THE MAKING OF A MAN
In the north country June is the smile of a bitter old man. The sun
is bright and warm, the waters are blue and placid, the poplars and
birches open their buds and drip ointment into eyes smarting from the
long strain of dreary monotones. Yet the vast spruce swamps remain as
desolate, the great, sprawling lakes as empty and the loneliness as
crushing as in the bleak, cold spring. The harsh, relentless spirit of
the land is wafted on the gentlest breeze.
Evelyn Layard had never been able to escape this thought. Cruel and
ruthless she knew the north to be and only a conviction that the
human soul is supreme, that environment and circumstance are never
unconquerable, had carried her through eight years as the wife of
a Hudson's Bay Company post manager. That she had won happiness
and contentment she ascribed to the love of her husband and to her
philosophy, never realizing the part played by her own warm, impulsive,
compassionate nature and by her capacity to act upon conviction.
It was this compassion and this capacity that led her immediately to
the championship of Wen-dah-ban's cause. When she talked to him she was
more deeply moved than her husband had been. The boy did not repeat the
vehement declarations he had made in the trade shop, but she caught
glimpses of the high resolve that had defied Nee-tah-wee-gan and had
made it possible for this shy, wilderness-bred creature to open his
heart to a strange white man, and she was moved by this spontaneous
effort of a boy to rise above his environment and above circumstance.
"He will never stick it out," Merton said when she announced that
she would help Wen-dah-ban. "You'll simply lead him on to ultimate
unhappiness."
"At least we should give him the chance he asks for," she answered. "I
am going to do what I can for him while Pe-tah-bo is away with the fur
brigade."
Merton smiled. He loved these impulsive attempts to lighten the burden
of a savage life, even though they failed, for to him they were an
expression of Evelyn's blindly altruistic nature. Now he was glad that
she would have such an effort to occupy her during his long journey to
Fort Bruce.
It was thus that Wen-dah-ban was suddenly removed from the harsh,
stifling sway of Nee-tah-wee-gan's vengeful nature to the sympathetic
and unfolding influence of Evelyn Layard and almost immediately he
began to repay her in a manner she had not expected. In the first few
days he was silent and unresponsive. He followed her about like a dog,
watching her with wide, sober eyes, listening with painful attention
when she spoke English. Yet those eyes were clear and direct--never
furtive, or with hidden lights. They began to haunt her and to escape
them she found tasks for him to do.
"The change was startling," she told Merton enthusiastically when he
returned from Fort Bruce. "As soon as I gave him something to do he
became a different boy. He gave me the creeps, staring at me with those
dumb eyes, and I thought he was only curious."
"He was," Merton laughed.
"But he wasn't! He was studying the way I do things. And when I set him
to work there was never a bit of that Indian idea that he must be paid
for every little task. He understood everything at once, too, and he
was so faithful."
"Poor little devil! He must have had a dog's life--shut up in the bush
since he was born."
"I know, Merton. He's been cramped and dwarfed through the very years
that should have been free and stimulating. But it was like a miracle
to see him develop. Why, Merton, I could actually see that boy's soul
unfold. He tried so hard to speak English and he got on so rapidly.
His face was actually shiny from scrubbing and he washed his shirt so
often, rubbing it on the rocks down at the lake, it was soon full of
holes."
Merton smiled. Evelyn's enthusiasms were so typical of her buoyant
spirit.
"Don't laugh!" she protested. "There's something different here.
You know how it is with these Ojibwas. There is always a baffling
unresponsiveness, a suspicion they can't quite conceal, and a greedy
grasping for surface things. I imagine white men have always had to
contend with it when they tried to elevate people of another race.
There's never been an exception among the women I've trained for
housework.
"But in Wen-dah-ban all that is lacking. He is so intent it is pitiful.
He seems like a starved spirit. It isn't only that he does everything
so well and tries so hard to please me. There is something more,
something deeper. I couldn't understand it at first and then I knew. It
is a sense of race equality."
Merton laughed indulgently. "I suppose that fasting dream of his has
gone to his head," he said.
"No," Evelyn declared passionately, "it's more than that. He told the
truth when he said he _felt_ all white. It isn't only that I never
knew an Indian or a half-breed who thinks as he does and it isn't
that he lacks the half-breed's superciliousness towards Indians when
he believes he is becoming a white man. Wen-dah-ban hasn't that at
all--nor is it a calm assumption that he is white. He just seems to
_feel_ that he is."
"I'll admit he possesses one quality no Indian ever had," Merton
answered. "Since I've been back I've noticed that he sticks to a thing
until he gets it done and then jumps right into something else. Doesn't
he ever stop to play? He's just a boy."
"That's the pitiful part of it!" Evelyn exclaimed. "He's so serious. He
has never known childhood. Nee-tah-wee-gan must have been a terrible
creature and just now, when he should be carefree, he has shouldered
this enormous burden upon himself."
"He doesn't seem to stagger under it."
"No, but he will some day--some day when he has grown up and reaches
out for the thing he desires most. Then he will discover that unseen
wall, that impassable thing that has been reared between the races. It
is terrible, Merton, for he will not have deserved it."
But as the weeks passed Wen-dah-ban did not suspect the presence of
that unseen wall. His quick, eager feet were taking him up the white
man's ladder and his faith in the white man's judgement, when he should
reach the top, made so subtle an appeal to the heart of Evelyn Layard
that she was rushed into a recognition of his viewpoint despite the
warnings of her husband.
"He's different, Merton!" she protested. "If he fails it will be
our fault and not his. I know how you feel about half-breeds but
Wen-dah-ban is the exception."
Merton smiled in indulgence of a faith that had persisted despite years
of disillusionment.
"I know," he answered. "The boy gets you. He did me, too, that first
morning in the trade shop. But don't count too much on it. Remember
that you're building castles on the foundation of an unknown father."
"But that's only another reason," Evelyn replied. "Whoever the man was,
he's given the boy something. I don't mean just honesty. Many Indians
have that. I mean an integrity of character, a sense of right that he
must live up to, not because he wants to please us but because there's
something in him that compels it."
"That," and her voice softened as she turned her tear-dimmed eyes away,
"is why I want to help him--to make up to him now while I can for the
sorrows and struggles that will come."
It was to this warm-hearted champion that Wen-dah-ban came one day in
early winter. Evelyn had already arranged that he was to remain at the
fort and Pe-tah-bo had gone back to his wigwam and Nee-tah-wee-gan long
before.
"I am called Wen-dah-ban," he began seriously. "It means 'coming
dawn'--that it was then I was born. But it is an Indian name and I am
not an Indian. I must have a white man's name."
There was something so confident and yet so pitiful in the request,
something so expressive of the boy's whole life's problem, that
Evelyn turned away to hide the quick tears. She saw him not only as a
nameless, raceless, kinless waif, but as one destined to go on through
life without contacts, belonging neither to one world nor to the
other--with nothing behind him, nothing ahead.
"Had you thought of a name?" she asked.
"I don't know the white man's names, only Mr. Layard's and the 'big
trader's.' Indian names are not like them. They are names of things.
Pe-tah-bo means 'tea water.' White men's names are real names. They
mean something and the children have names before they are born
because they have their fathers'."
"And you--you have never heard your father's name?"
It was the first time Evelyn had ever mentioned the subject to him but
he was not embarrassed.
"Nee-tah-wee-gan keeps silent," he answered simply. "Pe-tah-bo often
asked her. It made her angry and she would shout at him and she always
said that she would never tell. So I cannot have my father's name."
Again the tears came but she winked them back furiously.
"Wen-dah-ban," she said in a choked voice, "you shall have a name.
You shall have my father's. I have always loved it. I think it is a
beautiful name--Donald Norton. Do you like it?"
She did not tie strings to her gift. She did not tell him her father
had been a good man and urge him to be worthy of the name. Bestowal
came from her warm, compassionate heart and although he did not
understand its significance he did sense the generous impulse and
respond to it.
"You are very good to me," he said. "I like Donald Norton."
Unconsciously he had reached forth a hand. Never before had tenderness
come so close. He felt it all around, suffocating and entrancing, and
then suddenly Evelyn had thrown her arms about him and strained him
close. He felt a kiss on one cheek and then both cheeks were wet.
He had never been kissed before. Not since infancy had he wept. In
sudden confusion he dug his fists into his eyes and turned away.
Before the winter was over Merton Layard began to share his wife's
viewpoint. Wen-dah-ban, or Donald, as he was now called, made an appeal
to the fur trader just as surely, though in a different way, as he did
to Evelyn. The woman's heart had been touched by the pitiful, lonely
figure, the man's by the youngster's courage and determination. Layard
shared in the task of instruction and in the pleasure it gave and when
spring came he was as firm a champion of the boy as his wife.
In June the hunters arrived and among them was Pe-tah-bo. The big,
good-natured Indian clucked in amazement when he saw Donald.
"You dreamed true," he said, and there was a note of awe in his voice.
"You are a white man."
Then his eyes gleamed and his mouth widened in a grin.
"Nee-tah-wee-gan is here," he said. "When she sees you she will be like
a wolf in a trap."
But Nee-tah-wee-gan did not come near the fort for several days. She
was camped far down the shore and did not visit the other Indians,
practically none of whom she had ever seen. And then one noon, when
Donald came out of the trade shop, he found her huddled against the
white-washed wall.
She looked up at him with a twisted smile, her cruel lips curled
contemptuously, her black eyes glittering with an evil light.
"_Keen nish-e-na-be!_" she hissed. "You are an Indian."
"_Kah-win!_" he retorted.
"So! You think you are a white man?"
"Yes," Donald answered confidently. "It is as I dreamed. I am learning
to become one of them."
"You!" she burst forth scornfully, the word "_keen_" lending itself to
the derision of her shrill voice. "You! One of them! It is easier for
an Indian to make his canoe fly like a bird than to become a white man.
You do not know the white man. He will let you work, slave like a dog,
learn his ways, and then when your back is turned he laughs at you.
"He will take our women but he will never take our children. Often have
I heard the white man say, 'One drop of red and all is red.' You think
I do not know. My father was white and he left me and my mother and
returned to his own country. Do you think the blood of such a man has
made you white?"
"But my father----" Donald began.
Nee-tah-wee-gan's shrill laughter stopped him.
"Your father!" she gloated. "How you wish you knew! But you never will.
You are the son of Nee-tah-wee-gan. That is all you know and it is all
they care. Some day they will tell you so and send you back to your own
people.
"Fool! Work for them. Listen to their lies when they say they are
making you one of them. Some day you will learn the truth."
She had begun her tirade in the shrill voice he remembered so well,
venomous and bitter and unrelenting. But now her tone changed. Her
black eyes fastened upon him and into her voice came some of the
solemnity of a prophecy, or of a curse.
"Go!" she cried. "Go and find that it is as I tell you! Now you are a
child and it is easy to deceive you but when you are a man and would
take one of their women you will learn that it is as I say. Go put
wings on your canoe and ride in the clouds and say you are a white man
but some day they will say to you what I say now, 'You are an Indian.'"
She repeated the last words, "_keen nish-e-na-be_," gloatingly, as
though the very sound of them were a source of infinite pleasure, and
then drew her shawl about her head. The boy, more shaken and awed than
he had ever been before, stumbled away toward the dwelling house.
After that Nee-tah-wee-gan came to the fort each day. She rarely spoke
to anyone but would squat in front of the trade shop and watch for
Donald as he went about his daily tasks. Sooner or later he would have
to pass her and always she would hiss the words, low and venomous:
"_Keen nish-e-na-be!_"
Never during that summer was he permitted to forget it. "You are an
Indian," was dinned into his ears constantly. Each night when he went
to bed he remembered it. Each morning when he arose he dreaded it.
Indians and employes of the fort heard it and always laughed, for
their greatest amusement is derived from torture and ridicule, but
Nee-tah-wee-gan was careful never to let the Layards hear her.
And then one day Janet, walking softly in her moccasins, came up behind
the Indian woman as Donald was passing.
"_Keen nish-e-na-be!_" Nee-tah-wee-gan hissed.
"_Kah-win!_" the little girl cried angrily in Ojibwa. "Wen-dah-ban
_kah-win nish-e-na-be_! You are a mean old woman to say such a thing.
You can't be his mother or you wouldn't be so cruel to him."
Nee-tah-wee-gan spat contemptuously on the ground at Janet's feet.
"Wen-dah-ban is an Indian," she repeated coldly. "Some day you will
remember what I have told you."
She pulled her shawl about her head and Janet ran in search of
her father. Layard set a trap for the woman and heard one of her
vitriolic outbursts. Without speaking to the boy about it, he ordered
Nee-tah-wee-gan to keep away from the vicinity of the fort. The next
summer she did not come to Kenogami with Pe-tah-bo.
* * * * *
Four wonderful years followed for Donald. Kenogami was a small
world--an infinitesimal world isolated by the great distances, twisting
waterways and long winter trails of the north, and in that world the
boy won a place. Some quality in him conquered the inevitable feeling
of race superiority, conquered British aloofness and the precedents of
fur land because it had conquered the hearts of the Layards.
Yet the entering wedge had ceased to be a factor. The woman's heart was
no longer touched by a pitiful, lonely figure or the man's by a boy's
courage and determination.
"I can't believe he's the same boy," Evelyn said to her husband one
night just before he was leaving for his annual journey to Fort Bruce.
"I've seen him develop and still I'm wondering how it happened."
"It's very simple," Merton told her. He smiled and yet there was
something of adoration in his tone. "He's never been away from your
influence for five years."
She flushed with pleasure even as she disputed his statement.
"No one could give him what he has," she declared. "He has always had
it. He needed only the opportunity. That first year I was afraid. He
was so serious, tried so hard. It was pitiful. He always made me think
of a starved sleigh dog."
"You can't see his ribs now."
"Merton!"
"And he ought to make a good leader."
"Please----"
"You started it."
Despite her shocked expression, Evelyn was delighted. She understood
her husband too well to fail to comprehend--knew that emotion often
drove him to concealment in raillery.
"But that is the way I did think of him at first," she insisted. "Now
I can't imagine it. Why, Merton, I never knew a more charming boy.
All the somberness is gone, all the reticence. I can't understand how
such a disposition could have survived a wigwam and that dreadful
Nee-tah-wee-gan. And his mind! Why, Merton----"
"And yet you objected to my saying he would make a good leader."
"I know, but--"
"But I meant exactly what I said and when I get to Fort Bruce I'm going
to start something. Nick is through and----"
"Merton! The outpost!"
"Why not? Right now that boy will make a far better trader than an
old half-breed who has spent a lifetime in the service. He deserves a
chance."
Soon after his arrival at Fort Bruce, Layard told Duncan Mactavish, the
district manager, what he intended to do.
"I'm going to put that boy in charge of the outpost at Wabinosh this
fall," he said. "He's only nineteen but he's the best man for the place
now that Finlayson has taken a pension. And look at this list of books
he wants me to bring him from the district library."
The old Scotchman, who had spent half a century in fur land, glanced
over the sheet.
"On the strength of that alone I would say you are making a mistake,"
he commented drily. "He wants a college, not an outpost. But give him
the place."
Layard promised his two Indian canoemen a bonus for a quick trip home
and as the light craft came racing across Lake Kenogami Evelyn, Janet
and Donald ran down to the shore to meet him.
"Donald goes to Wabinosh!" Layard shouted when still far out.
Janet danced about in glee and Evelyn, tears in her eyes, grasped the
boy's hand.
"Isn't it wonderful!" she cried.
He returned the pressure with a quick, fierce grip and then suddenly
lifted her fingers and kissed them.
"Where homage is due," he said.
He had tried to speak lightly and had not succeeded. Evelyn glanced
at him quickly, saw the twitching muscles of his face and forced gay
laughter as she made an elaborate curtsey.
"Well spoken, Sir Knight of the Rueful Countenance," she said.
"I shouldn't look rueful," Donald grinned. "Or did you mean an outpost
is only a windmill?"
"Silly!" she retorted. "It's wonderful, to be in charge of one at
nineteen!"
Layard's canoe was close to shore now and all three ran down the bank
to greet him. In the two weeks that followed Donald tried to hide his
elation but the three Layards would not let him. They were over-joyed
to think that Duncan Mactavish had given him this opportunity. Few
things happened in their small world and this was one of the greatest.
When at last he departed, seated in a four-ton York boat loaded with
trade goods and rowed by a crew of Indians, Donald realized the true
significance of the event. The Indians toiling at the oars while he
sat in idleness, an open book on his knees, told how far he had come
in five years and foreshadowed how far he might go. His fasting dream
had ceased to be a vision. He felt that he had entered the white man's
world.
When he returned the next June this had become a conviction. His
accounts were in perfect shape. He had taken in a record amount of fur.
He knew he had conducted his post satisfactorily. Evelyn and Merton
welcomed him warmly and when the books had been examined they were
elated.
"I'm going to take him to Fort Bruce with me," Merton told his wife.
"The boy's a born fur trader. Mactavish will make him a post manager."
But a month later when he spoke to the kindly old district manager,
himself the father of two half-breed boys who had long been post
managers, he encountered a dismaying lack of enthusiasm. Mactavish
talked to Donald, asked him questions about Wabinosh, even referred to
the many books the young man had been getting from the district library
and drawing out his opinions of them, but he said nothing about a
promotion or the future.
"What's wrong?" Merton demanded angrily when he and Mactavish were
alone. "He had a record year for Wabinosh."
"Huh!" the old man grunted as he glanced over the reports. "He hasn't
lost the smoke smell yet. Send him back for another year."
"But don't you see? He's earned something better. The boy's made good."
"In a season? It takes more than one snow bird to make a winter in the
north country."
Merton protested and argued. His vehemence would have brought joy to
Evelyn if she could have heard and have known the sincerity of his
championship. But the old Scotchman, usually so sympathetic and so
quick to see promising material, was obdurate.
"I once saw an Indian boy get his first rifle," he said. "He went
outside the trade shop, loaded it and shot at a loon a quarter of a
mile out in the lake. And he hit it.
"Well, the fort became too small for that young buck. He got out of
hand entirely. So I set up a board at fifty feet and he missed it ten
times running."
"But Donald's not an Indian!" Merton exclaimed.
"Eh? Not an Indian? And he spent fourteen years in a wigwam? And
Nee-tah-wee-gan his mother? Send him back to Wabinosh, Merton. Let's
see if he can hit a board at fifty feet."
Layard broke the news to Donald as best he could but after the first
few sentences the young man smiled.
"There's nothing to do but go back," he said. "Mr. Mactavish doesn't
know anything about me except that one year's work."
"But he's going to give you a contract as an employe, not as a servant
of the company. He won't even make it an apprentice's contract."
"Old Nick Finlayson was only an employe and he ran Wabinosh for years
and never worked for anyone except the company since he was sixteen."
"But that's different. Old Nick was a----"
Merton stopped in sudden confusion. Unconsciously he had assumed
the attitude that Donald was white, that he deserved a white man's
treatment.
"Anyhow, it's settled," the young man said. "I'll go back and do the
best I can and if I have another good year he'll act differently."
When they returned to Kenogami Evelyn, too, failed to share Donald's
easy acceptance of Mactavish's action.
"Back to Wabinosh!" she exclaimed. "It's a shame! I'd like to tell old
Duncan so myself."
"You will want me in his place in another year," Donald laughed. "I
shouldn't wonder but what he's right. I'm only twenty. There's lots of
time."
The subject was dropped. Both Evelyn and Merton feared the boy would
think he had been discriminated against because of his parentage but
this thought never entered Donald's mind. He knew the old district
manager's two sons, half-breeds, had gone far in the service. To him it
was only a matter of caution on Mactavish's part and he was content to
wait.
It was thus that he started to the tiny outpost in much the same spirit
as the year before. He arrived to find the caretaker hysterical with
momentous news and a free trader erecting a post a quarter of a mile
from the Hudson's Bay establishment.