No More Learning

The guest's irritation increased, for the more he thought about it
the more he perceived that the accordion was badly played. There was
a piano in the coffee-room; he sat down at it and played the tune
correctly, as loudly as possible. The waiter took no notice. He did not
know that he was being played for. He was wholly absorbed in his own
playing, and besides he was old, obstinate, and deaf. The guest could
stand it no longer. He rang for the waiter, and then, remembering that
he did not need anything, went out before he came.

He went through Martin's Street and Peter's Lane, and turned down by
the burnt house at the corner of the fish-market, picking his way
towards the bridge. The town was dripping, but the rain was almost
over. The large drops fell seldomer and seldomer into the puddles. It
was the hour of ducks. Three or four had squeezed themselves under a
gate, and were now splashing about in the gutter of the main street.
There was scarcely anyone abroad. Once or twice a countryman went by
in yellow gaiters covered with mud and looked at the guest. Once an
old woman with a basket of clothes, recognizing the Protestant curate's
_locum tenens_, made a low curtsey.
The clouds gradually drifted away, the twilight deepened and the stars
came out. The guest, having bought some cigarettes, had spread his
waterproof on the parapet of the bridge and was now leaning his elbows
upon it, looking at the river and feeling at last quite tranquil.
His meditations, he repeated, to himself, were plated with silver by
the stars. The water slid noiselessly, and one or two of the larger
stars made little roadways of fire into the darkness. The light from a
distant casement made also its roadway. Once or twice a fish leaped.
Along the banks were the vague shadows of houses, seeming like phantoms
gathering to drink.

Yes; he felt now quite contented with the world. Amidst his enjoyment
of the shadows and the river--a veritable festival of silence--was
mixed pleasantly the knowledge that, as he leant there with the light
of a neighbouring gas-jet flickering faintly on his refined form and
nervous face and glancing from the little medal of some Anglican order
that hung upon his watch-guard, he must have seemed--if there had been
any to witness--a being of a different kind to the inhabitants--at once
rough and conventional--of this half-deserted town. Between these two
feelings the unworldly and the worldly tossed a leaping wave of perfect
enjoyment. How pleasantly conscious of his own identity it made him
when he thought how he and not those whose birthright it was, felt most
the beauty of these shadows and this river! For him who had read much,
seen operas and plays, known religious experiences, and written verse
to a waterfall in Switzerland, and not for those who dwelt upon its
borders for their whole lives, did this river raise a tumult of images
and wonders. What meaning it had for them he could not imagine. Some
meaning surely it must have!

As he gazed out into the darkness, spinning a web of thoughts from
himself to the river, from the river to himself, he saw, with a corner
of his eye, a spot of red light moving in the air at the other end of
the bridge. He turned towards it.