The Furnished Room PDF - O. Henry - adapted by Helaine Michaels Klein

THE FURNISHED ROOM By O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) Adapted for Television by Helaine Michaels­Klein 14  THE FURNISHED ROOM CHARACTERS NARRATOR (MALE) YOUNG MAN BARTENDER MRS. PURDY MRS. MCCOOL Overview of the lower west side of New...

THE FURNISHED ROOM By O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) Adapted for Television by Helaine Michaels­Klein 14  THE FURNISHED ROOM CHARACTERS NARRATOR (MALE) YOUNG MAN BARTENDER MRS. PURDY MRS. MCCOOL Overview of the lower west side of New York City at the turn of the century (1900). We see some people strolling along the street carrying various varieties of baggage. Music—“Home Sweet Home” in ragtime. NARRATOR: Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower west side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever—transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree. Camera pans row of red brick houses. Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests. Camera pans in on young man with suitcase as he stands on doorstep of one of the houses. He wipes the dust from his hat­band and forehead and rings doorbell. Housekeeper (Mrs. Purdy) answers. MRS. PURDY: Good afternoon. And what can I do for you young man? YOUNG MAN: Is there a room to let? MRS. PURDY: Yes. Come in. (He enters house. Camera pans in on foyer of house) I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it. YOUNG MAN: Oh yes, for sure. (He follows her up the stairs. They pass vacant niches in the walls where plants had once been set. The stairwell is dark and dreary) MRS. PURDY: (she opens the door to room) This is the room. It’s a nice room. It isn’t often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer—no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The water’s at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. They done a vaude­ 15  ville sketch. Miss B’retta Sprowls—you may have heard of her—right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet room. It’s a room every­ body likes. It never stays idle long. YOUNG MAN: Do you have many theatrical people rooming here? MRS. PURDY: They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is con­ nected with the theaters. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes. YOUNG MAN: Okay, I’ll take it. And since I’m kind of tired, I’ll move right in now. How much do I owe you? MRS. PURDY: That’ll be two and fifty for the upcomin’ week. (He counts out money and hands it to her) The room is ready, even to towels and water. YOUNG MAN: Can you tell me something before you go? 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. MRS. PURDY: No, I don’t remember the name. 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. (she exits down stairs) YOUNG MAN: (close up; we hear his thoughts) No, Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools, and choruses; by night among the audiences of theaters from all­star casts down to music halls so low that I dread to find what I most hope for. Where can you be? Sure but I love you so much. Where ever can you be, my darling? Overhead shot of young man slouching in chair. He is a small figure among the debris and clutter of the room. NARRATOR: The young man was sure that since her disappearance from home this great, water­girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of today buried tomorrow in ooze and slime. The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo­hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome. Camera pans room—decayed furniture, a ragged brocade couch and two chairs, gilt picture frames, brass bedstead in a comer, a soiled polychromatic rug with soiled mat­ ting, and gay­papered walls. Pictures on wall are “The Huguenot Lovers,” “The First Quarrel,” “The Wedding Breakfast,” and “Psyche at the Fountain.” Back to close up of young man as he listens to sounds heard in the house—a tittering and incontinent, slack laughter; the monologue of a scold; the rattling of dice; a lullaby; a baby cry­ 16 ing, a banjo; doors banging; elevated trains roaring; a cat yowling miserably upon a back fence. He breathes the breath of the house—a dank savor rather than a smell— a cold, musty effluvium. He suddenly smells the room filled with the strong, sweet odor of mignonette. He cries out: YOUNG MAN: What, dear? (he reaches out) She’s been in this room. She has. I know it. (he begins to ransack the room, looking for clues left behind or traces of the girl) She’s been in this room. I know she’s been here. That fragrance, that odor. I know it. I know it. It’s her mignonette. She loved that odor...made it herself. (He continues searching room. Camera follows him as he pulls open all the drawers, looks in closets, under furniture, etc. Close up of his hand as he discovers a half dozen hairpins. In one of the drawers he finds a tiny ragged handkerchief. He presses it to his face. In another drawer he finds odd buttons, a theater program, a pawnbroker’s card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last drawer he finds a woman’s black satin bow. Close up of bow as music comes up. Cut.) SCENE 2 A neighborhood bar somewhere on the west side. Camera comes in on young man as he is having a conversation with the bartender. BARTENDER: But for sure, how can you be certain she was in that room. YOUNG MAN: I’m sure of it. I smelled her mignonette as though she had just been there five minutes before. I also found these hairpins. It seemed she wore a million of these in her hair, to hold it up, you know. BARTENDER: But why wouldn’t the landlady have remembered. YOUNG MAN: You got me there fellow. But as she said, these theatrical people come and go so fast. I suppose it’s possible to just not remember. (close up) It’s so strange, you know. But when I smelled that odor, I heard her voice calling me. I tried to answer, but I couldn’t. But she just kept a callin’ and a callin’. (close up of bartender looking doubtfully at young man) Dissolve to: Young man walking the streets of the west side, examining all the passers­ by. He follows a young girl for about two minutes. The young girl faces him and turns out to be a stranger he has never seen before. Another close up of young man looking disappointed. Dissolve to: Room in rooming house. Young man sitting in chair deep in thought. We hear the ethereal sound of a female voice. Although the words are indistinguishable, they vaguely sound like “Come back to me.” 17 YOUNG MAN: What dear? Are you speaking to me? Oh where are you? Oh am I to be going mad? I must find her. He begins ransacking room once again. This time he searches inside mantlepiece, win­ dow crevices, and tables. He skims the walls, looks under rug, under the matting of the rug, pulls down curtains, and checks window sills. He looks in every conceivable spot for a trace of his beloved’s presence. YOUNG MAN: I know she has been in this room. Dammit, she has. Behind one of the crevices he finds a half­smoked cigar. He throws it down. Close up of his foot as he grinds it beneath his heel. Fade out. SCENE 3 Camera pans in on front view of rooming house. Out to shot of interior of furnished room. We see young man sitting amidst the clutter. NARRATOR: Our young man, in desperation to find his beloved, has burrowed in crevices and comers. He has found corks, cigarettes, and half­smoked cigars. He has found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant; but of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there, and whose spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace. (close up of young man) But the young man has not yet given up hope; he will prevail upon the mistress of this decaying abode once again. Camera follows young man as he runs from his room down the creaky old staircase to the landlady’s door which shows a crack of light at the bottom. Close up of door—his hand knocking. Mrs. Purdy answers door. YOUNG MAN: Will you tell me, madam, who occupied the room I have before I came? MRS. PURDY: Yes, sir. I can tell you again. ’Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B’retta Sprowls it was in the theaters, but Missis Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability. The marriage certificate hung, framed, on a nail over— YOUNG MAN: What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls—in looks, I mean? MRS. PURDY: Why, black­haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago Tuesday. YOUNG MAN: And before they occupied it? MRS. PURDY: Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying business. He left owing me a week. Before him was Missis Crowder and her two children, that stayed four months. That goes back a year, sir, and further I do not remember. YOUNG MAN: (dejected) Thank you. 18 Camera follows young man slowly climbing the staircase. NARRATOR: And so the young man crept back to his room. But the room was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had departed. In its place was the old, stale odor of moldy house furniture, of atmosphere in storage. The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. Camera follows young man as he walks to bed and begins to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drives them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. He turns out light, turns the gas on full again, and lays himself upon the bed. MUSIC—Fade out SCENE 4 Mrs. Purdy’s apartment. Mrs. McCool, another housekeeper, has brought in cans of beer. The two women are drinking and chatting.1 MRS. PURDY: I rented out my third floor back this evening. A young man took it. He went up to bed two hours ago. MRS. MCCOOL: Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, Ma’am? You do a wonder for rentin’ rooms of that kind. And did ye tell him, then? MRS. PURDY: Rooms are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool. MRS. MCCOOL: ’Tis right ye are, ma’am; ’tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for business, ma’am. There be many people will rayject the rentin’ of a room if they be tould a suicide has been after dyin’ in the bed of it. MRS. PURDY: As you say, we has our living to be making. MRS. MCCOOL: Yis, ma’am; ’tis true. ’Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin’ herself wid the gas—a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma’am. MRS. PURDY: She’d a­been called handsome, as you say, but for that mole she had a growin’ by her left eyebrow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool. Dissolve to: Closed door of furnished room on third floor. MUSIC—CREDITS 1 Many Irish immigrants and first­generation Irish­Americans settled on the lower west side of New York City during this period. They spoke with lilting Irish brogues. The young man is American­bom and the two landladies are Ireland­born as their brogue is much more pro­ nounced. O. Henry chose to write their dialogue phonetically. 19