Ruling Passion; tales of nature and human nature

Henry Van Dyke

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. Let me never tag a moral to a story, nor tell a story without a meaning. Make me respect my material so much that I dare not slight my work. Help me to deal very honestly with words and with people because they are both alive. Show me that as in a river, so in a writing, clearness is the best quality, and a little that is pure is worth more than much that is mixed. Teach me to see the local colour without being blind to the inner light. Give me an ideal that will stand the strain of weaving into human stuff on the loom of the real. Keep me from caring more for books than for folks, for art than for life. Steady me to do my full stint of work as well as I can: and when that is done, stop me, pay what wages Thou wilt, and help me to say, from a quiet heart, a grateful AMEN.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819923077
• Langue: English

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THE RULING PASSION
by Henry van Dyke
A WRITER'S REQUEST OF HIS MASTER
Let me never tag a moral to a story, nor tell astory without a meaning. Make me respect my material so much that Idare not slight my work. Help me to deal very honestly with wordsand with people because they are both alive. Show me that as in ariver, so in a writing, clearness is the best quality, and a littlethat is pure is worth more than much that is mixed. Teach me to seethe local colour without being blind to the inner light. Give me anideal that will stand the strain of weaving into human stuff on theloom of the real. Keep me from caring more for books than forfolks, for art than for life. Steady me to do my full stint of workas well as I can: and when that is done, stop me, pay what wagesThou wilt, and help me to say, from a quiet heart, a gratefulAMEN.
PREFACE
In every life worth writing about there is a rulingpassion, — “the very pulse of the machine. ” Unless you touch that,you are groping around outside of reality.
Sometimes it is romantic love: Natures masterpieceof interested benevolence. In almost all lives this passion has itsseason of empire. Therefore, and rightly, it is the favourite themeof the storyteller. Romantic love interests almost everybody,because almost everybody knows something about it, or would like toknow.
But there are other passions, no less real, whichalso have their place and power in human life. Some of them comeearlier, and sometimes they last longer, than romantic love. Theyplay alongside of it and are mixed up with it, now checking it, nowadvancing its flow and tingeing it with their own colour.
Just because love is so universal, it is often toone of the other passions that we must look for the distinctivehue, the individual quality of a life-story. Granted, if you will,that everybody must fall in love, or ought to fall in love, Howwill he do it? And what will he do afterwards? These are questionsnot without interest to one who watches the human drama as afriend. The answers depend upon those hidden and durable desires,affections, and impulses to which men and women give themselves upfor rule and guidance.
Music, nature, children, honour, strife, revenge,money, pride, friendship, loyalty, duty, — to these objects andothers like them the secret power of personal passion often turns,and the life unconsciously follows it, as the tides in the seafollow the moon in the sky.
When circumstances cross the ruling passion, whenrocks lie in the way and winds are contrary, then things happen,characters emerge, slight events are significant, mere adventuresare transformed into a real plot. What care I how many“hair-breadth 'scapes” and “moving accidents” your hero may passthrough, unless I know him for a man? He is but a puppet strung onwires. His kisses are wooden and his wounds bleed sawdust. There isnothing about him to remember except his name, and perhaps a bit ofdialect. Kill him or crown him, — what difference does it make?
But go the other way about your work:
"Take the least man of all mankind, as I;
Look at his head and heart, find how and why
He differs from his fellows utterly, "—
and now there is something to tell, with ameaning.
If you tell it at length, it is a novel, — apainting. If you tell it in brief, it is a short story, — anetching. But the subject is always the same: the unseen,mysterious, ruling passion weaving the stuff of human nature intopatterns wherein the soul is imaged and revealed.
To tell about some of these ruling passions, simply,clearly, and concretely, is what I want to do in this book. Thecharacters are chosen, for the most part, among plain people,because their feelings are expressed with fewer words and greatertruth, not being costumed for social effect. The scene is laid onNature's stage because I like to be out-of-doors, even when I amtrying to think and learning to write.
“Avalon, ” Princeton, July 22, 1901.
I. A LOVER OF MUSIC
I
He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literallyon the wings of the wind. It whirled him along like a bigsnowflake, and dropped him at the door of Moody's “Sportsmen'sRetreat, ” as if he were a New Year's gift from the North Pole. Hiscoming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there was something morein it, after all. At all events, you shall hear, if you will, thetime and the manner of his arrival.
It was the last night of December, some thirty-fiveyears ago. All the city sportsmen who had hunted the deer underBill Moody's direction had long since retreated to their homes,leaving the little settlement on the border of the Adirondackwilderness wholly under the social direction of the natives.
The annual ball was in full swing in the dining-roomof the hotel. At one side of the room the tables and chairs werepiled up, with their legs projecting in the air like a thicket ofvery dead trees.
The huge stove in the southeast corner was blushinga rosy red through its thin coat of whitewash, and exhaling afurious dry heat flavoured with the smell of baked iron. At thenorth end, however, winter reigned; and there were tiny ridges offine snow on the floor, sifted in by the wind through the cracks inthe window-frames.
But the bouncing girls and the heavy-footed guidesand lumbermen who filled the ball-room did not appear to mind theheat or the cold. They balanced and “sashayed” from the tropics tothe arctic circle. They swung at corners and made “ladies' change”all through the temperate zone. They stamped their feet and diddouble-shuffles until the floor trembled beneath them. The tinlamp-reflectors on the walls rattled like castanets.
There was only one drawback to the hilarity of theoccasion. The band, which was usually imported from Sandy RiverForks for such festivities, — a fiddle, a cornet, a flute, and anaccordion, — had not arrived. There was a general idea that themail-sleigh, in which the musicians were to travel, had beendelayed by the storm, and might break its way through thesnow-drifts and arrive at any moment. But Bill Moody, who wasnaturally of a pessimistic temperament, had offered a differentexplanation.
“I tell ye, old Baker's got that blame' band down tohis hotel at the Falls now, makin' 'em play fer his party. Themmusic fellers is onsartin; can't trust 'em to keep anythin' 'ceptthe toon, and they don't alluz keep that. Guess we might uz wellshet up this ball, or go to work playin' games. ”
At this proposal a thick gloom had fallen over theassembly; but it had been dispersed by Serena Moody's cheerfuloffer to have the small melodion brought out of the parlour, and toplay for dancing as well as she could. The company agreed that shewas a smart girl, and prepared to accept her performance withenthusiasm. As the dance went on, there were frequent comments ofapproval to encourage her in the labour of love.
“Sereny's doin' splendid, ain't she? ” said theother girls.
To which the men replied, “You bet! The playin' 'sreel nice, and good 'nough fer anybody— outside o' city folks.”
But Serena's repertory was weak, though her spiritwas willing. There was an unspoken sentiment among the men that“The Sweet By and By” was not quite the best tune in the world fora quadrille. A Sunday-school hymn, no matter how rapidly it wasrendered, seemed to fall short of the necessary vivacity for apolka. Besides, the wheezy little organ positively refused to gofaster than a certain gait. Hose Ransom expressed the popularopinion of the instrument, after a figure in which he and hispartner had been half a bar ahead of the music from start tofinish, when he said:
“By Jolly! that old maloney may be chock full o'relijun and po'try; but it ain't got no DANCE into it, no more 'n asaw-mill. ”
This was the situation of affairs inside of Moody'stavern on New Year's Eve. But outside of the house the snow lay twofeet deep on the level, and shoulder-high in the drifts. The skywas at last swept clean of clouds. The shivering stars and theshrunken moon looked infinitely remote in the black vault ofheaven. The frozen lake, on which the ice was three feet thick andsolid as rock, was like a vast, smooth bed, covered with a whitecounterpane. The cruel wind still poured out of the northwest,driving the dry snow along with it like a mist of powdereddiamonds.
Enveloped in this dazzling, pungent atmosphere, halfblinded and bewildered by it, buffeted and yet supported by theonrushing torrent of air, a man on snow-shoes, with a light pack onhis shoulders, emerged from the shelter of the Three Sisters'Islands, and staggered straight on, down the lake. He passed theheadland of the bay where Moody's tavern is ensconced, and probablywould have drifted on beyond it, to the marsh at the lower end ofthe lake, but for the yellow glare of the ball-room windows and thesound of music and dancing which came out to him suddenly through alull in the wind.
He turned to the right, climbed over the low wall ofbroken ice-blocks that bordered the lake, and pushed up the gentleslope to the open passageway by which the two parts of the ramblinghouse were joined together. Crossing the porch with the lastremnant of his strength, he lifted his hand to knock, and fellheavily against the side door.
The noise, heard through the confusion within,awakened curiosity and conjecture.
Just as when a letter comes to a forest cabin, it isturned over and over, and many guesses are made as to thehandwriting and the authorship before it occurs to any one to openit and see who sent it, so was this rude knocking at the gate theoccasion of argument among the rustic revellers as to what it mightportend. Some thought it was the arrival of the belated band.Others supposed the sound betokened a descent of the Corey clanfrom the Upper Lake, or a change of heart on the part of old DanDunning, who had refused to attend the ball because they would notallow him to call out the figures. The guesses were various; but noone thought of the possible arrival of a stranger at such an h