IN WHICH WE PAY A VISIT ASHORE
The mystery of the deck cabin was puzzling.
I alone held knowledge of the dastardly plan formed to blow up the
yacht, and was determined that the vessel should not sail again
before I had warned my fellow-guests. But how?
I had watched the old millionaire narrowly, and had plainly detected
his nervous agitation, and his anxiety for the cruise to be brought
to an end. As far as I myself was concerned, I had no intention of
again sailing in the _Vispera_, and would certainly not allow Ulrica
to continue the voyage. That the yacht was doomed was plain. Even
at that moment old Mr. Keppel was sending mysterious telegrams, in
all of which I scented some connection with the tragedy that had
occurred on board. It struck me that the wisest course would be to
attach myself to my host as much as possible, and narrowly watch his
movements. With that intention, therefore, I turned back and walked
as far as the great Piazza Carlo Alberto, where the central telegraph
office was situated. On the stone seats around the spacious square
hundreds of people were sitting and gossiping beneath the stars, for
the Italian of the working-class loves to gossip at night, when the
day's toil is over, and the cool breeze comes in from across the sea.
I met Keppel emerging from the office, and with some surprise he
greeted me. I told him that I had been making some purchases, while
the others had gone to the opera, whereupon he suggested that we,
too, should take a cab to the Goldoni and join the party there.
This we did. The old man was unusually chatty and affable, and
during our drive told me he had decided that the _Vispera_ should lie
in Leghorn for the next five or six days, as he was expecting letters
from England in reply to the telegrams he had just despatched.
This surprised me. If he and his unknown accomplice wished to get
rid of traces of their crime by blowing up the vessel, it seemed only
probable that they would do so at the earliest possible moment.
Again, a second point was an enigma. How was it that the Customs
officers, who had searched the yacht, and had, of course, entered the
mysterious deck-house, had not discovered the crime?
Keppel was a very shrewd old fellow, but it was my duty to prevent
the consummation of the dastardly plot which his accomplice had
suggested. With this object in view, I made a point of remaining as
near him as possible.
In the investigation of matters such as these a woman is in many ways
handicapped. A man can go hither and thither in search of truth, and
act in a manner for which a woman can find no excuse.
At the Goldoni, an enormous theatre, rather dingy with age, but
nevertheless comfortable, Verdi's _Aida_ was being performed, and
when we entered the box occupied by our party, Ulrica greeted me with
enthusiasm.
"You were quite right, Carmela, dear. The music is really wonderful.
I had no idea that they had opera of such high quality in a small
Italian town. The tenor is a great artist."
"Ah!" I laughed. "I was sneered at when I dared to say that there
was anything of interest in Leghorn. You have at least found an
evening's amusement equal to any you'll find in London. Pretty
toilettes you won't find, as at Covent Garden, but good opera you can
always hear."
"I quite agree with Miss Rosselli," declared Gerald, as he rose to
give me his seat. "Leghorn is a charming place. And what lovely
women! I've never in all my life seen such a galaxy of beauty."
"Oh, then you have noticed them already!" I said, smiling at his
enthusiasm.
Every Englishman who goes to Leghorn is enthusiastic over the beauty
of the Livornese women, the well-cut, regular features, the dark
flashing eyes, the artistically-dressed hair, the great gold-loop
ear-rings, and the soft santuzza, or silken scarf, with embroidered
ends, wound about the head and secured by great pins, the finishing
touch to a thoroughly artistic adornment.
As the Englishman walks down the Via Grande, they, promenading in
couples or threes, arm in arm, turn and laugh saucily at him as he
passes. Yes, they are a light-hearted, careless people, the
Livornesi, even though the poverty is terrible. Hundreds would die
of sheer starvation yearly were it not for those kind Capuchins, Fra
Antonio, Padre Sisto, Padre Antonino, and the others, who daily
distribute bread to all who ask for it at the convent gate. The good
friars have no funds, but Fra Orazio, a lay brother, and the youngest
of them, goes daily from house to house of the middle classes and the
wealthy, begging a trifle here and a trifle there with which to buy
the bread and the necessaries for soup for the starving. And who
does not know Fra Orazio in Leghorn? In his brown habit, a
dark-haired, black-bearded man of forty, with a round, jovial face
tanned by the sun, his rotund figure is as well known as the
equestrian statue of Vittorio Emanuele in the Piazza.
The theatre was crowded, the cheaper parts being packed by men and
women of the poorer classes, who had made that day one of
semi-fasting in order to be able to pay the _ingresso_, and hear the
music of their beloved _maestro_. The audience was an enthusiastic
one, as it generally is in Italy--as quick to praise as it is to
condemn--and that night the principal singers were recalled time
after time. In the Italian theatre there is a lack of luxury;
sometimes even the floor is unswept, and there is dust in the boxes;
nevertheless, all these drawbacks are counterbalanced by the
excellence of the performance.
To the millionaire's guests that performance was a revelation, and
when we left on the conclusion of the opera to return to the port and
go on board, Leghorn was voted by all to be quite an interesting
place. Indeed, when our host stated that he intended to remain there
a few days owing to the necessities of his business, no one demurred.
Ulrica suggested at breakfast next morning that some of us should run
up to Florence on a flying visit, it being only sixty miles distant,
while somebody else urged the formation of a party to go and see the
famed leaning tower at Pisa. For my part, however, I had resolved
that I would go wherever my host went. Several times that morning I
passed and repassed the deck-cabin, but those green silk blinds were
closely drawn across the brass-bound port-holes, and the door was
carefully locked.
What a terrible mystery was contained therein! If only my
fellow-guests were aware that on board the vessel was the body of an
unknown woman who had been foully and brutally murdered! And yet a
distinct suspicion had now seized me that the Customs officers,
having searched and found nothing, the body must have been secretly
disposed of. Perhaps it had been weighted and sunk during the silent
watches of the night.
Yet, if this had actually been done, what possible reason was there
to destroy the yacht and sacrifice the lives of those on board? I
had thought it all over very carefully in the privacy of my own small
cabin, where the morning sunshine, dancing upon the water lying just
below my port-hole, cast tremulous reflections upon the roof of the
cosy little chamber. No solution of the problem, however, presented
itself. I was utterly bewildered. A thousand times I was tempted to
confide in Ulrica, yet on reflection I saw how giddy she was, and
feared that she might blurt it out to one or other of her friends.
She was sadly indiscreet where secrets were concerned.
About ten o'clock I found the old millionaire lolling back in a
deck-chair, enjoying his morning cigar according to habit, and in
order to watch him, I sank into another chair close to his. The
_Vispera_ was lying within the semi-circular mole; and so, while
protected from the sudden gales for which that coast is so noted,
there was, nevertheless, presented from her deck a magnificent
panorama of the sun-blanched town and the range of dark mountains
beyond.
"The young Countess Bonelli, who was at school with me, has invited
us all to her villa at Ardenza," I said, as I seated myself. "You
will accompany us this afternoon, won't you, Mr. Keppel?"
"Ardenza? Where's that?" he inquired.
"The white village there, along the coast," I answered, pointing it
out to him. "I sent a message to the Countess last night, and half
an hour ago I received a most pressing invitation for all of us to
drive out to her villa to tea. You'll come? We shall accept no
excuses," I added.
"Ah, Miss Rosselli," he grunted, "I'm getting old and crochety; and
to tell you the plain truth, I hate tea-parties."
"But you men won't drink tea, of course," I said. "The Countess is
most hospitable. She's one of the best known of the younger
hostesses in Florence. You probably know the Bonelli Palace in the
Via Montebello. They always spend the spring and autumn at their
villa at Ardenza."
And so I pressed the old man until he could not refuse. I watched
him very narrowly during our conversation, and became more than ever
convinced that his increased anxiety and fidgety behaviour were due
to the pricks of conscience. More than once I felt sorely tempted to
speak straight out, and demand of him who and where was the woman who
had been concealed in that gilded deck-house?
But what would it profit to act ridiculously? Only by patience and
the exercise of woman's wit could I hope to learn the truth.
His reluctance to go ashore increased my suspicions. He had at
breakfast announced his intention of not landing before evening, as
he had some correspondence to attend to; but this seemed a mere
excuse to remain behind while the others went out exploring the town.
Therefore I was determined that he should accompany us, and I had
urged Ulrica to add her persuasive powers to mine.
The afternoon was one of those brilliant ones which are almost
incessant on the Tuscan coast. About three o'clock we all landed,
including the old millionaire, and in cabs were driven along the
promenade and out by the city gate along the oleander grove to
Ardenza, the first village eastward beyond Leghorn on the ancient
Strada Romana, that long highway which runs from Marseilles to Rome.
All in the party were delighted with the drive along that wide
sea-road, which for miles is divided from the actual rocks by a belt
of well-kept gardens of palms and oleanders, forming one of the
handsomest and most beautiful promenades in the South of Europe.
I have often thought it curious that the ubiquitous British traveller
has never discovered Ardenza. He will, no doubt, some day, and then
the fortune of the charming little retreat will be made. Time was,
and not very long ago, when Nervi, Santa Margherita, and Rapallo were
unknown to those fortunate ones who follow the sun in winter; yet
already all those little places are rapidly becoming fashionable, and
big hotels are springing up everywhere. The fact is, that _habitués_
of the South, becoming tired of the artificiality and flagrant vice
of the French Riviera, and of the terrible rapaciousness of
hotel-keepers and tradesmen in that most ghastly of all Riviera
resorts, San Remo, are gradually moving farther eastward, where the
sunshine is the same, but where the people are charming and as yet
unspoilt by the invading hordes of the wealthy; where the breezes are
health-giving, where the country is both picturesque and primitive,
and where the Aspasia of the boulevard and the _chevalier
d'industrie_ are alike absent.
Ardenza is a large village of great white villas in the Italian
style--mansions they would be called in England. Some face the
splendid tree-lined promenade, but many lie back from the sea in
their own grounds, shut out from the vulgar gaze by walls high and
prison-like. There is no mean street, for it is essentially a
village of the wealthy, where the great houses, with their wonderful
mosaic floors, are the acme of comfort and convenience, where both
streets and houses are lit by electricity, and where society is
extremely sociable, and yet select.
There is neither shop nor hotel in the place, but a quarter of a mile
away is the old village called Ardenza di Terra, to distinguish it
from that by the sea, a typical Italian village, with its old-world
fountain, round which the women, gay in their bright kerchiefs,
gossip; its picturesque bridge, and its long white high-road which
leads up to Montenero, that high, dark hill on which stands the
church with its miracle-working Virgin. Both Byron and Shelley knew
and appreciated the beauties of the place. The former had a villa
close by, which is, alas! now falling to decay; while Shelley
frequently visited Antignano, the next village along the old sea-road.
Better than San Remo, better than Bordighera, better than Alassio,
Ardenza will one day, when enterprising hotel-keepers discover it,
and the new direct railway from Genoa to Rome is constructed from
Viareggio to Cecina, become a rival to Nice. At present, however,
the residents are extremely conservative. They never seek to
advertise the beauties or advantages of the place, for they have no
desire that it should become a popular resort. Nevertheless, I dare
to assert here that the sea-bathing is perhaps the finest in Europe,
that no promenade of any English watering-place equals it, and that
its climate, save in the month of August, is one of the best of any
place on the Mediterranean shore.
No wonder, then, that rich Italians have built their villas in so
lovely a spot, or that they go there to escape the fogs of the Arno,
or the dreaded malaria of Rome.
The Countess Velia met me at the port, and carried Ulrica and myself
home in her smart victoria. We had not met for quite three years,
and I saw that the rather plain Velia of convent days had now grown
into a strikingly handsome woman. Her husband, she told us, was
unfortunately in Venice.
The Villa Bonelli we found to be one of the largest in Ardenza, a
huge white mansion, with bright green _persiennes_, standing back in
its own grounds behind a large gate of ornamental iron, the spikes
being gilded, in accordance with the usual style in Italy. Velia
received her guests in the great _salon_ upholstered in azure silk,
and then we wandered through the ground floor of the spacious
mansion, passing the smaller _salons_, and at last strolled out into
the garden, where tea was served in the English style under the
shadow of the orange trees. Velia had never been able to master
English, and, as few of her guests beside myself spoke Italian, her
conversation was of necessity limited. Nevertheless, after a five
weeks' cruise, resulting in the cramped sensation one usually
experiences while yachting, tea-drinking and rambling in that
beautiful garden, with its wealth of flowers, were delightful
occupations enjoyed by all, even by old Mr. Keppel, whose chief
wonder seemed to be at the magnificence of the house, which appeared
to be almost entirely constructed of marble. The mosaic floors, too,
were splendid, worked in dark green and white, in imitation of those
in the Thermæ Antoninianæ at Rome. The Bonellis were an ancient
family, one of the few Florentine nobles who were still wealthy.
Their ancestral castello was above Pracchia in the Apennines, between
Florence and Bologna, and Velia had several times since her marriage
given me pressing invitations to stay with her there.
At the convent we had always been close friends. She was the
daughter of the Marchese Palidoro of Ancona, and once I had spent the
Easter vacation with her at her home on the Adriatic shore. Ulrica
and the others found her a charming little woman, and, of course,
admired the two-year-old little Count, who was brought down from his
kingdom in the nursery, to be kissed and admired by us.