Nellie L. McClung - The Next of Kin

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The Next of Kin

_Those who Wait and Wonder_

By

Nellie L. McClung

Author of "Sowing Seeds in Denny," "The Second Chance,"
"The Black Creek Stopping House," and
"In Times like These"

TORONTO
THOMAS ALLEN
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1917

1917, BY NELLIE L. McCLUNG

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published November 1917_

HOPE

Down through the ages, a picture has come of the woman who weepeth:
Tears are her birthright, and sorrow and sadness her portion:
Weeping endures for a night, and prolongeth its season
Far in the day, with the will of God
For a reason!

Such has the world long accepted, as fitting and real;
Plentiful have been the causes of grief, without stinting;
Patient and sad have the women accepted the ruling,
Learning life's lessons, with hardly a word of complaint
At the schooling.

But there's a limit to tears, even tears, and a new note is sounding:
Hitherto they have wept without hope, never seeing an ending;
Now hope has dawned in their poor lonely hearts,
And a message they're sending
Over the world to their sisters in weeping, a message is flashing,
Flashing the brighter, for the skies are so dark
And war thunders crashing!
And this is the message the war-stricken women send out
In their sorrow:
"Yesterday and to-day have gone wrong,
But we still have to-morrow!"

Contents

FOREWORD 1

I. BEACH DAYS 22

II. WORKING IN! 35

III. LET'S PRETEND 46

IV. PICTURES 53

V. SAVING OUR SOULS 58

VI. SURPRISES 70

VII. CONSERVATION 92

VIII. "PERMISSION" 112

IX. THE SLACKER--IN UNIFORM 142

X. NATIONAL SERVICE--ONE WAY 154

XI. THE ORPHAN 171

XII. THE WAR-MOTHER 193

XIII. THE BELIEVING CHURCH 210

XIV. THE LAST RESERVES 227

XV. LIFE'S TRAGEDY 241

XVI. WAITING! 247

The Next of Kin

FOREWORD

It was a bleak day in November, with a thick, gray sky, and a great,
noisy, blustering wind that had a knack of facing you, no matter which
way you were going; a wind that would be in ill-favor anywhere, but in
northern Alberta, where the wind is not due to blow at all, it was
what the really polite people call "impossible." Those who were not so
polite called it something quite different, but the meaning is the
same.

There are districts, not so very far from us, where the wind blows so
constantly that the people grow accustomed to it; they depend on it;
some say they like it; and when by a rare chance it goes down for a
few hours, they become nervous, panicky, and apprehensive, always
listening, expecting something to happen. But we of the windless
North, with our sunlit spaces, our quiet days and nights, grow
peevish, petulant, and full of grouch when the wind blows. We will
stand anything but that. We resent wind; it is not in the bond; we
will have none of it!

"You won't have many at the meeting to-day," said the station agent
cheerfully, when I went into the small waiting-room to wait for the
President of the Red Cross Society, who wanted to see me before the
meeting. "No, you won't have many a day like this, although there are
some who will come out, wind or no wind, to hear a woman speak--it's
just idle curiosity, that's all it is."

"Oh, come," I said, "be generous; maybe they really think that she may
have something to say!"

"Well, you see," said this amateur philosopher, as he dusted the
gray-painted sill of the wicket with a large red-and-white
handkerchief, "it _is_ great to hear a woman speak in public, anyway,
even if she does not do it very well. It's sorto' like seeing a pony
walking on its hind legs; it's clever even if it's not natural. You
will have some all right--I'm going over myself. There would have been
a big crowd in if it hadn't been for the wind. You see, you've never
been here before and that all helps."

Then the President of the Red Cross Society came and conducted me to
the house quite near the station where I was to be entertained. My
hostess, who came to the door herself in answer to our ring, was a
sweet-faced, little Southern woman transplanted here in northern
Canada, who with true Southern hospitality and thoughtfulness asked me
if I would not like to step right upstairs and "handsome up a bit"
before I went to the meeting,--"not but what you're looking right
peart," she added quickly.

When I was shown upstairs to the spare room and was well into the
business of "handsoming up," I heard a small voice at the door
speaking my name. I opened the door and found there a small girl of
about seven years of age, who timidly asked if she might come in. I
told her that I was just dressing and would be glad to have her at
some other time. But she quickly assured me that it was right now that
she wished to come in, for she would like to see how I dressed. I
thought the request a strange one and brought the small person in to
hear more of it. She told me,

"I heard my mamma and some other ladies talking about you," she said,
"and wondering what you would be like; and they said that women like
you who go out making speeches never know how to dress themselves, and
they said that they bet a cent that you just flung your clothes
on,--and do you? Because I think it must be lovely to be able to fling
your clothes on--and I wish I could! Don't you tell that I told you,
will you?--but that is why I came over. I live over there,"--she
pointed to a house across the street,--"and I often come to this
house. I brought over a jar of cream this morning. My mamma sent it
over to Mrs. Price, because she was having you stay here."

"That was very kind of your mamma," I said, much pleased with this
evidence of her mother's good-will.

"Oh, yes," said my visitor. "My mamma says she always likes to help
people out when they are in trouble. But no one knows that I am here
but just you and me. I watched and watched for you, and when you came
nobody was looking and I slipped out and came right in, and never
knocked--nor nothin'."

I assured my small guest that mum was the word, and that I should be
delighted to have her for a spectator while I went on with the process
of making myself look as nice as nature would allow. But she was
plainly disappointed when she found that I was not one bit quicker
about dressing than plenty of others, even though she tried to speed
me up a little.

Soon the President came for me and took me to the Municipal Hall,
where the meeting was to be held.

I knew, just as soon as I went in, that it was going to be a good
meeting. There was a distinct air of preparedness about
everything--some one had scrubbed the floor and put flags on the wall
and flowers in the windows; over in the corner there was a long,
narrow table piled up with cups and saucers, with cake and sandwiches
carefully covered from sight; but I knew what caused the lumpiness
under the white cloth. Womanly instinct--which has been declared a
safer guide than man's reasoning--told me that there were going to be
refreshments, and the delightful odor of coffee, which escaped from
the tightly closed boiler on the stove, confirmed my deductions. Then
I noticed that a handbill on the wall spoke freely of it, and declared
that every one was invited to stay, although there did not seem to be
much need of this invitation--certainly there did not seem to be any
climatic reason for any one's leaving any place of shelter; for now
the wind, confirming our worst suspicions of it, began to drive frozen
splinters of sleet against the windows.

By three o'clock the hall was full,--women mostly, for it was still
the busy time for the men on the farms. Many of the women brought
their children with them. Soon after I began to speak, the children
fell asleep, tired out with struggling with wind and weather, and
content to leave the affairs of state with any one who wanted them.
But the women watched me with eager faces which seemed to speak back
to me. The person who drives ten miles against a head wind over bad
roads to hear a lecture is not generally disposed to slumber. The
faces of these women were so bright and interested that, when it was
over, it seemed to me that it had been a conversation where all had
taken part.

The things that I said to them do not matter; they merely served as an
introduction to what came after, when we sat around the stove and the
young girls of the company brought us coffee and sandwiches, and mocha
cake and home-made candy, and these women told me some of the things
that are near their hearts.

"I drove fourteen miles to-day," said one woman, "but those of us who
live long on the prairie do not mind these things. We were two hundred
miles from a railway when we went in first, and we only got our mail
'in the spring.' Now, when we have a station within fourteen miles and
a post-office on the next farm, we feel we are right in the midst of
things, and I suppose we do not really mind the inconveniences that
would seem dreadful to some people. We have done without things all
our lives, always hoping for better things to come, and able to bear
things that were disagreeable by telling ourselves that the children
would have things easier than we had had them. We have had frozen
crops; we have had hail; we have had serious sickness; but we have not
complained, for all these things seemed to be God's doings, and no one
could help it. We took all this--face upwards; but with the war--it is
different. The war is not God's doings at all. Nearly all the boys
from our neighborhood are gone, and some are not coming back----"

She stopped abruptly, and a silence fell on the group of us. She
fumbled for a moment in her large black purse, and then handed me an
envelope, worn, battered. It was addressed to a soldier in France and
it had not been opened. Across the corner, in red ink, was written the
words, "Killed in action."

"My letters are coming back now," she said simply. "Alex was my eldest
boy, and he went at the first call for men, and he was only
eighteen--he came through Saint-Eloi and Festubert--But this happened
in September."

The woman who sat beside her took up the theme. "We have talked a lot
about this at our Red Cross meetings. What do the women of the world
think of war? No woman ever wanted war, did she? No woman could bring
a child into the world, suffering for it, caring for it, loving it,
without learning the value of human life, could she? War comes about
because human life is the cheapest thing in the world; it has been
taken at man's estimate, and that is entirely too low. Now, we have
been wondering what can be done when this war is over to form a league
of women to enforce peace. There is enough sentiment in the world in
favor of human life if we could bind it up some way."

I gazed at the eager faces before me--in astonishment. Did I ever hear
high-browed ladies in distant cities talk of the need of education in
the country districts?

"Well-kept homes and hand-knit socks will never save the world," said
Alex's mother. "Look at Germany! The German women are kind, patient,
industrious, frugal, hard-working, everything that a woman ought to
be, but it did not save them, or their country, and it will not save
us. We have allowed men to have control of the big things in life too
long. While we worked--or played--they have ruled. My nearest neighbor
is a German, and she and I have talked these things over. She feels
just the same as we do, and she sews for our Red Cross. She says she
could not knit socks for our soldiers, for they are enemies, but she
makes bandages, for she says wounded men are not enemies, and she is
willing to do anything for them. She wanted to come to-day to hear
you, but her husband would not let her have a horse, because he says
he does not believe in women speaking in public, anyway! I wanted her
to come with us even if he did not like it, but she said that she
dared not."

"Were you not afraid of making trouble?" I asked.

Alex's mother smiled. "A quick, sharp fight is the best and clears up
things. I would rather be a rebel any time than a slave. But of
course it is easy for me to talk! I have always been treated like a
human being. Perhaps it is just as well that she did not come. Old
Hans has long generations back of him to confirm him in his theory
that women are intended to be men's bondservants and that is why they
are made smaller; it will all take time--and other things. The trouble
has been with all of us that we have expected time to work out all of
our difficulties, and it won't; there is no curative quality in time!
And what I am most afraid of is that we will settle down after the
war, and slip right back into our old ways,--our old peaceful
ways,--and let men go on ruling the world, and war will come again and
again. Men have done their very best,--I am not feeling hard to
them,--but I know, and the thoughtful men know, that men alone can
never free the world from the blight of war; and if we go on, too
gentle and sweet to assert ourselves, knitting, nursing, bringing
children into the world, it will surely come to pass, when we are old,
perhaps, and not able to do anything,--but suffer,--that war will
come again, and we shall see our daughters' children or our
granddaughters' children sent off to fight, and their heart-broken
mothers will turn on us accusing eyes and say to us, 'You went through
all this--you knew what this means--why didn't you do something?' That
is my bad dream when I sit knitting, because I feel hard toward the
women that are gone. They were a poor lot, many of them. I like now
best of all Jennie Geddes who threw the stool at somebody's head. I
forget what Jennie's grievance was, but it was the principle that
counts--she had a conviction, and was willing to fight for it. I never
said these things--until I got this." She still held the letter, with
its red inscription, in her hand. "But now I feel that I have earned
the right to speak out. I have made a heavy investment in the cause of
Humanity and I am going to look after it. The only thing that makes it
possible to give up Alex is the hope that Alex's death may help to
make war impossible and so save other boys. But unless we do something
his death will not help a bit; for this thing has always been--and
that is the intolerable thought to me. I am willing to give my boy to
die for others if I am sure that the others are going to be saved, but
I am not willing that he should die in vain. You see what I mean,
don't you?"

I told her that I did see, and that I believed that she had expressed
the very thought that was in the mind of women everywhere.

"Well, then," she said quickly, "why don't you write it? We will
forget this when it is all over and we will go back to our old
pursuits and there will be nothing--I mean, no record of how we felt.
Anyway, we will die and a new generation will take our places. Why
don't you write it while your heart is hot?"

"But," I said, "perhaps what I should write would not truly represent
what the women are thinking. They have diverse thoughts, and how can I
hope to speak for them?"

"Write what you feel," she said sternly. "These are fundamental
things. Ideas are epidemic--they go like the measles. If you are
thinking a certain thing, you may be sure you have no monopoly of it;
many others are thinking it too. That is my greatest comfort at this
time. Write down what you feel, even if it is not what you think you
ought to feel. Write it down for all of us!"

And that is how it happened. There in the Municipal Hall in the small
town of Ripston, as we sat round the stove that cold November day,
with the sleet sifting against the windows, I got my commission from
these women, whom I had not seen until that day, to tell what we think
and feel, to tell how it looks to us, who are the mothers of soldiers,
and to whom even now the letter may be on its way with its curt
inscription across the corner. I got my commission there to tell
fearlessly and hopefully the story of the Next of Kin.

It will be written in many ways, by many people, for the brand of this
war is not only on our foreheads, but deep in our hearts, and it will
be reflected in all that our people write for many years to come. The
trouble is that most of us feel too much to write well; for it is hard
to write of the things which lie so heavy on our hearts; but the
picture is not all dark--no picture can be. If it is all dark, it
ceases to be a picture and becomes a blot. Belgium has its tradition
of deathless glory, its imperishable memories of gallant bravery which
lighten its darkness and make it shine like noonday. The one
unlightened tragedy of the world to-day is Germany.

I thought of these things that night when I was being entertained at
the Southern woman's hospitable home.

"It pretty near took a war to make these English women friendly to
each other and to Americans. I lived here six months before any of
them called on me, and then I had to go and dig them out; but I was
not going to let them go on in such a mean way. They told me then that
they were waiting to see what church I was going to; and then I rubbed
it into them that they were a poor recommend for any church, with
their mean, unneighborly ways; for if a church does not teach people
to be friendly I think it ought to be burned down, don't you? I told
them I could not take much stock in that hymn about 'We shall know
each other there,' when they did not seem a bit anxious about knowing
each other here, which is a heap more important; for in heaven we will
all have angels to play with, but here we only have each other, and it
is right lonesome when they won't come out and play! But I tell you
things have changed for the better since the war, and now we knit and
sew together, and forgive each other for being Methodists and
Presbyterians; and, do you know? I made a speech one night, right out
loud so everybody could hear me, in a Red Cross meeting, and that is
what I thought that I could never do. But I got feeling so anxious
about the prisoners of war in Germany that I couldn't help making an
appeal for them; and I was so keen about it, and wanted every one of
those dear boys to get a square meal, that I forgot all about little
Mrs. Price, and I was not caring a cent whether she was doing herself
proud or not. And when I got done the people were using their
handkerchiefs, and I was sniffing pretty hard myself, but we raised
eighty-five dollars then and there, and now I know I will never be
scared again. I used to think it was so ladylike to be nervous about
speaking, and now I know it is just a form of selfishness. I was
simply scared that I would not do well, thinking all the time of
myself. But now everything has changed and I am ready to do anything I
can."

"Go on," I said; "tell me some more. Remember that you women to-day
made me promise to write down how this war is hitting us, and I merely
promised to write what I heard and saw. I am not going to make up
anything, so you are all under obligation to tell me all you can. I am
not to be the author of this book, but only the historian."

"It won't be hard," she said encouragingly. "There is so much
happening every day that it will be harder to decide what to leave out
than to find things to put in. In this time of excitement the lid is
off, I tell you; the bars are down; we can see right into the hearts
of people. It is like a fire or an earthquake when all the doors are
open and the folks are carrying their dearest possessions into the
street, and they are all real people now, and they have lost all
their little mincing airs and all their lawdie-daw. But believe me, we
have been some fiddlers! When I look around this house I see evidence
of it everywhere; look at that abomination now"--She pointed to an
elaborately beaded match-safe which hung on the wall.

It bore on it the word, "Matches," in ornate letters, all made of
beads, but I noticed that its empty condition belied the inscription.

"Think of the hours of labor that some one has put on that," she went
on scornfully, "and now it is such an aristocrat that it takes up all
its time at that and has no time to be useful. I know now that it
never really intended to hold matches, but simply lives to mock the
honest seeker who really needs a match. I have been a real sinner
myself," she went on after a pause; "I have been a fiddler, all right.
I may as well make a clean breast of it,--I made that match-safe and
nearly bored my eyes out doing it, and was so nervous and cross that I
was not fit to live with."

"I can't believe that," I said.

"Well, I sure was some snappy. I have teased out towel ends, and made
patterns on them; I've punched holes in linen and sewed them up
again--there is no form of foolishness that I have not committed--and
liked it! But now I have ceased to be a fiddler and have become a
citizen, and I am going to try to be a real good spoke in the wheel of
progress. I can't express it very well, but I am going to try to link
up with the people next me and help them along. Perhaps you know what
I mean--I think it is called team-play."

When the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa were burning, the main switch
which controlled the lighting was turned off by mistake and the whole
place was plunged into darkness, and this added greatly to the horror
and danger. The switch was down a long passage through which the smoke
was rolling, and it seemed impossible for any one to make the journey
and return. Then the people who were there formed a chain, by holding
each other's hands--a great human chain. So that the one who went
ahead felt the sustaining power of the one who came behind him. If he
stumbled and fell, the man behind him helped him to his feet and
encouraged him to go on. In this way the switch was reached, the light
was turned on, and many lives were saved.

Over the world to-day roll great billows of hatred and
misunderstanding, which have darkened the whole face of the earth. We
believe that there is a switch if we could get to it, but the smoke
blinds us and we are choked with our tears. Perhaps if we join hands
all of us will be able to do what a few of us could never do. This
reaching-out of feeble human hands, this new compelling force which is
going to bind us all together, this deep desire for cohesion which
swells in our hearts and casts out all smallness and all
self-seeking--this is what we mean when we speak of the Next of Kin.
It is not a physical relationship, but the great spiritual bond which
unites all those whose hearts have grown more tender by sorrow, and
whose spiritual eyes are not dimmed, but washed clearer by their
tears!

Sing a song of hearts grown tender,
With the sorrow and the pain;
Sorrow is a great old mender,
Love can give,--and give again.
Love's a prodigal old spender,--
And the jolliest old lender,
For he never turns away
Any one who comes to borrow,
If they say their stock is slender,
And they're sorely pressed by sorrow!
Never has been known to say,--
"We are short ourselves to-day,--
Can't you come again to-morrow?"
That has never been Love's way!
And he's rich beyond all telling,
Love divine all love excelling!

CHAPTER I

BEACH DAYS

When a soldier's watch, with its luminous face,
Loses its light and grows dim and black,
He holds it out in the sun a space
And the radiance all comes back;
And that is the reason I'm thinking to-day
Of the glad days now long past;
I am leaving my heart where the sunbeams play:
I am trying to drive my fears away:
I am charging my soul with a spirit gay,
And hoping that it will last!

We were the usual beach crowd, with our sport suits, our silk
sweaters, our Panama hats, our veranda teas and week-end guests, our
long, lovely, lazy afternoons in hammocks beside the placid waters of
Lake Winnipeg. Life was easy and pleasant, as we told ourselves life
ought to be in July and August, when people work hard all year and
then come away to the quiet greenness of the big woods, to forget the
noise and dust of the big city.

We called our cottage "Kee-am," for that is the Cree word which means
"Never mind"--"Forget it"--"I should worry!" and we liked the name.
It had a romantic sound, redolent of the old days when the Indians
roamed through these leafy aisles of the forest, and it seemed more
fitting and dignified than "Rough House," where dwelt the quietest
family on the beach, or "Dunwurkin" or "Neverdunfillin" or "Takitezi,"
or any of the other more or less home-made names. We liked our name so
well that we made it, out of peeled poles, in wonderful rustic
letters, and put it up in the trees next the road.

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