The Five Rupee Notes
Nor that Mimosa talked lightly on these matters. She seemed to have learned “to guard the inner wealth from the squandering of common talk.” But when she discovered, to her joyful surprise, that His children here were constantly proving His care even in these the ordinary needs of life, we met on common ground; and thus were drawn from her some of her own experiences to which we listened, wondering at the variety of our Lord’s loving-kindnesses, what one might call the ingenuity of love.
And, wondering more, we remembered that single afternoon so many years ago, with its medley of impressions; the excitement of the first look round a Christian house, the eager joy of being with her sister, the giving of that little fragment of truth with such a small hope on our part that so little could do anything (but oh, imperishable is every fragment of God’s eternal truth!), and then the blinding grief of the last ten minutes, which seemed as if it must have swept out of mind that one little fragment. Who could have thought that anything planted in such a
confusion and upturn of circumstances would 124 have lived, and put forth roots, and grown, and budded as a rose growing by a brook of water? Who would have thought it possible? How could it have been possible but for the unimaginable loving-kindness of Jesus Christ our Lord?
And now, when things were hardest, came this new touch, as of a hand on her little affairs, that assured her of His presence. But assured is not the word. Have we a word for the incoming of that sweet sense of being taken care of, loved, not forgotten? Perhaps such sweetness passes earth’s poor words.
Mimosa’s house-roof is made of palm leaves, and these require frequent renewal. If they are not renewed as soon as they begin to “go,” the roof leaks. And a leaky roof is a very miserable thing. “Though one may stay in the house of sorrow, to be in a leaky house is impossible,” says the proverb.
Hers needed repair. Five rupees (between six and seven shillings) would buy leaves enough to make all safe before the heavy rain of the north-east monsoon, rain that empties itself on these plains in solid sheets of grey water, till life in our foolish South India is one great shiver. For we build for sunshine here, and improvidently forget rain and cold, except that in the matter of palm-leaf roofs we try to keep them water-tight.
But food was dear, and the boys, who were growing fast, consumed a great deal of it; food came first, roofs second; Mimosa could not spare that five rupees. And yet the roof must be repaired. She tried hard to earn more money, but she had touched her limit. Not another copper could she add to the day’s incomings. But no one knew. “Only my God, He knew.”
In the beautiful old Tuscany story, Suora Marianna, tired out after nursing a poor sick woman, fell asleep while the food she was cooking for her was still on the fire. But the Child Christ came and cared for that little pot of food, and it was not spoiled.
“Oh, the Lord has many a way
That His children little think of,
To send answers when they pray.
He had finished all she failed in.”
Not in legend only, in real everyday commonplace life, these things are happening still. Only we do not always see the Christ or His holy angels in the house or in the street. Perhaps we forget to look for them. Perhaps this story is meant to be a witness to the invisible.
One day, while Music and Mischief, the Fortunate Fourth, were playing near the house, a wedding procession passed with a beautiful braying band and much shouting. After the dust had subsided, Music, who had been enjoying the mad racket to the full, saw some small pieces of paper lying in the middle of the village street.
In a house where letters never come — the one exception was that precious letter from Star, now stored away in the box — where there are no newspapers or pamphlets, paper has to be bought by the farthing’s worth in the bazaar. The boy pounced on his treasure-trove; just the thing for holding safely the sticky brown palm-sugar which from time to time his mother gave him for a treat.
But one of the pieces was dirty. He left it, and a less fastidious playfellow picked it up.
“Mother, mother!” he cried, running into the house. “Look at what I have found.” And he suggested that she might keep the five little slips of nice stiff paper for his sugar.
His mother took the crisp little slips from him, and noticed they were curiously cut and marked.
“This is not common paper,” she said to the boy, who waited eagerly; and, remembering that she had heard talk of paper money, though she had never seen it, she wondered if this could be that, and took the slips to a neighbour. Each one was a rupee note. The other carried off by her boy’s playfellow was for two and a half rupees. In her hand lay five rupees, the five rupees she wanted. Mimosa thought of her roof; but it might be possible to find the owner, so she waited.
Soon the story was noised abroad, and a man came to her door. Yes, her little boy had found the notes, she said, and she went to get them. But tender, tender are the mercies of the Lord. The man smiled and shook his head. “Let the little one keep them,” he said, and went his way.
Thus continually, unfailingly, she was helped, and she went on in the quietness of a sure confidence. Was ever one less defended? But it was to the city that had no moat or river that the great word came: “But there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams.”
The story loses sadly in the writing. First there is the poverty of bare words without any of the tender touches of the living telling. And then there is the loss of even what little those same poor words can capture, as they are hammered out in type and sewn up in a book. With every change of element something eludes one, floats away like a fragrance in the air, vanishes like colour on the mountains when the living light of dawn passes into ordinary day. Often I have stopped and longed that this rare look into the life of an Indian woman might be given by means of some other sense than that of eye or ear. When shall we be able to ¢ixk our tales across the sea?