But in fair weather, in his off hours, Zillah was relieved of his presence. Gruber installed himself on the naked front porch, where, with his chair tilted against the wall, he held court. Usually he had a flask handy, so he achieved his audience. He boasted; the men listened—he was after all their boss. If Zillah showed herself, he liked nothing better than to abuse her before his men. The men did not ever interfere; their chivalry did not extend that far. Zillah was, you see, Gruber's woman. If another one had stepped in between the man and the woman, I have no doubt they would have cast their vote with her, to a man; as for starting anything themselves—it was beyond their creed. They made up to her by casting her a decent "Howdy, Sister!" when they passed her kitchen, and in their tone was a tacit recognition of the fact that she was with them, against Gruber.
I recall one such episode. The usual crowd lounged on the steps and Gruber himself, as usual, was going good, when Zillah came out to the pump. Now I think I have not spoken of Zillah's peculiar walk; but I shall have occasion to mention that again. She moved with a long masculine stride, which had somehow a little lilt to it, a half-skipping ecstasy: a gait ridiculous in such a miserable little figure, like hitching a light spring wagon onto an old, used nag. Pathetic too, for you knew instinctively that it was something copied—that the woman herself had never known the freedom which that gait expressed.
She came, with that peculiar swinging, lilting walk, and Gruber broke off a tale of himself to attack her: "Hangs t'you like a lock step! Can't ye shake it off? Then I'll shake it off for you! Walk, damn you, walk!"
Zillah curbed her stride, spilling water from the pail.
Bah! It was too much for me, I broke from Gruber's circle, reached Zillah, took the pail from her. Gruber's chuckle followed us to the kitchen.
My rage against him, against her for enduring it, gushed out over Zillah. She stilled me with a piece of coarse yellow cake; it required all of my concentration to remove from the cake the red ants, to which Zillah herself seemed indifferent.
III
Zillah was always feeding me things which choked me, in return for the small services I rendered her. Her gratitude for my least attention was a part of her pathos.
Once, on the occasion of my birthday, she even presented me with a formal gift. I came upon her, working with hammer and knife on a flat rock by the kitchen. She was putting the finishing touches on an eccentric pin, which was made from a chicken bone mounted on tin.
"'Tis good luck," she assured me, offering it to me shyly; "see—I wear one always"—she showed me the chicken-bone brooch at her breast.
I thought if my luck would be like hers, I shouldn't care for it, but I attempted the proper thanks. Zillah was modest: it was nothing; the Dad had been a tinker, and she had learned from him.
We spent some decent evenings together, Zillah and I, during Gruber's frequent absences in the village. Hunched up on the kitchen door step, I {{SIC|srummed|strummed{{ tunes on my ukulele for Zillah, and sometimes surprised in her a little lift of spirit—a something to match that glitter I had seen in her black eyes. It was fun; too, to see her pleasure over the trifles which I picked up for her in the village dry goods store.
I remember one of those evenings when Gruber intruded. I had brought Zillah, from the Greek shop, a box of chocolates de luxe, tied up with a lurid yellow satin ribbon. She had pounced upon the gaudy ribbon with delight; there in my presence, before Gruber's shaving mirror, had unpinned her black hair, and achieved a fearful headdress. Curlycues and spit curls and writhing, thin loops of braid, with the yellow ribbon threaded in: it was like nothing I had ever seen in civilization, but it seemed to please her. My fingers caught up the chords of a gay college song, and I sang the words:
"'Oh, the bold dandelion, oh, the brave dandelion. . . .'"
Zillah's toes, in their old cracked shoes, caught up the tune, and, snapping her fingers, she took a few dance steps, as though to the click of castanets. She was no longer the cowed, spent creature; her face, beneath the yellow ribbon, was still sallow, old, but I had never seen such a snapping, brittle fire in it. Now she broke off laughing, to cram a whole chocolate into her mouth, and she was chewing it luxuriously like a large cud of tobacco, when Gruber walked into the kitchen.
The effect upon Zillah was as though a heavy, wet blanket had been pressed over the flame of her; she simply fizzled out, died.
Gruber tweaked at the yellow ribbon in her hair, with his thick fingers. Failing to elicit any resistance from her, he jerked at a lock of the hair itself. Apparently Zillah had not even the life to remove herself from his path. Now his eye fell upon the candy box on the table. Gruber laughed: it pleased him, enhanced his own feeling of power, that others should pay tribute to the woman whom it was his privilege to mistreat. He lunged for the box, balanced it in his hand, and then deliberately, still chuckling, poured out the chocolates onto the filthy floor.
In that moment I could have murdered him cold; I could have strangled Zillah for her listlessness under his insults. I stood panting, my fists tight with my desire. But Zillah, from the floor where she was already patiently picking up the chocolates, shook her head at me.
"Get out, please," she murmured. When I rebelled, she rose, pressed me firmly out of the door, and shut it in my face, She simply sent me home, like a small boy.
The little gallantries which others showed to Zillah tickled Gruber, but let anyone other than himself disparage her—that was a different story! I had seen them walking down the village street together. Zillah, sharp and little and brown, a kind of scarecrow figure, with that absurd gait of hers which amounted almost to a deformity, inevitably drew titterings and the gibes of certain bolder small boys. But Gruber turned on the offenders with a snarl and a growl; chest swollen, he stalked along by the woman, guarding her: the snickers might have been directed at him personally.
Zillah's reaction was odd, for she shrank, not from their mockery, but from Gruber himself. She moved along at his side, her head lowered, humiliated to the dust. Gruber's cruelty to her she could stand, but his protection of her she could not endure; it was somehow the climax of her subjection to him, the fine feathers of her shame. She objected not to his abuse, but to his exclusive privilege of abuse.
Come to thing of it, Gruber's championing of Zillah was, in a way, the final measure of his bullying, male egotism. The egotism of a man who is proud of his wife's beauty is one thing; but the egotism of a man who is proud of a poor specimen of a woman just because she belongs to him, is a bit thicker. As though Gruber's mere ownership of a thing were sufficient guarantee of it . . .as though the very socks he wore became royal wool for being against his shins. . .
Not that Zillah was subtle, but in her heart she felt this; she felt it very
