The Foreigner | Page 6

as Irma and the baby were concerned, for every day

the little maid presented her charge to the wise and watchful scrutiny of
Mrs. Fitzpatrick.
The last days of 1884, however, brought an event that cast a glow of
colour over the life of Paulina and the whole foreign colony. This event
was none other than the marriage of Anka Kusmuk and Jacob Wassyl,
Paulina's most popular lodger. A wedding is a great human event. To
the principals the event becomes the pivot of existence; to the relatives
and friends it is at once the consummation of a series of happenings
that have absorbed their anxious and amused attention, and the point of
departure for a new phase of existence offering infinite possibilities in
the way of speculation. But even for the casual onlooker a wedding
furnishes a pleasant arrest of the ordinary course of life, and lets in
upon the dull grey of the commonplace certain gleams of glory from
the golden days of glowing youth, or from beyond the mysterious
planes of experience yet to be.
All this and more Anka's wedding was to Paulina and her people. It
added greatly to Paulina's joy and to her sense of importance that her
house was selected to be the scene of the momentous event. For long
weeks Paulina's house became the life centre of the colony, and as the
day drew nigh every boarder was conscious of a certain reflected glory.
It is no wonder that the selecting of Paulina's house for the wedding
feast gave offence to Anka's tried friend and patron, Mrs. Fitzpatrick.
To that lady it seemed that in selecting Paulina's house for her wedding
Anka was accepting Paulina's standard of morals and condoning her
offences, and it only added to her grief that Anka took the matter so
lightly.
"I'm just affronted at ye, Anka," she complained, "that ye can step
inside the woman's dure."
"Ah, cut it out!" cried Anka, rejoicing in her command of the
vernacular. "Sure, Paulina is no good, you bet; but see, look at her
house--dere is no Rutenian house like dat, so beeg. Ah!" she continued
rapturously, "you come an' see me and Jacob dance de 'czardas,' wit
Arnud on de cymbal. Dat Arnud he's come from de old country, an' he's
de whole show, de whole brass band on de park."
To Anka it seemed an unnecessary and foolish sacrifice to the demands
of decency that she should forego the joy of a real czardas to the music
of Arnud accompanying the usual violins.

"Ye can have it," sniffed Mrs. Fitzpatrick with emphatic disdain; all the
more emphatic that she was conscious, distinctly conscious, of a strong
desire to witness this special feature of the festivities. "I've nothing agin
you, Anka, for it's a good gurrl ye are, but me and me family is
respectable, an' that Father Mulligan can tell ye, for his own mother's
cousin was married till the brother of me father's uncle, an' niver a fut
of me will go beyant the dure of that scut, Paulina." And Mrs.
Fitzpatrick, resting her hands upon her hips, stood the living
embodiment of hostility to any suggested compromise with sin.
But while determined to maintain at all costs this attitude toward
Paulina and her doings, her warm-hearted interest in Anka's wedding
made her very ready with offers of assistance in preparing for the feast.
"It's not much I know about y're Polak atin'," she said, "but I can make
a batch of pork pies that wud tempt the heart of the Howly Moses
himsilf, an' I can give ye a bilin' of pitaties that Timothy can fetch to
the house for ye."
This generous offer Anka gladly accepted, for Mrs. Fitzpatrick's pork
pies, she knew from experience, were such as might indeed have
tempted so respectable a patriarch as Moses himself to mortal sin. The
"bilin' of pitaties," which Anka knew would be prepared in no ordinary
pot, but in Mrs. Fitzpatrick's ample wash boiler, was none the less
acceptable, for Anka could easily imagine how effective such a
contribution would be in the early stages of the feast in dulling the keen
edge of the Galician appetite.
The preparation for the wedding feast, which might be prolonged for
the greater part of three days, was in itself an undertaking requiring
careful planning and no small degree of executive ability; for the
popularity of both bride and groom would be sufficient to insure the
presence of the whole colony, but especially the reputed wealth of the
bride, who, it was well known, had been saving with careful economy
her wages at the New West Hotel for the past three years, would most
certainly create a demand for a feast upon a scale of more than ordinary
magnificence, and