Dennis Wheatley - Vendetta in Spain

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 Escuela Moderna he was now much better equipped to argue with her upon anarchism and the range of means suggested for bringing about its triumph -from the utter ruthlessness of Bakunin and Stirner, through violent insurrections as envisaged by Kropotkin, to the peaceful propaganda advocated by Proudhon, the passive resistance of Benjamin Tucker and finally the spread of universal love hoped for by Count Tolstoi.

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 working classes, but whether that is so in fact is highly debatable.'

Having paused to light a cigarette, he went on. 'The main plank in the Liberal platform has for long been Free Trade, and with it they have won the votes of the masses in the towns because, on the face of it, their policy means cheap living. But go a little deeper into the matter and you will find that it has another altogether different aspect. The great strength of the Liberal party lies in the industrial north, and the money to finance industry comes from the rich manufacturers and the old Whig families who have invested their wealth in commerce. They are very shrewd people, and they know that if they can bring the cost of living down they will then be able to force down wages and derive bigger profits from their factories.'

'Do you suggest, then, that the Liberal policy is nothing but an infamous plot?' she asked indignantly.

'Not altogether,' he smiled, 'and the Liberals have introduced many excellent reforms. But if you go deeply into the matter you will find that Tory governments have proved better protectors of the interests of the ordinary people. It was they who first introduced free education, it was they who put a stop to women working in the mines, it was they who passed the first factory acts and legislated to prevent little children being forced to labour as though they were slaves. But to revert to the question of Britain continuing to give asylum to political firebrands from all over Europe, the last thing the Liberals must want is for such people to spread discontent in the industrial areas; so they are just as likely to put up a bar to their entering the country as would be the Tories, who in your sense of the word are more genuinely Liberal-minded.'

On another occasion they were talking about his early years spent in Russia when she said, 'The condition of the peasants and the poorer people must be quite appalling. One cannot wonder that last year Father Gapon led a revolution there. I know it was put down with ferocious brutality by the Tsar's Cossacks; but now that the people have shown their teeth it seems unlikely that will be the end of the matter. What do you think of their prospects of gaining their freedom?'

'It all depends what you mean by freedom,' he smiled. 'If they succeed in overthrowing the monarchy they certainly would not get it. That could only lead to a blood-bath, after which they would soon find themselves at the mercy of a committee of mob-leaders. All revolutions develop in much the same way, and you have only to recall how in the French Revolution the whole nation was held in subjection by Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety.'

'But it worked out in the end,' she objected. 'The Terror did not last for very long, and after it was over new laws secured to every Frenchman his rights as an individual.'