Nellie L. McClung - The Next of Kin

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"I am twenty-five years old, and I never before got a chance to do as
I liked. When I was a kid, I had to do as I was told. My mother
brought me up in the fear of the Lord and the fear of the neighbors. I
whistled once in church and was sent to bed every afternoon for a
week--I didn't care, though, I got in my whistle. I never wanted to do
anything bad, but I wanted to do as I liked--and I never got a chance.
Then I got married. William is a lot older than I am, and he
controlled me--always--made me economize, scrimp, and save. I really
did not want to blow money, but they never gave me a chance to be
sensible. Every one put me down for a 'nut.' My mother called me
'Trixie.' No girl can do well on a name like that. Teachers passed me
from hand to hand saying, 'Trixie is such a mischief!' I had a
reputation to sustain.

"Then mother and father married me off to Mr. Tweed because he was so
sensible, and I needed a firm hand, they said. I began everything in
life with a handicap. Name and appearance have always been against me.
No one can look sensible with a nose that turns straight up, and I
will have bright colors to wear--I was brought up on wincey, color of
mud, and all these London-smoke, battleship-gray colors make me sick.
I want reds and blues and greens, and I am gradually working into
them."

She held out a dainty foot as she spoke, exhibiting a bright-green
stocking striped in gold.

"But mind you, for all I am so frivolous, I am not a fool exactly. All
I ask is to have my fling, and I've had it now for three whole months.
When William was at home I never could sit up and read one minute, and
so the first night he was away I burned the light all night just to
feel wicked! It was great to be able to let it burn. I've gone to bed
early every night for a week to make up for it. What do you think of
that? It is just born in me, and I can't help it. If William had
stayed at home, this would never have showed out in me. I would have
gone on respectable and steady. But this is one of the prices we pay
for bringing up women to be men's chattels, with some one always
placed in authority over them. When the authority is removed, there's
the devil to pay!"

The President of the Red Cross looked at her in surprise. She had
never thought of it this way before; women were made to be protected
and shielded; she had said so scores of times; the church had taught
it and sanctioned it.

"The whole system is wrong," Mrs. Tweed continued, "and nice women
like you, working away in churches ruled by men, have been to blame.
You say women should be protected, and you cannot make good the
protection. What protection have the soldiers' wives now? Evil
tongues, prying eyes, on the part of women, and worse than that from
the men. The church has fallen down on its job, and isn't straight
enough to admit it! We should either train our women to take their own
part and run their own affairs, or else we should train the men really
to honor and protect women. The church has done neither. Bah! I could
make a better world with one hand tied behind my back!"

"But, Mrs. Tweed," said the president, "this war is new to all of
us--how did we know what was coming? It has taken all of us by
surprise, and we have to do our bit in meeting the new conditions.
Your man was never a fighting man--he hates it; but he has gone and
will fight, although he loathes it. I never did a day's work outside
of my home until now, and now I go to the office every day and try to
straighten out tangles; women come in there and accuse me of
everything, down to taking the bread out of their children's mouths.
Two of them who brought in socks the other day said, 'Do you suppose
the soldiers ever see them?' I did all I could to convince them that
we were quite honest, though I assure you I felt like telling them
what I thought of them. But things are abnormal now, everything is out
of sorts; and if we love our country we will try to remedy things
instead of making them worse. When I went to school we were governed
by what they called the 'honor system.' It was a system of
self-government; we were not watched and punished and bound by rules,
but graded and ruled ourselves--and the strange thing about it was
that it worked! When the teacher went out of the room, everything went
on just the same. Nobody left her desk or talked or idled; we just
worked on, minding our own affairs; it was a great system."

Mrs. Tweed looked at her with a cynical smile. "Some system!" she
cried mockingly; "it may work in a school, where the little pinafore,
pig-tail Minnies and Lucys gather; it won't work in life, where every
one is grabbing for what he wants, and getting it some way. But see
here," she cried suddenly, "you haven't called me down yet! or told me
I am a disgrace to the Patriotic Fund! or asked me what will my
husband say when he comes home! You haven't looked shocked at one
thing I've told you. Say, you should have seen old hatchet-face when I
told her that I hoped the war would last forever! She said I was a
wicked woman!"

"Well--weren't you?" asked the president.

"Sure I was--if I meant it--but I didn't. I wanted to see her jump,
and she certainly jumped; and she soon gave me up and went back and
reported. Then you were sent, and I guess you are about ready to give
in."

"Indeed, I am not," said the president, smiling. "You are not a
fool--I can see that--and you can think out these things for yourself.
You are not accountable to me, anyway. I have no authority to find
fault with you. If you think your part in this terrible time is to go
the limit in fancy clothes, theaters, and late suppers with men of
questionable character--that is for you to decide. I believe in the
honor system. You are certainly setting a bad example--but you have
that privilege. You cannot be sent to jail for it. The money you draw
is hard-earned money--it is certainly sweated labor which our gallant
men perform for the miserable little sum that is paid them. It is
yours to do with as you like. I had hoped that more of you young women
would have come to help us in our work in the Red Cross and other
places. We need your youth, your enthusiasm, your prettiness, for we
are sorely pressed with many cares and troubles, and we seem to be old
sometimes. But you are quite right in saying that it is your own
business how you spend the money!"

After Mrs. Kent had gone, the younger woman sat looking around her
flat with a queer feeling of discontent. A half-eaten box of
chocolates was on the table and a new silk sweater coat lay across the
lounge. In the tiny kitchenette a tap dripped with weary insistence,
and unwashed dishes filled the sink. She got up suddenly and began to
wash the dishes, and did not stop until every corner of her apartment
was clean and tidy.

"I am getting dippy," she said as she looked at herself in the mirror
in the buffet; "I've got to get out--this quiet life gets me. I'll go
down to the _dansant_ this afternoon--no use--I can't stand being
alone."

She put on her white suit, and dabbing rouge on her cheeks and
penciling her eyes, she went forth into the sunshiny streets.

She stopped to look at a display of sport suits in a window, also to
see her own reflection in a mirror placed for the purpose among the
suits.

Suddenly a voice sounded at her elbow: "Some kid, eh? Looking good
enough to eat!"

She turned around and met the admiring gaze of Sergeant Edward Loftus
Brown, recruiting sergeant of the 19-th, with whom she had been to the
theater a few nights before. She welcomed him effusively.

"Come on and have something to eat," he said. "I got three recruits
to-day--so I am going to proclaim a half-holiday."

They sat at a table in an alcove and gayly discussed the people who
passed by. The President of the Red Cross came in, and at a table
across the room hastily drank a cup of tea and went out again.

"She came to see me to-day," said Mrs. Tweed, "and gave me to
understand that they were not any too well pleased with me--I am too
gay for a soldier's wife! And they do not approve of you."

Sergeant Brown smiled indulgently and looked at her admiringly through
his oyster-lidded eyes. His smile was as complacent as that of the
ward boss who knows that the ballot-box is stuffed. It was the smile
of one who can afford to be generous to an enemy.

"Women are always hard on each other," he said soothingly; "these
women do not understand you, Trixie, that's all. No person understands
you but me." His voice was of the magnolia oil quality.

"Oh, rats!" she broke out. "Cut that understanding business! She
understands me all right--she knows me for a mean little selfish
slacker who is going to have a good time no matter what it costs. I
have been like a bad kid that eats the jam when the house is burning!
But remember this, I'm no fool, and I'm not going to kid myself into
thinking it is anything to be proud of, for it isn't."

Sergeant Brown sat up straight and regarded her critically. "What have
you done," he said, "that she should call you down for it? You're
young and pretty and these old hens are jealous of you. They can't
raise a good time themselves and they're sore on you because all the
men are crazy about you."

"Gee, you're mean," Mrs. Tweed retorted, "to talk that way about women
who are giving up everything for their country. Mrs. Kent's two boys
are in the trenches, actually fighting, not just parading round in
uniform like you. She goes every day and works in the office of the
Red Cross and tries to keep every tangle straightened out. She's not
jealous of me--she despises me for a little feather-brained pinhead.
She thinks I am even worse than I am. She thinks I am as bad as you
would like me to be! Naturally enough, she judges me by my company."

Sergeant Brown's face flushed dull red, but she went on: "That woman
is all right--take it from me."

"Well, don't get sore on me," he said quickly; "I'm not the one who
is turning you down. I've always stuck up for you and you know it!"

"Why shouldn't you?" she cried. "You know well that I am straight,
even if I am a fool. These women are out of patience with me and my
class----"

"Men are always more charitable to women than women are to each other,
anyway--women are cats, mostly!" he said, as he rolled a cigarette.

"There you go again!" she cried,--"pretending that you know. I tell
you women are women's best friends. What help have you given to me to
run straight, for all your hot air about thinking so much of me?
You've stuck around my flat until I had to put you out--you've never
sheltered or protected me in any way. Men are broad-minded toward
women's characters because they do not care whether women are good or
not--they would rather that they were not. I do not mean all
men,--William was different, and there are plenty like him--but I mean
men like you who run around with soldiers' wives and slam the women
who are our friends, and who are really concerned about us. You are
twenty years older than I am. You're always blowing about how much you
know about women--also the world. Why didn't you advise me not to make
a fool of myself?"

Sergeant Brown leaned over and patted her hand. "There now, Trixie,"
he said, "don't get excited; you're the best girl in town, only you're
too high-strung. Haven't I always stood by you? Did I ever turn you
down, even when these high-brow ladies gave you the glassy eye? Why
are you going back on a friend now? You had lots to say about the
Daughter of the Empire who came to see you the last time."

"She wasn't nice to me," said Mrs. Tweed; "but she meant well, anyway.
But I'm getting ashamed of myself now--for I see I am not playing the
game. Things have gone wrong through no fault of ours. The whole world
has gone wrong, and it's up to us to bring it right if we can. These
women are doing their share--they've given up everything. But what
have I done? I let William go, of course, and that's a lot, for I do
think a lot of William; but I am not doing my own share. Running
around to the stores, eating late suppers, saying snippy things about
other women, and giving people an excuse for not giving to the
Patriotic Fund. You and I sitting here to-day, eating expensive
things, are not helping to win the war, I can tell you."

"But my dear girl," he interrupted, "whose business is it? and what
has happened to you anyway? I didn't bring you here to tell me my
patriotic duty. I like you because you amuse me with your smart
speeches. I don't want to be lectured--and I won't have it."

Mrs. Tweed arose and began to put on her gloves. "Here's where we
part," she said; "I am going to begin to do my part, just as I see it.
I've signed on--I've joined the great Win-the-War-Party. You should
try it, Sergeant Brown. We have no exact rules to go by--we are
self-governed. It is called the honor system; each one rules himself.
It's quite new to me, but I expect to know more about it."

"Sit down!" he said sternly; "people are looking at you--they think
we are quarreling; I am not done yet, and neither are you. Sit down!"

She sat down and apologized. "I am excited, I believe," she said;
"people generally are when they enlist; and although I stood up, I had
no intention of going, for the bill has not come yet and I won't go
without settling my share of it."

"Forget it!" he said warmly; "this isn't a Dutch treat. What have I
done that you should hit me a slam like this?"

"It isn't a slam," she said; "it is quite different. I want to run
straight and fair--and I can't do it and let you pay for my meals;
there's no sense in women being sponges. I know we have been brought
up to beat our way. 'Be pretty, and all things will be added unto
you,' is the first commandment, and the one with the promise. I've
laid hold on that all my life, but to-day I am giving it up. The old
way of training women nearly got me, but not quite--and now I am
making a new start. It isn't too late. The old way of women always
being under an obligation to men has started us wrong. I'm not
blaming you or any one, but I'm done with it. If you see things as I
do, you'll be willing to let me pay. Don't pauperize me any more and
make me feel mean."

"Oh, go as far as you like!" he said petulantly. "Pay for me, too, if
you like--don't leave me a shred of self-respect. This all comes of
giving women the vote. I saw it coming, but I couldn't help it! I like
the old-fashioned women best--but don't mind me!"

"I won't," she said; "nothing is the same as it was. How can anything
go on the same? We have to change to meet new conditions and I'm
starting to-day. I'm going to give up my suite and get a
job--anything--maybe dishwashing. I'm going to do what I can to bring
things right. If every one will do that, the country is safe."

* * * * *

In a certain restaurant there is a little waitress with clustering
black hair and saucy little turned-up nose. She moves quickly, deftly,
decidedly, and always knows what to do. She is young, pretty, and
bright, and many a man has made up his mind to speak to her and ask
her to "go out and see a show"; but after exchanging a few remarks
with her, he changes his mind. Something tells him it would not go!
She carries trays of dishes from eight-thirty to six every day except
Sunday. She has respectfully refused to take her allowance from the
Patriotic Fund, explaining that she has a job. The separation
allowance sent to her from the Militia Department at Ottawa goes
directly into the bank, and she is able to add to it sometimes from
her wages.

The people in the block where Mrs. Tweed lived will tell you that she
suddenly gave up her suite and moved away and they do not know where
she went, but they are very much afraid she was going "wrong." What a
lot of pleasant surprises there will be for people when they get to
heaven!

CHAPTER VII

CONSERVATION

There are certain words which have come into general circulation since
the war. One of the very best of these is "Conservation."

Conservation is a fine, rich-sounding, round word, agreeable to the
ear and eye, and much more aristocratic than the word "Reform," which
seems to carry with it the unpleasant suggestion of something that
needs to be changed. The dictionary, which knows everything, says that
"Conservation means the saving from destructive change the good we
already possess," which seems to be a perfectly worthy ambition for
any one to entertain.

For many people, changes have in them an element of wickedness and
danger. I once knew a little girl who wore a sunbonnet all summer and
a hood all winter, and cried one whole day each spring and fall when
she had to make the change; for changes to her were fearsome things.

This antagonism to change has delayed the progress of the world and
kept back many a needed reform, for people have grown to think that
whatever is must be right, and indeed have made a virtue of this
belief.

"It was good enough for my father and it is good enough for me," cries
many a good tory (small _t_, please), thinking that by this utterance
he convinces an admiring world that all his folks have been
exceedingly fine people for generations.

But changes are inevitable. What is true to-day may not be true
to-morrow. All our opinions should be marked, "Subject to change
without notice." We cannot all indulge ourselves in the complacency of
the maiden lady who gave her age year after year as twenty-seven,
because she said she was not one of these flighty things who say "one
thing to-day and something else to-morrow."

Life is change. Only dead things remain as they are. Every living
thing feels the winds of the world blowing over it, beating and
buffeting it, marking and bleaching it. Change is a characteristic of
life, and we must reckon on it! Progress is Life's first law! In order
to be as good as we were yesterday, we have to be better. Life is
built on a sliding scale; we have to keep moving to keep up. There are
no rest stations on Life's long road!

The principle of conservation is not at enmity with the spirit of
change. It is in thorough harmony with it.

Conservation becomes a timely topic in these days of hideous waste. In
fact it will not much longer remain among the optional subjects in
Life's curriculum. Even now the Moving Finger, invisible yet to the
thoughtless, is writing after it the stern word "Compulsory." Four
hundred thousand men have been taken away from the ranks of producers
here in Canada, and have gone into the ranks of destroyers, becoming a
drain upon our resources for all that they eat, wear, and use. Many
thousand other men are making munitions, whose end is destruction and
waste. We spend more in a day now to kill and hurt our fellow men than
we ever spent in a month to educate or help them. Great new ways of
wasting and destroying our resources are going on while the old leaks
are all running wide open. More children under five years old have
died since the war than there have been men killed in battle!--and
largely from preventable "dirt-diseases" and poverty. Rats, weeds,
extravagance, general shiftlessness are still doing business at the
old stand, unmolested.

But it is working in on us that something must be done. Now is the
time to set in force certain agencies to make good these losses in so
far as they can be repaired. Now is the time, when the excitement of
the war is still on us, when the frenzy is still in our blood, for the
time of reaction is surely to be reckoned with by and by. Now we are
sustained by the blare of the bands and the flourish of flags, but in
the cold, gray dawn of the morning after, we shall count our dead with
disillusioned eyes and wonder what was the use of all this bloodshed
and waste. Trade conditions are largely a matter of the condition of
the spirit, and ours will be drooping and drab when the tumult and
the shouting have died and the reign of reason has come back.

Personal thrift comes naturally to our minds when we begin to think of
the lessons that we should take to heart. Up to the time of the war
and since, we have been a prodigal people, confusing extravagance with
generosity, thrift with meanness. The Indians in the old days killed
off the buffalo for the sport of killing, and left the carcases to
rot, never thinking of a time of want; and so, too, the natives in the
North Country kill the caribou for the sake of their tongues, which
are considered a real "company dish," letting the remainder of the
animal go to waste.

This is a startling thought, and comes to one over and over again. You
will think of it when you order your twenty-five cents' worth of
cooked ham and see what you get! You will think of it again when you
come home and find that the butcher delivered your twenty-five cents'
worth of cooked ham in your absence, and, finding the door locked,
passed it through the keyhole. And yet the prodigality of the Indian
and the caribou-killer are infantile compared with the big
extravagances that go on without much comment. Economy is a broad term
used to express the many ways in which other people might save money.
Members of Parliament have been known to tell many ways in which women
might economize; their tender hearts are cut to the quick as they
notice the fancy footwear and expensive millinery worn by women. Great
economy meetings have been held in London, to which the Cabinet
Ministers rode in expensive cars, and where they drank champagne,
enjoining women to abjure the use of veils and part with their pet
dogs as a war measure; but they said not a word about the continuance
of the liquor business which rears its head in every street and has
wasted three million tons of grain since the war began. What wonder is
it that these childish appeals to the women to economize fall on deaf
or indignant ears! Women have a nasty way of making comparisons. They
were so much easier to manage before they learned to read and write.

The war wears on its weary course. The high cost of living becomes
more and more of a nightmare to the people, yet the British Government
tolerates a system which wastes more sugar than would feed the army,
impairs the efficiency of the working-man one sixth, and wastes two
million dollars every day in what is at best a questionable
indulgence, and at worst a national menace. Speaking of economy,
personal thrift, conservation, and other "win-the-war" plans, how
would the elimination of the liquor traffic do for a start?

There are two ways of practicing economy: one is by refusing to spend
money, which is not always a virtue; and the other is by increasing
production, which is the greatest need of this critical time. The
farmers are doing all they can: they are producing as much as they
have means and labor for. But still in Canada much land is idle, and
many people sit around wondering what they can do. There will be women
sitting on verandas in the cities and towns in the summer, knitting
socks, or maybe crocheting edges on handkerchiefs, who would gladly be
raising potatoes and chickens if they knew how to begin; and a
corresponding number of chickens and potatoes will go unraised. But
the idea of cooeperation is taking root, and here and there there is a
breaking away from the conventional mode of life. The best thing about
it is that people are thinking, and pretty soon the impact of public
opinion will be so strong that there will be a national movement to
bring together the idle people and the idle land. We are paying a high
price for our tuition, but we must admit that the war is a great
teacher.

There is a growing sentiment against the holding-up of tracts of land
by speculators waiting for the increase in value which comes by the
hard work of settlers. Every sod turned by the real, honest settler,
who comes to make his home, increases the value of the section of land
next him, probably held by a railway company, and the increase makes
it harder for some other settler to buy it. By his industry the
settler makes money for the railway company, but incidentally makes
his own chance of acquiring a neighbor more remote!

The wild-lands tax which prevails in the western provinces of the
Dominion, and which we hope will be increased, will make it
unprofitable to hold land idle, and will do much, if made heavy
enough, to liberate land for settlement.

As it is now, people who have no money to buy land have to go long
distances from the railroad to get homesteads, and there suffer all
the inconveniences and hardships and dangers of pioneer life, miles
from neighbors, many miles from a doctor, and without school or
church; while great tracts of splendid land lie idle and unimproved,
close beside the little towns, held in the tight clasp of a
hypothetical owner far away.

Western Canada has a land problem which war conditions have
intensified. But people are beginning to talk of these things, and the
next few years will see radical changes.

The coming of women into the political world should help. Women are
born conservationists. Their first game is housekeeping and
doll-mending. The doll, by preference, is a sick doll, and in need of
care. Their work is to care for, work for something, and if the
advent of women into politics does not mean that life is made easier
and safer for other women and for children, then we will have to
confess with shame and sorrow that politically we have failed! But we
are not going to fail! Already the angel has come down and has
troubled the water. Discussions are raging in women's societies and
wherever women meet together, and out of it something will come. Men
are always quite willing to be guided by women when their schemes are
sound and sane.

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