Send for Me: I Can Come

But she is back again.

For on a good day a letter came from her, saying: “I beseech you to send for me. My coming is possible.”’ How? What had happened? Hardly daring to believe the thing could be, we sent our faithful Pearl, fellow-worker for nearly thirty years.

And she returned with Mimosa and the sturdy four-year-old and the ten-months-old baby boy, and a wistful and dear little maiden, the elder brother’s neglected little daughter whom Mimosa had befriended. “I could not leave her. I could not have left a little puppy dog to be lonely and half starved,’ she said. But Mimosa looked almost frightened in her wonder and her joy. She looked as if she felt anything might happen any minute to end it. It has taken a whole month to wash that look from her face.

One day her husband came. He did not go near her upon her return, so she had felt at last, with a sudden courage, that he did not care for the disgrace of owning a wife whose leanings were now known to the world. And that was why she

had felt she might rise up and come.

She told him now that she would return if he wished it, but not just yet. She must learn, she was learning to read, she could no longer go on without being able to read the Bible. All those years she had felt her way like one blind, groping and stumbling; now her eyes had been opened, she must see clearly, she must know. “When I am established I will return.”

It was the last thing he desired, but he went away, and now her hope is that he will come back and wish to learn himself. For he could not help being impressed by the astonishing happiness of everything he saw. It was the evening hour when he came into the Boys’ Compound. Kinglet was playing football with the other biggish boys. Music and another were careering about on an old tricycle, and Mischief was dashing giddily round as driver of a team of horses with jingling reins. Later on he had them to himself for a talk. “Do you not wish to come back with me?” But the boys were silent; they did not want to hurt him, but they did not want to go. Then Music had a happy thought. Why this dilemma? “Be God’s man and come with us,” he said.

Music has beautiful earnest eyes, like the eyes his mother had when she stood by the mango-tree and tried not to cry. With these eyes looking into his, his father could answer nothing. Perhaps they will draw him to come.

But he left us that day without food; he would not stain his caste by touching food, and some are praying for another miracle.

Not till yesterday did I hear the end of Mimosa’s journey home. The story dropped by accident among some other tellings.

She had left us without money. Not a word had she said, and we did not know. Afterwards a fear shot through us lest it might be so, and we sent a servant after her with enough to take her home. But he loitered by the way, and it did not reach her.

The first part of her journey was easy, for she travelled with one of our family; but after the bullock-cart and train were left behind there was a fifteen-mile walk, and, carrying her baby boy and her little bundle of things, Mimosa became suddenly faint.

She sat down by the road, a desolate figure, alone as no Indian woman cares to be alone on the road, for her brother, paid to escort her to us, had gone home a week before.

“Father,” she said, looking up in the old way, “Father, I am tired. I spent all I had in taking the boys to Dohnavur; I cannot hire a cart. But indeed it is necessary that I should reach my home. Kindly give me strength to walk.”

For a little while she sat there, saying softly, “Father, Father,’ and the word comforted her, and she got up and walked, though slowly with pauses to rest, the remaining ten miles.

But she was exhausted when she reached home. She lay down on her mat, with her Fifth beside her, and she longed for a drink of water.

Presently, to her relief, a relative, hearing she had returned, came in, and, touched by the sight of her fatigue, she drew water, lighted a fire, and put things in train for the evening meal.

Mimosa lay and watched her from her mat. It was getting dark, and we know how depressing twilight and tiredness together can be. Soon the house was dark save for the light of the poor little fire made of a few small bits of brushwood, gathered before she left home and left in readiness. There was no gleam of polished brass vessels, no brightness anywhere. She missed her little Music. The unfortunate Fifth was tired and cross — poor little lad, it was not his nature to be cross, but he had had a good deal to put up with — and she, his mother, was tireder than he; but deep in her heart she was utterly content.

“If only I could be sure of seeing them even once in the year,’ she had said to Star in a moment of almost weakness of resolve; but she had rallied at once. She knew it would not be easy to come even only once a year; but they would be happy and learning to be good. What did anything else matter?

Now she lay and thought of them, pictured their every action, following them through their day with loving, loving eyes, and then, with that act of committal which had brought peace to her so often before, she looked up through the dull air of the dull little house. ‘To You, Father.” The word has a gesture of its own; it is the gesture of a little child who has learned to give up something it would have liked to keep.

The Fortunate Fourth was retrieved. That very decided young man had made up his mind to rejoin his mother, which settled matters so far as he was concerned.

Then, as the days wore on and her husband took no notice whatever of her, she said she had begun to wonder if he really had, for the present, at any rate, tired of the disgrace of such a peculiar wife. And at last, like the glorious silver shining of the dawn star in these skies of great stars, a thought rose slowly as in some far, dim horizon of the mind, and it rose and rose and swam upwards till it became familiar, beautiful, a star of hope indeed. She would go to Dohnavur. She would learn to read, that the Book of God might open to her. She would receive the spiritual washing. After that God would show. Yes, she would rise and go. “And so I have come,” she said as she ended her story.