"THERE'S SOMEBODY AT THE DOOR!!!"
Jemima had standing orders from Arabella: “… and if you ever get a letter for him at your Ma’s, grab it and take it to him, don't let your Ma see it!, and offer to read it for him, he can’t read, see? Don’t say anything about it. Just find an excuse. Oh, and another thing…”
+++
Jemima knocked gingerly at Mr. Connolly’s door, her girlish heart, buried under all that hairy muscle, fluttering at the thought of being in his room alone with him. Theoretically, she was only here in obedience to the orders of ‘She who must be obeyed’ but actually this was a real pleasure, to have a chance to see their handsome lodger and, perhaps do him a service.
The letter she held in her hand looked mighty fine. Good quality envelope, perfect copperplate handwritten address.
“Mr, B. Connolly
c/o Wigfall’s Boarding House
Kalispell
Montana Territory”
But who the heck could be writing to him? Jemima was almost as curious as she was excited, not that you could see it in her dull bovine face.
When Brendan opened the door and found Jemima standing there, he almost looked relieved. He'd much rather be around Jemima than her mother, around whom he found himself equal parts flattered and uncomfortable. But Jemima was different.
"Hey, Jemima," he said, leaning casually against the doorframe. "What's up?" He glanced around to see if Mrs. Wigfall was hiding around the corner waiting to pounce, but saw no one so he eyed Jemima a little more carefully. Aha. An envelope.
An uneasy feeling began to slither through his stomach. The last time he'd gotten a letter, it had been from Crabbe. And that letter had set off the chain of events that had led to his residence here at the Wigfalls and eventually to Bridget's departure.
"Is-is that for me?"
"THERE'S SOMEBODY AT THE DOOR!!!"
"Hey, Jemima," he said, leaning casually against the doorframe. "What's up?" He glanced around to see if Mrs. Wigfall was hiding around the corner waiting to pounce
"It's all right, she's out. Thought I'd better bring this up before she saw it." Jemima explained in her flat tones. The girl knew that her mother was inhumanly curious and a whizz with a boiling kettle when it came to steaming open other people's correspondence.
She held up the missive.
"Is-is that for me?"
She nodded and pushed it toward him.
"Paid a dollar postage" she remarked, indicating that the sender had spared no expense in getting the letter to Kalispell as quickly as possible "Postmarked from somewhere called Irondequoit, New York." She looked at him significantly. New York state back East, they knew that Bridget had been sent out that-a-way by the Wentworths.
"You look kinda busy; if you like, I could read it out to you while you carry on." she recited, parrot-like, what Arabella had told her to say if Brendan ever need to read anything more complicated than a meat order in her presence. In truth, she was pretty curious to read what was inside anyway, though she didn't say it out loud.
She gave him her attempt at an encouraging smile.
Brendan's eyes bugged. "A dollar!" No one had ever been desperate enough to correspond with him that they'd spend that much money, not even his family. So who had written him? Jemima's next sentence shed a little more light on who the letter might be from -- or about -- and the unease turned his stomach over again. What if the letter was about Bridget? What would he do? He couldn't read it.
Brendan's eyes narrowed a bit as Jemima mentioned he looked busy. Busy? He'd been laying on his bed alternating between dozing and doing nothing but staring at the ceiling. "I ain't busy," he said dismissively, then paused as the rest of Jemima's words sunk in. She was offering to read the letter to him. Did she know he couldn't read?
Brendan hummed softly as he thought about how to broach the topic, then realized he didn't need to. Jemima had given him the perfect excuse to have her read the letter. He shrugged. "On second thought, I was kinda busy, but I guess you can come in and read it if you want."
He opened the door wider and stepped back to let her in. His room didn't have much in it, but he'd still managed to make a mess of it, with a few pairs of socks scattered around the floor, his saddle lying in a corner, and his boots on completely opposite ends of the room where he'd kicked them off. The quilt on his bed was thrown back wildly with one corner untucked from the foot of the bed.
He ignored the mess and went straight back to the bed, sitting and looking back expectantly at Jemima. "Well?"
"THERE'S SOMEBODY AT THE DOOR!!!"
Jemima held out a hand and took the letter right back, shoved a thumb into the seal and tore it open. It was thick and she saw immediately that as well as an actual letter, penned in a neat copperplate hand as the envelope, there were a number of photographic prints on stiff card with writing on the back in the same handwriting.
Jemima made a grunt of interest and, although the photographs would probably make more sense after she'd read the letter, she couldn't help looking at them straight away, and handing them to Brendan on the bed, one by one, after first reading out the legend on the back.
"Looks like it's about Bridget. There's photees. 'Miss Monahan with Nurse Hemsley' well, her hair grew back pretty good." Jemima commented in her flat voice as she handed over the first photograph.
"Next 'un says 'Miss Monahan with her speech therapist, Dr. Guteheil' hmph, pretty bushy lookin' sort of feller."
"Last one says 'Miss Monahan with new prosthetic leg and lightweight surgical corset, designed and built by Mr. Pearce of Ithaca, N.Y.' Oh yeah, that's not like her old one"
"Better read the letter" Jemima intoned, and plonked herself heavily on the bed, right next to Brendan, not because she wanted to be near the extremely handsome man, but because she felt that she might be about to read something very private and intimate to him and him alone, even if it had not been written by Bridget herself. She wanted to signal, in some unconscious way, that this was between her and him, and that the contents of the letter would not leave this room, if he so wished.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
Brendan perked up when Jemima handed him the photos, grabbing at each successive one more eagerly until he was practically snatching them from her. He devoured each one with his eyes, pausing at the last one of Bridget in her new corset. It certainly was different than her other one, more delicate than the one Pettigrew had made, and it made her curvy.
Bridget looked like she was doing well, and being treated well. She still had that airy, ethereal quality about her that made her seem like a fairy, and she was still beautiful. Beautiful enough to take Brendan's breath away as he stared at Brdiget in her corset. His brows furrowed. Was it legal to take photos like that? Normally photos of beautiful ladies in their underthings had to be bought discreetly, or viewed for a price through a box at a peep show.
"Are you ready?"
As the bed shifted under Jemima's weight, Brendan glanced up, startled out of the trance seeing Bridget had put him in. "Huh? Oh, yeah, go ahead and read it." He fanned the photos out like a deck of cards and stared hard at them as he prepared to listen.
"THERE'S SOMEBODY AT THE DOOR!!!"
Jemima gave a light cough, "Ahem" like people always did before they read anything out loud, and then, in her flat mid-western, slightly nasal accent, she began.
"Dear Mister Connelly
My name is Doctor Samuel A. Quimby, I am the chief physician and director of the Lakeview Sanitorium at Irondequoit, which is located in Monroe Country, New York. I am writing to you at the present time concerning one of my patients, Miss B.G. Monahan, late of Kalispell, Mt. Territory."
"May I begin by reporting that Miss Monahan is in the best of health and has considerably improved in her condition during her time at our sanatorium over the last six months, which had been paid for by the kind benevolence Miss Monahan's legal guardian Mister Charles Wentworth. Lakeview is a private medical clinic, founded by myself following the late war, specialising in the treatment and rehabilitation of amputees and which employs the services of some of the finest visiting professionals in the field of prosthetics engineering and in Miss Monahan's case, speech therapy."
Jemima struggled to decipher some of the longer words but managed at least to sound them out phonetically.
"Sir, I am writing to you in complete confidence, which I hope you will respect, in regard of an urgent matter which has arisen concerning Miss Monahan's future happiness, and which I hope you will treat with the utmost tact. I have not concerned Mr Wentworth in the matter, as my responsibility is always to my patient, not to their family, or the individual who pays their medical bills."
Jemima couldn't help feeling their writer of this missive was starting to loose a little of his stiff formality and starting to warm to a subject close to his heart!
"Miss Monahan is a great favourite with all the staff, and all of her fellow patients here, most of whom are old army men who have lost one or more limbs in the course of their service during the war; even the grumpiest and most morose of these fellows, who have been generally been through several shades of Hell, universally love Miss Monahan, whom they refer to as 'Our Sunshine Lady' or simply 'The Lady.'
One man in particular, a triple amputee after Chickamauga and severely brain damaged, unable to speak or talk, Miss Monahan will sit with for hours, holding his remaining hand, staring out at the beautiful lake Ontario which you may see in the enclosed photographic prints. It is, believe me Mr Connolly, even for a hard-bitten old army surgeon like myself, a truly affecting sight"
Jemima stopped for a second and scratched her armpit, "This feller needs to get on with it" she commented about Dr Quimby's verbose writing style. Another 'Ahem' indicated that she was going to start reading again.
"I have, however, of late, noticed a growing affection between Miss Monahan and the man who has done so much to improve her prosthetic leg and surgical corsetry, Mr Ambrose Pearce of Ithaca, N.Y. a brilliant young engineer, but perhaps not yet used to the intimacy that can necessarily grow between a patient and those employed to help them. I tackled him frankly upon the matter and he revealed that he is determined to marry Miss Monahan at the earliest possible moment. I confessed myself shocked, and immediately consulted with my esteemed colleague Dr Karl Guteheil, late of the Gymnasium, in Berlin, Prussia, who is perhaps the closest person to the lady in question, and the most able to broach the subject to her without causing alarm."
Jemima turned over the page of the letter quickly, like someone reading an 'unputdownable' romance novel.
"Upon no little subtle probing upon this matter, Miss Monahan assured Dr Guteheil that she is firmly engaged to be married to a Mr Brendan Connolly of Kalispell, your good self, and that she fully intends, at the earliest moment, to rejoin you there.
Sir, please let me know at your very earliest convenience, what exactly your intentions are toward my patient, Miss Monahan. If you are serious in your suit, I may assure you of my full co-operation in making our Sunshine Lady's dream come true. If, however, there is some misunderstanding by Miss Monahan, or if your affections toward this really wonderful young woman have cooled with distance and time, then I shall see no reason to stand in the way of Mr Pearce's suit.
Believe me, Sir, time is of the essence in this matter.
I am yours, etc.
Samuel A. Quimby, Surgeon."
Jemima blew out her cheeks, not only at the length of the letter but its import. She looked at Brendan expectantly for some sort of reaction.
This doctor must have a lot of time on his hands if he had time to pen such a long letter. Brendan was struggling to comprehend everything Jemima was reading to him -- it didn't help that she had trouble with some of the bigger words -- so he focused on bits and pieces like "Miss Monahan is in the best of health and has considerably improved." That was gratifying to hear. But what did considerably improved actually mean?
He grinned at the description of Bridget's sunny disposition on the other amputees. Trust Bridget to make people's lives better wherever she was. It wasn't as if she had a lot to offer the way most of the world saw things, but her sweetness, simplicity, and smile made up for any conversational shortcomings she suffered from.
But his grin faded as Jemima continued reading. His eyes narrowed, and he looked again at the picture of Bridget in her beautiful, delicately-fashioned corset this "young" engineer had made for her. Protective fury flashed through him, and he suddenly understood Crabbe's angry reaction on that night that seemed so long ago.
"...he revealed that he is determined to marry Miss Monahan at the earliest possible moment."
"He what?!" The pictures scattered at his feet, and he slid off the bed in a desperate scramble to pick them up, muttering hoarsely to Jemima, "Keep goin', keep goin'." He had to know the outcome, whether good or bad. He was in for another surprise, this one sort of a double-whammy, because Bridget believed they were going to be engaged. One, she believed it and intended to come back to Kalispell; two, she'd been able to articulate herself. The speech therapy really must have been helping her.
He remained crouched by the bed, staring up at Jemima until the letter's conclusion. There were a few seconds of silence after Jemima's loud blowing of her cheeks, then he said quietly, "God." He sank back against the bed, clutching the photographs in one hand and running the other across his face.
"I thought she'd forget about me. I thought she wasn't comin' back. That she was--was gone." His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard, his mind whirling. He'd resigned himself to never seeing Bridget again, and now he had the alleged support of a doctor he'd never met who was willing to help him be reunited with Bridget. It was a lot to take in.
"THERE'S SOMEBODY AT THE DOOR!!!"
"I thought she'd forget about me. I thought she wasn't comin' back. That she was--was gone."
Jemima looked at Brendan. God, he was beautiful. But, she considered, all the really beautiful people she knew seemed to have, along with their ethereal good looks, terrible character flaws that, perhaps, God gave them almost in payment for their facial radiance.
Anaesthesia Orr, a face like an angel but an unpleasant snobby temperament, Mr Astin the actor, a handsome parasite, living off poor Mr Pettigrew's weakness for well built young men. Caroline Mundee, who had a heavenly face and figure but lived a life that would send her to Hell. And Brendan himself. A God in looks, but aimless, indecisive, drifting through life like a feather, blown by the slightest breeze of chance and fate.
The Lord Giveth, the Lord taketh away.
Maybe being ugly was the price Jemima paid for her strength of character, and the spunk she generally displayed in aversity.
"Mr Connolly... I think this is one of them moments. One of those BIG moments in life when you either have to wither away and admit you're a nothing who can't do anything about anything.... or DO IT. Grasp the nettle. Go for something and the Devil take it if you fail." she declared boldly.
"Like when I shot Mr Steelgrave. I knew I'd never have a chance like that again and I did it. Oh, people say 'I bet you regret it' but I don't. Even if they'd hung me, I'd never regret it. And this is the same for you."
Suddenly she was climbing almost on top of him - not in the way she'd often dreamed of doing, but in a sort of inspirational ardour. He felt her unnaturally muscular grip on his shoulders as her piggy little eyes looked into his big soulful brown orbs.
"This is your moment, Mr Connolly! This time you have to be BIG, bigger than you've ever been. You have to DO something about Bridget, you have to bring her home."
Sheets of the letter and the photographs littered the bed. She suddenly realised that she was sitting on top of his supine form, and began to scramble off with an embarrassed "Oh. Sorry."
Well, it was rather unfair of Jemima to berate him this way. He'd just received life-changing news about Bridget. Yes, he would love to have her back so they could get married. No, he didn't want Pearce to marry her. But he'd come to realize over the past six months that he'd really been in over his head. Bridget, in her previous condition, would have needed much more care than he could have ever given her. And being sent back east really had been the best thing for her.
Of course he couldn't say that to Jemima, not right now. Locked in her almost inhumanly strong grip, all he could do was listen to her inspiring words. And he did feel inspired, almost like he could run all the way to New York to bring Bridget back.
Suddenly the spell of inspiration was broken, and Brendan blinked. Jemima was sitting on top of him. That was something he never wanted to experience again. He also scrambled up, grabbing at the photographs.
"Look, Jemima, you're right. I gotta do somethin.' But I want it to be what's best for Bridget." He stared at the picture of Bridget's beautiful elfin smile for a minute, then stuck it into his waistband. "You think you can write good enough to take down a reply for me?"
She'd gotten through the letter pretty well -- except for some of those pesky big words -- but writing was another matter. It would be real nice if she could write decently. Then he wouldn't have to find someone else to write for him. Arabella, who'd been his scribe when he was writing Bridget, was an option, but maybe not the best one. She was liable to add little asides and stick her own words in. Caroline was an option, too. He couldn't remember how her reading and writing was, but it had to be better than his.