The Revolt of "Mother" and Other Stories

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780486404288
• eBook ISBN: 9780486158389
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Eight poignant tales vividly portray patient, self-reliant heroines living in small New England villages .Well-known title story plus "A New England Nun," "Old Woman Magoun," "Gentian," "One Good Time," "The Selfishness of Amelia Lamkin," "The Apple Tree," and "The Butterfly." An excellent sampling of regional work by one of America's best-known women writers.

THE SELFISHNESS OF AMELIA LAMKIN

IT WAS A morning in late February. The day before there had been a storm of unusually damp, clogging snow, which had lodged upon everything in strange, shapeless masses. The trees bore big blobs of snow, caught here and there in forks or upon extremities. They looked as if the northwester had pelted them with snowballs. Below the rise of ground on which the Lamkin house stood there was a low growth of trees, and they resembled snowball bushes in full bloom. Amelia Lamkin at her breakfast-table could see them. There were seven persons at the breakfast-table: Josiah Lamkin and his wife Amelia; Annie Sears, the eldest daughter, who was married and lived at home; Addie Lamkin; the second daughter, a pretty girl of eighteen; Tommy Lamkin, aged thirteen; little Johnny Field, a child of four, an orphan grandchild of Amelia Lamkin; and Jane Strong, Amelia’s unmarried sister, who was visiting her. Annie Sears was eating, with dainty little bites, toast and eggs prepared in a particular way. She was delicate, and careful about her diet. The one maid in the household was not trusted to prepare Annie’s eggs. Amelia did that. She was obliged to rise early in any case. Harry Sears, Annie’s husband, left for the city at seven o’clock, and he was also particular about his eggs, although he was not delicate. Addie loathed eggs in any form except an omelet, and Hannah, the maid, could not achieve one. Therefore, Amelia cooked Addie’s nice, fluffy omelet. Tommy was not particular about quality, but about quantity, and Amelia had that very much upon her mind. Johnny’s rice was cooked in a special way which Hannah had not mastered, and Amelia prepared that. Josiah liked porterhouse beefsteak broiled to an exact degree of rareness, and Hannah could not be trusted with that. Hannah’s coffee was always muddy, and the Lamkins detested muddy coffee; therefore, Amelia made the coffee.

Hannah’s morning duties resolved themselves into standing heavily about, resting her weight first upon one large flat foot, then upon the other, while her mistress prepared breakfast, then waiting upon the table in an absent, desultory fashion. There was a theory in the Lamkin household that poor Hannah worked very hard, since she was the only maid in a family of seven. The neighbors also acquiesced in that opinion, and Hannah herself felt pleasantly and comfortably injured. Nobody pitied Amelia Lamkin, least of all her own family. She had always waited upon them and obliterated herself to that extent that she seemed scarcely to have a foothold at all upon the earth, but to balance timidly upon the extreme edge of existence. Now and then Amelia’s unmarried sister, Jane Strong, visited the Lamkins, and always expressed her unsolicited opinion. The Lamkins were justly incensed, and even Amelia herself bristled her soft plumage of indignation. She would say privately to her sister that she realized that she meant well, but she did wish that she would let her live her own way without interference; that she, Amelia, got her happiness in ways that Jane could not understand. Amelia would be quite disagreeable, and her references to Jane’s single condition would be obvious; then later, being gentle to the very core, she would beg Jane’s pardon, which would be granted stiffly, without the slightest retreat from the position of attack. “Of course I don’t mind a straw about what you threw out about my not being married,” said Jane. “You know as well as I do that it was my own choice.”

“Of course,” responded Amelia, meekly, but she looked reminiscent. She was trying to remember what serious suitors Jane had really had. Jane saw the expression and understood. She was nothing if not honest.

“Land! I don’t mean to say there was a line of men on their knees to marry me,” she said, brusquely. “There wasn’t a run as there was on that New York bank, and men hanging round from dawn till dark. Most of them got married afterward, and I guess they were pretty well satisfied, and I don’t believe one of them lost a meal of victuals or a night’s sleep. But you know as well as I do that there were chances I might have followed up if I wanted to.”

“Yes, I know,” returned Amelia, with more assurance. Really she had no doubt that if her sister had chosen to follow up any man, even her own husband Josiah, he might have capitulated. There had always been something fascinating about Jane, and she had been and was still handsome. She was much handsomer than Amelia, although she was ten years older. Amelia was faded almost out as to color, and intense solicitude for others and perfect meekness had crossed her little face with deep lines, and bowed her slender figure like that of a patient old horse, accustomed to having his lameness ignored, and standing before doors in harness through all kinds of weather. Amelia’s neck, which was long and slender, had the same curve of utter submission which one sees in the neck of a weary old beast of burden. She would slightly raise that drooping neck to expostulate with Jane. There would be a faint suggestion of ancient spirit; then it would disappear. Jane, her own chin raised splendidly, eyed her sister with a sort of tender resentment and contempt.

“Of course you know,” said Jane, “that I’m enough sight better off the way I am. I’m freer than any married woman in the world. Then I’ve kept my looks. My figure is just as good as it ever was, and my hair’s just as thick and not a thread of gray. I suppose the time’s got to come, if I live long enough, that I shall look in my glass, and see my skin yellow and flabby; but now the only change is that I’m settled past change. I know that means I’m not young, and some may think not as good-looking, but I am.” Jane regarded her sister with a sort of defiance. What she said was true. Her face was quite as handsome as in her youth; all the change lay in the fact of its impregnability to the shift and play of emotions. A laugh no longer transformed her features. These reigned triumphant over mirth and joy, even grief. She was handsome, but she was not young. She was immovably Jane Strong.

“I think you are just as good-looking as you ever were,” replied Amelia. As she spoke she gave a gentle sigh. Amelia, after all, was human. As a girl she had loved the soft, sweet face, suffused with bloom like an apple blossom, which she had seen in her looking-glass. She had enjoyed arranging the pretty, fair hair around it. Now that enjoyment was quite gone out of her life. The other face had been so dear and pleasant to see. She could not feel the same toward this little seamed countenance, with its shade of grayish hair over the lined temples, and its meek, downward arc of thin lips. However, she told herself, with a little feeling of self-scorn, that she, Josiah Lamkin’s wife, and mother and grandmother, could not possibly be so foolish as to regret the loss of her beauty when she could see it renewed so many-fold in the faces of her loved ones. She told herself that she was so thankful that her husband had kept his looks so well. Josiah, although older than she, was still fresh-colored and full-faced, and he had not a gray hair. Amelia knew that it would have been harder for her to see her husband’s face grown old and worn in the faithful mirror of her heart than to view her own altered face in her looking-glass.

When Amelia sighed, Jane looked at her with a sort of angry pity. “You might be just as good-looking as you ever were if you had taken decent care of yourself, and not worn yourself out for other folks,” said she. “There was no real need of your getting all bent over, no older than you were, and no need of your hair getting so thin and gray. You ought to have taken the time to put a tonic on it, and you ought to have stretched yourself out on the bed a good hour every afternoon, and remembered to hold your shoulders back.”

“I haven’t had much time to lie down every afternoon.”

“You might have had if you had set others to doing what they ought, instead of doing it yourself.”

Amelia bristled again, this time with more vigor. “You know,” said she, “that Hannah can’t cook. It isn’t in her.”

“I’d get a girl who could cook,” returned Jane, setting her lips hard and doubling her chin in an obstinate fashion.

“I can’t discharge Hannah after all the years she has been with me. She is honest and faithful.”

“Faithful nothing!”

“She is faithful,” said Amelia, with decision. “She is cranky, too, and I doubt if she could stay long with anybody except me. I know just how to manage her.”

“She knows just how to manage you. They all do.”

“Jane Strong, I won’t hear, you talk so about my family and poor Hannah.”

“I should think it was poor Amelia.”

“I have everything to be thankful for,” said Amelia. “I have the best husband and children that ever a woman had, and Hannah is just as faithful as she can be; and as for the cooking, you know I always liked to do it, Jane.”

“Yes, you always liked to do everything that everybody else didn’t; no doubt about that. And you always pretended you liked to eat everything that everybody else didn’t.”

“I have everything I want to eat.”

“What did you make your breakfast of this morning?” demanded Jane..

Amelia reflected. She colored a little, then she looked defiantly at her sister. “Beefsteak, and omelet, and biscuit, and coffee,” said she.

Jane sniffed. “Yes, a little scraggy bit of steak that Josiah didn’t want, and that little burnt corner of Addie’s omelet, and that under crust of Tommy’s biscuit, and a muddy cup of watered coffee, after all the others had had two cups apiece. You needn’t think I didn’t see. Amelia Lamkin, you are a fool! You are killing yourself, and you are hurting your whole family and that good-for-nothing Hannah thrown in.”

Then Amelia looked at Jane with sudden distress. “What do you mean, Jane?” she quavered.

“Just what I say. You are simply making your whole family a set of pigs, and Hannah too, and you know you have an awful responsibility toward an ignorant person like that, and you are ruining your own health.”

“I am very well, indeed, Jane,” said Amelia, but she spoke with a slight hesitation.

“You are not well. No mortal woman who has lived her whole life on the fag ends of food and rest and happiness that nobody else had any use for can be well. You hear about dogs feeding on crumbs, and I suppose they may thrive on them, though I never saw a dog yet that didn’t seem to me to get along better on bones with considerable meat sticking to them; but you don’t hear about human beings living in such a fashion, and it isn’t required of them. You’ve been doing your duty all your life so hard that you haven’t given other people a chance to do theirs. You’ve been a very selfish woman as far as duty is concerned, Amelia Lamkin, and you have made other people selfish. If Addie marries Arthur Henderson, what kind of a wife will she make after the way you have brought her up? He’s a poor man, and Addie has no more idea of waiting on herself than if she were a millionairess.”

“I don’t know that they have come to an understanding yet,” said Amelia, and as she spoke she blushed softly. She was as delicate over her daughter’s romance as over her own.

“Oh, they will,” said Jane, with a sniff, “though I don’t see, for my part, what Addie Lamkin, with her looks, is in such a hurry for. I don’t mean that Arthur Henderson isn’t well enough, but Addie might do better when it comes to money.”

“Money isn’t everything.”

“It is a good deal,” responded Jane, sententiously, “and I guess Addie Lamkin will find it is if she marries Arthur Henderson and has to live on next to nothing a year, with everything going up the way it is now, when you have to stretch on your tiptoes and reach your arms up as if you were hanging for dear life to a strap on a universe trolley-car to keep going at all.”

“Oh, I don’t think they have even thought of marriage yet,” said Amelia.

“Lord!” said Jane, with infinite scorn. After a little she continued: “I don’t care. You are miserable. You can’t hide it from me. You have lost flesh. You needn’t pretend you haven’t. You don’t weigh nearly as much as you did when I was here last fall.”

“I haven’t been weighed lately.”

“You don’t need to get weighed. You can tell by your clothes. That gray silk dress you wore last night fairly hung on you.”

“I always went up and down in my weight; you know I did, Jane.”

“One of these days you will go down and never come up,” retorted Jane, with grim assurance. Then Addie Lamkin, young and vigorous and instinct with beauty and health, marched into the room, and in her wake trailed Annie, sweet and dainty in a pale blue cashmere wrapper.

Addie, with her young cheeks full of roses, with her young yellow hair standing up crispy above her full temples, with her blue eyes blazing, with her red mouth pouting, opened fire. “Now, Aunt Jane,” said Addie, “you know we always like to have you visit us, but Annie and I couldn’t help overhearing—the door has been open all the time—and we have made up our minds to speak right out and tell you what we think. We love to have you here, don’t we, Annie?”

“Yes, indeed, we love to have you, Aunt Jane,” assented Annie, in her soft voice, which was very like her mother’s.

Amelia made a little distressed noise.

“Don’t you say a word, mother,” said Addie. “We are going to say just what we think. We have made up our minds.” Addie’s face had the expression of one who dives. “We simply can’t have you making mother miserable, Aunt Jane,” said she, “and you might just as well understand. Don’t you agree with me, Annie?”

“Yes,” said Annie.

“Don’t, dear,” said Amelia.

“I must,” Addie replied, firmly. “We both feel that it is our duty. We both love Aunt Jane, and we are not lacking in respect to her as to an older woman, but we must do our duty. We must speak. Aunt Jane, you simply must not interfere with mother. We will not have it.”

Jane’s face wore a curious expression. “How do I interfere?” asked she.

“You interfere with mother’s having her own way and doing exactly what she likes,” said Addie.

“And you never do?”

“No,” replied Addie, “we never do. None of us do.”

“No, we really don’t,” said Annie. She spoke apologetically. She was not as direct as Addie.

“You are quite right,” said Jane Strong. “I don’t think any of you ever do interfere with, your mother. You let her have her own way about slaving for you and waiting upon you. Your father has, ever since he was married, and all you children have, ever since you were born; not the slightest doubt of it.”

Addie looked fairly afire with righteous wrath. “Really, Aunt Jane,” said she, “I don’t feel that, as long as it makes mother’s whole happiness to live as she does, you are called upon to hinder her.”

Amelia in her turn was full of wrath. “I am sure I don’t want to be hindered,” said she.

“We know you don’t, mother dear,” said Addie, “and you shall not be.”

“You need not worry,” Jane said, slowly. “I shall not hinder your mother, but I miss my guess if she isn’t hindered.” Then she went out of the room, her head up, her carriage as majestic as that of a queen.

“Aunt Jane is hopping,” said Addie, “but I don’t care; as for having poor mother teased and made miserable every time she comes here, I won’t, for one!”

“Your aunt has never had a family and she doesn’t understand, dear,” said Amelia. She was a trifle bewildered by her daughter’s partisanship. She was not well, and had had visions of Addie’s offering to assist about luncheon. Now she realized that Addie would consider that such an offer would make her unhappy.

“No, mother dear, you shall have your own way,” Annie said, caressingly. “Your own family knows what makes you happy, and you shall do just what you like.” Annie put her arm around her mother’s poor little waist and kissed her softly. “I am feeling wretchedly this morning,” said Annie. “I think I will follow Doctor Emerson’s advice to wrap myself up and sit out on the piazza an hour. I can finish that new book.”

“Mind you wrap up well,” Amelia said, anxiously.

“I think I will finish embroidering my silk waist,” said Addie. “I want to wear it to the Simpsons’ party Saturday night.”

Then the daughters went away, and Amelia Lamkin went into the kitchen and prepared some scalloped fish and a cake for luncheon. She attended to some soup stock, and had consultations with the butcher and grocer. She also assisted Hannah about the breakfast dishes.

Amelia worked all the morning. She did not sit down for a moment until lunch-time. Then suddenly the hindrance which Jane Strong had foretold that morning came without a moment’s warning. There had not been enough fish left from the dinner of the day before to prepare the ramekins for the family and allow Tommy two, unless Amelia went without. She was patiently eating a slice of bread and butter and drinking tea when she fell over in a faint. The little, thin creature slid gently into her swoon, not even upsetting her teacup. She fainted considerately, as she had always done everything else. Jane, who sat next her sister, caught her before she had fallen from her chair. Josiah sprang up, and stood looking intensely shocked and perfectly helpless. Addie ran for a smelling-bottle, and Annie leaped back and gasped, as if she were about to faint herself. Tommy stared, with a spoon half-way to his mouth. Then he swallowed the contents of the spoon from force of habit. Then he stared again, and turned pale under his freckles. The baby cried and pounded the table with his fists.

Amelia’s face, under its thin film of gray hair, was very ghastly. Jane, supporting that poor head, looked impatiently at Josiah standing inert, with his fresh countenance fixed in that stare of helpless, almost angry, astonishment. “For goodness’ sake, Josiah Lamkin,” said his sister-in-law, “don’t stand there gaping like a nincompoop, but go for Doctor Emerson, if you’ve got sense enough!” Jane came from New England, and in moments of excitement she show...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Note
• Table of Contents
• THE REVOLT OF “MOTHER”
• GENTIAN
• A NEW ENGLAND NUN
• ONE GOOD TIME
• THE APPLE-TREE
• THE BUTTERFLY
• OLD WOMAN MAGOUN
• THE SELFISHNESS OF AMELIA LAMKIN
• DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS - UNABRIDGED