They hoped for a son.
It was this discovery that led to the modification of Edgar Lambe’s views about Aunt Tessie. Obviously, the presence of the unfortunate old lady subjected Maude to a continual strain that might easily become more and more severe as time went on.
The doctor, privately consulted by Mr. Lambe, admitted that in his opinion it was not quite fair on Mrs. Lambe, in her condition, to keep the aggressive, turbulent invalid in the house with her. And it wasn’t as if Aunt Tessie herself really benefited by it, either. She was far past appreciating any kindness or attention shown to her now. Her idée fixe was that everyone at Melrose excepting poor little Emma, the maid, was plotting against her in some way, and seeking to poison her.
Mr. Lambe listened, nodding his head, his red, heavy-jowled face puckered with distress. It went against the grain with him to invalidate the boast of years—that Aunt Tessie should always share his home—and yet in his heart he felt that the doctor was right.
Aunt Tessie was past minding or knowing, poor soul—and Maude and their unborn son must come first.
When once he had fairly made up his mind to it, Edgar Lambe could not help feeling a certain relief. He, too, in his own way, had suffered on those dreadful occasions when Aunt Tessie had insisted upon appearing downstairs, and had made his friends and his family uncomfortable by her strange, noisy eccentricity. Even nowadays his daily visit to her room was a miserable affair. It gave her no pleasure now to see the nephew for whom she had once done so much, and who had done so much for her in return. She classed him with her imaginary enemies.
It was very difficult for Edgar Lambe, who was not at all an imaginative man, not to feel irrationally wounded by those wild accusations of enmity. He could scarcely be brought to understand that poor Aunt Tessie’s floods of foolish vituperation had, in themselves, no meaning at all.
“But she was always devoted to me,” he said, half resentfully and half piteously. “I can’t make it out at all. You’d think that even now she’d be able to—to distinguish a bit between me and the wretched cook or charwoman. But no, she abuses us all alike, and seems to think we’re all in league to do her in.”
“It’s part of her illness, Mr. Lambe,” said Nurse Alberta soothingly. “You know, she really is quite cracky, poor old lady.”
The “arrangements,” as the doctor called them, were made as speedily as possible, since they were naturally distressing to everybody, and Mr. and Mrs. Lambe went themselves to see Aunt Tessie’s new quarters, and to talk to the charming lady at the head of the establishment, and get special permission for Nurse Alberta, to whom Aunt Tessie was used, to take her there and remain with her for some time until she grew accustomed to it all.