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Her Brother’s Keeper

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 3, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 43.

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Her Brother’s Keeper

By Annie Barnwell Morton

Annie Barnwell Morton, in Welcome News
Would it inconvenience you, Helen, if we brought two friends home to supper?” asked Guy Allison, as they were at the breakfast table. “Jim Bascom and Tom Grainger are in town, and we would like to show them some attention. We were classmates at college, you know. By the way, you and Tom used to be friends somewhere, I believe.”
“O, yes, I met him that summer I was in the Adirondacks, and liked him very much. Of course, bring them if you wish. Brownie’s suppers are always to be depended upon, but I will ask her to have something extra to-night. How will you entertain them after supper?”
“We hoped,” said Gerald, the other of the Allison twins, as they were generally called, “that you would stay at home and we could have some good music. Tom has a splendid voice and Jim plays the violin.”
“O, boys, I’m so sorry,” exclaimed Helen, “but this is the night for our Dramatic Club to meet, you know, and we are reading Hamlet. I don’t see how I can miss it, much as I would like to oblige you.”
“Suppose we ask them for to-morrow night, then,” said Guy. “How will that suit you?”
“O, dear, not a bit,” cried his sister, laughing. “That is one night for choir practise, and we are learning a new anthem. It is awfully hard, and I could not bear to disgrace my family on Sabbath by failing. Let me see, I think I could manage to be at home Saturday evening, or a part of it, at least, for I half promised to spend it with Janie Loftus.”
“They leave that morning,” said Gerald, rising as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Sis, but don’t look so worried about it. We’ll find some other way of doing the polite to them, never fear. Come on, Guy,” and they left the room laughing rather significantly.
Dr. Allison bent a troubled look upon his daughter, and said slowly: “I wish you could have done as the boys wished, Helen. It seems to me that they never spend an evening at home these days. Perhaps it is my fault, because I go to my laboratory or study in the evenings; but I am so busy all day that the nights are my only time for study. It seems to me as I grow older that I either have more to do or work more slowly. I am beginning to feel my age a good deal, daughter, and I miss your mother more every day. She always managed to keep us all together; and now we seem scattered, somehow, tho we still live together. I suppose it is because we have no center, such as her sofa was, to gather around now.”
As he left the room, Helen could not help noticing how he stooped and how white his head was for his sixty years. Her eyes filled with tears, and she murmured, “O, mother, darling, how we miss you.”
For ten years before her death, Mrs. Allison had been confined to her sofa, her spine having been injured in a railroad wreck. She died when Helen was sixteen and the twins two years older. To her husband and children she had been the sunlight of their lives, and without her presence their home was all darkness. The faithful housekeeper, who had lived with the Allisons ever since their marriage, kept the domestic machinery going in its old groove, but the light of the home had been darkened. The doctor buried himself in his professional work, and the children were sent to boarding-school. The boys came home for the winter and summer holidays, but Helen only came for the former, spending the summer in travel with her aunt. Nearly a year before that morning, Helen had returned home at the age of twenty and taken her place as its mistress. Mrs. Brown spared her all care in the matter of housekeeping, and friends flocked around her with eager kindness, trying to keep her from feeling lonely. She was an unusually bright and attractive girl, a fine musician, and blessed with a voice of rare power and sweetness. She was a member of the choir, the Musical Club, the Dramatic Club, and the Literary Club, so her evenings were fully occupied. Her brothers were absent at the time of her return, and later found her quite immersed in her pleasant round of entertainments. They were both medical students and not fond of society; and as there was nothing to keep them at home, their evenings were spent in the amusement of the bowling-alley, billiard-room, and other like places.
Helen had some shopping to do that morning, and just opposite to her on the street car sat two young men she did not know. Her attention was attracted by hearing one of them say with a laugh: “There go the Allison twins and two strange swells with them. I bet they are fixing up for a high old time. Those boys are getting wilder every day, and I don’t believe the old doctor has a notion of it.”
“They’re pretty swift,” answered his companion, “and they were such steady lads before their mother died and their home was broken up. Somebody told me their sister had come home, but I have not seen her. I heard the doctor was looking mighty old and broken. He surely took his wife’s death hard, and I don’t wonder, for she was such a good woman.”
“That she was,” answered the other heartily. “I’m sorry the twins are getting so wild, and I hate to think there’s more trouble brewing for the doctor. He saved my life five years ago when that horse threw me.”
“And he pulled me and two of my children through with typhoid fever last year. He’s the best doctor and the best surgeon and all-around best man I ever knew. I too hate to think of more trouble coming to him. But here’s the corner for us to get off.”
They left the car, and Helen sat looking out of the window, with eyes that saw nothing of what was passing. When she got off at the corner, she found her friend Janie Loftus waiting for her. She cried quickly:
“Why, Helen, what in the world is the matter? You look so flushed—and I really believe you have been crying. Let us go in here and have some ice cream while you tell me all about it.”
Helen was too wretched not to tell the whole story, ending with:
“I see now how selfish I have been and how unworthy to be my mother’s daughter. I have been thinking about it, and I am going to make a change at once. I am going to give up all of my clubs, and devote my evenings to making home pleasant for father and the boys. I have been shamefully selfish and blind, but my eyes are wide open now.”
“Why, Helen, what utter nonsense!” exclaimed her friend indignantly. “Give up your clubs, indeed! Why, child, you are the very life of everything, and we won’t hear of giving you up. The idea of sacrificing yourself to those wild boys. Yes, of course, I have heard of the gay life they are leading, but you are not your brothers’ keeper. They are older than you, and ought to have more sense. Just tell your father how they are going on, and let him attend to the matter. I don’t see that it is really any business of yours, Helen. I never worry about my brothers a bit.”
They talked for some time, but Helen went home more strongly convinced of her duty to her brothers than when the conversation began. “I will, with God’s help, be my brothers’ keeper,” she said to herself, “and try in my poor way to take mother’s place in our home. I’ll begin by telephoning the boys to bring their friends, as I find I will be at home this evening. What is Hamlet to me compared with my father and brothers?”
It was Gerald who answered her telephone call, and she fancied there was a tone of dismay in his voice, as he said: “O, don’t give up Hamlet for us, Sis. We have been talking of other plans; but if you really wish to have us, of course we will come. We can manage very well, tho, without putting you out.”
She insisted, however, and the evening proved a delightful one. Helen persuaded her father to join them in the parlor and listen to the music of which they were very fond. They were a very musical family, and that had been one of the strongest ties used by Mrs. Allison to bind the little family circle closely together. She had been a fine performer herself; and when she was forced to give up her place at the organ and piano, she installed Helen as her successor, while the doctor and Guy played the violin and Gerald the flute or cornet. They all sang well, and to the last her sweet voice led the songs and hymns they all joined in singing. At the close of one of the songs Tom Grainger remarked:
“This is lots better than being out, boys. You are certainly giving a delightful evening, Miss Helen. I am a homeless chap myself, and envy Guy and Gerald their evenings in such a home. It is very different from a boarding-house!”
“Where were you going on the river to-night?” asked the doctor. “I do not think the river is safe when there is such a high wind blowing from the east. Those sudden squalls are very dangerous, and it sounds as if one was blowing up now.”
“A party of fellows were going to Climax Point for supper and coming back by moonlight, and we were just promising to go with them when Helen ’phoned that she couldspare us the evening,” answered Gerald. “They are in a big yacht, but they will have a rough time beating home with this strong east wind blowing. I am glad we are not on board.”
As he spoke there came a vivid flash of lightning, followed almost instantly by a loud crash of thunder, and the rain poured down in torrents, dashing against the windows furiously.
“What a fearful night,” said the doctor, going to the window and looking out into the dense blackness. “I hope those boys had not started for home before the squall came up. I’m truly thankful your change of plan, Helen, kept your brothers and their friends at home. Who were the party, Gerald? Are any of them good sailors?”
“Mike Daly and Will and Jack Gaines are pretty fair seamen, sir,” answered Gerald, “but the two Loftus boys and the rest of the party are regular landlubbers. Only two or three of them can swim a stroke.”
“Rather a rough crowd,” remarked the doctor dryly. “I feel sorry for Judge Loftus, for he is a gentleman, and his boys are such rowdies. I don’t like to have my sons much in their company.”
The guests were persuaded to spend the night, and the next morning at the breakfast table the doctor exclaimed, as he glanced at the paper:
“How shocking! Here, boys! That yacht was swamped in the squall last night and both of the Loftus boys and two others were drowned. One of them is the Widow Bailey’s only son. Give me my coffee at once, please, daughter. I must go there and to poor Judge Loftus as quickly as I can. O, boys, what a narrow escape you have had. I, like my poor friend, might have been mourning my only sons to-day, but for God’s mercy.”
“Sent through Helen,” added Gerald, clasping his sister’s hand under the table. “It may be that you saved our four lives last night, Sis.”
As Helen sat with her arms around her friend an hour later, Janie sobbed out:
“O, Helen, do you remember what I said only yesterday about your not being your brothers’ keeper, and that I never worried about mine? Now I have no brothers to worry over. Perhaps if I had looked at the matter as you did, they would have been alive now, and my poor father and mother would not be broken-hearted. If you had gone to the Dramatic Club perhaps your brothers and their friends would have been on that yacht instead of safe at home with you.”
“O, Janie, they were going,” cried Helen, “and I was only just in time to stop them. I can not see why you are stricken and I am spared. While I was so miserable on the street car, I thought of what mother used to say about praying any place, and I asked God to direct me. It seems to me I can trace everything good back to mother in some way.”
“Why, Helen, I should never think of such a thing as praying in a street car,” exclaimed Janie. “I say my prayers every night, of course, except when I am just too sleepy for anything; but I don’t pray any other time, except a little in church, you know.”
“Mother used to say that prayer any place was meant, she thought, by the command to ‘pray without ceasing.’ She said our regular prayers night and morning and when we were in church were our big guns in battle with sin and fear and temptation, but that just lifting one’s heart to God for help whenever we were in doubt or trouble was the light artillery that is so effective and often wins the battle. Mother always had such dear thoughts that stuck in one’s memory.”
“I will never forget that one,” said Janie, and then added with a fresh burst of sobs, “but it comes too late for me to do anything for poor Bob and Fred. They were wild and careless, but they were dear affectionate brothers and I loved them dearly, dearly.”
Helen’s lesson had been thoroly learned, and the doctor’s house became once more a true home. Their narrow escape had come as a keen shock to the twins, and their eyes were opened to the danger of the downward path upon which they were so thoughtlessly entering. They yielded readily to their sister’s influence and joined with her in the effort to cheer their father. In after years, when as partners they took up the work of his noble life, they loved to tell of that night as the turning-point of their lives, when their devoted sister had realized that she was, so far as human being could be, her brothers’ keeper.