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26 Title: The Great Gatsby
27 Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
28 * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
29 eBook No.: 0200041.txt
30 Language: English
31 Date first posted: January 2002
32 Date most recently updated: May 2006
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51
52
53 Title: The Great Gatsby
54 Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
55
56
57
58 Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
59 If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
60 Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
61 I must have you!"
62
63 --THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERS
64
65
66
67
68
69 Chapter 1
70
71
72
73 In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice
74 that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
75
76 "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just
77 remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages
78 that you've had."
79
80 He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative
81 in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more
82 than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments,
83 a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also
84 made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind
85 is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it
86 appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I
87 was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the
88 secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were
89 unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile
90 levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate
91 revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations
92 of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are
93 usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving
94 judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of
95 missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested,
96 and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is
97 parcelled out unequally at birth.
98
99 And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission
100 that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet
101 marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on.
102 When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the
103 world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I
104 wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the
105 human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was
106 exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I
107 have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of
108 successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some
109 heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related
110 to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten
111 thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that
112 flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the
113 "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic
114 readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it
115 is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right
116 at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the
117 wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the
118 abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
119
120
121 My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western
122 city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we
123 have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the
124 actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in
125 fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale
126 hardware business that my father carries on today.
127
128 I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him--with
129 special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in
130 Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a
131 century after my father, and a little later I participated in that
132 delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the
133 counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being
134 the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the
135 ragged edge of the universe--so I decided to go east and learn the bond
136 business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it
137 could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it
138 over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said,
139 "Why--ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance
140 me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I
141 thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
142
143 The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm
144 season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees,
145 so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house
146 together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found
147 the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but
148 at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out
149 to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days
150 until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed
151 and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the
152 electric stove.
153
154 It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently
155 arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
156
157 "How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.
158
159 I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a
160 pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the
161 freedom of the neighborhood.
162
163 And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the
164 trees--just as things grow in fast movies--I had that familiar
165 conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
166
167 There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be
168 pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen
169 volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood
170 on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to
171 unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas
172 knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides.
173 I was rather literary in college--one year I wrote a series of very
174 solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"--and now I was going
175 to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most
176 limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an
177 epigram--life is much more successfully looked at from a single window,
178 after all.
179
180 It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of
181 the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender
182 riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where
183 there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of
184 land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in
185 contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most
186 domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great
187 wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals--like the
188 egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact
189 end--but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual
190 confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more
191 arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except
192 shape and size.
193
194 I lived at West Egg, the--well, the less fashionable of the two, though
195 this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little
196 sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the
197 egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge
198 places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on
199 my right was a colossal affair by any standard--it was a factual
200 imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side,
201 spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool
202 and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion.
203 Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by
204 a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a
205 small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the
206 water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling
207 proximity of millionaires--all for eighty dollars a month.
208
209 Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg
210 glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins
211 on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom
212 Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom
213 in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in
214 Chicago.
215
216 Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of
217 the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--a
218 national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute
219 limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of
220 anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy--even in college his
221 freedom with money was a matter for reproach--but now he'd left Chicago
222 and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for
223 instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest.
224 It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy
225 enough to do that.
226
227 Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no
228 particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever
229 people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move,
230 said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it--I had no sight
231 into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking
232 a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable
233 football game.
234
235 And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East
236 Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was
237 even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian
238 Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach
239 and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over
240 sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached
241 the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the
242 momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows,
243 glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy
244 afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his
245 legs apart on the front porch.
246
247 He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired
248 man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.
249 Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and
250 gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not
251 even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous
252 power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he
253 strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle
254 shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body
255 capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.
256
257 His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of
258 fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in
259 it, even toward people he liked--and there were men at New Haven who had
260 hated his guts.
261
262 "Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to
263 say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We
264 were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I
265 always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like
266 him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
267
268 We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
269
270 "I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about
271 restlessly.
272
273 Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the
274 front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half
275 acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped
276 the tide off shore.
277
278 "It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again,
279 politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."
280
281 We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space,
282 fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end.
283 The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass
284 outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze
285 blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other
286 like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of
287 the ceiling--and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a
288 shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
289
290 The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch
291 on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored
292 balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and
293 fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight
294 around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the
295 whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.
296 Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught
297 wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two
298 young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
299
300 The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length
301 at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised
302 a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely
303 to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of
304 it--indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having
305 disturbed her by coming in.
306
307 The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly
308 forward with a conscientious expression--then she laughed, an absurd,
309 charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the
310 room.
311
312 "I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."
313
314 She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand
315 for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one
316 in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had.
317 She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker.
318 (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people
319 lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
320
321 At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost
322 imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again--the object
323 she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something
324 of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any
325 exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
326
327 I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low,
328 thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and
329 down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be
330 played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it,
331 bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth--but there was an excitement
332 in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget:
333 a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done
334 gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay,
335 exciting things hovering in the next hour.
336
337 I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east
338 and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
339
340 "Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.
341
342 "The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel
343 painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all
344 night along the North Shore."
345
346 "How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added
347 irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."
348
349 "I'd like to."
350
351 "She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"
352
353 "Never."
354
355 "Well, you ought to see her. She's----"
356
357 Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped
358 and rested his hand on my shoulder.
359
360 "What you doing, Nick?"
361
362 "I'm a bond man."
363
364 "Who with?"
365
366 I told him.
367
368 "Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.
369
370 This annoyed me.
371
372 "You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."
373
374 "Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at
375 Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more.
376 "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."
377
378 At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I
379 started--it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room.
380 Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and
381 with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
382
383 "I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long
384 as I can remember."
385
386 "Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New
387 York all afternoon."
388
389 "No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the
390 pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."
391
392 Her host looked at her incredulously.
393
394 "You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of
395 a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."
396
397 I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed
398 looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect
399 carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the
400 shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at
401 me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented
402 face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her,
403 somewhere before.
404
405 "You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody
406 there."
407
408 "I don't know a single----"
409
410 "You must know Gatsby."
411
412 "Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"
413
414 Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced;
415 wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled
416 me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
417
418 Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two
419 young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the
420 sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished
421 wind.
422
423 "Why CANDLES?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her
424 fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year."
425 She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day
426 of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the
427 year and then miss it."
428
429 "We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the
430 table as if she were getting into bed.
431
432 "All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly.
433 "What do people plan?"
434
435 Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her
436 little finger.
437
438 "Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."
439
440 We all looked--the knuckle was black and blue.
441
442 "You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to
443 but you DID do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man,
444 a great big hulking physical specimen of a----"
445
446 "I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."
447
448 "Hulking," insisted Daisy.
449
450 Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a
451 bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool
452 as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all
453 desire. They were here--and they accepted Tom and me, making only a
454 polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew
455 that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too
456 would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the
457 West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its
458 close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer
459 nervous dread of the moment itself.
460
461 "You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass
462 of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or
463 something?"
464
465 I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an
466 unexpected way.
467
468 "Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently.
469 "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read
470 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"
471
472 "Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
473
474 "Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if
475 we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged.
476 It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."
477
478 "Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of
479 unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them.
480 What was that word we----"
481
482 "Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her
483 impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us
484 who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have
485 control of things."
486
487 "We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously
488 toward the fervent sun.
489
490 "You ought to live in California--" began Miss Baker but Tom
491 interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
492
493 "This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are
494 and----" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a
495 slight nod and she winked at me again. "--and we've produced all the
496 things that go to make civilization--oh, science and art and all that.
497 Do you see?"
498
499 There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency,
500 more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost
501 immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy
502 seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.
503
504 "I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's
505 about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"
506
507 "That's why I came over tonight."
508
509 "Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for
510 some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people.
511 He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to
512 affect his nose----"
513
514 "Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.
515
516 "Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up
517 his position."
518
519 For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon
520 her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as
521 I listened--then the glow faded, each light deserting her with
522 lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
523
524 The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear
525 whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went
526 inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned
527 forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
528
529 "I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a--of a rose, an
530 absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation.
531 "An absolute rose?"
532
533 This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only
534 extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her
535 heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those
536 breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the
537 table and excused herself and went into the house.
538
539 Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of
540 meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in
541 a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room
542 beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The
543 murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted
544 excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
545
546 "This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor----" I said.
547
548 "Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."
549
550 "Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.
551
552 "You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised.
553 "I thought everybody knew."
554
555 "I don't."
556
557 "Why----" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."
558
559 "Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.
560
561 Miss Baker nodded.
562
563 "She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't
564 you think?"
565
566 Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of
567 a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back
568 at the table.
569
570 "It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.
571
572 She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and
573 continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic
574 outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale
575 come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away----" her
576 voice sang "----It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?"
577
578 "Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough
579 after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."
580
581 The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her
582 head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all
583 subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the
584 last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again,
585 pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every
586 one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom
587 were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have
588 mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth
589 guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament
590 the situation might have seemed intriguing--my own instinct was to
591 telephone immediately for the police.
592
593 The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss
594 Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into
595 the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while
596 trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed
597 Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In
598 its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
599
600 Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and
601 her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent
602 emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some
603 sedative questions about her little girl.
604
605 "We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly.
606 "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."
607
608 "I wasn't back from the war."
609
610 "That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick,
611 and I'm pretty cynical about everything."
612
613 Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more,
614 and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her
615 daughter.
616
617 "I suppose she talks, and--eats, and everything."
618
619 "Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what
620 I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"
621
622 "Very much."
623
624 "It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about--things. Well, she was less
625 than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether
626 with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it
627 was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head
628 away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope
629 she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world,
630 a beautiful little fool."
631
632 "You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a
633 convinced way. "Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I KNOW.
634 I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything."
635 Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she
636 laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!"
637
638 The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention,
639 my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said.
640 It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick
641 of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited,
642 and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk
643 on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather
644 distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
645
646
647 Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker
648 sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from
649 the "Saturday Evening Post"--the words, murmurous and
650 uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light,
651 bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair,
652 glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender
653 muscles in her arms.
654
655 When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
656
657 "To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our
658 very next issue."
659
660 Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she
661 stood up.
662
663 "Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the
664 ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."
665
666 "Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy,
667 "over at Westchester."
668
669 "Oh,--you're JORdan Baker."
670
671 I knew now why her face was familiar--its pleasing contemptuous
672 expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of
673 the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I
674 had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story,
675 but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
676
677 "Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."
678
679 "If you'll get up."
680
681 "I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."
682
683 "Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange
684 a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of--oh--fling you
685 together. You know--lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push
686 you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing----"
687
688 "Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."
689
690 "She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her
691 run around the country this way."
692
693 "Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly.
694
695 "Her family."
696
697 "Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's
698 going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of
699 week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very
700 good for her."
701
702 Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
703
704 "Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.
705
706 "From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our
707 beautiful white----"
708
709 "Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?"
710 demanded Tom suddenly.
711
712 "Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think
713 we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of
714 crept up on us and first thing you know----"
715
716 "Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.
717
718 I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later
719 I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by
720 side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy
721 peremptorily called "Wait!
722
723 "I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were
724 engaged to a girl out West."
725
726 "That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were
727 engaged."
728
729 "It's libel. I'm too poor."
730
731 "But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in
732 a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."
733
734 Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely
735 engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the
736 reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on
737 account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being
738 rumored into marriage.
739
740 Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely
741 rich--nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove
742 away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of
743 the house, child in arms--but apparently there were no such intentions
744 in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York"
745 was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book.
746 Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his
747 sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
748
749 Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside
750 garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I
751 reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for
752 a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown
753 off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and
754 a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the
755 frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the
756 moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not
757 alone--fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my
758 neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets
759 regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely
760 movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested
761 that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was
762 his of our local heavens.
763
764 I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and
765 that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave
766 a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone--he stretched out his
767 arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him
768 I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and
769 distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away,
770 that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby
771 he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
772
773
774
775
776 Chapter 2
777
778
779
780 About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily
781 joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to
782 shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of
783 ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and
784 hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and
785 chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of
786 men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
787 Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives
788 out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey
789 men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud
790 which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
791
792 But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift
793 endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.
794 J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and
795 gigantic--their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but,
796 instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a
797 nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
798 fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself
799 into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes,
800 dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over
801 the solemn dumping ground.
802
803 The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and
804 when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on
805 waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an
806 hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was
807 because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.
808
809 The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His
810 acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular
811 restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about,
812 chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her I
813 had no desire to meet her--but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on
814 the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped
815 to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the
816 car.
817
818 "We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl."
819
820 I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to
821 have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that
822 on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.
823
824 I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked
825 back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent
826 stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick
827 sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street
828 ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the
829 three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night
830 restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a
831 garage--Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold--and I followed
832 Tom inside.
833
834 The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the
835 dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had
836 occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that
837 sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the
838 proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands
839 on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and
840 faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his
841 light blue eyes.
842
843 "Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the
844 shoulder. "How's business?"
845
846 "I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going
847 to sell me that car?"
848
849 "Next week; I've got my man working on it now."
850
851 "Works pretty slow, don't he?"
852
853 "No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it,
854 maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."
855
856 "I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant----"
857
858 His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then
859 I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a
860 woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle
861 thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously
862 as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue
863 crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an
864 immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body
865 were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her
866 husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in
867 the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her
868 husband in a soft, coarse voice:
869
870 "Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."
871
872 "Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office,
873 mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen
874 dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in
875 the vicinity--except his wife, who moved close to Tom.
876
877 "I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train."
878
879 "All right."
880
881 "I'll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level."
882
883 She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson
884 emerged with two chairs from his office door.
885
886 We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before
887 the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting
888 torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.
889
890 "Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor
891 Eckleburg.
892
893 "Awful."
894
895 "It does her good to get away."
896
897 "Doesn't her husband object?"
898
899 "Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb
900 he doesn't know he's alive."
901
902 So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York--or not
903 quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom
904 deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be
905 on the train.
906
907 She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin which stretched
908 tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in
909 New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of "Town Tattle" and a
910 moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream
911 and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive
912 she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one,
913 lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the
914 mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she
915 turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the
916 front glass.
917
918 "I want to get one of those dogs," she said earnestly. "I want to get one
919 for the apartment. They're nice to have--a dog."
920
921 We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John
922 D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very
923 recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.
924
925 "What kind are they?" asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly as he came to the
926 taxi-window.
927
928 "All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?"
929
930 "I'd like to get one of those police dogs; I don't suppose you got that
931 kind?"
932
933 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew
934 one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.
935
936 "That's no police dog," said Tom.
937
938 "No, it's not exactly a polICE dog," said the man with disappointment
939 in his voice. "It's more of an airedale." He passed his hand over the
940 brown wash-rag of a back. "Look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog
941 that'll never bother you with catching cold."
942
943 "I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"
944
945 "That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten
946 dollars."
947
948 The airedale--undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere
949 though its feet were startlingly white--changed hands and settled down
950 into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with
951 rapture.
952
953 "Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.
954
955 "That dog? That dog's a boy."
956
957 "It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten
958 more dogs with it."
959
960 We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the
961 summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great
962 flock of white sheep turn the corner.
963
964 "Hold on," I said, "I have to leave you here."
965
966 "No, you don't," interposed Tom quickly. "Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't
967 come up to the apartment. Won't you,
968 Myrtle?"
969
970 "Come on," she urged. "I'll telephone my sister Catherine. She's said to
971 be very beautiful by people who ought to know."
972
973 "Well, I'd like to, but----"
974
975 We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds.
976 At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of
977 apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the
978 neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases
979 and went haughtily in.
980
981 "I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the
982 elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too."
983
984 The apartment was on the top floor--a small living room, a small
985 dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to
986 the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it
987 so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of
988 ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was
989 an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred
990 rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself
991 into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down
992 into the room. Several old copies of "Town Tattle "lay on the table
993 together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small
994 scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with
995 the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and
996 some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large
997 hard dog biscuits--one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer
998 of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey
999 from a locked bureau door.
1000
1001 I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that
1002 afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it
1003 although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful
1004 sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the
1005 telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at
1006 the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so
1007 I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon
1008 Called Peter"--either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted
1009 things because it didn't make any sense to me.
1010
1011 Just as Tom and Myrtle--after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called
1012 each other by our first names--reappeared, company commenced to arrive
1013 at the apartment door.
1014
1015 The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty
1016 with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky
1017 white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more
1018 rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the
1019 old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about
1020 there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets
1021 jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary
1022 haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered
1023 if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated
1024 my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.
1025
1026 Mr. McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below. He had just
1027 shaved for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone and he
1028 was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He
1029 informed me that he was in the "artistic game" and I gathered later
1030 that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs.
1031 Wilson's mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife
1032 was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride
1033 that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times
1034 since they had been married.
1035
1036 Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now
1037 attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which
1038 gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room.
1039 With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a
1040 change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage
1041 was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her
1042 assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she
1043 expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be
1044 revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.
1045
1046 "My dear," she told her sister in a high mincing shout, "most of these
1047 fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a
1048 woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the
1049 bill you'd of thought she had my appendicitus out."
1050
1051 "What was the name of the woman?" asked Mrs. McKee.
1052
1053 "Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people's feet in their own
1054 homes."
1055
1056 "I like your dress," remarked Mrs. McKee, "I think it's adorable."
1057
1058 Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.
1059
1060 "It's just a crazy old thing," she said. "I just slip it on sometimes when
1061 I don't care what I look like."
1062
1063 "But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean," pursued
1064 Mrs. McKee. "If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could
1065 make something of it."
1066
1067 We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from
1068 over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee
1069 regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand
1070 back and forth slowly in front of his face.
1071
1072 "I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to bring
1073 out the modelling of the features. And I'd try to get hold of all the
1074 back hair."
1075
1076 "I wouldn't think of changing the light," cried Mrs. McKee. "I think
1077 it's----"
1078
1079 Her husband said "SH!" and we all looked at the subject again whereupon
1080 Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.
1081
1082 "You McKees have something to drink," he said. "Get some more ice and
1083 mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep."
1084
1085 "I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair
1086 at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep
1087 after them all the time."
1088
1089 She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the
1090 dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that
1091 a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.
1092
1093 "I've done some nice things out on Long Island," asserted Mr. McKee.
1094
1095 Tom looked at him blankly.
1096
1097 "Two of them we have framed downstairs."
1098
1099 "Two what?" demanded Tom.
1100
1101 "Two studies. One of them I call 'Montauk Point--the Gulls,' and the
1102 other I call 'Montauk Point--the Sea.' "
1103
1104 The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
1105
1106 "Do you live down on Long Island, too?" she inquired.
1107
1108 "I live at West Egg."
1109
1110 "Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named
1111 Gatsby's. Do you know him?"
1112
1113 "I live next door to him."
1114
1115 "Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's
1116 where all his money comes from."
1117
1118 "Really?"
1119
1120 She nodded.
1121
1122 "I'm scared of him. I'd hate to have him get anything on me."
1123
1124 This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by
1125 Mrs. McKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:
1126
1127 "Chester, I think you could do something with HER," she broke out,
1128 but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention
1129 to Tom.
1130
1131 "I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All
1132 I ask is that they should give me a start."
1133
1134 "Ask Myrtle," said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as
1135 Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of
1136 introduction, won't you, Myrtle?"
1137
1138 "Do what?" she asked, startled.
1139
1140 "You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can
1141 do some studies of him." His lips moved silently for a moment as he
1142 invented. " 'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like
1143 that."
1144
1145
1146 Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them
1147 can stand the person they're married to."
1148
1149 "Can't they?"
1150
1151 "Can't STAND them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is,
1152 why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get
1153 a divorce and get married to each other right away."
1154
1155 "Doesn't she like Wilson either?"
1156
1157 The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had overheard
1158 the question and it was violent and obscene.
1159
1160 "You see?" cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again.
1161 "It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and
1162 they don't believe in divorce."
1163
1164 Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness
1165 of the lie.
1166
1167 "When they do get married," continued Catherine, "they're going west to
1168 live for a while until it blows over."
1169
1170 "It'd be more discreet to go to Europe."
1171
1172 "Oh, do you like Europe?" she exclaimed surprisingly. "I just got back
1173 from Monte Carlo."
1174
1175 "Really."
1176
1177 "Just last year. I went over there with another girl."
1178
1179 "Stay long?"
1180
1181 "No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles.
1182 We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started but we got gypped
1183 out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an awful time
1184 getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!"
1185
1186 The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue
1187 honey of the Mediterranean--then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me
1188 back into the room.
1189
1190 "I almost made a mistake, too," she declared vigorously. "I almost
1191 married a little kyke who'd been after me for years. I knew he was
1192 below me. Everybody kept saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's way below
1193 you!' But if I hadn't met Chester, he'd of got me sure."
1194
1195 "Yes, but listen," said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down,
1196 "at least you didn't marry him."
1197
1198 "I know I didn't."
1199
1200 "Well, I married him," said Myrtle, ambiguously. "And that's the
1201 difference between your case and mine."
1202
1203 "Why did you, Myrtle?" demanded Catherine. "Nobody forced you to."
1204
1205 Myrtle considered.
1206
1207 "I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally.
1208 "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick
1209 my shoe."
1210
1211 "You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine.
1212
1213 "Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about
1214 him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man
1215 there."
1216
1217 She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly.
1218 I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.
1219
1220 "The only CRAZY I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a
1221 mistake. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never
1222 even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out.
1223 She looked around to see who was listening: " 'Oh, is that your suit?' I
1224 said.
1225 'This is the first I ever heard about it.' But I gave it to him and then I
1226 lay down
1227 and cried to beat the band all afternoon."
1228
1229 "She really ought to get away from him," resumed Catherine to me.
1230 "They've been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom's the
1231 first sweetie she ever had."
1232
1233 The bottle of whiskey--a second one--was now in constant demand by all
1234 present, excepting Catherine who "felt just as good on nothing at all."
1235 Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated sandwiches,
1236 which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to get out and walk
1237 eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried
1238 to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me
1239 back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of
1240 yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the
1241 casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and
1242 wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled
1243 by the inexhaustible variety of life.
1244
1245 Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath
1246 poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.
1247
1248 "It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the
1249 last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my
1250 sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather
1251 shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at
1252 me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head.
1253 When we came into the station he was next to me and his white
1254 shirt-front pressed against my arm--and so I told him I'd have to call
1255 a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into
1256 a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway
1257 train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live
1258 forever, you can't live forever.' "
1259
1260 She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial
1261 laughter.
1262
1263 "My dear," she cried, "I'm going to give you this dress as soon as I'm
1264 through with it. I've got to get another one tomorrow. I'm going to
1265 make a list of all the things I've got to get. A massage and a wave
1266 and a collar for the dog and one of those cute little ash-trays where
1267 you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother's
1268 grave that'll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won't
1269 forget all the things I got to do."
1270
1271 It was nine o'clock--almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch
1272 and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists
1273 clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out my
1274 handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the remains of the spot of dried
1275 lather that had worried me all the afternoon.
1276
1277 The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through
1278 the smoke and from time to time groaning faintly. People disappeared,
1279 reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other,
1280 searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time
1281 toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face
1282 discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to
1283 mention Daisy's name.
1284
1285 "Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want
1286 to! Daisy! Dai----"
1287
1288 Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his
1289 open hand.
1290
1291 Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's
1292 voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of
1293 pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the door.
1294 When he had gone half way he turned around and stared at the scene--his
1295 wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled here and
1296 there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and the
1297 despairing figure on the couch bleeding fluently and trying to spread
1298 a copy of "Town Tattle" over the tapestry scenes of Versailles.
1299 Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from
1300 the chandelier I followed.
1301
1302 "Come to lunch some day," he suggested, as we groaned down in the
1303 elevator.
1304
1305 "Where?"
1306
1307 "Anywhere."
1308
1309 "Keep your hands off the lever," snapped the elevator boy.
1310
1311 "I beg your pardon," said Mr. McKee with dignity, "I didn't know I was
1312 touching it."
1313
1314 "All right," I agreed, "I'll be glad to."
1315
1316 . . . I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the
1317 sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.
1318
1319 "Beauty and the Beast . . . Loneliness . . . Old Grocery Horse . . .
1320 Brook'n Bridge . . . ."
1321
1322 Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania
1323 Station, staring at the morning "Tribune" and waiting for the four
1324 o'clock train.
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329 Chapter 3
1330
1331
1332
1333 There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In
1334 his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the
1335 whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the
1336 afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or
1337 taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats
1338 slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of
1339 foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties
1340 to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past
1341 midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to
1342 meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra
1343 gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers
1344 and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
1345
1346 Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer
1347 in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back
1348 door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the
1349 kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an
1350 hour, if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's
1351 thumb.
1352
1353 At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several
1354 hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas
1355 tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with
1356 glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of
1357 harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.
1358 In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked
1359 with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of
1360 his female guests were too young to know one from another.
1361
1362 By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived--no thin five-piece affair
1363 but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and
1364 cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. The last swimmers have
1365 come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from
1366 New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and
1367 salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors and hair shorn in
1368 strange new ways and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The
1369 bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the
1370 garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and
1371 casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and
1372 enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.
1373
1374 The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and
1375 now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of
1376 voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier, minute by minute,
1377 spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups
1378 change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the
1379 same breath--already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave
1380 here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp,
1381 joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph
1382 glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the
1383 constantly changing light.
1384
1385 Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out
1386 of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like
1387 Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the
1388 orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her and there is a
1389 burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda
1390 Gray's understudy from the "Follies." The party has begun.
1391
1392 I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of
1393 the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not
1394 invited--they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out
1395 to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there
1396 they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby and after that they
1397 conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with
1398 amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby
1399 at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own
1400 ticket of admission.
1401
1402 I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin's egg
1403 blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly
1404 formal note from his employer--the honor would be entirely Gatsby's, it
1405 said, if I would attend his "little party" that night. He had
1406 seen me several times and had intended to call on me long before
1407 but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it--signed
1408 Jay Gatsby in a majestic hand.
1409
1410 Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after
1411 seven and wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies
1412 of people I didn't know--though here and there was a face I had noticed
1413 on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of young
1414 Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry
1415 and all talking in low earnest voices to solid and prosperous
1416 Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or
1417 insurance or automobiles. They were, at least, agonizingly aware of the
1418 easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few
1419 words in the right key.
1420
1421 As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or
1422 three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an
1423 amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements
1424 that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table--the only place
1425 in the garden where a single man could linger without looking
1426 purposeless and alone.
1427
1428 I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when
1429 Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble
1430 steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest
1431 down into the garden.
1432
1433 Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone
1434 before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by.
1435
1436 "Hello!" I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally
1437 loud across the garden.
1438
1439 "I thought you might be here," she responded absently as I came up.
1440 "I remembered you lived next door to----"
1441
1442 She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she'd take care
1443 of me in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses
1444 who stopped at the foot of the steps.
1445
1446 "Hello!" they cried together. "Sorry you didn't win."
1447
1448 That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week
1449 before.
1450
1451 "You don't know who we are," said one of the girls in yellow, "but we
1452 met you here about a month ago."
1453
1454 "You've dyed your hair since then," remarked Jordan, and I started
1455 but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the
1456 premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's
1457 basket. With Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine we descended
1458 the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails floated at
1459 us through the twilight and we sat down at a table with the two girls in
1460 yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble.
1461
1462 "Do you come to these parties often?" inquired Jordan of the girl
1463 beside her.
1464
1465 "The last one was the one I met you at," answered the girl, in an alert,
1466 confident voice. She turned to her companion: "Wasn't it for you,
1467 Lucille?"
1468
1469 It was for Lucille, too.
1470
1471 "I like to come," Lucille said. "I never care what I do, so I always have
1472 a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked
1473 me my name and address--inside of a week I got a package from Croirier's
1474 with a new evening gown in it."
1475
1476 "Did you keep it?" asked Jordan.
1477
1478 "Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the
1479 bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two
1480 hundred and sixty-five dollars."
1481
1482 "There's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that,"
1483 said the other girl eagerly. "He doesn't want any trouble with ANYbody."
1484
1485 "Who doesn't?" I inquired.
1486
1487 "Gatsby. Somebody told me----"
1488
1489 The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.
1490
1491 "Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."
1492
1493 A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and
1494 listened eagerly.
1495
1496 "I don't think it's so much THAT," argued Lucille skeptically; "it's
1497 more that he was a German spy during the war."
1498
1499 One of the men nodded in confirmation.
1500
1501 "I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in
1502 Germany," he assured us positively.
1503
1504 "Oh, no," said the first girl, "it couldn't be that, because he was in
1505 the American army during the war." As our credulity switched back to
1506 her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. "You look at him sometimes when
1507 he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man."
1508
1509 She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and
1510 looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he
1511 inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little
1512 that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.
1513
1514 The first supper--there would be another one after midnight--was now
1515 being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party who were
1516 spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were
1517 three married couples and Jordan's escort, a persistent undergraduate
1518 given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression
1519 that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person
1520 to a greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling this party
1521 had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the
1522 function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside--East
1523 Egg condescending to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its
1524 spectroscopic gayety.
1525
1526 "Let's get out," whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and
1527 inappropriate half hour. "This is much too polite for me."
1528
1529 We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host--I
1530 had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The
1531 undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.
1532
1533 The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded but Gatsby was not there.
1534 She couldn't find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn't on the
1535 veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked
1536 into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and
1537 probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.
1538
1539 A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was
1540 sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with
1541 unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he
1542 wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.
1543
1544 "What do you think?" he demanded impetuously.
1545
1546 "About what?"
1547
1548 He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.
1549
1550 "About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I
1551 ascertained. They're real."
1552
1553 "The books?"
1554
1555 He nodded.
1556
1557 "Absolutely real--have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice
1558 durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages
1559 and--Here! Lemme show you."
1560
1561 Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and
1562 returned with Volume One of the "Stoddard Lectures."
1563
1564 "See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter.
1565 It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What
1566 thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too--didn't cut the pages.
1567 But what do you want? What do you expect?"
1568
1569 He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf
1570 muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable
1571 to collapse.
1572
1573 "Who brought you?" he demanded. "Or did you just come? I was brought.
1574 Most people were brought."
1575
1576 Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully without answering.
1577
1578 "I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt," he continued. "Mrs. Claud
1579 Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I've
1580 been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me
1581 up to sit in a library."
1582
1583 "Has it?"
1584
1585 "A little bit, I think. I can't tell yet. I've only been here
1586 an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They're real. They're----"
1587
1588 "You told us."
1589
1590 We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.
1591
1592 There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden, old men pushing
1593 young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples
1594 holding each other tortuously, fashionably and keeping in the
1595 corners--and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically
1596 or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or
1597 the traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had
1598 sung in Italian and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz and between
1599 the numbers people were doing "stunts" all over the garden, while happy
1600 vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage
1601 "twins"--who turned out to be the girls in yellow--did a baby act in
1602 costume and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls.
1603 The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of
1604 silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the
1605 banjoes on the lawn.
1606
1607 I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of
1608 about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest
1609 provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I
1610 had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed
1611 before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.
1612
1613 At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.
1614
1615 "Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the Third
1616 Division during the war?"
1617
1618 "Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion."
1619
1620 "I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd
1621 seen you somewhere before."
1622
1623 We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France.
1624 Evidently he lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just
1625 bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.
1626
1627 "Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound."
1628
1629 "What time?"
1630
1631 "Any time that suits you best."
1632
1633 It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around
1634 and smiled.
1635
1636 "Having a gay time now?" she inquired.
1637
1638 "Much better." I turned again to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual
1639 party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there----" I waved
1640 my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, "and this man Gatsby sent
1641 over his chauffeur with an invitation."
1642
1643 For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.
1644
1645 "I'm Gatsby," he said suddenly.
1646
1647 "What!" I exclaimed. "Oh, I beg your pardon."
1648
1649 "I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."
1650
1651 He smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was
1652 one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance
1653 in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or
1654 seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then
1655 concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It
1656 understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in
1657 you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it
1658 had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to
1659 convey. Precisely at that point it vanished--and I was looking at an
1660 elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate
1661 formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he
1662 introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his
1663 words with care.
1664
1665 Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself a butler
1666 hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him on
1667 the wire. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of us
1668 in turn.
1669
1670 "If you want anything just ask for it, old sport," he urged me.
1671 "Excuse me. I will rejoin you later."
1672
1673 When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan--constrained to assure her
1674 of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and
1675 corpulent person in his middle years.
1676
1677 "Who is he?" I demanded. "Do you know?"
1678
1679 "He's just a man named Gatsby."
1680
1681 "Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?"
1682
1683 "Now YOU're started on the subject," she answered with a wan smile.
1684 "Well,--he told me once he was an Oxford man."
1685
1686 A dim background started to take shape behind him but at her
1687 next remark it faded away.
1688
1689 "However, I don't believe it."
1690
1691 "Why not?"
1692
1693 "I don't know," she insisted, "I just don't think he went there."
1694
1695 Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl's "I think
1696 he killed a man," and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity. I
1697 would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang
1698 from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York.
1699 That was comprehensible. But young men didn't--at least in my provincial
1700 inexperience I believed they didn't--drift coolly out of nowhere and buy
1701 a palace on Long Island Sound.
1702
1703 "Anyhow he gives large parties," said Jordan, changing the subject
1704 with an urbane distaste for the concrete. "And I like large parties.
1705 They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy."
1706
1707 There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra leader
1708 rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden.
1709
1710 "Ladies and gentlemen," he cried. "At the request of Mr. Gatsby we are
1711 going to play for you Mr. Vladimir Tostoff's latest work which attracted
1712 so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the papers
1713 you know there was a big sensation." He smiled with jovial condescension
1714 and added "Some sensation!" whereupon everybody laughed.
1715
1716 "The piece is known," he concluded lustily, "as 'Vladimir Tostoff's
1717 Jazz History of the World.' "
1718
1719 The nature of Mr. Tostoff's composition eluded me, because just as
1720 it began my eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps
1721 and looking from one group to another with approving eyes.
1722 His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and
1723 his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day. I could
1724 see nothing sinister about him. I wondered if the fact that he was
1725 not drinking helped to set him off from his guests, for it seemed
1726 to me that he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased.
1727 When the "Jazz History of the World" was over girls were putting
1728 their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were
1729 swooning backward playfully into men's arms, even into groups knowing
1730 that some one would arrest their falls--but no one swooned backward on
1731 Gatsby and no French bob touched Gatsby's shoulder and no singing
1732 quartets were formed with Gatsby's head for one link.
1733
1734 "I beg your pardon."
1735
1736 Gatsby's butler was suddenly standing beside us.
1737
1738 "Miss Baker?" he inquired. "I beg your pardon but Mr. Gatsby would like
1739 to speak to you alone."
1740
1741 "With me?" she exclaimed in surprise.
1742
1743 "Yes, madame."
1744
1745 She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in astonishment,
1746 and followed the butler toward the house. I noticed that she wore
1747 her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes--there
1748 was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to
1749 walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings.
1750
1751 I was alone and it was almost two. For some time confused and
1752 intriguing sounds had issued from a long many-windowed room which
1753 overhung the terrace. Eluding Jordan's undergraduate who was now
1754 engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who
1755 implored me to join him, I went inside.
1756
1757 The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was
1758 playing the piano and beside her stood a tall, red haired young lady
1759 from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of
1760 champagne and during the course of her song she had decided ineptly
1761 that everything was very very sad--she was not only singing, she was
1762 weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with
1763 gasping broken sobs and then took up the lyric again in a quavering
1764 soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks--not freely, however, for when
1765 they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an
1766 inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A
1767 humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face
1768 whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair and went off into
1769 a deep vinous sleep.
1770
1771 "She had a fight with a man who says he's her husband," explained a
1772 girl at my elbow.
1773
1774 I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights
1775 with men said to be their husbands. Even Jordan's party, the quartet
1776 from East Egg, were rent asunder by dissension. One of the men was
1777 talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife after
1778 attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent
1779 way broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks--at intervals she
1780 appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed "You
1781 promised!" into his ear.
1782
1783 The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall was at
1784 present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly indignant
1785 wives. The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised
1786 voices.
1787
1788 "Whenever he sees I'm having a good time he wants to go home."
1789
1790 "Never heard anything so selfish in my life."
1791
1792 "We're always the first ones to leave."
1793
1794 "So are we."
1795
1796 "Well, we're almost the last tonight," said one of the men sheepishly.
1797 "The orchestra left half an hour ago."
1798
1799 In spite of the wives' agreement that such malevolence was beyond
1800 credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives were
1801 lifted kicking into the night.
1802
1803 As I waited for my hat in the hall the door of the library opened and
1804 Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together. He was saying some last word
1805 to her but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly into
1806 formality as several people approached him to say goodbye.
1807
1808 Jordan's party were calling impatiently to her from the porch but she
1809 lingered for a moment to shake hands.
1810
1811 "I've just heard the most amazing thing," she whispered. "How long were
1812 we in there?"
1813
1814 "Why,--about an hour."
1815
1816 "It was--simply amazing," she repeated abstractedly. "But I swore
1817 I wouldn't tell it and here I am tantalizing you." She yawned
1818 gracefully in my face. "Please come and see me. . . . Phone book.
1819 . . . Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard. . . . My aunt. . . ."
1820 She was hurrying off as she talked--her brown hand waved a
1821 jaunty salute as she melted into her party at the door.
1822
1823 Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I had stayed so late, I
1824 joined the last of Gatsby's guests who were clustered around him. I
1825 wanted to explain that I'd hunted for him early in the evening and to
1826 apologize for not having known him in the garden.
1827
1828 "Don't mention it," he enjoined me eagerly. "Don't give it another
1829 thought, old sport." The familiar expression held no more familiarity
1830 than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. "And don't forget
1831 we're going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."
1832
1833 Then the butler, behind his shoulder:
1834
1835 "Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir."
1836
1837 "All right, in a minute. Tell them I'll be right there. . . . good
1838 night."
1839
1840 "Good night."
1841
1842 "Good night." He smiled--and suddenly there seemed to be a pleasant
1843 significance in having been among the last to go, as if he had desired
1844 it all the time. "Good night, old sport. . . . Good night."
1845
1846 But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over.
1847 Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and
1848 tumultuous scene. In the ditch beside the road, right side up but
1849 violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupé which had left Gatsby's
1850 drive not two minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall accounted for the
1851 detachment of the wheel which was now getting considerable attention from
1852 half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However, as they had left their cars
1853 blocking the road a harsh discordant din from those in the rear had been
1854 audible for some time and added to the already violent confusion of
1855 the scene.
1856
1857 A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in
1858 the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tire and from the
1859 tire to the observers in a pleasant, puzzled way.
1860
1861 "See!" he explained. "It went in the ditch."
1862
1863 The fact was infinitely astonishing to him--and I recognized first the
1864 unusual quality of wonder and then the man--it was the late patron of
1865 Gatsby's library.
1866
1867 "How'd it happen?"
1868
1869 He shrugged his shoulders.
1870
1871 "I know nothing whatever about mechanics," he said decisively.
1872
1873 "But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?"
1874
1875 "Don't ask me," said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole matter.
1876 "I know very little about driving--next to nothing. It happened,
1877 and that's all I know."
1878
1879 "Well, if you're a poor driver you oughtn't to try driving at night."
1880
1881 "But I wasn't even trying," he explained indignantly, "I wasn't even
1882 trying."
1883
1884 An awed hush fell upon the bystanders.
1885
1886 "Do you want to commit suicide?"
1887
1888 "You're lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even TRYing!"
1889
1890 "You don't understand," explained the criminal. "I wasn't driving. There's
1891 another man in the car."
1892
1893 The shock that followed this declaration found voice in a sustained
1894 "Ah-h-h!" as the door of the coupé swung slowly open. The crowd--it was
1895 now a crowd--stepped back involuntarily and when the door had opened wide
1896 there was a ghostly pause. Then, very gradually, part by part, a pale
1897 dangling individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing tentatively at the
1898 ground with a large uncertain dancing shoe.
1899
1900 Blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant
1901 groaning of the horns the apparition stood swaying for a moment before
1902 he perceived the man in the duster.
1903
1904 "Wha's matter?" he inquired calmly. "Did we run outa gas?"
1905
1906 "Look!"
1907
1908 Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel--he stared
1909 at it for a moment and then looked upward as though he suspected that
1910 it had dropped from the sky.
1911
1912 "It came off," some one explained.
1913
1914 He nodded.
1915
1916 "At first I din' notice we'd stopped."
1917
1918 A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders
1919 he remarked in a determined voice:
1920
1921 "Wonder'ff tell me where there's a gas'line station?"
1922
1923 At least a dozen men, some of them little better off than he was,
1924 explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical
1925 bond.
1926
1927 "Back out," he suggested after a moment. "Put her in reverse."
1928
1929 "But the WHEEL'S off!"
1930
1931 He hesitated.
1932
1933 "No harm in trying," he said.
1934
1935 The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and
1936 cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon
1937 was shining over Gatsby's house, making the night fine as before and
1938 surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A
1939 sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great
1940 doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host who
1941 stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.
1942
1943
1944 Reading over what I have written so far I see I have given the
1945 impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all
1946 that absorbed me. On the contrary they were merely casual events in a
1947 crowded summer and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less
1948 than my personal affairs.
1949
1950 Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow
1951 westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the
1952 Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their
1953 first names and lunched with them in dark crowded restaurants on
1954 little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short
1955 affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the
1956 accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my
1957 direction so when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow
1958 quietly away.
1959
1960 I took dinner usually at the Yale Club--for some reason it was the
1961 gloomiest event of my day--and then I went upstairs to the library and
1962 studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour.
1963 There were generally a few rioters around but they never came into the
1964 library so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was
1965 mellow I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel
1966 and over Thirty-third Street to the Pennsylvania Station.
1967
1968 I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night
1969 and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and
1970 machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and
1971 pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few
1972 minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever
1973 know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their
1974 apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled
1975 back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the
1976 enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes,
1977 and felt it in others--poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows
1978 waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner--young clerks
1979 in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
1980
1981 Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five
1982 deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a
1983 sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited,
1984 and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted
1985 cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that
1986 I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate
1987 excitement, I wished them well.
1988
1989 For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found
1990 her again. At first I was flattered to go places with her because she
1991 was a golf champion and every one knew her name. Then it was
1992 something more. I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of
1993 tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the
1994 world concealed something--most affectations conceal something
1995 eventually, even though they don't in the beginning--and one day I found
1996 what it was. When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she
1997 left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied
1998 about it--and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded
1999 me that night at Daisy's. At her first big golf tournament there was a
2000 row that nearly reached the newspapers--a suggestion that she had moved
2001 her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round. The thing approached
2002 the proportions of a scandal--then died away. A caddy retracted his
2003 statement and the only other witness admitted that he might have been
2004 mistaken. The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.
2005
2006 Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever shrewd men and now I saw
2007 that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence
2008 from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest.
2009 She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this
2010 unwillingness I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she
2011 was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the
2012 world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body.
2013
2014 It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never
2015 blame deeply--I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on that
2016 same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a
2017 car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our
2018 fender flicked a button on one man's coat.
2019
2020 "You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more
2021 careful or you oughtn't to drive at all."
2022
2023 "I am careful."
2024
2025 "No, you're not."
2026
2027 "Well, other people are," she said lightly.
2028
2029 "What's that got to do with it?"
2030
2031 "They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an
2032 accident."
2033
2034 "Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself."
2035
2036 "I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why
2037 I like you."
2038
2039 Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had
2040 deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved
2041 her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes
2042 on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of
2043 that tangle back home. I'd been writing letters once a week and signing
2044 them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when that certain
2045 girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her
2046 upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be
2047 tactfully broken off before I was free.
2048
2049 Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and
2050 this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
2051
2052
2053
2054
2055 Chapter 4
2056
2057
2058
2059 On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages along shore
2060 the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby's house and twinkled
2061 hilariously on his lawn.
2062
2063 "He's a bootlegger," said the young ladies, moving somewhere between
2064 his cocktails and his flowers. "One time he killed a man who had found out
2065 that he was nephew to von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil.
2066 Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crystal
2067 glass."
2068
2069 Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a time-table the names
2070 of those who came to Gatsby's house that summer. It is an old time-table
2071 now, disintegrating at its folds and headed "This schedule in effect
2072 July 5th, 1922." But I can still read the grey names and they will give
2073 you a better impression than my generalities of those who accepted
2074 Gatsby's hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing
2075 whatever about him.
2076
2077 From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches and a
2078 man named Bunsen whom I knew at Yale and Doctor Webster Civet who
2079 was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie
2080 Voltaires and a whole clan named Blackbuck who always gathered in a
2081 corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whosoever came near.
2082 And the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr.
2083 Chrystie's wife) and Edgar Beaver, whose hair they say turned
2084 cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all.
2085
2086 Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only
2087 once, in white knickerbockers, and had a fight with a bum named
2088 Etty in the garden. From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles
2089 and the O. R. P. Schraeders and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of
2090 Georgia and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there
2091 three days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the
2092 gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett's automobile ran over his right
2093 hand. The Dancies came too and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over
2094 sixty, and Maurice A. Flink and the Hammerheads and Beluga the
2095 tobacco importer and Beluga's girls.
2096
2097 From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and
2098 Cecil Schoen and Gulick the state senator and Newton Orchid who
2099 controlled Films Par Excellence and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don
2100 S. Schwartze (the son) and Arthur McCarty, all connected with the
2101 movies in one way or another. And the Catlips and the Bembergs and G.
2102 Earl Muldoon, brother to that Muldoon who afterward strangled his wife.
2103 Da Fontano the promoter came there, and Ed Legros and James B.
2104 ("Rot-Gut") Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly--they came to
2105 gamble and when Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he was
2106 cleaned out and Associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably
2107 next day.
2108
2109 A man named Klipspringer was there so often and so long that he became
2110 known as "the boarder"--I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical
2111 people there were Gus Waize and Horace O'Donavan and Lester Meyer and
2112 George Duckweed and Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes
2113 and the Backhyssons and the Dennickers and Russel Betty and the
2114 Corrigans and the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S. W.
2115 Belcher and the Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry
2116 L. Palmetto who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train
2117 in Times Square.
2118
2119 Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite
2120 the same ones in physical person but they were so identical one with
2121 another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before. I have
2122 forgotten their names--Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela or Gloria
2123 or Judy or June, and their last names were either the melodious names
2124 of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American
2125 capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to
2126 be.
2127
2128 In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina O'Brien came
2129 there at least once and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer who had
2130 his nose shot off in the war and Mr. Albrucksburger and Miss Haag, his
2131 fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Peters, and Mr. P. Jewett, once head of the
2132 American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip with a man reputed to be her
2133 chauffeur, and a prince of something whom we called Duke and whose name,
2134 if I ever knew it, I have forgotten.
2135
2136 All these people came to Gatsby's house in the summer.
2137
2138
2139 At nine o'clock, one morning late in July Gatsby's gorgeous car
2140 lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody
2141 from its three noted horn. It was the first time he had called on me
2142 though I had gone to two of his parties, mounted in his hydroplane,
2143 and, at his urgent invitation, made frequent use of his beach.
2144
2145 "Good morning, old sport. You're having lunch with me today and I
2146 thought we'd ride up together."
2147
2148 He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that
2149 resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American--that comes,
2150 I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth
2151 and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games.
2152 This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in
2153 the shape of restlessness. He was never quite still; there was always a
2154 tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand.
2155
2156 He saw me looking with admiration at his car.
2157
2158 "It's pretty, isn't it, old sport." He jumped off to give me a better
2159 view. "Haven't you ever seen it before?"
2160
2161 I'd seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright
2162 with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with
2163 triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a
2164 labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind
2165 many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory we started
2166 to town.
2167
2168 I had talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and
2169 found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say. So my first
2170 impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had
2171 gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate
2172 roadhouse next door.
2173
2174 And then came that disconcerting ride. We hadn't reached West Egg
2175 village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished
2176 and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-colored
2177 suit.
2178
2179 "Look here, old sport," he broke out surprisingly. "What's your opinion
2180 of me, anyhow?"
2181
2182 A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which
2183 that question deserves.
2184
2185 "Well, I'm going to tell you something about my life," he interrupted.
2186 "I don't want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you
2187 hear."
2188
2189 So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavored conversation in
2190 his halls.
2191
2192 "I'll tell you God's truth." His right hand suddenly ordered divine
2193 retribution to stand by. "I am the son of some wealthy people in the
2194 middle-west--all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at
2195 Oxford because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years.
2196 It is a family tradition."
2197
2198 He looked at me sideways--and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was
2199 lying. He hurried the phrase "educated at Oxford," or swallowed it or
2200 choked on it as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt
2201 his whole statement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn't
2202 something a little sinister about him after all.
2203
2204 "What part of the middle-west?" I inquired casually.
2205
2206 "San Francisco."
2207
2208 "I see."
2209
2210 "My family all died and I came into a good deal of money."
2211
2212 His voice was solemn as if the memory of that sudden extinction of a clan
2213 still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg
2214 but a glance at him convinced me otherwise.
2215
2216 "After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of
2217 Europe--Paris, Venice, Rome--collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting
2218 big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to
2219 forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago."
2220
2221 With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very
2222 phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a
2223 turbaned "character" leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a
2224 tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.
2225
2226 "Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief and I tried very
2227 hard to die but I seemed to bear an enchanted life. I accepted a
2228 commission as first lieutenant when it began. In the Argonne Forest I
2229 took two machine-gun detachments so far forward that there was a half
2230 mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldn't advance. We
2231 stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty men with
2232 sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last they found
2233 the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of dead. I was
2234 promoted to be a major and every Allied government gave me a
2235 decoration--even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic
2236 Sea!"
2237
2238 Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them--with
2239 his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro's troubled history and
2240 sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It
2241 appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had
2242 elicited this tribute from Montenegro's warm little heart. My
2243 incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming
2244 hastily through a dozen magazines.
2245
2246 He reached in his pocket and a piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, fell
2247 into my palm.
2248
2249 "That's the one from Montenegro."
2250
2251 To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic look.
2252
2253 _Orderi di Danilo_, ran the circular legend, _Montenegro, Nicolas Rex_.
2254
2255 "Turn it."
2256
2257 _Major Jay Gatsby_, I read, _For Valour Extraordinary_.
2258
2259 "Here's another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It was
2260 taken in Trinity Quad--the man on my left is now the Earl of Dorcaster."
2261
2262 It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an
2263 archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby,
2264 looking a little, not much, younger--with a cricket bat in his hand.
2265
2266 Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace
2267 on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with
2268 their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
2269
2270 "I'm going to make a big request of you today," he said, pocketing his
2271 souvenirs with satisfaction, "so I thought you ought to know something
2272 about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody. You see,
2273 I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there
2274 trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me." He hesitated.
2275 "You'll hear about it this afternoon."
2276
2277 "At lunch?"
2278
2279 "No, this afternoon. I happened to find out that you're taking Miss Baker
2280 to tea."
2281
2282 "Do you mean you're in love with Miss Baker?"
2283
2284 "No, old sport, I'm not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak
2285 to you about this matter."
2286
2287 I hadn't the faintest idea what "this matter" was, but I was more
2288 annoyed than interested. I hadn't asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss
2289 Mr. Jay Gatsby. I was sure the request would be something utterly
2290 fantastic and for a moment I was sorry I'd ever set foot upon his
2291 overpopulated lawn.
2292
2293 He wouldn't say another word. His correctness grew on him as we neared
2294 the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of
2295 red-belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with
2296 the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded gilt nineteen-hundreds. Then
2297 the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse
2298 of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we
2299 went by.
2300
2301 With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half
2302 Astoria--only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the
2303 elevated I heard the familiar "jug--jug--SPAT!" of a motor cycle, and a
2304 frantic policeman rode alongside.
2305
2306 "All right, old sport," called Gatsby. We slowed down. Taking a white
2307 card from his wallet he waved it before the man's eyes.
2308
2309 "Right you are," agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. "Know you next
2310 time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse ME!"
2311
2312 "What was that?" I inquired. "The picture of Oxford?"
2313
2314 "I was able to do the commissioner a favor once, and he sends me a
2315 Christmas card every year."
2316
2317 Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a
2318 constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the
2319 river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of
2320 non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always
2321 the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the
2322 mystery and the beauty in the world.
2323
2324 A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two
2325 carriages with drawn blinds and by more cheerful carriages for
2326 friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short
2327 upper lips of south-eastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of
2328 Gatsby's splendid car was included in their somber holiday. As we
2329 crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white
2330 chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl. I
2331 laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in
2332 haughty rivalry.
2333
2334 "Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge," I thought;
2335 "anything at all. . . ."
2336
2337 Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.
2338
2339
2340 Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby
2341 for lunch. Blinking away the brightness of the street outside my eyes
2342 picked him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to another man.
2343
2344 "Mr. Carraway this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem."
2345
2346 A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two
2347 fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I
2348 discovered his tiny eyes in the half darkness.
2349
2350 "--so I took one look at him--" said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand
2351 earnestly, "--and what do you think I did?"
2352
2353 "What?" I inquired politely.
2354
2355 But evidently he was not addressing me for he dropped my hand and
2356 covered Gatsby with his expressive nose.
2357
2358 "I handed the money to Katspaugh and I sid, 'All right, Katspaugh,
2359 don't pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth.' He shut it then and
2360 there."
2361
2362 Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the
2363 restaurant whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was
2364 starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction.
2365
2366 "Highballs?" asked the head waiter.
2367
2368 "This is a nice restaurant here," said Mr. Wolfshiem looking at the
2369 Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. "But I like across the street better!"
2370
2371 "Yes, highballs," agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: "It's too hot
2372 over there."
2373
2374 "Hot and small--yes," said Mr. Wolfshiem, "but full of memories."
2375
2376 "What place is that?" I asked.
2377
2378 "The old Metropole.
2379
2380 "The old Metropole," brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. "Filled with faces
2381 dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can't forget so
2382 long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us
2383 at the table and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all evening. When it was
2384 almost morning the waiter came up to him with a funny look and says
2385 somebody wants to speak to him outside. 'All right,' says Rosy and begins
2386 to get up and I pulled him down in his chair.
2387
2388 " 'Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don't you,
2389 so help me, move outside this room.'
2390
2391 "It was four o'clock in the morning then, and if we'd of raised the blinds
2392 we'd of seen daylight."
2393
2394 "Did he go?" I asked innocently.
2395
2396 "Sure he went,"--Mr. Wolfshiem's nose flashed at me indignantly--"He
2397 turned around in the door and says, 'Don't let that waiter take away
2398 my coffee!' Then he went out on the sidewalk and they shot him
2399 three times in his full belly and drove away."
2400
2401 "Four of them were electrocuted," I said, remembering.
2402
2403 "Five with Becker." His nostrils turned to me in an interested way.
2404 "I understand you're looking for a business gonnegtion."
2405
2406 The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered
2407 for me:
2408
2409 "Oh, no," he exclaimed, "this isn't the man!"
2410
2411 "No?" Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed.
2412
2413 "This is just a friend. I told you we'd talk about that some other
2414 time."
2415
2416 "I beg your pardon," said Mr. Wolfshiem, "I had a wrong man."
2417
2418 A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the more
2419 sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with
2420 ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around the
2421 room--he completed the arc by turning to inspect the people directly
2422 behind. I think that, except for my presence, he would have taken one
2423 short glance beneath our own table.
2424
2425 "Look here, old sport," said Gatsby, leaning toward me, "I'm afraid I
2426 made you a little angry this morning in the car."
2427
2428 There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it.
2429
2430 "I don't like mysteries," I answered. "And I don't understand why you
2431 won't come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to
2432 come through Miss Baker?"
2433
2434 "Oh, it's nothing underhand," he assured me. "Miss Baker's a great
2435 sportswoman, you know, and she'd never do anything that wasn't all right."
2436
2437 Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up and hurried from the room
2438 leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table.
2439
2440 "He has to telephone," said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his eyes.
2441 "Fine fellow, isn't he? Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman."
2442
2443 "Yes."
2444
2445 "He's an Oggsford man."
2446
2447 "Oh!"
2448
2449 "He went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?"
2450
2451 "I've heard of it."
2452
2453 "It's one of the most famous colleges in the world."
2454
2455 "Have you known Gatsby for a long time?" I inquired.
2456
2457 "Several years," he answered in a gratified way. "I made the pleasure of
2458 his acquaintance just after the war. But I knew I had discovered a man of
2459 fine breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to myself: 'There's
2460 the kind of man you'd like to take home and introduce to your mother and
2461 sister.' " He paused. "I see you're looking at my cuff buttons."
2462
2463 I hadn't been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of
2464 oddly familiar pieces of ivory.
2465
2466 "Finest specimens of human molars," he informed me.
2467
2468 "Well!" I inspected them. "That's a very interesting idea."
2469
2470 "Yeah." He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. "Yeah, Gatsby's very
2471 careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend's wife."
2472
2473 When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat
2474 down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet.
2475
2476 "I have enjoyed my lunch," he said, "and I'm going to run off from you
2477 two young men before I outstay my welcome."
2478
2479 "Don't hurry, Meyer," said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem
2480 raised his hand in a sort of benediction.
2481
2482 "You're very polite but I belong to another generation," he announced
2483 solemnly. "You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and
2484 your----" He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his
2485 hand--"As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won't impose myself
2486 on you any longer."
2487
2488 As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling.
2489 I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.
2490
2491 "He becomes very sentimental sometimes," explained Gatsby. "This is one of
2492 his sentimental days. He's quite a character around New York--a denizen of
2493 Broadway."
2494
2495 "Who is he anyhow--an actor?"
2496
2497 "No."
2498
2499 "A dentist?"
2500
2501 "Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added
2502 coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919."
2503
2504 "Fixed the World's Series?" I repeated.
2505
2506 The idea staggered me. I remembered of course that the World's Series
2507 had been fixed in 1919 but if I had thought of it at all I would have
2508 thought of it as a thing that merely HAPPENED, the end of some
2509 inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to
2510 play with the faith of fifty million people--with the single-mindedness
2511 of a burglar blowing a safe.
2512
2513 "How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.
2514
2515 "He just saw the opportunity."
2516
2517 "Why isn't he in jail?"
2518
2519 "They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man."
2520
2521 I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I caught
2522 sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.
2523
2524 "Come along with me for a minute," I said. "I've got to say hello
2525 to someone."
2526
2527 When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our
2528 direction.
2529
2530 "Where've you been?" he demanded eagerly. "Daisy's furious because you
2531 haven't called up."
2532
2533 "This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan."
2534
2535 They shook hands briefly and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment
2536 came over Gatsby's face.
2537
2538 "How've you been, anyhow?" demanded Tom of me. "How'd you happen to come
2539 up this far to eat?"
2540
2541 "I've been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby."
2542
2543 I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.
2544
2545
2546 One October day in nineteen-seventeen----
2547 (said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight
2548 chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)
2549 --I was walking along from one place to another half on the sidewalks and
2550 half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from
2551 England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground.
2552 I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the wind and
2553 whenever this happened the red, white and blue banners in front of all
2554 the houses stretched out stiff and said TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT in a disapproving
2555 way.
2556
2557 The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to
2558 Daisy Fay's house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and
2559 by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She
2560 dressed in white, and had a little white roadster and all day long
2561 the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp
2562 Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night, "anyways,
2563 for an hour!"
2564
2565 When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside
2566 the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen
2567 before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didn't see me until
2568 I was five feet away.
2569
2570 "Hello Jordan," she called unexpectedly. "Please come here."
2571
2572 I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older
2573 girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross and
2574 make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she couldn't come
2575 that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way
2576 that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it
2577 seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since. His name
2578 was Jay Gatsby and I didn't lay eyes on him again for over four
2579 years--even after I'd met him on Long Island I didn't realize it was the
2580 same man.
2581
2582 That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux myself,
2583 and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn't see Daisy very often.
2584 She went with a slightly older crowd--when she went with anyone at all.
2585 Wild rumors were circulating about her--how her mother had found her
2586 packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a
2587 soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she
2588 wasn't on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After
2589 that she didn't play around with the soldiers any more but only
2590 with a few flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town who couldn't
2591 get into the army at all.
2592
2593 By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut
2594 after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a
2595 man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago with
2596 more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came
2597 down with a hundred people in four private cars and hired a whole
2598 floor of the Seelbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her
2599 a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
2600
2601 I was bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal
2602 dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in
2603 her flowered dress--and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of
2604 sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.
2605
2606 " 'Gratulate me," she muttered. "Never had a drink before but oh, how I do
2607 enjoy it."
2608
2609 "What's the matter, Daisy?"
2610
2611 I was scared, I can tell you; I'd never seen a girl like that before.
2612
2613 "Here, dearis." She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her
2614 on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. "Take 'em downstairs and
2615 give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her
2616 mine. Say 'Daisy's change' her mine!'."
2617
2618 She began to cry--she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her
2619 mother's maid and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She
2620 wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and
2621 squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the
2622 soap dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.
2623
2624 But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put
2625 ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress and half an
2626 hour later when we walked out of the room the pearls were around her
2627 neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o'clock she married Tom
2628 Buchanan without so much as a shiver and started off on a three months'
2629 trip to the South Seas.
2630
2631 I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back and I thought I'd
2632 never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a
2633 minute she'd look around uneasily and say "Where's Tom gone?" and
2634 wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the
2635 door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour
2636 rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable
2637 delight. It was touching to see them together--it made you laugh in a
2638 hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa
2639 Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped
2640 a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the
2641 papers too because her arm was broken--she was one of the chambermaids
2642 in the Santa Barbara Hotel.
2643
2644 The next April Daisy had her little girl and they went to France for a
2645 year. I saw them one spring in Cannes and later in Deauville and then
2646 they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in Chicago,
2647 as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich
2648 and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation.
2649 Perhaps because she doesn't drink. It's a great advantage not to drink
2650 among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover,
2651 you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else
2652 is so blind that they don't see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in
2653 for amour at all--and yet there's something in that voice of hers. . . .
2654
2655 Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time
2656 in years. It was when I asked you--do you remember?--if you knew Gatsby
2657 in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me
2658 up, and said "What Gatsby?" and when I described him--I was half
2659 asleep--she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used
2660 to know. It wasn't until then that I connected this Gatsby with the
2661 officer in her white car.
2662
2663
2664 When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this we had left the Plaza
2665 for half an hour and were driving in a Victoria through Central Park.
2666 The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in
2667 the West Fifties and the clear voices of girls, already gathered like
2668 crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight:
2669
2670
2671 "I'm the Sheik of Araby,
2672 Your love belongs to me.
2673 At night when you're are asleep,
2674 Into your tent I'll creep----"
2675
2676
2677 "It was a strange coincidence," I said.
2678
2679 "But it wasn't a coincidence at all."
2680
2681 "Why not?"
2682
2683 "Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay."
2684
2685 Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired
2686 on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the
2687 womb of his purposeless splendor.
2688
2689 "He wants to know--" continued Jordan "--if you'll invite Daisy to your
2690 house some afternoon and then let him come over."
2691
2692 The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a
2693 mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths so that he could
2694 "come over" some afternoon to a stranger's garden.
2695
2696 "Did I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?"
2697
2698 "He's afraid. He's waited so long. He thought you might be offended.
2699 You see he's a regular tough underneath it all."
2700
2701 Something worried me.
2702
2703 "Why didn't he ask you to arrange a meeting?"
2704
2705 "He wants her to see his house," she explained. "And your house is right
2706 next door."
2707
2708 "Oh!"
2709
2710 "I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties,
2711 some night," went on Jordan, "but she never did. Then he began asking
2712 people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found.
2713 It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have
2714 heard the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately
2715 suggested a luncheon in New York--and I thought he'd go mad:
2716
2717 " 'I don't want to do anything out of the way!' he kept saying. 'I want to
2718 see her right next door.'
2719
2720 "When I said you were a particular friend of Tom's he started to abandon
2721 the whole idea. He doesn't know very much about Tom, though he says he's
2722 read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse
2723 of Daisy's name."
2724
2725 It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm
2726 around Jordan's golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to
2727 dinner. Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more but of
2728 this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and
2729 who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began
2730 to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the
2731 pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired."
2732
2733 "And Daisy ought to have something in her life," murmured Jordan to me.
2734
2735 "Does she want to see Gatsby?"
2736
2737 "She's not to know about it. Gatsby doesn't want her to know. You're
2738 just supposed to invite her to tea."
2739
2740 We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of Fifty-ninth
2741 Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park.
2742 Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan I had no girl whose disembodied face
2743 floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs and so I drew up the
2744 girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled and so
2745 I drew her up again, closer, this time to my face.
2746
2747
2748
2749
2750 Chapter 5
2751
2752
2753
2754 When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that
2755 my house was on fire. Two o'clock and the whole corner of the peninsula
2756 was blazing with light which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin
2757 elongating glints upon the roadside wires. Turning a corner I saw that it
2758 was Gatsby's house, lit from tower to cellar.
2759
2760 At first I thought it was another party, a wild rout that had resolved
2761 itself into "hide-and-go-seek" or "sardines-in-the-box" with all the
2762 house thrown open to the game. But there wasn't a sound. Only wind in
2763 the trees which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on again
2764 as if the house had winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned away I
2765 saw Gatsby walking toward me across his lawn.
2766
2767 "Your place looks like the world's fair," I said.
2768
2769 "Does it?" He turned his eyes toward it absently. "I have been glancing
2770 into some of the rooms. Let's go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car."
2771
2772 "It's too late."
2773
2774 "Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming pool? I haven't made use
2775 of it all summer."
2776
2777 "I've got to go to bed."
2778
2779 "All right."
2780
2781 He waited, looking at me with suppressed eagerness.
2782
2783 "I talked with Miss Baker," I said after a moment. "I'm going to call up
2784 Daisy tomorrow and invite her over here to tea."
2785
2786 "Oh, that's all right," he said carelessly. "I don't want to put you to
2787 any trouble."
2788
2789 "What day would suit you?"
2790
2791 "What day would suit YOU?" he corrected me quickly. "I don't want to put
2792 you to any trouble, you see."
2793
2794 "How about the day after tomorrow?" He considered for a moment. Then,
2795 with reluctance:
2796
2797 "I want to get the grass cut," he said.
2798
2799 We both looked at the grass--there was a sharp line where my ragged lawn
2800 ended and the darker, well-kept expanse of his began. I suspected that
2801 he meant my grass.
2802
2803 "There's another little thing," he said uncertainly, and hesitated.
2804
2805 "Would you rather put it off for a few days?" I asked.
2806
2807 "Oh, it isn't about that. At least----" He fumbled with a series of
2808 beginnings. "Why, I thought--why, look here, old sport, you don't make
2809 much money, do you?"
2810
2811 "Not very much."
2812
2813 This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.
2814
2815 "I thought you didn't, if you'll pardon my--you see, I carry on a
2816 little business on the side, a sort of sideline, you understand. And I
2817 thought that if you don't make very much--You're selling bonds, aren't
2818 you, old sport?"
2819
2820 "Trying to."
2821
2822 "Well, this would interest you. It wouldn't take up much of your
2823 time and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It happens to be
2824 a rather confidential sort of thing."
2825
2826 I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might
2827 have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer was
2828 obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice
2829 except to cut him off there.
2830
2831 "I've got my hands full," I said. "I'm much obliged but I couldn't take
2832 on any more work."
2833
2834 "You wouldn't have to do any business with Wolfshiem." Evidently he
2835 thought that I was shying away from the "gonnegtion" mentioned at lunch,
2836 but I assured him he was wrong. He waited a moment longer, hoping I'd
2837 begin a conversation, but I was too absorbed to be responsive, so he went
2838 unwillingly home.
2839
2840 The evening had made me light-headed and happy; I think I walked into a
2841 deep sleep as I entered my front door. So I didn't know whether or not
2842 Gatsby went to Coney Island or for how many hours he "glanced into
2843 rooms" while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the
2844 office next morning and invited her to come to tea.
2845
2846 "Don't bring Tom," I warned her.
2847
2848 "What?"
2849
2850 "Don't bring Tom."
2851
2852 "Who is 'Tom'?" she asked innocently.
2853
2854 The day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven o'clock a man in a
2855 raincoat dragging a lawn-mower tapped at my front door and said that
2856 Mr. Gatsby had sent him over to cut my grass. This reminded me that I
2857 had forgotten to tell my Finn to come back so I drove into West Egg
2858 Village to search for her among soggy white-washed alleys and to buy
2859 some cups and lemons and flowers.
2860
2861 The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o'clock a greenhouse arrived
2862 from Gatsby's, with innumerable receptacles to contain it. An hour
2863 later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby in a white flannel
2864 suit, silver shirt and gold-colored tie hurried in. He was pale and
2865 there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.
2866
2867 "Is everything all right?" he asked immediately.
2868
2869 "The grass looks fine, if that's what you mean."
2870
2871 "What grass?" he inquired blankly. "Oh, the grass in the yard." He looked
2872 out the window at it, but judging from his expression I don't believe
2873 he saw a thing.
2874
2875 "Looks very good," he remarked vaguely. "One of the papers said they
2876 thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was 'The Journal.' Have
2877 you got everything you need in the shape of--of tea?"
2878
2879 I took him into the pantry where he looked a little reproachfully at the
2880 Finn. Together we scrutinized the twelve lemon cakes from the delicatessen
2881 shop.
2882
2883 "Will they do?" I asked.
2884
2885 "Of course, of course! They're fine!" and he added hollowly, ". . .old
2886 sport."
2887
2888 The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp mist through which
2889 occasional thin drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes
2890 through a copy of Clay's "Economics," starting at the Finnish tread that
2891 shook the kitchen floor and peering toward the bleared windows from time
2892 to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were taking
2893 place outside. Finally he got up and informed me in an uncertain voice
2894 that he was going home.
2895
2896 "Why's that?"
2897
2898 "Nobody's coming to tea. It's too late!" He looked at his watch as if
2899 there was some pressing demand on his time elsewhere. "I can't wait
2900 all day."
2901
2902 "Don't be silly; it's just two minutes to four."
2903
2904 He sat down, miserably, as if I had pushed him, and simultaneously there
2905 was the sound of a motor turning into my lane. We both jumped up and,
2906 a little harrowed myself, I went out into the yard.
2907
2908 Under the dripping bare lilac trees a large open car was coming up the
2909 drive. It stopped. Daisy's face, tipped sideways beneath a
2910 three-cornered lavender hat, looked out at me with a bright ecstatic
2911 smile.
2912
2913 "Is this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?"
2914
2915 The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I had
2916 to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone
2917 before any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of
2918 blue paint across her cheek and her hand was wet with glistening drops as
2919 I took it to help her from the car.
2920
2921 "Are you in love with me," she said low in my ear. "Or why did I have
2922 to come alone?"
2923
2924 "That's the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far
2925 away and spend an hour."
2926
2927 "Come back in an hour, Ferdie." Then in a grave murmur, "His name is
2928 Ferdie."
2929
2930 "Does the gasoline affect his nose?"
2931
2932 "I don't think so," she said innocently. "Why?"
2933
2934 We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living room was deserted.
2935
2936 "Well, that's funny!" I exclaimed.
2937
2938 "What's funny?"
2939
2940 She turned her head as there was a light, dignified knocking at the front
2941 door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands
2942 plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of
2943 water glaring tragically into my eyes.
2944
2945 With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked by me into the
2946 hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire and disappeared into the
2947 living room. It wasn't a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of my own
2948 heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain.
2949
2950 For half a minute there wasn't a sound. Then from the living room I
2951 heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh followed by Daisy's
2952 voice on a clear artificial note.
2953
2954 "I certainly am awfully glad to see you again."
2955
2956 A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall so I went
2957 into the room.
2958
2959 Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the
2960 mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom.
2961 His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a
2962 defunct mantelpiece clock and from this position his distraught eyes
2963 stared down at Daisy who was sitting frightened but graceful on the
2964 edge of a stiff chair.
2965
2966 "We've met before," muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at
2967 me and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily
2968 the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his
2969 head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers and set
2970 it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the
2971 sofa and his chin in his hand.
2972
2973 "I'm sorry about the clock," he said.
2974
2975 My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn't muster up
2976 a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head.
2977
2978 "It's an old clock," I told them idiotically.
2979
2980 I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on
2981 the floor.
2982
2983 "We haven't met for many years," said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact
2984 as it could ever be.
2985
2986 "Five years next November."
2987
2988 The automatic quality of Gatsby's answer set us all back at least another
2989 minute. I had them both on their feet with the desperate suggestion that
2990 they help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac Finn brought it in
2991 on a tray.
2992
2993 Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical decency
2994 established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow and while Daisy
2995 and I talked looked conscientiously from one to the other of us with
2996 tense unhappy eyes. However, as calmness wasn't an end in itself I
2997 made an excuse at the first possible moment and got to my feet.
2998
2999 "Where are you going?" demanded Gatsby in immediate alarm.
3000
3001 "I'll be back."
3002
3003 "I've got to speak to you about something before you go."
3004
3005 He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door and whispered:
3006 "Oh, God!" in a miserable way.
3007
3008 "What's the matter?"
3009
3010 "This is a terrible mistake," he said, shaking his head from side to
3011 side, "a terrible, terrible mistake."
3012
3013 "You're just embarrassed, that's all," and luckily I added: "Daisy's
3014 embarrassed too."
3015
3016 "She's embarrassed?" he repeated incredulously.
3017
3018 "Just as much as you are."
3019
3020 "Don't talk so loud."
3021
3022 "You're acting like a little boy," I broke out impatiently. "Not only
3023 that but you're rude. Daisy's sitting in there all alone."
3024
3025
3026 He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me with unforgettable
3027 reproach and opening the door cautiously went back into the other room.
3028
3029 I walked out the back way--just as Gatsby had when he had made his
3030 nervous circuit of the house half an hour before--and ran for a huge
3031 black knotted tree whose massed leaves made a fabric against the rain.
3032 Once more it was pouring and my irregular lawn, well-shaved by
3033 Gatsby's gardener, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric
3034 marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except
3035 Gatsby's enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church
3036 steeple, for half an hour. A brewer had built it early in the "period"
3037 craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay
3038 five years' taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would
3039 have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the
3040 heart out of his plan to Found a Family--he went into an immediate
3041 decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the
3042 door. Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always
3043 been obstinate about being peasantry.
3044
3045 After half an hour the sun shone again and the grocer's automobile
3046 rounded Gatsby's drive with the raw material for his servants' dinner--I
3047 felt sure he wouldn't eat a spoonful. A maid began opening the upper
3048 windows of his house, appeared momentarily in each, and, leaning from a
3049 large central bay, spat meditatively into the garden. It was time I
3050 went back. While the rain continued it had seemed like the murmur of
3051 their voices, rising and swelling a little, now and the, with gusts of
3052 emotion. But in the new silence I felt that silence had fallen within
3053 the house too.
3054
3055 I went in--after making every possible noise in the kitchen short of
3056 pushing over the stove--but I don't believe they heard a sound. They
3057 were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if
3058 some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of
3059 embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears and when I
3060 came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before
3061 a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding.
3062 He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new
3063 well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.
3064
3065 "Oh, hello, old sport," he said, as if he hadn't seen me for years. I
3066 thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.
3067
3068 "It's stopped raining."
3069
3070 "Has it?" When he realized what I was talking about, that there were
3071 twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man,
3072 like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to
3073 Daisy. "What do you think of that? It's stopped raining."
3074
3075 "I'm glad, Jay." Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only
3076 of her unexpected joy.
3077
3078 "I want you and Daisy to come over to my house," he said, "I'd like to
3079 show her around."
3080
3081 "You're sure you want me to come?"
3082
3083 "Absolutely, old sport."
3084
3085 Daisy went upstairs to wash her face--too late I thought with humiliation
3086 of my towels--while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.
3087
3088 "My house looks well, doesn't it?" he demanded. "See how the whole
3089 front of it catches the light."
3090
3091 I agreed that it was splendid.
3092
3093 "Yes." His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. "It took
3094 me just three years to earn the money that bought it."
3095
3096 "I thought you inherited your money."
3097
3098 "I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in
3099 the big panic--the panic of the war."
3100
3101 I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what
3102 business he was in he answered "That's my affair," before he realized
3103 that it wasn't the appropriate reply.
3104
3105 "Oh, I've been in several things," he corrected himself. "I was in the
3106 drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I'm not in either
3107 one now." He looked at me with more attention. "Do you mean you've been
3108 thinking over what I proposed the other night?"
3109
3110 Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass
3111 buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.
3112
3113 "That huge place THERE?" she cried pointing.
3114
3115 "Do you like it?"
3116
3117 "I love it, but I don't see how you live there all alone."
3118
3119 "I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People who
3120 do interesting things. Celebrated people."
3121
3122 Instead of taking the short cut along the Sound we went down the road and
3123 entered by the big postern. With enchanting murmurs Daisy admired this
3124 aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky, admired the
3125 gardens, the sparkling odor of jonquils and the frothy odor of hawthorn
3126 and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate.
3127 It was strange to reach the marble steps and find no stir of bright
3128 dresses in and out the door, and hear no sound but bird voices in the
3129 trees.
3130
3131 And inside as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music rooms and
3132 Restoration salons I felt that there were guests concealed behind
3133 every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we
3134 had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of "the Merton College
3135 Library" I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into
3136 ghostly laughter.
3137
3138 We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender
3139 silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing rooms and poolrooms,
3140 and bathrooms with sunken baths--intruding into one chamber where a
3141 dishevelled man in pajamas was doing liver exercises on the floor. It
3142 was Mr. Klipspringer, the "boarder." I had seen him wandering hungrily
3143 about the beach that morning. Finally we came to Gatsby's own apartment,
3144 a bedroom and a bath and an Adam study, where we sat down and drank a
3145 glass of some Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the wall.
3146
3147 He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy and I think he revalued
3148 everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew
3149 from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his
3150 possessions in a dazed way as though in her actual and astounding
3151 presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a
3152 flight of stairs.
3153
3154 His bedroom was the simplest room of all--except where the dresser was
3155 garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush
3156 with delight and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and
3157 shaded his eyes and began to laugh.
3158
3159 "It's the funniest thing, old sport," he said hilariously. "I can't--when
3160 I try to----"
3161
3162 He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third.
3163 After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with
3164 wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it
3165 right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an
3166 inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running
3167 down like an overwound clock.
3168
3169 Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent
3170 cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and
3171 his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.
3172
3173 "I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection
3174 of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall."
3175
3176 He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one
3177 before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel
3178 which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in
3179 many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft
3180 rich heap mounted higher--shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in
3181 coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of
3182 Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into
3183 the shirts and began to cry stormily.
3184
3185 "They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the
3186 thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such--such beautiful
3187 shirts before."
3188
3189
3190 After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and the
3191 hydroplane and the midsummer flowers--but outside Gatsby's window it
3192 began to rain again so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated
3193 surface of the Sound.
3194
3195 "If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said
3196 Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of
3197 your dock."
3198
3199 Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed
3200 in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the
3201 colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared
3202 to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed
3203 very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star
3204 to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of
3205 enchanted objects had diminished by one.
3206
3207 I began to walk about the room, examining various indefinite objects in
3208 the half darkness. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting
3209 costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk.
3210
3211 "Who's this?"
3212
3213 "That? That's Mr. Dan Cody, old sport."
3214
3215 The name sounded faintly familiar.
3216
3217 "He's dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago."
3218
3219 There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the
3220 bureau--Gatsby with his head thrown back defiantly--taken apparently
3221 when he was about eighteen.
3222
3223 "I adore it!" exclaimed Daisy. "The pompadour! You never told me you had
3224 a pompadour--or a yacht."
3225
3226 "Look at this," said Gatsby quickly. "Here's a lot of clippings--about
3227 you."
3228
3229 They stood side by side examining it. I was going to ask to see the rubies
3230 when the phone rang and Gatsby took up the receiver.
3231
3232 "Yes. . . . Well, I can't talk now. . . . I can't talk now, old
3233 sport. . . . I said a SMALL town. . . . He must know what a small town
3234 is. . . . Well, he's no use to us if Detroit is his idea of a small
3235 town. . . ."
3236
3237 He rang off.
3238
3239 "Come here QUICK!" cried Daisy at the window.
3240
3241 The rain was still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west,
3242 and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea.
3243
3244 "Look at that," she whispered, and then after a moment: "I'd like to
3245 just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you
3246 around."
3247
3248 I tried to go then, but they wouldn't hear of it; perhaps my presence
3249 made them feel more satisfactorily alone.
3250
3251 "I know what we'll do," said Gatsby, "we'll have Klipspringer play the
3252 piano."
3253
3254 He went out of the room calling "Ewing!" and returned in a few
3255 minutes accompanied by an embarrassed, slightly worn young man with
3256 shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blonde hair. He was now decently clothed
3257 in a "sport shirt" open at the neck, sneakers and duck trousers of a
3258 nebulous hue.
3259
3260 "Did we interrupt your exercises?" inquired Daisy politely.
3261
3262 "I was asleep," cried Mr. Klipspringer, in a spasm of embarrassment.
3263 "That is, I'd BEEN asleep. Then I got up. . . ."
3264
3265 "Klipspringer plays the piano," said Gatsby, cutting him off. "Don't you,
3266 Ewing, old sport?"
3267
3268 "I don't play well. I don't--I hardly play at all. I'm all out of
3269 prac----"
3270
3271 "We'll go downstairs," interrupted Gatsby. He flipped a switch. The
3272 grey windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light.
3273
3274 In the music room Gatsby turned on a solitary lamp beside the piano. He
3275 lit Daisy's cigarette from a trembling match, and sat down with her on
3276 a couch far across the room where there was no light save what the
3277 gleaming floor bounced in from the hall.
3278
3279 When Klipspringer had played "The Love Nest" he turned around on the
3280 bench and searched unhappily for Gatsby in the gloom.
3281
3282 "I'm all out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn't play. I'm all
3283 out of prac----"
3284
3285 "Don't talk so much, old sport," commanded Gatsby. "Play!"
3286
3287
3288 IN THE MORNING,
3289 IN THE EVENING,
3290 AIN'T WE GOT FUN----
3291
3292 Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along the
3293 Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the electric trains,
3294 men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain from New York. It was
3295 the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on
3296 the air.
3297
3298
3299 ONE THING'S SURE AND NOTHING'S SURER
3300 THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET--CHILDREN.
3301 IN THE MEANTIME,
3302 IN BETWEEN TIME----
3303
3304
3305 As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment
3306 had come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to
3307 him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five
3308 years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when
3309 Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but
3310 because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond
3311 her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative
3312 passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright
3313 feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can
3314 challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
3315
3316 As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took
3317 hold of hers and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward
3318 her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most with its
3319 fluctuating, feverish warmth because it couldn't be over-dreamed--that
3320 voice was a deathless song.
3321
3322 They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand;
3323 Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they
3324 looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out
3325 of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there
3326 together.
3327
3328
3329
3330
3331 Chapter 6
3332
3333
3334
3335 About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one
3336 morning at Gatsby's door and asked him if he had anything to say.
3337
3338 "Anything to say about what?" inquired Gatsby politely.
3339
3340 "Why,--any statement to give out."
3341
3342 It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard
3343 Gatsby's name around his office in a connection which he either
3344 wouldn't reveal or didn't fully understand. This was his day off
3345 and with laudable initiative he had hurried out "to see."
3346
3347 It was a random shot, and yet the reporter's instinct was right. Gatsby's
3348 notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his
3349 hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased
3350 all summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary
3351 legends such as the "underground pipe-line to Canada" attached
3352 themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he
3353 didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house
3354 and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why
3355 these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North
3356 Dakota, isn't easy to say.
3357
3358 James Gatz--that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had
3359 changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that
3360 witnessed the beginning of his career--when he saw Dan Cody's yacht drop
3361 anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz
3362 who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green
3363 jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who
3364 borrowed a row-boat, pulled out to the TUOLOMEE and informed Cody that
3365 a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.
3366
3367 I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His
3368 parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people--his imagination had
3369 never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that
3370 Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic
3371 conception of himself. He was a son of God--a phrase which, if it means
3372 anything, means just that--and he must be about His Father's Business,
3373 the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty. So he invented
3374 just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be
3375 likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.
3376
3377 For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of
3378 Lake Superior as a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other
3379 capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived
3380 naturally through the half fierce, half lazy work of the bracing days.
3381 He knew women early and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous
3382 of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others
3383 because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming
3384 self-absorption he took for granted.
3385
3386 But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque
3387 and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe
3388 of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the
3389 clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet
3390 light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the
3391 pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid
3392 scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an
3393 outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the
3394 unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded
3395 securely on a fairy's wing.
3396
3397 An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to
3398 the small Lutheran college of St. Olaf in southern Minnesota. He stayed
3399 there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of
3400 his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor's work with
3401 which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake
3402 Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day
3403 that Dan Cody's yacht dropped anchor in the shallows along shore.
3404
3405 Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields,
3406 of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since Seventy-five. The
3407 transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire
3408 found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and,
3409 suspecting this an infinite number of women tried to separate him from
3410 his money. The none too savory ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the
3411 newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him
3412 to sea in a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgid journalism
3413 of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five
3414 years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny at Little Girl Bay.
3415
3416 To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed
3417 deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world. I
3418 suppose he smiled at Cody--he had probably discovered that people liked
3419 him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of
3420 them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick, and
3421 extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and
3422 bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers and a yachting
3423 cap. And when the TUOLOMEE left for the West Indies and the Barbary
3424 Coast Gatsby left too.
3425
3426 He was employed in a vague personal capacity--while he remained with
3427 Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor,
3428 for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be
3429 about and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more
3430 trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years during which the
3431 boat went three times around the continent. It might have lasted
3432 indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night
3433 in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.
3434
3435 I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid
3436 man with a hard empty face--the pioneer debauchee who during one phase
3437 of American life brought back to the eastern seaboard the savage
3438 violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to
3439 Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties
3440 women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the
3441 habit of letting liquor alone.
3442
3443 And it was from Cody that he inherited money--a legacy of twenty-five
3444 thousand dollars. He didn't get it. He never understood the legal
3445 device that was used against him but what remained of the millions
3446 went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate
3447 education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the
3448 substantiality of a man.
3449
3450
3451 He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the
3452 idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which
3453 weren't even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of
3454 confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and
3455 nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while
3456 Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of
3457 misconceptions away.
3458
3459 It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For
3460 several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone--mostly
3461 I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to
3462 ingratiate myself with her senile aunt--but finally I went over to
3463 his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn't been there two minutes when
3464 somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled,
3465 naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadn't happened
3466 before.
3467
3468 They were a party of three on horseback--Tom and a man named Sloane and
3469 a pretty woman in a brown riding habit who had been there previously.
3470
3471 "I'm delighted to see you," said Gatsby standing on his porch.
3472 "I'm delighted that you dropped in."
3473
3474 As though they cared!
3475
3476 "Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar." He walked around the room
3477 quickly, ringing bells. "I'll have something to drink for you in just
3478 a minute."
3479
3480 He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be
3481 uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague
3482 way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. A
3483 lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all,
3484 thanks. . . . I'm sorry----
3485
3486 "Did you have a nice ride?"
3487
3488 "Very good roads around here."
3489
3490 "I suppose the automobiles----"
3491
3492 "Yeah."
3493
3494 Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom who had accepted
3495 the introduction as a stranger.
3496
3497 "I believe we've met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan."
3498
3499 "Oh, yes," said Tom, gruffly polite but obviously not remembering.
3500 "So we did. I remember very well."
3501
3502 "About two weeks ago."
3503
3504 "That's right. You were with Nick here."
3505
3506 "I know your wife," continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.
3507
3508 "That so?"
3509
3510 Tom turned to me.
3511
3512 "You live near here, Nick?"
3513
3514 "Next door."
3515
3516 "That so?"
3517
3518 Mr. Sloane didn't enter into the conversation but lounged back haughtily
3519 in his chair; the woman said nothing either--until unexpectedly, after
3520 two highballs, she became cordial.
3521
3522 "We'll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby," she suggested.
3523 "What do you say?"
3524
3525 "Certainly. I'd be delighted to have you."
3526
3527 "Be ver' nice," said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. "Well--think ought to
3528 be starting home."
3529
3530 "Please don't hurry," Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now
3531 and he wanted to see more of Tom. "Why don't you--why don't you stay for
3532 supper? I wouldn't be surprised if some other people dropped in from
3533 New York."
3534
3535 "You come to supper with ME," said the lady enthusiastically.
3536 "Both of you."
3537
3538 This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.
3539
3540 "Come along," he said--but to her only.
3541
3542 "I mean it," she insisted. "I'd love to have you. Lots of room."
3543
3544 Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn't see
3545 that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn't.
3546
3547 "I'm afraid I won't be able to," I said.
3548
3549 "Well, you come," she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.
3550
3551 Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.
3552
3553 "We won't be late if we start now," she insisted aloud.
3554
3555 "I haven't got a horse," said Gatsby. "I used to ride in the army but
3556 I've never bought a horse. I'll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me
3557 for just a minute."
3558
3559 The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began
3560 an impassioned conversation aside.
3561
3562 "My God, I believe the man's coming," said Tom. "Doesn't he know she
3563 doesn't want him?"
3564
3565 "She says she does want him."
3566
3567 "She has a big dinner party and he won't know a soul there." He frowned.
3568 "I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be
3569 old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to
3570 suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish."
3571
3572 Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted
3573 their horses.
3574
3575 "Come on," said Mr. Sloane to Tom, "we're late. We've got to go." And then
3576 to me: "Tell him we couldn't wait, will you?"
3577
3578 Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod and
3579 they trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August
3580 foliage just as Gatsby with hat and light overcoat in hand came out
3581 the front door.
3582
3583 Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the
3584 following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Perhaps
3585 his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness--it
3586 stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. There
3587 were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same
3588 profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion,
3589 but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that
3590 hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it,
3591 grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own
3592 standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had
3593 no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again,
3594 through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new
3595 eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of
3596 adjustment.
3597
3598 They arrived at twilight and as we strolled out among the sparkling
3599 hundreds Daisy's voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
3600
3601 "These things excite me SO," she whispered. "If you want to kiss me
3602 any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I'll be glad
3603 to arrange it for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green card.
3604 I'm giving out green----"
3605
3606 "Look around," suggested Gatsby.
3607
3608 "I'm looking around. I'm having a marvelous----"
3609
3610 "You must see the faces of many people you've heard about."
3611
3612 Tom's arrogant eyes roamed the crowd.
3613
3614 "We don't go around very much," he said. "In fact I was just thinking
3615 I don't know a soul here."
3616
3617 "Perhaps you know that lady." Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human
3618 orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy
3619 stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the
3620 recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.
3621
3622 "She's lovely," said Daisy.
3623
3624 "The man bending over her is her director."
3625
3626 He took them ceremoniously from group to group:
3627
3628 "Mrs. Buchanan . . . and Mr. Buchanan----" After an instant's hesitation
3629 he added: "the polo player."
3630
3631 "Oh no," objected Tom quickly, "Not me."
3632
3633 But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for Tom remained "the polo
3634 player" for the rest of the evening.
3635
3636 "I've never met so many celebrities!" Daisy exclaimed. "I liked that
3637 man--what was his name?--with the sort of blue nose."
3638
3639 Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.
3640
3641 "Well, I liked him anyhow."
3642
3643 "I'd a little rather not be the polo player," said Tom pleasantly, "I'd
3644 rather look at all these famous people in--in oblivion."
3645
3646 Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised by his graceful,
3647 conservative fox-trot--I had never seen him dance before. Then they
3648 sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour while
3649 at her request I remained watchfully in the garden: "In case there's a
3650 fire or a flood," she explained, "or any act of God."
3651
3652 Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together.
3653 "Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?" he said. "A fellow's
3654 getting off some funny stuff."
3655
3656 "Go ahead," answered Daisy genially, "And if you want to take down any
3657 addresses here's my little gold pencil. . . ." She looked around after
3658 a moment and told me the girl was "common but pretty," and I knew that
3659 except for the half hour she'd been alone with Gatsby she wasn't having
3660 a good time.
3661
3662 We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault--Gatsby had
3663 been called to the phone and I'd enjoyed these same people only two
3664 weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.
3665
3666 "How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?"
3667
3668 The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my
3669 shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.
3670
3671 "Wha?"
3672
3673 A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf
3674 with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker's defence:
3675
3676 "Oh, she's all right now. When she's had five or six cocktails she always
3677 starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone."
3678
3679 "I do leave it alone," affirmed the accused hollowly.
3680
3681 "We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: 'There's somebody
3682 that needs your help, Doc.' "
3683
3684 "She's much obliged, I'm sure," said another friend, without gratitude.
3685 "But you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in the pool."
3686
3687 "Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool," mumbled Miss
3688 Baedeker. "They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey."
3689
3690 "Then you ought to leave it alone," countered Doctor Civet.
3691
3692 "Speak for yourself!" cried Miss Baedeker violently. "Your hand shakes.
3693 I wouldn't let you operate on me!"
3694
3695 It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with
3696 Daisy and watching the moving picture director and his Star. They were
3697 still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except
3698 for a pale thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he
3699 had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this
3700 proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree
3701 and kiss at her cheek.
3702
3703 "I like her," said Daisy, "I think she's lovely."
3704
3705 But the rest offended her--and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but
3706 an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place"
3707 that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village--appalled
3708 by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too
3709 obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing
3710 to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed
3711 to understand.
3712
3713 I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It
3714 was dark here in front: only the bright door sent ten square feet of
3715 light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a shadow
3716 moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow,
3717 an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an
3718 invisible glass.
3719
3720 "Who is this Gatsby anyhow?" demanded Tom suddenly. "Some big bootlegger?"
3721
3722 "Where'd you hear that?" I inquired.
3723
3724 "I didn't hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are
3725 just big bootleggers, you know."
3726
3727 "Not Gatsby," I said shortly.
3728
3729 He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the drive crunched under his
3730 feet.
3731
3732 "Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie
3733 together."
3734
3735 A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy's fur collar.
3736
3737 "At least they're more interesting than the people we know," she said
3738 with an effort.
3739
3740 "You didn't look so interested."
3741
3742 "Well, I was."
3743
3744 Tom laughed and turned to me.
3745
3746 "Did you notice Daisy's face when that girl asked her to put her under
3747 a cold shower?"
3748
3749 Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper,
3750 bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had
3751 before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice
3752 broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and
3753 each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.
3754
3755 "Lots of people come who haven't been invited," she said suddenly.
3756 "That girl hadn't been invited. They simply force their way in and he's
3757 too polite to object."
3758
3759 "I'd like to know who he is and what he does," insisted Tom. "And I think
3760 I'll make a point of finding out."
3761
3762 "I can tell you right now," she answered. "He owned some drug stores,
3763 a lot of drug stores. He built them up himself."
3764
3765 The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.
3766
3767 "Good night, Nick," said Daisy.
3768
3769 Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps where
3770 "Three o'Clock in the Morning," a neat, sad little waltz of that year,
3771 was drifting out the open door. After all, in the very casualness of
3772 Gatsby's party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from
3773 her world. What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling
3774 her back inside? What would happen now in the dim incalculable hours?
3775 Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare
3776 and to be marvelled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with
3777 one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot
3778 out those five years of unwavering devotion.
3779
3780
3781 I stayed late that night. Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free
3782 and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party had run
3783 up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights were
3784 extinguished in the guest rooms overhead. When he came down the steps at
3785 last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face, and his eyes
3786 were bright and tired.
3787
3788 "She didn't like it," he said immediately.
3789
3790 "Of course she did."
3791
3792 "She didn't like it," he insisted. "She didn't have a good time."
3793
3794 He was silent and I guessed at his unutterable depression.
3795
3796 "I feel far away from her," he said. "It's hard to make her understand."
3797
3798 "You mean about the dance?"
3799
3800 "The dance?" He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of
3801 his fingers. "Old sport, the dance is unimportant."
3802
3803 He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say:
3804 "I never loved you." After she had obliterated three years with that
3805 sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken.
3806 One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to
3807 Louisville and be married from her house--just as if it were five
3808 years ago.
3809
3810 "And she doesn't understand," he said. "She used to be able to
3811 understand. We'd sit for hours----"
3812
3813 He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds
3814 and discarded favors and crushed flowers.
3815
3816 "I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."
3817
3818 "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
3819
3820 He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the
3821 shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
3822
3823 "I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said,
3824 nodding determinedly. "She'll see."
3825
3826 He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover
3827 something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.
3828 His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could
3829 once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he
3830 could find out what that thing was. . . .
3831
3832 . . . One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down
3833 the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where
3834 there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight.
3835 They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night
3836 with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of
3837 the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the
3838 darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the
3839 corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really
3840 formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees--he could
3841 climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the
3842 pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
3843
3844 His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his
3845 own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his
3846 unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp
3847 again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer
3848 to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed
3849 her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the
3850 incarnation was complete.
3851
3852 Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was
3853 reminded of something--an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that
3854 I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to
3855 take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though
3856 there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But
3857 they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was
3858 uncommunicable forever.
3859
3860
3861
3862
3863 Chapter 7
3864
3865
3866
3867 It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights
3868 in his house failed to go on one Saturday night--and, as obscurely as it
3869 had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over.
3870
3871 Only gradually did I become aware that the automobiles which turned
3872 expectantly into his drive stayed for just a minute and then drove
3873 sulkily away. Wondering if he were sick I went over to find out--an
3874 unfamiliar butler with a villainous face squinted at me suspiciously
3875 from the door.
3876
3877 "Is Mr. Gatsby sick?"
3878
3879 "Nope." After a pause he added "sir" in a dilatory, grudging way.
3880
3881 "I hadn't seen him around, and I was rather worried. Tell him Mr. Carraway
3882 came over."
3883
3884 "Who?" he demanded rudely.
3885
3886 "Carraway."
3887
3888 "Carraway. All right, I'll tell him." Abruptly he slammed the door.
3889
3890 My Finn informed me that Gatsby had dismissed every servant in his
3891 house a week ago and replaced them with half a dozen others, who never
3892 went into West Egg Village to be bribed by the tradesmen, but ordered
3893 moderate supplies over the telephone. The grocery boy reported that the
3894 kitchen looked like a pigsty, and the general opinion in the village was
3895 that the new people weren't servants at all.
3896
3897 Next day Gatsby called me on the phone.
3898
3899 "Going away?" I inquired.
3900
3901 "No, old sport."
3902
3903 "I hear you fired all your servants."
3904
3905 "I wanted somebody who wouldn't gossip. Daisy comes over quite often--in
3906 the afternoons."
3907
3908 So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the
3909 disapproval in her eyes.
3910
3911 "They're some people Wolfshiem wanted to do something for. They're all
3912 brothers and sisters. They used to run a small hotel."
3913
3914 "I see."
3915
3916 He was calling up at Daisy's request--would I come to lunch at
3917 her house tomorrow? Miss Baker would be there. Half an hour later
3918 Daisy herself telephoned and seemed relieved to find that I was coming.
3919 Something was up. And yet I couldn't believe that they would choose
3920 this occasion for a scene--especially for the rather harrowing scene
3921 that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.
3922
3923 The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest, of
3924 the summer. As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the
3925 hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush
3926 at noon. The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion;
3927 the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into her white
3928 shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her fingers,
3929 lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry. Her pocket-book
3930 slapped to the floor.
3931
3932 "Oh, my!" she gasped.
3933
3934 I picked it up with a weary bend and handed it back to her, holding it
3935 at arm's length and by the extreme tip of the corners to indicate that
3936 I had no designs upon it--but every one near by, including the woman,
3937 suspected me just the same.
3938
3939 "Hot!" said the conductor to familiar faces. "Some weather! Hot! Hot! Hot!
3940 Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it . . . ?"
3941
3942 My commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand.
3943 That any one should care in this heat whose flushed lips he kissed,
3944 whose head made damp the pajama pocket over his heart!
3945
3946 . . . Through the hall of the Buchanans' house blew a faint wind,
3947 carrying the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as we
3948 waited at the door.
3949
3950 "The master's body!" roared the butler into the mouthpiece. "I'm sorry,
3951 madame, but we can't furnish it--it's far too hot to touch this noon!"
3952
3953 What he really said was: "Yes . . . yes . . . I'll see."
3954
3955 He set down the receiver and came toward us, glistening slightly, to take
3956 our stiff straw hats.
3957
3958 "Madame expects you in the salon!" he cried, needlessly indicating the
3959 direction. In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the
3960 common store of life.
3961
3962 The room, shadowed well with awnings, was dark and cool. Daisy and
3963 Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols, weighing down
3964 their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans.
3965
3966 "We can't move," they said together.
3967
3968 Jordan's fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a moment in
3969 mine.
3970
3971 "And Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the athlete?" I inquired.
3972
3973 Simultaneously I heard his voice, gruff, muffled, husky, at the hall
3974 telephone.
3975
3976 Gatsby stood in the center of the crimson carpet and gazed around with
3977 fascinated eyes. Daisy watched him and laughed, her sweet, exciting
3978 laugh; a tiny gust of powder rose from her bosom into the air.
3979
3980 "The rumor is," whispered Jordan, "that that's Tom's girl on the
3981 telephone."
3982
3983 We were silent. The voice in the hall rose high with annoyance.
3984 "Very well, then, I won't sell you the car at all. . . . I'm
3985 under no obligations to you at all. . . . And as for your bothering me
3986 about it at lunch time I won't stand that at all!"
3987
3988 "Holding down the receiver," said Daisy cynically.
3989
3990 "No, he's not," I assured her. "It's a bona fide deal. I happen to
3991 know about it."
3992
3993 Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space for a moment with his
3994 thick body, and hurried into the room.
3995
3996 "Mr. Gatsby!" He put out his broad, flat hand with well-concealed
3997 dislike. "I'm glad to see you, sir. . . . Nick. . . ."
3998
3999 "Make us a cold drink," cried Daisy.
4000
4001 As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and pulled
4002 his face down kissing him on the mouth.
4003
4004 "You know I love you," she murmured.
4005
4006 "You forget there's a lady present," said Jordan.
4007
4008 Daisy looked around doubtfully.
4009
4010 "You kiss Nick too."
4011
4012 "What a low, vulgar girl!"
4013
4014 "I don't care!" cried Daisy and began to clog on the brick fireplace.
4015 Then she remembered the heat and sat down guiltily on the couch just as
4016 a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came into the room.
4017
4018 "Bles-sed pre-cious," she crooned, holding out her arms. "Come to your
4019 own mother that loves you."
4020
4021 The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across the room and rooted
4022 shyly into her mother's dress.
4023
4024 "The Bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your old yellowy
4025 hair? Stand up now, and say How-de-do."
4026
4027 Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small reluctant hand.
4028 Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don't think he had
4029 ever really believed in its existence before.
4030
4031 "I got dressed before luncheon," said the child, turning eagerly to
4032 Daisy.
4033
4034 "That's because your mother wanted to show you off." Her face bent into
4035 the single wrinkle of the small white neck. "You dream, you. You absolute
4036 little dream."
4037
4038 "Yes," admitted the child calmly. "Aunt Jordan's got on a white
4039 dress too."
4040
4041 "How do you like mother's friends?" Daisy turned her around so that she
4042 faced Gatsby. "Do you think they're pretty?"
4043
4044 "Where's Daddy?"
4045
4046 "She doesn't look like her father," explained Daisy. "She looks like me.
4047 She's got my hair and shape of the face."
4048
4049 Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took a step forward and held
4050 out her hand.
4051
4052 "Come, Pammy."
4053
4054 "Goodbye, sweetheart!"
4055
4056 With a reluctant backward glance the well-disciplined child held to her
4057 nurse's hand and was pulled out the door, just as Tom came back,
4058 preceding four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice.
4059
4060 Gatsby took up his drink.
4061
4062 "They certainly look cool," he said, with visible tension.
4063
4064 We drank in long greedy swallows.
4065
4066 "I read somewhere that the sun's getting hotter every year," said Tom
4067 genially. "It seems that pretty soon the earth's going to fall into the
4068 sun--or wait a minute--it's just the opposite--the sun's getting colder
4069 every year.
4070
4071 "Come outside," he suggested to Gatsby, "I'd like you to have a look at
4072 the place."
4073
4074 I went with them out to the veranda. On the green Sound, stagnant in the
4075 heat, one small sail crawled slowly toward the fresher sea. Gatsby's eyes
4076 followed it momentarily; he raised his hand and pointed across the bay.
4077
4078 "I'm right across from you."
4079
4080 "So you are."
4081
4082 Our eyes lifted over the rosebeds and the hot lawn and the weedy refuse
4083 of the dog days along shore. Slowly the white wings of the boat moved
4084 against the blue cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay the scalloped ocean and
4085 the abounding blessed isles.
4086
4087 "There's sport for you," said Tom, nodding. "I'd like to be out there
4088 with him for about an hour."
4089
4090 We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened, too, against the heat,
4091 and drank down nervous gayety with the cold ale.
4092
4093 "What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the
4094 day after that, and the next thirty years?"
4095
4096 "Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets
4097 crisp in the fall."
4098
4099 "But it's so hot," insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, "And
4100 everything's so confused. Let's all go to town!"
4101
4102 Her voice struggled on through the heat, beating against it, moulding its
4103 senselessness into forms.
4104
4105 "I've heard of making a garage out of a stable," Tom was saying to
4106 Gatsby, "but I'm the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage."
4107
4108 "Who wants to go to town?" demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby's eyes
4109 floated toward her. "Ah," she cried, "you look so cool."
4110
4111 Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space.
4112 With an effort she glanced down at the table.
4113
4114 "You always look so cool," she repeated.
4115
4116 She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was
4117 astounded. His mouth opened a little and he looked at Gatsby and then
4118 back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as some one he knew a
4119 long time ago.
4120
4121 "You resemble the advertisement of the man," she went on innocently.
4122 "You know the advertisement of the man----"
4123
4124 "All right," broke in Tom quickly, "I'm perfectly willing to go to
4125 town. Come on--we're all going to town."
4126
4127 He got up, his eyes still flashing between Gatsby and his wife.
4128 No one moved.
4129
4130 "Come on!" His temper cracked a little. "What's the matter, anyhow?
4131 If we're going to town let's start."
4132
4133 His hand, trembling with his effort at self control, bore to his lips the
4134 last of his glass of ale. Daisy's voice got us to our feet and out on
4135 to the blazing gravel drive.
4136
4137 "Are we just going to go?" she objected. "Like this? Aren't we going to
4138 let any one smoke a cigarette first?"
4139
4140 "Everybody smoked all through lunch."
4141
4142 "Oh, let's have fun," she begged him. "It's too hot to fuss."
4143
4144 He didn't answer.
4145
4146 "Have it your own way," she said. "Come on, Jordan."
4147
4148 They went upstairs to get ready while we three men stood there shuffling
4149 the hot pebbles with our feet. A silver curve of the moon hovered already
4150 in the western sky. Gatsby started to speak, changed his mind, but not
4151 before Tom wheeled and faced him expectantly.
4152
4153 "Have you got your stables here?" asked Gatsby with an effort.
4154
4155 "About a quarter of a mile down the road."
4156
4157 "Oh."
4158
4159 A pause.
4160
4161 "I don't see the idea of going to town," broke out Tom savagely.
4162 "Women get these notions in their heads----"
4163
4164 "Shall we take anything to drink?" called Daisy from an upper window.
4165
4166 "I'll get some whiskey," answered Tom. He went inside.
4167
4168 Gatsby turned to me rigidly:
4169
4170 "I can't say anything in his house, old sport."
4171
4172 "She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked. "It's full of----"
4173
4174 I hesitated.
4175
4176 "Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.
4177
4178 That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money--that was
4179 the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the
4180 cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter,
4181 the golden girl. . . .
4182
4183 Tom came out of the house wrapping a quart bottle in a towel, followed
4184 by Daisy and Jordan wearing small tight hats of metallic cloth and
4185 carrying light capes over their arms.
4186
4187 "Shall we all go in my car?" suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot, green
4188 leather of the seat. "I ought to have left it in the shade."
4189
4190 "Is it standard shift?" demanded Tom.
4191
4192 "Yes."
4193
4194 "Well, you take my coupé and let me drive your car to town."
4195
4196 The suggestion was distasteful to Gatsby.
4197
4198 "I don't think there's much gas," he objected.
4199
4200 "Plenty of gas," said Tom boisterously. He looked at the gauge.
4201 "And if it runs out I can stop at a drug store. You can buy anything at a
4202 drug store nowadays."
4203
4204 A pause followed this apparently pointless remark. Daisy looked at Tom
4205 frowning and an indefinable expression, at once definitely unfamiliar
4206 and vaguely recognizable, as if I had only heard it described in words,
4207 passed over Gatsby's face.
4208
4209 "Come on, Daisy," said Tom, pressing her with his hand toward Gatsby's
4210 car. "I'll take you in this circus wagon."
4211
4212 He opened the door but she moved out from the circle of his arm.
4213
4214 "You take Nick and Jordan. We'll follow you in the coupé."
4215
4216 She walked close to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand. Jordan and
4217 Tom and I got into the front seat of Gatsby's car, Tom pushed the
4218 unfamiliar gears tentatively and we shot off into the oppressive heat
4219 leaving them out of sight behind.
4220
4221 "Did you see that?" demanded Tom.
4222
4223 "See what?"
4224
4225 He looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and I must have known all
4226 along.
4227
4228 "You think I'm pretty dumb, don't you?" he suggested. "Perhaps I am, but
4229 I have a--almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do.
4230 Maybe you don't believe that, but science----"
4231
4232 He paused. The immediate contingency overtook him, pulled him back from
4233 the edge of the theoretical abyss.
4234
4235 "I've made a small investigation of this fellow," he continued. "I could
4236 have gone deeper if I'd known----"
4237
4238 "Do you mean you've been to a medium?" inquired Jordan humorously.
4239
4240 "What?" Confused, he stared at us as we laughed. "A medium?"
4241
4242 "About Gatsby."
4243
4244 "About Gatsby! No, I haven't. I said I'd been making a small
4245 investigation of his past."
4246
4247 "And you found he was an Oxford man," said Jordan helpfully.
4248
4249 "An Oxford man!" He was incredulous. "Like hell he is! He wears a
4250 pink suit."
4251
4252 "Nevertheless he's an Oxford man."
4253
4254 "Oxford, New Mexico," snorted Tom contemptuously, "or something like
4255 that."
4256
4257 "Listen, Tom. If you're such a snob, why did you invite him to lunch?"
4258 demanded Jordan crossly.
4259
4260 "Daisy invited him; she knew him before we were married--God knows
4261 where!"
4262
4263 We were all irritable now with the fading ale and, aware of it,
4264 we drove for a while in silence. Then as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's faded
4265 eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby's caution about
4266 gasoline.
4267
4268 "We've got enough to get us to town," said Tom.
4269
4270 "But there's a garage right here," objected Jordan. "I don't want to get
4271 stalled in this baking heat."
4272
4273 Tom threw on both brakes impatiently and we slid to an abrupt
4274 dusty stop under Wilson's sign. After a moment the proprietor emerged
4275 from the interior of his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at the car.
4276
4277 "Let's have some gas!" cried Tom roughly. "What do you think we stopped
4278 for--to admire the view?"
4279
4280 "I'm sick," said Wilson without moving. "I been sick all day."
4281
4282 "What's the matter?"
4283
4284 "I'm all run down."
4285
4286 "Well, shall I help myself?" Tom demanded. "You sounded well enough
4287 on the phone."
4288
4289 With an effort Wilson left the shade and support of the doorway and,
4290 breathing hard, unscrewed the cap of the tank. In the sunlight his face
4291 was green.
4292
4293 "I didn't mean to interrupt your lunch," he said. "But I need money
4294 pretty bad and I was wondering what you were going to do with your
4295 old car."
4296
4297 "How do you like this one?" inquired Tom. "I bought it last week."
4298
4299 "It's a nice yellow one," said Wilson, as he strained at the handle.
4300
4301 "Like to buy it?"
4302
4303 "Big chance," Wilson smiled faintly. "No, but I could make some money
4304 on the other."
4305
4306 "What do you want money for, all of a sudden?"
4307
4308 "I've been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want to
4309 go west."
4310
4311 "Your wife does!" exclaimed Tom, startled.
4312
4313 "She's been talking about it for ten years." He rested for a moment
4314 against the pump, shading his eyes. "And now she's going whether she wants
4315 to or not. I'm going to get her away."
4316
4317 The coupé flashed by us with a flurry of dust and the flash of a
4318 waving hand.
4319
4320 "What do I owe you?" demanded Tom harshly.
4321
4322 "I just got wised up to something funny the last two days," remarked
4323 Wilson. "That's why I want to get away. That's why I been bothering you
4324 about the car."
4325
4326 "What do I owe you?"
4327
4328 "Dollar twenty."
4329
4330 The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had
4331 a bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions
4332 hadn't alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some
4333 sort of life apart from him in another world and the shock had
4334 made him physically sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made
4335 a parallel discovery less than an hour before--and it occurred to me
4336 that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so
4337 profound as the difference between the sick and the well. Wilson was so
4338 sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty--as if he had just got
4339 some poor girl with child.
4340
4341 "I'll let you have that car," said Tom. "I'll send it over tomorrow
4342 afternoon."
4343
4344 That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad
4345 glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been
4346 warned of something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of
4347 Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil but I perceived, after
4348 a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity
4349 from less than twenty feet away.
4350
4351 In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved aside
4352 a little and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car. So engrossed
4353 was she that she had no consciousness of being observed and one
4354 emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly
4355 developing picture. Her expression was curiously familiar--it was an
4356 expression I had often seen on women's faces but on Myrtle Wilson's
4357 face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized that her
4358 eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan
4359 Baker, whom she took to be his wife.
4360
4361
4362 There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we
4363 drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his
4364 mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping
4365 precipitately from his control. Instinct made him step on the
4366 accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving
4367 Wilson behind, and we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an hour,
4368 until, among the spidery girders of the elevated, we came in sight of
4369 the easygoing blue coupé.
4370
4371 "Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool," suggested Jordan.
4372 "I love New York on summer afternoons when every one's away. There's
4373 something very sensuous about it--overripe, as if all sorts of funny
4374 fruits were going to fall into your hands."
4375
4376 The word "sensuous" had the effect of further disquieting Tom but before
4377 he could invent a protest the coupé came to a stop and Daisy signalled us
4378 to draw up alongside.
4379
4380 "Where are we going?" she cried.
4381
4382 "How about the movies?"
4383
4384 "It's so hot," she complained. "You go. We'll ride around and meet you
4385 after." With an effort her wit rose faintly, "We'll meet you on some
4386 corner. I'll be the man smoking two cigarettes."
4387
4388 "We can't argue about it here," Tom said impatiently as a truck gave
4389 out a cursing whistle behind us. "You follow me to the south side of
4390 Central Park, in front of the Plaza."
4391
4392 Several times he turned his head and looked back for their car,
4393 and if the traffic delayed them he slowed up until they came into
4394 sight. I think he was afraid they would dart down a side street and out
4395 of his life forever.
4396
4397 But they didn't. And we all took the less explicable step of engaging
4398 the parlor of a suite in the Plaza Hotel.
4399
4400 The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into
4401 that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the
4402 course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my
4403 legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back. The
4404 notion originated with Daisy's suggestion that we hire five bathrooms
4405 and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as "a place to
4406 have a mint julep." Each of us said over and over that it was a "crazy
4407 idea"--we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and thought, or
4408 pretended to think, that we were being very funny. . . .
4409
4410 The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four
4411 o'clock, opening the windows admitted only a gust of hot shrubbery from
4412 the Park. Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to us,
4413 fixing her hair.
4414
4415 "It's a swell suite," whispered Jordan respectfully and every one
4416 laughed.
4417
4418 "Open another window," commanded Daisy, without turning around.
4419
4420 "There aren't any more."
4421
4422 "Well, we'd better telephone for an axe----"
4423
4424 "The thing to do is to forget about the heat," said Tom impatiently.
4425 "You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it."
4426
4427 He unrolled the bottle of whiskey from the towel and put it on the table.
4428
4429 "Why not let her alone, old sport?" remarked Gatsby. "You're the one that
4430 wanted to come to town."
4431
4432 There was a moment of silence. The telephone book slipped from its nail
4433 and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered "Excuse me"--but
4434 this time no one laughed.
4435
4436 "I'll pick it up," I offered.
4437
4438 "I've got it." Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered "Hum!" in an
4439 interested way, and tossed the book on a chair.
4440
4441 "That's a great expression of yours, isn't it?" said Tom sharply.
4442
4443 "What is?"
4444
4445 "All this 'old sport' business. Where'd you pick that up?"
4446
4447 "Now see here, Tom," said Daisy, turning around from the mirror, "if
4448 you're going to make personal remarks I won't stay here a minute. Call
4449 up and order some ice for the mint julep."
4450
4451 As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and
4452 we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March
4453 from the ballroom below.
4454
4455 "Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!" cried Jordan dismally.
4456
4457 "Still--I was married in the middle of June," Daisy remembered,
4458 "Louisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?"
4459
4460 "Biloxi," he answered shortly.
4461
4462 "A man named Biloxi. 'Blocks' Biloxi, and he made boxes--that's a
4463 fact--and he was from Biloxi, Tennessee."
4464
4465 "They carried him into my house," appended Jordan, "because we lived
4466 just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy
4467 told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy died." After a
4468 moment she added as if she might have sounded irreverent, "There
4469 wasn't any connection."
4470
4471 "I used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis," I remarked.
4472
4473 "That was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he left.
4474 He gave me an aluminum putter that I use today."
4475
4476 The music had died down as the ceremony began and now a long cheer floated
4477 in at the window, followed by intermittent cries of "Yea--ea--ea!"
4478 and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began.
4479
4480 "We're getting old," said Daisy. "If we were young we'd rise and dance."
4481
4482 "Remember Biloxi," Jordan warned her. "Where'd you know him, Tom?"
4483
4484 "Biloxi?" He concentrated with an effort. "I didn't know him. He was a
4485 friend of Daisy's."
4486
4487 "He was not," she denied. "I'd never seen him before. He came down in
4488 the private car."
4489
4490 "Well, he said he knew you. He said he was raised in Louisville.
4491 Asa Bird brought him around at the last minute and asked if we had room
4492 for him."
4493
4494 Jordan smiled.
4495
4496 "He was probably bumming his way home. He told me he was president of
4497 your class at Yale."
4498
4499 Tom and I looked at each other blankly.
4500
4501 "BilOxi?"
4502
4503 "First place, we didn't have any president----"
4504
4505 Gatsby's foot beat a short, restless tattoo and Tom eyed him suddenly.
4506
4507 "By the way, Mr. Gatsby, I understand you're an Oxford man."
4508
4509 "Not exactly."
4510
4511 "Oh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford."
4512
4513 "Yes--I went there."
4514
4515 A pause. Then Tom's voice, incredulous and insulting:
4516
4517 "You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven."
4518
4519 Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint and ice but
4520 the silence was unbroken by his "Thank you" and the soft closing of the
4521 door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared up at last.
4522
4523 "I told you I went there," said Gatsby.
4524
4525 "I heard you, but I'd like to know when."
4526
4527 "It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That's why I
4528 can't really call myself an Oxford man."
4529
4530 Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief. But we were all
4531 looking at Gatsby.
4532
4533 "It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the
4534 Armistice," he continued. "We could go to any of the universities in
4535 England or France."
4536
4537 I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those renewals
4538 of complete faith in him that I'd experienced before.
4539
4540 Daisy rose, smiling faintly, and went to the table.
4541
4542 "Open the whiskey, Tom," she ordered. "And I'll make you a mint julep.
4543 Then you won't seem so stupid to yourself. . . . Look at the mint!"
4544
4545 "Wait a minute," snapped Tom, "I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more
4546 question."
4547
4548 "Go on," Gatsby said politely.
4549
4550 "What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?"
4551
4552 They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.
4553
4554 "He isn't causing a row." Daisy looked desperately from one to the
4555 other. "You're causing a row. Please have a little self control."
4556
4557 "Self control!" repeated Tom incredulously. "I suppose the latest thing
4558 is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.
4559 Well, if that's the idea you can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin
4560 by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they'll
4561 throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black
4562 and white."
4563
4564 Flushed with his impassioned gibberish he saw himself standing alone on
4565 the last barrier of civilization.
4566
4567 "We're all white here," murmured Jordan.
4568
4569 "I know I'm not very popular. I don't give big parties. I suppose
4570 you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any
4571 friends--in the modern world."
4572
4573 Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened
4574 his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.
4575
4576 "I've got something to tell YOU, old sport,----" began Gatsby. But Daisy
4577 guessed at his intention.
4578
4579 "Please don't!" she interrupted helplessly. "Please let's all go home.
4580 Why don't we all go home?"
4581
4582 "That's a good idea." I got up. "Come on, Tom. Nobody wants a drink."
4583
4584 "I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me."
4585
4586 "Your wife doesn't love you," said Gatsby. "She's never loved you.
4587 She loves me."
4588
4589 "You must be crazy!" exclaimed Tom automatically.
4590
4591 Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement.
4592
4593 "She never loved you, do you hear?" he cried. "She only married you
4594 because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible
4595 mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me!"
4596
4597 At this point Jordan and I tried to go but Tom and Gatsby insisted with
4598 competitive firmness that we remain--as though neither of them had
4599 anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously
4600 of their emotions.
4601
4602 "Sit down Daisy." Tom's voice groped unsuccessfully for the paternal
4603 note. "What's been going on? I want to hear all about it."
4604
4605 "I told you what's been going on," said Gatsby. "Going on for five
4606 years--and you didn't know."
4607
4608 Tom turned to Daisy sharply.
4609
4610 "You've been seeing this fellow for five years?"
4611
4612 "Not seeing," said Gatsby. "No, we couldn't meet. But both of us loved
4613 each other all that time, old sport, and you didn't know. I used to laugh
4614 sometimes--"but there was no laughter in his eyes, "to think that you
4615 didn't know."
4616
4617 "Oh--that's all." Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a clergyman
4618 and leaned back in his chair.
4619
4620 "You're crazy!" he exploded. "I can't speak about what happened five years
4621 ago, because I didn't know Daisy then--and I'll be damned if I see how you
4622 got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back
4623 door. But all the rest of that's a God Damned lie. Daisy loved me when
4624 she married me and she loves me now."
4625
4626 "No," said Gatsby, shaking his head.
4627
4628 "She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas
4629 in her head and doesn't know what she's doing." He nodded sagely. "And
4630 what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree
4631 and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I
4632 love her all the time."
4633
4634 "You're revolting," said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice,
4635 dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: "Do you
4636 know why we left Chicago? I'm surprised that they didn't treat you to
4637 the story of that little spree."
4638
4639 Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.
4640
4641 "Daisy, that's all over now," he said earnestly. "It doesn't matter any
4642 more. Just tell him the truth--that you never loved him--and it's all
4643 wiped out forever."
4644
4645 She looked at him blindly. "Why,--how could I love him--possibly?"
4646
4647 "You never loved him."
4648
4649 She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal,
4650 as though she realized at last what she was doing--and as though she had
4651 never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now.
4652 It was too late.
4653
4654 "I never loved him," she said, with perceptible reluctance.
4655
4656 "Not at Kapiolani?" demanded Tom suddenly.
4657
4658 "No."
4659
4660 From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up
4661 on hot waves of air.
4662
4663 "Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes
4664 dry?" There was a husky tenderness in his tone. ". . . Daisy?"
4665
4666 "Please don't." Her voice was cold, but the rancour was gone from it.
4667 She looked at Gatsby. "There, Jay," she said--but her hand as she tried
4668 to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette and
4669 the burning match on the carpet.
4670
4671 "Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now--isn't that
4672 enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly.
4673 "I did love him once--but I loved you too."
4674
4675 Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.
4676
4677 "You loved me TOO?" he repeated.
4678
4679 "Even that's a lie," said Tom savagely. "She didn't know you were alive.
4680 Why,--there're things between Daisy and me that you'll never know,
4681 things that neither of us can ever forget."
4682
4683 The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
4684
4685 "I want to speak to Daisy alone," he insisted. "She's all excited now----"
4686
4687 "Even alone I can't say I never loved Tom," she admitted in a pitiful
4688 voice. "It wouldn't be true."
4689
4690 "Of course it wouldn't," agreed Tom.
4691
4692 She turned to her husband.
4693
4694 "As if it mattered to you," she said.
4695
4696 "Of course it matters. I'm going to take better care of you from now on."
4697
4698 "You don't understand," said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. "You're not
4699 going to take care of her any more."
4700
4701 "I'm not?" Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to
4702 control himself now. "Why's that?"
4703
4704 "Daisy's leaving you."
4705
4706 "Nonsense."
4707
4708 "I am, though," she said with a visible effort.
4709
4710 "She's not leaving me!" Tom's words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby.
4711 "Certainly not for a common swindler who'd have to steal the ring he
4712 put on her finger."
4713
4714 "I won't stand this!" cried Daisy. "Oh, please let's get out."
4715
4716 "Who are you, anyhow?" broke out Tom. "You're one of that bunch that
4717 hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem--that much I happen to know. I've made
4718 a little investigation into your affairs--and I'll carry it further
4719 tomorrow."
4720
4721 "You can suit yourself about that, old sport." said Gatsby steadily.
4722
4723 "I found out what your 'drug stores' were." He turned to us and spoke
4724 rapidly. "He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug stores
4725 here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of
4726 his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw
4727 him and I wasn't far wrong."
4728
4729 "What about it?" said Gatsby politely. "I guess your friend Walter Chase
4730 wasn't too proud to come in on it."
4731
4732 "And you left him in the lurch, didn't you? You let him go to jail for
4733 a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the subject
4734 of YOU."
4735
4736 "He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old
4737 sport."
4738
4739 "Don't you call me 'old sport'!" cried Tom. Gatsby said nothing.
4740 "Walter could have you up on the betting laws too, but Wolfshiem scared
4741 him into shutting his mouth."
4742
4743 That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsby's face.
4744
4745 "That drug store business was just small change," continued Tom slowly,
4746 "but you've got something on now that Walter's afraid to tell me
4747 about."
4748
4749 I glanced at Daisy who was staring terrified between Gatsby
4750 and her husband and at Jordan who had begun to balance an invisible
4751 but absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to
4752 Gatsby--and was startled at his expression. He looked--and this is said
4753 in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden--as if he had
4754 "killed a man." For a moment the set of his face could be described in
4755 just that fantastic way.
4756
4757 It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything,
4758 defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with
4759 every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave
4760 that up and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped
4761 away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling
4762 unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.
4763
4764 The voice begged again to go.
4765
4766 "PLEASE, Tom! I can't stand this any more."
4767
4768 Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage
4769 she had had, were definitely gone.
4770
4771 "You two start on home, Daisy," said Tom. "In Mr. Gatsby's car."
4772
4773 She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.
4774
4775 "Go on. He won't annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous
4776 little flirtation is over."
4777
4778 They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated,
4779 like ghosts even from our pity.
4780
4781 After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of
4782 whiskey in the towel.
4783
4784 "Want any of this stuff? Jordan? . . . Nick?"
4785
4786 I didn't answer.
4787
4788 "Nick?" He asked again.
4789
4790 "What?"
4791
4792 "Want any?"
4793
4794 "No . . . I just remembered that today's my birthday."
4795
4796 I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous menacing road of a
4797 new decade.
4798
4799 It was seven o'clock when we got into the coupé with him and started
4800 for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his
4801 voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamor on the
4802 sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy
4803 has its limits and we were content to let all their tragic arguments
4804 fade with the city lights behind. Thirty--the promise of a decade
4805 of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning
4806 brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside
4807 me who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten
4808 dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face
4809 fell lazily against my coat's shoulder and the formidable stroke of
4810 thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.
4811
4812 So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
4813
4814
4815 The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the
4816 ashheaps was the principal witness at the inquest. He had slept through
4817 the heat until after five, when he strolled over to the garage and
4818 found George Wilson sick in his office--really sick, pale as his own
4819 pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go to bed but
4820 Wilson refused, saying that he'd miss a lot of business if he did.
4821 While his neighbor was trying to persuade him a violent racket broke
4822 out overhead.
4823
4824 "I've got my wife locked in up there," explained Wilson calmly.
4825 "She's going to stay there till the day after tomorrow and then we're
4826 going to move away."
4827
4828 Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbors for four years and
4829 Wilson had never seemed faintly capable of such a statement. Generally
4830 he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn't working he sat on a
4831 chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed
4832 along the road. When any one spoke to him he invariably laughed in an
4833 agreeable, colorless way. He was his wife's man and not his own.
4834
4835 So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson
4836 wouldn't say a word--instead he began to throw curious, suspicious
4837 glances at his visitor and ask him what he'd been doing at certain
4838 times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy some
4839 workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant and Michaelis took
4840 the opportunity to get away, intending to come back later. But he didn't.
4841 He supposed he forgot to, that's all. When he came outside again
4842 a little after seven he was reminded of the conversation because he
4843 heard Mrs. Wilson's voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in the garage.
4844
4845 "Beat me!" he heard her cry. "Throw me down and beat me, you dirty
4846 little coward!"
4847
4848 A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and
4849 shouting; before he could move from his door the business was over.
4850
4851 The "death car" as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out
4852 of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then
4853 disappeared around the next bend. Michaelis wasn't even sure of its
4854 color--he told the first policeman that it was light green. The other
4855 car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards
4856 beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life
4857 violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark
4858 blood with the dust.
4859
4860 Michaelis and this man reached her first but when they had torn open
4861 her shirtwaist still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left
4862 breast was swinging loose like a flap and there was no need to listen
4863 for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the
4864 corners as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous
4865 vitality she had stored so long.
4866
4867
4868 We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still
4869 some distance away.
4870
4871 "Wreck!" said Tom. "That's good. Wilson'll have a little business
4872 at last."
4873
4874 He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping until,
4875 as we came nearer, the hushed intent faces of the people at the garage
4876 door made him automatically put on the brakes.
4877
4878 "We'll take a look," he said doubtfully, "just a look."
4879
4880 I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued incessantly
4881 from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coupé and walked
4882 toward the door resolved itself into the words "Oh, my God!" uttered over
4883 and over in a gasping moan.
4884
4885 "There's some bad trouble here," said Tom excitedly.
4886
4887 He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle of heads into the
4888 garage which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging wire basket
4889 overhead. Then he made a harsh sound in his throat and with a violent
4890 thrusting movement of his powerful arms pushed his way through.
4891
4892 The circle closed up again with a running murmur of expostulation; it
4893 was a minute before I could see anything at all. Then new arrivals
4894 disarranged the line and Jordan and I were pushed suddenly inside.
4895
4896 Myrtle Wilson's body wrapped in a blanket and then in another
4897 blanket as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night lay on a
4898 work table by the wall and Tom, with his back to us, was bending over
4899 it, motionless. Next to him stood a motorcycle policeman taking down
4900 names with much sweat and correction in a little book. At first I
4901 couldn't find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed
4902 clamorously through the bare garage--then I saw Wilson standing on the
4903 raised threshold of his office, swaying back and forth and holding to
4904 the doorposts with both hands. Some man was talking to him in a low
4905 voice and attempting from time to time to lay a hand on his shoulder,
4906 but Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would drop slowly from the
4907 swinging light to the laden table by the wall and then jerk back to
4908 the light again and he gave out incessantly his high horrible call.
4909
4910 "O, my Ga-od! O, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!"
4911
4912 Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and after staring around the
4913 garage with glazed eyes addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to the
4914 policeman.
4915
4916 "M-a-v--" the policeman was saying, "--o----"
4917
4918 "No,--r--" corrected the man, "M-a-v-r-o----"
4919
4920 "Listen to me!" muttered Tom fiercely.
4921
4922 "r--" said the policeman, "o----"
4923
4924 "g----"
4925
4926 "g--" He looked up as Tom's broad hand fell sharply on his shoulder.
4927 "What you want, fella?"
4928
4929 "What happened--that's what I want to know!"
4930
4931 "Auto hit her. Ins'antly killed."
4932
4933 "Instantly killed," repeated Tom, staring.
4934
4935 "She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn't even stopus car."
4936
4937 "There was two cars," said Michaelis, "one comin', one goin', see?"
4938
4939 "Going where?" asked the policeman keenly.
4940
4941 "One goin' each way. Well, she--" His hand rose toward the blankets but
4942 stopped half way and fell to his side, "--she ran out there an' the one
4943 comin' from N'York knock right into her goin' thirty or forty miles an
4944 hour."
4945
4946 "What's the name of this place here?" demanded the officer.
4947
4948 "Hasn't got any name."
4949
4950 A pale, well-dressed Negro stepped near.
4951
4952 "It was a yellow car," he said, "big yellow car. New."
4953
4954 "See the accident?" asked the policeman.
4955
4956 "No, but the car passed me down the road, going faster'n forty. Going
4957 fifty, sixty."
4958
4959 "Come here and let's have your name. Look out now. I want to get his
4960 name."
4961
4962 Some words of this conversation must have reached Wilson swaying
4963 in the office door, for suddenly a new theme found voice among
4964 his gasping cries.
4965
4966 "You don't have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind of
4967 car it was!"
4968
4969 Watching Tom I saw the wad of muscle back of his shoulder tighten
4970 under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wilson and standing
4971 in front of him seized him firmly by the upper arms.
4972
4973 "You've got to pull yourself together," he said with soothing
4974 gruffness.
4975
4976 Wilson's eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tiptoes and then
4977 would have collapsed to his knees had not Tom held him upright.
4978
4979 "Listen," said Tom, shaking him a little. "I just got here a minute ago,
4980 from New York. I was bringing you that coupé we've been talking about.
4981 That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn't mine, do you hear? I
4982 haven't seen it all afternoon."
4983
4984 Only the Negro and I were near enough to hear what he said but the
4985 policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with truculent
4986 eyes.
4987
4988 "What's all that?" he demanded.
4989
4990 "I'm a friend of his." Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on
4991 Wilson's body. "He says he knows the car that did it. . . . It was a yellow
4992 car."
4993
4994 Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look suspiciously at Tom.
4995
4996 "And what color's your car?"
4997
4998 "It's a blue car, a coupé."
4999
5000 "We've come straight from New York," I said.
5001
5002 Some one who had been driving a little behind us confirmed this and
5003 the policeman turned away.
5004
5005 "Now, if you'll let me have that name again correct----"
5006
5007 Picking up Wilson like a doll Tom carried him into the office,
5008 set him down in a chair and came back.
5009
5010 "If somebody'll come here and sit with him!" he snapped
5011 authoritatively. He watched while the two men standing closest glanced
5012 at each other and went unwillingly into the room. Then Tom shut the
5013 door on them and came down the single step, his eyes avoiding the
5014 table. As he passed close to me he whispered "Let's get out."
5015
5016 Self consciously, with his authoritative arms breaking the way, we
5017 pushed through the still gathering crowd, passing a hurried doctor,
5018 case in hand, who had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago.
5019
5020 Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend--then his foot came down
5021 hard and the coupé raced along through the night. In a little while I
5022 heard a low husky sob and saw that the tears were overflowing down his
5023 face.
5024
5025 "The God Damn coward!" he whimpered. "He didn't even stop his car."
5026
5027
5028 The Buchanans' house floated suddenly toward us through the dark rustling
5029 trees. Tom stopped beside the porch and looked up at the second floor
5030 where two windows bloomed with light among the vines.
5031
5032 "Daisy's home," he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me and
5033 frowned slightly.
5034
5035 "I ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There's nothing we can
5036 do tonight."
5037
5038 A change had come over him and he spoke gravely, and with decision.
5039 As we walked across the moonlight gravel to the porch he disposed of
5040 the situation in a few brisk phrases.
5041
5042 "I'll telephone for a taxi to take you home, and while you're waiting
5043 you and Jordan better go in the kitchen and have them get you some
5044 supper--if you want any." He opened the door. "Come in."
5045
5046 "No thanks. But I'd be glad if you'd order me the taxi. I'll wait
5047 outside."
5048
5049 Jordan put her hand on my arm.
5050
5051 "Won't you come in, Nick?"
5052
5053 "No thanks."
5054
5055 I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jordan lingered
5056 for a moment more.
5057
5058 "It's only half past nine," she said.
5059
5060 I'd be damned if I'd go in; I'd had enough of all of them for one day
5061 and suddenly that included Jordan too. She must have seen something of
5062 this in my expression for she turned abruptly away and ran up the
5063 porch steps into the house. I sat down for a few minutes with my head
5064 in my hands, until I heard the phone taken up inside and the butler's
5065 voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the drive away from the
5066 house intending to wait by the gate.
5067
5068 I hadn't gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped from
5069 between two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird by that
5070 time because I could think of nothing except the luminosity of his
5071 pink suit under the moon.
5072
5073 "What are you doing?" I inquired.
5074
5075 "Just standing here, old sport."
5076
5077 Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he was going
5078 to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn't have been surprised to see
5079 sinister faces, the faces of "Wolfshiem's people," behind him in the
5080 dark shrubbery.
5081
5082 "Did you see any trouble on the road?" he asked after a minute.
5083
5084 "Yes."
5085
5086 He hesitated.
5087
5088 "Was she killed?"
5089
5090 "Yes."
5091
5092 "I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It's better that the shock
5093 should all come at once. She stood it pretty well."
5094
5095 He spoke as if Daisy's reaction was the only thing that mattered.
5096
5097 "I got to West Egg by a side road," he went on, "and left the car in my
5098 garage. I don't think anybody saw us but of course I can't be sure."
5099
5100 I disliked him so much by this time that I didn't find it necessary to
5101 tell him he was wrong.
5102
5103 "Who was the woman?" he inquired.
5104
5105 "Her name was Wilson. Her husband owns the garage. How the devil did it
5106 happen?"
5107
5108 "Well, I tried to swing the wheel----" He broke off, and suddenly I
5109 guessed at the truth.
5110
5111 "Was Daisy driving?"
5112
5113 "Yes," he said after a moment, "but of course I'll say I was. You see,
5114 when we left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would
5115 steady her to drive--and this woman rushed out at us just as we were
5116 passing a car coming the other way. It all happened in a minute but it
5117 seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were somebody
5118 she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward the other
5119 car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back. The second my hand
5120 reached the wheel I felt the shock--it must have killed her instantly."
5121
5122 "It ripped her open----"
5123
5124 "Don't tell me, old sport." He winced. "Anyhow--Daisy stepped on it.
5125 I tried to make her stop, but she couldn't so I pulled on the emergency
5126 brake. Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on.
5127
5128 "She'll be all right tomorrow," he said presently. "I'm just going to
5129 wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness
5130 this afternoon. She's locked herself into her room and if he tries any
5131 brutality she's going to turn the light out and on again."
5132
5133 "He won't touch her," I said. "He's not thinking about her."
5134
5135 "I don't trust him, old sport."
5136
5137 "How long are you going to wait?"
5138
5139 "All night if necessary. Anyhow till they all go to bed."
5140
5141 A new point of view occurred to me. Suppose Tom found out that Daisy had
5142 been driving. He might think he saw a connection in it--he might think
5143 anything. I looked at the house: there were two or three bright windows
5144 downstairs and the pink glow from Daisy's room on the second floor.
5145
5146 "You wait here," I said. "I'll see if there's any sign of a commotion."
5147
5148 I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel softly
5149 and tiptoed up the veranda steps. The drawing-room curtains were open,
5150 and I saw that the room was empty. Crossing the porch where we had dined
5151 that June night three months before I came to a small rectangle of light
5152 which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind was drawn but I found
5153 a rift at the sill.
5154
5155 Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table
5156 with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of
5157 ale. He was talking intently across the table at her and in his
5158 earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a
5159 while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.
5160
5161 They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the
5162 ale--and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air
5163 of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that
5164 they were conspiring together.
5165
5166 As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the
5167 dark road toward the house. Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in
5168 the drive.
5169
5170 "Is it all quiet up there?" he asked anxiously.
5171
5172 "Yes, it's all quiet." I hesitated. "You'd better come home and get
5173 some sleep."
5174
5175 He shook his head.
5176
5177 "I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport."
5178
5179 He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his
5180 scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of
5181 the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the
5182 moonlight--watching over nothing.
5183
5184
5185
5186
5187 Chapter 8
5188
5189
5190
5191 I couldn't sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the
5192 Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage
5193 frightening dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby's drive
5194 and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress--I felt that I
5195 had something to tell him, something to warn him about and morning
5196 would be too late.
5197
5198 Crossing his lawn I saw that his front door was still open and he was
5199 leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep.
5200
5201 "Nothing happened," he said wanly. "I waited, and about four o'clock she
5202 came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out
5203 the light."
5204
5205 His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we
5206 hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside curtains
5207 that were like pavilions and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for
5208 electric light switches--once I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the
5209 keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount of dust
5210 everywhere and the rooms were musty as though they hadn't been aired for
5211 many days. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table with two stale dry
5212 cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French windows of the
5213 drawing-room we sat smoking out into the darkness.
5214
5215 "You ought to go away," I said. "It's pretty certain they'll trace
5216 your car."
5217
5218 "Go away NOW, old sport?"
5219
5220 "Go to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal."
5221
5222 He wouldn't consider it. He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he knew
5223 what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and I
5224 couldn't bear to shake him free.
5225
5226 It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with
5227 Dan Cody--told it to me because "Jay Gatsby" had broken up like glass
5228 against Tom's hard malice and the long secret extravaganza was played
5229 out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything, now, without
5230 reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.
5231
5232 She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed
5233 capacities he had come in contact with such people but always
5234 with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly
5235 desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers
5236 from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him--he had never been
5237 in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless
5238 intensity was that Daisy lived there--it was as casual a thing to her
5239 as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it,
5240 a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other
5241 bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its
5242 corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in
5243 lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining
5244 motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It
5245 excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy--it increased
5246 her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house,
5247 pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions.
5248
5249 But he knew that he was in Daisy's house by a colossal accident.
5250 However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a
5251 penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible
5252 cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made
5253 the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and
5254 unscrupulously--eventually he took Daisy one still October night,
5255 took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.
5256
5257 He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under
5258 false pretenses. I don't mean that he had traded on his phantom
5259 millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he
5260 let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as
5261 herself--that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of
5262 fact he had no such facilities--he had no comfortable family standing
5263 behind him and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government
5264 to be blown anywhere about the world.
5265
5266 But he didn't despise himself and it didn't turn out as he had
5267 imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go--but
5268 now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail.
5269 He knew that Daisy was extraordinary but he didn't realize just how
5270 extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. She vanished into her rich
5271 house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby--nothing. He felt
5272 married to her, that was all.
5273
5274 When they met again two days later it was Gatsby who was breathless,
5275 who was somehow betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought
5276 luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably
5277 as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth.
5278 She had caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more charming
5279 than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery
5280 that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes
5281 and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot
5282 struggles of the poor.
5283
5284
5285 "I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her,
5286 old sport. I even hoped for a while that she'd throw me over, but she
5287 didn't, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot
5288 because I knew different things from her. . . . Well, there I was,
5289 way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and
5290 all of a sudden I didn't care. What was the use of doing great
5291 things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going
5292 to do?"
5293
5294 On the last afternoon before he went abroad he sat with Daisy in
5295 his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day with fire
5296 in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he
5297 changed his arm a little and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The
5298 afternoon had made them tranquil for a while as if to give them a deep
5299 memory for the long parting the next day promised. They had never been
5300 closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one
5301 with another than when she brushed silent lips against his coat's
5302 shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though
5303 she were asleep.
5304
5305
5306 He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a captain before he went
5307 to the front and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and
5308 the command of the divisional machine guns. After the Armistice
5309 he tried frantically to get home but some complication or
5310 misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now--there
5311 was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters. She didn't see why
5312 he couldn't come. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside
5313 and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be
5314 reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.
5315
5316 For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids
5317 and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of
5318 the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new
5319 tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the
5320 "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver
5321 slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were
5322 always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low sweet fever,
5323 while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the
5324 sad horns around the floor.
5325
5326 Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the
5327 season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with
5328 half a dozen men and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and
5329 chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor
5330 beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a
5331 decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately--and the decision
5332 must be made by some force--of love, of money, of unquestionable
5333 practicality--that was close at hand.
5334
5335 That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom
5336 Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his
5337 position and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain
5338 struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was
5339 still at Oxford.
5340
5341
5342 It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of
5343 the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey turning,
5344 gold turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew
5345 and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a
5346 slow pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool
5347 lovely day.
5348
5349 "I don't think she ever loved him." Gatsby turned around from a window
5350 and looked at me challengingly. "You must remember, old sport, she was
5351 very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that
5352 frightened her--that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper.
5353 And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying."
5354
5355 He sat down gloomily.
5356
5357 "Of course she might have loved him, just for a minute, when they were
5358 first married--and loved me more even then, do you see?"
5359
5360 Suddenly he came out with a curious remark:
5361
5362 "In any case," he said, "it was just personal."
5363
5364 What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in
5365 his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured?
5366
5367 He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding
5368 trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville
5369 on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the
5370 streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the
5371 November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which
5372 they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had always
5373 seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses so his
5374 idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded
5375 with a melancholy beauty.
5376
5377 He left feeling that if he had searched harder he might have found
5378 her--that he was leaving her behind. The day-coach--he was penniless
5379 now--was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a
5380 folding-chair, and the station slid away and the backs of unfamiliar
5381 buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields, where a yellow
5382 trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have
5383 seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street.
5384
5385 The track curved and now it was going away from the sun which, as it
5386 sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing
5387 city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand
5388 desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of
5389 the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too
5390 fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of
5391 it, the freshest and the best, forever.
5392
5393
5394 It was nine o'clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the
5395 porch. The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there
5396 was an autumn flavor in the air. The gardener, the last one of Gatsby's
5397 former servants, came to the foot of the steps.
5398
5399 "I'm going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves'll start falling
5400 pretty soon and then there's always trouble with the pipes."
5401
5402 "Don't do it today," Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically.
5403 "You know, old sport, I've never used that pool all summer?"
5404
5405 I looked at my watch and stood up.
5406
5407 "Twelve minutes to my train."
5408
5409 I didn't want to go to the city. I wasn't worth a decent stroke of work
5410 but it was more than that--I didn't want to leave Gatsby. I missed that
5411 train, and then another, before I could get myself away.
5412
5413 "I'll call you up," I said finally.
5414
5415 "Do, old sport."
5416
5417 "I'll call you about noon."
5418
5419 We walked slowly down the steps.
5420
5421 "I suppose Daisy'll call too." He looked at me anxiously as if he
5422 hoped I'd corroborate this.
5423
5424 "I suppose so."
5425
5426 "Well--goodbye."
5427
5428 We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I
5429 remembered something and turned around.
5430
5431 "They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the
5432 whole damn bunch put together."
5433
5434 I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave
5435 him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded
5436 politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding
5437 smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time.
5438 His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the
5439 white steps and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral
5440 home three months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the
5441 faces of those who guessed at his corruption--and he had stood on those
5442 steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye.
5443
5444 I thanked him for his hospitality. We were always thanking him for
5445 that--I and the others.
5446
5447 "Goodbye," I called. "I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby."
5448
5449
5450 Up in the city I tried for a while to list the quotations on an
5451 interminable amount of stock, then I fell asleep in my swivel-chair.
5452 Just before noon the phone woke me and I started up with sweat
5453 breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called
5454 me up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements
5455 between hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find
5456 in any other way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something
5457 fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf links had come
5458 sailing in at the office window but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.
5459
5460 "I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm at Hempstead and I'm going down
5461 to Southampton this afternoon."
5462
5463 Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act
5464 annoyed me and her next remark made me rigid.
5465
5466 "You weren't so nice to me last night."
5467
5468 "How could it have mattered then?"
5469
5470 Silence for a moment. Then--
5471
5472 "However--I want to see you."
5473
5474 "I want to see you too."
5475
5476 "Suppose I don't go to Southampton, and come into town this afternoon?"
5477
5478 "No--I don't think this afternoon."
5479
5480 "Very well."
5481
5482 "It's impossible this afternoon. Various----"
5483
5484 We talked like that for a while and then abruptly we weren't talking any
5485 longer. I don't know which of us hung up with a sharp click but I know I
5486 didn't care. I couldn't have talked to her across a tea-table that day if
5487 I never talked to her again in this world.
5488
5489 I called Gatsby's house a few minutes later, but the line was busy. I
5490 tried four times; finally an exasperated central told me the wire was
5491 being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out my
5492 time-table I drew a small circle around the three-fifty train. Then I
5493 leaned back in my chair and tried to think. It was just noon.
5494
5495
5496 When I passed the ashheaps on the train that morning I had crossed
5497 deliberately to the other side of the car. I suppose there'd be a
5498 curious crowd around there all day with little boys searching for dark
5499 spots in the dust and some garrulous man telling over and over what
5500 had happened until it became less and less real even to him and he
5501 could tell it no longer and Myrtle Wilson's tragic achievement was
5502 forgotten. Now I want to go back a little and tell what happened at the
5503 garage after we left there the night before.
5504
5505 They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. She must
5506 have broken her rule against drinking that night for when she
5507 arrived she was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the
5508 ambulance had already gone to Flushing. When they convinced her of
5509 this she immediately fainted as if that was the intolerable part of
5510 the affair. Someone kind or curious took her in his car and drove
5511 her in the wake of her sister's body.
5512
5513 Until long after midnight a changing crowd lapped up against the front
5514 of the garage while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on the
5515 couch inside. For a while the door of the office was open and
5516 everyone who came into the garage glanced irresistibly through it.
5517 Finally someone said it was a shame and closed the door. Michaelis and
5518 several other men were with him--first four or five men, later two or
5519 three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask the last stranger to wait
5520 there fifteen minutes longer while he went back to his own place and made
5521 a pot of coffee. After that he stayed there alone with Wilson until dawn.
5522
5523 About three o'clock the quality of Wilson's incoherent muttering
5524 changed--he grew quieter and began to talk about the yellow car. He
5525 announced that he had a way of finding out whom the yellow car belonged
5526 to, and then he blurted out that a couple of months ago his wife had
5527 come from the city with her face bruised and her nose swollen.
5528
5529 But when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry "Oh,
5530 my God!" again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt
5531 to distract him.
5532
5533 "How long have you been married, George? Come on there, try and sit
5534 still a minute and answer my question. How long have you been married?"
5535
5536 "Twelve years."
5537
5538 "Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit still--I asked you a
5539 question. Did you ever have any children?"
5540
5541 The hard brown beetles kept thudding against the dull light and whenever
5542 Michaelis heard a car go tearing along the road outside it sounded to him
5543 like the car that hadn't stopped a few hours before. He didn't like to go
5544 into the garage because the work bench was stained where the body had
5545 been lying so he moved uncomfortably around the office--he knew every
5546 object in it before morning--and from time to time sat down beside Wilson
5547 trying to keep him more quiet.
5548
5549 "Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you
5550 haven't been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church
5551 and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?"
5552
5553 "Don't belong to any."
5554
5555 "You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must have
5556 gone to church once. Didn't you get married in a church? Listen, George,
5557 listen to me. Didn't you get married in a church?"
5558
5559 "That was a long time ago."
5560
5561 The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking--for a moment he
5562 was silent. Then the same half knowing, half bewildered look came back
5563 into his faded eyes.
5564
5565 "Look in the drawer there," he said, pointing at the desk.
5566
5567 "Which drawer?"
5568
5569 "That drawer--that one."
5570
5571 Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it but
5572 a small expensive dog leash made of leather and braided silver. It was
5573 apparently new.
5574
5575 "This?" he inquired, holding it up.
5576
5577 Wilson stared and nodded.
5578
5579 "I found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it but I
5580 knew it was something funny."
5581
5582 "You mean your wife bought it?"
5583
5584 "She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau."
5585
5586 Michaelis didn't see anything odd in that and he gave Wilson a dozen
5587 reasons why his wife might have bought the dog leash. But conceivably
5588 Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before, from Myrtle,
5589 because he began saying "Oh, my God!" again in a whisper--his comforter
5590 left several explanations in the air.
5591
5592 "Then he killed her," said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly.
5593
5594 "Who did?"
5595
5596 "I have a way of finding out."
5597
5598 "You're morbid, George," said his friend. "This has been a strain to you
5599 and you don't know what you're saying. You'd better try and sit quiet
5600 till morning."
5601
5602 "He murdered her."
5603
5604 "It was an accident, George."
5605
5606 Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly
5607 with the ghost of a superior "Hm!"
5608
5609 "I know," he said definitely, "I'm one of these trusting fellas and I
5610 don't think any harm to NObody, but when I get to know a thing I know
5611 it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he
5612 wouldn't stop."
5613
5614 Michaelis had seen this too but it hadn't occurred to him that there was
5615 any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson had been
5616 running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any
5617 particular car.
5618
5619 "How could she of been like that?"
5620
5621 "She's a deep one," said Wilson, as if that answered the question.
5622 "Ah-h-h----"
5623
5624 He began to rock again and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in
5625 his hand.
5626
5627 "Maybe you got some friend that I could telephone for, George?"
5628
5629 This was a forlorn hope--he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend:
5630 there was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a little later when
5631 he noticed a change in the room, a blue quickening by the window, and
5632 realized that dawn wasn't far off. About five o'clock it was blue enough
5633 outside to snap off the light.
5634
5635 Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small grey
5636 clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint
5637 dawn wind.
5638
5639 "I spoke to her," he muttered, after a long silence. "I told her she might
5640 fool me but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window--" With an
5641 effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face
5642 pressed against it, "--and I said 'God knows what you've been doing,
5643 everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God!' "
5644
5645 Standing behind him Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the
5646 eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg which had just emerged pale and enormous
5647 from the dissolving night.
5648
5649 "God sees everything," repeated Wilson.
5650
5651 "That's an advertisement," Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn
5652 away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a
5653 long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.
5654
5655
5656 By six o'clock Michaelis was worn out and grateful for the sound of a
5657 car stopping outside. It was one of the watchers of the night before
5658 who had promised to come back so he cooked breakfast for three which
5659 he and the other man ate together. Wilson was quieter now and Michaelis
5660 went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and hurried back to the
5661 garage Wilson was gone.
5662
5663 His movements--he was on foot all the time--were afterward traced to Port
5664 Roosevelt and then to Gad's Hill where he bought a sandwich that he
5665 didn't eat and a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and walking
5666 slowly for he didn't reach Gad's Hill until noon. Thus far there was
5667 no difficulty in accounting for his time--there were boys who had seen a
5668 man "acting sort of crazy" and motorists at whom he stared oddly from
5669 the side of the road. Then for three hours he disappeared from view.
5670 The police, on the strength of what he said to Michaelis, that he "had
5671 a way of finding out," supposed that he spent that time going from
5672 garage to garage thereabouts inquiring for a yellow car. On the other
5673 hand no garage man who had seen him ever came forward--and perhaps he
5674 had an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted to know. By
5675 half past two he was in West Egg where he asked someone the way to
5676 Gatsby's house. So by that time he knew Gatsby's name.
5677
5678
5679 At two o'clock Gatsby put on his bathing suit and left word with the
5680 butler that if any one phoned word was to be brought to him at the
5681 pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that had amused
5682 his guests during the summer, and the chauffeur helped him pump it up.
5683 Then he gave instructions that the open car wasn't to be taken out
5684 under any circumstances--and this was strange because the front right
5685 fender needed repair.
5686
5687 Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he
5688 stopped and shifted it a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he
5689 needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among
5690 the yellowing trees.
5691
5692 No telephone message arrived but the butler went without his sleep and
5693 waited for it until four o'clock--until long after there was any one to
5694 give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't
5695 believe it would come and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true
5696 he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high
5697 price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up
5698 at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he
5699 found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was
5700 upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being
5701 real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted
5702 fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward
5703 him through the amorphous trees.
5704
5705 The chauffeur--he was one of Wolfshiem's protégés--heard the
5706 shots--afterward he could only say that he hadn't thought anything much
5707 about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby's house and my
5708 rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that alarmed any
5709 one. But they knew then, I firmly believe. With scarcely a word said, four
5710 of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener and I, hurried down to the pool.
5711
5712 There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the
5713 fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other.
5714 With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden
5715 mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that
5716 scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental
5717 course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves
5718 revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle
5719 in the water.
5720
5721 It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener
5722 saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was
5723 complete.
5724
5725
5726
5727
5728 Chapter 9
5729
5730
5731
5732 After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the
5733 next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and
5734 newspaper men in and out of Gatsby's front door. A rope stretched
5735 across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but
5736 little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard and
5737 there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool.
5738 Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the
5739 expression "mad man" as he bent over Wilson's body that afternoon, and
5740 the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper
5741 reports next morning.
5742
5743 Most of those reports were a nightmare--grotesque, circumstantial,
5744 eager and untrue. When Michaelis's testimony at the inquest brought to
5745 light Wilson's suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would
5746 shortly be served up in racy pasquinade--but Catherine, who might have
5747 said anything, didn't say a word. She showed a surprising amount of
5748 character about it too--looked at the coroner with determined eyes under
5749 that corrected brow of hers and swore that her sister had never seen
5750 Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her
5751 sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it
5752 and cried into her handkerchief as if the very suggestion was more
5753 than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man "deranged by
5754 grief" in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And
5755 it rested there.
5756
5757 But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on
5758 Gatsby's side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of
5759 the catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and
5760 every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and
5761 confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or
5762 speak hour upon hour it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no
5763 one else was interested--interested, I mean, with that intense personal
5764 interest to which every one has some vague right at the end.
5765
5766 I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her
5767 instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away
5768 early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.
5769
5770 "Left no address?"
5771
5772 "No."
5773
5774 "Say when they'd be back?"
5775
5776 "No."
5777
5778 "Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?"
5779
5780 "I don't know. Can't say."
5781
5782 I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he
5783 lay and reassure him: "I'll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don't worry.
5784 Just trust me and I'll get somebody for you----"
5785
5786 Meyer Wolfshiem's name wasn't in the phone book. The butler gave me his
5787 office address on Broadway and I called Information, but by the time I
5788 had the number it was long after five and no one answered the phone.
5789
5790 "Will you ring again?"
5791
5792 "I've rung them three times."
5793
5794 "It's very important."
5795
5796 "Sorry. I'm afraid no one's there."
5797
5798 I went back to the drawing room and thought for an instant that they were
5799 chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled it. But
5800 as they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eyes,
5801 his protest continued in my brain.
5802
5803 "Look here, old sport, you've got to get somebody for me. You've got
5804 to try hard. I can't go through this alone."
5805
5806 Some one started to ask me questions but I broke away and going upstairs
5807 looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk--he'd never told me
5808 definitely that his parents were dead. But there was nothing--only the
5809 picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence staring down from
5810 the wall.
5811
5812 Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem
5813 which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next
5814 train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he'd
5815 start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there'd be a wire
5816 from Daisy before noon--but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem arrived, no
5817 one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men.
5818 When the butler brought back Wolfshiem's answer I began to have a
5819 feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me
5820 against them all.
5821
5822
5823 _Dear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most terrible shocks of my
5824 life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a mad
5825 act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down now as
5826 I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in
5827 this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later let me
5828 know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a
5829 thing like this and am completely knocked down and out.
5830
5831 Yours truly
5832 MEYER WOLFSHIEM_
5833
5834 and then hasty addenda beneath:
5835
5836 _Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all._
5837
5838
5839 When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was
5840 calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came
5841 through as a man's voice, very thin and far away.
5842
5843 "This is Slagle speaking. . . ."
5844
5845 "Yes?" The name was unfamiliar.
5846
5847 "Hell of a note, isn't it? Get my wire?"
5848
5849 "There haven't been any wires."
5850
5851 "Young Parke's in trouble," he said rapidly. "They picked him up when he
5852 handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York
5853 giving 'em the numbers just five minutes before. What d'you know about
5854 that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns----"
5855
5856 "Hello!" I interrupted breathlessly. "Look here--this isn't Mr. Gatsby.
5857 Mr. Gatsby's dead."
5858
5859 There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an
5860 exclamation . . . then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.
5861
5862
5863 I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz
5864 arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was
5865 leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.
5866
5867 It was Gatsby's father, a solemn old man very helpless and dismayed,
5868 bundled up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His
5869 eyes leaked continuously with excitement and when I took the bag and
5870 umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse
5871 grey beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on the
5872 point of collapse so I took him into the music room and made him sit
5873 down while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn't eat and the
5874 glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.
5875
5876 "I saw it in the Chicago newspaper," he said. "It was all in the Chicago
5877 newspaper. I started right away."
5878
5879 "I didn't know how to reach you."
5880
5881 His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.
5882
5883 "It was a mad man," he said. "He must have been mad."
5884
5885 "Wouldn't you like some coffee?" I urged him.
5886
5887 "I don't want anything. I'm all right now, Mr.----"
5888
5889 "Carraway."
5890
5891 "Well, I'm all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?"
5892
5893 I took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there.
5894 Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall;
5895 when I told them who had arrived they went reluctantly away.
5896
5897 After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth
5898 ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and
5899 unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the
5900 quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the
5901 first time and saw the height and splendor of the hall and the great
5902 rooms opening out from it into other rooms his grief began to be mixed
5903 with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs; while he took
5904 off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been
5905 deferred until he came.
5906
5907 "I didn't know what you'd want, Mr. Gatsby----"
5908
5909 "Gatz is my name."
5910
5911 "--Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body west."
5912
5913 He shook his head.
5914
5915 "Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in
5916 the East. Were you a friend of my boy's, Mr.--?"
5917
5918 "We were close friends."
5919
5920 "He had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man but
5921 he had a lot of brain power here."
5922
5923 He touched his head impressively and I nodded.
5924
5925 "If he'd of lived he'd of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill.
5926 He'd of helped build up the country."
5927
5928 "That's true," I said, uncomfortably.
5929
5930 He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the bed,
5931 and lay down stiffly--was instantly asleep.
5932
5933 That night an obviously frightened person called up and demanded to know
5934 who I was before he would give his name.
5935
5936 "This is Mr. Carraway," I said.
5937
5938 "Oh--" He sounded relieved. "This is Klipspringer."
5939
5940 I was relieved too for that seemed to promise another friend
5941 at Gatsby's grave. I didn't want it to be in the papers and draw
5942 a sightseeing crowd so I'd been calling up a few people myself.
5943 They were hard to find.
5944
5945 "The funeral's tomorrow," I said. "Three o'clock, here at the house.
5946 I wish you'd tell anybody who'd be interested."
5947
5948 "Oh, I will," he broke out hastily. "Of course I'm not likely to see
5949 anybody, but if I do."
5950
5951 His tone made me suspicious.
5952
5953 "Of course you'll be there yourself."
5954
5955 "Well, I'll certainly try. What I called up about is----"
5956
5957 "Wait a minute," I interrupted. "How about saying you'll come?"
5958
5959 "Well, the fact is--the truth of the matter is that I'm staying with
5960 some people up here in Greenwich and they rather expect me to be with
5961 them tomorrow. In fact there's a sort of picnic or something.
5962 Of course I'll do my very best to get away."
5963
5964 I ejaculated an unrestrained "Huh!" and he must have heard me for he went
5965 on nervously:
5966
5967 "What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if
5968 it'd be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You
5969 see they're tennis shoes and I'm sort of helpless without them. My
5970 address is care of B. F.----"
5971
5972 I didn't hear the rest of the name because I hung up the receiver.
5973
5974 After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby--one gentleman to whom I
5975 telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was
5976 my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at
5977 Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor and I should have known
5978 better than to call him.
5979
5980 The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer
5981 Wolfshiem; I couldn't seem to reach him any other way. The door that I
5982 pushed open on the advice of an elevator boy was marked "The Swastika
5983 Holding Company" and at first there didn't seem to be any one inside.
5984 But when I'd shouted "Hello" several times in vain an argument broke
5985 out behind a partition and presently a lovely Jewess appeared at an
5986 interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eyes.
5987
5988 "Nobody's in," she said. "Mr. Wolfshiem's gone to Chicago."
5989
5990 The first part of this was obviously untrue for someone had begun to
5991 whistle "The Rosary," tunelessly, inside.
5992
5993 "Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him."
5994
5995 "I can't get him back from Chicago, can I?"
5996
5997 At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem's called "Stella!"
5998 from the other side of the door.
5999
6000 "Leave your name on the desk," she said quickly. "I'll give it to him
6001 when he gets back."
6002
6003 "But I know he's there."
6004
6005 She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up
6006 and down her hips.
6007
6008 "You young men think you can force your way in here any time," she
6009 scolded. "We're getting sickantired of it. When I say he's in Chicago,
6010 he's in ChiCAgo."
6011
6012 I mentioned Gatsby.
6013
6014 "Oh--h!" She looked at me over again. "Will you just--what was your name?"
6015
6016 She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway,
6017 holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a
6018 reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me
6019 a cigar.
6020
6021 "My memory goes back to when I first met him," he said. "A young
6022 major just out of the army and covered over with medals he got
6023 in the war. He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform
6024 because he couldn't buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was
6025 when he come into Winebrenner's poolroom at Forty-third Street and
6026 asked for a job. He hadn't eat anything for a couple of days. 'Come on
6027 have some lunch with me,' I sid. He ate more than four dollars' worth of
6028 food in half an hour."
6029
6030 "Did you start him in business?" I inquired.
6031
6032 "Start him! I made him."
6033
6034 "Oh."
6035
6036 "I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right
6037 away he was a fine appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told
6038 me he was an Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up
6039 in the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he
6040 did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like
6041 that in everything--" He held up two bulbous fingers "--always
6042 together."
6043
6044 I wondered if this partnership had included the World's Series transaction
6045 in 1919.
6046
6047 "Now he's dead," I said after a moment. "You were his closest friend,
6048 so I know you'll want to come to his funeral this afternoon."
6049
6050 "I'd like to come."
6051
6052 "Well, come then."
6053
6054 The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly and as he shook his head his
6055 eyes filled with tears.
6056
6057 "I can't do it--I can't get mixed up in it," he said.
6058
6059 "There's nothing to get mixed up in. It's all over now."
6060
6061 "When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way.
6062 I keep out. When I was a young man it was different--if a friend of mine
6063 died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that's
6064 sentimental but I mean it--to the bitter end."
6065
6066 I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come,
6067 so I stood up.
6068
6069 "Are you a college man?" he inquired suddenly.
6070
6071 For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a "gonnegtion" but he
6072 only nodded and shook my hand.
6073
6074 "Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not
6075 after he is dead," he suggested. "After that my own rule is to let
6076 everything alone."
6077
6078 When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg
6079 in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found
6080 Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his
6081 son and in his son's possessions was continually increasing and now he
6082 had something to show me.
6083
6084 "Jimmy sent me this picture." He took out his wallet with trembling
6085 fingers. "Look there."
6086
6087 It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with
6088 many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. "Look there!" and
6089 then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think
6090 it was more real to him now than the house itself.
6091
6092 "Jimmy sent it to me. I think it's a very pretty picture. It shows up
6093 well."
6094
6095 "Very well. Had you seen him lately?"
6096
6097 "He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in
6098 now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home but I see now
6099 there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him.
6100 And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me."
6101
6102 He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute,
6103 lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from
6104 his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called "Hopalong Cassidy."
6105
6106 "Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows
6107 you."
6108
6109 He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see.
6110 On the last fly-leaf was printed the word SCHEDULE, and the date
6111 September 12th, 1906. And underneath:
6112
6113
6114 Rise from bed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.00 A.M.
6115 Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling . . . . . . 6.15-6.30 "
6116 Study electricity, etc . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.15-8.15 "
6117 Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.30-4.30 P.M.
6118 Baseball and sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.30-5.00 "
6119 Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it 5.00-6.00 "
6120 Study needed inventions . . . . . . . . . . . 7.00-9.00 "
6121
6122 GENERAL RESOLVES
6123
6124 No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
6125 No more smokeing or chewing
6126 Bath every other day
6127 Read one improving book or magazine per week
6128 Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week
6129 Be better to parents
6130
6131
6132 "I come across this book by accident," said the old man. "It just shows
6133 you, don't it?"
6134
6135 "It just shows you."
6136
6137 "Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or
6138 something. Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was
6139 always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once and I beat him
6140 for it."
6141
6142 He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then
6143 looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the
6144 list for my own use.
6145
6146 A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing and
6147 I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did
6148 Gatsby's father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and
6149 stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously and he
6150 spoke of the rain in a worried uncertain way. The minister glanced
6151 several times at his watch so I took him aside and asked him to wait
6152 for half an hour. But it wasn't any use. Nobody came.
6153
6154
6155 About five o'clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery
6156 and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate--first a motor hearse,
6157 horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I in the
6158 limousine, and, a little later, four or five servants and the postman
6159 from West Egg in Gatsby's station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we
6160 started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then
6161 the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked
6162 around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found
6163 marvelling over Gatsby's books in the library one night three months
6164 before.
6165
6166 I'd never seen him since then. I don't know how he knew about the
6167 funeral or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses and
6168 he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled
6169 from Gatsby's grave.
6170
6171 I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment but he was already too
6172 far away and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy
6173 hadn't sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur
6174 "Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on," and then the owl-eyed
6175 man said "Amen to that," in a brave voice.
6176
6177 We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-Eyes spoke
6178 to me by the gate.
6179
6180 "I couldn't get to the house," he remarked.
6181
6182 "Neither could anybody else."
6183
6184 "Go on!" He started. "Why, my God! they used to go there by the
6185 hundreds."
6186
6187 He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and in.
6188
6189 "The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said.
6190
6191
6192 One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from prep school
6193 and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than
6194 Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o'clock of a
6195 December evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up into
6196 their own holiday gayeties to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember
6197 the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This or That's and
6198 the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as
6199 we caught sight of old acquaintances and the matchings of invitations:
6200 "Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?"
6201 and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands.
6202 And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul
6203 Railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside
6204 the gate.
6205
6206 When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow,
6207 began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the
6208 dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace
6209 came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked
6210 back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our
6211 identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted
6212 indistinguishably into it again.
6213
6214 That's my middle west--not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede
6215 towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street
6216 lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly
6217 wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a
6218 little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent
6219 from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are
6220 still called through decades by a family's name. I see now that this
6221 has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and
6222 Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some
6223 deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
6224
6225 Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware
6226 of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the
6227 Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the
6228 children and the very old--even then it had always for me a quality of
6229 distortion. West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic
6230 dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at
6231 once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging
6232 sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress
6233 suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a
6234 drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over
6235 the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a
6236 house--the wrong house. But no one knows the woman's name, and no one
6237 cares.
6238
6239 After Gatsby's death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted
6240 beyond my eyes' power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle
6241 leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the
6242 line I decided to come back home.
6243
6244 There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant
6245 thing that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I wanted to
6246 leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent
6247 sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and
6248 around what had happened to us together and what had happened
6249 afterward to me, and she lay perfectly still listening in a big
6250 chair.
6251
6252 She was dressed to play golf and I remember thinking she looked like a
6253 good illustration, her chin raised a little, jauntily, her hair the
6254 color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless
6255 glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that
6256 she was engaged to another man. I doubted that though there were
6257 several she could have married at a nod of her head but I pretended to
6258 be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn't making a
6259 mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say
6260 goodbye.
6261
6262 "Nevertheless you did throw me over," said Jordan suddenly. "You threw me
6263 over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now but it was a
6264 new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while."
6265
6266 We shook hands.
6267
6268 "Oh, and do you remember--" she added, "----a conversation we had once
6269 about driving a car?"
6270
6271 "Why--not exactly."
6272
6273 "You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver?
6274 Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me
6275 to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest,
6276 straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride."
6277
6278 "I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call
6279 it honor."
6280
6281 She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously
6282 sorry, I turned away.
6283
6284
6285 One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead
6286 of me along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a
6287 little from his body as if to fight off interference, his head moving
6288 sharply here and there, adapting itself to his restless eyes. Just as I
6289 slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped and began frowning into
6290 the windows of a jewelry store. Suddenly he saw me and walked back
6291 holding out his hand.
6292
6293 "What's the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?"
6294
6295 "Yes. You know what I think of you."
6296
6297 "You're crazy, Nick," he said quickly. "Crazy as hell. I don't know
6298 what's the matter with you."
6299
6300 "Tom," I inquired, "what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?"
6301
6302 He stared at me without a word and I knew I had guessed right about
6303 those missing hours. I started to turn away but he took a step after me
6304 and grabbed my arm.
6305
6306 "I told him the truth," he said. "He came to the door while we were
6307 getting ready to leave and when I sent down word that we weren't in he
6308 tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I
6309 hadn't told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his
6310 pocket every minute he was in the house----" He broke off defiantly.
6311 "What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw
6312 dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy's but he was a tough
6313 one. He ran over Myrtle like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped
6314 his car."
6315
6316 There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact
6317 that it wasn't true.
6318
6319 "And if you think I didn't have my share of suffering--look here, when I
6320 went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting
6321 there on the sideboard I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it
6322 was awful----"
6323
6324 I couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was,
6325 to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused.
6326 They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and
6327 creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast
6328 carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other
6329 people clean up the mess they had made. . . .
6330
6331 I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as
6332 though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewelry store to
6333 buy a pearl necklace--or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons--rid of my
6334 provincial squeamishness forever.
6335
6336
6337 Gatsby's house was still empty when I left--the grass on his lawn had
6338 grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never
6339 took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and
6340 pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to
6341 East Egg the night of the accident and perhaps he had made a story
6342 about it all his own. I didn't want to hear it and I avoided him when I
6343 got off the train.
6344
6345 I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling
6346 parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the
6347 music and the laughter faint and incessant from his garden and the
6348 cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material car
6349 there and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn't
6350 investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the
6351 ends of the earth and didn't know that the party was over.
6352
6353 On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer,
6354 I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once
6355 more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a
6356 piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight and I erased it,
6357 drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the
6358 beach and sprawled out on the sand.
6359
6360 Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any
6361 lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound.
6362 And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away
6363 until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered
6364 once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world.
6365 Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had
6366 once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams;
6367 for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the
6368 presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation
6369 he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in
6370 history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
6371
6372 And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of
6373 Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of
6374 Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must
6375 have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not
6376 know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity
6377 beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under
6378 the night.
6379
6380 Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by
6381 year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow
6382 we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine
6383 morning----
6384
6385 So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into
6386 the past.
6387
6388
6389
6390 THE END
6391
6392
6393
6394
6395
6396
6397
6398
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