CHAPTER XV 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.