"GUIDE! Where are we?"
"I can't say for certain."
"Have you lost your way?"
The guide looks slowly all round him, and then looks at me. That is his
answer to my question. And that is enough.
The lost persons are three in number. My traveling companion, myself,
and the guide. We are seated on three Shetland ponies--so small in
stature, that we two strangers were at first literally ashamed to get on
their backs. We are surrounded by dripping white mist so dense that we
become invisible to one another at a distance of half a dozen yards. We
know that we are somewhere on the mainland of the Shetland Isles. We see
under the feet of our ponies a mixture of moorland and bog--here, the
strip of firm ground that we are standing on, and there, a few feet off,
the strip of watery peat-bog, which is deep enough to suffocate us if
we step into it. Thus far, and no further, our knowledge extends. This
question of the moment is, What are we to do next?
The guide lights his pipe, and reminds me that he warned us against the
weather before we started for our ride. My traveling companion looks
at me resignedly, with an expression of mild reproach. I deserve it. My
rashness is to blame for the disastrous position in which we now find
ourselves.
In writing to my mother, I have been careful to report favorably of my
health and spirits. But I have not confessed that I still remember the
day when I parted with the one hope and renounced the one love which
made life precious to me. My torpid condition of mind, at home,
has simply given place to a perpetual restlessness, produced by the
excitement of my new life. I must now always be doing something--no
matter what, so long as it diverts me from my own thoughts. Inaction is
unendurable; solitude has become horrible to me. While the other members
of the party which has accompanied Sir James on his voyage of inspection
among the lighthouses are content to wait in the harbor of Lerwick for
a favorable change in the weather, I am obstinately bent on leaving
the comfortable shelter of the vessel to explore some inland ruin of
prehistoric times, of which I never heard, and for which I care nothing.
The movement is all I want; the ride will fill the hateful void of
time. I go, in defiance of sound advice offered to me on all sides. The
youngest member of our party catches the infection of my recklessness
(in virtue of his youth) and goes with me. And what has come of it?
We are blinded by mist; we are lost on a moor; and the treacherous
peat-bogs are round us in every direction!
What is to be done?
"Just leave it to the pownies," the guide says.
"Do you mean leave the ponies to find the way?"
"That's it," says the guide. "Drop the bridle, and leave it to the
pownies. See for yourselves. I'm away on _my_ powny."
He drops his bridle on the pommel of his saddle, whistles to his pony,
and disappears in the mist; riding with his hands in his pockets, and
his pipe in his mouth, as composedly as if he were sitting by his own
fireside at home.
We have no choice but to follow his example, or to be left alone on
the moor. The intelligent little animals, relieved from our stupid
supervision, trot off with their noses to the ground, like hounds on the
scent. Where the intersecting tract of bog is wide, they skirt round it.
Where it is narrow enough to be leaped over, they cross it by a jump.
Trot! trot!--away the hardy little creatures go; never stopping, never
hesitating. Our "superior intelligence," perfectly useless in the
emergency, wonders how it will end. Our guide, in front of us, answers
that it will end in the ponies finding their way certainly to the
nearest village or the nearest house. "Let the bridles be," is his one
warning to us. "Come what may of it, let the bridles be!"
It is easy for the guide to let his bridle be--he is accustomed to place
himself in that helpless position under stress of circumstances, and he
knows exactly what his pony can do.
To us, however, the situation is a new one; and it looks dangerous in
the extreme. More than once I check myself, not without an effort, in
the act of resuming the command of my pony on passing the more dangerous
points in the journey. The time goes on; and no sign of an inhabited
dwelling looms through the mist. I begin to get fidgety and irritable; I
find myself secretly doubting the trustworthiness of the guide. While
I am in this unsettled frame of mind, my pony approaches a dim, black,
winding line, where the bog must be crossed for the hundredth time at
least. The breadth of it (deceptively enlarged in appearance by the
mist) looks to my eyes beyond the reach of a leap by any pony that ever
was foaled. I lose my presence of mind. At the critical moment before
the jump is taken, I am foolish enough to seize the bridle, and suddenly
check the pony. He starts, throws up his head, and falls instantly as if
he had been shot. My right hand, as we drop on the ground together, gets
twisted under me, and I feel that I have sprained my wrist.
If I escape with no worse injury than this, I may consider myself well
off. But no such good fortune is reserved for me. In his struggles to
rise, before I have completely extricated myself from him, the pony
kicks me; and, as my ill-luck will have it, his hoof strikes just where
the poisoned spear struck me in the past days of my service in India.
The old wound opens again--and there I lie bleeding on the barren
Shetland moor!
This time my strength has not been exhausted in attempting to breast
the current of a swift-flowing river with a drowning woman to support.
I preserve my senses; and I am able to give the necessary directions
for bandaging the wound with the best materials which we have at our
disposal. To mount my pony again is simply out of the question. I must
remain where I am, with my traveling companion to look after me; and the
guide must trust his pony to discover the nearest place of shelter to
which I can be removed.
Before he abandons us on the moor, the man (at my suggestion) takes our
"bearings," as correctly as he can by the help of my pocket-compass.
This done, he disappears in the mist, with the bridle hanging loose,
and the pony's nose to the ground, as before. I am left, under my young
friend's care, with a cloak to lie on, and a saddle for a pillow. Our
ponies composedly help themselves to such grass as they can find on the
moor; keeping always near us as companionably as if they were a couple
of dogs. In this position we wait events, while the dripping mist hangs
thicker than ever all round us.
The slow minutes follow each other wearily in the majestic silence of
the moor. We neither of us acknowledge it in words, but we both feel
that hours may pass before the guide discovers us again. The penetrating
damp slowly strengthens its clammy hold on me. My companion's
pocket-flask of sherry has about a teaspoonful of wine left in the
bottom of it. We look at one another--having nothing else to look at in
the present state of the weather--and we try to make the best of it. So
the slow minutes follow each other, until our watches tell us that forty
minutes have elapsed since the guide and his pony vanished from our
view.
My friend suggests that we may as well try what our voices can do toward
proclaiming our situation to any living creature who may, by the barest
possibility, be within hearing of us. I leave him to try the experiment,
having no strength to spare for vocal efforts of any sort. My companion
shouts at the highest pitch of his voice. Silence follows his first
attempt. He tries again; and, this time, an answering hail reaches us
faintly through the white fog. A fellow-creature of some sort, guide or
stranger, is near us--help is coming at last!
An interval passes; and voices reach our ears--the voices of two men.
Then the shadowy appearance of the two becomes visible in the mist. Then
the guide advances near enough to be identified. He is followed by a
sturdy fellow in a composite dress, which presents him under the double
aspect of a groom and a gardener. The guide speaks a few words of rough
sympathy. The composite man stands by impenetrably silent; the sight of
a disabled stranger fails entirely either to surprise or to interest the
gardener-groom.
After a little private consultation, the two men decide to cross their
hands, and thus make a seat for me between them. My arms rest on their
shoulders; and so they carry me off. My friend trudges behind them, with
the saddle and the cloak. The ponies caper and kick, in unrestrained
enjoyment of their freedom; and sometimes follow, sometimes precede
us, as the humor of the moment inclines them. I am, fortunately for my
bearers, a light weight. After twice resting, they stop altogether, and
set me down on the driest place they can find. I look eagerly through
the mist for some signs of a dwelling-house--and I see nothing but a
little shelving beach, and a sheet of dark water beyond. Where are we?
The gardener-groom vanishes, and appears again on the water, looming
large in a boat. I am laid down in the bottom of the boat, with my
saddle-pillow; and we shove off, leaving the ponies to the desolate
freedom of the moor. They will pick up plenty to eat (the guide says);
and when night comes on they will find their own way to shelter in a
village hard by. The last I see of the hardy little creatures they are
taking a drink of water, side by side, and biting each other sportively
in higher spirits than ever!
Slowly we float over the dark water--not a river, as I had at first
supposed, but a lake--until we reach the shores of a little island; a
flat, lonely, barren patch of ground. I am carried along a rough pathway
made of great flat stones, until we reach the firmer earth, and discover
a human dwelling-place at last. It is a long, low house of one story
high; forming (as well as I can see) three sides of a square. The door
stands hospitably open. The hall within is bare and cold and dreary. The
men open an inner door, and we enter a long corridor, comfortably warmed
by a peat fire. On one wall I notice the closed oaken doors of rooms;
on the other, rows on rows of well-filled book-shelves meet my eye.
Advancing to the end of the first passage, we turn at right angles into
a second. Here a door is opened at last: I find myself in a spacious
room, completely and tastefully furnished, having two beds in it, and
a large fire burning in the grate. The change to this warm and cheerful
place of shelter from the chilly and misty solitude of the moor is
so luxuriously delightful that I am quite content, for the first
few minutes, to stretch myself on a bed, in lazy enjoyment of my new
position; without caring to inquire into whose house we have intruded;
without even wondering at the strange absence of master, mistress, or
member of the family to welcome our arrival under their hospitable roof.
After a while, the first sense of relief passes away. My dormant
curiosity revives. I begin to look about me.
The gardener-groom has disappeared. I discover my traveling companion
at the further end of the room, evidently occupied in questioning the
guide. A word from me brings him to my bedside. What discoveries has he
made? whose is the house in which we are sheltered; and how is it that
no member of the family appears to welcome us?
My friend relates his discoveries. The guide listens as attentively to
the second-hand narrative as if it were quite new to him.
The house that shelters us belongs to a gentleman of ancient Northern
lineage, whose name is Dunross. He has lived in unbroken retirement on
the barren island for twenty years past, with no other companion than a
daughter, who is his only child. He is generally believed to be one of
the most learned men living. The inhabitants of Shetland know him far
and wide, under a name in their dialect which means, being interpreted,
"The Master of Books." The one occasion on which he and his daughter
have been known to leave their island retreat was at a past time when
a terrible epidemic disease broke out among the villages in the
neighborhood. Father and daughter labored day and night among their poor
and afflicted neighbors, with a courage which no danger could shake,
with a tender care which no fatigue could exhaust. The father had
escaped infection, and the violence of the epidemic was beginning to
wear itself out, when the daughter caught the disease. Her life had been
preserved, but she never completely recovered her health. She is now an
incurable sufferer from some mysterious nervous disorder which
nobody understands, and which has kept her a prisoner on the island,
self-withdrawn from all human observation, for years past. Among the
poor inhabitants of the district, the father and daughter are worshiped
as semi-divine beings. Their names come after the Sacred Name in the
prayers which the parents teach to their children.
Such is the household (so far as the guide's story goes) on whose
privacy we have intruded ourselves! The narrative has a certain interest
of its own, no doubt, but it has one defect--it fails entirely to
explain the continued absence of Mr. Dunross. Is it possible that he is
not aware of our presence in the house? We apply the guide, and make a
few further inquiries of him.
"Are we here," I ask, "by permission of Mr. Dunross?"
The guide stares. If I had spoken to him in Greek or Hebrew, I could
hardly have puzzled him more effectually. My friend tries him with a
simpler form of words.
"Did you ask leave to bring us here when you found your way to the
house?"
The guide stares harder than ever, with every appearance of feeling
perfectly scandalized by the question.
"Do you think," he asks, sternly, "'that I am fool enough to disturb the
Master over his books for such a little matter as bringing you and your
friend into this house?"
"Do you mean that you have brought us here without first asking leave?"
I exclaim in amazement.
The guide's face brightens; he has beaten the true state of the case
into our stupid heads at last! "That's just what I mean!" he says, with
an air of infinite relief.
The door opens before we have recovered the shock inflicted on us by
this extraordinary discovery. A little, lean, old gentleman, shrouded
in a long black dressing-gown, quietly enters the room. The guide steps
forward, and respectfully closes the door for him. We are evidently in
the presence of The Master of Books!