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Fort Henry had fallen, and Grant was even then moving to besiege Donelson. Mr. Brinsmade prepared to leave at once for the battlefield, taking with him too Paducah physicians and nurses. All day long the boat was loading with sanitary stores and boxes of dainties for the wounded.
His frontiersman's clothes, stained with blackened blood, hung limp over his wasted body. At Virginia's bidding the Colonel ran downstairs for a bucket of fresh water, and she washed the caked dust from his face and hands. It was Mr. Brinsmade who got the surgeon to dress the man's wound, and to prescribe some of the broth from Virginia's basket.
This was but natural. He told her of the brave struggle Stephen had made, and how he had earned luxuries, and often necessities, for his mother by writing for the newspapers. "Often," said Mr. Brinsmade, "often I have been unable to sleep, and have seen the light in Stephen's room until the small hours of the morning." "Oh, Mr. Brinsmade," cried Virginia.
"You will find my tent a little wet, air," replied Stephen, touched. Here the General, who had been sitting by watching them with a very curious expression, spoke up. "That's hospitality for you, Brinsmade!" Stephen and Mr. Brinsmade made their way across plank and bridge to Stephen's tent, and his mess servant arrived in due time with the package from home.
Brinsmade who was everywhere that day, answering the questions of distracted mothers and fathers and sisters who thronged the place; consulting with the surgeons; helping the few who knew how to work in placing mattresses under the worst cases; or again he might have been seen seated on the bare floor with a pad on his knee, taking down the names of dear ones in distant states, that he might spend his night writing to them.
"Curse you!" he panted; "curse you, you let me go and I'll kill you, you Yankee upstart!" But Stephen held on. Brinsmade became more and more frantic. One of the officers, seeing the struggle, started down the bank, was reviled, and hesitated. At that moment Major Sherman came between them. "Let him go, Brice," he said, in a tone of command. Stephen did as he was bid.
It had been granted with a queenly generosity. And after that none of the bevy had dared to broach the subject to Virginia. Jack Brinsmade had. He told Puss afterward that when Virginia got through with him, he felt as if he had taken a rapid trip through the wheel-house of a large steamer. Puss tried, by various ingenious devices, to learn whether Mr. Brice had accepted his invitation.
And the two spent most of the dark hours remaining in unprofitable discussion as to whether Virginia were at last engaged to her cousin, and in vain queried over another unsolved mystery. This mystery was taken up at the breakfast table the next morning, when Miss Carvel surprised Mrs. Brinsmade and the male household by appearing at half-past seven. "Why, Jinny," cried Mr.
She was standing against one of the pilasters at the side of the room, laughing demurely at the antics of Becky Sharp and Sir John Falstaff, Miss Puss Russell and Mr. Jack Brinsmade, respectively. Mr. Tennyson's "Idylls" having appeared but the year before, Anne was dressed as Elaine, a part which suited her very well. Eugenie went as Marie Antoinette.
Anne Brinsmade was almost the only girl left to him from among his former circle of acquaintances. Miss Carvel's conduct is known. The Misses Russell showed him very plainly that they disapproved of his politics. The hospitable days at that house were over. Miss Catherwood, when they met on the street, pretended not to see him, and Eugenie Renault gave him but a timid nod.
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