For two years he had drifted about the city, living now here and now
there, a real hand-to-mouth existence, sinking a little lower each day.
Now, no one knew him. He had completely passed out of the lives of
Haight, Geary, and Ellis, just as before he had passed out of the life of
Turner Ravis. At the end of the first year they had ceased even to think
about him. For a long time they thought that he was dead, until one day
Ellis declared that he had seen him far down on Kearney Street, near the
Barbary Coast, looking at the pictures in the illustrated weeklies that
were tacked upon the show-board on the sidewalk in front of a
stationer's. Ellis had told the others that on this occasion Vandover
seemed to be more sickly than ever; he described his appearance in
detail, wagging his head at his own story, pursing his lips, putting his
chin in the air. Vandover had worn an old paint-stained pair of blue
trousers, fastened with a strap, so that his shirt showed below his
vest; he had no collar, and he had allowed his beard to grow, a
straggling thin beard, through which one could see the buttons of his
shirt, a dirty beard full of the cracker crumbs from the free
lunch-counters of cheap saloons; he had on a hat which he had worn when
they had known him; but one should see that hat now!
It was all true: little by little Vandover had abandoned all interest
in his personal appearance.
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