In the House of Her Friends

Awnp at last with fresh courage Mimosa gained strength and set to work to retrieve her poor little fortune. In India, when one is sick, one’s relatives come in clusters, stay a day or two, and depart, to return perhaps again if the sickness be prolonged. They come to inquire, as the saying is, to lament, and to advise. Not to do so would show lack of family affection and all proper feeling.

A death draws even larger clusters, the most distant relatives flock around then. And, as children always come with their parents and all must be fed, it may be imagined that illness and death are expensive luxuries and empty the family purse, unless it be a very full one, nearly as thoroughly as a wedding does. But no Indian householder would dream of omitting to provide food for all who come. At any cost it must be done.

The cost to Mimosa had been the sale of everything that could be sold, all went to feed her guests. She often went hungry herself. It was a lean time.

As soon as possible she got to work in the fields of the kind Boaz, but she looked, as she was, poor. No gold ornaments were in her ears, no necklet round her neck. The poorest in India, if of any respectable family, clings to this visible bank-deposit. To be in debt is nothing, you may be richly jewelled and yet be in debt. No one thinks anything of that, not even the creditor. You may even beg with jewels in your ears. The stoniest heart would not blame you or refuse you alms for any such trifling cause. But to be unjewelled is disgrace, humiliation, intolerable.

But Mimosa, as we know, had the most curious thoughts about such things, no one understood her. She was a law to herself. So she sold her few jewels kept back from the sale of her dowry, and fed the flocks of kind inquirers, and did not go into debt. It was when she had none to wear that her brother’s child died.

‘“* Do not go to inquire,”’ said her husband, for neither that brother nor his wife had come to inquire when her little peacock flew away, and for the moment she was sorely tempted to retaliate as her husband urged. But she put the thought aside as unkind, and she and her little sons went.

The feast was spread; to each guest a large fresh leaf was given of young green plantain, like fine satin in texture, most beautiful of plates. On it was heaped rice with the various curries.

The leaf once used is thrown on the ash heap, never used again.

When the one who was serving came to the unjewelled Mimosa and her two little sons, she laid before her an old leaf used by another guest, and on it was the rice and curry left over from that other meal.

Mimosa could hardly believe she saw rightly. No such indignity had she ever before seen, heard of, or imagined. To touch the leaf of another is to become ceremonially unclean, to touch the food left over an unthinkable defilement. No child would offer such an insult to its fellow. To offer it to a guest — Mimosa was stunned, and sat silent. Similar leaves were put before her little boys. They understood the offence and burst into angry tears.

Then their mother knew what she must do. “Do not cry, my little ones,’’ she whispered, and gently touched the indignant children, who would have risen and left the house. ‘‘ See, we must be patient, we must be quiet. Say nothing to disturb the feast but take the food.”’ And ina lower whisper she added: ‘‘ Let us accept even this. Without the allowing of our God it could not have been done.”’

But it cut deep. As soon as possible without causing scandal she left the house; and, not trusting herself to accept food from friends on the way lest her still hot wrath should boil over and she should say words better left unspoken, she and her boys walked the fifteen miles home; and, after bathing comprehensively as if to wash off the very remembrance, they all had a meal together blessed by love and good manners; and the boys still seething with wounded pride were comforted.

But her husband could not refrain from a ‘‘ Did I not say to thee, ‘ Better not go’?’’ and her heart echoed him feelingly. How much better not to have gone!

That night she fought out her battle alone.

Well she understood the meaning of this rudeness of all rudenesses. It was a public affront, unforgivable from an Indian point of view, unforgettable. It has no English parallel. To set before a guest at a public banquet an unwashed knife and fork and a plate with remains upon it would be discourteous enough. But this was more. The religious element poisoned it. Ceremonial uncleanness is abhorrent here. Over our poor Mimosa swept great waves of longing for her little Mayil, the child they had not cared about enough to come to see her as he lay dying. And she had gone to them in their sorrow, meaning her very action to say: ‘‘I forgive you; let us be friends.’”’ They knew her going meant that, and this was their reply.

She thought of the two rupees they had refused

to lend. That too she had forgiven. What was the use of forgiving? Stung through her very soul, she burned with shame as she lived through the day in the darkness of the night. Had they done it because she was known to be not as others were, but one who loved the Christians’ God? But they were Christians. Why, then, this cruel affront?

Was it because she was unjewelled? She had not hired jewels to put in her ears (this would have been thought polite, but to her had not seemed honest).

Christians! Why were they so different from their God? Within five miles of her where she lay and wept was a true Christian man, pastor of the church, good to all and tender-hearted as his Master. And within that distance there were at least two or three Christian women who would have shown the Lord’s love to her, if only she could have known them. But they were of another caste and had no access to hers, unless invited. And she knew nothing of them, nor they of her; for an unknown world may be in the house of our next neighbour, five miles may contain an infinite distance. But Mimosa remembered the old woman who had been sent to her in her need. She at least had been as a very angel of God to her. Yes, but was this the guidance she had promised? ‘‘/z every least thing He will wonderfully guide you.’ Wad she been guided to that heartless house with its hateful outrage? And as she saw it and felt it again, hot shame scorched her. She had been flouted in her brother’s house.

Why, oh why were hearts allowed to be so unkind? Nothing that had ever happened to her hurt like this, and, the barriers of her self-control, so painfully maintained through the morning and all through the day, once broken down, she was left to the mercy of heavy, sweeping waves of grief. “‘ The waters compassed me about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.’’ If she had known the words they would have sounded through her then, in her longing for her child, her hurt at this rebuff, her loneliness of spirit among those who could not understand. And now to add to her distress she was conscious of the working of a new passion within. What of this flaming anger? Was anger right? Should she not forgive? But how could she forgive?

At last, and suddenly, she remembered her Lord.

‘““Remembering Thee, I straight forgot
What otherwhile had troubled me;
It was as if it all were not,
I only was aware of Thee.

Of Thee, of Thee alone aware,

I rested me, I held me still,

The blessed thought of Thee, most Fair, Banished the brooding sense of ill. And quietness around me fell x

Oh, it is true, it is true. Whoso hath known that comforting can bear witness it is true. He who knew what it was to be wounded in the house of His friends, He who turned not His face from a shame which shames our hottest, reddest shame, making it feel cool and pale, He, though of all this she did not know, was with her then. The thought of Him brought Him, just a thought and He was there, softening the sharp edges of the pain, soothing, tending, cooling, comforting, till her soul was hushed within her; she took heart to forgive; and she slept.