The Furnished Room

In the red-brick district of the lower West Side of New York lives a restless, shifting population. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They move from furnished room to furnished room, transients for ever, carrying their lives in a bag and a hat-box. Their songs are in ragtime; their hearts are restless too.

One evening after dark a young man rang the bell of one of these crumbling red houses. The landlady who came to the door made him think of a worm that has eaten its way into a nut until only the shell is left, and now looks for lodgers to fill the empty space. "I have the third-floor back, vacant since a week back," she said. "Should you wish to look at it?" He followed her up the dark stairs. "It's a nice room," she said, in a voice that seemed to come from deep inside a cupboard. "It ain't often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer. Theatre people, mostly. Yes, sir, theatrical people are often round here."

He paid for a week in advance. Then he asked the question he had asked a thousand times. "A young girl — Miss Vashner — Miss Eloise Vashner. Do you remember such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow." "No, I don't remember the name," said the landlady. "Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don't call that one to mind."

No. Always no. Five months of searching — theatre managers, agents, schools and dance halls, the crowded rooming-houses at night — and always no. He was sure that since she had left home she had come to this huge city. But New York was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its grains all the time, and what sank there one day was buried deep the next.

Alone, he sat down in the room. It was shabby, with a worn carpet and a cheap mirror, and every object in it seemed to speak of the hundreds of lodgers who had passed through. A brass bed. A broken fan. On the wall, pictures of lovers and soldiers that every furnished room seems to have. On the carpet, a worn path to the bed, as if lovely women had marched there in pairs. On the walls, names scratched with pins. A dark stain where someone had thrown a bottle in rage. The room was like a guest list of the homeless — they had come and they had gone, and none had stayed long enough to love it.

And then, as he sat there, the room was suddenly filled with the strong, sweet scent of mignonette. It came as plainly as if a voice had spoken. He jumped up. "What, dear?" he cried, as though someone had called him. It was her perfume, the scent she had always loved and always worn. She had been in this room. He was certain.

He searched every corner. In the drawers he found a small, abandoned handkerchief, a theatre programme, a pawnbroker's card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the interpretation of dreams, a black satin hair-bow, and a single hairpin. A hairpin is a hairpin; it says nothing about the head it belonged to. He crawled over the floor. He searched the walls, the curtains and the old, cracked chest of drawers. Nothing of hers. And yet the scent of mignonette was everywhere in the room, strong and warm, as if she were standing right behind him.

He ran downstairs to the landlady. "Who had my room before I came?" "If you please, I can tell you again. It was Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss Brett Sprowls it was in the theatres, but Missis Mooney she was. Their marriage certificate hung, framed, on a nail over—" "What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls — in looks, I mean?" "Why, black-haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago Tuesday." "And before them?" "Why, a single gentleman. Before him was Mrs Crowder and her two children. Before them was old Mr Doyle. That takes me back six months. I couldn't say further back than that."

He thanked her and went back up to his room. The scent was gone now; the room was dead and cold. Hope drained out of him. He sat looking at the yellow, singing gaslight for a long time. Then he tore the bed-sheets into strips and pushed them into every crack around the window and the door. When everything was tight and closed, he turned out the light, turned the gas on full again, and lay down gratefully on the bed.

That same night, in the basement below, Mrs Purdy the landlady was drinking beer with her friend Mrs McCool. "I rented out my third-floor back this evening," said Mrs Purdy. "A young man took it." "Did you tell him, then?" asked Mrs McCool, in a whisper. "Rooms," said Mrs Purdy, "are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs McCool. There's many people wouldn't take a room if they knew a suicide had been in it." "True for you, ma'am. And a pretty thing she was, to be gassing herself in that very bed. A pretty face she had too, Mrs Purdy, ma'am, except for that mole she had growing by her left eyebrow. Do fill your glass again."