The Priests Tale - Père Etienne | Page 2

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