And, too, he perceived that the world would see something
grimly humorous in his insistence on the girl's parentage, when all the
time, in the home to which he was to bring her, dwelt these unlovable,
snobbish old parents of his own. So he laughed. And he thought of how
he had been fooled, and played with, and duped, and cheated, and all
but disgraced by the very people on whom he had looked down from a
fancied superiority. And so he laughed. And as he laughed his hands
swelled up to the size of pillows, and he thought that he was dressed
in a loose garment spotted all over with great spots, and that he was
standing on a stage before these grave, silent hillmen. The light came
in through a golden-yellow square just behind them. In the front row
sat Mary, looking at him with wide-open, trusting eyes. And he was
revolving these hands like pillows around each other, trying to make
the sombre men and the wistful girl laugh with him, while over and
over certain words slipped in between his cachinnations, like stray
bird-notes through a rattle of drums.
"I have no fresh motley for my lady's amusement," he was saying to her,
"no new philosophies to spread out for my lady's inspection, no bright
pictures to display for my lady's pleasure, and so I, like a poor
poverty-stricken minstrel whose harp has been broken, yet dare beg at
the castle gate for a crumb of my lady's bounty." At which he would
have wept, but could only laugh louder and louder.
Then dimly he knew again he was in his own room, and he felt that
several people were moving back and forth quickly. He tried to rise,
but could not, and he knew that he was slipping back to the hall and
the solemn crowd of men. He did not want to go. He grasped convulsively
at the blanket with his sound hand, and shrieked aloud.
"I am sick! I am sick! I am sick!" he cried louder and louder.
Some one laid a cool hand on his forehead, and he lay quiet and smiled
contentedly. The room and the people became wraithlike. He saw them
still, but he saw through them to a reality of soft meadows and summer
skies, from which Mary leaned, resting her hand on his brow. Voices
spoke, but muffled, as though by many veils. They talked of various
things.
"It's the mountain fever," he heard one say. "It's a wonder he escaped
it so long."
Then the cool hand was withdrawn from his brow, and inexorably he was
hurried back into the land of visions.