In the next room a Portuguese fruit vender, very drunk, was fighting with the tin pitcher and pasteboard bowl on his wash-stand, trying to wet his head, swearing and making a hideous clatter.  At length he tipped them over upon the floor and gave the pitcher a great kick.  The noise roused Vandover; he sat up in bed, stretching, rubbing his hands over his face.  About the same moment the clock in the office downstairs struck nine.  Vandover let his feet drop to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed, looking vaguely about him.  His face, ordinarily very pale, was oily from sleep and red upon one side from long contact with the pillow, the marks of the creases still showing upon his cheek.  His long straight hair fell about his eyes and ears like a tangled mane.  A thin straggling beard and moustache, of a brown much lighter than his hair, covered the lower part of his face.  His nose was long and pinched, while brown and puffed pockets hung beneath his eyes.

He wore a white shirt very crumpled and dirty, a low standing collar and a black four-in-hand necktie, very greasy.  His trousers were striped and of a slate blue colour—­the “blue pants” of the ready-made clothing stores.  Still sitting on the bed, Vandover continued his stupid gaze about the room.

The room was small, and at some long-forgotten, almost prehistoric period had been covered with a yellowish paper, stamped with a huge pattern of flowers that looked like the flora of a carboniferous strata, a pattern repeated to infinity wherever the eye turned.  Newspapers were pasted upon the ceiling and a great square of very dirty matting covered the floor.  There were a few pieces of furniture, very old-fashioned, made of pine, with a black walnut veneer, two chairs, a washstand and the bed.  A great pile of old newspapers tied up with bale rope was kicked into one corner.  Two gas brackets without globes stretched forth their long arms over the empty space where the bureau should have been.  Under the single window was Vandover’s trunk, and upon it his colour box and pots of paint.  His hat hung upon a hook screwed to the door.  The hat had once been black, but it had long since turned to a greenish hue, and sweat stains were showing about the band.

Vandover dressed slowly.  He straightened his hair a bit before the cheap mirror that hung over the washstand, putting on his hat immediately after to keep it in place.  He washed his hands in the dirty water that had stood in his pasteboard bowl since the previous afternoon, but left his face as it was.  He put on his coat, an old cutaway which had been his best years ago, but which was now absurdly small for him, the breast all spotted and streaked with old stains of soup and gravy.  Last of all he drew on his shoes.  They were new.  Vandover had bought them two days before for a dollar and ninety cents.  They were lined so as to make socks superfluous.