As I thought of this and with my mind’s eye measured the height from the windows to the ground, I heard voices below, and after a short interval Constantia came up the ladder, muffled in her cloak. She did not look in my direction, but she came straight to the fire and stooped over it to warm her hands. Then, hardly moving her lips, and choosing a moment when the two men had turned their backs, “Be close to me,” she breathed “if trouble comes. Keep away now.”
She moved some paces from me as soon as she had spoken, and when Levi and the other two men appeared, we were standing on opposite sides of the hearth. Levi cast a sharp glance at me; I think he had his suspicions—God knows what had roused them when I had seen nothing! But he only swore at the men for letting down the fire and at the fire for giving no warmth, and at the morning for being cold. If ever there was an ill-conditioned cur, he was one!
For me, I was no longer cold. Her words, her tone, tingled through my veins, set my pulses beating, did all but give strength to my useless arm. I could face anything now, I could face the worst now, and hope to live through it.
My relief, indeed, was unspeakable. But apart from me—and I masked my feelings—it was a gloomy party that, shivering in the aguish air, gathered about the poor meal and ate and drank in a brutish fashion. Constantia kept her old place on the farther side of the hearth, and muffled in her cloak preserved a stern silence. Her face by the morning light looked white and drawn, so that even in a lover’s eyes it lacked something of its ordinary beauty. But the strain which she was putting on herself did not appear until the meal was over, and we had risen from our seats. Then when the men, stuffing their corn-cob pipes, had gone, some to feed the horses, and some to lean yawning from the windows and curse the fog, she began to walk up and down the room; while Levi watched her openly and I in secret. To and fro, she paced, the hood of her cloak drawn over her head, to and fro, this way and that, restlessly; only breaking her march at intervals to glance from the window and sigh, and so to resume her walk.
“There’ll be no news yet, ma’am,” Levi said after a time. He spoke with servility but I guessed that he was suspicious and uneasy. I wondered if he had intercepted some glance meant for me.
She gave him no answer by word or look. She continued to walk up and down. Impatience seemed to be getting the better of her. She could not be still.
“They’ll be having the message, about this time,” he said, glancing at me in turn. “Not a minute earlier.”
I nodded. I had no doubt that he was right.
“Curse me,” he continued, “but as sure as there are snakes in Virginia, you’re a cool fish, Major! You mightn’t have a tongue in your head. What is it, I’d like to know, you have up your sleeve?”
I laughed. It was easy to laugh since she had spoken to me.