The Wolf's Long Howl

by Stanley Waterloo

This arrangement made, George Henry took up his list of creditors, one hundred and twenty in all, and made a study of them, as to character, habits and customs. He knew them very well indeed. In their intercourse with him, each, he decided, had laid his soul bare, and each should be treated according to the revelations so made. There was one man who had loaned him quite a large sum, and this was the oldest debt of all, incurred when George Henry first saw the faint signs of approaching calamity, but understood them not. This man, a friend, recognizing the nature of George Henry's struggle, had never sought payment—had, in fact, when the debtor had gone to him, apologetically and explaining, objected to the intrusion and objurgated the caller in violent language of the lovingly profane sort. He would have no talk of payment, as things stood. This claim, not only the oldest but the least annoying, should, George Henry decided, have the honor of being "No. 1"—that is, it should be paid first of all. So the list was extended, a careful analysis being made of the mental and moral qualities of each creditor as exposed in his monetary relations with George Henry Harrison. There were some who had been generous and thoughtful, some who had been vicious and insulting; and in his examination George Henry made the discovery that those who had probably least needed the money due them had been by no means the most considerate. It seemed almost as if the reverse rule had obtained. There was one man in particular, who had practically forced a small loan upon him when George Henry was still thought to be well-to-do, who had developed an ingenuity and insolence in dunning which gave him easy altitude for meanness and harshness among the lot. He went down as "No. 120," the last on the list.

There were others. There were the petty tradesmen who in former years had prospered through George Henry's patronage, whose large bills had been paid with unquestioning promptness until came the slip of his cog in the money-distributing machine. They had not hesitated a moment. As the peccaries of Mexico and Central America pursue blindly their prey, so these small yelpers, Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, of the trade world, had bitten at his heels persistently from the beginning of his weakness up to the present moment. Toward these he had no malice. He counted them but as he had counted his hunting dogs in better days. They were narrow, but they were reckoned as men; they transacted business and married the females of their kind, and bred children—prodigally—and after all, against them he had no particular grievance. They were as they were made and must be. He gathered a bunch of their bills together, and decided that they should be classed together, not quite at the end of the list.

The grade of each individual creditor fixed, the list was carefully divided into five parts, twenty in each, of which twenty should receive their letters and checks one day, twenty the next, and so on. Then the literature of the occasion began.

The thoughtful debtor who has had somewhat continuous relations with a creditor can, supposing he has even a moderate gift, write a very neat, compact and thought-compelling little letter to that creditor when he finally settles with him, if, as in the case of George Henry, the debtor will have balance enough left after all settlements to make him easy and independent. George Henry felt the strength of this proposition as he wrote. In casual, easily written conversation with his meanest creditors he rather excelled himself. Of course he sent abundant interest to everybody, though apologizing to the gentlemen among the lot for doing so, but telling them frankly that it would relieve him if they accepted the proper sum for the use of the money, saying nothing about it; while of the mean ones he demanded prompt receipts in full. That was the general tenor of the notes, but there were certain moderate extravagances in either direction, if there be such a thing as a "moderate extravagance."

To the worst, the most irritating of his creditors, George Henry indicted his masterpiece. He admitted his obligation, he expressed his satisfaction at paying an interest which made it a good investment for the creditor, and then he entered into a little disquisition as to the creditor's manner and scale of thought and existence, followed by certain mild suggestions as to improvements which might be made in the character under observation. He pledged himself to return at any time the favor extended him, and promised also never to mention it after it had been extended. He apologized for the lack of further and more adequate treatment of the subject, expressing his conviction that the more delicate shades of meaning which might be employed after a more extended study would not be comprehended by the person addressed.

George Henry—it is with regret that it is admitted—had a wild hope that this creditor would become enraged to the point of making a personal assault on him from this simple summing up of affairs, because he had an imbedded desire to lick, or anyway try to lick, this particular person, could he be provoked into an encounter. It is as well to say here that his dream was never gratified. The nagging man is never a fighting man.

And so the Feast of the Paying of Bills went on to its conclusion. It was a season of intense enjoyment for George Henry. When it was ended, having money, having also a notable gift as a shot, he fled to the northern woods, where grouse and deer fell plentifully before him, and then after a month he returned to enjoy life at ease.

It was upon his return home that George Henry Harrison, well-to-do and content, learned something which for a time made him think this probably the hollowest of all the worlds which swing around the sun. He came back, vigorous and hopeful of spirit, with the strength of the woods and of nature in him, and with open heart and hand ready to greet his fellow-beings, glad to be one with them. The thing which smote him was odd. It was that he found himself a stranger among the fellow-beings he had come to meet. He found himself still a Selkirk of the world of trade and traffic and transfer of thought and well-wishing and strong-doing and of all social life. He was like a strange bird, like an albatross blown into unaccustomed seas, alighting upon an island where albatrosses were unknown.

He found his office as bright and attractive as urgently and sternly directed servitude could make it. 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.