“Blue for Your Eyes and Brown for Your Hair”

Outside the small panes of the kitchen windows the dusk pressed, gray-white, like an emanation from the deep snow about the house. The room had a peripheral disorder; the occupants had, as winter came on, drawn close to the stove, casting behind them the equipment of livelier seasons. In the corner under the cupboards a pile of rags on which a black cat was curled; under the windows a cot with tumbled blankets; on the table, shoved back from the edge, a litter of cans and broken jars, a plate of flat, gray biscuit. In the room the odor of age, musty plaster and rotting wood and unwashed clothes, an odor with one streak of protest, aromatic and fanciful, the hot sap from the green birch logs piled to dry in the oven and under the stove.

The rocker close to the range creaked; a gaunt cat jumped to the floor; and slowly, one hand clutching at her back, Elizabeth Whittle pushed herself up to her feet. Her face was lichen-gray and mottled; her body made a crumpled “C” as though she huddled about her own heart.

“Where’s Hanley?” Her voice had the crackle of lichens broken between fingers. “I must of dozed. Hanley ought to come in. He’ll get a cold, working so long. He ought to come in, he ought.” Her passing to the outer door had the wavering of a dried leaf over the floor. She opened the door, holding it with her crooked fingers; there was no wind to rush in, but the cold pressed through the crack, a massive, solid force. “Hanley!” She thrust her face into that palpable dusk. “Hanley!” From the shed came the sound of an axe, not a clean, swift stroke, but short, nibbling cuts. “Hanley!” She closed the door before winter should take complete possession of the kitchen and drifted back to her rocker.

“Terrible cold.” She panted slightly as she hitched her chair nearer the stove and let herself down with brittle care. “Terrible cold winter. Hanley ought to come in. The Lord sees fit to make us suffer. Whom He loveth—— What was it I had in mind to do?” She held her hands toward the stove, their spider-like fingers trembling. “Something ’bout Hanley’s supper. The strength’s gone from me. I think what to do and I don’t do it.” She dropped into silence, eyelids folded over dim, yellowed eyes. Over her bent shoulders drooped a twist of gray hair.

The opening of the door and the clumping of a man’s boots across the floor did not rouse her. Hanley let his armful of pine sticks slip into the box, and thrust his long, mild face close to the old woman’s.

“Sleeping,” he said, slowly. “I keep fearing another of them spells.” He sat down on the couch and tugged at his boots, puffing as he reached for his slippers. “She sleeps considerable,” he went on, in his gentle, uncadenced voice. “Sleeps and sleeps—might be strengthing to sleep. If she’d get stronger I’d get about more.” He stood up, sighing, peering about the room with straining, opaque eyes. “Makes it hard, me not getting out, with wood to cut and all. The sick must be tended to.” He shuffled across to the water bucket at the sink; there was in his movements, in his narrow, bent shoulders and dangling arms, a slow futility, as though his body made sluggish response to any need for action. He carried a dipperful of water from pail to the kettle on the stove, one hand held to catch the drops from the rag-stuffed hole. As he moved the kettle forward his mother stirred, blinked, and took up her crackle where she had dropped it.

“I think what’s to do and don’t do it. Biscuits for supper, I think. I must of dozed. I’d ought to mix up some biscuits.”

“There’s bread enough, mother.”

“Eh?”

“Bread enough.” Hanley shouted close to her ear. “Bread enough. You set still.”

“Terrible cold, Hanley. You’d ought to come in.”

“I am in, mother. Set still and I’ll fix your supper.”

“I don’t know as I call to mind a colder winter. Eats into me. It’s colder’n there’s any call for winter to be.”

“It’s pretty cold.” Hanley moved about the room with his sidewise shuffle, setting cups and bread on the corner of the table, lighting the smoky lamp.

“One winter I recollect was cold enough to freeze the bay. We drove across with oxen to the mainland, father and mother and me. That was—once. Cold and cruel.” She twisted around in her chair. “You’d ought to be careful, Hanley, it’s so cold.”

“Yes, mother.” Hanley lifted the kettle, holding it cautiously with both hands as he filled the teapot. “Want your supper here in your chair? Not so much for supper. If we had some butter, now, ’twould seem more.”

“Eh?”

“I’ll give you your supper here. Warmer.” Hanley did not hurry his gentle speech; he bent nearer his mother and repeated his words. “I was saying I’d ought to try for some butter. Mis’ Saxe might see to giving us some for wood cutting next spring.” He poured the tea into the cracked, heavy cups.

“Now at home we always had butter. Father kept a cow. I had to milk when my fingers was too little to reach round her tits. Always worked hard.” She nodded, her wisps of gray hair waving. “Washed the dishes when I had to stand up on a chair. And going for the cows, down through the cranberry bog, dark coming back—two miles—and the tide might be in across the bar——”

“Here’s your tea, mother.” Hanley placed the cup in her restless hands, and set the saucer with its hunk of bread near her, on the back of the stove. For a few minutes the kitchen was silent except for the faint sucking noise of old gums mumbling tea-soaked bread. Then Hanley set his emptied cup on the shelf and moved a chair over near the stove.

“Next week if you feel smarter, I might cut wood a day or two for Mis’ Saxe. I been thinking about it. I might cut a day or two. You might feel right smart by next week.” He slipped a birch stick into the stove, and sat down, his large loose hands spread on his knees. “What with them potatoes freezing and all, we’re getting sort of short. I might cut a day or two.”

“I’m a hindrance and a drawback to you in your works.” Elizabeth Whittle set down her cup with a click. “Keeping you from your good chance at wood cutting and all. A poor old hindrance——”

“Now, mother, don’t go off talking that way.” Hanley’s steady monotone broke into her querulous plaint. “I ain’t been feeling none too smart myself, and it’s cold to work in. Don’t talk that way. Come spring and we’ll be chipper’n ever. Winter’s hard to endure.”

“Come spring——” She jerked her head around the back of her rocker to peer at a door. “Who’s that? Who’s in there?”

“Nobody’s there, mother. What’d you think was there?”

“Somebody’s in there. Walking.” She pushed herself to her feet and scurried across to the door.

“You’ll get cold, opening that door, mother.” Hanley’s protest followed her.

She rattled the knob and thrust against the door with her withered hands.

“Somebody’s holding it!”

“Now, mother, you’ve got a notion, that’s all.” Hanley came with his shambling walk, and opened the door. The room beyond was still, empty, with the clayey odor of rooms unheated, cold-devoured. A square sitting room, a rusty Franklin stove in front of the large fireplace, a few pieces of furniture indistinct in the shadows. “No one’s there. You’ll get cold, standing here.” He pulled the door firmly shut again.

“I heard your father walking around in there,” insisted the old woman. “Where is he, if he ain’t there?” Her fingers plucked at Hanley’s sleeve.

“Why, mother, you know. He’s dead. Dead these ten years. You know.”

“I heard him. Walking around.” She stood close to her son, her crackle stilled to a faint rustle. “He thinks I don’t know he’s there. Once before he came back. From sea. He thought I didn’t know.”

“Come back here by the fire, mother.” Hanley led her to her chair and took his seat beside her.

“Your father was a good man. But he was foolish-streaked.” Her bent shoulders trembled in a dry laugh. “He was off in his vessel, fishing on the Banks. The boys told him, ‘John, you’re a widower. Your wife’s got married again, while you’re off at sea.’ He believes them and comes home to find out. He was foolish-streaked. He thinks I don’t know he’s in there. All day he’s been there, waiting. I heard him.”

“He’s dead, mother. You remember he’s dead.”

“He thinks something is going to happen today. That’s why he’s back.”

“Mother, you better lie down and rest you. You’re tired.” Hanley shoved back his chair, his patient, dull face perplexed. “You better go to bed. You’re tired.”

“I’m tired. Yes. But I got something else to do tonight.” She drew herself up in her chair, a simper on her old, bloodless lips. “I want you should get me my chest of clothes.”

“What you want that for, mother? It’s late. You go to bed now.”

“You get me my green chest of clothes. It’s cold in there. Bring ’em out here.”

Hanley went slowly across to the little room behind the sitting room where he slept during the winter.

“I got to humor her,” he said, as he groped for the chest. “She’s notional, but I got to humor her. Going against her might turn her into a heart spell.” He carried out the chest, a painted wooden box, and let it down to the floor near his mother’s chair. He untied the cord which bound it and lifted the cover. From the confused piles of faded stuffs within rose a pale fragrance, lavender perhaps, incongruous and pitiful against the close air of the kitchen.

“Now shake out the things and I’ll say what I want.” Mrs. Whittle leaned over the arm of her chair, her hands pulling at the folds of her grimy wrapper.

“Now mother!” Hanley sat down on the cot, the cover of the chest braced between his knees. “What’s the good of that? What you want? Taking them out and putting them back again—they’re all folded proper now.”

“Eh?” Mrs. Whittle lurched forward, her fingers closing into the yellowed fringe of the silk shawl. Jerking herself back into her chair, she spread it over her knees. “All nice things. I never made a show of my best as some does.” Her roughened finger tips caught in the silk and it floated about her hands before it dropped into limp, discolored folds again. “Your father brought that from some foreign parts one time. I always liked a mite of color myself. He brought it from foreign parts. Always bringing home things what wouldn’t fit your want, he was. Shake out that next, Hanley.”

Hanley lifted a pile of woolen stuff, blue ground with a small flower. He fumbled with it.

“No head nor tail to this—there!” He held it out stiffly so that it flowed about him, a voluminous old dress, the panniers crumpled, streaked with black, the front eaten away in a frayed, black gap.

Mrs. Whittle clutched at it.

“Burned—all burned!” She pressed it against her body and rocked over it. “A lovely piece of goods and mother helped sew on it.”

“You saved it from the fire when the house caught and burned.”

“Wanton, cruel destruction! She never surmised I knew she did it! Burning up a home——”

“It caught from the range, mother. What you thinking of now?”

“Oh, I never said.” The old woman bent forward, whispering cunningly. “I knew! Hartwell’s sister, Eliza Bond. I saw her running up the hill that night. I saw it in her face. Wanton, cruel destruction!”

“Now, mother!” Hanley drew the dress out of her arms and laid it on the cot beside him. “You’ve no call to say things like that. Eliza Bond’s dead these many years. She wouldn’t fire a house——”

“I never said—but I’m saying now to you. She did it. Hated me, she did. Thought she would fright me.” Mrs. Whittle peered about the kitchen. “She thought Hartwell was my fancy man. That’s what she thought. She knew I couldn’t speak out if I saw her. Setting us back—we never rightly caught up. All our things gone.”

“Mother, you’re getting all heated up. You ought to go to bed.” Hanley shifted his feet uneasily. “Ain’t no call to stir up things.”

“She was a jealous piece. She’s gone to her reward.” She held her hands out again. “They’s things I want there. What’s that?”

As Hanley lifted the next garment, a basque of brown silk, faded, streaked, with flattened bows of pale blue ribbon, something clinked to the floor. He stooped to find it, while his mother, with little murmurs of delight, stroked the silk, held the basque up to her throat, felt of the old blue bows.

“Blue for your eyes and brown for your hair——” The thin voice shrilled into pleasure. “That’s just what Hartwell said. Blue for your eyes and brown—— What you got, Hanley?”

Hanley held the small leather case close to his eyes.

“A picture, maybe.” He fumbled at the hook. “Why, yes. That’s what it is, a picture.” He peered at it.

“Who might it be?” Mrs. Whittle reached for it. “Eh, that’s your father.” She blinked for a moment at the daguerreotype. The face might have been a poet’s, thin, soft, with dark eyes and hair. “Took in some port. He didn’t think to have his hair cut or take off his work clothes, even.” She dropped it into Hanley’s hand. “When he brings it home, I says, ‘John, never set for a taking unless you are prepared.’ He was foolish-streaked.”

“It looks dreadful youngish.” Hanley held the daguerreotype again close to his eyes. “Dreadful youngish.”

“Blue brings out blue eyes.” Elizabeth Whittle held the basque up to her shoulders. “Blue and brown’s always my real colors. You lay this one side, Hanley. I want you should lay this one side.”

“You want this, too?” Hanley lifted the next, full skirt and basque of flowered calico, the bowknots of color still startlingly bright against the yellowed ground. “Looks big-like for you, mother.”

“That!” Mrs. Whittle did not reach for it. Over the parchment of her face moved a dry quiver. “Might be I was fuller favored then. I don’t want that. I never wore that again. I couldn’t rightly do without it. But I never put it on my back again. Coming home I was, down the hill, and I was met. Lem Rainey he it was met me. ‘Heard the sad news, Mis’ Whittle?’ he says. ‘No, I ain’t,’ I says. ‘How Hartwell was lost at sea?’ he says. My heart left my body with anguish. I stood there quietlike, and says, ‘No, I ain’t heard.’ He was peering and prying at my face. ‘Sad for his folks,’ he says. ‘Yes, ’tis so,’ I makes reply. I never could endure to put that dress on again.” She was silent a moment, her lips mumbling. Then she cried out, shrilly: “Many’s the time your father was thought to be lost at sea. Three months lost his ship was one time. He always came back. Even after I put on decent black one time. Came back and died in there in his own bed. Hartwell—he was lost. His vessel foundered. I knew it that day.”

“I call to mind now how Hartwell Bond was lost at sea.” Hanley laid the dress carefully beside him. “You never made mention of it. He wasn’t kin of yours.”

“Eh? My strength’s gone. I’m wore out.” Elizabeth Whittle dropped back in her chair, her head nodding. “I knew it that day. I felt it here.” She pressed her hand to her shrunken old breast. “He was a fair-spoken man. Took for a punishment to my sin. A fair-spoken man.”

“Now, mother, there’s no call to stir things up. You ought to go to bed.”

“The Lord saw my sin.” She paused, and again her thin shoulders trembled in a laugh. “They never found our trysting place. The second turn of the woodpath beyond the upper blueberry patch, along the fence. And Hartwell coming in from the other road, beyond. He took what he wanted, Hartwell did. He was a driving, masterful man. It’s been a good while back since I went there. The last time—Hartwell didn’t keep his tryst. ‘Four months to a day I’ll meet you,’ he said, and he went on his voyage. I went, but he was lost at sea. A good while back. Eh, it was bitter, his not keeping his tryst. But he’ll keep it now!” She bent forward. “Maybe ’twas sinful. So long ago—I can’t rightly say. I told your father straight out. He cried! Cried. That ain’t a man’s part, to cry. But here I sit talking, in the stead of making myself ready.”

“What you want to get ready for, mother?”

“They’d ought to be a skirt there, a velvet skirt, velvet with raised roses on it. A summer boarder gave it to me once. I want that.”

Hanley bent over the chest, feeling among the folded stuffs.

“Here’s velvet.” He pulled it out.

His mother seized it, and shook it out, a narrow strip of green, with painted pansies crumbing off the ends.

“That’s my table cover, that I mind to use when company comes. It’s real pretty.” She folded it with care. “They’d ought to be a skirt there, velvet.”

Hanley drew up something else, his face reddened from stooping.

“This it?” He bent to stroke the cat, which had stirred from its pile in the corner and come to arch itself against his leg. “Well, pussy, what you want? Want we should go to bed?”

Mrs. Whittle smoothed out the skirt. It was velvet, brown, brocaded, napless, spotted.

“That’ll go with the basque. Do nicely. Brown for your hair and blue for your eyes.” She doubled her hands under the folds. “Hanley!” Her voice dropped into its rustling whisper. “I couldn’t let you go to sea. There’s some the sea wants and some it wouldn’t have. Him it wouldn’t—” She thrust a finger toward the door of the sitting room. “A good son you’ve been. I couldn’t have you go.”

“No likelihood I’ll go now. I’m out of the way of it. Biding here ashore put me out of the way of it. I’m getting on too much to change my ways. No likelihood I’ll go to sea now.”

“That voyage you shipped on—down the coast—I never closed my eyes while you was gone, only to pray. I never slept a mite. You made me suffer cruel. After you come home I never slept till I had your promise. You were set and stubborn, Hanley. You made me suffer cruel. Then you swore you’d give up following the sea. He was dreadful vexed——” Her finger jerked toward the door. “Wanted you should sign with him. And you only a boy, not grown into man’s strength yet. You swore you’d give it up. Hartwell lost at sea—and you pleading to go——”

“There, mother.” Hanley rose and drew from the oven the browned birch logs. “Guess them has dried enough.” He pushed one into the stove and laid the rest on the hearth. “No use fretting over that. I stopped at home with you. No use fretting.” He drew one hand across his chin as he seated himself again. “I was set on going, I call to mind. Seems queer I was so set on going. That must be more’n forty years back. Coming of sea-faring folk, so, I felt I had to follow the sea. But I stopped home.”

“A cruel hard life I saved you from.” Mrs. Whittle’s eyelids closed; her head lopped sidewise against her chair. The birch log within the stove burst into a little roar, splaying red light through the cracks in lid and stove front over her rigid figure, up over the whitewashed ceiling.

Hanley watched her a moment, and then, sucking in his cheeks with a noisy sigh of relief, he began to replace in the chest the garments piled at his side.

“She’s wore off her notion, maybe. I can coax her to lie down. She gets more notional.” He held the calico with its flowers close to his dull eyes. “They made things good in those times; ain’t scarcely faded.” As he pressed it into the box he paused, craning his head to look up at his mother. “She’s breaking up. Never spoke his name before. Never let it through her lips. They was enough said amongst the townsfolk. Her fancy man. But she never spoke his name before.” As he tucked the folds down at the corners, Mrs. Whittle’s hands twitched at the skirt she still held and her voice ran on before her eyelids lifted.

“A hard life I saved you from. What you doing, Hanley? Don’t you go putting them back. There’s more I want.”

“Now, mother, what you want is to go to bed. You’re all wore out.” Hanley laid his hands on the velvet skirt. “Let me put that away.”

Her hands clung to the skirt.

“They’d ought to be a hat there. A straw hat with posies and a piece of ribbon. Down underneath, keeping flat.”

“What you want a straw hat for, tonight?”

With a swift movement Mrs. Whittle crouched over the box, her hands digging into the layers of clothes.

“There!” She dragged it up, breathless. “There—a real pretty hat—I knew I had it saved.” She held it out, an old poke bonnet of braided straw, with yellowed tatters of lace and flowers, and a long streamer of black ribbon.

“Now that’s all I want.” She darted her arm out for the basque, and stood for an instant, hugging the garments against her body and making tiny inarticulate sounds of delight. “Now I got to dress me in them.” She spread skirt and basque on the back of her chair and laid the bonnet on the cot.

“Mother!” Hanley got to his feet and stepped near her. “This ain’t sense. Night ain’t no time to dress yourself up. You ought to go to bed.”

“You let me be.” Mrs. Whittle’s tone snapped. “You let me be. There’s things to do tonight. You don’t know.” She whispered again. “He does. That’s why he’s here! He don’t make no odds. He can’t prevent what’s to do.” She did not turn her head, but Hanley stared at the door into the sitting room, and then with a long sigh, sat down again.

Mrs. Whittle held the basque across her bosom, laid it down, and fumbled at the buttons of her wrapper. Then she shook her head.

“I’ll put ’em over this. It’s cold. And I might not be so full-favored as then. Brown for your hair——” She struggled with the skirt, her words lost beneath it as she dragged it over her head. “I ought to have a pin, Hanley.” She held the skirt about her crooked back and sides; it billowed and sagged, enveloping her grotesquely. “I got one. Here’s a pin.” She made the belt fast, doubling it across her withered, protruding abdomen. “I ought to make haste.” She pulled the basque about her shoulders, pawing with her hands for the sleeves. “He wouldn’t tarry long. He never felt too sure about me.” Her lips parted over her dry gums in a little grimace. “Never let them feel too sure.” She patted the basque down over her hollow bosom. “I ain’t so full. Blue for your eyes, he said.” She pulled at one of the bows. “Brown for your hair.” Her hand touched the straggling wisps of gray about her face. “Don’t it make my eyes bluer, Hanley? Blue ribbon——”

“This ain’t sense,” repeated Hanley. “Tiring yourself and for no sense at all.”

“Eh? Don’t you like blue? Some likes red better. Thick-skinned, blowsy girls. Your skin’s like a shell, cool-like and smooth. That’s what he said.” She held the basque across her breast, the sleeves wrinkling down her arms. Suddenly the clothes seemed to obliterate the dried body within them; they stood there alone, nothing human about them, not even the doddering gray head above them; they had put on, not life, but a macabre illusion of motion.

“He’ll be there, if I make haste.” She reached for the bonnet, stumbling in the flowing skirt. “That goes on—so!” It shut down over her head, enclosing in its flattened curve the pointed chin and nose, the little eager eyes. “Now I got to go. Don’t you sit up for me, Hanley.”

“Where you think you’re going, mother?” Hanley’s monotone had a new cadence of distress in its patient humoring. “This kind of a night? What ever is into you?” He edged along the cot until he had his shoulder against the door.

“Hartwell never kept his last tryst——” Above the cot, between the windows, hung a small cracked mirror. Bending forward, Elizabeth Whittle strained to capture her reflection. “Never could see in that glass. The flaw in it always pictured you older.” She stood for a moment, her fingers touching her lips, her eyes wary. Then with her uneven, wavering step, she came to the end of the cot.

“Now, mother, you can’t go outdoors.” Hanley rose, laying his hands on her arms. “You can’t! They ain’t no sense——”

“Sh-h!” She glanced over her shoulder. “He’ll hear you.”

“Father isn’t there!” Hanley pushed her backward with firm despair. “You lie down here. You’ve got you all excited. You lie down and I’ll cover you up.”

“You let me be!” The ribbons on her bonnet quavered. “Hanley, you let me be. I’m going—you might as well know—I’m going to keep my tryst with Hartwell.”

“He’s dead, mother. Lost at sea. You said he was dead.”

She rocked unsteadily on her feet. Half lifting, half dragging her, Hanley got her onto the cot. For an instant she lay quiet, her breath making faint gurgles in her throat.

“It’s—my heart—Hanley.” One hand pulled at a bow of ribbon under her chin. “Get me some water.”

“Lie still. I’ll get you some.” Hanley crossed the kitchen. “You lie still. I’ll get some fresh. The pail’s empty. You lie still.” He went with awkward haste, out through the rear entry.

Elizabeth Whittle lay quietly until the creak of the pump sounded. Then, with strange agility, she pushed herself erect, pulled at the outer door, and stood on the step. The snow gleamed white where the light fell through the windows and doorway; beyond it grayed and deepened into black, solid, motionless, frozen black.

“They’d all keep me from my tryst,” she cried out. “All of ’em!”

Steps behind her and a shout, “Mother!”

She plunged forward, slipping on the second ice-covered step. The old bonnet slid along the surface of the snow with a little skithering noise before it rested, but the pile of clothes, brown and blue, had lost all motion.