A long walk it was, over rough and smooth, over wet and dry, by road and track of very various quality, to the cluster of moorland cottages, far off in an upland valley, where dwelt the Mudge family. Betty knew the mileage pretty well, but she kept the information to herself, lest, as she said in her own heart, ‘school-mistress’ should be ‘scared.’ She had a very poor opinion personally of the physical powers of book-learned fellow-creatures; but when she found how well her companion kept pace with her on the steep hill-side, she paused once to say, with shy approval: ‘’Tis yarely well ye walk, miss. We’ll be there before long.’
A curiously contrasted pair would these two have appeared, had any competent observer been there to note the difference between them, as they scaled the edges of the lofty table-land, gashed by ravines and dotted by crags, which constitutes Dartmoor. Betty’s personal appearance has been mentioned. To say that a young female looks lanky and gawky, may, however frequently such adjectives are upon feminine lips, be thought to imply some irreverence towards the sex. But it would be impossible to conceive an accurate idea of Betty Mudge without constructing an ideal portrait of her that should depict her as gawky and lanky, a large-boned, freckled, well-meaning young creature, willingly accepting the responsibilities of a life of hard work and contented ignorance.
Ethel Gray, on the other hand, was a very beautiful girl. Beauty, as we know, is independent of its surroundings, and there is no reason why a village schoolmistress should not possess that dangerous gift. Her plain dress, her plain little hat, could not hide the fact that her figure was faultless, and that she possessed a lovely face and hair that in its dark luxuriance deserved to be called magnificent. What was more remarkable was the sweet dignity of her manner, frank and unpretending as it was. No one could be gentler than Ethel. Children were at home with her at once. But she seemed to be one of those who are born to be respected, without advancing any especial claim to consideration.
Lenny Mudge’s sister ought to have known better than to have entered, with the rash confidence of youth, on what was really five miles of rough walking, on that most treacherous of days, locally denominated as ‘spoiled,’ when a sunny morning is succeeded by the oncoming of a mist as dense as if it had boiled up from the sullen shores of Cocytus or Acheron. The fog fell, as Dartmoor fogs did fall before Britain saw the Roman eagles, with the rapidity of a theatrical drop-scene cutting off the mimic presentment from the clapping hands and levelled opera-glasses of the spectators. Only in this case it was stern reality.
‘Doan’t you be afeard, miss,’ said Betty sturdily; ‘I be moorland born and bred, and I’ll hammer it out somehow.’
But this boast was more easy to make than to fulfil, for everywhere hung, poised in air, something like a silvery veil, shutting out from sight all familiar landmarks, and rendering it impossible to distinguish any object two paces distant. The mist had fallen so abruptly from the huge Tors, as it seemed, that rose here and there like watch-towers of the waste, that a fanciful imagination might have conceived the seething vapour to represent a semi-transparent drapery, suddenly cast from a giant hand over land and sea.
But a minute or two before, Ethel had allowed her eyes to rest admiringly on the many-coloured surface of the vast moor, here robed in purple of imperial splendour, there of tenderest green, and anon brown or crimson or bluish gray, as shrub and berry and weed and wild-flower dappled the rolling ocean of heather. Then below was the cultured plain, furrowed by thickly wooded clefts, through which the Dartmoor streams ran brawling to the sea, that lay calm and blue and flecked with white sails, so plainly within the range of vision. And now all was changed, and it was fog, fog, and fog only, girdling in the wayfarers on every hand, and there was no knowing whither to turn.
Betty Mudge did her best; but her zeal outran her discretion; and indeed the task of pilot in that rolling mist was no easy one. Had there but been a hard road, though never so narrow, beneath her feet, the girl would have gone on cheerfully enough. But there was no real road for about half the distance between High Tor and Shaws, as that solitary spot where stood the abode of the Mudges was called, merely a congeries of winding cart-ruts, among which, in moderately clear weather, it was facile for one who knew the country to make short-cuts at pleasure.
‘If we were to go back?’ suggested Ethel, after a while; but Betty Mudge by no means accepted the proposition.
‘It be just as easy, miss, to go forrard as to go backarder,’ returned Lenny’s sister doggedly; ‘but what’s main hard in the thick is to know which is which.’