Bardek was facing her, standing like a statue in the middle of the low room. The light was behind him, so that Gorgas, coming in out of the darkness, was not able instantly to comprehend that the little wife, clad in the gayest of garments, deep reds and greens, with a glorious scarf of gold about her head, was folded snugly in the Bohemian’s sturdy arms.
“Oh!” cried Gorgas, and started back.
“Come in!” welcomed Bardek, without moving the fraction of an inch, save the necessary tightening of his hold on the shy wife.
“Oh, no! No!” cried Gorgas, shocked at her intrusion.
“Come in, I say!” roared Bardek. “We jus’ celebr-r-rate our marriage—zat is all. Come in, and see how it is done.... Be still, Bit-of-my-heart,” he called to the struggling wife, but in some staccato dialect of Hungary. “We must be the teacher of the beautiful Gorgas in all things, and this is what she should learn to do; and it must be done well, or life itself is spilled to the wind.” This he translated gayly to Gorgas. “Come in, Liebschen! This is our marriage day. It is the day I take the wonderful woman when she is but wonderful girl, take her right out of the street where she squat beside the orange cart wit’ her peddling mother; and I do not know her name; and I will not know it, so I can call her love names all her life—I take her from her oranges, and quick into the biggest cathedral in all Hungary, and kneel before the altar, and call upon the priest to come marry us before I cut him open to see what make him so fat and slow.”
The invitation in their eyes was so real that Gorgas slipped weakly to a chair near the door.
“He say to wait five, six, seven week or it not a marriage,” Bardek went on. “‘Five, six, seven week!’ I cry; ‘in that time she be grow up and ol’ woman! And I? Every day of zose week I die of waiting. Five, six, seven week? Not five, six, seven minute!’; and I scare zat priest by the things I say. And when I show him gold, he not so scared, but raise up the hands and make the language which I give him to make.
“And when all is done, ‘Tzoom!’ I cry, and explain: ‘Zat is the big bell up in Heaven which bring all the angels to the Gates of Earth, through which they now look down; and Tzoo-oom!’—he nearly drop dead for think I be madman!—‘zat is the bell which break open the Gates of Earth and fling the glad angels toward this good world of love; and Tzoo-oo-oom!’ I roar like the roar of Saint Peters in Rome when they make the new Pope, ‘zat is the bell which make this woman of my blood and of my flesh, and carry us together, up straight up, up, up with the singing angels to the Heaven itself.’ And zen I take her in my arms, and lift her to her little toes, and hug her till she forget for little while to live!... Ah! But she nevair forget zat marriage! Nevair!”
As he talked he interrupted himself often to utter weird sayings to the happy wife, so that she half turned in his arms, and seemed to understand that he was telling Gorgas of the wonderful wedding day. And Gorgas contemplated their happiness with the greatest sympathy and with a longing that was akin to pain.
“So!” Bardek went on jubilantly. “On zat wonderful day in May, which we now celebr-r-ate—ah. May is in Hungary of all months the—”