She told Noel that her father had impoverished Sherwood years ago, when she was a child of ten or eleven, by cheating at cards, and then had tricked him into his debt and his power by further cheating—and all under the guise of friendship and good-fellowship. Her mother had told her so in a deathbed confession. Then her father had tried to make a rogue of Sherwood. He had succeeded temporarily, but with such difficulty and by means of such cruel efforts that he had made a coward of him. Yes, a coward—and that was worse than all the rest, it had seemed to Julie. She told the Maliseet that he, Richard Sherwood, who had been a soldier, had no courage now except what he got from her.
Noel used to advise them to leave French River. He put it strong, in spite of the fact that he would have been desolate if they had gone. Julie said they were planning to go to the settlements as soon as the baby was big enough to travel and Sherwood agreed with her. Noel suggested that Louis Balenger might come back and pump two more bullets into Sherwood. At that the big, broken Englishman paled under his tan but the woman didn’t flinch. She said that her father would never return but that she was not afraid of him anyway.
Noel and the Sherwoods lived peacefully in their adjoining clearings year after year. Noel and Sherwood trapped fur together; but Sherwood never went very far afield. His mind and nerves went “jumpy” whenever he got more than a few miles away from his wife and child. As the years passed he seemed normal enough when with them, more nearly a sound man each year; but once out of sight of them his eyes showed fear.
Noel often tried to argue him out of his fear. When a young man and a soldier he had not been afraid of hurts or life or death, so why be a coward now, Noel argued. His old enemy Balenger was gone, so what was he afraid of? He had broken game laws and stolen furs from other men’s traps and even acted as Balenger’s tool once in the matter of a “rigged” game of poker down in Woodstock—but he was living as honestly now as any man and had the best wife and daughter in the province. So why continue to be ashamed and afraid? He was his own master now. He had education and strong muscles. Why didn’t he go away to the settlements with Julie and the child and forget all about French River? He owed it to himself and those two, Noel argued; and if he’d only forget Louis Balenger he’d be as good a man as he’d ever been.
Strange to say, Julie did not back Noel Sabattis as strongly as she should have in his efforts to get her husband to leave the scene of his disgrace. She, brave as a tiger in her attitude toward every known peril and ready to give her life for either her husband or child, was afraid of the unknown. She was afraid of the world of cities and men beyond the wilderness. Her parents had brought her to French River when she was scarcely more than a baby but she had fragmentary memories of streets of high houses and wet pavements shining under yellow lamps and her mother in tears and a stealthy flight. Even her father, clever and daring and wicked, had been forced to flee in fear from a city! How then would Dick Sherwood fare among men? Her fear of cities haunted her like a half-remembered nightmare.
Julie said that they would leave French River in a year or two—and always it was put off another year or two.
Julie died very suddenly of a deadly cold. She was ill for only two days. It shook old Noel Sabattis even now to think of it. Sherwood was like a man without a mind for weeks. He moved about, sometimes he ate food that was placed before him, but he seemed to be without life. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t believe his wife was gone. Realization of his loss came to him suddenly; and Noel had to strike him, club him, to save him from self-destruction.
Sherwood’s courage was all gone after that. Without Julie he knew that he was good for nothing and afraid of everything. Because he was worthless and a coward Julie had died. A doctor could have saved her and if he had lived in the settlements she could have had a doctor.
A year passed and Noel tried to arouse Sherwood. There was still the little girl to think of. Why didn’t Sherwood get out with the girl and work among men and make a home for her? What right had he to keep her in the woods on French River? But Sherwood was hopeless. He knew himself for a failure. He had failed in the woods in the best years of his life, and he knew that he would fail in the settlements. He had thought it over a thousand times. Failure outside, among strangers, would make the future terrible for the child. What could he do in towns or cities now, he who clung to an old Indian and a little girl for courage to live from day to day?
Strangers? He would not dare look a stranger in the face!