“Boo, boo, boo!” said Reicht contemptuously. “When she wants to get rid of me, let her turn herself off and die. I am sure she is old enough for't. But take your time, mistress; if you are in no hurry, no more am I. When that day doth come, 'twill take a man to dry my eyes; and if you should be in the same mind then, soldier, you can say so; and if you are not, why, 'twill be all one to Reicht Heynes.”
And the plain speaker went her way. But her words did not fall to the ground. Neither of her female hearers could disguise from herself that this blunt girl, solitary herself, had probably read Margaret Brandt aright, and that she had gone away from Sevenbergen broken-hearted.
Catherine and Denys bade the Van Eyck adieu, and that same afternoon Denys set out on a wild goose chase. His plan, like all great things, was simple. He should go to a hundred towns and villages, and ask in each after an old physician with a fair daughter, and an old long-bow soldier. He should inquire of the burgomasters about all new-comers, and should go to the fountains and watch the women and girls as they came with their pitchers for water.
And away he went, and was months and months on the tramp, and could not find her.
Happily, this chivalrous feat of friendship was in some degree its own reward.
Those who sit at home blindfolded by self-conceit, and think camel or man out of the depths of their inner consciousness, alias their ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind. But those who look before they babble or scribble will see and say that men who risk their lives habitually thirst for exciting pleasures between the acts of danger, are not for innocent tranquility.
To this Denys was no exception. His whole military life had been half sparta, half Capua. And he was too good a soldier and too good a libertine to have ever mixed either habit with the other. But now for the first time he found himself mixed; at peace and yet on duty; for he took this latter view of his wild goose chase, luckily. So all these months he was a demi-Spartan; sober, prudent, vigilant, indomitable; and happy, though constantly disappointed, as might have been expected. He flirted gigantically on the road; but wasted no time about it. Nor in these his wanderings did he tell a single female that “marriage was not one of his habits, etc.”
And so we leave him on the tramp, “Pilgrim of Friendship,” as his poor comrade was of Love.