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Sustainability in Business
A Financial Economics
Analysis
Sustainability in Business
 David Hobson Myers

Sustainability
in Business
A Financial Economics Analysis
David Hobson Myers
D’Amore-McKim School of Business
Northeastern University
Boston, MA, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-96603-8 ISBN 978-3-319-96604-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96604-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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 Preface

Since the initial draft of this book, the world has been changed by the
COVID-19 crisis. The crisis, however, serves to highlight the choices soci-
eties, businesses, and individuals make. The importance of a clear, concise,
consistent, and convincing decision model is thus that more critical. The
original aim of the book was to provide such a context for understanding
the choices businesses make among their current and future shareholders,
customers, employees, suppliers, and communities. The decision model
structure presented here may help students and researchers make sense of
the world and the choices they now face.
Sustainability is about ethics, philosophy, and social interactions. It is
about how people approach each other and how they approach future
generations. Economics is about choices and scarce resources. Business
necessarily lies across both sustainability and economics. The choices high-
lighted in today’s world of pandemic, geopolitical unrest, and economic
uncertainty make that a very stark reality. The “green” movement has
aimed some of its efforts towards reducing plastics and greenhouse gases.
The pandemic has switched society from moving towards more reusable
cups, grocery bags, and metal straws back to throwaway utensils to
prevent the spread of the virus. On the flip side of the sustainability coin
and the pandemic, we have seen a dramatic decrease in greenhouse gases
due to the slowdown in economic activity. The advantages and disad-
vantages reflected in the response to the pandemic magnify the choices

v
vi PREFACE

among current and future generations. The aim here is to provide a deci-
sion model for those in a business environment to make better informed
choices.
Business and societal choices are about sustainability and the tradeoffs
of current generations versus future generations. The model presented is
based on the economics and finance of discounted cash flows with the
addition of social distance as a discount factor. Social distance may mirror
issues of empathy towards other groups. These measures provide a struc-
ture to understand those tradeoffs. Discount factors based on time and
social distance remind consumers that a dollar tomorrow is less than a
dollar today or a dollar to someone else is less than a dollar to us. How
much less is based on the size of the discount factors.
Businesses and organizations have competing interests of their share-
holders and other stakeholders. The economic foundations of a model
based on social distance and time discounting extend the traditional
discounted cash flow models of net present value to one of sustainable net
present value. Such a structure for decision making provides a framework
for thought and reflection about the business choices today and impacts
those choices have on current and future stakeholders and on profits.
The objective of this book is to provide a text that more firmly roots
the concepts learned in financial economics to the field of sustainability.
Most textbooks in the arena of sustainability for businesses are from the
management perspective and those in the economics literature most often
focus more on macroeconomic goals such as societal goals. The aim here
is to frame a discussion of sustainability for businesses or organizations
and describe how to incorporate financial economic techniques in their
decision-making process.
In the broadest sense, economics is about the allocation of scarce
resources. The allocation of such resources is a question of choices.
Choices of the consumption and allocation of scarce resources are
being made by individuals, businesses, governments, and societies. Those
choices are also central to sustainability. Choices have an impact for
others whether the others are current generations or future. Those choices
impact natural resources, shared resources, public, and private resources
and the allocation of those resources. The framework adopted here
provides a lesson in the concepts of utility maximization for sustainable
businesses. Such lessons will provide researchers with a theoretical basis
to approach research questions on sustainability.
 PREFACE vii

Since choices impact others, society and government create norms and
laws to protect members of society from each other. A responsible or
sustainable business may simply be one that rises above the minimum
societal standard. The decision-making process for any individual or orga-
nization becomes the understanding, rationale, and commitment to rise
above those minimum standards. The simple goal to maximize share-
holder wealth and meet all legal standards is a starting point for all busi-
nesses; sustainability is about going beyond. In particular, the next step
is to understand the impacts on stakeholders present and future and the
ethical and moral responsibilities of the organization. The approach neces-
sitates being cross-disciplinary. An approach that will touch on philosophy,
psychology, sociology, and political science in combination with the core
financial economist approaches.
The format for each chapter is begins with an introduction to theo-
retical financial economic approaches that will be useful to creating more
sustainable businesses. Examples of applying these approaches will provide
further understanding of their advantages and disadvantages and the chal-
lenges of sustainable decision making. Each chapter ends with some
discussion of societal and governmental roles within which organizations
must operate.
The book is outlined as follows:
The introductory chapter lays out the case for the approach to sustain-
ability in a financial economics framework. Discussion of different defi-
nitions of sustainability frames how those definitions affect the approach
researchers, students, and business people take in determining their deci-
sion making. The contrast between traditional finance, Friedman’s “Max-
imize Shareholder Wealth”, and sustainability’s double or triple bottom
lines (environmental, social, and governance or profit, people, and planet)
are laid out as the foundation for those discussions.
Chapter 2 introduces utility functions and concentrate on consump-
tion for both the individual and society. Given the contrast between maxi-
mizing shareholder wealth and triple bottom lines, this chapter discusses
utility functions with an emphasis on consumption models. The case for
sustainability relies on social distance measures for the intergenerational
and intragenerational transfers where the utility is a function of time value
of money and social distance (Becker 1968 and Anderson and Myers
2017 and 2020). The discussion of utility is supplemented with discus-
sions of Von Neumann Morgenstern Utility, transitivity, and one period
viii PREFACE

models versus multi-period models as a means of discussing the framing

of sustainability beyond traditional finance models.
Chapter 3 introduces a discounted cash flow approach to valuation
of business ventures and highlights the key element of growth. The
success of a business, sustainable or not, is dependent on its growth.
Expansion of a business relies on expanding its markets’ reach (demo-
graphics), its innovation or creation of new products, and its capital struc-
ture (leverage) within a legal and governmental framework. The interplay
of social distance and demographics highlights the markets that a busi-
ness may expand into as it builds customer relationships. Those relation-
ships are based on the marketing of innovative sustainable products. The
role of leverage on capital structure is described within a risk and return
framework.
Chapter 4 introduces the reader to different ratings created and
employed to measure sustainability. In building relationships with
consumers for sustainable products or business, the trust and certifi-
cation of sustainability is dependent upon measurement. The chapter
discusses methods of certification through organizations such as LEED,
Bloomberg’s ESG, MSCI KLD, and other assurances of sustainability. The
strengths and weaknesses of the measurability will be highlighted by the
presence of false advertising known as “greenwashing.”
Chapter 5 highlights the different legal structures for businesses and
how sustainability fits with those structures. Corporate or business imple-
mentation strategies are covered. Implementation of structure and process
in a sustainable framework highlights investments in products through a
Sustainable NPV (SNPV) analysis or business structure. Differences in
structure and form such as B-Corps, non-profits, institutions, partner-
ships, and corporations are discussed within the area of sustainability.
The final chapter is a review of the investment opportunities and strate-
gies for sustainably minded investors. A review of the historical sustain-
able movement from ethical screens to socially responsible investment to
mission related and impact invest investing is made to highlight changes in
the costs of monitoring and investor interest which have created a greater
interest in sustainable investing. Strategies from positive and negative
screening to shareholder activism as well as best in class are discussed.

Boston, USA David Hobson Myers

 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Sustainability and Sustainable Goals 3
Basic Economic Concepts and Their Awesome Power 4
Model for Sustainability with the Concept of Social Distance 6
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) 8
Intergenerational and Intragenerational Transforms 10
A Word of Caution on Economic Models 12
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (A Strange Interpretation) 14
Government’s Role in Defining Limits and Generational
Transfers 16
References 17

2 Economic Models 19
Transitivity and Binary Choices 21
Stated Versus Revealed Preference 23
Portfolio Choice 25
Consumption Utility Model 25
Consumption Utility Model Through Time 28
Fisher Approximation (1930) 29
Sustainability Utility Model 29
Line in the Sand or a Spectrum of Options 31
Binomial Pricing Models for Uncertainty 32
Edgeworth Box and Societal Agreement 34

ix
x CONTENTS

Infinity and Finance 37

Infinite Costs 37
Infinity and Going Concern 38
References 39

3 Growth and Business Sustainability 41

Leverage 43
Innovation 45
Demographics 46
Role of Government 48

4 Certification of Sustainability 51
Trust and Acceptance in the Certification 52
Measurability of the Certification 53
Relationship of Certification to Social Distance 54
Relationship of Certification to Stakeholders 54
Sustainable Accounting Standards Board (SASB) 56
Governmental Role in Certification 56
Stability and Consistency 57
Reference 59

5 Corporate Implementation and Business Forms 61

Net Present Value and Discounted Cash Flows 62
Payback Period 65
Internal Rate of Return (IRR) 67
Equivalent Annual Cost: Long Versus Short Term 68
Sustainable Net Present Value (SNPV) 69
Manipulations to the Cash Flow Model 72
Business Forms 73
Sole Proprietorships 75
Partnerships 75
Limited Liability Corporations: Private 76
Limited Liability Corporations: Public 76
Non-profits and Non-governmental Organizations
(NGOs) 77
B-Corporations 78
Other Potential Advantages to Sustainable Corporations 78
Governmental Roles and International Differences 79
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 CONTENTS xi

Refresher on General Finance Variables 80

General Asset Pricing Models (APM) 80
Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) 80
References 83

6 Investment Implementation 85
Theory to Evolution in Practice 86
History of Sustainable Screening 88
Investor Types 91
Individuals 92
Pensions 93
Endowments 93
Foundations 94
Governmental Role 95
Choice of Sustainable Approach 96
Constrained and Unconstrained Portfolios 97
Climate Change Investing and Risk Management 98
Portfolio Creation 99
Other Investment Vehicles 100
References 101

Epilogue 103

Index 105
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Mean-variance efficient frontier 26

Fig. 2.2 Budget constrained utility optimal two product indifference
curve 27
Fig. 2.3 Binomial pricing 32
Fig. 2.4 Edgeworth box similar utilities 36
Fig. 2.5 Edgeworth box disparate utilities 37
Fig. 3.1 Impact of leverage on returns 44
Fig. 3.2 Leverage, capital structure, and bankruptcy 45
Fig. 6.1 Returns and social distance to non-shareholders
(stakeholders) 95

xiii
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 UN’s millennium development goals (2000–2015) 8

Table 1.2 UN’s sustainable development goals (2015–2030) 9
Table 1.3 UN SDGs, social distance, and discounting 13
Table 2.1 Intransitive preferences 22
Table 2.2 Regression coefficients of local versus organic attributes 24
Table 4.1 Rating criteria example 55
Table 4.2 Rating examples 56
Table 4.3 UN SDGs as a rating system for an organization 58
Table 5.1 Less sustainable option 67
Table 5.2 More sustainable option 67
Table 5.3 NPV versus SNPV decisions 70
Table 5.4 NPV versus SNPV decisions for charity 71
Table 5.5 Organizational structure with social distance 74
Table 5.6 Variables fixed and random 82
Table 6.1 UN PRI 6 principles 88
Table 6.2 Categories of qualitative screens from Anderson and
Myers (2007) 91
Table 6.3 Investment approaches by implied social distances and
information costs 92
Table 6.4 Investor type with social distance and returns 96
Table 6.5 S&P 500 top 10 versus 2 largest SRI mutual funds 100

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract The introductory chapter lays out the case for the approach
to sustainability in a financial economics framework. Discussion of
different definitions of sustainability frames how those definitions affect
the approach researchers, students, and business people take in deter-
mining their decision making. The contrast between traditional finance,
Friedman’s “Maximize Shareholder Wealth,” and sustainability’s double
or triple bottom lines (environmental, social, and governance or profit,
people, and planet) are laid out as the foundation for those discussions.

Keywords Intragenerational transfers · Sustainability · Social distance ·

Business · UN SDGs

In preparing students as future business leaders and researchers for a

sustainable future, it is important to lay out the arguments for and
against sustainability that they will face. Those arguments center on defi-
nitions of sustainability and the battle lines that exist among the different
stakeholders. This text is a step toward outlining those arguments from
a financial economics standpoint. Most business sustainability texts are
written from a management perspective. It is the goal here to frame the
issues of sustainability against the backdrop of financial economics. Such
a framework necessitates outlining the distinction between the classic

© The Author(s) 2020 1

D. H. Myers, Sustainability in Business,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96604-5_1
2 D. H. MYERS

finance approaches and the behavioral finance approaches to the issues

and combining the result with sustainability.
In addition to the battle lines within finance, another hurdle that busi-
ness leaders must be cognizant of is the wide range of definitions and
therefore disagreements of what is “sustainability.” Without agreement
on what sustainability is, there is little possibility for agreement on solu-
tions. Ultimately, it will be incumbent upon each reader to determine the
best definition and solution for their work. It is the hope that this text
will provide the tools to do so. This approach may be unsatisfactory to
some. A. D. Roy (1952), the economist, best summarized this when he
wrote “A man who seeks advice about his actions will not be grateful
for the suggestion that he maximize utility.” Yet this is exactly what this
text intends to do. Utility functions, Chapter 2, are one of a financial
economist’s tools to explain human behavior. This is true whether one is
a classical economist or behavioralist.
For the classical economist, Milton Friedman in 1970 set out the one
and only directive for corporations (their utility function must include)
maximizing shareholder wealth. If sustainability goals do not maximize
shareholder wealth, then those goals are inappropriate for the firm.
Since Friedman placed this stake in the theoretical ground of corporate
behavior, there have been movements to justify changing that objec-
tive. Management scholars offer maximizing stakeholder wealth as an
alternative to the traditional finance goal of maximizing shareholder
wealth. If the stakeholders include the employees, the customers, and
the community, then the theory is inching away from the shareholder
toward stakeholders and a definition of more sustainable goals. Within
stakeholders, future generations and current generations are included to
be consistent with the goals of sustainability. In the summer of 2019,
over 180 US CEOs announced that businesses had a responsibility to
stakeholders not just shareholders. The stakeholders mentioned were
employees, customers, suppliers, and the communities. This was reiterated
on a broader scale at Davos in 2020.
For those looking for clarity and definitive answers, this text will
not provide those. The approach taken here is that there are many
approaches to sustainability. Individual solutions will be dependent on
the organization/business and its stakeholders and the social distances
to those stakeholders. The good news is that good students, researchers,
and future leaders will recognize that solutions require thoughtfulness
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

through critical thinking. The approach taken here should serve them
well in all their endeavors.
The ability to create a more sustainable business or organization will
rely on the ability to think beyond just profit and shareholders. It will
require the ability to recognize how sustainability is dependent on the
ability to view the impact of decisions on current and future generations.
Those decisions reflect the economic choices that are made with respect
to the consumption choices of current and future generations. Remem-
bering that economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources.
The assumption is resources that are scarce today will be even scarcer
in the future. In creating profitable businesses that are also sustainable
will require changing human behavior and corporate behavior. Not an
easy task to take on, but one that appears to be more pressing today
as governments from local to national struggle with issues of climate
change, pollution, and poverty. Remember that businesses, organizations,
and individuals work within the societies that they belong and the rules
and regulations within they reside. With that heady charge, we begin our
journey.

Sustainability and Sustainable Goals

The best place to begin is to ground the discussion in a common defini-
tion of sustainability. There is a plethora of definitions for sustainability
from financial sustainability to environmental sustainability. Economics
centers on choice and choices have consequences to ourselves and others.
As an example, the choices made by the ordering of the United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs: https://www.un.org/sustai
nabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/) presents the starting
point for the first definition of sustainability. The UN SDGs will be
enumerated in more depth later.
Other widely accepted definitions of sustainability include Landrum
and Edwards’ (2009),

We will define sustainable business as one that operates in the interest of

all current and future stakeholders in a manner that ensures the long-term
health and survival of the business and its associated economic, social, and
environmental systems.

And Sanders and Wood’s Definition

4 D. H. MYERS

“Positive social impact, a reduced negative environmental impact, and a

positive economic impact.” or “a business’s contribution to social justice,
environmental quality, and economic propriety is collectively referred to as
the triple bottom line…or people, planet, profit.”

All these definitions fit within the approach to sustainability of realizing

that economic decisions affect current and future generations through the
allocation of scarce resources. Thus, to be sustainable and to make those
sustainable decisions in a manner consistent with the goals and objectives,
the lessons of financial economics will be the guide.

Basic Economic Concepts and Their Awesome Power

The beginning of the twenty-first century has witnessed the awesome
power of the simple economic concepts such as supply and demand with
respect to oil prices, natural gas prices, and recycling. Additionally, the
pandemic has changed decisions from future generations to current gener-
ations as societies have returned to plastic cups and bags to reduce further
spreading of the COVID 19 virus. In both cases, to control or mitigate
this power governments often jump into maintain sovereignty. The levers
that they pull may be from central banks and interest rates to tariffs and
trade controls. Even in their efforts to impact a more sustainable future,
regulations and subsidies for electric vehicles, biofuels, and alternative
power sources have subsidiary effects on both current and future genera-
tions. The role of societal norms expressed through governmental action
decides the future of sustainability.
An example of the rippling effects of governmental intervention comes
from the early years of the Obama administration. Efforts to increase
the use of biofuels had downstream effects on food prices driven by
both the increase in prices for corn and sugar from the substitution
effects of increased demand for biofuels as well as protection effects from
restrictions on support for farmers and agricultural policies.
The trade-offs between stakeholders or communities within current
generations and across national borders have a profound effect on the
international and global economic goals and progress between the devel-
oped and developing worlds. The UN SDGs highlight this tension both in
terms of current versus future generations, but also within current genera-
tions between the developed and developing economies. Simple questions
of fossil fuels and economic growth limits and targets have significant
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

economic implications for all countries. One example is if to slow climate

change, are developing economies sacrificing growth to future genera-
tions? These trade-offs among economies have been the key discussion
points in most of the climate accords over the past few decades (Kyoto,
Paris, …).
Another example of this tension between developed and developing
is China has become more stringent on the recycled materials they
accept. In the past, they were willing to take recycled materials from
the United States and Europe. The restrictions now in place in China
and other countries have resulted in the cost of recycling to rise and
are combined with a decreasing price of recycled materials as supply
grows. Numerous accounts have surfaced of US cities abandoning recy-
cling programs because the programs are no longer economically viable.
The margins for recycling have become much worse.
Similar economic pressures are seen with oil prices and cars. Electric
cars became more popular in the early part of this century as gas prices
rose. With the economic decline after the Great Financial Crisis, gas prices
fell and the demand for SUVs rose. Lower gas prices made SUVs more
economical. More recently, the cost of electric vehicles has come down,
and in combination with climate concerns, electric vehicles have become
more popular, but an increase in electric vehicles pushes down demand
for gasoline and thus prices. The dynamic will be the trade-offs (marginal
costs and benefits) of climate concerns, electric vehicle prices versus lower
gasoline prices, and affordability of internal combustion engines (ICE).
There are also implications for funding of roads which are presently
supported by gasoline taxes. To fund roads in an era of increasing electric
vehicle world means transferring taxes from gasoline to electric vehicles.
The power of the marginal cost and marginal benefit rules of deci-
sion making is also evident in economics and sustainability. Returning to
another of the supply and demand examples, it is the lowering of the
marginal cost of production of natural gas that has increased its demand
and decreased the demand for coal in electricity production.
Key economic concepts to remember from microeconomics:

1. Maximizing utility leads us to marginal cost equals marginal benefit

and optimal decisions.
2. Time value of money and the marginal rate of intertemporal substi-
tution assist in investment and consumption decisions.
6 D. H. MYERS

3. Expected values are the probability of an outcome times the value of

the outcome summed over all possible outcomes (the probabilities
must sum to one).

Model for Sustainability

with the Concept of Social Distance
After the first choice of defining sustainability with the UN SDGs, the
second choice is to use the framework of “social distance” to discuss the
issues of sustainability within the UN SDGs. Social distance was intro-
duced by Becker (1968) to discuss the consumption choices within a
family unit. Given the theory was in the 1960s, the framework was a father
figure as the breadwinner making decisions for the family. The argument
was that a dollar for the father was worth a dollar for family or any indi-
vidual in the family. The conclusion was that in the family unit there was
no or zero social distance. Anderson and Myers (2018) expand on this
analogy toward more of a utilitarian interpretation of each consumer has
known social distances and thus discount rates to others.
In approaching the decisions made by individuals, groups, and society
for their own benefit, the model of maximizing wealth is greatly lacking in
its ability to explain pro-social behavior. Economists have struggled with
altruistic behavior. A model that is more widely applicable includes the
addition of social distance. Social distance is a measure of how a deci-
sion maker relates to others. The impetus for this goes back to Becker
and social distance within a family unit. For the family unit, there is no
distance within the nuclear family. A dollar to one member is worth a
dollar to all members. The concept of social distance becomes a discount
factor as one moves outside the nuclear family. The further the social
distance, the greater is the discount factor.
By employing social distance as a discount factor, Anderson and Myers
leverage Becker to create a framework to corral the disparate defini-
tions in the world of sustainability into a model of economic growth,
consumption, and social distance. The model is employed throughout
the text as the framework for sustainable decision making. The model
will be discussed in more depth later both within the context of general
consumption models as well as applications to sustainable decisions in
organizations as an extension of net present value criterion. As a base case,
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

social distance will be applied to the United Nation’s Sustainable Devel-

opment Goals as our broadest definition of sustainability. Social distance
will be the metric to explain potentially the ordering of the UN SDGs.
Having begun my financial career with a Japanese brokerage firm in the
1980s and living in a company dorm, my first inkling of social distance as
a way of explaining behavior came from that experience. A background for
the social distance measure is from the structure and interactions within
the Japanese society. If viewed as a series of concentric circles, Japanese
have zero distance within the nuclear family as well, but distances may be
seen to increase as one moves to family, school mates, college mates, busi-
ness mates, to Japanese as a whole. The word for foreigners, “gaikokujin,”
is literally “outside country person.” A poorer analogy is the solar system
and the distances from the sun. Not only is Pluto’s distance large, but its
status as a planet has been debated. Even the current political debates of
America First or populist movements in Europe may be seen as increasing
social distance to those not in one’s particular group.
The Economist writes about efficient charity that is also consistent with
the model of social distance. Those making decisions about charity want
to ensure who the money is going to help. Those who have the shortest
social distance or smallest discount rate to the donor are the targets of
the donations. Giving or having the greatest impact (utility) for the donor
comes from getting the money to those with the shortest social distance.
Efficiency of the donation or inefficiency may also be measured by monies
going to those with greater social distance as being seen as more ineffi-
cient. That is if the money goes to not direct mission-related individuals
versus mission-related individuals it is interpreted as being inefficient.
Mission-related individuals as the target of the charity have lower social
distance and thus greater utility to the donor.
Within the added dimension of social distance, it is much easier to
discuss the range of definitions surrounding sustainability. The model of
social distance also firmly plants the idea of sustainability within a social
justice framework matching the SDGs of how decisions affect others and
how much does it matter to the decision maker. Take, for example, the
acronym ESG meaning Environmental, Social, and Governance. Environ-
mental impact is about the effects on future generations and the current
generation and the impact on that generation’s health and well-being and
their consumption goals. There will be more covered about consumption
goals in Chapter 2’s discussion of utility. Social goals are the impacts on
other groups as well as governance’s impact on the corporate culture and
decision making. Environmentalists or social justice advocates can easily
be categorized as having lower or shorter social distance to others, where
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just for me.” Her face was shining with an inner light, as she locked
her hands about his neck.
He stood a moment, looking into her eyes, then gathered her
gently into his arms and carried her to a chair, holding her to him.
“Well, I did,” he said, his voice a little uncertain. “And,” he added,
kissing her, “it was worth while.”
She settled down into his arms with a little sigh.
“We are very happy, Hugh. I am afraid sometimes we are too
happy.”
“Too happy? I can ‘thole’ a lot o’ yon,” he answered cheerily. “But,”
he added suddenly, letting into his voice a deeper tone, “as for you,
you jolly well deserve all there is going. Now a little rest before
lunch, while I get out my gun.” He laid her on a lounge, covered her
with a wrap and left her, with a smile of pride and ineffable joy
illuminating the beauty of her face.
After a hasty lunch Gaspard looked in upon her, found her sleeping
quietly and with the adumbration of that same smile still lingering
about her, then taking his gun set forth to the completion of the
other task he had set himself for the day. A disturbing factor in his
day’s problem he had learned from old Jinny. Paul had gone off with
the Sleeman children, Asa and Adelina, on their ponies for the day,
and the boy had spoken of a visit to the Indian camp. Of course, he
could send the children off on some chase, but none the less it was
a complication which added to the difficulty of a situation sufficiently
complex already. He did not, however, anticipate much trouble with
Onawata. Her love for him and her native Indian pride would work
together to further his purpose. As to the old chief, he was an
uncertain and possibly refractory element. A Chippewayan chief of
ancient lineage, proud of his race and rank, he had kept his tribe
aloof from the life and manners of the white man. He had seen the
degradation of other tribes through contact with white civilisation
and, following the tradition of his ancestors, he had built up in his
people a fear of the white man’s power and a contempt for his vices.
On the plains of the far north land his people could meet with the
white man on equal terms without fear, and at the trading post he
could hold his own in shrewd bargaining for the products of trap and
gun. He permitted no mingling of blood strains in his tribe, no half-
breed could find a home in his wigwams. Next to his passion for his
people, his love for his daughter held place with him. Her mother, an
Athabascan princess of great beauty and intelligence, trained in one
of the out-post Anglican mission schools, had captured his youthful
fancy and had held his heart in loyal allegiance for twenty years,
until her death twenty-two years ago in giving birth to her only child,
Onawata, who, growing up into beautiful girlhood, took her mother’s
place in her father’s heart and became the very light of his eyes, the
joy of his heart.
He had not sent her to the mission school. He wanted her kept
pure Indian. But he had cleverly cajoled the missionary into setting
up among his tribe a kind of extension branch of his school, the
principal pupil of which was the chief’s daughter. Her extraordinary
intelligence, stimulated by her father’s ambition for her, enabled her
to overcome with remarkable ease and rapidity the initial difficulty of
language in acquiring knowledge. She learned to read, to write, to
do simple sums, and, not only so, but succeeded in bullying her
father into the same knowledge. So that at seventeen she was a
sweet, clean, well educated Indian maid of rare intelligence and
rarer beauty, the pride of the tribe which she ruled like a queen and
the centre and delight of her father’s life.
Frankly, Gaspard was afraid to meet the old chief. He relied upon
Onawata’s influence with him, but it was with very considerable
trepidation that he strode into the Indian camp.
A strange scene spread itself before his eyes. On a grassy bench,
a little removed from the river bank, were pitched two tents before
which were grouped two Indians and at a little distance the chief
with his daughter, all intent upon the doings of a group of children
and their ponies upon the grass plot before them. The children were
dismounted, and their ponies standing, held by their trailing reins, all
but Paul, who with the little four-year old Indian child in his arms
was galloping up and down the sward to the shrieking delight of the
children standing by.
“The Sleeman youngsters and Peg Pelham,” he said to himself, as
he stood watching. “By Jove! That boy is a rider,” he added as his
eyes followed the galloping pony with its double load, careering up
and down. Almost as he spoke the pony reached the turn, turned on
its hind legs and was swinging back on its return trip, when the
Sleeman boy sprang forward with a shout, waving his hat. With a
quick side jump the pony’s feet struck the overhanging cut-bank,
broke through, plunged wildly and disappeared, crashing into the
underbrush some ten feet below.
Swift as a flash of light, the old chief sprang for the bank, but
before him was Gaspard who, clearing the bank with a single leap,
was at the head of the struggling pony and, with one hand holding it
quiet, grasped with the other the Indian child and, sheltering it with
his own body from the kicks of the struggling pony, pulled it clear of
danger. It was bravely and cleverly done.
“Paul,” he shouted, peering among the underbrush for his son,
“where are you?”
“Huh,” grunted the chief, whose quick eye had caught sight of the
boy farther down the bank, lying motionless at the root of an old
birch stump. With one leap the chief was over the pony and at the
boy’s side. Swiftly he lifted the boy, carried him down to the river’s
edge and laid him gently down. Then reaching down he scooped up
a double handful of water and dashed it into the still, white face. A
gasping sob, a shudder of the limbs, and the eyes opened upon the
chief’s face, then quietly closed again.
“Huh, Kawin! Good!” grunted the chief, whose hands were swiftly
moving over the boy’s legs and arms. “Good,” said the chief again,
giving place to the boy’s father who had handed over the Indian
child to its mother.
“Hello, old boy!” said Gaspard. “All right?”
“All r-i-i-ght,” said the boy with a deep sigh. “I’m a-w-f-u-l sle-epy.”
Gaspard reached down to gather him up in his arms.
 “No!” said the chief, placing his hand on Gaspard’s arm. “No! Lie
down—good. Better soon—five minutes.” And Gaspard, kneeling
there, waited with white, anxious face. The chief spoke a few words
to his daughter who was standing near with her child in her arms.
She hurried away and came back in a few moments with a tin cup.
The chief took it from her.
“Good,” he said with a grunt. “Good. Drink.” Gaspard looked at the
stuff doubtfully, then at the girl.
“Yes, it is good. The Indians know it is good,” she said quietly.
Gaspard took the cup and waited till Paul opened his eyes again.
“Here, old chap, drink this,” he said, lifting the boy’s head.
“My! Daddy, that’s awful agusting stuff,” he said, screwing up his
face.
“Good,” said the chief with emphasis. “Drink. Make all better.”
“Shall I, Daddy?” said the boy.
“The chief says so, Paul, and he knows.”
The boy’s eyes went round the circle of faces till they came to the
Indian girl’s, then rested there. She smiled at him, and took the cup
from his father’s hand.
“Drink it,” she said in a quiet voice. “My little boy drinks it. It will
do you good.” He drank it up at once.
“Where’s Joseph?” he asked suddenly when he had lain some
minutes quietly. “He went over too, didn’t he?” Joseph was the name
of his pinto pony, so called in Scriptural reminiscence of the earliest
recorded Joseph, with his coat of many colours.
“He’s perfectly all right—clumsy little beggar,” said his father.
“And the baby?” said Paul, sitting bolt upright and wide awake.
“He is here and safe,” replied the mother. “Your father saved him,”
she added in a voice that somehow carried a thrilling tone.
“Did you, Daddy? That was fine.”
“Pshaw! I just jerked the baby free from Joseph’s feet,” answered
his father almost gruffly.
 “Good man! Smart man!” said the chief. “Jump like deer!”
“I guess the angels were smarter’n you, Daddy,” observed the boy
dreamily.
“Angels? What do you——? Oh, I see,” laughed the father.
“Yes, Mother says they just sweep down and keep us from
bumping too hard. They do, don’t they, Daddy?” enquired the boy,
seeking assurance in his father’s eyes.
“Why—ah—certainly they do. They got a wing in the way of that
old stump sure enough. But are you all right now, old man? Any
headache? Arms all right?’ Legs? Back? All sound, eh?” Paul, moving
his various limbs in response to his father’s questioning, found them
all entire, without bruise or fracture.
They all climbed to the grassy plot above, Paul refusing to be
carried, and found waiting them only one little girl, her face showing
dead white against the aureole of her bronze-gold hair.
“Hello, Peg,” grinned Paul. “Where’s Asa and Adelina?”
The little girl, looking very tiny in her riding breeches, gulped very
hard once or twice, then rushing at Paul flung herself upon him in a
storm of tears.
“Oh, Paul, they said you were dead,” she sobbed, clinging to him.
“But you’re not! You’re not!”
“Oh, rot, Peg.” Paul cast sheepish eye round the group as he
disentangled himself from the clinging arms. “Don’t be a silly. What’s
a fling from a horse? Lots of chaps get that.”
The little girl drew away from him, hurt and ashamed, and went
slowly toward her pony.
“Where are you going, Peg?” said Paul.
“None of your business,” she flung at him, leading her pony
toward a convenient stump.
“Peggy!” called Gaspard. Slowly she turned her face toward him.
“Peggy, will you do something for me?” He walked over toward her.
“Peggy, I want you to take Paul home for me. He is quite all right, I
think, but I would feel safer if you were with him. Will you?”
 “Yes, Uncle Hugh,” said the little girl, her self-respect much
restored.
“And, Paul—sure you feel all right?” enquired his father.
“Sure thing. Perfeckly all right, Daddy,” replied the boy stoutly.
“Well, then, ride slowly home together. Don’t race. And don’t tell
Mother anything about the accident, about what’s happened, till I
return. I don’t want her frightened. You understand, Paul, don’t you?
I can trust you, eh?”
“Yes, Daddy, you can trust me.” And, sitting his pony very straight
and gripping tight with his knees, he set off, crying out, “Good-bye,
all! Come along, Peg.”
“Good-bye, Uncle Hugh. Good-bye, little baby. Good-bye, all,” cried
Peg, putting her horse to a gallop to overtake Paul who was just
disappearing round a turn in the trail.
 CHAPTER VI

When Gaspard turned from waving his son good-bye he found

himself facing the chief and his daughter.
“Chief, I want to speak to you about—about—that baby there.” He
pointed to the child in the girl’s arms.
The chief motioned the girl away.
“No, Father, it is my child. I will hear what is said.”
“Let her stay,” said Gaspard.
The chief grunted acquiescence. Then Gaspard spoke.
“I want to have the boy educated like a white man. I will pay for
all. But I want him to live in the North Country with his mother. That
is the best place for him just now.”
A gleam shot across the haughty face of the old chief.
“Listen!” he said in his own speech, his voice clear and vibrant
with passion. “You come to my wigwam, wounded, dying. Our
people take you in, bring you back from the land of the Great Spirit.
For many moons you live with me, my son, her brother. When you
grow strong again you become a wolf, you tear my heart; a thief,
you rob my cache of the food on which I live, you take away my
treasure, my pride, my honour, my name. On my knees”—he fell on
his knees, his face distorted with passion—“I make a prayer to the
Great Spirit that some day He will show me your face. That day will
wipe out my shame in blood.” He rose from his knees. His face once
more took on its accustomed look of haughty self-command. “Last
night my daughter told me how your woman saved the child from
death. Today you too gave your blood for him. I am content. My
knife remains in its sheath. I have heard your word. It is not good.
The boy is my daughter’s son, he is my son. He will be chief after
me. He will be Indian. He will learn all that his mother has learned,
and more. But he will be Indian. Tomorrow we go to our own land.
Never again will we look upon your face, never again will you come
to our land. The day you come to our land you will die.”
“You will let me pay for the boy’s education and—and all that?”
Gaspard pleaded in a shaking voice.
“No! No thief shall pay money for the son of Wah-na-ta-hi-ta. Go!
dog!”
The tall spare form drawn up to its full height, the out-flung
command, the dark eagle-like face, the fiercely blazing eye, the
haughty mien, the ringing trumpet tone, all this, with an acute and
damnatory consciousness of baseness and all too fully deserved
rebuke, combined to produce upon Gaspard’s sensitive, artistic soul
a truly appalling and overwhelming effect. His whole being shrivelled
within him like a growing tree before the blast of a scorching flame.
An abasing degradation swept his soul bare of any and every sense
of manhood. For some moments he stood utterly deprived of speech
or movement. An intolerable agony of humiliation paralysed his
mental processes. His mind was blank. He sought for a word but no
word seemed adequate. Nor could he move from the spot.
Fascinated by that superb, terrible, living embodiment of vengeful
judgment, he was held rooted to earth. That final utterance of
blighting contempt, “Go! dog!” inhibited thought or motion. Suddenly
there flamed up against the blank wall of his imagination, as if in a
fiery scroll, the words of ancient doom, “Depart from me, ye cursed.”
He was conscious at once of an agonising desire to be gone and of
an utter powerlessness to lift his feet from their place.
A soft cry and a rush of feet released him. It was Onawata. Swiftly
she came to him, flung her arms round his neck, laid her head
against his breast, and there rested for a few moments. Then, with
her one arm still resting on his shoulder, she faced the old chief and
poured forth a passionate defence of the man against whom he had
pronounced his bitter and contemptuous indictment. The blame for
her wrong was hers as much as his. She had come to him, she had
loved him, she loved him still though he had forgotten her. Today he
had saved her child from death, and yesterday his woman had done
the same. Tomorrow she would depart to her own land, never more
would she see his face, but not in humiliation and shame would he
leave her now. He would carry with him her heart, her love, her life.
While she spoke Gaspard felt a warm tide of gratitude well up within
his heart, restoring his manhood, freeing him from the awful sense
of abasing degradation which had overwhelmed him the moment
before. He passed his arm round the girl and drew her toward him.
But even as he did so the Indian girl tore herself free and sprang
from him, her eyes staring in horror over his shoulder. Following her
eyes, Gaspard turned and there beheld his wife, standing beside her
pony, white, silent, bewildered. Slowly she moved toward them.
“Where is Paul?” she asked of her husband. “Is he dead?”
“Dead? Nonsense! He has just gone galloping home with Peg.
Who told you about him? He was knocked out a bit, but he is
perfectly all right.” His words came in a hurried flood, as if he
dreaded further questioning.
Standing there, her eyes closed for a moment. “Thank God!” she
murmured to herself. Then, opening her eyes as if waking suddenly
from sleep, she turned them steadily first on the girl, then on the
child, then on her husband and again on the child.
“Hugh, tell me,” her voice calm but terrible as the voice of doom,
“whose is that child? Remember God hears.”
“Mine!” The word leaped forth from the lips of the Indian girl in a
shrill cry. “Mine!” she repeated, springing before the man as if to
shelter him from attack.
“Hugh, in God’s name, tell me truly, whose is that child?”
The man, unnerved by the racking emotions of the last hour and
reading in her eyes that she already knew the truth which she
dreaded to hear, flung up his hands with a despairing cry.
“God help you, Marion! The child is mine!”
 For five full seconds, to him they seemed hours, she stood, white-
lipped and staring. Then, turning, she walked with uncertain steps
toward her pony, adjusted the reins, attempted to mount, swayed as
if to fall, but clutched the mane and hung there.
Gaspard and the girl both sprang to her aid.
“Don’t—don’t—don’t touch me, Hugh!” she gasped, thrusting him
from her.
“Marion,” he cried, his voice hurried and broken, “let me tell you.”
“No, no! Please go.” She stood a moment or two, shuddering, her
hands over her face as if to shut from her sight a terrible thing, with
a choking cry.
“My God, it has come.” Gaspard turned from his wife, plunged into
the underbrush and was lost to sight.
The Indian woman ran to the other and, clutching her skirt, fell
upon her knees crying, “Call him back, call him back quick. Let me
call him back. You will lose him forever.”
The white woman took her hands from her face, looked down
upon the Indian and said in a voice from which all hope had died,
“Why call him back? He is lost to me now.”
“No, no,” said the other, springing to her feet and seizing the white
woman’s arm. “He is yours, he is yours, only yours. Me! I am
nothing to him. It was my fault, my mistake. I knew nothing. I went
to him. But to him now I am nothing, nothing. Oh, let me call him
back quick.” In her vehemence she shook the white woman violently.
But to her violence there was no reaction. The wife slowly drew
away from the grasp of the Indian woman, climbed somehow on to
her pony, and, with the face of one stricken with her death wound,
she set off slowly down the homeward trail.
For a single moment the Indian woman followed her with scornful
eyes. This supreme, this mad folly in a woman who would turn away
from a man who so obviously and so passionately was hers, she
could not understand. It was the madness of the white race. White
women did not know how to love. She caught up her boy, ran with
him to the chief.
 “Take him. Keep him till I return,” she said fiercely.
“Where do you go?” said the chief sternly.
“I go to save the man I love,” she breathed.
“But who loves you not.” The chief’s tones were eloquent of scorn.
“What matters that? Not for myself I go, but for him. To bring him
back—to—her.”
“Fool!” said the chief.
“Yes, fool, fool,” she answered passionately. “But he will be safe—
and—happy.” She hurried into her wigwam, snatched a few camp
necessities and, swift as a deer, sped on the white man’s trail.
 CHAPTER VII

For three days the Pine Croft Ranch was plunged in gloom. In her
room the lady of the ranch lay, fighting back death till her man
should return. She was unwilling to pass out of the world in which
together they had shared so deeply of its joys, without another word
beyond that last spoken between them.
On the third day Paul, with face pale, tense and worn, rode into
the Indian camp to interview the Chief. Straight up he stood, pale,
quivering under the nerve strain, but unafraid.
“Mother is very sick,” he said. “I’m awful afraid she will die. Father
is lost in the woods. She wants him awful bad.”
The chief listened, apparently unmoved.
“Mother kept the little baby from dying.”
The chief glanced sharply at the little lad. “Huh! I go find him,” he
said abruptly. He called his men. Together they consulted,
apparently canvassing the situation and planning the search. Then,
with swift expedition, they prepared for their tramp. In a very few
minutes the chief and one of his men stood ready for their journey,
the other man remaining in camp with the child. Before setting forth,
the chief came to the boy.
“You go mother,” he said. “Good woman! Two day father he come
back. Sure, two day. Tell mother. Good woman. Chief not forget
baby.”
“Oh, thank you, Chief,” said the little boy, impulsively catching his
hand. “I’ll tell Mother. She will be awfully thankful to you. Good-bye.
Everything will be right now.”
 “Huh!” grunted the chief, and with a wave of the hand he was
gone.
“Hello, little one,” Paul called, catching sight of the Indian child
standing shyly within the tent door. “Come on over here. Come on
and see my pony.”
The child, with a fearlessness quite unusual among Indian
children, came trotting to him. Paul was delighted to find he was not
forgotten.
“I say, little chap, tell me your name again,” he said, dropping on
his knees beside the youngster. The little chap gurgled a reply.
“What is it?” Again a gurgle. Paul gave an answering gurgle. “Is that
it?”
The stolid face of the Indian standing near suddenly broke into a
grin.
“Him name Peter,” he said, with a struggle.
“Peter,” shouted the boy, with a delighted laugh. “And I’m Paul.
Oh, isn’t that funny? Peter and Paul! Why, we are two Apostles.” He
caught up the little child and danced about with him in high glee,
and the glee of the little one was no less high. Then for half an hour
the grave-faced Indian looked upon a scene that more than once
broke up his gravity. For with all sorts of games and antics the white
boy tumbled the other about upon the grass, driving him into shrieks
of delighted laughter, such as in his rather sombre four years of life
in the wigwam with his stolid seniors he had never been known to
utter. In the full tide of his play Paul remembered his duty.
“Here, Peter, old chap, I must get away home,” he cried, rolling off
from his back the little Indian who had been using him as a pony.
“Good-bye. I’ll see you again soon.”
But a fierce howl of protest brought him back running. It was only
after he had emptied his pockets of his treasures, a top, a knife,
some peppermints, somewhat the worse for wear but none the less
toothsome to Peter, impervious to the microbe terror, that he was
able to make his escape in an atmosphere of smiling serenity.
 “Two days!” The chief’s promise he knew would be kept. In two
days his father, whose mysterious absence had wrought such havoc
in the life of home, would be back again, and then the old serene
and happy life would be restored. In two days that dreadful fear
which had been clutching at his heart all yesterday and this morning
and which the memory of his mother’s face even now brought back
to him would be gone. Two days! He let his pony out to his full
speed, eager to bring the great news to his mother.

Two days later the chief appeared at the bungalow, supporting a

stumbling, ragged, half-starved man who fell sprawling at the steps
and lay there waiting for strength to make the ascent. The chief
passed quickly into the living room and finding no one went on into
the kitchen. There he found old Jinny, rocking in her arms a
haggard, grief-distracted boy who sobbed in his sleep. The old
nurse, catching sight of the chief, held up her hand for silence.
“Man come! Drink!” muttered the Indian, picking up a cup from
the table and going through the motion of drinking. Old Jinny,
nodding comprehension, rose with the boy in her arms, carried him
to a sofa and laying him gently down turned to the Indian with her
finger on her lips, then passing into the living room procured a glass
of liquor and gave it to the Indian.
“Come,” he ordered, and she followed promptly and without a
word. Together they lifted the exhausted Gaspard, gave him the
drink, and waited till his strength should come back.
“The Lord help the man, he maun dree his weird! It’s a sair warl
for him.” Then, turning to the chief who stood as if cut from stone,
she said:
“Gae awa’, you, tae Colonel Pelham,” she commanded him, “tae
the big white hoose doon the way yonder, and tell him the woman’s
deid.” But her speech was beyond the Indian till, baffled, she
beckoned him into the house.
“Come,” she said, and took him into the room where the dead
woman lay. At once the chief understood. Down the driveway she
went with him and pointed the way to the “big white house” of
Colonel Pelham. Without a word he was off on his errand, on the
long swinging trot of the Indian, while the old nurse returned to the
man who still lay upon the steps, too spent to move. She bent over
him, shook him awake, and said, “Come, man, get ye in till y’re bed.
Ye’re no fit for onything.” He turned dull eyes upon the house.
“Jinny,” he mumbled, “my—your—Marion—she is better?”
“Aye, she’s better,” said the old nurse calmly. “She’s beyond all ill.”
Jinny was entirely preoccupied with grief over the death of the
woman she had nursed as a babe and whose babes she had nursed
as well.
The man staggered to his feet and held by the verandah post,
struggling for breath.
“Jinny,” he gasped. “No—no—you don’t—mean—she’s——” He
could get no further.
“Aye, she’s deid. Gude save us a’, my sweet lassie is deid.” The old
woman threw her apron over her head and burst into wailing. “Aye,
the puir lassie, the puir lassie! Ma bonnie wee lamb! She’s awa’,
she’s awa’.”
The man stared stupidly upon the rocking, wailing figure at his
feet.
“Dead! Dead!” he said in a harsh voice. “It’s a lie. It’s a lie! She
wouldn’t die that way. She wouldn’t die without a word to me.”
“Aye, she left ye a word as she was bleedin’ ta deith. A pail full o’
bluid she pit up. Wae’s me! But she didna forget ye.” Old Jinny’s
voice took a grudging note. “She left ye a word.” She went into the
house, returning in a minute with a torn piece of paper. Gaspard
took it with a shaking hand, dropped it with a cry.
“What’s that on it?” he gasped pointing at a stain upon the white
paper. “What’s that? You old—fool—don’t tell me it’s——” His voice
became a shriek. “My God—my God! It’s blood! Her blood!” He
pointed at the stained paper a finger that wavered and shook, his
face white, his eyes fierce and glaring like those of a mad man.
 “Aye, it’s her bluid. The blessed lamb!” said Jinny picking up the
paper. “She pit her dyin’ lips till it—the bluid——”
“Stop! Stop! For Heaven’s sake, stop! Do you want to kill me?”
cried the man, his voice shrill, strident, broken.
“Oh, Daddy, Daddy! You’re here! Oh, I’m glad you’re here!” The
child’s voice rang out in a cry of wild joy. In the doorway he paused,
looking from one to the other, then flung himself at his father.
Gaspard made as if to thrust him off, but on a second impulse he
gathered the boy in his arms and sank down, moaning, on the steps.
“She’s gone, she’s gone! Oh, God, let me go! Let me go too! She’s
left us, boy! She’s left us!”
“Yes, Daddy,” said the boy quietly, his hand reaching up to his
father’s cheek. “And she said you would go and me too, Daddy. I
want to go with you, Daddy.”
His father only groaned.
“And she made me promise to tell you about my very last lesson.”
Still the father was silent, heedless of the boy’s talk. “My Bible
lesson, you know, Daddy. She made me promise to tell you about it.
Are you listening, Daddy?”
“What! Oh, yes, yes, go on boy. What was it you were saying?”
His father roused himself to listen.
“She made me promise to tell you my lesson.”
“Yes! Go on!”
“About the seventy times seven, you remember.”
“Seventy times seven?” The man was broad awake.
“Yes, you know, seventy times seven in one day. That’s four
hundred and ninety times in one day we must forgive. And she said,
‘Be sure, be very sure to tell Daddy that.’ She said you would be
awful glad to hear that. Why, Daddy? And she said it was the lesson
she loved best in all the Bible. I don’t think so, do you Daddy?”
“Seventy times seven! She said that. Oh, my God, my God!
Seventy times seven! Seventy times seven!” Convulsive, mighty sobs
shook his great body. The boy was terrified, too terrified to speak.
His father’s eyes fell upon the stained bit of paper, lying where it had
fallen from his fingers. Shuddering, he picked it up. There in poor
wandering letters he read:
“My dear, dear love—I want you so—oh—I want you so. I want to
ask you to forgive—to tell you—oh, I want you—with me—now—
dear heart——” Then one desperate trailing scrawl as if death were
clutching at her fingers. “Remember—70 X 7——” Then a poor
faltering “X” and the marks of blood. “She pit her dyin’ lips till it,” old
Jinny had said.
With an agonising cry he put the boy from him, scrambled up the
steps, staggered through the living room, felt his way blindly into the
bedroom where she lay. One glance he gave at the white still face
touched with the calm dignity of death. Then with a bitter cry he fell
on his knees at the bedside, gathered the quiet form in his arms,
and there drank slowly, drop by drop, to the last dregs, the cup of
his Gethsemane.
Terrified, petrified with his terror, his little son stood behind him,
his limbs shaking under him, impotent of motion, desperately
longing but unable to escape from the room, till at length, overcome
by the tumultuous tide of his emotions, with a sobbing cry, “Oh,
Daddy, I’m afraid,” he flung himself on his knees at his father’s side
and there clung to him.
In that position the wife of Colonel Pelham found them half an
hour later.
“Paul, dear, come with me,” she said, trying to lift him up.
“I want Daddy,” whispered the boy, still clinging to his father.
“Mr. Gaspard,” she said sharply, “this boy must be put to bed at
once. He will be ill.”
The man raised his face, ghastly, unshaven, horrible.
“What do you say?” he asked dully.
“The boy, the boy,” she said, pointing to him. “He ought to be in
bed. He will be ill.”
 “Yes, yes,” he said stupidly. “Certainly, he must go to bed. Come,
Paul.” He rose to his feet, and with the boy in his arms staggered
into the living room, stood there, swaying drunkenly, and would
have fallen had not Colonel Pelham caught him and steadied him to
a couch where he lay moaning, “Gone, gone, gone! Oh, my God!
Gone forever!” till from sheer weakness, due to starvation and
emotional exhaustion, he sank into deathlike sleep.
The boy crept in beside him, stroking his cheek and whispering,
“Poor Daddy! Poor Daddy!” till he too fell asleep.
 CHAPTER VIII

The “big white house” was overflowing with music, or, rather, with
musical acrobatics. Scales, major and minor, octaves, arpeggios, and
all other musical combinations were madly chasing each other up
and down the keyboard.
“Come on, Paul.” A girl’s black head appeared at the window. The
player merely glanced at her and went on with his fireworks. “Oh,
come on, you lummix! Shut up this row and come on. We’re going
round the ranch and then down the west trail to the river.”
The player’s sole answer was a wave of his left hand, his right still
careering madly up the chromatic scale.
“Aw, Paul, won’t you come?” A little girl whose face was screwed
up in a bewitching pout came to the door.
“Now, Peg, you know I don’t quit till I’m done, and I’ve got half an
hour yet. Come back for me then, Peg.”
She came close to him. “I don’t want to go with Asa and Adelina
without you. They—they—I don’t want to go.”
“Oh, go on, Peg, for a run as far as Pine Croft driveway and back
again. Go! See, the rain is all gone. It’s a lovely day. Run now, that’s
a good girl. I’ll come when I’m through my practice.”
“You’re a mean old thing. You don’t care a bit about me,” said Peg,
bouncing indignantly out of the room.
But the boy paid no heed. He was hard at his scales again with an
enthusiasm which amounted almost to a passion. All else, for the
time being, was as nothing to him. He was at double octaves now,
his fingers roaring up and down the keys. In the full tide of the
uproar Colonel Pelham appeared at the door of the dining room
where his wife was engaged in her domestic activities.
“What a row the chap makes!” he said. “You’d think it was a full
grown man at the thing.”
“He has wonderful fingers,” said his wife, pausing in her work.
“Listen! How, that is really quite unusual work.”
“Is it? You ought to know. It’s all fury and fuss to me. But I like
the way he sticks it. The other youngsters were trying to pull him
away—I saw them at it, but it was no go.”
“He loves his music. He’s quite mad about it,” replied his wife.
“He may be,” said the Colonel, “but it’s not that. It’s a point of
honour with him. He has a kind of feeling his mother would like it.”
“He’s a queer little chap, you know. He has queer ideas about
things.”
“What do you mean exactly?” inquired the Colonel. “Queer in what
sense?”
“Well,” said his wife thoughtfully, “he has queer ideas about God.
He says he sees Him. One day I found him with an intense look
upon his face, and his explanation was that he was listening for
God.”
“‘Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth,’” quoted the Colonel to
himself.
“But, my dear,” protested his wife, “you know that sort of thing
was quite all right for those times. But now-a-days, in British
Columbia—well, you know, it’s a little unusual.”
“‘If any man hear My voice and open the door,’” again quoted the
Colonel softly.
“Oh, come now, Edgar. You don’t think those things are to be
taken literally in these days—voices, and all that sort of thing. You’ll
be off into all sorts of Spiritualistic nonsense. He is queer. As a
matter of fact, he is almost uncanny, unreal, unnatural.”
“Unnatural? Unreal? Well, he is a bit of a mystic, I confess. And he
came by that naturally enough; got it from his mother. And not a
bad thing, either, in these materialistic days, and in this country. But
all the same, he’s a real boy, a game sport. He can ride, swim,
shoot, and for a boy of twelve shows an extraordinary sense of
responsibility.”
“Responsibility? He’s as mad as a March hare at times,” said the
Colonel’s wife. “Forgets food, drink, sleep. He has appalling powers
of absorption, of concentration. I know he leads Peg into all sorts of
scrapes.”
“Leads Peg!” exclaimed her husband. “Good Lord! Does any one
lead Peg? He’s a real boy, he gets into scrapes, but I still contend
that he has an extraordinary sense of responsibility. Do you realise
that every day of his life he has a certain routine of study, music,
Catechism, Bible lesson, and that sort of thing, that he has kept up
since his father left him? I believe it was his father—a queer thing
too!—who put it up to him and who made it a matter of loyalty to his
mother.”
“He is certainly devoted to his mother’s memory. But there again
he is queer. He has an idea that his mother knows, hears,
understands all that he does.”
“Why not?” asked the Colonel.
“Oh, I don’t know. I have no use for these spooky things. But the
boy is queer, and he is unpractical.”
“Well, it is hardly to be wondered at. He has his father’s artistic
temperament and his mother’s mysticism. But, after all, is he
unpractical? Don’t you know that once a week, winter and summer,
for the last year and a half, with Indian Tom he has ridden the
marches of the ranch? The Lord knows he’s always reporting fences
broken and cattle and horses straying over to Sleeman’s herd,”
added the Colonel ruefully.
“Sleeman’s herd! My opinion is that the chronic state of disrepair
in those fences can be easily accounted for. I observe that Sleeman’s
calves last year and this year too show a strong Saddle-back strain,
and as for his colts they are all Percheron. I don’t like the man
Sleeman. I don’t trust him.”
 “Neither does Paul,” said the Colonel. “Of course, Paul has quite
made up his mind that Sleeman is going to hell, so he doesn’t let his
various iniquities worry him too much. Sleeman will receive a due
reward for his misdeeds. Paul has warmly adopted the Psalmist’s
retribution point of view.”
“What do you mean?” inquired his wife.
“‘Fret not thyself because of evil doers, for they shall soon be cut
down like the grass and wither as the green herb.’ The little beggar
brought me the quotation not long ago with great satisfaction. He
thinks that Asa too is heading toward the same untimely end.”
“Why!” said his wife, “I thought that Paul held a most liberal
doctrine of forgiveness, which practically wiped out hell.”
“Don’t imagine any such thing,” asserted her husband. “I know his
‘seventy times seven’ theory, but he is careful to insist that this is
only for the man who turns and repents. He would be terribly
disappointed, I imagine, if Sleeman should ever show any signs of
repentance. Of course, he doesn’t expect this. Oh, he’s a relentless
little devil in his hatred and his theories of judgment. And with a
fighting strain in him, too.”
“What do you mean?” asked his wife. “Fighting?”
“Why, you remember last autumn when he came to me with the
calm request that I teach him to fight. He had evidently had some
trouble with Asa. When I asked him why he wanted to learn to fight,
his answer was characteristic enough, ‘I don’t want to fight exactly,’
he said, ‘but I don’t want to feel afraid to fight.’ Rather a fine
distinction, I think. And every week since that time the little beggar
insists upon his ‘fighting’ lesson.”
“Well,” said his wife with a slight smile, “he couldn’t have come to
a better master of the art, I fancy, if college rumours mean anything.
Wasn’t it light-weight championship you held for a year at Oxford?”
“Three years, my dear,” modestly corrected the Colonel.
“There is one thing I do like in the boy,” continued Mrs. Pelham,
“and that is his devotion to old Jinny. Of course, Jinny worships the
ground he walks on. She has all that fine old Scotch spirit of
devotion and loyalty to the family that this age and this country
know nothing about. She is an old dear, and immensely helpful
about the house. But I do like Paul’s way with her. I always say that
there is no truer sign of breeding than the way people treat their
servants, and Paul certainly has that fine touch.”
In a pause of the conversation weird sounds were heard coming
from the music room. The musical acrobatics had ceased. Both sat
listening for some moments.
“Now what is he on?” the Colonel inquired. “I don’t know that
thing.”
“Nor I, and I’ve looked over all his father’s things which he is
continually trying. Listen! Sounds like a Chopin Nocturne. But, no!
That’s not Chopin. He must be improvising. He told me one day he
was playing all the things out of doors, a kind of Nature Symphony,
the Pine Croft out of doors, as it were—the stream tumbling down
beside the bungalow, the pines and the poplars and the flowers and
the clouds. He told me he was playing the great yellow splashes of
sunlight on the valley. He kept me an hour that day, fascinated,
playing the different colours in the landscape—blue of the sky, light,
sweet, smooth-flowing, a Handel sort of thing; reds and yellows
were set forth in dashing, smashing chords and runs, a Liszt or
Tschaikowsky effect; then, for sunset gold and saffron he used a
kind of Mozart thing, rich, full, sweet. It was quite marvellous. He is
queer, undoubtedly queer. Why! Do you know he had the audacity to
even play ‘God’ to me that day. He was like an inspired thing. Played
‘God smiling at him from the clouds.’ He protests he sees God, you
know, and hears Him. Oh, he’s quite spooky!”
“Spooky? Nonsense! That’s not the word. There are artistic and
mystic strains in him, that’s all. But all the same, I wonder when his
father is coming back, or if he is coming back at all. That Pine Croft
Ranch is going bad. I simply can’t keep it on.”
“Of course you can’t. You were mad to take it on at first.”
“My dear Augusta, what could I do? The man was distracted,
broken. I was actually afraid for his brain. I really was. You
remember those days. Well—then came his request and the formal
will—by Jove! Now I think of it, it was you who offered to take the
boy.”
“The boy? Yes, I did. But the ranch was a different thing. And that
Sleeman sniffing round, I simply can’t bear him.”
“Sleeman? I don’t much care for him myself. He may be honest
enough, but he’s sharp. Says he holds I O U’s for loans and such like
from Gaspard. True enough, Gaspard was hard up. You know the
Bank had closed down on him. He could get no more extensions.
Frankly, I am worried. The stock is running wild, as you say.”
“Edgar, I forbid you to worry. It’s not worth it. We’ll look after the
boy. The bungalow is closed up, everything all right there; old Tom
looks after it. The ranch and stock must simply take care of
themselves.”
At this point a louder crash than usual on the piano arrested their
attention. A wild whoop followed, and Paul stood in the doorway.
“Oh, Uncle Colonel, where are they? Did you see them go?” he
burst forth.
“Come, Paul,” said the Colonel’s lady severely. “It’s not customary
to rush in upon people like that.” The boy flushed to his hair roots.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Augusta. Awfully sorry, Uncle Colonel. But did you
see them go, sir?”
“Yes, they went up toward Pine Croft Ranch. But you ought to be
able to track them easily, for the rain has softened the trail.”
“Oh, splendid! I’ll do it. I’ll just get Joseph and find them.”
“By the way, what were you playing last, Paul?” asked the Colonel.
The boy flushed.
“Oh, just some nonsense, Uncle Colonel. I was through with my
lesson,” he said apologetically, “and I was just fooling a bit—like
Daddy used to do sometimes—” he paused, “for Mother and me, you
know.” He stood quietly, looking out the door, his eyes on the far
mountains.
“All right, boy. Off you go,” said the Colonel.
 “Lunch at one, Paul, remember,” said Mrs. Pelham.
“I’ll try, Aunt Augusta. But it’s awfully hard to remember
sometimes.”
“I want Peg at one,” said Mrs. Pelham firmly. “We have something
on after lunch. I depend upon you, Paul.”
“Oh, all right, then, I’ll have to remember.” He stuck his hand in
his pocket and extracted something which he began to wind around
his finger.
“What’s that, old chap? String, eh?”
“A ’lastic band—to remember me about one o’clock. I hate having
to remember,” he added impatiently.
“Hey day!” exclaimed Mrs. Pelham. “What sort of a boy would you
be if you couldn’t remember?”
“All right, Aunt Augusta, but I hate it all the same.”
“He’ll remember,” said the Colonel. “He feels he’s on his honour.”
“Yes, he’ll remember. He’s a reliable little beggar.”
In a surprisingly short time the lad appeared on his pony, a
beautiful pinto, bred from an Arabian sire out of an Indian pony, a
strain of which his father was inordinately proud and in the breeding
of which he had been unusually successful. The boy went flashing
past the window, riding cowboy fashion, straight leg and with lines
held loosely in his left hand, his cap high in his right, making right
for the bars at the end of the drive.
“What the—— By Jove, he’s done it! Must be quite four feet.”
With never a halt the pony had taken the bars in his stride, and
was off down the road, head down and at racing speed.
“Superb, Augusta! Couldn’t have done it better yourself, what?”
“He can ride,” said his wife. Her eyes were upon the flying figure.
“He is quite without fear and has the true rider’s instinct for what his
mount can do. Wonderful pony of his that. There’s a mate to it in
Gaspard’s bunch I’d like for Peg.”
 “Oh, thanks, my dear; Peggy is quite sufficiently well mounted.
Tubby does her quite well. I have no desire to see my daughter
tearing like a mad thing after that race horse.”
“Poor old Tubby! She does her best, but I fear she is a continual
source of humiliation and heartache to her rider when out with the
pinto. Perhaps next year, eh? She will be quite ready to ride with me
by that time.”
“With you? The Lord forbid! You know quite well, my dear, when
once you are astride a horse you are conscious only of one
consuming passion.”
“Well, I like to hear you talk!” And it must be confessed there was
ground for her scorn. For in cross-country work in the Homeland
there was just one place in the hunt that gave any real satisfaction
to the little Colonel, as daring a hunter as ever rode to hounds.
Meantime the pinto and his rider had tracked the others up to the
Pine Croft bungalow, along the upper trail, and down again toward
the big rapid. To Paul, who for the past two years had been trained
in sign reading by Indian Tom, his father’s ancient factotum, the trail
lay plain as the open road. After the first wild gallop he was in no
hurry to catch up. The glory of the early June day filled his world,
right up to the blue sky. With his eyes open to the unending variety
of colour and form in the growing things about him, he cantered
slowly along, his lithe form swaying in unison with every motion of
his pony. He had the make of a rider and his style was a curious
mixture of his father’s and Indian Tom’s. His hands were his father’s;
the easy yielding sway of his body he had from Indian Tom. But,
whatever its source, every movement of every part of his body was
smooth, easy, graceful. As the pinto carried him along in swallow-like
movement, his mind following his eye went first to the pictures that
kept composing and dissolving themselves on either side, and from
them to those pictures which from his earliest years he had watched
his father call into being in his studio. Where was his father now?
For three years there had been silence, from that dreadful day when
his father, gaunt, broken, his great frame heaving with deep-drawn
sobs, had ridden down the Golden trail, followed by Indian Tom,
leaving him with Colonel Pelham. Two words only had his father
spoken, two unforgettable words. “Paul, your mother has gone to
God. Let every morning bring back to you her words.” And the other,
“Some day I will come back to you—point of honour,” using a phrase
common to those three when the word was pledged. Those two
words he carried in his heart. With every opening dawn his first
thoughts went to his mother. He was dismayed to find how few were
his mother’s words that came to him as he sat down deliberately to
recall them. To his delight he stumbled upon a plan. When struggling
with his Catechism—it was a point of honour that he should
complete the task his mother had not seen completed—he found
upon reviewing the questions he had discussed with her that floods
of memories were let loose upon his mind. With painful care, for,
though he had his father’s fingers and was clever with them, he had
made no very great progress with his penmanship, he undertook to
set down, in one of his father’s sketch books, all her sayings that
came back to him. The words associated with the Bible stories were
much easier to recall. The chirography and orthography would have
quite paralysed the intelligence of learned experts, but to himself the
record was perfectly intelligible, and with its increasing volume
became an increasingly precious possession. This record he kept
hidden from mortal eyes, but somehow he had the conviction both
God and his mother knew all about it. The two were very really and
vitally associated in his thought. Indeed, God had come nearer since
his mother had passed out of his sight. His mother, he knew, was
intimately involved in his life, sharing his thoughts, his imaginations,
his dreams. And since she had gone to God, naturally it followed
that God must be somehow, somewhere, quite close at hand. He no
longer saw God’s face up in the blue between the clouds. He was
deeply grieved that he never could visualise that kindly face looking
down, so quiet and so kind, “as if He liked him.” It seemed as if God
had moved much nearer to him, so near that he seemed to be
aware of Him, and by intently “listening with his ears inside,” as he
explained to Indian Tom who seemed to quite understand, he could
“hear God thinking.” “And so,” as he confidently asserted to the
gravely sympathetic Indian, “I always know what He wants me to
know.” Life was a very simple proceeding with Paul. He had only to
listen carefully and, having heard, to give heed.
But where was his father, and when would he come back? The
little Colonel was quite silent upon that question, and upon that
question the boy was equally reserved with the Colonel. With a
maturity ripened by responsibility, the boy had fallen into the habit
of keeping an eye upon the ranch matters. His own observation was
quickened by the rare but penetrating comments of Indian Tom who,
though deficient in initiative and inclined when not impelled to
activity by necessity to a laissez faire attitude towards life, was
nevertheless, when once set upon a trail, tenacious of his quest as a
bloodhound on the scent. It was a remark of Indian Tom’s that gave
the Colonel’s lady the clue as to Sleeman’s Saddle-backs and
Percherons. It was a grunt of Indian Tom’s that had set Paul off one
day on a tour round the ranch, and that first tour with Indian Tom
proved so fascinating that once a week for a year and a half,
through rain or shine, cold or heat, Paul had ridden round the line of
fences of the ranch. He had come to know that things were not
going well, and this knowledge intensified in him the longing for his
father’s return.
The sound of shouting broke the current of his thoughts. He
pulled up his pony and stood listening. “They’re away beyond the big
rapid,” he said to himself. “Must be down by the creek.” Again the
shouting came to him, and in an instant he was off at a gallop. A
short run brought him to the edge of a rapidly flowing stream along
which a cow path ran. Following this path he came upon an open
grassy meadow through which the stream had cut its way between
overhanging banks. At a little distance he saw his friends, and as he
drew near learned the cause of the shouting. The stream had cut a
channel about eight feet wide, through which the water ran, deep
and swift, to a pool some thirty yards farther down, from which it
tumbled over jagged rocks to a bench below. Across this flowing
stream Asa and his sister were jumping their horses in high glee,
and taunting Peg to attempt the same exploit.
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