Chapter Eleven—A Tale of a Star
"Pardon me?" Una asked, startled. She inadvertently slopped her iced tea over into the saucer.
"Your accent—it reminded me of Prince Edward Island, in Canada, where I once lived. It's been twenty years since I've been home," the man said. As he talked, Una studied him. Not an overly tall man, with one shoulder somewhat higher than the other, she judged him to be about sixty. His dark hair was sprinkled with silver, but his eyes were still alert.
"Yes, I'm an Islander," Una said, still confused.
"I do beg your pardon for speaking so out of turn," the man told her. "I'm in rather good spirits. I'm headed home for the first time in twenty years—home to the people I love." He looked at Una, and she felt as if he could see into the depths of her soul. "You seem to be by yourself, and also seem to be the sort of person who would understand. Do you mind if I tell you my story?"
"Oh, no," replied Una, unsure of what else to say. "Have a chair." She began to feel like a character in one of the fairy tales reenacted in bygone days in Rainbow Valley. Was she going to wake up soon, like Rip Van Winkle, and realize that a hundred years had gone by? This stranger seemed quite peculiar—eccentric, but harmless. She looked at his face more closely. It looked like it had once been a jealous, mocking face, but time and sorrow had mellowed the hard lines into ones of wisdom.
"I loved a girl once…" he began. "Perhaps you can't understand that—have you ever loved anyone?"
Una thought this to be a strange question to ask someone five minutes after meeting them, especially if the aforementioned someone happened to be wearing an engagement ring. Unconsciously, she twisted Shirley's ring around and around her finger. "Yes, I've loved someone," she said softly, her thoughts traveling backwards in time to the days before the Piper had piped his dance of death.
"Then maybe you can begin to understand what I felt. I thought she'd never love me…old, crippled, hunchbacked me. She was my Star, the light of the dark night of my life…" the man trailed off, remembering. For several minutes he watched, unseeing, the gondolas on the canal. Then he seemed to come out of his reverie and continued. "And then, I played a horrible trick on her—I told her a lie, and out of that lie came a time where I thought she was going to die…oh, I went through purgatory then. But she recovered, and agreed to marry me. That summer…it was the golden summer of my life. I should have known that it was too perfect to last. There was a bond between her and a childhood friend—a bond that could reach across time and space. How could I compete with that? She broke our engagement. I should have known it would happen, that it was too good to last. I was too old, and besides, there was the lie I'd won her by. So I left the Island and traveled 'round the world. I saw it all without truly seeing any of it, burdened by loss and guilt.
"I laughed at the world with no humor in my laugh. The Fates had played me a cruel trick, and I didn't want to feel better. I wanted to wallow in my misery. And then, I heard that my Star was to be married, to her childhood friend. I gave them our house, the house we were to have shared together, as a wedding gift, but it hurt too much to ever think of returning to the Island and seeing her again."
"Why are you telling me all this?" Una asked curiously.
"No real reason at all, I suppose. You remind me of home, and I'm sure you have a story to tell as well—a lone woman in the middle of Venice wearing an engagement ring but obviously by herself. There's something in your face as well…something that makes me think you've been hurt in love. It shows, you know, to fellow-sufferers." There was a hint of a mocking tone in the man's last words, but Una felt she understood. There had been many times when she had felt like laughing sardonically at life, but her family had given her something to care about. This man seemed to have gone many years without anyone to care about except himself and a memory.
"So what happened?" Una asked, finding herself drawn into the story. "You're going back now, so what changed your feelings?"
"I don't know how much my feelings are changed. My Star is the only woman there's ever been or ever will be for me. The memory of our summer together will succor me for the remainder of my days. But I can't live in the realm of Might-Have-Been. It's time to go back and say farewell to my dreams, to shut that door in hopes of another one opening some day.
"And so I return, to the scene of my greatest happiness and greatest sorrow, back to the hamlet of Blair Water, to pat my Star's daughter on the head and be civil to her husband," he finished wryly, "knowing that she did the right thing and that I've been a fool all of these years."
"Blair Water?" Una asked curiously. "My brother is the minister there—Jerry Meredith—of course, he came several years after you left."
"Oh, yes, I hail from Blair Water…or Priest Pond, to be more precise. I never introduced myself, did I? Dean Priest, a man without a country…it feels like it most days, anyway. And who, Island girl, are you, now that I've laid open all the secrets of my heart to a perfect stranger?"
"Una Meredith, of Glen St. Mary's."
"Well, Miss Una Meredith of Glen St. Mary's, I seem to have intruded upon your time here in Venice. Please accept my apology." The mocking tone was quite strong now, almost as if he regretted baring his soul to her. "Farewell, ma'am. May the Fates treat you kindly and the ring on your finger bring you happiness." And he was gone, with a slight bow, down the crowded street.