“Yes, monsieur. Saint Dympna has received thousands of mad ones, and of those who are mad but whom she has not received, there are millions. When the war broke out two men went mad in this village. They were carried away to Gheel, raving. Their eyes stared, their lips frothed, and they twitched all over. When the Germans came here, certain ones went mad at sight of them. I have seen it with my eyes, monsieur. They say that when the Germans came into France they sent whole long trainloads of mad ones back into their own land. When the big shells burst in the forts, all the garrison goes mad. When the aviator flies over the trench, men go mad. You have seen there are always two German sentries together? It is so that if one goes mad the other will be at hand. For they go mad, monsieur, by dozens, by hundreds, by thousands. Have you seen their eyes? They are mad. And their lips? They work like the lips of men always talking to themselves. When the war began, I, too, was mad. I dreamed terrible dreams. For two months I was mad—like all the world.”
“But the woman there?” I asked, pointing to the figure beside the turf glow.
The man clattered over to her and laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “Madame,” he said, “there is a gentleman here to speak with you.”
“Nay, mynheer,” she answered quietly, “not until midnight.”
“He is not the doctor, madame.”
She turned and gave me a searching glance. The movement revealed that her breast was uncovered, and that she held the sleeping child against her heart. “Nay,” she said again, “not until midnight.”
He came slowly back. “When a child is sick, she knows it and she comes,” he explained apologetically. “At midnight she goes back to the doctor’s house.”
“Alone?”
“Alone, monsieur. God and the Devil alike love the mad. God and the Devil alike watch over them. This one”—he pointed to the woman with the child—“was a lady of Louvain, of the Krakenstraat; she was rich; she had a husband and two children. They were killed by the Germans and she was wounded in the shoulder. Her house was burned; her money lost. She went mad. She was taken to Duffel, I think; then to Antwerp, then to Hoogstraeten, then she was brought to Gheel, screaming for her children and her husband—mad—mad and soon to die. Then, monsieur, Saint Dympna wrought a miracle through the love of a little child, a little sick boy in the doctor’s house where madame was confined, and she became well after a fashion. And now in whatever house a child is ill, madame by the grace of God knows of it, and she comes and nurses it back to health. The first madness is of the Devil, monsieur, violent and bloody; the second is of God, and it is kind.”
In the midst of his prattle the woman rose slowly, holding the sleeping child in the hollow of her right arm and buttoning the bosom of her dress with her left hand. “Hush!” she admonished softly. “Listen, mynheeren!” From some instinct of courtesy I rose to my feet. She raised her hand warningly but did not turn her head. “Listen,” she repeated, staring toward the fireplace.