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+Project Gutenberg's The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne, by Robert Keable
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne
+       From "The New Decameron", Volume III.
+
+Author: Robert Keable
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22478]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIEST'S TALE - PERE ETIENNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PRIEST'S TALE--PERE ETIENNE
+
+From "The New Decameron"--Volume III.
+
+By Robert Keable
+
+
+PERE 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 Pere 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 Pere 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. Pere 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,
+Pere 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 Pere 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 Pere 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, Pere 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 - Pere Etienne, by Robert Keable
+
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