Pembroke

Pembroke

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pembroke, by Mary E. Wilkins
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Title: Pembroke A Novel
Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Release Date: December 31, 2005 [EBook #17428]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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PEMBROKE ***

Produced by Jeff Kaylin

Transcriber's Note: The images for this text were scanned from the
1894 edition.

Pembroke

Mary E. Wilkins
Harper & Brothers Publishers; New York: 1900
[Illustration: "'It's beautiful,' Rose said"]
Introductory Sketch
Pembroke was originally intended as a study of the human will in
several New England characters, in different phases of disease and
abnormal development, and to prove, especially in the most marked
case, the truth of a theory that its cure depended entirely upon the
capacity of the individual for a love which could rise above all
considerations of self, as Barnabas Thayer's love for Charlotte Barnard
finally did.
While Barnabas Thayer is the most pronounced exemplification of this
theory, and while he, being drawn from life, originally suggested the
scheme of the study, a number of the other characters, notably Deborah
Thayer, Richard Alger, and Cephas Barnard, are instances of the same
spiritual disease. Barnabas to me was as much the victim of disease as a
man with curvature of the spine; he was incapable of straightening
himself to his former stature until he had laid hands upon a more purely
unselfish love than he had ever known, through his anxiety for
Charlotte, and so raised himself to his own level.
When I make use of the term abnormal, I do not mean unusual in any
sense. I am far from any intention to speak disrespectfully or disloyally
of those stanch old soldiers of the faith who landed upon our
inhospitable shores and laid the foundation, as on a very rock of spirit,
for the New England of to-day; but I am not sure, in spite of their
godliness, and their noble adherence, in the face of obstacles, to the
dictates of their consciences, that their wills were not developed past
the reasonable limit of nature. What wonder is it that their descendants
inherit this peculiarity, though they may develop it for much less
worthy and more trivial causes than the exiling themselves for a
question of faith, even the carrying-out of personal and petty aims and
quarrels?

There lived in a New England village, at no very remote time, a man
who objected to the painting of the kitchen floor, and who quarrelled
furiously with his wife concerning the same. When she persisted, in
spite of his wishes to the contrary, and the floor was painted, he refused
to cross it to his dying day, and always, to his great inconvenience, but
probably to his soul's satisfaction, walked around it.
A character like this, holding to a veriest trifle with such a deathless
cramp of the will, might naturally be regarded as a notable exception to
a general rule; but his brethren who sit on church steps during services,
who are dumb to those whom they should love, and will not enter
familiar doors because of quarrels over matters of apparently no
moment, are legion. Pembroke is intended to portray a typical New
England village of some sixty years ago, as many of the characters
flourished at that time, but villages of a similar description have existed
in New England at a much later date, and they exist to-day in a very
considerable degree. There are at the present time many little towns in
New England along whose pleasant elm or maple shaded streets are
scattered characters as pronounced as any in Pembroke. A short time
since a Boston woman recited in my hearing a list of seventy-five
people in the very small Maine village in which she was born and
brought up, and every one of the characters which she mentioned had
some almost incredibly marked physical or mental characteristic.
However, this state of things--this survival of the more prominent traits
of the old stiff-necked ones, albeit their necks were stiffened by their
resistance of the adversary--can necessarily be known only to the
initiated. The sojourner from cities for the summer months cannot often
penetrate in the least, though he may not be aware of it, the reserve and
dignified aloofness of the dwellers in the white cottages along the road
over which he drives. He often looks upon them from the superior
height of a wise and keen student of character; he knows what he thinks
of them, but he never knows