She always had her meals in the dining-room, and it was really on that account that Ena and Evelyn had their midday dinner upstairs, and only came downstairs when the starched and mob-capped maids were handing round coffee. Their mother would have liked them to come to the dining-room for luncheon, at least on Sundays, but they both hated Aunt Tessie, and made faces and laughed at each other when she uttered any of her loud, inconsequent remarks, or pushed her food into her mouth with her fingers.
Maude, and even Edgar, had tried to persuade Aunt Tessie that it would be more comfortable for her to have all her meals in the large upstairs sitting-room that they had given her, but Aunt Tessie had been first angry and then hurt. They wanted her out of the way, she said angrily, they were ashamed of her, and did not like her to meet their friends.
Mrs. Lambe could not help thinking that it was rather ungrateful of Aunt Tessie to say this, after all that had been done for her. However, they would not vex and disappoint the poor old lady, and so she continued to appear downstairs, even when there was a party, and to embarrass and disconcert everybody by her ineptitudes and her uncouth manners at the dinner-table.
II
By the time the Armistice was signed, Mr. Lambe had become richer than ever.
He entertained his friends even more often to dinner, and gave them better wine, although it had always been so good before. He increased Mrs. Lambe’s allowance for the housekeeping, and frequently gave her presents of money to be spent upon herself or the little girls. He would have given Aunt Tessie money too, but she had grown even queerer in the course of the past year, and it was only too evident that what had been called her “eccentricity “ was now becoming something much more serious. For the very first time, there was trouble with the maids.
They did not like waiting on Miss Lambe. It was no wonder, either, poor Mrs. Lambe was forced to admit.
Aunt Tessie was untidy, even dirty, and as the housemaid once pertly remarked, her bedroom only needed three gold balls over the door. She kept things to eat upstairs, and scattered crumbs everywhere.
The parlour-maid, speaking for herself and for the housemaid, declared that it was quite impossible to do the proper work of the house and to clear up after Miss Lambe as well.
In another moment she would have given notice... Mrs. Lambe could see it coming.
Hastily she sent for Emma, the little between-maid, and informed her that in future she would have the sole care of Miss Lambe’s bedroom and her sitting-room, and would wait upon her, instead of the housemaid. She at the same time raised Emma’s wages by two pounds a year, for she always tried to be very just.
Emma was only seventeen, and a very childish little thing, and Mrs. Lambe had not expected her to raise any objection to the new scheme; but it was surprising, although satisfactory, to find that Emma seemed to be actually pleased by it.
She said “Yes’m,” a good many times, and smiled at her mistress as though joyfully accepting a form of promotion.
Mrs. Lambe was relieved, the parlour-maid and the housemaid did not give notice, and even Aunt Tessie — very difficult to please nowadays — appeared contented and satisfied.
But she was getting worse all the time.
It became more and more embarrassing when visitors came to Melrose.
The old lady always found out when anyone was expected, and the more people were coming the noisier and more excited she became.
One dreadful Sunday there were guests for luncheon — two of Edgar’s important clients, and little Ena’s godfather — a rich old bachelor cousin — and two unmarried ladies, friends of Mrs. Lambe’s maiden days. She was always very faithful to her friends.
Aunt Tessie actually pranced downstairs and met some of these people in the hall as they arrived, and greeted them boisterously, and so incoherently that really they might almost have been excused for thinking that she had been taking too much to drink.
Mrs. Lambe, hastening downstairs from her own room, could hear it all, although she could not see it, and it was thus that she afterwards described it to Edgar.
“So glad — so glad to see you!” shouted Aunt Tessie. “This fine house — always open, and my nephew is so generous and hospitable. They take advantage, sometimes — there are bad people about, very bad people. Sometimes they make attempts ... one’s life isn’t as safe as it looks, I can assure you...”
She had thrown out such ridiculous and yet sinister hints once or twice lately. But what could the poor guests think of it all?
They were very polite, and soon saw that the best thing to do was to ignore Aunt Tessie as far as possible, and pretend not to hear when she talked, and not to see when she shuffled about the room, upsetting ornaments here and there, and every now and then whisking round suddenly to look behind her as though she expected someone or something to be following her. Once she shouted very loud, “Get out, I tell you! I can smell the poison from here! ...” But after the first involuntary, startled silence, everyone began simultaneously to talk again, and very soon after that, luncheon was announced.
Mrs. Lambe saw that her husband, talking to his principal guest and smiling a great deal, kept on all the time turning an anxious eye towards Aunt Tessie, and this emboldened her to do what she had never done before.
She put her hand on the old lady’s arm, and detained her whilst the others were all going into the dining-room.
“Dear auntie,” she said, speaking low and very gently, ‘‘I’m sure you’re not well. You look so flushed and tired. All these people are really too much for you. Do let Emma carry your lunch upstairs on a tray and have it comfortably in your own room.”
But it was of no use.
Aunt Tessie, her looks and her manner stranger than ever, vociferated an incoherent refusal, mixed up with something about Emma, to whom she had taken a violent fancy.
“A good girl — the only one you can trust. She never plots against people!” Aunt Tessie shouted, nodding her head with wild emphasis, and rolling her eyeballs round in their sockets.
Mrs. Lambe could do nothing. She dared not let Aunt Tessie sit next to any of the visitors, and of course she herself had to have one of the important clients upon either side of her, but she made Ena and Evelyn, who were lunching downstairs in honour of the godfather’s presence, take their places one on each side of their extraordinary old relative.”
Evelyn, who was very little, began to whine and protest, but Mrs. Lambe pretended not to hear. She knew that Evelyn’s attention was always very easily distracted. She felt much more afraid of Ena, and her heart sank when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aunt Tessie officiously trying to put Ena’s long curls away from her shoulders.
The little girl’s fair, pretty face turned black with scowls in an instant, and she twitched herself away from the big, heavy, mottled hand fumbling clumsily at her neck, and sat with her back as nearly as possible turned to Aunt Tessie.
One couldn’t really blame the poor children for disliking her so much, but it was very bad for them ... it made them naughty and ill-mannered...
Poor Mrs. Lambe could only give half her attention to her guests, and she saw that Edgar, too, underneath his geniality and his urgent and repeated invitations that everyone should have more food and more wine, was anxious and ill at ease.
Every now and then Aunt Tessie’s strident tones rose above all the other sounds in the big, hot dining-room.
“Not any more — no. They put things into one’s food sometimes, and then they think one doesn’t notice. But the one who waits on me — Emma, her name is — she’s all right. You can trust her.”
Aunt Tessie’s words, no less than her emphasis on Emma’s trustworthiness, would of course be noticed, and bitterly resented, by the other two servants, waiting deftly and quietly at the table. But neither of them moved a muscle, even when she went on to something worse.
“Never put any confidence in upper servants,” declared Aunt Tessie, leaning across the table and almost shouting. “They may b
e civil enough, but they plot and plan behind people’s backs. There’s cases in the newspapers very often ... it’s ... it’s murder, really, you know. They call it accidental, but sometimes it’s poisoning. One can’t be too auspicious — suspicious, I should say.”
She paused to laugh vacantly at her own slip of the tongue, and to let her eyes rove all over the table as though in search of something.
Mr. Lambe clumsily wrenched at the conversation: “Talking about newspaper reports, that was a curious case in Staffordshire ...”
The visitors seconded him gamely, and Aunt Tessie’s voice was overborne and heard again only in snatches.
Mrs. Lambe, however, was very much upset, and she ordered coffee to be brought to the drawing-room so as to make a move as soon as possible.
Things were a little better in the drawing-room. Ena and Evelyn were soon screaming and romping round Ena’s godfather, and one of Maude’s humble friends, perhaps feeling that she owed her something’ in return for the splendid luncheon and lavish hospitality, sat in the bow- window with Aunt Tessie and kept her away from the rest of the room. This was a great relief, although it led to an uncomfortable moment when the party was breaking up, and Aunt Tessie, vehemently taking leave of her kind companion, actually caught up a little gilt trifle from Maude’s knick-knack shelf and tried to press it upon her acceptance.
Miss Mason was very tactful, pretending with rather an embarrassed look to accept the impossible gift, and secretly slipping it on to a table near the door as she went out.
Aunt Tessie did not see, but Maude did. She was nearly crying by the time it was all over and everyone had gone away. The children had been sent upstairs again, and Aunt Tessie’s heavy footsteps had taken her to her own part of the house.
Curiously enough, she and Edgar hardly spoke to one another about the disastrous subject, but Maude Lambe knew very well that he now, as well as she, fully realised the discomfort and humiliation entailed upon the whole household by his too-generous treatment of Aunt Tessie.
III
Soon it was no longer possible to pretend that Aunt Tessie was not getting worse and worse. Her constant, irrelevant allusions to plots, and poisonings, and wicked people, had become a fixed delusion.
She really thought that everyone at Melrose was conspiring against her life, and she would allow no one, except Emma, to do anything for her.
It was a mercy, Mrs. Lambe often told herself, that Emma was such a good little thing. She was so willing, and never seemed to grudge the time and trouble that she was obliged to spend over cleaning Aunt Tessie’s apartments and tidying up after her. She would even listen, respectfully and yet compassionately, to Aunt Tessie’s long, rambling denunciations and accusations.
“Poor old lady!” Maude once overheard Emma saying to another servant. “She’s a lady just the .same, for all she’s gone queer, and I behaves towards her like I would to any other lady, that’s all.”
“Funny kind of a lady that makes a face at a servant, as she did at me this morning.”
“She never done that to me, nor nothing the least like it,” said Emma stoutly.
It was only too true that Aunt Tessie was very rude to all the maids except Emma, and sometimes to Edgar and Maude as well. As she grew worse, she seemed to forget all their kindness and generosity, and to look upon them as being her enemies.
Mrs. Lambe would not let the little girls go near her any more, and the nurse had orders to keep them away from Miss Lambe “until she grew better.”
Aunt Tessie, however, did not grow better.
The doctor, an old friend of Edgar Lambe’s, advised them to have a nurse for her, if they were still determined to keep her on at Melrose, instead of sending her to one of the many excellent establishments that he could have recommended.
“Nothing in the least like an institution or — or asylum. Simply a nursing home where Miss Lambe would have entire freedom and every possible comfort, but would yet receive the constant medical supervision that her unfortunate condition renders necessary.”
But Edgar Lambe remained obstinate. Aunt Tessie had been very good to him in the past, and he had always said that she should be his special charge. He would not send her away to any nursing home, however highly recommended.
He was, however, quite willing that a professional nurse should be installed at Melrose. The expense, he said, was nothing, if it would make things easier for Maude and be of advantage to Aunt Tessie.
The presence of Nurse Alberta certainly fulfilled both these requirements.
She was an intelligent, pleasant-looking woman of five- or six-and-thirty, with none of the pretensions so often associated with her class. She had meals with Aunt Tessie, in the latter’s big, comfortable sitting-room, and slept in a little room adjoining hers. Both of them were waited upon by Emma.
Aunt Tessie nowadays made no difficulty about not coming to the dining-room. Her crazy old mind had fastened upon the idea of poison, and Emma and Nurse Alberta were the only people from whom she would accept food or drink.
The nurse told Emma, with whom she became quite friendly by dint of constant association, that the “persecution mania “ was a very common symptom amongst those who were mentally deranged.
“They always think that everybody’s against them,” she declared cheerfully, “even those who do most for them. Look at this poor old lady, for instance! She thinks Mr. and Mrs. Lambe are plotting against her, and I’m sure they’re goodness itself to her, and have been for years, I should think. No expense grudged, and everything done to make her comfortable. Why, most people would have had an own mother sent away by this time and put under restraint — and Miss Lambe is only an aunt. No real relation at all, as you may say, to Mrs. Lambe. Really, I do think Mrs. Lambe’s behaved wonderfully, and I’m sure she finds it a strain.”
Nurse Alberta was quite right. Mrs. Lambe did find the presence of Aunt Tessie in the house a great strain, even now.
In her heart, she was terribly afraid that the old aunt, who had so rapidly passed from one distressing stage to another, might suddenly become a real danger to those around her.
She thought of Ena and Evelyn and shuddered. Very often, she woke in the night and crept out to the landing, trembling, to listen at the night-nursery door.
One day, when Nurse Alberta had been in the house for some time, Mrs. Lambe felt so wretched and so much unstrung by her state of now chronic nervousness, that she detained the doctor after his habitual visit to Aunt Tessie, and timidly spoke to him of her own symptoms.
He listened very attentively, asked her several questions, and finally made a suggestion which Mrs. Lambe saw at once ought to have occurred to her earlier.
She was going to have another child.
It was over five years since Evelyn’s birth, and she had somehow never expected to have any more babies, but both Mr. and Mrs. Lambe were honestly pleased.
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 fix 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.
&n
bsp; 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.
“Fires in her room, of course, and any extras that she may fancy,” said Mr. Lambe impressively. “Expense is of no consideration at all. I shall send round a comfortable couch for the sitting-room this afternoon.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 274