Thy Brother's Keeper

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 11, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 23.

Thy Brother's Keeper.

It had been an unusually busy day with Mr. Archer, of Archer, Ames & Co. As a rule, he, as senior member of a wealthy firm, was spared most of the business details, and his life, though by no means an idle one, was not crowded with care; but as he climbed the steps of his brownstone mansion, at the same time feeling for his pass-key, there was a worried look upon his face, which did not escape his wife's eyes.

“I have not seen you look so tired in a long time. Has anything happened?” she asked, as soon as the servants had left them alone.

“Yes, I have decided to turn off one of our clerks. He has not been with us long—not over a year; but it is the first time one of our fellows has disgraced himself, and it has upset me. Then they've elected me as one of the trustees of that new Home for Disabled Clerks, and I had to attend a meeting to-day. The fact of the matter is I can't think how such a fine fellow as Clark could have done it.”

“Done what, dear?”

“Oh, didn't I tell you? Come to the office drunk. Not a little under the influence of liquor, but drunk.”

“And he was always steady?”

“Perfectly so, since I met him. He came well recommended, and gave good satisfaction; so good that we were thinking of raising his salary.”

“How old a man is he?”

“Anywhere between thirty and forty.”

“Married?”

“I don't know—yes, come to think of it, he is, for he lost a child awhile ago.”

Mrs. Archer had her own notions of the relations between employers and employed, but her husband, when she hinted at them, always told her they were most unbusiness-like. “Never let business and charity interfere,” he would say, “I am always glad to aid any good cause, to help any struggling man or woman, but it must be outside of business. My clerks are mere machines to me; if they run well, I retain them; if not, they go.”

Yet, being a warm-hearted man, Mr. Archer was not quite consistent, and it grieved him deeply to turn away a clerk in disgrace. “A quick fellow. Such a good correspondent! Isn't one in the office writes a hand like he!” he kept muttering, as he sat sipping his coffee and peeling fruit for his wife.

The front door-bell rang just as Mr. Archer was refusing a second cup of coffee, and John announced, “A lady on business, sir.”

“Ask her name, John; I am tired, and unless it is something important, I shall see no one.”

“Mrs. Clark, and she dislikes troubling you, but the matter is important.”

“His wife!” exclaimed Mrs. Archer, while her husband frowned almost angrily. “Let her come in here, dear. She may not have come to tease you, only to explain. Don't send her off without a hearing. Do you mind my being in the next room while you see her?”

“No, indeed; and if you were not so soft-hearted, I would engage you to come in at the right moment to send her off. I can't stand a woman's tears.” Then stepping to the door, Mr. Archer added, “Show the lady in here, John.”

A moment more, and a young woman came in. Her dress was most severely simple, but it was such as only a lady would have devised, and her manner, though nervous, was of one accustomed to move among cultivated people.

“I beg pardon, Mr. Archer, for calling at this hour, but I could not wait through a long night.”

The voice was so sweet and low, and the eyes that were raised to his so full of patient endurance and quiet determination, that Mr. Archer said to himself, “Confound the fellow! How could he do it with such a wife?” But he was not a man of ready speech, and, though feeling more kindly to his guest, did not say a word to help her on.

“My husband will not explain matters to you; he thinks you might fancy he was excusing himself, and he and I both know that no man has any real excuse, though”—her voice broke a little, but she recovered herself, and began again.

“I will tell you the exact truth—the story of our married life, though I hardly hope that it will make any difference to us, it may be the means of your saving others; at least, I have felt impelled to come and tell it. We were very happy the first year or two; but my husband, through the failure of the firm he was with, lost his position. He was offered another clerkship, but a relative of mine was willing to take him into business as a partner, and it was tempting—he accepted. This relative was unmarried; and after six months, tiring of the business, he sold out; and as affairs had been carelessly arranged with my husband, he was again cast loose without any means of support. I believe that he then began to drink—not much, but I never suspected it; only enough to ‘give him courage,’ as he said afterward.”

“I will not weary you with an account of the next three years. It was in the panic times, and better men than he had nothing to do. He was often from morning to night without food, and when a friend would ask him to step in and take a drink, I cannot wonder that he, little suspecting danger, would accept. As he has said since, many a friend will offer a man a glass, but not one in ten will ask him to lunch. The habit of drinking grew upon him, till when he did get a position he could not keep it. He sank very low. Not that he drank hard, but liquor made him unfit for business, and affected him very quickly. He had been out of business six months when a friend of ours told him that he could get him a position in your office if he would solemnly swear not to touch liquor. He had been so steady for some months that I felt sure, with encouragement, he would be a changed man.”

“He was accepted by the firm just about a year ago. I remember so well my anxiety that night; for our friend had told us that the last correspondent had eighteen hundred a year, and I felt that if he could be raised above real anxiety, he would be so much safer. He came home very happy, for he was accepted. His salary was one thousand dollars; but he felt sure, if he did his best, he would soon have it increased. He was very happy and hopeful, and though I knew that we had debts that must be paid at once, and that we could no longer live with our relatives, I tried to keep up a brave heart.”

“I am sure you did,” Mr. Archer said, involuntarily, and his kind tones encouraged the wife to go on with her story.

“You see my husband was always so generous when he had money—so hopeful that he would have more—that though he brought me all his salary, only paying for his monthly commutation ticket, and reserving ten cents a day for his lunch, I found it a very hard matter to pay rent and keep the house on his salary, besides trying to pay the debts that now began to trouble him. We had four children”—the mother's voice would break in spite of her strong will, but she kept the tears back—“perhaps you know that we buried our little six-year-old a year ago? The eldest had to be sent to a good school, for our children will have a better position by and by, and must be fitted for it. Still, even though we had great anxiety and struggles, if we had been fortunate in choosing our home in a healthy place, I think all might have been well. Unfortunately, we were tempted by the cheap rents to hire in a little village in Jersey. They assured us chills were unknown there, but at the end of three months we were all ill. The doctor's bills and the quinine crushed us, Mr. Archer.”

“My husband went to business, time and again, sick with malarial fever. He gave entire satisfaction, for more work was piled upon him—he wrote such a good hand; but no hint was given him of raising his salary. He says it is a mere matter of business—that the firm never knows how many children a man has, nor whether he can live on his salary. If he can't, they can get one who can.”

“At last the fever got such a hold of our little Robbie that he died. I had lost all fear of my husband's drinking, for he had gone again and again to business, distressed and half sick, and had not tasted a drop; so I thought him cured. But he told me to-day that ever since Robbie went he has been tempted. He has felt so discouraged, so hopeless. This morning an old comrade met him. He was weak and depressed—he had given up hope of getting out of debt and educating his children properly, and he took the offered drink!”

Here the poor tired wife burst into tears. In a moment Mrs. Archer was by her side, soothing her with loving words, and promising a hundred possible things, talking between whiles to her husband, who sat conscience-stricken, unable to defend himself against her indignation.

“This is what comes of keeping business and benevolence apart. This comes of looking upon your employees as mere machines. If the poor fellow had been in one of the institutions you uphold, his family would have been helped, and he would have been carefully guarded and guided. But here is a man who tries to retrieve himself; who, run down, and living in an unhealthy atmosphere, needed for his salvation an adequate income, and you hardly knew he was a married man! Henry, Henry! who was it asked God scornfully, ‘Am I my brother's keeper?’”

By this time Mrs. Clark had grown composed, and was listening in undisguised astonishment, and even horror, to her new champion. She had had the same thoughts, but such things could not be said.

“O Mrs. Archer,” she said hurriedly, “my husband has said again and again there is not a firm in the city that is more noted for its large donations—”

“Donations!” put in Mrs. Archer impatiently. “And if a clerk is ill, his place is kept for him, and his salary goes on.”

“To be sure it does; that is mere decent treatment. Every well-to-do house does that, my dear Mrs. Clark. What I complain of is that so many men and women who are good and kind and generous, like Mr. Archer, yet employ men and women without taking any interest in their lives, without feeling that, as children of a common Father, as fellow-pilgrims in a better home, we must take a warm personal interest in those whom we employ.”

“How many ladies know the private history of their servants, take an interest in the mother in the old country, or the brother who has been a little wild, but who is trying to mend, and ought to be invited to Mary's warm kitchen, evenings,

and so kept from bad companions? And with gentlemen it is even worse; for their clerks are educated gentlemen like themselves, sometimes better educated than themselves; and yet the heads of a firm seldom or ever care whether their clerks are able to educate their children, or can afford to save a delicate wife by giving her change of air and rest from anxiety.”

“It is very true,” said Mr. Archer, slowly; “and for my part, whatever Ames or Hancock may think of it, things must be looked after down at the office. I will see your husband myself, to-morrow,” he added, taking Mrs. Clark's hand in his, “and I ask you to forgive a fellow-sinner—a fellow-Christian. Let Clark be at his desk as usual, and now that we do know one of our clerk's wives, we mean to keep up the acquaintance, don't we, wife?”

“Indeed we do! But Mrs. Clark has come all the way from Jersey, and I don't believe she's dined!”

There was a ringing of bells and hurried orders, and soon Mrs. Clark was seated between her new friends, who had to play at eating a second dinner to keep her in countenance. Then Mr. Archer, tired as he was, decided he would go out to the little Jersey home that very night, and have a talk with Mr. Clark. Mrs. Archer could see by the happy look in the wife's eyes that that was just what she most wanted. So the carriage was ordered, and soon the brave woman who had mounted those steps two hours before with such fear, was running lightly down, sure that she was carrying a true friend to her husband, who would help him to lead a new life.

What passed between the wealthy merchant and his wife that night is only known to them; but there were mutual confessions; both felt humbled and penitent, and the morrow began a new life with each.

We need not follow them further. Would that this story, founded on fact, might arouse other noble men to a sense of their duty—to an acknowledgment that they are their brothers' keepers, under God.—Christian Weekly.