“Marston, I’m going to talk to you straight from the shoulder. I love Choupette and I’m not apologizing for it. These things have happened before in this world. I guess you understand that. The only difficulty is this matter of the custody of Choupette’s children. You seem determined to try and take them away from the mother that bore them and raised them”—Wiese’s words became more dearly articulated, as if they came from a wider mouth—“but you left one thing out of your calculations, and that’s me. Do you happen to realize that at this moment I’m one of the richest men in Virginia?”
“I’ve heard as much.”
“Well, money is power, Marston. I repeat, suh, money is power.”
“I’ve heard that too. In fact, you’re a bore, Wiese.” Even by the moon Henry could see the crimson deepen on his brow.
“You’ll hear it again, suh. Yesterday you took us by surprise and I was unprepared for your brutality to Choupette. But this morning I received a letter from Paris that puts the matter in a new light. It is a statement by a specialist in mental diseases, declaring you to be of unsound mind, and unfit to have the custody of children. The specialist is the one who attended you in your nervous breakdown four years ago.”
Henry laughed incredulously, and looked at Choupette, half expecting her to laugh, too, but she had turned her face away, breathing quickly through parted lips. Suddenly he realised that Wiese was telling the truth—that by some extraordinary bribe he had obtained such a document and fully intended to use it.
For a moment Henry reeled as if from a material blow. He listened to his own voice saying, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,” and to Wiese’s answer: “They don’t always tell people when they have mental troubles.”
Suddenly Henry wanted to laugh, and the terrible instant when he had wondered if there could be some shred of truth in the allegation passed. He turned to Choupette, but again she avoided his eyes.
“How could you, Choupette?”
“I want my children,” she began, but Wiese broke in quickly:
“If you’d been halfway fair, Marston, we wouldn’t have resorted to this step.”
“Are you trying to pretend you arranged this scurvy trick since yesterday afternoon?”
“I believe in being prepared, but if you had been reasonable; in fact, if you will be reasonable, this opinion needn’t be used.” His voice became suddenly almost paternal, almost kind: “Be wise, Marston. On your side there’s an obstinate prejudice; on mine there are forty million dollars. Don’t fool yourself. Let me repeat, Marston, that money is power. You were abroad so long that perhaps you’re inclined to forget that fact. Money made this country, built its great and glorious cities, created its industries, covered it with an iron network of railroads. It’s money that harnesses the forces of Nature, creates the machine and makes it go when money says go, and stop when money says stop.”
As though interpreting this as a command, the engine gave forth a sudden hoarse sound and came to rest.
“What is it?” demanded Choupette.
“It’s nothing.” Wiese pressed the self-starter with his foot. “I repeat, Marston, that money—The battery is dry. One minute while I spin the wheel.”
He spun it for the best of fifteen minutes while the boat meandered about in a placid little circle.
“Choupette, open that drawer behind you and see if there isn’t a rocket.”
A touch of panic had crept into her voice when she answered that there was no rocket. Wiese eyed the shore tentatively.
“There’s no use in yelling; we must be half a mile out. We’ll just have to wait here until someone comes along.”
“We won’t wait here,” Henry remarked.
“Why not?”
“We’re moving toward the bay. Can’t you tell? We’re moving out with the tide.”
“That’s impossible!” said Choupette sharply.
“Look at those two lights on shore—one passing the other now. Do you see?”
“Do something!” she wailed, and then, in a burst of French: “Ah, c’est epouvantable! N’est-ce pas qu’il y a quelque chose qu’on peut faire?”
The tide was running fast now, and the boat was drifting down the Roads with it toward the sea. The vague blots of two ships passed them, but at a distance, and there was no answer to their hail. Against the western sky a lighthouse blinked, but it was impossible to guess how near to it they would pass——
“It looks as if all our difficulties would be solved for us,” Henry said.
“What difficulties?” Choupette demanded. “Do you mean there’s nothing to be done? Can you sit there and just float away like this?”
“It may be easier on the children, after all.” He winced as Choupette began to sob bitterly, but he said nothing. A ghostly idea was taking shape in his mind.
“Look here, Marston. Can you swim?” demanded Wiese, frowning.
“Yes, but Choupette can’t.”
“I can’t either—I didn’t mean that. If you could swim in and get to a telephone, the coast-guard people would send for us.”
Henry surveyed the dark, receding shore.
“It’s too far,” he said.
“You can try!” said Choupette.
Henry shook his head.
“Too risky. Besides, there’s an outside chance that we’ll be picked up.”
The lighthouse passed them, far to the left and out of earshot. Another one, the last, loomed up half a mile away.
“We might drift to France like that man Gerbault,” Henry remarked. “But then, of course, we’d be expatriates—and Wiese wouldn’t like that, would you, Wiese?”
Wiese, fussing frantically with the engine, looked up.
“See what you can do with this,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about mechanics,” Henry answered. “Besides, this solution of our difficulties grows on me. Just suppose you were dirty dog enough to use that statement and got the children because of it—in that case I wouldn’t have much impetus to go on living. We’re all failures—I as head of my household, Choupette as a wife and a mother, and you, Wiese, as a human being. It’s just as well that we go out of life together.”
“This is no time for a speech, Marston.”
“Oh, yes, it’s a fine time. How about a little more houseorgan oratory about money being power?”
Choupette sat rigid in the bow; Wiese stood over the engine, biting nervously at his lips.
“We’re not going to pass that lighthouse very close.” An idea suddenly occurred to him. “Couldn’t you swim to that, Marston?”
“Of course he could!” Choupette cried.
Henry looked at it tentatively.
“I might. But I won’t.”
“You’ve got to!”
Again he flinched at Choupette’s weeping; simultaneously he saw the time had come.
“Everything depends on one small point,” he said rapidly. “Wiese, have you got a fountain pen?”
“Yes. What for?”
“If you’ll write and sign about two hundred words at my dictation, I’ll swim to the lighthouse and get help. Otherwise, so help me God, we’ll drift out to sea! And you better decide in about one minute.”
“Oh, anything!” Choupette broke out frantically. “Do what he says, Charles; he means it. He always means what he says. Oh, please don’t wait!”
“I’ll do what you want”—Wiese’s voice was shaking—“only, for God’s sake, go on. What is it you want—an agreement about the children? I’ll give you my personal word of honor——”
“There’s no time for humor,” said Henry savagely. “Take this piece of paper and write.”
The two pages that Wiese wrote at Henry’s dictation relinquished all lien on the children thence and forever for himself and Choupette. When they had affixed trembling signatures Wiese cried:
“Now go, for God’s sake, before it’s too late!”
“Just one thing more: The certificate from the doctor.”
“I haven’t it here.”
“You lie.”
Wiese took it from his pocket.
“Write across the bottom that you paid so much for it, and sign your name to that.”
A minute later, stripped to his underwear, and with the papers in an oiled-silk tobacco pouch suspended from his neck, Henry dived from the side of the boat and struck out toward the light.
The waters leaped up at him for an instant, but after the first shock it was all warm and friendly, and the small murmur of the waves was an encouragement. It was the longest swim he had ever tried, and he was straight from the city, but the happiness in his heart buoyed him up. Safe now, and free. Each stroke was stronger for knowing that his two sons, sleeping back in the hotel, were safe from what he dreaded. Divorced from her own country, Choupette had picked the things out of American life that pandered best to her own self-indulgence. That, backed by a court decree, she should be permitted to hand on this preposterous moral farrago to his sons was unendurable. He would have lost them forever.
Turning on his back, he saw that already the motorboat was far away, the blinding light was nearer. He was very tired. If one let go—and, in the relaxation from strain, he felt an alarming impulse to let go—one died very quickly and painlessly, and all these problems of hate and bitterness disappeared. But he felt the fate of his sons in the oiled-silk pouch about his neck, and with a convulsive effort he turned over again and concentrated all his energies on his goal.
Twenty minutes later he stood shivering and dripping in the signal room while it was broadcast out to the coast patrol that a launch was drifting in the bay.
“There’s not much danger without a storm,” the keeper said. “By now they’ve probably struck across current from the river and drifted into Peyton Harbor.”
“Yes,”
