Fiona MacLeod, “Love in a Mist”

This is the first story in the series that is actually sick-making. Be warned: the sentimentality herein is pretty overwhelming. Fiona MacLeod was the pen name of a dude named William Sharp, who was a friend of George MacDonald and did the whole Christian-mysticism-fading-into-Paganism thing in a way to make sure he would never be taken seriously by later generations. (The reason he chose a female pen name, the reverse of then-common practice, probably has more to do with the Victorian cult of woman as a sensitive, spiritual being than with any sexual-identity politics on his part. Which cult is bullshit, no matter what Gaiea the Earth Mother says.) Anyway, the story was found in an 1896 volume called Good Words.

In a green hollow in the woodlands, Love, a mere child, with sunny golden curls and large blue eyes, stood whimpering. A round tear had fallen on his breast and trickled slowly down his white skin, till it lay like a dewdrop on his thigh: another was in pursuit, but had reached no further than a dimple in the chubby cheek, into which it had heedlessly rolled and could not get out again. Beside Love was a thicket of white wild roses, so innumerable that they seemed like a cloud of butterflies alit on a hedge for a moment and about to take wing — so white that the little wanderer looked as though he were made of rose-stained ivory. Here was the cause of the boy’s whimpering. A thorn-point had slightly scratched his right arm, barely tearing the skin but puncturing it sufficiently to let a tiny drop of blood, like a baby rowan-berry, slowly well forth.

Love looked long and earnestly at the wound. Then he whimpered, but stopped to smile at a squirrel who pretended to be examining the state of its tail, but was really watching him. When the little drop of blood would neither roll away nor go back, Love grew angry, and began to cry.

“Ah, I am so weak,” he sighed; “perhaps I shall die! Ah, wretched little soul that I am, to lie here in this horrible thorny wood. No — no — I will drag myself out into the sunshine, and die there. Perhaps — p’raps — (sniffle) — ’aps — (sniffle) — a kind lark will” — (sniffle).

Sobbing bitterly, Love crept through a beech-hedge, and so into the open sunlit meadow beyond. He was so unhappy that he quite forgot to knock off from a grey thistle a huge snail, although its shell shone temptingly many-hued; and even a cricket that jumped on to his foot and then off again hardly brought to his face a wan smile.

But after sitting awhile by a heavy burdock, and sobbing at gradually lengthening intervals, he stopped abruptly. Out of a garth of red clover and white campions he saw two round black eyes staring at him with such unmitigated astonishment that he could do nothing but stare back with equal rigidity and silence.

“Why, it is only a brown hare,” exclaimed Love below his breath. “How it smiles!” — and therewith he broke into so hearty a laugh that the hare sprang round as if on a pivot, and went leaping away through the meadow. Beyond the puffed campions were a cluster of tall ox-eye daisies, and they moved so temptingly towards him in the breeze that Love ran as it were to meet them.

No sooner, however, was he in their midst than he pluckt them one by one, and then ran back with them towards the wood, in whose cool shadow, he thought, it would be delightful to weave of them a starry wreath.

But by the time the wreath was woven, Love was both thirsty and aweary of being still. So, having sipped the dew from a bed of green mosses among the surface-roots of a vast oak, he ran into a little wilderness of wild hyacinths, and danced therein with maddest glee, while the sunlight splashed upon him through the dappling shadows of the oak boughs.

A fat bumble-bee and two white butterflies joined him for a time, but at last the bee grew hot and breathless, and the butterflies were frightened by his joyous laughter and the clapping of his little hands. Scarce, however, was he left alone once more than he descried a young fawn among the fern. It took him but a moment to snatch his wreath of ox-eye daisies and but another to spring to the side of the startled fawn and place the wreath round its neck. The great brown eyes looked fearfully at Love, who, little rascal, pretended to be caressing when he was really making ready for a leap. In a second he was on the fawn’s back — but ah! poor Love, he had not calculated for such a flight. Away sped the fawn, athwart the glade, through the hollow, and out across the meadow towards the sand-dune. Gradually Love’s hold became more and more insecure, and at last off he came right into a mass of yellow irises and a tadpole-haunted little pool.

Love might have stopped to cry, or at least to chase the tadpoles, but he happened to see a sea-gull flying low beyond him across the dunes. With a shout he pursued it, forgetful alike of the fawn and his lost wreath.

But when he came to the break in the dunes he could not see the ocean because of the haze that lay upon it, and in which the sea-gull was soon lost to sight. But at least the sands were there. For a time he wandered disconsolately along the shore. Then, when he saw the tide slowly advancing, he frowned. “Ha! ha!” he laughed, “I shall build a castle of sand, and then the sea will not know what to do, and the white gull will come back again.”

But having built his sand-castle, Love was so weary that he curled himself up behind the shallow barrier, and having wearily but lovingly placed beside him three pink half-shells, a pearly willie-winkie, a piece of wave-worn chalk, and a hermit-crab (which soon crawled away), he was speedily asleep.

Before long the ripple of the water against the very frontier of his small domain aroused the brine-bred things that live by the sea-marge. A few cockles gaped thirstily, and one or two whistle-fish sent their jets of water up into the air and then protruded their shelly snouts as if to scan the tardy advance of the tide. The sand-lice bestirred themselves, creeping, leaping, confusedly eager not to be overtaken by that rapid ooze which would quicksand them in a moment.

Then a piece of dulse was washed right on to the castle-wall. On the salt-smelling wrack was a crab, and this startled voyager saw dry land and mayhap new food to sample in the white foot of Love that lay temptingly near. Just then a flying shrimp, a mad aeronaut, a reckless enthusiast among its kind, took the fortress at a leap and alighted on Love’s white and crinkled belly. The boy’s body instinctively shivered. Still, he might not have awaked, had not the crab at that moment joyously gripped, as succulent prey, his little toe, curled as it was like a small and dainty mollusc.

Love sat up, and with indignant eyes remonstrated with the crab, who had at once given way and retreated with haphazard assiduity to the shelter of a convenient pebble partially embedded in the sand.

As for the shrimp, it had come and gone like the very ghost of a tickle, like the dream-fly of sleepland.

But suddenly Love heard a voice, a low whisper, coming he knew not whence, and yet so strangely familiar. Was it borne upon the white lips of the tide, or did it come from the curving billow that swept shoreward, or from the deep beyond? Who can guess what the voice said, since Love himself knew not the sweet strange word, but was comforted: knowing only that he was to return to the wood again. Fragments he caught, though little comprehensible: “My child, my little wandering Love, who art born daily, and art ever young,” and then the words of which he knew nothing, or but vaguely apprehended.

Yet ever petulant, Love would rather have stayed by the sea, even to the undoing of his castle-walls, already toppling with the upward reaching damp of the stealthy underooze, had he not descried a white wild-goat standing on the dune and looking at him with mild eyes like sunlit sardonyx. With a glad cry he ran towards the goat, who made no play of caprice but seemed to invite, for all the strangeness of the essay, this young rider with the child’s smile and the emperor’s eyes.

The yellow-hammers and ousels, the whin-chats and sea-larks sent abroad long thrilling notes in their excitement, as the white goat, with Love laughingly astride, raced across the dunes and over the meadows towards the wood. But as the too-impulsive steed took a fallen oak at a bound, its feet caught in the loose bark, and poor Love was shot forward into a hollow of green moss. Alas, in the comet-like passage thither, a nettle slightly stung the sole of one foot; so that the moment he had recovered from his somersault he snatched a broken oak-branch, and turned to chastise the too heedless goat. But, to his astonishment, no goat was to be seen. It had disappeared as though it were a blossom blown by the wind.

Rubbing his eyes, Love looked again and again. No goat; no sound, even, save the ruffling of the low wind among the lofty domes of the forest, the tap-tapping of a woodpecker, the shrill cry of a jay and indiscriminate warbling undertone of a myriad birds, with, below all, the chirp of the grasshopper and the drone of the small wood-wasp and the foraging bee.

Beyond the last copse the sun was slowly moving in a whirlwind of golden fire.

Hark! What was that? Love started, and then slipped cautiously from tree to tree, finding his way into the woodland like a gliding sunray. He heard voices, and a snatch of a song: —

“The wild bird called to me, ‘Follow!’
The nightingale whispered ‘Stay!’
When lost in the hawthorn-hollow
We” . . . . .

The next moment he descried a lovely girl lying on the moss below an oak, with her face towards the setting sun, whose warm flood soaked through the wide green flame of the irradiated leaves. A little way beyond her was a young man, no other than the singer, standing by an easel, and putting the last touches to the canvas upon which he was at work.

Love was curious. He had never seen a picture, and, in fact, he thought the man was probably spreading out something to eat. He, child though he was, was so fearless, that no one could have daunted him, and so natively royal, that no idea even of his being gainsaid troubled his brain.

With great interest he stole alongside the painter. He looked at the canvas dubiously; sniffed it; and then turned away with a gesture of disapproval. He liked the look of the pigments on a palette that lay on the ground, and thought that the man was perhaps no other than he who painted the king-cups and violets and bells of the hyacinths. But the smell made him sick, and so he stole towards the girl to see what she was doing.

It vaguely puzzled him that neither the man nor the girl seemed to be aware of his presence; yet, as Love never troubled to think, the bewilderment was but a shadow of a passing cloud. The girl was beautiful. He loved better to look at her than at any other flower of the forest. Even the blue cornflower, even the hedge-speedwell, had not so exquisite a blue as the dream-wrought eyes into whose unconscious depths he looked long, and saw at last his own image, clear as in deep water. “I wish she would sing,” said Love to himself; “that man yonder is no better than a huge bumble-bee.” With a mischievous glance he pluckt a tall wind-flower, and gently tickled her with it.

A faint smile, a delicate wave of colour, came into her face. “Ah, Love! Love!” she whispered below her breath.

How sweet the words were! With a happy sigh Love cuddled up close to the beautiful girl, and, tired and drowsy, would soon have fallen asleep, had not the heaving of her bosom disturbed him.

“Ah, what a tiresome world it is,” exclaimed Love fretfully, as he crawled indolently away, and then rested again among some blue flowers. There he sat for some time, sulkily tying a periwinkle round each toe. Suddenly, with a cry of joy, he descried among the flowers his lost bow and sheaf of arrows. With a merry laugh he reached for them, and in mere wantonness began to fray the petals with an arrow, and to tangle them into an intricate net of blue blossom and green fibre.

But in the midst of his glee came retribution. He heard a rustling sound, a quick exclamation, and the next moment an easel fell right atop of him, and, but for his soft, mossy carpet, might have flattened him, for all his white plumpness. True, the easel was picked up again immediately, but Love felt the insult as well as the blow. With a yell of anger, that very nearly startled a neighbouring caterpillar, he fitted an arrow to his bow, and shot it straight at the clumsy owner of the easel. “Aha,” he thought, “I have paid you back, you see,” for he saw the young man stop, grow pale, hesitate, and then suddenly fall on his knees. “Ah! he is wounded to death,” and Love’s tender heart got the better of his resentment, and he would fain have recalled that deadly arrow. But to his astonishment the youth seemed more eager to seize and kiss the girl’s hand than to save his life, if that were still possible!

As for the girl, the sunset was upon her face as a flame. She tried to rise, and in doing to trampled upon one of Love’s toes. Poor little Love danced about furiously on one foot, holding his wounded toe with one hand; but alas! again his hasty anger overcame him, and, before he realised what he had done, he shot another arrow, this time straight into the heart of the lovely girl.

Alas, how it weakened her at once! In the agony of death, no doubt, she fell forward into the man’s arms and laid her head upon his breast.

But speedily Love saw that they were not dead or even dying, but merely kissing and fondling each other, and this too in the most insensate fashion.

“Oh, how funny! how funny!” laughed Love, and rolled about in an ecstasy among the blue flowers, making the tangle worse than ever.

* * *

(Twilight.)

She. Darling — darling — let me go now — let me go. It will soon be dark.

He. Sweetheart, wait!

She. Hush! What is that?

(A low tiny snore comes from amidst the blue flowers.)

He. Oh, it is only a beetle rubbing its shards, or a mole burrowing through the grass.

She. Ah, look; we are trampling underfoot such beautiful flowers. These must be our flowers, dear, must they not? What are they?

He. I don’t know — ah, yes, to be sure — they must be the flower called “Love in a Mist.”

She (dreamily). I wonder if we could see Love himself if we searched below all this blue tangle?

. . . She leans down, and peers through the blue veil of the flowers. Love wakes with the fragrance of her warm breath playing upon his cheek, but does not sir, for he his remorseful at having shot an arrow at so lovely a thing. With loving caressing touch he gently lays a dew-drop into each blue flower of her eyes. . . .

She (whispering as she rises). How beautiful, how wonderful it all is!

He. Ah, darling, tears in those beautiful eyes! Come, let me kiss them away.

Love (below his breath). Greedy wretch — I gave them to her! Ah, she shall have many more, and you, mayhap, none!

Hand in hand, the lovers go away, and, well content, Love turns over on his side and is soon sound asleep. The moon rises, full and golden yellow. From a beech-covert a nightingale sings with intermittent snatches of joy. Above the blue flowers two white night-moths flicker in a slow fantastic wayward dance. A glowworm, hanging on a lock of Love’s curly hair, shines as though it were the child of a moonbeam and a flower.

But at last the glowworm, crawling from its high place and adown the white sweetness of Love’s face, tickled his small nose, and caused him to sit up, startled, and wide awake. “What — who?” muttered Love confusedly.

THE NIGHTJAR.

Quir-rr-rr-o! . . . Quir-rr-rr-o!

THE NIGHTINGALE.

Kew-u-ee, kwee! Kwee-kwee-tchug! tchug! tchug! kwee-kwilloh!

A RESTLESS MAGPIE (mockingly).

Kwilloh . . . kwollow, ohee kwollow-kwan!

ECHO.

Follow . . . oh, follow them!

FURTHER ECHO.

Follow! . . . Fol . . . low!

LOVE (rising).

I come, I come! who calls?

DISTANT ECHO (faintly).

Fol . . . low.