The Priests Tale - Père Etienne | Page 4

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