Had all those in the graves come to life again? Were those rising who had slept there, wakened by the snorting of the horses and the crack of the whip, indignant at being disturbed in their rest? What were those sounds?
The quiet Venn had become alive. Piercing sounds and whistling shrill cries and groaning and the flapping of wings and indignant screams mingled with the dull roar of the organ of the storm.
A flight of birds swam through the sea of mist. They rowed to the right, they rowed to the left, looked down uneasily at the strange carriage, remained poised above it for some moments with wings spread out ready to strike it to the ground, and then uttered their cry, the startled, penetrating cry of a wild bird. There was nothing triumphant about it to-day--it sounded like a lamentation.
And the Venn wept. Large drops fell from the mist. The mist itself turned into tears, to slowly falling and then to rushing, streaming, never-ending tears.
CHAPTER VI
The Schliebens had reached Berlin safely. Käte was exhausted when she got out of the train; her hair was untidy, she did not look quite so smart as usual. It had been no trifle to make that long journey with the child. But they had been fortunate hi finding a good nurse so quickly in Cologne--a widow, fond of children and experienced, a typical, comfortable-looking nurse; however, the mother had had enough to see to all the same. Had the child caught cold, or did it not like its bottle? It had cried with all the strength of its lungs--no carrying about, rocking, dandling, singing to it had been of any avail--it had cried with all its might the whole way to Berlin.
But, thank goodness, now they were at home. And everything was arranged as quickly as if by magic. True, the comfortable house they had had before was let, but there was villa after villa in the Grunewald, and, as they required so much more room now, they moved into one of those. They rented it to begin with. Later on they would no doubt buy it, as it was quite impossible to take a child like this one into a town. It would have to have a garden.
They called him Wolfgang. "Wolf" had something so concise, vigorous, energetic about it, and--Käte gave a slight happy shudder as she thought of it--it was like a secret memory of the Venn, of that desolate spot over which they had triumphed, and to which they made only this slight concession. And did not "Wölfchen"--if they made that the diminutive of Wolf--sound extremely affectionate?
"Wölfchen"--the young mother said it about a hundred times every day.
The young mother? Oh yes, Käte felt young. Her child had made her young again, quite young. Nobody would have taken her for thirty-five, and she herself least of all. How she could run, how she could fly upstairs when they said: "The child is awake. It's screaming for its bottle."