Window Escape Rope

The Window Escape Rope is a coiled length of rope kept beside a window in The Inn / Red Mill, where it serves as fire-escape equipment until Johnny Gordon uses one to hang himself. Its practical purpose and its later association with death make it a small but consequential object: it remains part of the room’s furnishings even as its meaning changes for those who encounter it.

Design and Intended Use

The Inn / Red Mill has six small, identical rooms on its second floor. Each is furnished with an iron bed, a washstand, a closet, and a neatly coiled rope beside the window in case of fire. The rope belongs to the hotel’s ordinary provisions, a precaution set in place for an emergency rather than an object initially marked as ominous.

Johnny Gordon's Death

The rope’s practical purpose is overturned when Peter Gordon finds his father upstairs, having hanged himself from one of the ropes coiled by the window. Peter has just cut Johnny Gordon down when he stands before his mother, still holding the black pocket comb he habitually carries and struggling to find words for what he has found. The rope is therefore bound to the moment of discovery as well as to the death itself: a provision meant to help occupants escape a fire has become the instrument of a suicide, and Peter must face the task of telling his mother.

The Inn Afterward

After the suicide becomes known, neighbors and tourists point out The Inn / Red Mill as the place where it happened. The building’s reputation now shapes how visitors see it: people eating there wonder whether the tragedy might touch their own lives, while the story leaves the rooms associated with death and disappointment. The rope is not singled out in these later public reactions, but its ordinary place beside the window has acquired the knowledge of what happened there.

The Rope in Phil's Room

On another night at The Inn / Red Mill, Phil Burbank waits in an upstairs room for George Burbank. In the moonlight he notices the white pitcher and basin, the tall narrow wardrobe, and the coil of hempen rope beneath the window. He turns in bed, then gets up and walks to the window before looking toward the opposite one and calling for his brother. The rope appears again as one item in the room’s familiar inventory; after Johnny Gordon’s death, however, the same arrangement carries a grave association that the scene does not explain away.