CHAPTER XVIII.
"Known mischiefs have their cure, but doubts have none;
And better is despair than friendless hope
Mixed with a killing fear."—May.
It is two o'clock on the following day. Horace,—who came down from town for the ball, and is staying with Dorian,—sauntering leisurely into the smoking-room at Sartoris, finds Branscombe there, overlooking some fishing-tackle.
This room is a mingled and hopelessly entangled mass of guns, pipes, whips, spurs, fishing-rods, and sporting pictures; there are, too, a few other pictures that might not exactly come under this head, and a various and most remarkable collection of lounging-chairs.
There is a patriarchal sofa, born to create slumber; and an ancient arm-chair, stuffed with feathers and dreams of many sleepers. Over the door stand out the skeleton remains of a horse's head, bleached and ghastly, and altogether hideous, that, even now, reminds its master of a former favorite hunter that had come to a glorious but untimely end upon the hunting-field. A stuffed setter, with very glassy eyes, sits staring, in an unearthly fashion, in one corner. Upon a window-sill a cat sits, blinking lazily at the merry spring sunshine outside.
"Are you really going back to town this evening, Horace?" asks the owner of all these gems, in a somewhat gloomy fashion, bending over a fishing line as he speaks.
"Yes. I feel I am bound to be back there again as soon as possible."
"Business?"
"Well, I can hardly say it is exactly press of business," says the candid Horace; "but if a man wants to gain any, he must be on the spot, I take it?"