Produced by Nicole Apostola, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
Harald Kaas was sixty.
He had given up his free, uncriticised bachelor life; his yacht was nolonger seen off the coast in summer; his tours to England and the southhad ceased; nay, he was rarely to be found even at his club inChristiania. His gigantic figure was never seen in the doorways; he wasfailing.
Bandy-legged he had always been, but this defect had increased; hisherculean back was rounded, and he stooped a little. His forehead,always of the broadest—no one else's hat would fit him—was now one ofthe highest, that is to say, he had lost all his hair, except a raggedlock over each ear and a thin fringe behind. He was beginning also tolose his teeth, which were strong though small, and blackened bytobacco; and now, instead of "deuce take it" he said "deush take it."
He had always held his hands half closed as though grasping something;now they had stiffened so that he could never open them fully. Thelittle finger of his left hand had been bitten off "in gratitude" by anadversary whom he had knocked down: according to Harald's version ofthe story, he had compelled the fellow to swallow the piece on the spot.
He was fond of caressing the stump, and it often served as anintroduction to the history of his exploits, which became greater andgreater as he grew older and quieter.
His small sharp eyes were deep set and looked at one with greatintensity. There was power in his individuality, and, besides shrewdsense, he possessed a considerable gift for mechanics. His boundlessself-esteem was not devoid of greatness, and the emphasis with whichboth body and soul proclaimed themselves made him one of the originalsof the country.
Why was he nothing more?
He lived on his estate, Hellebergene, whose large woods skirted thecoast, while numerous leasehold farms lay along the course of theriver. At one time this estate had belonged to the Kurt family, and hadnow come back to them, in so far as that Harald's father, as every oneknew, was not a Kaas at all, but a Kurt; it was he who had got theestate together again; a book might be written about the ways and meansthat he had employed.
The house looked out over a bay studded with islands; farther out weremore islands and the open sea. An immensely long building, raised on anold and massive foundation, its eastern wing barely half furnished, thewestern inhabited by Harald Kaas, who lived his curious life here.
These wings were connected by two covered galleries, one above theother, with stairs at each end.
Curiously enough, these galleries did not face the sea, that is, thesouth, but the fields and woods to the north. The portion of the housebetween the two wings was a neutral territory—namely, a largedining-room with a ballroom above it, neither of which was used inlater years.
Harald Kaas's suite of rooms was distinguished from without by a mightyelk's head with its enormous antlers, which was set up over the gallery.
In the gallery itself were heads of bear, wolf, fox and lynx, withstuffed birds from land and sea. Skins and guns hung on the walls ofthe anteroom, the inner rooms were also full of skins and impregnatedwith the smell of wild animals and tobacco-smoke. Harald himself calledit "Man-smell;" no one who had once put his nose inside could everforget it.
...