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.