“So I say to myself, I can let her go on and blunder across our border in some way and, of course, surely be shot; or I may take a little trouble about her myself and spare her. You do not make yourself overthankful, Liebchen.”
“I am trying to, Herr Baron.”
“A kiss, darling, to your better success!” He gave it. “Now I will have you compose yourself. A few more kilometers and the next stop is ours. Lauengratz is not upon the railroad; it is not so modern, nor is my family so new as that.”
He gazed out complacently while the train ran the few kilometers swiftly. It drew into a tiny woodland station of the sort which Ruth had frequently observed—a depot with switch tracks serving no visible community, but with a traveled highway reaching back from it toward a town hidden within the hills. No one waited here but the station master and a man in the uniform of a military driver, who stood near a large touring car. He was gazing at the train windows and, seeing Wessels, he saluted. He came forward as the train stopped and, when the compartment door was opened, he took Wessels’ traveling bag.
“Those in the racks, too,” Wessels directed curtly in German. Those were Ruth’s; and she shrank back into the corner of the seat as the man obediently took them down. Wessels stepped out upon the platform and turned to Ruth.
No one else was leaving the train at that station; indeed, the door of no other compartment opened. There was no one to whom Ruth might appeal, even if appeal were possible. Wessels stood patiently in the doorway; behind him rose quiet, beautiful woodland.
“Come,” he commanded Ruth, stretching a hand toward her.
She arose, neglecting his hand, and stepped from the train. The guard closed the door behind her; immediately the train departed. The station master—an old and shrunken man—approached, abjectedly, to inquire whether Hauptmann von Forstner had desires. Herr Hauptmann disclaimed any which he required the station master to satisfy; and the old man retired swiftly to the kiosk at the farther end of the platform.
The driver, who had finished securing the luggage behind his car, opened the door of the tonneau and waited there at attention.
“Welcome to Lauengratz, gnädiges Fräulein.” Von Forstner dropped the insulting liebchens to employ his term of respectful and gallant address; and before the soldier-servant he refrained from accents of too evident irony. Ruth’s position must be perfectly plain to the man, she thought; but it pleased the master to pretend that he concealed it.