He slept, and the scene was renewed with a thousand strange varieties.
Imagination recalled, in fantastic vision, all that he had read of
enchanted pleasures, or of descending goddesses mingling their immortal
nature with favoured man. He now lost his own identity in the person
of Rogero, slumbering away life in the arms of Alcina; and then became
the indignant Rinaldo, cutting his way through the entangling thickets
of Armida's wood.--He awoke heated, and unrefreshed. His heart panted
with his imaginary contest; and his fevered temples beat to agony as he
sprung from his disordered bed, and throwing open the window towards
the breezes of the sea, inhaled their cooling freshness. His tremulous
frame gradually recovered a braced tone; and wrapping his dressing-gown
around him, he stood gazing on the opposite rocks of Lindisfarne, with
feelings as new to him as had been the spectacle of the night before.
He blushed as he thought of rejoining the dear inhabitants of that
sacred spot.--A strange faintness seized on his heart--a sense of shame!
"For what?" cried he, "what have I done, to cause this
self-accusation?--I have not broken my word with my uncle; I did not
consent willingly, to stay till this morning: I made the sacrifice to
Sir Anthony's feelings."
Thus far, his conscience acquitted him; and he breathed freer: but
still he could not say, my heart is lightened of its load.
"I feel myself polluted!" cried he; "I know not what was said and done
last night, to change me thus; but the wine I drank, and those women's
looks and words; and my very dreams, seem to have contaminated my soul
and body!--Oh, holy Lindisfarne!--My uncle, my sweet cousins, why did I
ever leave your innocent presence!"
With this agonized invocation, he hastened to dress himself; that he
might fly from the castle, and all its present mischiefs.
Violante had informed him the preceding night, how so strange a party
came together; and why they had intruded themselves on the hospitality
of his uncle. She described, with satirical pleasantry, a week's
visit, which she and her Thespian sisters had been making to a noble
_amateur_ in Teviotdale.--Lord Warwick was there; and soon after, Duke
Wharton came in his way from the Highlands. At the time of his arrival,
the whole company were on the eve of departure; but as he was coming
southward, and they were to travel in the same direction, he complied
with Warwick's entreaties to join the party.--The storm caught them
on the moors; and as it was attended with thunder, the women became so
frightened, it was necessary to take them to some place of shelter.--A
minute's thought brought to Wharton's recollection that Bamborough was
in the neighbourhood; and without hesitation he ordered the horses
heads of half a dozen carriages to be turned towards the mansion of the
convivial baronet.
As Louis ran over these circumstances in his mind, and recalled the
lively indifference with which the Duke seemed to dally with all this
youth and beauty, and female witchery; turning from one to the other
with the gay caprice of the frolic butterfly, which flies from flower
to flower, hovering and touching, and straight to flight again:--"Happy
Wharton!" exclaimed he, "yours is indeed the spirit which _skims the
earth, and does not soil its wings_! while mine, has only to approach
its surface, and be made but too sensible, that dust I am, and would to
dust return!"
In this mood he descended to the court yard; and gave orders for a boat
to be ready at the castle-cove, to row him across to Lindisfarne as
soon as the tide should serve. But in returning along the terrace, he
encountered the object of his meditation and his envy; the object which
still made his heart linger about the spot he was so determined to
leave.
"Ha, de Montemar!" cried the Duke, "Well met; before the constellations
of last night arise to put yon saucy, upbraiding sun out of
countenance!--But how long have you been making morn hideous with those
rueful looks?--Why, you are a different man, from the etherial son
of joy, who moved amongst us last night like Ganymede dispensing the
draughts of Olympus!"
Louis saw in this gay hyperbole, only the spectre of a folly he was
ashamed of. His disturbed countenance spoke what was passing in his
mind; but trying to smile, "Indeed, my Lord," said he, "you are right
to laugh at my inebriated senses.--I assure you, I despise myself."
"For what, de Montemar? That you have eyes, and ears, and are a man?"