Tales From a Famished Land
I
SAINT DYMPNA’S MIRACLE
Pierre, the chauffeur, launched a savage kick at the newly punctured tire and swore into the night. “Three quarters of an hour, monsieur, to repair it,” he said reluctantly, switching off the motor. “Do you wish——”
Into the sudden silence stole the slow, incessant roar of the Yser cannon. The level stretches of the Campine, alternating black vistas of scrub evergreens with little fields, peat bogs, and kitchen gardens, lay fragrant and silent in the moonlight. Heather was in bloom, nightingales were nesting and so were no longer singing, and the narrow Flemish road before and behind the automobile lay like a placid silver river, inviting one to quiet thoughts.
“Yes,” I answered Pierre’s unfinished query. “I’ll go for a stroll toward the next farmhouse. Take your time, Pierre. There’s no hurry to-night.”
We had just left the town of Gheel, one of the most remarkable places in Belgium, a town where more than a thousand insane folk live quiet and useful lives, parcelled out among the peasants, but under the supervision of district doctors. The insane are treated as if they were normal beings, are given work according to their strength, mental and physical, and find companionship among a peasantry noted for industry and stubborn independence. This is originally due to certain miracles of Saint Dympna, one of the guardian saints of the insane—an Irish princess, converted to Christianity, and martyred at Gheel by her pagan father on the 30th of May in the year of Our Lord 600.
Under the bright moon the land seemed singularly like Ireland, and a little old man stepping toward me down the silvery road, his pipe in his mouth, his eyes screwed up, his bent legs wrapped in ill-fitting trousers, his feet in wooden shoes, might have been the fabled leprechaun, or Wee Hughie Gallagher of Donegal. He wore a brassard on his right sleeve, for he was one of the village watch, guarding the telephone and telegraph wires so that no accident might happen to them to give the Germans an excuse for crushing the commune with an exorbitant fine.
“Goe’n avond, mynheer,” I called cheerfully.
“Avond, mynheer,” he answered in a weak voice.
“I am the American delegate of the Komiteit voor Hulp en Voeding,” I explained.