“No, gnädiges Fräulein, I can do nothing for Herr Hauptmann,” the soldier agreed. Of himself he was doubtful whether he should yet leave his gnädiges Fräulein, but he had been commanded, so he went.
The Russians had withdrawn a little; and after the German soldier was gone Ruth stood alone, gazing down at von Forstner’s body. She had killed von Forstner and his servant. She had killed them in self-defense and by an act which might have destroyed her as well as them, yet horror shrank her as she saw them lying dead—horror which first had seized her at the idea of individually dealing in death that day long ago when she stood with Gerry in the parlor of the pension upon the Rue des Saints Pères, and when he had told her that the French had taken Louis de Trevenac upon her information, and were to execute him.
If she had killed these men solely to save herself, she must cast herself down beside them. But she had not! That sudden, mad deed which she had just performed—and in the consequences of which she was just beginning to be involved—sprang not from self-defense. It was not sense of escape from personal violation which at this moment chiefly swayed her; it was a sensation of requital, in petty part, for the savageries of that sweep through Belgium of which she had heard four years ago; requital for the Lusitania; for Poland and Serbia; for the bombing of Paris and for that long-range gun whose shells she had seen bursting; for Grand’mère Bergues’ daughter and for the other refugees upon the Mirevaux road; for the French girls and women in slavery only a mile from here; for....
She raised her hands to her hair, which was wet, as she was wet all over; she arranged her hair and her clothing as decently as she could. A motor car was coming upon the road from the manor. It stopped directly above, and the soldier and a man in civilian clothes got out; the driver of the car remained in his seat and maneuvered to turn the car about in the narrow road.
The man in civilian clothes, who came down the slope toward the stream, was forty or forty-five years old, Ruth thought. He was a large man, florid-faced and mustached, with the bearing not of servant but of a subordinate—an overseer of some sort, Ruth guessed, or perhaps a resident manager of the estate.
“Good morning, gnädiges Fräulein,” he saluted Ruth, breathless from his haste and agitation. “I am Dittman,” he made himself known. “What a terrible accident has occurred! Herr Hauptmann is dead, they say; and Josef, too!” He gave barely a glance toward the body of the chauffeur, but knelt at once beside von Forstner’s.
“They are both dead,” Ruth said quietly. It was plain that von Forstner had been Dittman’s master and that Dittman, for the moment at least, accepted Ruth as a friend of von Forstner’s, as the soldier had.
“What shall I order done?” Dittman appealed to Ruth, rising.
“Take Hauptmann von Forstner’s body to the house, of course,” Ruth directed. “Who is at the house?” she inquired.
“Besides the servants, this morning only Herr Adler.”