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 appreciation4 of the college cap and the pleasant anticipations5 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 lank6, 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 367for 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.
“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 nervously7 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.
368Mr. 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 illuminated8 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 musingly9. 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 369bread. 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 remains10 to this day, buried in the glaciers11 of Mount Ararat.
This man, I say, fleeing with others from the Kurds who had come upon them, went up into desolate12 places among the mountains—places beyond the common knowledge of
men. And fleeing from imminent13 pursuit, they came to a slope high among the mountain-peaks, green with a grass like knife-blades, that cut and slashed14 most pitilessly
at any one who went into it. The Kurds were close behind, and there was nothing for it but to plunge15 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 fugitives16 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 precipice17, and then he saw
the grass was all on fire, and the smoke of it rose like a veil between him and his enemies.”
The stranger paused. “Yes?” said Mr. Hinchcliff. “Yes?”
370“There he was, all torn and bloody18 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 gorge20 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 371marching slowly athwart it, that made the stunted21 trees against it black
as night, and turned the slopes all about them and their figures to the likeness22 of fiery23 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 amber19.
“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 recede24 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 tumult25 sweeping26 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 372vision? 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. It was as if the real was a mere28 veil to the fantastic, and here was the
“The legend,” said the stranger, “tells that those thickets30 of dwarfed31 trees growing about the garden sprang from the apple that Adam carried in his hand when he
and Eve were driven forth27. He felt something in his hand, saw the half-eaten apple, and flung it petulantly32 aside. And there they grow, in that desolate valley,
girdled round with the everlasting33 snows; and there the fiery swords keep ward3 against the Judgment34 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 mirage35, say. Suppose—”
“Look at it,” said the stranger.
It was certainly a strange-looking globe, not 373really 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 vividly36 the desolate valley among the mountains, the guarding swords of fire, the strange antiquities37 of
“It has kept like that, smooth and full, three months. Longer than that it is now by some days. No drying, no withering39, 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 sanity40. “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. 374“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 lusts41 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 375away! 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 blotted42 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
receding43 round the bend, and with the wonderful fruit in 376his 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 début? It occurred to him that, so far as they could tell,
the fruit might very well be the na?ve refreshment44 of an orange. He flushed at the thought, and thrust the fruit into his side pocket, where it bulged45 undesirably46. But
there was no help for it, so he went towards them, awkwardly concealing47 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 thither48. Of all the odd and fantastic yarns49 to tell a fellow!
His luggage could be taken on a truck for sixpence, he found, and he could precede it on foot He fancied an ironical50 note in the voices. He was painfully aware of his
contour.
The curious earnestness of the man in the train, and the glamour51 of the story he told, had, for a time, diverted the current of Mr. Hinchcliff’s thoughts. It drove
like a mist before his immediate52 concerns. Fires that went to and fro! But the preoccupation of his new position, and the impression he was to produce upon Holmwood
generally, and the school people in particular, returned upon him with reinvigorating power before he left the station and cleared his mental atmosphere. But it is
extraordinary what an inconvenient53 377thing the addition of a soft and rather brightly-golden fruit, not three inches in diameter, prove to a sensitive youth on his
best appearance. In the pocket of his black jacket it bulged dreadfully, spoilt the lines altogether. He passed a little old lady in black, and he felt her eye drop
upon the excrescence at once. He was wearing one glove and carrying the other, together with his stick, so that to bear the fruit openly was impossible. In one place,
where the road into the town seemed suitably secluded54, he took his encumbrance55 out of his pocket and tried it in his hat. It was just too large, the hat wobbled
ludicrously, and just as he was taking it out again, a butcher’s boy came driving round the corner.
“Confound it!” said Mr. Hinchcliff.
He would have eaten the thing, and attained56 omniscience57 there and then, but it would seem so silly to go into the town sucking a juicy fruit—and it certainly felt
juicy. If one of the boys should come by, it might do him a serious injury with his discipline so to be seen. And the juice might make his face sticky and get upon his
cuffs—or it might be an acid juice as potent58 as lemon, and take all the colour out of his clothes.
Then round a bend in the lane came two pleasant, sunlit, girlish figures. They were walking slowly towards the town and chattering—at any moment they might look round
and see a hot-faced young man behind them carrying a kind of 378phosphorescent yellow tomato! They would be sure to laugh.
“Hang!” said Mr. Hinchcliff, and with a swift jerk sent the encumbrance flying over the stone wall of an orchard59 that there abutted60 on the road. As it vanished, he
felt a faint twinge of loss that lasted scarcely a moment. He adjusted the stick and glove in his hand, and walked on, erect61 and self-conscious, to pass the girls.
But in the darkness of the night Mr. Hinchcliff had a dream, and saw the valley, and the flaming swords, and the contorted trees, and knew that it really was the Apple
of the Tree of Knowledge that he had thrown regardlessly away. And he awoke very unhappy.
In the morning his regret had passed, but afterwards it returned and troubled him; never, however, when he was happy or busily occupied. At last, one moonlight night
about eleven, when all Holmwood was quiet, his regrets returned with redoubled force, and therewith an impulse to adventure. He slipped out of the house and over the
playground wall, went through the silent town to Station Lane, and climbed into the orchard where he had thrown the fruit. But nothing was to be found of it there
among the dewy grass and the faint intangible globes of dandelion down.
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收听单词发音
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1
abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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anticipations
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| 预期( anticipation的名词复数 )； 预测； （信托财产收益的）预支； 预期的事物 | |
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lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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7
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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8
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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11
glaciers
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| 冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 ) | |
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12
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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13
imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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14
slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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15
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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16
fugitives
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| n.亡命者，逃命者( fugitive的名词复数 ) | |
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17
precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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18
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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20
gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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21
stunted
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| adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的 | |
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22
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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23
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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24
recede
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| vi.退(去)，渐渐远去；向后倾斜，缩进 | |
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25
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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26
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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27
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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28
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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29
poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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30
thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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31
dwarfed
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| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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32
petulantly
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33
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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34
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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35
mirage
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景 | |
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36
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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37
antiquities
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| n.古老( antiquity的名词复数 )；古迹；古人们；古代的风俗习惯 | |
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38
knuckle
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| n.指节；vi.开始努力工作；屈服，认输 | |
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39
withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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40
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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41
lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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42
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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43
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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44
refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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45
bulged
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| 凸出( bulge的过去式和过去分词 )； 充满； 塞满（某物） | |
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undesirably
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47
concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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48
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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49
yarns
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| n.纱( yarn的名词复数 )；纱线；奇闻漫谈；旅行轶事 | |
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50
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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51
glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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52
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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53
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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54
secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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55
encumbrance
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| n.妨碍物，累赘 | |
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56
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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57
omniscience
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| n.全知，全知者，上帝 | |
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58
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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59
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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60
abutted
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| v.（与…）邻接( abut的过去式和过去分词 )；（与…）毗连；接触；倚靠 | |
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61
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
参考例句： |
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