TO LET

The fourth of January, 188—, very early in the morning, the porter's wife at Rossi Palazzo, formerly called Cavalcanti, put a step-ladder against the architrave of the entrance door, to the right, and stuck three bits of paper on the pipernina stone, with 'To Let' printed on each piece. The three notices said that three large suites of rooms, so many in each suite, were available, and could be seen at such an hour. Coming down the ladder, the woman sighed dolefully. For years none of the Rossi Palazzo suites had been to let; everyone was very comfortable and stayed on. She had got to know them all well. In the four months houses are looked for in Naples, from the fourth of January to the fourth of May, she had peacocked about at her ease always. She had not to go up and down stairs with house-hunters, as the Rosa Mansion woman next door or the Latilla woman had to do; she did not risk changing tenants that liked her for new ones that might be unpleasant. Instead of which, this very year three large flats were empty at the same time: one on the first floor—the FragalÀs'; two suites on the second floor—Dr. Amati's and the Marquis di Formosa's. It was a real catastrophe for the porter's wife, who never would get any rest for four months, and get no pay for her trouble. Altogether, three large suites to be empty was really a misfortune. 'Just like my luck,' said the porter's wife to those who condoled with her and asked the reason of these changes. She told the reason the tenants were going at once, so that people should not believe Rossi Palazzo was damp, that it threatened to fall, or that the owner had got an idea of raising the rents. Nothing of the sort. It was misfortunes. All are liable to them. It was natural Don Cesare FragalÀ and that good soul Donna Luisa should leave the house where they had been married. It was splendid, really—a gorgeous apartment, but they could not pay the high rent any longer. The husband had gambled everything away at the lottery; he was loaded with debts and ruined. Also, his confectioner's shop in Santo Spirito Square had gone out of his possession, for his wife, fearing bankruptcy was at hand, had decided to sell everything: jewels, plate, and furniture were all to be sold, everything luxurious got rid of, and a composition be made with their creditors. They were to go into a small house, and look out for a clerk's place for her husband, to keep the family agoing. The porter's wife and her gossiping friend remembered the two gorgeous parties for Cesare's marriage with Luisella and at little Agnesina's birth—all the great style of these receptions, the sweets, wine, and ices. It was an overthrow.

'Good gracious!' muttered the inquirer, man or woman. 'Did he lose all that at the lottery?'

'He lost all. They are left without a farthing, if they pay their debts; and Donna Luisa insists on paying. She may die from it, but she will pay.'

'What a scoundrel of a husband she has got!'

'We are not masters of ourselves,' the porter's wife prosed solemnly; 'we are all flesh.'

She was sorry, very, that the FragalÀs were going off to who knew where. She would never see them again. Most of all, she was sorry for little Agnesina; she was so good, placid, and obedient. She already went to the infants' school, tiny little body! Her mother went with her and brought her back carefully every day. They were a good sort, and it had to be seen who would come in their place.

The Cavalcantis' going away was a thing that had been foreseen for some time. The Marquis had paid no rent for several months, and Signor Rossi had stood it. He had allowed something to be paid on account now and then, partly because the Marquis di Formosa had been the old owner of the house and sold it to him, and he did not want to turn him out forcibly. How patient he had been! Now he could stand it no longer. In the Cavalcanti household they were often short of five francs for food. The Marquis had carried off the most necessary furniture piece by piece, selling it to a dealer in Baracchi Square. Donna Bianca Maria, poor soul! often dined off a hot dish that her aunt, Sister Maria degli Angioli, sent her from the Sacramentiste convent. The two old servants, Giovanni and Margherita, tried for outside work. The woman darned stockings and silk-knitted goods; the man copied papers for a magistrate's clerk. They were in such wretchedness that but for feeling shame the door-keeper would often carry up a dish of her macaroni or hot vegetable soup; but she dared not. They were gentlefolk, and bore their wretchedness silently. Besides, for want of a dower, Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti had been rejected as a sister of charity. By the new laws it was not allowable to go into other monasteries or orders; the new Government would not even let one be a nun.

'Then are they going away in May?' asked the inquirer rather pityingly. 'Where are they going?'

'Who can say? But I can tell you that her ladyship will not see that day. She is so ill; she wastes away like a taper; she says nothing, but when she has the strength to show at the window, she looks like a shadow. She does not go out now; indeed, she has no clothes to go out with, and if she had them she would not have the strength to go a step. Poor lady! to think her father could have got her married if he had chosen.'

'To whom? Why would he not allow it?'

Here began the woman's third sorrowful recital, the departure of the third tenant, Dr. Amati, that she earned such a lot of money by, from his sudden summonses to sick people. Alas! he was going away; indeed, he had gone, putting her on the street, poor woman, for she would never earn another farthing. Just fancy that Dr. Amati, who was so rich now, and earned as much as he liked, just out of charity, he was such a good man, had wanted to marry the Marchesina, she was so sweet and lovely; and she had been in love with the doctor, too, from her soul, because he had helped her in her illness—because she had known no other man—in short, because he only could get her out of that beggary. Well, it was not to be believed, but the Marquis di Formosa had said 'No,' and had persisted in saying 'No,' always making his daughter lose that bit of good luck she would never have again.

'What do you say?' her questioner cried out. 'It seems impossible.'

'Indeed, yes, it looks like a lie, but the Marquis di Formosa said "No." He felt quite honoured and pleased that Dr. Amati had asked for his daughter's hand, but some forbears of his long ago had left a written paper, in which it was said the last woman child of the family was not to marry—she must die a maid; and if this command was not carried out, a great punishment from God would come on her. No one knew what tears the Marchesina had shed, but her father had been firm. So that Dr. Amati—one evening they had had a great dispute—to avoid further occasions for anger, and to get the idea out of his head, had taken a month's leave from the hospital, left all his patients, and gone off to his native village to see his mother. Then he came back to Naples, but he would not even put his foot in Rossi Palazzo; he had gone to live in a furnished house in Chiaia Road. At Rossi Palazzo his flat was closed with all his furniture and books which the doctor no longer read; sometimes the housekeeper came to dust, and went away again. In a short time now the furniture and books would be carried away, too, and in May the flat would be empty. Poor Donna Bianca Maria, how often she had seen her come to the window of the inner court and gaze on Dr. Amati's closely-shut balcony! She made one's heart sore, that poor child of the Virgin, wasting away with sickness, melancholy, and wretchedness. Really it looked as if there was no more oil in the lamp. Margherita, her maid, when she spoke about her, cast down her eyes not to show she was weeping. But the Marquis was not wrong to obey his grandsire's wishes; there is no trifling with God's vengeance.'

'Ah! it was written,' remarked the gossip approvingly, quite thoughtful. 'It was written, my dear. When it is God's will, what is to be done?'

House-hunters began to flock in to inspect the flats to let in Rossi Palazzo, and the door-keeper's hard times began—it was never-ending, from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon, up and down the stairs. Every time a family arrived in front of the office and made the usual inquiries, she shook her head and got up, sighing, to go with them to the first or second floor. She went in front, going up very slowly, turning round to chat with the usual familiarity of small people in Naples, making her keys rattle, as they hung from her waist; asking if they wanted to see the doctor's rooms, for he had given her charge of them. Monotonously wandering through the huge rooms, rather severely furnished, where the stern moral impression of a great science—a great will—was still present, and all the human misery that had come there to ask help, she praised up the house and Dr. Amati, the famous doctor that all Naples admired, or, as she said, the whole world.

'Ah,' said the visitors, much impressed; 'and why did he leave this house, then?'

Very hastily she replied that the doctor was going to marry and needed a larger house, or that his business had gone in another direction, or that he was going to a smaller apartment, having taken a consulting-room at the hospital; in short, any lie that came into her head—such hurried, unlikely lies that the house-hunters, endowed with natural suspiciousness, would not take it in at all, and interrupted her with: 'All right; we will come back.' But they did not come back at all; indeed, the solemn, solitary look of the flat, with too many books, too many surgical appliances, and even the chair-bed of black leather that the sick lay on to be examined, that looked like the first step towards the tomb, left rather a sad impression, so they went away hurriedly, speaking low, still more alarmed by the doctor being away, the feared and respected god of medicine. They fled, never to return, a cloud over their spirits, not at all anxious to come back to be dispirited by these solemn, thought-inspiring surroundings.

The door-keeper, standing in the doorway, saw them go off quickly towards Toledo Street, where there was movement, light, and gaiety, and in spite of their vague promises, hesitatingly made, she knew they would never come back. 'Nothing is arranged, dear,' she often said, with a wearied air, to the neighbouring door-keeper at the Rosa Mansion. Nothing was settled, even for the flats that the FragalÀ and Cavalcanti families were leaving. It looked as if the house-hunters noticed the bad luck that came from these two flats, where so many tears had been shed, where so many were still being shed. In the FragalÀs' house, brave, melancholy Luisella had got rid of a great part of the furniture; the fine red drawing-room was now bare of its old brocade couches, and the child slept in its parents' room. Their way of living was of a sudden meaner, smaller, being restricted to the bedroom and dining-room. Sometimes the visitors found the family at dinner at two o'clock. Cesare FragalÀ kept his eyes on his plate, eating stolidly. Luisella said nothing, but kept rolling bread-pellets in her fingers. Little Agnesina, well-behaved and good as usual, looked at her father and mother alternately, taking care to make no noise with her spoon and fork, not to disturb them. When the visitors came in, the father of the family got paler and the mother cast down her eyes. Both of them at each visit felt having to leave the house: their wounds smarted and bled afresh. The little one looked at them, and said over in a whisper:

'Mamma, mamma!'

The visitors, led in by the door-keeper, felt they were in the way, and excused themselves, going on into other rooms while the woman spoke volubly to take off their attention. When they saw the drawing-room, parlour, and lobby empty, they gave queer glances at each other, so that the door-keeper shivered with impatience, cursing in her heart all who go away from houses and those who go looking for them, also those who go round to show them—that is to say, herself, who had this hard fate. The visitors asked the stock questions rather suspiciously:

'Why are they going away?'

Then she made up her mind and whispered:

'They have failed in business.'

'Ah, is that it?' exclaimed the visitors, much interested.

On the stair she gave particulars—told the reason of the failure, spoke of their former riches and the want of any comforts now; told about Signora Luisella's courage and her husband's rage for gambling on the lottery, and poor little Agnesina's good behaviour. She seemed to understand having come into the world and grown up at a bad season. The house-hunters listened full of interest, with that skin-deep emotion peculiar to Southerners; but from what they had seen, as well as from what they had heard from the door-keeper, they got a singular impression of evil fate—a doom weighing down an innocent, good family; a hard destiny, destroying all the sources of happiness and energy.

The house-hunters turned their backs on the FragalÀ household and Rossi Palazzo slowly; but they still felt sad, and spoke to each other about there being implacable, unforeseen, overpowering disasters, sometimes coming on humanity. Some attributed it to perfidious fate, some to the evil eye; others were philosophical over the passions of humanity, especially for gambling, still repeating the phrase that includes all the indulgence and forgiveness of Naples' folk: 'We are not our own masters.'

It was difficult to get into the Marquis di Formosa's flat. Often Margherita objected to anyone seeing the house, in spite of its being the right hours for visits. The door-keeper talked her over, feeling rather annoyed. She raised her voice and asked, 'How ever would a house be let, if no one could get in to see it?' Sometimes she managed to get in by slipping through the half-open door. All stopped speaking at once, for from the freezing bare lobby to the bare frozen drawing-room there was such cold, such a smell of old dust displaced, that it gave one a shudder. Big dull stains on the walls marked the outline of large pieces of furniture that had once been there, which the Marquis had sold to use what they fetched for staking on the lottery. One saw the big hooks and nails that the pictures had been hung from, and a heap of old yellow paper lay on the ground in a corner of one empty room. Where curtains had been fastened to the doors and balcony windows, there were holes in the plaster, for they seemed to have been violently torn away.

The chapel, too, had not a saint left. Our Lady of Sorrows and the Ecce Homo had been sold, also the vases and ornaments—even the fine napkins with old lace, so that the despoiled altar had a doleful, desecrated look. Sometimes the visitors, on going through the house, met a slight girlish figure in black, her shoulders wrapped in a shabby shawl, the lady's heavy black tresses seeming to make her face still more bloodless. She gazed at the visitors with her sorrowful eyes as if she did not know what was going on; a shade of grief reanimated them for a moment when she remembered it meant they had to leave that roof, their only refuge. The woman said in a whisper, 'It is the Marchesina!' nothing else, and that apparition was like the outline of an irreparable disaster. Sometimes the house-hunters, followed by Margherita and the door-keeper, came to a closed door. The waiting-woman rather hesitated, but on a hint from the door-keeper she made up her mind to knock.

'My lady, may we come in?'

'Yes, yes; come in,' a feeble voice answered.

Then all saw a wretched maidenly room, freezing with cold, where a pale creature in black, wrapped in a worn shawl, was seated by the bedside, or getting up quickly from her kneeling-desk. Then, abashed, they just gave a quick look round, muttered vaguely some excuse, and went off, the maiden following them with her thoughtful, sorrowing eyes. On the stair they dared to speak. They asked the woman, as if speaking of dead people or things:

'What was their name?'

'The Cavalcantis; he is a Marquis,' said the door-keeper.

Then the visitors would go off, taking with them a deep impression of people and things that are extinct.