closing of his bedroom door.
The Beautiful Anarchist
It took another thirty-six hours for de Quesnoy to make up the ground lost through his set-back; but after that he began to recover rapidly, and on the 10th of September he was allowed to get up in his room for an hour in the late afternoon. Sixteen days had elapsed since his fall, all his bruises had disappeared, the cuts on his head had healed, his ribs and collar-bone had mended and, owing to his excellent health, his body had made good the blood it had lost. At times he still suffered from severe headaches, but it was now only his broken leg that kept him a prisoner. When the plaster cast was removed from it the doctor had pronounced the mend to be satisfactory and it was a great relief to exchange the rigid casing for a much more comfortable supporting bandage, but he was not allowed until some days after that to put his foot to the ground.
As soon as he had been in a condition to do so he had dictated to de Cordoba a full account of all that had befallen him in Barcelona, for transmission to the King, who was in residence at San Sebastian. From then onward the Conde and de Vendome came in three or four times a day to sit with him for a while, but he knew that on many of these occasions de Cordoba would normally have been immersed in his banking affairs and that the Prince, in addition to certain duties he had to perform, would, while at this seaside resort, normally be amusing himself playing tennis or polo or bathing with parties of other young people; so as de Quesnoy grew stronger he told them that he would soon be about again and urged them to resume their usual activities.
After some pressing they agreed to look in on him after breakfast each morning and not make any long visits till the evenings. It was then he learned, too, that normally the Conde's business necessitated his spending one or two nights a week in Madrid. But by his thought for his friends the Count penalized himself considerably, as he was left with no one to talk to all day and he found that reading soon brought on his headaches. Dona Gulia often accompanied her husband or de Vendome on visits to him, and when she learnt that he could not read for any length of time she volunteered to read to him. In consequence, by the time he was well enough to leave his bed it was already an established
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custom that Gulia and her duenna, Dona Eulalia, should sit with him for an hour or more in the mornings and again after the siesta.
On his second time up he was allowed to try out his crutches and, although he felt rather shaky, he managed to walk with them round the small flower-bordered patio on to which his room faced. After that he took his meals at an iron table out there and received his visitors at it.
Three days later the doctor agreed to Gulia's suggestion that it would do the patient goocf to have a dip in the sea, providing someone was close at hand all the time to support him should he lose his balance. A private bay lay on the far side of the house. It was a quarter-mile-wide half-moon of lovely golden sand screened at either end by pine-covered headlands. At one side of it there stood a row of gaily painted wooden huts with a group of chairs, tables and striped sun umbrellas in front of them.
A footman named Ricardo, who had been allotted to the Count as his valet, and another footman, carried him in a chair with two poles lashed to it down to one of the huts. Ricardo helped him to undress and change into a borrowed bathing dress then, acting as a human crutch, escorted him out to the surf line. As they reached it he looked back and saw Gulia emerge from one of the other huts. Her burnished hair was now hidden under a big white macintosh cap, which made her face look unusually small, and she was wearing an elaborate dark blue costume piped with white. It was of thickish material with a yoke from the shoulders and a full, short skirt; so actually much less could be seen of the upper part of her person than when she was in evening dress; but her legs, normally hidden on all occasions by long skirts, were now bare from just below the knee, and he noted that they were slender and shapely.
On the Biscay coast the sea is nearly always rough and some way out great white combers were breaking over a submerged sand-spit, but nearer inshore it was moderately calm. Even so, neither of them went far out, and on this first day the Count contented himself with paddling and sitting down in the shallows to let the waves wash over him.
Next day he found that when waist deep in the water its buoyancy enabled him to keep his balance while putting only a very little weight on his injured leg; so he was able for the first time to exercise it. The following day he went for a short swim and after his fourth bathe he limped back up the beach to the bathing hut without Richard's help.
From then onward Ricardo and Gulia's maid came down to the shore only to help them change into and out of their bathing things; but Dona Eulalia continued to be their constant companion. However, this plump and indolent ageing lady, whose function it was in the Spanish tradition to protect her beautiful young mistress from unwelcome - or welcome - attempts on her virtue, knew her place as well as her duties. From their first meeting, the strong- willed Gulia had made it plain that she did not consider it part of those duties for a duenna to participate in every conversation she might hold with her husband's men friends, and that at such times Dona Eulalia would be expected to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. Anxious to secure the comforts and good food that went with such a post in a rich household, Dona Eulalia had made no bones about agreeing.
In consequence, while she had had perforce to remain in their immediate proximity when in the bedroom or sitting out in the patio, here on the beach when after bathing they sunned themselves in deck-chairs, she sat under one of the striped umbrellas sewing or dozing a good fifty yards away from them.
As the weather continued calm and warm they now spent a good part of each day down in the bay, usually having a picnic lunch brought out to them there. Sometimes de Vendome joined them, either alone or with a party of young friends, but for long periods they were on their own and, during them, enjoyed listening to one another's views on a great variety of subjects.
While de Quesnoy swam or limped up and down the golden sands Gulia watched him with covert glances from under her long curling eyelashes. She decided that she had never seen a more beautifully made and supple male body, and that the premature greyness that, as the result of the ordeals he had been through, now streaked his slightly wavy dark hair, added the final touch of distinction to his aquiline features. Disguising her passionate personal interest in him under the guise of normal feminine curiosity, she asked him innumerable questions about himself and these often led to political discussions.
Owing to the time de Quesnoy had spent at the
That she was serious in her belief in anarchism he soon had no lingering doubts; but she was not of the category that would have made even a temporary marriage of convenience with Communism. Neither did she approve of violence. It was simply that she believed that complete anarchism could eliminate poverty and that every individual had the right to live as he pleased.
To find out more about his life with Angela she frequently turned the conversation to England. Although she had never been to that country she had a great admiration for the British and on one occasion she spolte glowingly of the way in which, strong in their own freedom, they refused to be bullied by all the other great nations into refusing to give asylum to political refugees.
He said that he personally had the best of reasons to be grateful to the British on that account, but that soon such refugees might find Switzerland the only country left open to them for, although he was convinced it was not so, there had been accusations from many quarters that the attempt to assassinate King Alfonso and his Queen had been planned in London; and the British were becoming tired of being labelled accessories to murder.
'Had the attempt taken place a year ago they might have altered their law, but they won't now,' she asserted quickly. 'Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman having ousted the Conservatives from office last December makes that a certainty. No Liberal Government would ever introduce a measure aimed at curtailing the march of humanity towards freedom.'
De Quesnoy gave her an amused glance, and said, 'I fear you are not quite so well up in British politics as you are in many other subjects. As I lived until recently for a good while in England allow me to enlighten you. Liberalism does not mean the same thing there as it does in Spain, Russia and most other Continental countries. The British Liberal party is descended from the Whigs - the great nobles of the eighteenth century who banded together to curb the powers of the Crown. Today it is true that in theory the Liberals represent the interests of the
