"M'sieur le maire?" and then he stopped short, daunted by the mayor's stern look of impatient fatigue. "Has m'sieur le maire heard the news?" The speaker gathered up courage; it is exciting to be the bearer of news, especially of ill news.
M. de Wissant shook his head.
"Alas! there has been an accident, m'sieur le maire! A terrible accident! One of the submarines—they don't yet know which it is—has been struck by a big private yacht and has sunk in the fairway of the Channel, about two miles out!"
The Mayor of Falaise uttered an involuntary exclamation of horror. "When did it happen?" he asked quickly.
"About half an hour ago more or less. I said that m'sieur le maire ought to be informed at once of such a calamity. But I was told to wait till the marriages were over."
Looking furtively at the mayor's pale face, the young man regretted that he had not taken more on himself, for m'sieur le maire looked seriously displeased.
There was an old feud between the municipal and the naval authorities of Falaise—there often is in a naval port—and the mayor ought certainly to have been among the very first to hear the news of the disaster.
The bearer of ill news hoped m'sieur le maire would not blame him for the delay, or cause the fact to postpone his advancement to a higher grade—that advancement which is the perpetual dream of every French Government official.
"The admiral has only just driven by," he observed insinuatingly, "not five minutes ago——"
But still Jacques de Wissant did not move. He was listening to the increasing stir and tumult going on outside in the market place. The sounds had acquired a sinister significance; he knew now that the tramping of feet, the loud murmur of voices, meant that the whole population belonging to the seafaring portion of the town was emptying itself out and hurrying towards the harbour and the shore.