Produced by David Widger





THE PRIEST’S TALE--PÈRE ETIENNE

From “The New Decameron”--Volume III.

By Robert Keable


PÈRE ETIENNE came aboard at Dares-Salaam and did not at once make
friends. It was our own fault, however. He neither obtruded nor effaced
himself, but rather went quietly on his own way with that recollection
which the clerical system of the Catholic Church encourages. We
few first-class passengers had already settled down into the usual
regularities of shipboard life, from the morning constitutional in
pyjamas on the boat deck, to the Bridge four after dinner in the
smoke-room, and, besides, it was plain that Père Etienne was not likely
to have much in common with any of us. So we were polite at a distance,
like Englishmen everywhere. Even I, who, by virtue of my cloth, might
have been supposed to make advances, was shy of beginning. I was young
in those days, and for one thing spelt Rome always with a big capital.

But from the first there was something which attracted me to the priest,
the more so as it was hard to define. In his appearance there was
nothing to suggest interest. His age was round about fifty; his hair
brown, though in his beard a white hair or two was to be observed. In
his short black coat and trousers he looked neither mediaeval nor
a traveller, and his luggage was neither romantically minute nor
interestingly large. He was booked from Dar-es-Salaam to Bombay, and
the purser professed neither to know whence he came nor whither he went
beyond those two fixed points.

Yet I was attracted. I have no wish to bore you, so that I shall not
dwell upon the point, but in my opinion it was interesting. There are
some people who carry an atmosphere with them as they go their own
individual way about the world, and there are others who can instantly
perceive it. I am not speaking of clairvoyance; I dislike that jargon;
but I do know that I was conscious of Père Etienne if he did but pass
the smoke-room door when I was about to play a doubled four in No
Trumps.

Well, our old British India tramp lay about for a week in Dar-es-Salaam
harbour, rolled up to Tanga, and finally crossed over to Zanzibar,
without further developments. There we passengers went sweltering about
the narrow streets, visited duly the coconut and clove plantations, and
conceived ourselves to be exploring by hiring a car, crossing the island
to Chuaka, and spending a day up the creek. Père Etienne went at once
to the Catholic Mission and remained there. Thus it was not until the
evening on which we sailed that we saw him again.

It was half an hour or so before sunset, and a serene beauty lay over
land and sea. There was the gentlest breeze, and at our moorings it
was almost cool. We were clustering on the landward side of the ship,
smoking and watching the town and harbour. Close up under the tall white
houses the blue sea broke in tiny creamy ripples on the sand or the
low coral rocks, and, with its green woods to right and left, the
city seemed to dream in the sun. One could see, however, that it was
preparing to wake. A flutter of orange or scarlet on the flat roofs here
and there told that the women were already coming up to enjoy the cooler
hours; and between the thin cassuarinas in the square that opened to the
sea before the Sultan’s Palace, a white-robed crowd was gathering for
the faint excitement of the sunset gun. Between ship and shore, the
brown-timbered rough-hewn native boats came and went on their long
oars, and in smarter skiffs the silk and curio merchants were taking
a lingering leave of us. From the south a dozen peaceful lateen-sailed
dhows beat up for the native anchorage behind which, from our view-point,
the twin spires of the Catholic cathedral stood out against an opal sky.
Despite travellers’ tales, there is only one mosque with a minaret in
Zanzibar, and that so small and hidden that it is scarcely visible from
the sea.

Watching the dhows and sighting the cathedral, suggested, I suppose,
Père Etienne. Someone asked if his reverence had come aboard, but no one
knew. Lazily turning the question and answer over in my mind, I became
aware that I was sure he had. The persistent intuition grew on me.
Without speaking of it, I determined, out of sheer curiosity, to go and
see. I detached myself from the group unobtrusively, and strolled off
round the deck.

Sure enough on the seaward side I saw him. He was sitting in a
deck-chair and looking out across the water. At first I thought he was
gazing intently at nothing, but as I too looked, I made out, across the
strait, the dim outline of the Sham-balla Mountains on the mainland
that are sometimes visible for a little at sunset and dawn. The priest’s
chair was drawn close to the bulwark, and almost before I knew what I
was doing, I was leaning against it in an attitude which allowed me,
too, to see those distant peaks and at the same time to converse easily,
if it should be permitted.

“Hullo, father,” I said; “we were wondering if you had come aboard.”

He looked at me, smiling. “I believe I was one of the first,” he
replied, in his excellent English.

“Saying good-bye to Africa?” I queried, half jocularly.

“Yes, I expect so.”

The tone of his voice suggested far more than the words themselves
expressed. It aroused my curiosity. “For long?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t suppose I shall see those peaks again. I saw them first
twenty-seven years ago, a young priest on his first mission, and I have
not seen them from the sea since. Now I have been ordered to India to my
second mission, and it is not very likely that I shall be moved
again. It is still less likely that I shall return. After so long an
acquaintance, it is natural that I should want to say good-bye.”

I think I was slightly incredulous. “Do you mean you have been over
twenty-seven years up there without leave?” I questioned.

“Twenty-seven next month, there and beyond.”

I have told you that I was young in those days, and I did not then know
of the heroic sacrifices of Catholic missionaries. Moreover, I too was
taking a first leave--after two years’ service, according to our plan.
And I was eagerly looking forward to a visit to my married sister in
India, and a journey home after that. Stupidly enough, it took me a few
seconds to swallow those twenty-seven years; but for all that my mind
worked quickly. Twenty-seven years of tinned food, mosquitoes, heat,
natives, and packing-case furniture! That was how I read it. “Well,”
 I said at last, “I should think you were glad to go anywhere after all
that time.”

“Eh? Oh, I don’t know. No, that’s wrong; I do know. I’m sorry, that’s
the truth.”

“You like Africa?”

The Frenchman showed himself in the half-humorous shrug of the
shoulders, but the missionary spoke. “It has become my home, and its
people my people,” he said.

I turned the saying over in my mind before I spoke again. Then interest
and attraction overcame my hesitation, and I abandoned all pretence
of making a chance conversation. “Father,” I said, “I expect you have
travelled a good deal up there and seen many things. Tell me a
little about it all. I’ve seen enough to be very interested in your
experiences. May I pull up a chair and may we talk?”

His brown eyes twinkled, “Certainly,” he said, “especially if you will
give me a fill of that English tobacco you’re smoking. Years ago I
learned to smoke English tobacco, but it hasn’t too often come my way.”

I threw him my pouch with a laugh and went to find a chair. That was the
beginning of many conversations, but none of his stories interested me
more than the one he told me that night. He had half hinted of strange
happenings away back there in remote districts, as well as of more
commonplace although sufficiently interesting journeys and adventures,
and it was to the less usual that I was drawn that evening. There was
that about Père Etienne which made one feel that the commonplace world
was of secondary importance, and that he, like the poet at Charing
Cross, might find Jacob’s ladder reaching heavenward in any place. Thus,
while the light died swiftly out of the sky and the stars shone out
over that far-off range which runs up to the Para Mountains and giant
Kilimanjaro and that far-flung plain which lies embraced beyond, between
them and the great lakes, I put my question and he answered it. “Tell me
the queerest of all the queer things you have seen, father,” I said.

“Queer?”

“Yes,” said I. “Unusual, I mean. Not necessarily supernatural, and not
horrible. But the thing, perhaps, that more than all else draws your
mind back to Africa.”

“You ask a big thing,” he said, smiling friendlily.

“And I believe you can answer it,” said I, impulsively.

He nodded more gravely. “I believe I can,” he said.

“I shall tell you a little story that seems to me singularly arresting
and tender. True, I believe that it may arrest me because it occurred
in a village--or perhaps I should say a town--which I have visited
but once though I have often tried to get back to it again. Now I shall
never go. Very likely it is for that reason, then, that it lingers in my
memory as a place of great beauty, though in my opinion there are other
causes. However, let me begin by describing it to you.

“From the slopes of Kilimanjaro you can look westwards to Mweru, a still
active volcano little known and rarely visited, and from Mweru a chain
of heights runs west once more till they end abruptly almost in a
precipice that descends to the plain. At its foot rises a small river,
bubbling up from half a dozen springs in a slight depression, and
flowing swiftly off, very clear and cool, towards the great lake which
is visible on the horizon from the mountain behind. Just below the pool
of the source, on the right bank, shaded with trees, ringed with
giant aloes and set in fields of millet and maize, stands a somewhat
remarkable native town. There is stone in the hills, and the natives
have drawn and worked it for their huts--not a usual thing in tropical
Africa. They may, of course, have learned the lore themselves, or some
wandering Arab traders may have taught them; but I have another idea,
as you shall hear. Be that as it may, there the neat houses stand--grey
walls, brown thatch, small swept yards of trodden earth before them
within the rings of neat reed fencing. Great willows grow along the bank
and trail their hanging tendrils in the water, and the brown kiddies
swing from them and go splashing into the stream with shouts of delight.
The place is remote, and in a corner out of the path of marauding
tribes. Not too easy to find, its folk are peaceable, and I can see
it again as I saw it on my first visit when, from the height of the
precipice behind, I could make out the thin spires of smoke rising on
the evening air and just perceive the brown herds of cattle drifting
slowly homewards to the protecting kraals.

“The tribe is a branch of the Bonde, iron workers and a settled folk.
How they came to be there, so far north and west of the main stock of
their people, I do not know, but of course one comes across that kind
of thing fairly commonly and the explanation is nearly always the same.
Fear of some kind drove out a family who wandered, like Abram from
Charron, until they found a promised land. These folk knew that they
came from the south and east a long long time ago; more they neither
knew nor cared to know. They were not many in number, and although
Arab _safaris_ had passed by, they were not enough to tempt a permanent
trader to cross the barren lands north and south, or dare the mountain
way from Mweru. The chief’s oldest councillor spoke to me of a
slave-raid that had been defeated when he was a young man, but since
then they had dwelt in peace. No European had been there within living
memory.

“Such was, and may be still, the town of Mtakatifuni, as I shall call
it. Do you know Ki-Swahili?”

I shook my head.

“Then the name will do, and not spoil my tale. Let me but tell you how
I came to be there and I will make haste about it. I was exploring.
Ah, but once in all the years have I been able to explore! Usually we
missionaries hurry from place to place on an unending round till the
circle is as big as we can possibly manage. Then a new centre must be
made, and it was because my Order had determined on a new centre that my
opportunity came. The Vicar Apostolic was doubtful as to the direction
in which we should expand. He sent me, therefore, west beyond Mweru to
see what could be seen, and another farther south on the same errand.
The folk were few about Mweru, but I heard a rumour of Mtakatifuni,
much exaggerated, and set out to find it. Foolishly I went west until
supplies were so low that it would have been fatal to turn back over the
bare mountains by which we had come, and our only hope lay in pushing
on. And so I reached my hidden town, stayed a while, and returned
another way, to find that the other explorer had a report to make
of more peopled and easier lands which found greater favour with his
lordship. And rightly. When labourers are so few and the field is so
big, it is necessary to settle where the work offers most prospect of
large returns. So was I permitted to see, but not to enter in.”

He leant forward to knock out his pipe, blew down it, refused more
tobacco, and re-settled himself. “Ah, well,” he said philosophically,
“le Bon Dieu knows best. I do not believe He has forgotten Mtakatifuni.

“Where was I? Oh yes, I remember. We saw the place then, in the evening,
and next morning journeyed early towards it. You must understand that we
were spent. I cannot recall better water than that at the source of that
little river, and the roasted mealies they gave us, and sour milk, how
good it all was! The chief had sent word that we were to be fed and
given an empty house, and after I had eaten I went to see and thank him.
I put on my cassock and with it my beads about my waist, and I carried
my breviary in my hand, for I thought he might keep me waiting in the
native fashion and that I could say my office in the meantime.

“But he received me at once. The ground rose a little and was built up
too before his group of huts, terraced roughly and faced with stone,
with steps at one end. A big block of stone stood near the edge of it,
so that standing behind one looked east over the town to the mountains,
and it was there, after a little, that I offered the Holy Sacrifice each
remaining day of my stay. There was little linen in the place, and he
stood to greet me at the top of the steps, clad in prepared skins, a
youngish man and a fine figure of a savage king. He gave me later the
twisted iron spear of state that he carried that day. It hangs in our
church of the Holy Cross now, behind the altar of the Sacred Heart.
Surely the Good God will not forget Mtakatifuni.

“Well, he greeted me courteously, with reserve, but with a suggestion
of curious eagerness. I marked it at once. Not, however, till the usual
questions as to my journeys and so on were over, did I get a clue to the
cause of it. But then, when we were seated on stools by the great stone
I have mentioned, big clay beakers of thin, delicious light beer beside
us, he put a question. ‘Why have you been so long a time coming, my
father?’ he asked. ‘A little later and you would have been too late.’

“I was slightly puzzled, but I supposed he referred to the length of my
journey. ‘The way was long and rough, chief,’ said I.

“‘But why were you so long in setting out?’ he persisted. ‘Mwezi has
been expecting you for many years.’ He turned to an old councillor. ‘How
many years has Mwezi been expecting the father?’

“‘Since the days of the Great One, the father of the King,’ said the old
man. ‘Mwezi came first among us when I was a boy.’

“Now most of this was Greek to me, but the speaker was fifty if he was a
day, whatever allowance was to be made for the early ageing of Africans,
and you may imagine that I understood enough to be surprised. ‘How
could that be, chief?’ I asked. ‘When this old man was a boy, I had not
crossed the black water to come to this land, and possibly I had not
been born. Truly of this Mwezi I knew nothing, but how could he expect
me whom even my mother had not seen?’

“The chief looked worried, and stared at me for awhile in silence. Then
he nodded thoughtfully. ‘It is true,’ he said. ‘The father is doubtless
wise and has seen years, but his beard is not white and the thing is
strange. Nevertheless he wears the black robe and the dried beans, and
he carries the book in his hand, even as Mwezi has said. Still, I have
sent for Mwezi, and doubtless he will explain the matter. See, he comes;
slowly, for he is very old. Does the father not remember him at all?’

“He pointed down the path that led up to us from the town, into which
had come a small crowd of natives who were eagerly following three or
four figures, jostling each other to get a better view. It soon became
plain that a young man led the way, and that after him came three of
whom I guessed the central person to be Mwezi. I think he was the oldest
native I have ever seen, bent, shrivelled, and stiff-jointed, but with
keen dark eyes which, a little later, fixed themselves inquiringly on my
face and then clouded with acute disappointment. On either side his sons
helped him with a hand beneath his arm-pits, and he himself walked by
means of a great stick. The crowd of hangers-on stopped respectfully
below, but these four climbed up to the dais. A stool was brought for
the old man, but at first he would not sit. He stood there, staring at
me and shaking his head. ‘It is not he,’ he said, ‘it is not he. Yet he
is like, very like. But it is not he.’

“I was still perplexed at all this, but by this time a little amused.
Nevertheless I hid that, for the old fellow was so plainly disappointed.

“‘Come, father,’ I said. ‘I am very sorry, but will you not explain?
Perhaps it is a brother of mine whom you have seen. Seat yourself and
tell me about it.’

“He did not seem at once to comprehend, but when his sons had persuaded
him to sit, he made a peremptory motion with his stick towards the old
councillor who had spoken before. This individual glanced at the
chief for permission, and having received it, told me this story at
considerable length.

“He said that, very many years before, in the time of the late king, the
village had been one day thrown into a state of great excitement by the
advent of a stranger. This had been Mwezi, at the time a man of middle
age. He had come from the south and west--from Central Africa, that
is--and he had said that he was seeking a white man whom it had been
shown him he should find in that village. Pressed for details, he
announced that he had come from a town far away by a wide river where
there were great falls over whose rocks the water thundered night and
day in a perpetual cloud of spray. One night he had awakened in his hut,
and had seen a white man standing before him dressed in a black robe, a
string of beads, and carrying a book. Behind the white man he could see,
as it were, the vision of a town, a river, a precipice--in short,
what he now saw to have been Mtakatifuni. The figure had beckoned him
solemnly, and he had sat up in his bed in fear. It had beckoned again,
and had then pointed north and east, and at that the vision had died
away before the startled sleeper’s eyes. But Mwezi understood. In his
mind there had been no question as to what he must do. In the dawn he
had risen, said good-bye to his wife and family, and set out. For two
years he had journeyed, wandering from place to place, scarcely knowing
whither he went save that it was always north and east. The very wild
beasts had respected him, and men, seeing the vision in his eyes,
had withheld their hands from him. At length, then, he had reached
Mtakatifuni. There, as always, he had inquired for his white man, and,
hearing that no white man had ever been there but convinced that it was
the place of his dream, he sat down to wait. He had grown old waiting;
had married, and had begotten sons and daughters. Now he was too old to
move; all but too old to live; but still he waited. Still he believed he
would see his white man again before he died; indeed, he could not
die until he had seen. My coming had seemed to the whole place the
fulfilment of his vision, but I was not the man. Mwezi was sure of that
and no one doubted him. And maybe, now, added the councillor, he would
never see him. That was all.

“Now I had been long enough in Africa to set little store by native
dreams as a rule. The affair, then, seemed to me pathetic rather than
interesting.

“My eyes kept straying to the old fellow while the story was being
told me, and I marvelled to think of the simplicity of his faith, the
weariness of his journey into the unknown, and the tenacity with which
he had clung to his obsession. That this man should have given his whole
life to such a quest, and should now be so bitterly disappointed when
a remote chance had brought it nearer realisation than had been in the
least degree likely, was indeed certainly cruel. I therefore turned to
him to make what amends I could.

“‘But, old Mwezi,’ I said as kindly as possible, ‘doubtless you are
mistaken. It was but once that you saw the figure in your dream, and
that years ago. You dreamt of a white man dressed as I. Well, I belong
to a regiment of white men who dress alike, and for many lives it has
been the custom of that regiment to dress so. Doubtless as a boy you had
seen one of my brethren, or perchance a picture of one, and your spirit
saw him again in a dream. If I am right, and your home is on that great
river which we white men call the Zambesi, then it is not unlikely that
such a thing happened. Perhaps you have forgotten. Now in me you see him
whom you seek.’

“The old fellow’s keen eyes flashed angrily. ‘The white stranger mocks
me,’ he said.

“I protested. ‘No, father, I do not mean to mock you. Why should I do
so? But come now, can you describe the face of the man you saw?’

“‘I can, and easily. His beard was white and not as thine. Moreover, he
was bald-headed, and beneath his right eye was there a little scar such
as he had perhaps received in the hunt from some beast or the other. His
face was long and thin, and his nose bigger. Am I a child that I should
not know one man from another? Thou art not he.’

“It was foolish of me, but I was surprised out of all caution. ‘How
could you see so much in the dark of your hut?’ I exclaimed.

“Mwezi rose to his feet and made a pathetic effort to hold his head
erect. With true native dignity, he ignored me and turned to the chief.
‘With the leave of the chief, I go,’ he said. ‘I am old and would rest
in my place. Fare thee well, father of thy people. The Heavens guard
thee. Be in peace.’

“I realised that I had blundered, but at the moment there was nothing to
do. We watched the procession move away again almost in silence, and I
noticed curiously that the crowd were even more interested in Mwezi than
in myself, a white stranger. When he was out of sight, I apologised to
the chief, who, however, would not hear that I had done any wrong. He
himself showed me back to the house set apart for us and invited me to
feast with him in the evening. He gave me leave to speak to his people,
and I remember that I was so dog-tired that I lay down at once and slept
for the rest of the day.

“In the morning, however, I remembered Mwezi, and told the chief that
I would like to go and call on him. I determined to do what I could
for the old fellow’s peace of mind, and, with a guide and one of my own
boys, we set out.

“The way led through the native huts and without them. It was downhill
going, as the village, in African fashion, was built on the side of a
rise which culminated in the chief’s hut, while Mwezi lived, very close
to the source of the river I have mentioned. We emerged through trees
into a grassy open space of perhaps thirty paces wide, and I saw at once
the old fellow sitting at the door of his hut beneath the shade of a
wild vine which grew luxuriantly over the porch and roof. I was too much
occupied in greeting him to take note at once of the building, but when
we were seated, and he had been thawed out of his first coolness, I
looked more closely at it. It interested me. It was long in shape, much
longer than the usual native hut, and with three windows narrow and
pointed, one of them now roughly blocked with sods. I examined the
stones of the walls, getting up to do so. They struck me as being old
and much more carefully laid than is usual in native work.

“‘Did you build this house yourself, old man?’ I asked. ‘It is well
made.’

“‘I did not build it,’ he said. ‘I found it here. When I came to
Mtakatifuni, it was empty and had been empty for long. There was no roof
to it in those days, and few came near the place. But that suited me.
My mind was full of him whom I had seen, and my spirit told me that
I should await him here. The father of the chief then gave it me, no
councillor knowing aught about it.’

“‘And you planted this vine and cleared this space, perhaps?’

“‘I did not. I did but train the vine which had blocked the door, and
cut down for the wood of the roof the young trees that had grown here.
But some other had cleared the ground before me.’

“‘Would you mind if I looked within, Mwezi?’ I questioned, for to tell
you the truth my curiosity was thoroughly aroused.

“The old fellow got up courteously. ‘Enter, white man,’ said he. ‘My
sons shall bring the stools and fetch us beer. I am old and poor, but
you are welcome. You are at least of the people of him I saw, and shall
I, in my sorrow, forbid you to come in?’

“We entered. The place was divided into two by a sod partition, plainly
recent in construction, and I looked disappointedly at what I could see.
There were the usual scant furnishings of a native hut--a _kitanda_,
some pots, a stool or two, a few spears in a corner. But when I passed
round the partition, my interest increased tenfold. I even cried out in
my astonishment.

“I saw what I had not been able to see from the fact of my approach
from the west of the clearing. The eastern end of the hut was not built
squarely as the other, but roughly rounded in what elsewhere I should
unhesitatingly have called an apse, and since on either side there were
still visible a couple of those narrow pointed windows, while the floor
space was practically empty, the suggestion of a chapel was complete. I
ought, perhaps, to have guessed it before, but the thought burst on me
suddenly. The situation, near the stream rather than up on the hill,
the orientation, the unusual length, the vine, the clearing--everything
pointed in the same direction. And then the old man’s story. I was
frankly amazed.

“I turned and saw him standing in the doorway, his hand on the mud wall
for support, his eyes peering at me from his bowed head. If I had been
momentarily suspicious of a knowledge hitherto kept from me, all fled
at the sight of him. He was transparently honest and eager. ‘What is it,
white man?’ he quavered.

“‘Mwezi,’ said I, ‘here is a strange thing and a wonder. You tell me
that you saw in your vision a white man, and I know from what you say
that he was a priest. You travelled far, and your spirit sent you
here. Well, I do not doubt that this house of yours was once a place of
worship, and I think it was built by white priests. Think now, have you
heard of no such thing?’

“He swayed a little as he stood, and did not answer at once. Then he
slowly shook his head. ‘I have heard nothing, nothing,’ he said. ‘If it
be so, none know of these things, white man. Art thou sure? Thou wouldst
not mock me again.’

“‘Mwezi,’ I cried eagerly, ‘I do not mock you. Why should I do any such
thing? I cannot yet tell certainly, but this place is such as we build
for prayers, and we may yet make sure. May I search more diligently?’

“‘Do what thou wilt, my son,’ said he, ‘and if my hands cannot, my
spirit will help thee.’

“There and then I began a close scrutiny. I went outside, measured,
tapped, sought, but I found nothing more. If there had ever been a
stoup, a cross, a rude piscina, they had long since gone. But the more
I searched, the more sure grew my conviction that the place had been a
chapel. At last I sat down to rest, and while resting, I had an idea.

“‘Mwezi,’ I said, ‘have you ever dug up the floor?’

“He shook his head. ‘Why should I dig it up?’ he asked.

“‘Would you allow me to do so?’ I queried.

“He looked doubtful. ‘But why?’ he asked again, suspiciously. ‘And would
you dig even now?’

“I laughed. ‘Well, not at once,’ I said. ‘We must find a new house for
you first. But if I am right, it may be that things are buried here,
or that there are stones which will tell me a tale. See, the floor is
higher now than it was. There was a step here at the door, and the mud
has nearly covered it.’

“‘It is but the smearing,’ he said, half contemptuously.

“That roused me. Of course I know the native habit of cleaning a house
by putting down a fresh layer of mud mixed with a little dung, which in
time raises the floor considerably. But I was not to be put off by
that. Below the smearing of the old man’s time might be a layer of earth
thrown in to hide something. I glanced round. ‘May I borrow a spear?’ I
asked.

“He nodded, and I selected one from the corner with a long thin blade.
Then I went into the inner room, and he came and stood again to watch me
with his peering old eyes. Under his scrutiny, I began in the apse and
thrust downward as far as I could. The blade sank to its hilt fairly
easily, and that was all.

“Thus I stabbed until I came to the string of the apse, and then, almost
at once, I made a discovery. The point of the blade struck a stone. A
foot to the left, it touched again, and a foot more. In a few minutes I
was all but certain that a stone slab was buried there. You may imagine
my excitement.

“Mwezi called his sons and sent one for a native hoe. When he returned,
we all gathered about the place while he slowly dug up the trampled mud.
In a few minutes a stone slab was being exposed to view, and with my
spear I got to work scraping off the earth while he dug free the other
end. Suddenly, as I scraped, I made out a cross, and to cut the story
short, we laid bare at length what had undoubtedly been an altar-stone.
Every one of the five crosses were plainly visible, and left no room for
question.

“We stopped out of breath, and I explained something of its use. At that
Mwezi spoke suddenly, calling our attention to him. ‘Lift it, lift it,’
he cried. ‘Lift it at once.’

“The old man was a striking spectacle. His withered face was simply
alive with emotion. He was kneeling on hands and knees, and his thin
fingers worked at the edge of the slab. Something in his voice compelled
us, and we got at once to work. After all it was an easy task, for it
was soon apparent that the stone was fitted into brick, with which
the whole place was paved, and with spade and spear we levered it up a
little. Then two of Mwezi’s sons got their fingers under it, and without
any great effort raised it completely. They staggered aside with it and
the rest of us peered within. For a second we looked, and then Mwezi
gave a great cry.

“‘My father, my father! Lo, I have come to thee, as thou didst bid.
These many years have I waited, for my spirit spoke true, bidding me
rest above thee. Now will I pass on whither thou art passed, and as thou
hadst understanding, so it shall befall. Lo, I come to thee, seeking
peace!’

“His voice hesitated, and failed, and he fell forward very gently and
slowly till his head rested on his hands on the edge of the tomb. None
of us dared to move for a few seconds, for Mwezi’s voice rang so truly
and convincingly. Great awe fell on us all, for he had spoken as one who
certainly saw. Then I stretched out my hand and touched him, but he had
gone, as he said. And on his face was peace.

“That is all there is to tell in a way. For inside the grave, if grave
it were, there was nothing at all that it was given to our eyes to
see--not a bone, not a shred of a habit, nor book nor beads. If ever a
body or treasures of any sort had been there, the receptacle had been
rifled long before, and entirely forgotten. So there is literally no
more to tell. Of course the affair made great excitement. The chief and
all his people came to see, and came once again the day after when I
lowered Mwezi into the grave and replaced the altar stone. After that
the door and the windows were blocked up at my request, against the
day of the coming of the Faith once more to Mtaka-tifuni. For that, the
space about the sanctuary is to be kept clear of undergrowth, by order
of the chief. For that old Mwezi waits beneath the altar, and maybe he
whom he saw waits also.”

The dinner bugle had sounded a few moments before Père Etienne had
finished, and now we rose to go. We stood a second, and I gazed over
the side at the star-shine on the water, for the night was fine. When
I looked up, Père Etienne was staring out into the darkness, a far-away
look on his face, but he must have felt my eyes on him, for he turned
quickly and smiled. Possibly he read a question I rather wanted to ask,
but did not dare. Anyway, he smiled, as I say, and shook his head. “I
have lived too long in Africa to have theories, my friend,” he said,
“but to me the memory of Mwezi and his chapel is a very precious thing.
We are all of us souls on pilgrimage, and we rarely understand why or
how, or remember that we have a Guide. But I like to think in the end,
the Good God willing, we shall find a hidden sanctuary and that we have
been led to a place prepared.”





End of Project Gutenberg’s The Priest’s Tale - Père Etienne, by Robert Keable