The Wolfs Long Howl | Page 8

There were no letters upon his desk,
however, the desk so overburdened in the past. The desk spoke of
loneliness. The new carpet, without a worn white strip leading from the
doorway, said loneliness. All was loneliness. He could not understand
it.
There was the abomination of clean and cold desolation in and all about
his belongings. He sat down in the easy-chair before his desk, and was
far, very far, from happy. He leaned back--the chair worked beautifully
upon its well-oiled springs--and wondered. He shut his eyes, and tried
to place himself in his position of a month before, and failed. Why had

there been no callers? His own branch of business was in a laggard way,
but of that he made no account. He thought of Oonalaska, and decided
that there were worse places in the world than on that shore, even with
the drawback of the howlings. He seemed to be in space.
To sum up all in an explanatory way, George Henry, having largely lost
his grip upon the world, had voluntarily, being too sensitive, severed all
connections save those he had to maintain with that portion of the
community interested in the paying of his bills. Now, since he had met
all material obligations, he thought the world would come to him again
unsought. It did not come.
Every one seemed to have gone away with the wolf. George Henry
began trying to determine what it was that was wrong. The letter-carrier,
a fine fellow, who had called upon him daily in the past, now never
crossed his threshold. Even book agents and peddlers avoided the place,
from long experience of rebuff. The bill-collectors came no more, of
course; and as George Henry looked back over the past months of
humiliation and agony he suddenly realized that to these same
collectors he had been solely indebted toward the last of his time of
trial for what human companionship had come to him. His friends, how
easily they had given him up! He thought of poor old Rip Van Winkle's
plaint, "How soon we are forgotten when we are gone!" and
sarcastically amended it to "How soon we are forgotten when we are
here!" A few invitations declined, the ordinary social calls left for some
other time, and he was apparently forgotten. He could not much blame
himself that he had voluntarily severed the ties. A man cannot dine in
comfort with comfortable friends when his heart is sore over his
general inconsequence in the real world. Play is not play when zest is
not given to it by work and duties. Even his social evenings with old
and true friends he had given up early in the struggle. He could not
overcome the bitterness of his lot sufficiently to sit easily among those
he most cared for. It is not difficult sometimes to drop out of life while
yet alive. Yet George Henry realized that possibly he had been an
extended error--had been too sensitive. He thought of his neglect of
friends and his generally stupid performances while under the spell of
the wolf, but he thought also of the excuse he had, and conscience was

half appeased.
So he was alone, the same old Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe, without a
man Friday, without even a parrot and goats; alone in his once familiar
hotel and his office, in a city where he was distinctly of the native sort,
where he had seen, it seemed to him, every one of the great
"sky-scraping" buildings rise from foundation-stone to turret, where he
should be one whose passage along the street would be a series of
greetings. He yearned for companionship. His pulse quickened when he
met one of his lately persecuting bill-collectors on the street and
received from him a friendly recognition of his bow and smile. He
became affable with elevator-men and policemen. But he was lonely,
very lonely.
The days drifted into long weeks, when one day the mail-carrier, once
so regular in his calls, now almost a stranger, appeared and cast upon
George Henry's desk a letter returned uncalled for. The recipient
examined it with interest. It did not require much to excite his interest
now.
The returned letter was one which he had sent enclosing a check to a Dr.
Hartley, to whom he had become indebted for professional services at
one time. He had never received a bill, but had sent the check at a
venture. Its return, with the postoffice comment, "Moved, left no
address," startled him. Dr. Hartley was Her father. George Henry
pondered. Was it a dream or reality, that a few months ago, while he
was almost submerged in his sea of difficulties, he had read or heard of
Dr. Hartley's death? He had known the doctor but slightly,