Mr. Hinchcliff paused–“fables –parables rather. Do you mean to tell me that there in Armenia–”
The stranger answered the unfinished question with the fruit in his open hand.
“But you don’t know,” said Mr. Hinchcliff, “that that is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The man may have had–a sort of mirage, say. Suppose–”
“Look at it,” said the stranger.
It was certainly a strange-looking globe, not really an apple, Mr. Hinchcliff saw, and a curious glowing golden colour, almost as though light itself was wrought into its substance. As he looked at it, he began to see more vividly the desolate valley among the mountains, the guarding swords of fire, the strange antiquities of the story he had just heard. He rubbed a knuckle into his eye. “But–” said he.
“It has kept like that, smooth and full, three months. Longer than that it is now by some days. No drying, no withering, no decay.”
“And you yourself,” said Mr. Hinchcliff, “really believe that–”
“Is the Forbidden Fruit.”
There was no mistaking the earnestness of the man’s manner and his perfect sanity. “The Fruit of Knowledge,” he said.
“Suppose it was?” said Mr. Hinchcliff, after a pause, still staring at it. “But after all,” said Mr. Hinchcliff, “it’s not my kind of knowledge –not the sort of knowledge. I mean, Adam and Eve have eaten it already.”
“We inherit their sins–not their knowledge,” said the stranger. “That would make it all clear and bright again. We should see into everything, through everything, into the deepest meaning of everything–”
“Why don’t you eat it, then?” said Mr. Hinchcliff, with an inspiration.
“I took it intending to eat it,” said the stranger. “Man has fallen. Merely to eat again could scarcely–”
“Knowledge is power,” said Mr. Hinchcliff.
“But is it happiness? I am older than you–more than twice as old. Time after time I have held this in my hand, and my heart has failed me at the thought of all that one might know, that terrible lucidity– Suppose suddenly all the world became pitilessly clear?”
“That, I think, would be a great advantage,” said Mr. Hinchcliff, “on the whole.”
Suppose you saw into the hearts and minds of every one about you, into their most secret recesses–people you loved, whose love you valued?”
“You’d soon find out the humbugs,” said Mr. Hinchcliff, greatly struck by the idea.
“And worse–to know yourself, bare of your most intimate illusions. To see yourself in your place. All that your lusts and weaknesses prevented your doing. No merciful perspective.”
“That might be an excellent thing too. ‘Know thyself,’ you know.”
“You are young,” said the stranger.
“If you don’t care to eat it, and it bothers you, why don’t you throw it away?”
“There again, perhaps, you will not understand me. To me, how could one throw away a thing like that, glowing, wonderful? Once one has it, one is bound. But, on the other hand, to give it away! To give it away to some one who thirsted after knowledge, who found no terror in the thought of that clear perception–”
“Of course,” said Mr. Hinchcliff, thoughtfully, “it might be some sort of poisonous fruit.”
And then his eye caught something motionless, the end of a white board black-lettered outside the carriage-window. “-MWOOD,” he saw. He started convulsively. “Gracious!” said Mr. Hinchcliff. “Holmwood!”–and the practical present blotted out the mystic realisations that had been stealing upon him.
In another moment he was opening the carriage-door, portmanteau in hand. The guard was already fluttering his green flag. Mr. Hinchcliff jumped out. “Here!” said a voice behind him, and he saw the dark eyes of the stranger shining and the golden fruit, bright and bare, held out of the open carriage-door. He took it instinctively, the train was already moving.
“No!” shouted the stranger, and made a snatch at it as if to take it back.
“Stand away,” cried a country porter, thrusting forward to close the door. The stranger shouted something Mr. Hinchcliff did not catch, head and arm thrust excitedly out of the window, and then the shadow of the bridge fell on him, and in a trice he was hidden. Mr. Hinchcliff stood astonished, staring at the end of the last waggon receding round the bend, and with the wonderful fruit in his hand. For the fraction of a minute his mind was confused, and then he became aware that two or three people on the platform were regarding him with interest. Was he not the new Grammar School master making his debut? It occurred to him that, so far as they could tell, the fruit might very well be the naive refreshment of an orange. He flushed at the thought, and thrust the fruit into his side pocket, where it bulged undesirably. But there was no help for it, so he went towards them, awkwardly concealing his sense of awkwardness, to ask the way to the Grammar School, and the means of getting his portmanteau and the two tin boxes which lay up the platform thither. Of all the odd and fantastic yarns to tell a fellow!