“No’m, they don’t want me,” he repeated.
I beckoned him to follow me, went back to the telephone and rang up the woman who was arranging for the supper. “Do you want me to bring Fairfax Hunter with us?” I asked her explicitly.
“Why, of course,” she said surprised. “I told you we want a crowd.”
After this Fairfax stood undecided, his sensitive face clouded and anxious. I had a glimpse then of the long years of brutal discrimination through which he had lived, and said, feeling very much ashamed of my civilization, “Now, Fairfax, don’t be so foolish. We want you to go. Get on your best clothes, so’s to do honor to the Ladies Aid.”
He went back to the room in the corner of the barn, and half an hour later came out, fresh and neat in his new suit, closely shaven, his slim yellow hands clean, his gray hair smooth. He looked almost eager, with a light in his eyes that was like a distant reflection of gaiety. But when we cranked up the Ford to go he was not in sight. We called him, and he answered from the barn that he was not ready, and would walk in. I was vexed, and shouted back as we rolled down the hill, “Now don’t fail to come.”
It rained on the way in, and the supper was served in the basement, with all the neighbors spruced up and fresh, while the busy women of the Ladies Aid rushed back and forth bringing us salmon loaf, pickles, Boston brown bread, creamed potatoes, and coffee and ice-cream as from the beginning of time they always have; but though I kept a chair at our table empty for Fairfax, and sat where I could watch the door, he did not appear.
After the supper I went across the street to see my aunt, house-ridden with a hard cold. She told me that from her windows she had seen Fairfax come down to the village street, halt in front of the church, go on, turn back, halt again. She said he had paced back and forth in this way for half an hour, and finally had gone home.
When we reached the house we found Fairfax there, his good clothes put away, his cook’s white apron tied around him, eating bread and butter and cold meat.
I sat down to scold him for not doing as I had said. When I had finished Fairfax looked at me, hesitated, and said, “If it had been out of doors, maybe I’d have tried it.” There was an expression on his thin somber face, which made me get up and go away without venturing any more comment.
As his health increased, his spirits rose somewhat. My little son was born that winter, and Fairfax was very fond of the baby, who soon developed the most extravagant fondness for his company. When spring came on, and gardening arrived, Fairfax took over a part of that work, and had a long-running feud with the woodchucks who live in the edge of the woods beyond our garden patch. It was a quaint sight to see Fairfax in his white jacket and apron, sitting outside the kitchen door, peeling potatoes, a rifle across his knees, or to see him emerge in a stealthy run from the kitchen door, gun in hand, and dart across the road to get a better sight on the little brown garden thieves. It did me good to see him stirred up enough to care about anything.