The clang of the bell.
Esther is seated. Her grey tilted eyes seem sudden to stand upon the farther wall of her husband's shop, and to look upon her. Her eyes speak soft warm words that touch her hair, touch her lips, lie like caressing fingers upon the soft cloth that lies upon her breast.
—Less beautiful than I, though. My flesh is soft and sweat, it is the colour of cream. What for? My hair is like an autumn tree gleaming with sun. I can let it fall through the high channel of my breast against my stomach that does not bulge but lies soft and low like a cushion of silk. What for? My eyes see beauty. What for? O there is no God. If there is God, what for?—He will come back and work. He will eat and work. He is kind and good. What for? When he is excited with love, doesn't he make an ugly noise with his nose? What else does he make with his love?—Another like Flora? God forbid. What for?
She did not pull down the wide yellow shade, though it was night. The street was a ribbon of velvet blackness laid beside the hurting and sharp brightness of the store. The yellow light was hard like grains of sand under the quick of her nails. She was afraid of the street. She was hurt in the store. But the brightness clamped her. She did not move.—O let no more customers come! "Keep quiet, Flora." I can not move.—She was clamped.
But the store moved, moved.
There was a black wheel with a gleaming axle—the Sun—that sent light dimming down its spokes as it spun. From the rim of the wheel where it was black, bright dust flung away as it spun. The store was a speck of bright dust. It flung straight. It moved along the velvet path of the street, touching, not merging with its night. It moved, it moved, she sat still in its moving. The store caught up with Meyer. He entered the store. He was there. He was there, scooped up from the path of the street by the store. Now her work was over. He was there. The store was a still store, fixed in a dirty house. Its brightness the spurt of two jets of gas. He was back from Schul.—That is all.
A man with blond hair, flat feet that shuffled, small tender hands. A man with a mouth gentle, slow; with eyes timid to see. "Come dear: that is no place."—Why she lets the child play with my shears!
Tender hands pull Flora from beneath the table. Flora comes blinking, unprotesting. Where her father's hands leave off from her, she stays. She sinks back to the floor. She looks at her little fists from which the scizzors are gone. She misses hard gleaming steel. She opens and shuts her fists and looks at them: she cries. But she does not move.—Her mother does not move.—Her father does not move. He squats on the table. His head sways with his thoughts. He knows that Flora will stop—what can he do?—in perhaps half an hour. It is a weak cry. Grows weaker. He is used to it. There is work.
He sews. 'A woman of valour who can find? For her price is far above rubies'—She will stay here, stay here silent. Flora should be in bed. Who to put his child in bed? Hard gas-light on her beloved hair? A wither, a wilt—'She is like the merchant ships; she bringeth her food from afar'—He sews and rips.—What, Lord, have I left undone? I love my Esther.—He sews.—I love my little girl. Lord, I fear the Lord—'She looketh well to the ways of the household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.'—Lighten me, Lord, give me light. There is my daughter crying, who should sleep: and my wife sitting, who will not, who will never without me go home. She is afraid. She says she is afraid. She is sullen and silent. She is so fair and sweet against my heart. Lord! why did her hands that held my head speak a lie? and her silent lips that she let press upon my mouth, why were they lies? Lord, I cannot understand. Lord, I pray. I must sew bread for Esther and for my child. I go to Schul at least once each Shabbas, Lord—Do I not fill the deep ten Penitential Days from Rosh Ha Shonoh to Yom Ha Kippurim with seeking out of heart?—He sews, he rips. The weeping of his child is done. Long stitches, here. She has found a chair's leg to play with. Her moist fingers clasp at the shrill wood. The wooden chair and her soft flesh wrestle. Esther sits still. He sews.
'Her children arise, and call her blessed;
Her husband also, and he praiseth her;
—Many daughters have done valiantly,
But thou excellest them all.—
Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain;
But a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands;
And let her works praise her in the gates.'