The car was past the fields where the Russians toiled and was skirting woodlands again; when fields opened once more quite different figures appeared—figures of women and of a familiarity which sent the blood choking in Ruth’s throat. They were French women and girls, or perhaps Belgians of the sort whom she had seen tilling free, French farms; but these were captives—slaves. And seeing them, Ruth understood with a flaming leap of realization what von Forstner had meant about the Russians. They were captives also, and slaves; but they had never known freedom.
But to see these women slaves!
Von Forstner himself betrayed especial interest in them. He spoke sharply to the driver, who halted the car and signaled for the nearest of the slaves to approach.
“Where are you from?” he questioned them in French. They named various places in the invaded lands; most of them had been but recently deported and had arrived during von Forstner’s absence. Two of the group, which numbered eight, were very young—girls of sixteen or seventeen, Ruth thought. They gazed up at Ruth with wide, agonized eyes and then gazed down upon the ground. Ruth glanced to von Forstner and caught him estimating them—their faces, their figures, as he had estimated her own. She caught him glancing from them to herself now, comparing them; and her loathing, and detestation of him and of all that he was, and which he represented suddenly became dynamic.
He did not see that; but one of the French girls, who had glanced up at her again, did see; and the girl looked quickly down at once as though fearing to betray it. But Ruth saw her thin hands clenching at her sides and crumpling the rags of her skirt; and from this Ruth was first aware that her own hands had clenched and through her pulled a new tension.
“Go on,” von Forstner ordered his driver.
The car sped along the turning road into woods; the road followed a stream which rushed down a tiny valley thirty or forty feet below. At times the turns gave glimpses far ahead and in one of these glimpses Ruth saw a large house which must be the Landgut—or the manor—of this German country-place.
“See! We are almost home, Liebchen!” Von Forstner pointed it out to her when it was clearer and nearer at the next turn. He had his hand upon Ruth again; and the confident lust of his fingers set hot blood humming dizzily, madly in Ruth’s brain. The driver, as though responding to the impatience of his master, sent the car spinning in and out upon the turns of the road beside the brook. In two or three minutes more—not longer—the car would reach the house. Now the car was rushing out upon a reach of road abruptly above the stream and with a turn ahead sharper, perhaps, than most. In spite of the speed the driver easily could make the turn if unimpeded; but if interfered with at all....
The plan barely was in Ruth’s brain before she acted upon it. Accordingly, there was no chance for von Forstner to prevent it; nor for the driver to oppose her. She sprang from her seat, seized the driver’s right arm and shoulder, as he should have been turning the steering-wheel sharply; and, for the necessary fraction of a second, she kept the car straight ahead and off the road over the turn.
When a motor car is going over, crouch down; do not try to leap out. So a racing driver, who had been driving military cars in France, had drilled into Ruth when he was advising her how to run the roads back of the battle lines. Thus as the car went over she sprang back and knelt on the floor between the seats.