THE MARRIAGE OF ANKA
The withdrawing of Mrs. Fitzpatrick from Paulina's life meant a
serious diminution in interest for the unhappy Paulina, but with
the characteristic uncomplaining patience of her race she plodded
on with the daily routine at washing, baking, cleaning, mending,
that filled up her days. There was no break in the unvarying
monotony of her existence. She gave what care she could to the two
children that had been entrusted to her keeping, and to her baby.
It was well for her that Irma, whose devotion to the infant became
an absorbing passion, developed a rare skill in the care of the
child, and it was well for them all that the ban placed by Mrs.
Fitzpatrick upon Paulina's house was withdrawn as far as Irma and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 Anka was determined that in providing
for the feast this demand should be fully satisfied.
For a long time she was torn between two conflicting desires:
on the one hand she longed to appear garbed in all the glory of the
Western girl's most modern bridal attire; on the other she coveted
the honour of providing a feast that would live for years in the
memory of all who might be privileged to be present. Both she could
not accomplish, and she wisely chose the latter; for she shrewdly
reasoned that, while the Western bridal garb would certainly set
forth her charms in a new and ravishing style, the glory of that
triumph would be short-lived at best, and it would excite the envy
of the younger members of her own sex and the criticism of the
older and more conservative of her compatriots.
She was further moved to this decision by the thought that inasmuch
as Jacob and she had it in mind to open a restaurant and hotel as
soon as sufficient money was in hand, it was important that they
should stand well with the community, and nothing would so insure
popularity as abundant and good eating and drinking. So to the
preparation of a feast that would at once bring her immediate glory
and future profit, Anka set her shrewd wits. The providing of the
raw materials for the feast was to her an easy matter, for her
experience in the New West Hotel had taught her how to expend to
the best advantage her carefully hoarded wages. The difficulty was
with the cooking. Clearly Paulina could not be expected to attend to
this, for although her skill with certain soups and stews was
undoubted, for the finer achievements of the culinary art Paulina
was totally unfitted. To overcome this difficulty, Anka hit upon the
simple but very effective expedient of entrusting to her neighbours,
who would later be her guests, the preparing of certain dishes
according to their various abilities and inclinations, keeping
close account in her own shrewd mind of what each one might be
supposed to produce from the materials furnished, and stimulating
in her assistants the laudable ambition to achieve the very best
results. Hence, in generous quantities she distributed flour for
bread and cakes in many varieties, rice and beans and barley, which
were to form the staple portion of the stews, cabbage and beets and
onions in smaller measure--for at this season of the year the
price was high--sides of pork, ropes of sausages, and roasts of
beef from neck and flank. Through the good offices of the butcher
boy that supplied the New West Hotel, purchased with Anka's shyest
smile and glance, were secured a considerable accumulation of shank
bones and ham bones, pork ribs and ribs of beef, and other scraps
too often despised by the Anglo-Saxon housekeeper, all of which
would prove of the greatest value in the enrichment of the soups.
For puddings there were apples and prunes, raisins and cranberries.
The cook of the New West Hotel, catching something of Anka's generous
enthusiasm, offered pies by the dozen, and even the proprietor himself,
learning of the preparations and progress, could think of nothing so
appropriate to the occasion as a case of Irish whiskey. This, however,
Anka, after some deliberation, declined, suggesting beer instead,
and giving as a reason her experience, namely, that "whiskey make
too quick fight, you bet." A fight was inevitable, but it would be
a sad misfortune if this necessary part of the festivities should
occur too early in the programme.
Gradually, during the days of the week immediately preceding the
ceremony, there began to accumulate in the shacks about, viands of
great diversity, which were stored in shelves, in cupboards,--where
there were any,--under beds, and indeed in any and every available
receptacle. The puddings, soups and stews, which, after all, were to
form the main portion of the eating, were deposited in empty beer
kegs, of which every shack could readily furnish a few, and set out
to freeze, in which condition they would preserve their perfect
flavour. Such diligence and such prudence did Anka show in the
supervision of all these arrangements, that when the day before the
feast arrived, on making her final round of inspection, everything
was discovered to be in readiness for the morrow, with the single
exception that the beer had not arrived. But this was no over-sight
on the part of Jacob, to whom this portion of the feast had been
entrusted. It was rather due to a prudence born of experience that
the beer should be ordered to be delivered at the latest possible hour.
A single beer keg is an object of consuming interest to the Galician
and subjects his sense of honour to a very considerable strain; the
known presence of a dray load of beer kegs in the neighbourhood would
almost certainly intensify the strain beyond the breaking point. But as
the shadows of evening began to gather, the great brewery dray with its
splendid horses and its load of kegs piled high, drew up to Paulina's
door. Without loss of time, and under the supervision of Rosenblatt
and Jacob himself, the beer kegs were carried by the willing hands of
Paulina's boarders down to the cellar, piled high against the walls,
and carefully counted. There they were safe enough, for every man, not
only among the boarders but in the whole colony, who expected to be
present at the feast, having contributed his dollar toward the purchase
of the beer, constituted himself a guardian against the possible
depredations of his neighbours. Not a beer keg from this common store
was to be touched until after the ceremony, when every man should have
a fair start. For the preliminary celebrations during the evening and
night preceding the wedding day the beer furnished by the proprietor
of the New West Hotel would prove sufficient.
It was considered a most fortunate circumstance both by the bride
and groom-elect, that there should have appeared in the city,
the week before, a priest of the Greek Catholic faith, for though
in case of need they could have secured the offices of a Roman
priest from St. Boniface, across the river, the ceremonial would
thereby have been shorn of much of its picturesqueness and efficacy.
Anka and her people had little regard for the services of a Church
to which they owed only nominal allegiance.
The wedding day dawned clear, bright, and not too cold to forbid
a great gathering of the people outside Paulina's house, who stood
reverently joining with those who had been fortunate enough to
secure a place in Paulina's main room, which had been cleared of
all beds and furniture, and transformed for the time being into
a chapel. The Slav is a religious man, intensely, and if need be,
fiercely, religious; hence these people, having been deprived for
long months of the services of their Church, joined with eager and
devout reverence in the responses to the prayers of the priest,
kneeling in the snow unmoved by and apparently unconscious of
the somewhat scornful levity of the curious crowd of onlookers
that speedily gathered about them. For more than two hours the
religious part of the ceremony continued, but there was no sign of
abating interest or of waning devotion; rather did the religious
feeling appear to deepen as the service advanced. At length there
floated through the open window the weirdly beautiful and stately
marriage chant, in which the people joined in deep-toned guttural
fervour, then the benediction, and the ceremony was over.
Immediately there was a movement toward the cellar, where Rosenblatt,
assisted by a score of helpers, began to knock in the heads of the beer
kegs and to hand about tin cups of beer for the first drinking of the
bride's health. Beautiful indeed, in her husband's eyes and the eyes of
all who beheld her, appeared Anka as she stood with Jacob in the doorway,
radiant in the semi-barbaric splendour of her Slavonic ancestry.
This first formal health-drinking ceremony over, from within
Paulina's house and from shacks roundabout, women appeared with
pots and pails, from which, without undue haste, but without undue
delay, men filled tin cups and tin pans with stews rich, luscious,
and garlic flavoured. The feast was on; the Slav's hour of rapture
had come. From pot to keg and from keg to pot the happy crowd
would continue to pass in alternating moods of joy, until the acme
of bliss would be attained when Jacob, leading forth and up and down
his lace-decked bride, would fling the proud challenge to one and all
that his bride was the fairest and dearest of all brides ever known.
Thus with full ceremonial, with abundance of good eating,
and with multitudinous libations, Anka was wed.