Tales of the Unexpected

by H. G. Wells

‘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, eh!’ 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 any one 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.’