As they drove on, the Avenue became more crowded; it was one of the
great days.
"What is his name?"
"Frans Roey."
"Roey? That is our lady doctor's name--Miss Roey."
"Yes, she is his sister, he often talks of her."
"She is a fine-looking woman."
Alice drew herself up. "You should see _him_. When I walk with him in
the street, people turn round to take another look at him. He is a
giant! But not of the kind that run to muscle and flesh. No, very tall,
agile."
"A trained athlete, I suppose?"
"Magnificent! His strength is what he is proudest of and delights most
in displaying."
"Is he stupid, then?"
"Stupid? Frans Roey?----" She leaned back again, and Mary asked no more.
They had been late in setting out. Endless rows of returning carriages
passed them. The three broad driving-roads of the Avenue were crowded.
The nearer they came to the iron gate where these three meet in one, the
more compact did the rows become. The display of light, many-coloured
spring costumes on this first day of sunshine after rain was a unique
sight. Amongst the fresh foliage the carriages looked like baskets of
flowers among green leaves--one behind the other, one alongside of the
other, without beginning, without end.
At the iron gate they came close to the undulating crowd of pedestrians.
No sooner were they inside than a disturbance communicated itself from
right to left. The people on the right must see something invisible to
the others. Some of them were screaming and pointing in the direction of
the lakes; the carriages were ordered to drive either to the side or
into the cross-roads; the agitation increased; it was soon universal.
Gendarmes and park-keepers rushed hither and thither; the carriages were
packed so closely together that none of them could move on. A broad
space in the centre was soon clear for a considerable distance. All
gazed, all questioned ... there it came! A pair of frantic horses with a
heavy carriage behind them. On the box both coachman and groom were to
be seen. There must have been a struggle, since there had been time to
clear the way; or else the horses must have bolted a long way off. Up
here, inside the gate, all the carriages had disappeared from the
central passage. Alice's stood blocked nearest the gate, against the
left footpath. They hear shouts behind them; probably the whole Avenue
is being cleared. But no one looks that way, all gaze straight ahead, at
the magnificent animals that are tearing frantically towards them.
Driven by curiosity, the crowds on both sides swayed back and forwards.
Terrified voices outside the gate cried: "Shut the gates!" A furious
protest, a thousand-voiced jeer, answered them from within. In the
carriages every one was standing; many had mounted the seats, Mary and
Alice among the number. It seemed as if the horses' pace increased the
nearer they came; both coachman and groom were tugging at the reins with
might and main, but this only excited them the more. A man wearing a
tall hat was leaning his whole body out of the carriage, probably to
discover where he was going to break his neck. Some dogs were following,
with strenuous protest. Up here they allured others on to the road, but
these did not venture far out. Two or three that did, knocked up against
each other with such violence that one fell and was run over; the
carriage bounded, the dog howled; his comrades stopped for a moment.
Now a man, disengaging himself from the crowd at the iron gate, ran into
the middle of the road. People shouted to him; they waved with sticks
and umbrellas; they threatened. Two gendarmes ventured out a few steps
after him and gesticulated and shouted; a single park-keeper inside the
gate did the same, but ran back terrified. Instead of attending to these
shouts and threats, the man measured the horses with his eye, moved to
the left, to the right, back again to the left ... evidently preparing
to throw himself on them.
The moment the crowd comprehended this, it became silent, so silent that
the birds could be heard singing in the trees. And heard, too, the dull,
distant sound from the giant town, which never ceases, borne hither by
the breeze. Its monotonous tone underlay the twitter of the birds.
Strange it was, but the horses of the carriages drawn up by the
roadside stood as intent as the human beings; they did not stir a foot.
The frantic pair reach the man in the middle of the avenue. He turns
with the speed of an arrow in the direction they are going, and runs
along with them, flinging himself against the side of the horse next
him....
"It is he!" cried Alice, deathly pale, and gripping Mary so violently
that they were both on the point of toppling over. Women's screams
resounded wild and shrill, the deeper roars of the men following. He was
now hanging on to the horse. Alice closed her eyes. Mary turned away.
Was he running, or was he being dragged? Stop them he could not!
Again a few seconds of terrible silence; only the dogs and the horses'
hoofs were heard. Then a short cry, then thousands, then jubilation,
wild, endless jubilation--handkerchiefs waving, and hats and parasols.
The crowd burst into the Avenue again from both sides like a flood. The
space by the gate was filled in an instant. The frenzied animals stood
trembling, in a lather of foam, close to Alice's carriage. Mary saw a
grey-clad Englishman, an erect old man with a white beard and a tall
hat; she saw a young lady hanging on his arm, and she heard him say:
"Well done, young man!" A roar of laughter followed. And not till now
did she see him who had evoked it--still gripping the horse's nostrils,
hatless, waistcoat torn, hand bleeding, his perspiring, excited face at
this moment turned laughingly towards the Englishman. At exactly the
same time the man caught sight of Alice, who was still standing on the
seat of her carriage. He instantly deserted horses, carriage,
Englishman, and forced his way through the crowd towards her.
"Dear people, get me out of this!" he said quickly, in the broadest of
"Eastern" Norwegian. Before Alice had time to answer, or even to step
down from the seat, and long before the groom could swing himself down
from the box, he had opened the carriage door and was standing beside
them. He handed first Alice and then her friend down from the seat. Then
he said to the coachman in French:
"Drive me home as soon as you can move. You remember the address?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Capitaine," replied the coachman, touching his hat
respectfully, with a look of admiration.
As Frans Roey turned to sit down, his face contracted, and he exclaimed,
catching hold of his foot: "Oh!----the devil! that brute must have
trodden on me. I never felt it till now."
As he spoke, he met Mary's large, astonished eyes; he had not looked at
her before, not even when he was assisting her down from the seat. The
change in his expression was so sudden and so extremely comical that
both ladies burst out laughing. Frans raised his bleeding hand to his
hat--and discovered that he had no hat. Then he laughed too.
The coachman had in the meantime manoeuvred them a few yards forwards,
and they were beginning to turn.
"I don't suppose I need tell you who she is?" laughed Alice.
"No," answered Roey, looking so hard at Mary that she blushed.
"Good heavens! Think of your daring to do that!" It was Alice who spoke.
"Oh! It's not so dangerous as it looks," he replied, without taking his
eyes off Mary. "There's a trick in it. I've done it twice before." He
was speaking to Mary alone. "I saw at once that only one horse had lost
its head; the other was being dragged along. So I went for the mad
one.--Goodness! what a sight I am!" He had not discovered till now that
his waistcoat was in rags, that his watch was gone, and that blood was
dripping from his hand. Mary offered him her handkerchief. He looked at
the delicate square of embroidery and then at her again: "No, Miss Krog;
that would be like stitching birch-bark with silk."
Roey lived quite near the iron gate, to the right, so they arrived in a
few moments. Thanking them heartily, and without offering his bleeding
hand, he jumped out. Whilst he limped across the pavement, erect, huge,
and the carriage was turning, Alice whispered in English: "If one could
only have a model like that, Mary!"