'The Furnished Room' by O. Henry

01The Furnished Room Restless, always moving, forever passing, like time itself, are most of the people who live in these old red houses.

02This is on New York's west side.

03The people are homeless, yet they have a hundred homes.

04They go from furnished room to furnished room.

05They are transients, transients forever, transients in living place, transients in heart and mind.

06They sing the song Home Sweet Home, but they sing it without feeling what it means.

07They can carry everything they own in one small box.

08They know nothing of gardens.

09To them, flowers and leaves are something to put on a woman's hat.

10The houses of this part of the city have had a thousand people living in them.

11Therefore, each house should have a thousand stories to tell.

12Perhaps most of these stories would not be interesting.

13But it would be strange if you did not feel in some of these houses, that you were among people you could not see.

14The spirits of some who had lived and suffered there must surely remain, though their bodies had gone.

15One evening a young man appeared, going from one to another of these big old houses, ringing the doorbell.

16At the twelfth house, he put down the bag he carried.

17He cleaned the dust from his face.

18Then he touched the bell.

19It sounded far, far away, as if it were ringing deep underground.

20The woman who owned the house came to the door.

21The young man looked at her.

22He thought that she was like some fat, colorless, legless thing that had come up from a hole in the ground, hungrily hoping for something, or someone, to eat.

23He asked if there was a room that he could have for the night.

24Come in, said the woman.

25Her voice was soft, but for some reason he did not like it.

26I have the back room on the third floor.

27Do you wish to look at it?

28The young man followed her up.

29There was little light in the halls.

30He could not see where that light was coming from.

31The covering on the floor was old and ragged.

32There were places in the walls made, perhaps to hold flowering plants.

33If this were true, the plants had died long before this evening.

34The air was bad.

35No flowers could have lived in it for long.

36This is the room, said the lady in her soft, thick voice.

37It's a nice room.

38Someone is usually living in it.

39I had some very nice people in it last summer.

40I had no trouble with them.

41They paid on time.

42The water is at the end of the hall.

43Sprouse and Mooney had the room for three months.

44You know them?

45Theater people.

46The gas is here.

47You see, there's plenty of space to hang your clothes.

48It's a room everyone likes.

49If you don't take it, someone else will take it soon.

50Do you have many theater people living here?

51Asked the young man.

52They come and they go.

53Many of my people work in the theater.

54Yes, sir.

55This is the part of the city where theater people live.

56They never stay long anyplace.

57They live in all the houses near here.

58They come and they go.

59The young man paid for the room for a week.

60He was going to stay there, he said, and rest.

61He counted out the money.

62The room was all ready, she said.

63He would find everything that he needed.

64As she moved away, he asked his question.

65He had asked it already a thousand times.

66It was always there, waiting to be asked again.

67A young girl, Eloise Vashner.

68Do you remember her?

69Has she ever been in this house?

70She would be singing in the theater, probably.

71A girl of mid-height, thin, with red-gold hair, and a small dark spot on her face near her left eye.

72No, I don't remember the name.

73Theater people change names as often as they change their rooms.

74They come and they go.

75No, I don't remember that one.

76No.

77Always no.

78He had asked his question for five months, and the answer was always no.

79Every day he questioned men who knew theater people.

80Had she gone to them to ask for work?

81Every evening he went to the theaters.

82He went to the good theaters and to bad ones.

83Some were so bad that he was afraid to find her there.

84Yet he went to them, hoping.

85He who had loved her best had tried to find her.

86She had suddenly gone from her home.

87He was sure that this great city, this island, held her.

88But everything in the city was moving, restless.

89What was on top today was lost at the bottom tomorrow.

90The furnished room received the young man with a certain warmth.

91Or it seemed to receive him warmly.

92It seemed to promise that here he could rest.

93There was a bed and there were two chairs with ragged covers.

94Between the two windows there was a looking glass about twelve inches wide.

95There were pictures on the walls.

96The young man sat down in a chair while the room tried to tell him its history.

97The words it used were strange, not easy to understand.

98As if they were words of many distant foreign countries.

99There was a floor covering of many colors.

100Like an island of flowers in the middle of the room.

101Dust lay all around it.

102There was a bright wallpaper on the wall.

103There was a fireplace.

104On the wall above it some bright pieces of cloth were hanging.

105Perhaps they had been put there to add beauty to the room.

106This they did not do.

107And the pictures on the walls were pictures the young man had seen a hundred times before in other furnished rooms.

108Here and there around the room were small objects forgotten by others who had used the room.

109There were pictures of theater people, something to hold flowers.

110But nothing valuable.

111One by one the little signs grew clear.

112They showed the young man the others who had lived there before him.

113In front of the looking glass there was a thin spot on the floor.

114It told him that women had been in the room.

115Small finger marks on the wall told of children trying to feel their way to sun and air.

116A larger spot on the wall made him think of someone in anger throwing something there.

117Across the looking glass some person had written the name Marie.

118It seemed to him that those who had lived in the furnished room had been angry with it and had done all they could to hurt it.

119Perhaps their anger had been caused by the room's brightness and its coldness.

120For there was no true warmth in the room.

121There were cuts and holes in the chairs and in the walls.

122The bed was half broken.

123The floor cried out as if in pain when it was walked on.

124People for a time had called this room home.

125And yet they had heard it.

126This was a fact not easy to believe.

127But perhaps it was.

128Strangely, a deep love of home that was the cause.

129The people who had lived in the room perhaps never knew what a real home was.

130But they knew that this room was not a home.

131Therefore, their deep anger rose up and made them strike out.

132The young man in the chair allowed these thoughts to move one by one softly through his mind.

133At the same time, sounds and smells from other furnished rooms came into his room.

134He heard someone laughing.

135Laughing in a manner that was neither happy nor pleasant.

136From other rooms he heard a woman talking too loudly.

137He heard people playing games for money.

138And he heard a woman singing to a baby.

139And he heard someone weeping.

140Above him there was music.

141Doors opened and closed.

142The trains outside rushed noisily past.

143Some animal cried out in the night outside.

144And the young man felt the breath of the house.

145It had a smell that was more than bad.

146It seemed cold and sick and old and dying.

147Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet smell of a flower, small and white, named Mignonette.

148The smell came so surely and so strongly that it almost seemed like a living person entering the room.

149And the man cried out aloud, What, dear?

150As if he had been called.

151He jumped up and turned around.

152The rich smell was near and all around him.

153He opened his arms for it.

154For a moment, he did not know where he was or what he was doing.

155How could anyone be called by a smell?

156Surely it must have been a sound.

157But could a sound have touched him?

158She has been in this room, he cried.

159And he began to seek some sign of her.

160He knew that if he found any small thing that had belonged to her, he would know that it was hers.

161If she had only touched it, he would know it.

162This smell of flowers that was all around him.

163She had loved it and she had made it her own.

164Where did it come from?

165The room had been carelessly cleaned.

166He found many small things that women had left.

167Something to hold their hair in place.

168Something to wear in the hair to make it more beautiful.

169A piece of cloth that smelled of another flower.

170A book.

171Nothing that had been hers.

172And he began to walk around the room like a dog hunting a wild animal.

173He looked in corners.

174He got down on his hands and knees to look at the floor.

175He wanted something that he could see.

176He could not realize that she was there, beside, around, against, within, above him, near to him, calling him.

177Then once again he felt the call.

178Once again he answered loudly, Yes, dear!

179And turned, wild-eyed, to look at nothing.

180For he could not yet see the form and color and love and reaching arms that were there in the smell of white flowers.

181Oh, God, where did the smell of flowers come from?

182Since when has a smell had a voice to call?

183So he wondered and went on seeking.

184He found many small things left by many who had used the room.

185But of her who may have been there, whose spirits seemed to be there, he found no sign.

186And then he thought of the owner.

187He ran from the room with its smell of flowers, going down into a door where he could see a light.

188She came out.

189He tried to speak quietly.

190Will you tell me?

191He asked her.

192Who was in my room before I came here?

193Yes, sir, I can tell you again.

194It was Sprouse and Mooney, as I said.

195It was really Mr.

196and Mrs.

197Mooney, but she used her own name.

198Theater people do that.

199Tell me about Mrs.

200Mooney.

201What does she look like?

202Black-haired, short and fat.

203They left here a week ago.

204And before they were here?

205There was a gentleman not in the theater business.

206He didn't pay.

207Before him was Mrs.

208Crowder and her two children.

209They stayed four months.

210And before them was old Mr.

211Doyle.

212His sons paid for him.

213He had the room six months.

214That is a year.

215And further, I do not remember.

216He thanked her and went slowly back to his room.

217The room was dead.

218The smell of flowers had made it alive, but the smell of flowers was gone.

219In its place was the smell of the house.

220His hope was gone.

221He sat looking at the yellow gaslight.

222Soon he walked to the bed and took the covers.

223He began to tear them into pieces.

224He pushed the pieces into every open space around the windows and door.

225No air now would be able to enter the room.

226When all was as he wished it, he put out the burning gaslight.

227Then, in the dark, he started the gas again.

228And he lay down, thankfully, on the bed.

229It was Mrs.

230McCool's night to go out and get them something cold to drink.

231So she went and came back and sat with Mrs.

232Purdy in one of those rooms underground where the women who own these old houses meet and talk.

233I have a young man in my third-floor back room this evening, said Mrs.

234Purdy, taking a drink.

235He went up to bed two hours ago.

236Is that true, Mrs.

237Purdy?

238said Mrs.

239McCool.

240It was easy to see that she thought this was a fine and surprising thing.

241You always find someone to take a room like that.

242I don't know how you do it.

243Did you tell him about it?

244Rooms, said Mrs.

245Purdy in her soft, thick voice, are furnished to be used by those that need them.

246I did not tell him, Mrs.

247McCool.

248You're right, Mrs.

249Purdy.

250It's the money we get for the rooms that keep us alive.

251You have the real feeling for business.

252There are many people who wouldn't take a room like that if they knew.

253If you told them that someone had died in the bed and died by their own hand, they wouldn't enter the room.

254As you say, we have our living to think of, said Mrs.

255Purdy.

256Yes, it is true.

257Only one week ago I helped you there in the third floor back room.

258She was a pretty little girl, and to kill herself with the gas.

259She had a sweet little face, Mrs.

260Purdy.

261She would have been called beautiful, as you say, said Mrs.

262Purdy.

263Except for that dark spot she had growing by her left eye.

264Do fill up your glass again, Mrs.

265McCool.

266She was a pretty little girl.

267She was a pretty little girl.

268She was a pretty little girl.

269She was a pretty little girl.

270She was a pretty little girl.

271She was a pretty little girl.

272She was a pretty little girl.

273She was a pretty little girl.

274She was a pretty little girl.

275She was a pretty little girl.