Part 11

"M. Bocardon?"

"At your service, monsieur."

"Can I have a bedroom?"

"Certainly." He waved a hand towards a set of black sample boxes studded with brass nails and bound with straps that lay in the hall. "The omnibus has brought your boxes. You are M. Lambert?"

"M. Bocardon," said Aristide, in a lordly way, "I am M. Aristide Pujol, and not a commercial traveller. I have come to see the beauties of Nîmes, and have chosen this hotel because I have the honour to be a distant relation of your wife, Mme. Zette Bocardon, whom I have not seen for many years. How is she?"

"Her health is very good," replied M. Bocardon, shortly. He rang a bell.

A dilapidated man in a green baize apron emerged from the dining-room and took Aristide's valise.

"No. 24," said M. Bocardon. Then, swinging his massive form halfway through the narrow bureau door, he called down the passage, "Euphémie!"

A woman's voice responded, and in a moment the woman herself appeared, a pallid, haggard, though more youthful, replica of Zette, with the dark rings of sleeplessness or illness beneath her eyes which looked furtively at the world.

"Tell your sister," said M. Bocardon, "that a relation of yours has come to stay in the hotel."

He swung himself back into the bureau and took no further notice of the guest.

"A relation?" echoed Euphémie, staring at the smiling, lustrous-eyed Aristide, whose busy brain was wondering how he could mystify this unwelcome and unexpected sister.

"Why, yes. Aristide, cousin to your good Aunt Léonie at Raphèle. Ah--but you are too young to remember me."

"I will tell Zette," she said, disappearing down the narrow passage.

Aristide went to the doorway, and stood there looking out into the not too savoury street. On the opposite side, which was in the shade, the tenants of the modest little shops sat by their doors or on chairs on the pavement. There was considerable whispering among them and various glances were cast at him. Presently footsteps behind caused him to turn. There was Zette. She had evidently been weeping since they had parted, for her eyelids were red. She started on beholding him.

"You?"

He laughed and shook her hesitating hands.

"It is I, Aristide. But you have grown! Pécaïre! How you have grown!" He swung her hands apart and laughed merrily in her bewildered eyes. "To think that the little Zette in pigtails and short check skirt should have grown into this beautiful woman! I compliment you on your wife, M. Bocardon."

M. Bocardon did not reply, but Aristide's swift glance noticed a spasm of pain shoot across his broad face.

"And the good Aunt Léonie? Is she well? And does she still make her matelotes of eels? Ah, they were good, those matelotes."

"Aunt Léonie died two years ago," said Zette.

"The poor woman! And I who never knew. Tell me about her."

The salle à manger door stood open. He drew her thither by his curious fascination. They entered, and he shut the door behind them.

"Voilà!" said he. "Didn't I tell you I should see you again?"

"Vous avez un fameux toupet, vous!" said Zette, half angrily.

He laughed, having been accused of confounded impudence many times before in the course of his adventurous life.

"If I told my husband he would kill you."

"Precisely. So you're not going to tell him. I adore you. I have come to protect you. Foi de Provençal."