The Master of Ballantrae Chapter 5

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Chapter 5 of The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Thomas Copeland. Chapter 5 A Count of All That Passed on the Night of February 27, 1757 On the evening of the interview referred to, the Master went abroad. He was abroad a great deal of the next day also, for that fatal 27th, but where he went or what he did we never concerned ourselves to ask until next day.

If we had done so, and by any chance found out, it might have changed all. But as all we did was done in ignorance, and should be so judged, I shall so narrate these passages as they appeared to us in the moment of their birth, and reserve all that I since discovered for the time of its discovery. For I have now come to one of the dark parts of my narrative and must engage the reader's indulgence for my patron.

All the twenty-seventh that rigorous weather endured, a stifling cold, the folk passing about like smoking chimneys, the wide hearth in the hall piled high with fuel, some of the spring birds that had already blundered north into our neighborhood, besieging the windows of the house or trotting on the frozen turf like things distracted. About noon there came a blink of sunshine, showing a very pretty, wintry, frosty landscape of white hills and woods, with crails luggered waiting for a wind under the crag-head, and the smoke mounting straight into the air from every farm and cottage. With the coming of night the haze closed in overhead. It fell dark and still and starless and exceeding cold, a night the most unseasonable fit for strange events.

Mrs. Henweaver withdrew, as was now her custom, very early. We had set ourselves of late to pass the evening with a game of cards, another mark that our visitor was wearying mightily of the life at Dura's dear, and we had not been long at this when my old lord slipped from his place beside the fire and was off without a word to seek the warmth of bed. The three thus left together had neither love nor courtesy to share. Not one of us would have sat up one instant to oblige another, yet from the influence of custom and, as the cards had just been dealt, we continued the form of playing out the round.

I should say we were late sitters, and though my lord had departed earlier than was his custom, twelve was already gone some time upon the clock and the servants long ago in bed. Another thing I should say, that although I never saw the master any way affected with liquor, he had been drinking freely and was perhaps, although he showed it not, a trifle heated.

Anyway, he now practised one of his transitions, and so soon as the door closed behind my lord and without the smallest change of voice shifted from ordinary civil talk into a stream of insult. My dear Henry, it is yours to play, he had been saying, and now continued. It is a very strange thing how, even in so small a matter as a game of cards, you display your rusticity. You play Jacob like a bonnet layered or a sailor in a tavern. The same dullness, the same petty greed, c'est l'enterre de bité qui me fait rager. It is strange I should have such a brother. Even square-toes has a certain vivacity when his stake is imperiled, but the dreary-ness of a game with you, I positively lack language to depict. Mr. Henry continued to look at his cards as though very maturely considering some play, but his mind was elsewhere.

Dear God, will this never be done, inquires the Master. Quelle lourdeaux! But why do I trouble you with French expressions which are lost on such an ignoramus? A lourdeaux, my dear brother, is, as we might say, a bumpkin, a clown, a plodpole, a fellow without grace, lightness, quickness, any gift of pleasing, any natural brilliancy, such a one as you shall see when you desire by looking in the mirror.

I tell you these things for your good, I assure you. And besides square-toes, looking at me and stifling a yawn, it is one of my diversions in this very dreary spot to toast you and your master at the fire like chestnuts. I have great pleasure in your case, for I observe the nickname, rustic as it is, as always the power to make you writhe. But sometimes I have more trouble with this dear fellow here, who seems to have gone to sleep upon his card.

Do you not see the applicability of the epithet I have just explained, dear Henry?