For three long miserable months he had wrestled with those ignoble
questionings only the jealous know, now accepting as probable, now
rejecting with angry self-rebuke, the thought that his wife suffered,
perhaps even returned, Dupré's love. And to-day, instead of finding his
jealousy allayed by her half-confidence, he felt more wretched than he
had ever been. His horses responded to his mood, and going down the steep hill which
leads into the town of Falaise they shied violently at a heap of stones
they had passed sedately a dozen times or more. Jacques de Wissant
struck them several cruel blows with the whip he scarcely ever used, and
the groom, looking furtively at his master's set face and blazing eyes,
felt suddenly afraid. III

It was one o'clock, and the last of the wedding parties had swept gaily
out of the great _salle_ of the Falaise town hall and so to the
Cathedral across the market place. Jacques de Wissant, with a feeling of relief, took off his tricolor
badge of office. With the instinctive love of order which was
characteristic of the man, he gathered up the papers that were spread on
the large table and placed them in neat piles before him. Through the
high windows, which by his orders had been prised open, for it was
intensely hot, he could hear what seemed an unwonted stir outside. The
picturesque town was full of strangers; in addition to the usual
holiday-makers from the neighbourhood, crowds of Parisians had come down
to spend the Feast of the Assumption by the sea. The Mayor of Falaise liked to hear this unwonted stir and movement, for
everything that affected the prosperity of the town affected him very
nearly; but he was constitutionally averse to noise, and just now he
felt very tired. The varied emotions which had racked him that morning
had drained him of his vitality; and he thought with relief that in a
few moments he would be in the old-fashioned restaurant just across the
market place, where a table was always reserved for him when his town
house happened to be shut up, and where all his tastes and dietetic
fads--for M. de Wissant had a delicate digestion--were known. He took up his tall hat and his lemon-coloured gloves--and then a look
of annoyance came over his weary face, for he heard the swinging of a
door. Evidently his clerk was coming back to ask some stupid question. He always found it difficult to leave the town hall at the exact moment
he wished to do so; for although the officials dreaded his cold
reprimands, they were far more afraid of his sudden hot anger if
business of any importance were done without his knowledge and sanction. But this time it was not his clerk who wished to intercept the mayor on
his way out to _déjeuner_; it was the chief of the employés in the
telephone and telegraph department of the building, a forward, pushing
young man whom Jacques de Wissant disliked. "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. Shaking off the bearer of ill news with a curt word of thanks, the Mayor
of Falaise strode out of the town hall into the street and joined the
eager crowd, mostly consisting of fisher folk, which grew denser as it
swept down the tortuous narrow streets leading to the sea. The people parted with a sort of rough respect to make way for their
mayor; many of them, nay the majority, were known by name to Jacques de
Wissant, and the older men and women among them could remember him as a
child. Rising to the tragic occasion, he walked forward with his head held
high, and a look of deep concern on his pale, set face. The men who
manned the Northern Submarine Flotilla were almost all men born and bred
at Falaise--Falaise famed for the gallant sailors she has ever given to
France. The hurrying crowd--strangely silent in its haste--poured out on to the
great stone-paved quays in which is set the harbour so finely encircled
on two sides by the cliffs which give the town its name. Beyond the harbour--crowded with shipping, and now alive with eager
little craft and fishing-boats making ready to start for the scene of
the calamity--lay a vast expanse of glistening sea, and on that
sun-flecked blue pall every eye was fixed. The end of the harbour jetty was already roped off, only those
officially privileged being allowed through to the platform where now
stood Admiral de Saint Vilquier impatiently waiting for the tug which
was to take him out to the spot where the disaster had taken place. The
Admiral was a naval officer of the old school--of the school who called
their men "my children"--and who detested the Republican form of
government as being subversive of discipline. As Jacques de Wissant hurried up to him, he turned and stiffly saluted
the Mayor of Falaise. Admiral de Saint Vilquier had no liking for M. de
Wissant--a cold prig of a fellow, and yet married to such a beautiful,
such a charming young woman, the daughter, too, of one of the Admiral's
oldest friends, of that Admiral de Kergouët with whom he had first gone
to sea a matter of fifty years ago! The lovely Claire de Kergouët had
been worthy of a better fate than to be wife to this plain, cold-blooded
landsman.