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diff --git a/search-engine/books/The Great Gatsby.txt b/search-engine/books/The Great Gatsby.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..751b903 --- /dev/null +++ b/search-engine/books/The Great Gatsby.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6404 @@ +Title: The Great Gatsby +Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald + + The Great Gatsby + by + F. Scott Fitzgerald + + + Table of Contents + +I +II +III +IV +V +VI +VII +VIII +IX + + + Once again + to + Zelda + + + Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; + If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, + Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, + I must have you!” + + Thomas Parke d’Invilliers + + + I + +In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice +that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. + +“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just +remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages +that you’ve had.” + +He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative +in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more +than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a +habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me +the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to +detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal +person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of +being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, +unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have +feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by +some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on +the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least +the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and +marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of +infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I +forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly +repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out +unequally at birth. + +And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission +that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the +wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded +on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted +the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I +wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the +human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was +exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I +have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of +successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some +heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related +to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten +thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that +flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the +“creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a +romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and +which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out +all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust +floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my +interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle +Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a +clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of +Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s +brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil +War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father +carries on today. + +I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with +special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in +father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of +a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that +delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the +counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being +the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the +ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond +business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it +could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it +over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, +“Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance +me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I +thought, in the spring of twenty-two. + +The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm +season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly +trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a +house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He +found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a +month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and +I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a +few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who +made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to +herself over the electric stove. + +It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more +recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. + +“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly. + +I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, +a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the +freedom of the neighbourhood. + +And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the +trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar +conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. + +There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to +be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen +volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they +stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, +promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and +Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other +books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a +series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now +I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become +again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” +This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at +from a single window, after all. + +It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of +the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender +riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where +there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of +land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in +contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most +domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great +wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the +egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact +end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual +wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more +interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular +except shape and size. + +I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though +this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little +sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the +egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge +places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on +my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual +imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one +side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble +swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was +Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a +mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an +eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I +had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and +the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a +month. + +Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg +glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins +on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom +Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom +in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in +Chicago. + +Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of +the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a +national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute +limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of +anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his +freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago +and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for +instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake +Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was +wealthy enough to do that. + +Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for +no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully +wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a +permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe +it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift +on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of +some irrecoverable football game. + +And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East +Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house +was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white +Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at +the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, +jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when +it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though +from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French +windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm +windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with +his legs apart on the front porch. + +He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy +straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a +supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established +dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning +aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding +clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill +those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could +see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his +thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body. + +His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of +fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in +it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who +had hated his guts. + +“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to +say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We +were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I +always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like +him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own. + +We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch. + +“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about +restlessly. + +Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the +front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half +acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped +the tide offshore. + +“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, +politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.” + +We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, +fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The +windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside +that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through +the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale +flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the +ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow +on it as wind does on the sea. + +The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous +couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an +anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were +rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a +short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments +listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a +picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the +rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the +curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the +floor. + +The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full +length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her +chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which +was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes +she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring +an apology for having disturbed her by coming in. + +The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly +forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, +charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the +room. + +“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.” + +She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my +hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was +no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she +had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was +Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people +lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less +charming.) + +At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost +imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object +she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her +something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. +Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned +tribute from me. + +I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, +thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and +down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be +played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, +bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement +in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: +a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had +done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, +exciting things hovering in the next hour. + +I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, +and how a dozen people had sent their love through me. + +“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically. + +“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel +painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all +night along the north shore.” + +“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added +irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.” + +“I’d like to.” + +“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?” + +“Never.” + +“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—” + +Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped +and rested his hand on my shoulder. + +“What you doing, Nick?” + +“I’m a bond man.” + +“Who with?” + +I told him. + +“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively. + +This annoyed me. + +“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.” + +“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at +Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something +more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.” + +At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that +I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the +room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned +and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room. + +“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long +as I can remember.” + +“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to +New York all afternoon.” + +“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the +pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.” + +Her host looked at her incredulously. + +“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom +of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.” + +I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I +enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with +an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward +at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked +back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, +discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a +picture of her, somewhere before. + +“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody +there.” + +“I don’t know a single—” + +“You must know Gatsby.” + +“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?” + +Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; +wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled +me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square. + +Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two +young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward +the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the +diminished wind. + +“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her +fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She +looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day +of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in +the year and then miss it.” + +“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the +table as if she were getting into bed. + +“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me +helplessly: “What do people plan?” + +Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her +little finger. + +“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.” + +We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue. + +“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, +but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a +great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—” + +“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in +kidding.” + +“Hulking,” insisted Daisy. + +Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a +bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool +as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all +desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a +polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew +that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too +would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the +West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its +close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer +nervous dread of the moment itself. + +“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass +of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or +something?” + +I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in +an unexpected way. + +“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve +gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise +of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?” + +“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone. + +“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is +if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly +submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” + +“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of +unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in +them. What was that word we—” + +“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her +impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to +us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will +have control of things.” + +“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously +toward the fervent sun. + +“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom +interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair. + +“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, +and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a +slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the +things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all +that. Do you see?” + +There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his +complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. +When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler +left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned +towards me. + +“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. +“It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s +nose?” + +“That’s why I came over tonight.” + +“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher +for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred +people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it +began to affect his nose—” + +“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker. + +“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up +his position.” + +For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her +glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I +listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering +regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk. + +The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, +whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went +inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned +forward again, her voice glowing and singing. + +“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an +absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: +“An absolute rose?” + +This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only +extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart +was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, +thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and +excused herself and went into the house. + +Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of +meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” +in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the +room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to +hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, +mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether. + +“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began. + +“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.” + +“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently. + +“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. +“I thought everybody knew.” + +“I don’t.” + +“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.” + +“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly. + +Miss Baker nodded. + +“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. +Don’t you think?” + +Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a +dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at +the table. + +“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety. + +She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and +continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic +outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a +nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing +away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?” + +“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light +enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.” + +The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head +decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, +vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes +at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I +was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to +avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but +I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain +hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill +metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation +might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone +immediately for the police. + +The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss +Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into +the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, +trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed +Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In +its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee. + +Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and +her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that +turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be +some sedative questions about her little girl. + +“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even +if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.” + +“I wasn’t back from the war.” + +“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, +and I’m pretty cynical about everything.” + +Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more, +and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her +daughter. + +“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.” + +“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you +what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?” + +“Very much.” + +“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was +less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of +the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right +away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I +turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a +girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be +in this world, a beautiful little fool.’ + +“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a +convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I +know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” +Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and +she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m +sophisticated!” + +The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my +belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me +uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to +exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a +moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as +if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret +society to which she and Tom belonged. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at +either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the +Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running +together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and +dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as +she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms. + +When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand. + +“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in +our very next issue.” + +Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she +stood up. + +“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the +ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.” + +“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, +“over at Westchester.” + +“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.” + +I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous +expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the +sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard +some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I +had forgotten long ago. + +“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.” + +“If you’ll get up.” + +“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.” + +“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a +marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you +together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push +you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—” + +“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a +word.” + +“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let +her run around the country this way.” + +“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly. + +“Her family.” + +“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s +going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots +of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be +very good for her.” + +Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence. + +“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly. + +“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our +beautiful white—” + +“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” +demanded Tom suddenly. + +“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we +talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept +up on us and first thing you know—” + +“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me. + +I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes +later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood +side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor +Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait! + +“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were +engaged to a girl out West.” + +“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were +engaged.” + +“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.” + +“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again +in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be +true.” + +Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even +vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one +of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old +friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention +of being rumoured into marriage. + +Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely +rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove +away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out +of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such +intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman +in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been +depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of +stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his +peremptory heart. + +Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside +garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and +when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and +sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had +blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the +trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth +blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered +across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I +was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of +my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets +regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely +movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested +that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was +his of our local heavens. + +I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and +that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he +gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched +out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was +from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced +seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute +and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked +once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the +unquiet darkness. + + + II + +About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily +joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as +to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley +of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and +hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and +chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of +ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery +air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, +gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the +ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable +cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. + +But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift +endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. +J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and +gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, +but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass +over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set +them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then +sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved +away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun +and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground. + +The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, +when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on +waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an +hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute, and it was +because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress. + +The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His +acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular cafés +with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with +whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire +to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one +afternoon, and when we stopped by the ash-heaps he jumped to his feet +and, taking hold of my elbow, literally forced me from the car. + +“We’re getting off,” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.” + +I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon, and his determination +to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption +was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do. + +I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked +back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s +persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of +yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact +Main Street ministering to it, and contiguous to absolutely nothing. +One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an +all-night restaurant, approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a +garage—Repairs. George B. Wilson. Cars bought and sold.—and I followed +Tom inside. + +The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the +dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had +occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind, and that +sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead, when the +proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands +on a piece of waste. He was a blond, spiritless man, anaemic, and +faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his +light blue eyes. + +“Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping him jovially on the +shoulder. “How’s business?” + +“I can’t complain,” answered Wilson unconvincingly. “When are you +going to sell me that car?” + +“Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.” + +“Works pretty slow, don’t he?” + +“No, he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it, +maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.” + +“I don’t mean that,” explained Wilson quickly. “I just meant—” + +His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. +Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish +figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was +in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her flesh +sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark +blue crêpe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there +was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of +her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking +through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, +looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without +turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: + +“Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.” + +“Oh, sure,” agreed Wilson hurriedly, and went toward the little +office, mingling immediately with the cement colour of the walls. A +white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled +everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom. + +“I want to see you,” said Tom intently. “Get on the next train.” + +“All right.” + +“I’ll meet you by the newsstand on the lower level.” + +She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with +two chairs from his office door. + +We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days +before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was +setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track. + +“Terrible place, isn’t it,” said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor +Eckleburg. + +“Awful.” + +“It does her good to get away.” + +“Doesn’t her husband object?” + +“Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so +dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.” + +So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not +quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom +deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might +be on the train. + +She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin, which stretched +tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in +New York. At the newsstand she bought a copy of Town Tattle and a +moving-picture magazine, and in the station drugstore some cold cream +and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive +she let four taxicabs drive away before she selected a new one, +lavender-coloured with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from +the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she +turned sharply from the window and, leaning forward, tapped on the +front glass. + +“I want to get one of those dogs,” she said earnestly. “I want to get +one for the apartment. They’re nice to have—a dog.” + +We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John +D. Rockefeller. In a basket swung from his neck cowered a dozen very +recent puppies of an indeterminate breed. + +“What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly, as he came to the +taxi-window. + +“All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?” + +“I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got +that kind?” + +The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and +drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck. + +“That’s no police dog,” said Tom. + +“No, it’s not exactly a police dog,” said the man with disappointment +in his voice. “It’s more of an Airedale.” He passed his hand over the +brown washrag of a back. “Look at that coat. Some coat. That’s a dog +that’ll never bother you with catching cold.” + +“I think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. “How much is +it?” + +“That dog?” He looked at it admiringly. “That dog will cost you ten +dollars.” + +The Airedale—undoubtedly there was an Airedale concerned in it +somewhere, though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and +settled down into Mrs. Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the +weatherproof coat with rapture. + +“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately. + +“That dog? That dog’s a boy.” + +“It’s a bitch,” said Tom decisively. “Here’s your money. Go and buy +ten more dogs with it.” + +We drove over to Fifth Avenue, warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the +summer Sunday afternoon. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great +flock of white sheep turn the corner. + +“Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.” + +“No you don’t,” interposed Tom quickly. “Myrtle’ll be hurt if you +don’t come up to the apartment. Won’t you, Myrtle?” + +“Come on,” she urged. “I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. She’s said +to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.” + +“Well, I’d like to, but—” + +We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. +At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of +apartment-houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the +neighbourhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other +purchases, and went haughtily in. + +“I’m going to have the McKees come up,” she announced as we rose in +the elevator. “And, of course, I got to call up my sister, too.” + +The apartment was on the top floor—a small living-room, a small +dining-room, a small bedroom, and a bath. The living-room was crowded +to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for +it, so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of +ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an +over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. +Looked at from a distance, however, the hen resolved itself into a +bonnet, and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the +room. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table together with +a copy of Simon Called Peter, and some of the small scandal magazines +of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant +elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk, to which he +added on his own initiative a tin of large, hard dog biscuits—one of +which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all +afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whisky from a locked +bureau door. + +I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that +afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, +although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful +sun. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the +telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some +at the drugstore on the corner. When I came back they had both +disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living-room and read a +chapter of Simon Called Peter—either it was terrible stuff or the +whisky distorted things, because it didn’t make any sense to me. + +Just as Tom and Myrtle (after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called +each other by our first names) reappeared, company commenced to arrive +at the apartment door. + +The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty, +with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky +white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more +rakish angle, but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the +old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about +there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets +jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary +haste, and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I +wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed +immoderately, repeated my question aloud, and told me she lived with a +girl friend at a hotel. + +Mr. McKee was a pale, feminine man from the flat below. He had just +shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he +was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He +informed me that he was in the “artistic game,” and I gathered later +that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of +Mrs. Wilson’s mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His +wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible. She told me with +pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven +times since they had been married. + +Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before, and was now +attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream-coloured chiffon, +which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With +the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a +change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage +was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her +assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she +expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be +revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air. + +“My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, “most of +these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I +had a woman up here last week to look at my feet, and when she gave me +the bill you’d of thought she had my appendicitis out.” + +“What was the name of the woman?” asked Mrs. McKee. + +“Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people’s feet in their own +homes.” + +“I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. McKee, “I think it’s adorable.” + +Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain. + +“It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I just slip it on sometimes +when I don’t care what I look like.” + +“But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,” pursued Mrs. +McKee. “If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could +make something of it.” + +We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson, who removed a strand of hair +from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. +McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side, and then moved +his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face. + +“I should change the light,” he said after a moment. “I’d like to +bring out the modelling of the features. And I’d try to get hold of +all the back hair.” + +“I wouldn’t think of changing the light,” cried Mrs. McKee. “I think +it’s—” + +Her husband said “Sh!” and we all looked at the subject again, +whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet. + +“You McKees have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and +mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep.” + +“I told that boy about the ice.” Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair +at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. “These people! You have to +keep after them all the time.” + +She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to +the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, and swept into the kitchen, implying +that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there. + +“I’ve done some nice things out on Long Island,” asserted Mr. McKee. + +Tom looked at him blankly. + +“Two of them we have framed downstairs.” + +“Two what?” demanded Tom. + +“Two studies. One of them I call Montauk Point—The Gulls, and the +other I call Montauk Point—The Sea.” + +The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch. + +“Do you live down on Long Island, too?” she inquired. + +“I live at West Egg.” + +“Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named +Gatsby’s. Do you know him?” + +“I live next door to him.” + +“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s. That’s +where all his money comes from.” + +“Really?” + +She nodded. + +“I’m scared of him. I’d hate to have him get anything on me.” + +This absorbing information about my neighbour was interrupted by Mrs. +McKee’s pointing suddenly at Catherine: + +“Chester, I think you could do something with her,” she broke out, but +Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way, and turned his attention to Tom. + +“I’d like to do more work on Long Island, if I could get the entry. +All I ask is that they should give me a start.” + +“Ask Myrtle,” said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as +Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. “She’ll give you a letter of +introduction, won’t you, Myrtle?” + +“Do what?” she asked, startled. + +“You’ll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can +do some studies of him.” His lips moved silently for a moment as he +invented, “ ‘George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,’ or something like +that.” + +Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: + +“Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.” + +“Can’t they?” + +“Can’t stand them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “What I say +is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them +I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.” + +“Doesn’t she like Wilson either?” + +The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle, who had +overheard the question, and it was violent and obscene. + +“You see,” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. +“It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and +they don’t believe in divorce.” + +Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the +elaborateness of the lie. + +“When they do get married,” continued Catherine, “they’re going West +to live for a while until it blows over.” + +“It’d be more discreet to go to Europe.” + +“Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed surprisingly. “I just got back +from Monte Carlo.” + +“Really.” + +“Just last year. I went over there with another girl.” + +“Stay long?” + +“No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of +Marseilles. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started, but we +got gyped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an +awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!” + +The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the +blue honey of the Mediterranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee +called me back into the room. + +“I almost made a mistake, too,” she declared vigorously. “I almost +married a little kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was +below me. Everybody kept saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s way below +you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d of got me sure.” + +“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, +“at least you didn’t marry him.” + +“I know I didn’t.” + +“Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that’s the +difference between your case and mine.” + +“Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.” + +Myrtle considered. + +“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said +finally. “I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t +fit to lick my shoe.” + +“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine. + +“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy +about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that +man there.” + +She pointed suddenly at me, and everyone looked at me accusingly. I +tried to show by my expression that I expected no affection. + +“The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made +a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and +never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he +was out: ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘This is the first I ever +heard about it.’ But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to +beat the band all afternoon.” + +“She really ought to get away from him,” resumed Catherine to me. +“They’ve been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom’s the +first sweetie she ever had.” + +The bottle of whisky—a second one—was now in constant demand by all +present, excepting Catherine, who “felt just as good on nothing at +all.” Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated +sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to +get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, +but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident +argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet +high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed +their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening +streets, and I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and +without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible +variety of life. + +Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath +poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom. + +“It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the +last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my +sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather +shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked +at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his +head. When we came into the station he was next to me, and his white +shirtfront pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call +a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into +a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway +train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live +forever; you can’t live forever.’ ” + +She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial +laughter. + +“My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you this dress as soon as I’m +through with it. I’ve got to get another one tomorrow. I’m going to +make a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A massage and a wave, +and a collar for the dog, and one of those cute little ashtrays where +you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s +grave that’ll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won’t +forget all the things I got to do.” + +It was nine o’clock—almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch +and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists +clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out +my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the spot of dried lather that +had worried me all the afternoon. + +The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes +through the smoke, and from time to time groaning faintly. People +disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost +each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet +away. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood +face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson +had any right to mention Daisy’s name. + +“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I’ll say it whenever I +want to! Daisy! Dai—” + +Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his +open hand. + +Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women’s +voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of +pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the +door. When he had gone halfway he turned around and stared at the +scene—his wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled +here and there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and +the despairing figure on the couch, bleeding fluently, and trying to +spread a copy of Town Tattle over the tapestry scenes of +Versailles. Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. +Taking my hat from the chandelier, I followed. + +“Come to lunch some day,” he suggested, as we groaned down in the +elevator. + +“Where?” + +“Anywhere.” + +“Keep your hands off the lever,” snapped the elevator boy. + +“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. McKee with dignity, “I didn’t know I was +touching it.” + +“All right,” I agreed, “I’ll be glad to.” + +… I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the +sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands. + +“Beauty and the Beast … Loneliness … Old Grocery Horse … Brook’n +Bridge …” + +Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the +Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune, and waiting for +the four o’clock train. + + + III + +There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. +In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the +whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the +afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or +taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats +slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of +foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties +to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past +midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to +meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra +gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers +and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. + +Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a +fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left +his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in +the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in +half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a +butler’s thumb. + +At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several +hundred feet of canvas and enough coloured lights to make a Christmas +tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with +glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of +harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark +gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and +stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that +most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. + +By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, +but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and +cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have +come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from +New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and +salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colours, and hair bobbed in +strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is +in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden +outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual +innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic +meetings between women who never knew each other’s names. + +The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and +now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of +voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, +spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups +change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the +same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave +here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, +joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, +glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and colour under +the constantly changing light. + +Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail +out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like +Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the +orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a +burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda +Gray’s understudy from the Follies. The party has begun. + +I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one +of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not +invited—they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out +to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there +they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they +conducted themselves according to the rules of behaviour associated +with an amusement park. Sometimes they came and went without having +met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that +was its own ticket of admission. + +I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin’s-egg +blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly +formal note from his employer: the honour would be entirely Gatsby’s, +it said, if I would attend his “little party” that night. He had seen +me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a +peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it—signed Jay +Gatsby, in a majestic hand. + +Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after +seven, and wandered around rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies +of people I didn’t know—though here and there was a face I had noticed +on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of +young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little +hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous +Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or +insurance or automobiles. They were at least agonizingly aware of the +easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few +words in the right key. + +As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or +three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an +amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, +that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place +in the garden where a single man could linger without looking +purposeless and alone. + +I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when +Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble +steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous +interest down into the garden. + +Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone +before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passersby. + +“Hello!” I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally +loud across the garden. + +“I thought you might be here,” she responded absently as I came up. +“I remembered you lived next door to—” + +She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she’d take care of me +in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses, who +stopped at the foot of the steps. + +“Hello!” they cried together. “Sorry you didn’t win.” + +That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week +before. + +“You don’t know who we are,” said one of the girls in yellow, “but we +met you here about a month ago.” + +“You’ve dyed your hair since then,” remarked Jordan, and I started, +but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to +the premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a +caterer’s basket. With Jordan’s slender golden arm resting in mine, we +descended the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of +cocktails floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down at a +table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced +to us as Mr. Mumble. + +“Do you come to these parties often?” inquired Jordan of the girl +beside her. + +“The last one was the one I met you at,” answered the girl, in an +alert confident voice. She turned to her companion: “Wasn’t it for +you, Lucille?” + +It was for Lucille, too. + +“I like to come,” Lucille said. “I never care what I do, so I always +have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and +he asked me my name and address—inside of a week I got a package from +Croirier’s with a new evening gown in it.” + +“Did you keep it?” asked Jordan. + +“Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the +bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two +hundred and sixty-five dollars.” + +“There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll do a thing like that,” +said the other girl eagerly. “He doesn’t want any trouble with +anybody.” + +“Who doesn’t?” I inquired. + +“Gatsby. Somebody told me—” + +The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially. + +“Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.” + +A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and +listened eagerly. + +“I don’t think it’s so much that,” argued Lucille sceptically; “It’s +more that he was a German spy during the war.” + +One of the men nodded in confirmation. + +“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in +Germany,” he assured us positively. + +“Oh, no,” said the first girl, “it couldn’t be that, because he was in +the American army during the war.” As our credulity switched back to +her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. “You look at him sometimes +when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. I’ll bet he killed a man.” + +She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned +and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic +speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those +who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this +world. + +The first supper—there would be another one after midnight—was now +being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party, who were +spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were +three married couples and Jordan’s escort, a persistent undergraduate +given to violent innuendo, and obviously under the impression that +sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a +greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling, this party had +preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function +of representing the staid nobility of the countryside—East Egg +condescending to West Egg and carefully on guard against its +spectroscopic gaiety. + +“Let’s get out,” whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and +inappropriate half-hour; “this is much too polite for me.” + +We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host: I +had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The +undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way. + +The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded, but Gatsby was not +there. She couldn’t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t +on the veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and +walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, +and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas. + +A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was +sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with +unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he +wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot. + +“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously. + +“About what?” + +He waved his hand toward the bookshelves. + +“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I +ascertained. They’re real.” + +“The books?” + +He nodded. + +“Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice +durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages +and—Here! Lemme show you.” + +Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and +returned with Volume One of the Stoddard Lectures. + +“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed +matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a +triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, +too—didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?” + +He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, +muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable +to collapse. + +“Who brought you?” he demanded. “Or did you just come? I was brought. +Most people were brought.” + +Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully, without answering. + +“I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt,” he continued. “Mrs. Claud +Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I’ve been +drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit +in a library.” + +“Has it?” + +“A little bit, I think. I can’t tell yet. I’ve only been here an hour. +Did I tell you about the books? They’re real. They’re—” + +“You told us.” + +We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors. + +There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden; old men pushing +young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples +holding each other tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in the +corners—and a great number of single girls dancing individually or +relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the +traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had +sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and +between the numbers people were doing “stunts” all over the garden, +while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A +pair of stage twins, who turned out to be the girls in yellow, did a +baby act in costume, and champagne was served in glasses bigger than +finger-bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was +a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny +drip of the banjoes on the lawn. + +I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man +of about my age and a rowdy little girl, who gave way upon the +slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying +myself now. I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene +had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental, and +profound. + +At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled. + +“Your face is familiar,” he said politely. “Weren’t you in the First +Division during the war?” + +“Why yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry.” + +“I was in the Sixteenth until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I’d seen +you somewhere before.” + +We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France. +Evidently he lived in this vicinity, for he told me that he had just +bought a hydroplane, and was going to try it out in the morning. + +“Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound.” + +“What time?” + +“Any time that suits you best.” + +It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked +around and smiled. + +“Having a gay time now?” she inquired. + +“Much better.” I turned again to my new acquaintance. “This is an +unusual party for me. I haven’t even seen the host. I live over +there—” I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, “and +this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation.” + +For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand. + +“I’m Gatsby,” he said suddenly. + +“What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your pardon.” + +“I thought you knew, old sport. I’m afraid I’m not a very good host.” + +He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one +of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that +you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to +face—the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on +you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you +just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you +would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had +precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to +convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an +elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate +formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he +introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his +words with care. + +Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself a butler +hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him +on the wire. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of +us in turn. + +“If you want anything just ask for it, old sport,” he urged me. +“Excuse me. I will rejoin you later.” + +When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan—constrained to assure +her of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid +and corpulent person in his middle years. + +“Who is he?” I demanded. “Do you know?” + +“He’s just a man named Gatsby.” + +“Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?” + +“Now you’re started on the subject,” she answered with a wan smile. +“Well, he told me once he was an Oxford man.” + +A dim background started to take shape behind him, but at her next +remark it faded away. + +“However, I don’t believe it.” + +“Why not?” + +“I don’t know,” she insisted, “I just don’t think he went there.” + +Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl’s “I think he +killed a man,” and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity. I would +have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from +the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York. That +was comprehensible. But young men didn’t—at least in my provincial +inexperience I believed they didn’t—drift coolly out of nowhere and +buy a palace on Long Island Sound. + +“Anyhow, he gives large parties,” said Jordan, changing the subject +with an urban distaste for the concrete. “And I like large parties. +They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” + +There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra +leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden. + +“Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried. “At the request of Mr. Gatsby we are +going to play for you Mr. Vladmir Tostoff’s latest work, which +attracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the +papers you know there was a big sensation.” He smiled with jovial +condescension, and added: “Some sensation!” Whereupon everybody +laughed. + +“The piece is known,” he concluded lustily, “as ‘Vladmir Tostoff’s +Jazz History of the World!’ ” + +The nature of Mr. Tostoff’s composition eluded me, because just as it +began my eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps and +looking from one group to another with approving eyes. His tanned skin +was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as +though it were trimmed every day. I could see nothing sinister about +him. I wondered if the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him +off from his guests, for it seemed to me that he grew more correct as +the fraternal hilarity increased. When the “Jazz History of the World” +was over, girls were putting their heads on men’s shoulders in a +puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward playfully into +men’s arms, even into groups, knowing that someone would arrest their +falls—but no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched +Gatsby’s shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby’s +head for one link. + +“I beg your pardon.” + +Gatsby’s butler was suddenly standing beside us. + +“Miss Baker?” he inquired. “I beg your pardon, but Mr. Gatsby would +like to speak to you alone.” + +“With me?” she exclaimed in surprise. + +“Yes, madame.” + +She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in astonishment, and +followed the butler toward the house. I noticed that she wore her +evening-dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a +jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk +upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings. + +I was alone and it was almost two. For some time confused and +intriguing sounds had issued from a long, many-windowed room which +overhung the terrace. Eluding Jordan’s undergraduate, who was now +engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who +implored me to join him, I went inside. + +The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was +playing the piano, and beside her stood a tall, red-haired young lady +from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of +champagne, and during the course of her song she had decided, ineptly, +that everything was very, very sad—she was not only singing, she was +weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with +gasping, broken sobs, and then took up the lyric again in a quavering +soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks—not freely, however, for +when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they +assumed an inky colour, and pursued the rest of their way in slow +black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes +on her face, whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair, and +went off into a deep vinous sleep. + +“She had a fight with a man who says he’s her husband,” explained a +girl at my elbow. + +I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights +with men said to be their husbands. Even Jordan’s party, the quartet +from East Egg, were rent asunder by dissension. One of the men was +talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after +attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent +way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks—at intervals +she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed: +“You promised!” into his ear. + +The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall +was at present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly +indignant wives. The wives were sympathizing with each other in +slightly raised voices. + +“Whenever he sees I’m having a good time he wants to go home.” + +“Never heard anything so selfish in my life.” + +“We’re always the first ones to leave.” + +“So are we.” + +“Well, we’re almost the last tonight,” said one of the men sheepishly. +“The orchestra left half an hour ago.” + +In spite of the wives’ agreement that such malevolence was beyond +credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives +were lifted, kicking, into the night. + +As I waited for my hat in the hall the door of the library opened and +Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together. He was saying some last +word to her, but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly into +formality as several people approached him to say goodbye. + +Jordan’s party were calling impatiently to her from the porch, but she +lingered for a moment to shake hands. + +“I’ve just heard the most amazing thing,” she whispered. “How long +were we in there?” + +“Why, about an hour.” + +“It was … simply amazing,” she repeated abstractedly. “But I swore I +wouldn’t tell it and here I am tantalizing you.” She yawned gracefully +in my face. “Please come and see me … Phone book … Under the name of +Mrs. Sigourney Howard … My aunt …” She was hurrying off as she +talked—her brown hand waved a jaunty salute as she melted into her +party at the door. + +Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I had stayed so late, I +joined the last of Gatsby’s guests, who were clustered around him. I +wanted to explain that I’d hunted for him early in the evening and to +apologize for not having known him in the garden. + +“Don’t mention it,” he enjoined me eagerly. “Don’t give it another +thought, old sport.” The familiar expression held no more familiarity +than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. “And don’t +forget we’re going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning, at nine +o’clock.” + +Then the butler, behind his shoulder: + +“Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir.” + +“All right, in a minute. Tell them I’ll be right there … Good night.” + +“Good night.” + +“Good night.” He smiled—and suddenly there seemed to be a pleasant +significance in having been among the last to go, as if he had desired +it all the time. “Good night, old sport … Good night.” + +But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite +over. Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a +bizarre and tumultuous scene. In the ditch beside the road, right side +up, but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupé which had +left Gatsby’s drive not two minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall +accounted for the detachment of the wheel, which was now getting +considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However, +as they had left their cars blocking the road, a harsh, discordant din +from those in the rear had been audible for some time, and added to +the already violent confusion of the scene. + +A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in +the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tyre and from the +tyre to the observers in a pleasant, puzzled way. + +“See!” he explained. “It went in the ditch.” + +The fact was infinitely astonishing to him, and I recognized first the +unusual quality of wonder, and then the man—it was the late patron of +Gatsby’s library. + +“How’d it happen?” + +He shrugged his shoulders. + +“I know nothing whatever about mechanics,” he said decisively. + +“But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?” + +“Don’t ask me,” said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole +matter. “I know very little about driving—next to nothing. It +happened, and that’s all I know.” + +“Well, if you’re a poor driver you oughtn’t to try driving at night.” + +“But I wasn’t even trying,” he explained indignantly, “I wasn’t even +trying.” + +An awed hush fell upon the bystanders. + +“Do you want to commit suicide?” + +“You’re lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even trying!” + +“You don’t understand,” explained the criminal. “I wasn’t driving. +There’s another man in the car.” + +The shock that followed this declaration found voice in a sustained +“Ah-h-h!” as the door of the coupé swung slowly open. The crowd—it was +now a crowd—stepped back involuntarily, and when the door had opened +wide there was a ghostly pause. Then, very gradually, part by part, a +pale, dangling individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing tentatively +at the ground with a large uncertain dancing shoe. + +Blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant +groaning of the horns, the apparition stood swaying for a moment +before he perceived the man in the duster. + +“Wha’s matter?” he inquired calmly. “Did we run outa gas?” + +“Look!” + +Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel—he stared at it +for a moment, and then looked upward as though he suspected that it +had dropped from the sky. + +“It came off,” someone explained. + +He nodded. + +“At first I din’ notice we’d stopped.” + +A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders, +he remarked in a determined voice: + +“Wonder’ff tell me where there’s a gas’line station?” + +At least a dozen men, some of them a little better off than he was, +explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any +physical bond. + +“Back out,” he suggested after a moment. “Put her in reverse.” + +“But the wheel’s off!” + +He hesitated. + +“No harm in trying,” he said. + +The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and +cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a +moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night fine as before, +and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. +A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great +doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who +stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +Reading over what I have written so far, I see I have given the +impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were +all that absorbed me. On the contrary, they were merely casual events +in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they absorbed me +infinitely less than my personal affairs. + +Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my +shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York +to the Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen +by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded +restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I +even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and +worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing +mean looks in my direction, so when she went on her vacation in July I +let it blow quietly away. + +I took dinner usually at the Yale Club—for some reason it was the +gloomiest event of my day—and then I went upstairs to the library and +studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour. There +were generally a few rioters around, but they never came into the +library, so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was +mellow, I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel, +and over 33rd Street to the Pennsylvania Station. + +I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, +and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and +machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue +and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few +minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever +know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their +apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and +smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm +darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting +loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor young clerks who +loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary +restaurant dinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant +moments of night and life. + +Again at eight o’clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were lined +five deep with throbbing taxicabs, bound for the theatre district, I +felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they +waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, +and lighted cigarettes made unintelligible circles inside. Imagining +that I, too, was hurrying towards gaiety and sharing their intimate +excitement, I wished them well. + +For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I +found her again. At first I was flattered to go places with her, +because she was a golf champion, and everyone knew her name. Then it +was something more. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of +tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world +concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually, +even though they don’t in the beginning—and one day I found what it +was. When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a +borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about +it—and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me +that night at Daisy’s. At her first big golf tournament there was a +row that nearly reached the newspapers—a suggestion that she had moved +her ball from a bad lie in the semifinal round. The thing approached +the proportions of a scandal—then died away. A caddy retracted his +statement, and the only other witness admitted that he might have been +mistaken. The incident and the name had remained together in my mind. + +Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw +that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence +from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. +She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this +unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she +was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to +the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body. + +It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you +never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on +that same house-party that we had a curious conversation about driving +a car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our +fender flicked a button on one man’s coat. + +“You’re a rotten driver,” I protested. “Either you ought to be more +careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.” + +“I am careful.” + +“No, you’re not.” + +“Well, other people are,” she said lightly. + +“What’s that got to do with it?” + +“They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It takes two to make an +accident.” + +“Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.” + +“I hope I never will,” she answered. “I hate careless people. That’s +why I like you.” + +Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had +deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved +her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as +brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself +definitely out of that tangle back home. I’d been writing letters once +a week and signing them: “Love, Nick,” and all I could think of was +how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint moustache of +perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague +understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free. + +Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and +this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever +known. + + + IV + +On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, +the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled +hilariously on his lawn. + +“He’s a bootlegger,” said the young ladies, moving somewhere between +his cocktails and his flowers. “One time he killed a man who had found +out that he was nephew to Von Hindenburg and second cousin to the +devil. Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there +crystal glass.” + +Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a timetable the names of +those who came to Gatsby’s house that summer. It is an old timetable +now, disintegrating at its folds, and headed “This schedule in effect +July 5th, 1922.” But I can still read the grey names, and they will +give you a better impression than my generalities of those who +accepted Gatsby’s hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of +knowing nothing whatever about him. + +From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a +man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who +was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie +Voltaires, and a whole clan named Blackbuck, who always gathered in a +corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whosoever came +near. And the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and +Mr. Chrystie’s wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, turned +cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all. + +Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only once, +in white knickerbockers, and had a fight with a bum named Etty in the +garden. From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles and the O. +R. P. Schraeders, and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the +Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three days before he +went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that +Mrs. Ulysses Swett’s automobile ran over his right hand. The Dancies +came, too, and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over sixty, and Maurice +A. Flink, and the Hammerheads, and Beluga the tobacco importer, and +Beluga’s girls. + +From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and +Cecil Schoen and Gulick the State senator and Newton Orchid, who +controlled Films Par Excellence, and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don +S. Schwartz (the son) and Arthur McCarty, all connected with the +movies in one way or another. And the Catlips and the Bembergs and G. +Earl Muldoon, brother to that Muldoon who afterward strangled his +wife. Da Fontano the promoter came there, and Ed Legros and James B. +(“Rot-Gut”) Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly—they came to +gamble, and when Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he was +cleaned out and Associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably +next day. + +A man named Klipspringer was there so often that he became known as +“the boarder”—I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical people +there were Gus Waize and Horace O’Donavan and Lester Myer and George +Duckweed and Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes and the +Backhyssons and the Dennickers and Russel Betty and the Corrigans and +the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S. W. Belcher and the +Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry L. Palmetto, who +killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train in Times Square. + +Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite +the same ones in physical person, but they were so identical one with +another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before. I have +forgotten their names—Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela, or Gloria +or Judy or June, and their last names were either the melodious names +of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American +capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves +to be. + +In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina O’Brien came +there at least once and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer, who had +his nose shot off in the war, and Mr. Albrucksburger and Miss Haag, +his fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Peters and Mr. P. Jewett, once head of +the American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip, with a man reputed to be +her chauffeur, and a prince of something, whom we called Duke, and +whose name, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten. + +All these people came to Gatsby’s house in the summer. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +At nine o’clock, one morning late in July, Gatsby’s gorgeous car +lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody +from its three-noted horn. + +It was the first time he had called on me, though I had gone to two of +his parties, mounted in his hydroplane, and, at his urgent invitation, +made frequent use of his beach. + +“Good morning, old sport. You’re having lunch with me today and I +thought we’d ride up together.” + +He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that +resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—that comes, +I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth and, even more, +with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality +was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape +of restlessness. He was never quite still; there was always a tapping +foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand. + +He saw me looking with admiration at his car. + +“It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?” He jumped off to give me a better +view. “Haven’t you ever seen it before?” + +I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream colour, bright +with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with +triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and toolboxes, and terraced with +a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down +behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, +we started to town. + +I had talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and +found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say. So my first +impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had +gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an +elaborate roadhouse next door. + +And then came that disconcerting ride. We hadn’t reached West Egg +village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished +and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-coloured +suit. + +“Look here, old sport,” he broke out surprisingly, “what’s your +opinion of me, anyhow?” + +A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that +question deserves. + +“Well, I’m going to tell you something about my life,” he interrupted. +“I don’t want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you +hear.” + +So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavoured conversation +in his halls. + +“I’ll tell you God’s truth.” His right hand suddenly ordered divine +retribution to stand by. “I am the son of some wealthy people in the +Middle West—all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at +Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many +years. It is a family tradition.” + +He looked at me sideways—and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he +was lying. He hurried the phrase “educated at Oxford,” or swallowed +it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. And with +this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if +there wasn’t something a little sinister about him, after all. + +“What part of the Middle West?” I inquired casually. + +“San Francisco.” + +“I see.” + +“My family all died and I came into a good deal of money.” + +His voice was solemn, as if the memory of that sudden extinction of a +clan still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling +my leg, but a glance at him convinced me otherwise. + +“After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of +Europe—Paris, Venice, Rome—collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting +big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to +forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago.” + +With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very +phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that +of a turbaned “character” leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued +a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne. + +“Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very +hard to die, but I seemed to bear an enchanted life. I accepted a +commission as first lieutenant when it began. In the Argonne Forest I +took the remains of my machine-gun battalion so far forward that there +was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldn’t +advance. We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty +men with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last +they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of +dead. I was promoted to be a major, and every Allied government gave +me a decoration—even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the +Adriatic Sea!” + +Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them—with his +smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro’s troubled history and +sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It +appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had +elicited this tribute from Montenegro’s warm little heart. My +incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming +hastily through a dozen magazines. + +He reached in his pocket, and a piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, +fell into my palm. + +“That’s the one from Montenegro.” + +To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic look. “Orderi di +Danilo,” ran the circular legend, “Montenegro, Nicolas Rex.” + +“Turn it.” + +“Major Jay Gatsby,” I read, “For Valour Extraordinary.” + +“Here’s another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It +was taken in Trinity Quad—the man on my left is now the Earl of +Doncaster.” + +It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an +archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby, +looking a little, not much, younger—with a cricket bat in his hand. + +Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace +on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with +their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart. + +“I’m going to make a big request of you today,” he said, pocketing his +souvenirs with satisfaction, “so I thought you ought to know something +about me. I didn’t want you to think I was just some nobody. You see, +I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there +trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.” He hesitated. +“You’ll hear about it this afternoon.” + +“At lunch?” + +“No, this afternoon. I happened to find out that you’re taking Miss +Baker to tea.” + +“Do you mean you’re in love with Miss Baker?” + +“No, old sport, I’m not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak +to you about this matter.” + +I hadn’t the faintest idea what “this matter” was, but I was more +annoyed than interested. I hadn’t asked Jordan to tea in order to +discuss Mr. Jay Gatsby. I was sure the request would be something +utterly fantastic, and for a moment I was sorry I’d ever set foot upon +his overpopulated lawn. + +He wouldn’t say another word. His correctness grew on him as we neared +the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of +red-belted oceangoing ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with +the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds. +Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a +glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting +vitality as we went by. + +With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half +Astoria—only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated +I heard the familiar “jug-jug-spat!” of a motorcycle, and a frantic +policeman rode alongside. + +“All right, old sport,” called Gatsby. We slowed down. Taking a white +card from his wallet, he waved it before the man’s eyes. + +“Right you are,” agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. “Know you next +time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse me!” + +“What was that?” I inquired. “The picture of Oxford?” + +“I was able to do the commissioner a favour once, and he sends me a +Christmas card every year.” + +Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a +constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across +the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of +nonolfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always +the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the +mystery and the beauty in the world. + +A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two +carriages with drawn blinds, and by more cheerful carriages for +friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short +upper lips of southeastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of +Gatsby’s splendid car was included in their sombre holiday. As we +crossed Blackwell’s Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white +chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I +laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in +haughty rivalry. + +“Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,” I thought; +“anything at all …” + +Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby +for lunch. Blinking away the brightness of the street outside, my eyes +picked him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to another man. + +“Mr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem.” + +A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two +fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a +moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness. + +“—So I took one look at him,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand +earnestly, “and what do you think I did?” + +“What?” I inquired politely. + +But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped my hand and +covered Gatsby with his expressive nose. + +“I handed the money to Katspaugh and I said: ‘All right, Katspaugh, +don’t pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth.’ He shut it then and +there.” + +Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the +restaurant, whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was +starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction. + +“Highballs?” asked the head waiter. + +“This is a nice restaurant here,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, looking at the +presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. “But I like across the street +better!” + +“Yes, highballs,” agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: “It’s too +hot over there.” + +“Hot and small—yes,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, “but full of memories.” + +“What place is that?” I asked. + +“The old Metropole.” + +“The old Metropole,” brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. “Filled with +faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can’t +forget so long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It +was six of us at the table, and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all +evening. When it was almost morning the waiter came up to him with a +funny look and says somebody wants to speak to him outside. ‘All +right,’ says Rosy, and begins to get up, and I pulled him down in his +chair. + +“ ‘Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don’t +you, so help me, move outside this room.’ + +“It was four o’clock in the morning then, and if we’d of raised the +blinds we’d of seen daylight.” + +“Did he go?” I asked innocently. + +“Sure he went.” Mr. Wolfshiem’s nose flashed at me indignantly. “He +turned around in the door and says: ‘Don’t let that waiter take away +my coffee!’ Then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot him three +times in his full belly and drove away.” + +“Four of them were electrocuted,” I said, remembering. + +“Five, with Becker.” His nostrils turned to me in an interested way. +“I understand you’re looking for a business gonnegtion.” + +The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered +for me: + +“Oh, no,” he exclaimed, “this isn’t the man.” + +“No?” Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed. + +“This is just a friend. I told you we’d talk about that some other +time.” + +“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, “I had a wrong man.” + +A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the more +sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with +ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around +the room—he completed the arc by turning to inspect the people +directly behind. I think that, except for my presence, he would have +taken one short glance beneath our own table. + +“Look here, old sport,” said Gatsby, leaning toward me, “I’m afraid I +made you a little angry this morning in the car.” + +There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it. + +“I don’t like mysteries,” I answered, “and I don’t understand why you +won’t come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got +to come through Miss Baker?” + +“Oh, it’s nothing underhand,” he assured me. “Miss Baker’s a great +sportswoman, you know, and she’d never do anything that wasn’t all +right.” + +Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up, and hurried from the room, +leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table. + +“He has to telephone,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his +eyes. “Fine fellow, isn’t he? Handsome to look at and a perfect +gentleman.” + +“Yes.” + +“He’s an Oggsford man.” + +“Oh!” + +“He went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?” + +“I’ve heard of it.” + +“It’s one of the most famous colleges in the world.” + +“Have you known Gatsby for a long time?” I inquired. + +“Several years,” he answered in a gratified way. “I made the pleasure +of his acquaintance just after the war. But I knew I had discovered a +man of fine breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to +myself: ‘There’s the kind of man you’d like to take home and introduce +to your mother and sister.’ ” He paused. “I see you’re looking at my +cuff buttons.” + +I hadn’t been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of +oddly familiar pieces of ivory. + +“Finest specimens of human molars,” he informed me. + +“Well!” I inspected them. “That’s a very interesting idea.” + +“Yeah.” He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. “Yeah, Gatsby’s very +careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend’s +wife.” + +When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and +sat down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his +feet. + +“I have enjoyed my lunch,” he said, “and I’m going to run off from you +two young men before I outstay my welcome.” + +“Don’t hurry Meyer,” said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem +raised his hand in a sort of benediction. + +“You’re very polite, but I belong to another generation,” he announced +solemnly. “You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies +and your—” He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his +hand. “As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won’t impose myself on +you any longer.” + +As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I +wondered if I had said anything to offend him. + +“He becomes very sentimental sometimes,” explained Gatsby. “This is +one of his sentimental days. He’s quite a character around New York—a +denizen of Broadway.” + +“Who is he, anyhow, an actor?” + +“No.” + +“A dentist?” + +“Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added, +coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.” + +“Fixed the World’s Series?” I repeated. + +The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World’s +Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I +would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of +some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could +start to play with the faith of fifty million people—with the +single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe. + +“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute. + +“He just saw the opportunity.” + +“Why isn’t he in jail?” + +“They can’t get him, old sport. He’s a smart man.” + +I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I +caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room. + +“Come along with me for a minute,” I said; “I’ve got to say hello to +someone.” + +When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our +direction. + +“Where’ve you been?” he demanded eagerly. “Daisy’s furious because you +haven’t called up.” + +“This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.” + +They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of +embarrassment came over Gatsby’s face. + +“How’ve you been, anyhow?” demanded Tom of me. “How’d you happen to +come up this far to eat?” + +“I’ve been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.” + +I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +One October day in nineteen-seventeen— + +(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a +straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel) + +—I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks +and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on +shoes from England with rubber knobs on the soles that bit into the +soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the +wind, and whenever this happened the red, white, and blue banners in +front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said tut-tut-tut-tut, +in a disapproving way. + +The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to +Daisy Fay’s house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and +by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She +dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long +the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp +Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that +night. “Anyways, for an hour!” + +When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was +beside the kerb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had +never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she +didn’t see me until I was five feet away. + +“Hello, Jordan,” she called unexpectedly. “Please come here.” + +I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the +older girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red +Cross to make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she +couldn’t come that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was +speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at +sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the +incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didn’t lay eyes on +him again for over four years—even after I’d met him on Long Island I +didn’t realize it was the same man. + +That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux +myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn’t see Daisy very +often. She went with a slightly older crowd—when she went with anyone +at all. Wild rumours were circulating about her—how her mother had +found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say +goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually +prevented, but she wasn’t on speaking terms with her family for +several weeks. After that she didn’t play around with the soldiers any +more, but only with a few flat-footed, shortsighted young men in town, +who couldn’t get into the army at all. + +By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a début +after the armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a +man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, +with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He +came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a +whole floor of the Muhlbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he +gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand +dollars. + +I was a bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the +bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June +night in her flowered dress—and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle +of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other. + +“ ’Gratulate me,” she muttered. “Never had a drink before, but oh how +I do enjoy it.” + +“What’s the matter, Daisy?” + +I was scared, I can tell you; I’d never seen a girl like that before. + +“Here, dearies.” She groped around in a wastebasket she had with her +on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. “Take ’em downstairs +and give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em all Daisy’s +change’ her mine. Say: ‘Daisy’s change’ her mine!’ ” + +She began to cry—she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her +mother’s maid, and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. +She wouldn’t let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her +and squeezed it up in a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the +soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow. + +But she didn’t say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and +put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half +an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around +her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o’clock she +married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a +three months’ trip to the South Seas. + +I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back, and I thought I’d +never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a +minute she’d look around uneasily, and say: “Where’s Tom gone?” and +wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the +door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the +hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with +unfathomable delight. It was touching to see them together—it made you +laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I +left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night, +and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got +into the papers, too, because her arm was broken—she was one of the +chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel. + +The next April Daisy had her little girl, and they went to France for +a year. I saw them one spring in Cannes, and later in Deauville, and +then they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in +Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young +and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect +reputation. Perhaps because she doesn’t drink. It’s a great advantage +not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, +moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that +everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care. Perhaps Daisy +never went in for amour at all—and yet there’s something in that voice +of hers … + +Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first +time in years. It was when I asked you—do you remember?—if you knew +Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and +woke me up, and said: “What Gatsby?” and when I described him—I was +half asleep—she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man +she used to know. It wasn’t until then that I connected this Gatsby +with the officer in her white car. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this we had left the Plaza +for half an hour and were driving in a victoria through Central Park. +The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in +the West Fifties, and the clear voices of children, already gathered +like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight: + + “I’m the Sheik of Araby. Your love belongs to me. At night when + you’re asleep Into your tent I’ll creep—” + +“It was a strange coincidence,” I said. + +“But it wasn’t a coincidence at all.” + +“Why not?” + +“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.” + +Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that +June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of +his purposeless splendour. + +“He wants to know,” continued Jordan, “if you’ll invite Daisy to your +house some afternoon and then let him come over.” + +The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and +bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths—so that +he could “come over” some afternoon to a stranger’s garden. + +“Did I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?” + +“He’s afraid, he’s waited so long. He thought you might be +offended. You see, he’s regular tough underneath it all.” + +Something worried me. + +“Why didn’t he ask you to arrange a meeting?” + +“He wants her to see his house,” she explained. “And your house is +right next door.” + +“Oh!” + +“I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some +night,” went on Jordan, “but she never did. Then he began asking +people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found. It +was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have heard +the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately +suggested a luncheon in New York—and I thought he’d go mad: + +“ ‘I don’t want to do anything out of the way!’ he kept saying. ‘I +want to see her right next door.’ + +“When I said you were a particular friend of Tom’s, he started to +abandon the whole idea. He doesn’t know very much about Tom, though he +says he’s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of +catching a glimpse of Daisy’s name.” + +It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm +around Jordan’s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her +to dinner. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, +but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal +scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my +arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady +excitement: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and +the tired.” + +“And Daisy ought to have something in her life,” murmured Jordan to +me. + +“Does she want to see Gatsby?” + +“She’s not to know about it. Gatsby doesn’t want her to know. You’re +just supposed to invite her to tea.” + +We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the façade of Fifty-Ninth +Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park. +Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face +floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up +the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth +smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face. + + + V + +When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that +my house was on fire. Two o’clock and the whole corner of the +peninsula was blazing with light, which fell unreal on the shrubbery +and made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires. Turning a +corner, I saw that it was Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar. + +At first I thought it was another party, a wild rout that had resolved +itself into “hide-and-go-seek” or “sardines-in-the-box” with all the +house thrown open to the game. But there wasn’t a sound. Only wind in +the trees, which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on +again as if the house had winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned +away I saw Gatsby walking toward me across his lawn. + +“Your place looks like the World’s Fair,” I said. + +“Does it?” He turned his eyes toward it absently. “I have been +glancing into some of the rooms. Let’s go to Coney Island, old +sport. In my car.” + +“It’s too late.” + +“Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming pool? I haven’t made +use of it all summer.” + +“I’ve got to go to bed.” + +“All right.” + +He waited, looking at me with suppressed eagerness. + +“I talked with Miss Baker,” I said after a moment. “I’m going to call +up Daisy tomorrow and invite her over here to tea.” + +“Oh, that’s all right,” he said carelessly. “I don’t want to put you +to any trouble.” + +“What day would suit you?” + +“What day would suit you?” he corrected me quickly. “I don’t want to +put you to any trouble, you see.” + +“How about the day after tomorrow?” + +He considered for a moment. Then, with reluctance: “I want to get the +grass cut,” he said. + +We both looked down at the grass—there was a sharp line where my +ragged lawn ended and the darker, well-kept expanse of his began. I +suspected that he meant my grass. + +“There’s another little thing,” he said uncertainly, and hesitated. + +“Would you rather put it off for a few days?” I asked. + +“Oh, it isn’t about that. At least—” He fumbled with a series of +beginnings. “Why, I thought—why, look here, old sport, you don’t make +much money, do you?” + +“Not very much.” + +This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently. + +“I thought you didn’t, if you’ll pardon my—you see, I carry on a +little business on the side, a sort of side line, you understand. And +I thought that if you don’t make very much—You’re selling bonds, +aren’t you, old sport?” + +“Trying to.” + +“Well, this would interest you. It wouldn’t take up much of your time +and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It happens to be a rather +confidential sort of thing.” + +I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation +might have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer +was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no +choice except to cut him off there. + +“I’ve got my hands full,” I said. “I’m much obliged but I couldn’t +take on any more work.” + +“You wouldn’t have to do any business with Wolfshiem.” Evidently he +thought that I was shying away from the “gonnegtion” mentioned at +lunch, but I assured him he was wrong. He waited a moment longer, +hoping I’d begin a conversation, but I was too absorbed to be +responsive, so he went unwillingly home. + +The evening had made me lightheaded and happy; I think I walked into a +deep sleep as I entered my front door. So I don’t know whether or not +Gatsby went to Coney Island, or for how many hours he “glanced into +rooms” while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the +office next morning, and invited her to come to tea. + +“Don’t bring Tom,” I warned her. + +“What?” + +“Don’t bring Tom.” + +“Who is ‘Tom’?” she asked innocently. + +The day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven o’clock a man in a +raincoat, dragging a lawn-mower, tapped at my front door and said that +Mr. Gatsby had sent him over to cut my grass. This reminded me that I +had forgotten to tell my Finn to come back, so I drove into West Egg +Village to search for her among soggy whitewashed alleys and to buy +some cups and lemons and flowers. + +The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock a greenhouse arrived +from Gatsby’s, with innumerable receptacles to contain it. An hour +later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby in a white flannel +suit, silver shirt, and gold-coloured tie, hurried in. He was pale, +and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. + +“Is everything all right?” he asked immediately. + +“The grass looks fine, if that’s what you mean.” + +“What grass?” he inquired blankly. “Oh, the grass in the yard.” He +looked out the window at it, but, judging from his expression, I don’t +believe he saw a thing. + +“Looks very good,” he remarked vaguely. “One of the papers said they +thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was The +Journal. Have you got everything you need in the shape of—of tea?” + +I took him into the pantry, where he looked a little reproachfully at +the Finn. Together we scrutinized the twelve lemon cakes from the +delicatessen shop. + +“Will they do?” I asked. + +“Of course, of course! They’re fine!” and he added hollowly, “… old +sport.” + +The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp mist, through which +occasional thin drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes +through a copy of Clay’s Economics, starting at the Finnish tread that +shook the kitchen floor, and peering towards the bleared windows from +time to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were +taking place outside. Finally he got up and informed me, in an +uncertain voice, that he was going home. + +“Why’s that?” + +“Nobody’s coming to tea. It’s too late!” He looked at his watch as if +there was some pressing demand on his time elsewhere. “I can’t wait +all day.” + +“Don’t be silly; it’s just two minutes to four.” + +He sat down miserably, as if I had pushed him, and simultaneously +there was the sound of a motor turning into my lane. We both jumped +up, and, a little harrowed myself, I went out into the yard. + +Under the dripping bare lilac-trees a large open car was coming up the +drive. It stopped. Daisy’s face, tipped sideways beneath a +three-cornered lavender hat, looked out at me with a bright ecstatic +smile. + +“Is this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?” + +The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I +had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear +alone, before any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a +dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with +glistening drops as I took it to help her from the car. + +“Are you in love with me,” she said low in my ear, “or why did I have +to come alone?” + +“That’s the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far +away and spend an hour.” + +“Come back in an hour, Ferdie.” Then in a grave murmur: “His name is +Ferdie.” + +“Does the gasoline affect his nose?” + +“I don’t think so,” she said innocently. “Why?” + +We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living-room was deserted. + +“Well, that’s funny,” I exclaimed. + +“What’s funny?” + +She turned her head as there was a light dignified knocking at the +front door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his +hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a +puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes. + +With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked by me into the +hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire, and disappeared into the +living-room. It wasn’t a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of my +own heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain. + +For half a minute there wasn’t a sound. Then from the living-room I +heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh, followed by +Daisy’s voice on a clear artificial note: + +“I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.” + +A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall, so I +went into the room. + +Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the +mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of +boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face +of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught +eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful, +on the edge of a stiff chair. + +“We’ve met before,” muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at +me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily +the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his +head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and +set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm +of the sofa and his chin in his hand. + +“I’m sorry about the clock,” he said. + +My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn’t muster up +a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head. + +“It’s an old clock,” I told them idiotically. + +I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on +the floor. + +“We haven’t met for many years,” said Daisy, her voice as +matter-of-fact as it could ever be. + +“Five years next November.” + +The automatic quality of Gatsby’s answer set us all back at least +another minute. I had them both on their feet with the desperate +suggestion that they help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac +Finn brought it in on a tray. + +Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical +decency established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow and, +while Daisy and I talked, looked conscientiously from one to the other +of us with tense, unhappy eyes. However, as calmness wasn’t an end in +itself, I made an excuse at the first possible moment, and got to my +feet. + +“Where are you going?” demanded Gatsby in immediate alarm. + +“I’ll be back.” + +“I’ve got to speak to you about something before you go.” + +He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door, and +whispered: “Oh, God!” in a miserable way. + +“What’s the matter?” + +“This is a terrible mistake,” he said, shaking his head from side to +side, “a terrible, terrible mistake.” + +“You’re just embarrassed, that’s all,” and luckily I added: “Daisy’s +embarrassed too.” + +“She’s embarrassed?” he repeated incredulously. + +“Just as much as you are.” + +“Don’t talk so loud.” + +“You’re acting like a little boy,” I broke out impatiently. “Not only +that, but you’re rude. Daisy’s sitting in there all alone.” + +He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me with unforgettable +reproach, and, opening the door cautiously, went back into the other +room. + +I walked out the back way—just as Gatsby had when he had made his +nervous circuit of the house half an hour before—and ran for a huge +black knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric against the +rain. Once more it was pouring, and my irregular lawn, well-shaved by +Gatsby’s gardener, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric +marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except +Gatsby’s enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church +steeple, for half an hour. A brewer had built it early in the “period” +craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he’d agreed to pay +five years’ taxes on all the neighbouring cottages if the owners would +have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the +heart out of his plan to Found a Family—he went into an immediate +decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on +the door. Americans, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have +always been obstinate about being peasantry. + +After half an hour, the sun shone again, and the grocer’s automobile +rounded Gatsby’s drive with the raw material for his servants’ +dinner—I felt sure he wouldn’t eat a spoonful. A maid began opening +the upper windows of his house, appeared momentarily in each, and, +leaning from the large central bay, spat meditatively into the +garden. It was time I went back. While the rain continued it had +seemed like the murmur of their voices, rising and swelling a little +now and then with gusts of emotion. But in the new silence I felt that +silence had fallen within the house too. + +I went in—after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of +pushing over the stove—but I don’t believe they heard a sound. They +were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if +some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of +embarrassment was gone. Daisy’s face was smeared with tears, and when +I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief +before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply +confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of +exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little +room. + +“Oh, hello, old sport,” he said, as if he hadn’t seen me for years. I +thought for a moment he was going to shake hands. + +“It’s stopped raining.” + +“Has it?” When he realized what I was talking about, that there were +twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man, +like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to +Daisy. “What do you think of that? It’s stopped raining.” + +“I’m glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told +only of her unexpected joy. + +“I want you and Daisy to come over to my house,” he said, “I’d like to +show her around.” + +“You’re sure you want me to come?” + +“Absolutely, old sport.” + +Daisy went upstairs to wash her face—too late I thought with +humiliation of my towels—while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn. + +“My house looks well, doesn’t it?” he demanded. “See how the whole +front of it catches the light.” + +I agreed that it was splendid. + +“Yes.” His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. “It +took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.” + +“I thought you inherited your money.” + +“I did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but I lost most of it in +the big panic—the panic of the war.” + +I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what +business he was in he answered: “That’s my affair,” before he realized +that it wasn’t an appropriate reply. + +“Oh, I’ve been in several things,” he corrected himself. “I was in the +drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I’m not in +either one now.” He looked at me with more attention. “Do you mean +you’ve been thinking over what I proposed the other night?” + +Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of +brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight. + +“That huge place there?” she cried pointing. + +“Do you like it?” + +“I love it, but I don’t see how you live there all alone.” + +“I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People +who do interesting things. Celebrated people.” + +Instead of taking the shortcut along the Sound we went down to the +road and entered by the big postern. With enchanting murmurs Daisy +admired this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky, +admired the gardens, the sparkling odour of jonquils and the frothy +odour of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odour of +kiss-me-at-the-gate. It was strange to reach the marble steps and find +no stir of bright dresses in and out the door, and hear no sound but +bird voices in the trees. + +And inside, as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music-rooms and +Restoration Salons, I felt that there were guests concealed behind +every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we +had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of “the Merton College +Library” I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into +ghostly laughter. + +We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender +silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing-rooms and poolrooms, +and bathrooms with sunken baths—intruding into one chamber where a +dishevelled man in pyjamas was doing liver exercises on the floor. It +was Mr. Klipspringer, the “boarder.” I had seen him wandering hungrily +about the beach that morning. Finally we came to Gatsby’s own +apartment, a bedroom and a bath, and an Adam’s study, where we sat +down and drank a glass of some Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in +the wall. + +He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued +everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew +from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes too, he stared around at his +possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding +presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a +flight of stairs. + +His bedroom was the simplest room of all—except where the dresser was +garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush +with delight, and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and +shaded his eyes and began to laugh. + +“It’s the funniest thing, old sport,” he said hilariously. “I +can’t—When I try to—” + +He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a +third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed +with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, +dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to +speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, +he was running down like an over-wound clock. + +Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent +cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and +his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high. + +“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a +selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.” + +He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, +before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, +which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in +many-coloured disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft +rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in +coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of +indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into +the shirts and began to cry stormily. + +“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the +thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such +beautiful shirts before.” + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and +the hydroplane, and the midsummer flowers—but outside Gatsby’s window +it began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated +surface of the Sound. + +“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” +said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at +the end of your dock.” + +Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what +he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal +significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the +great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very +near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to +the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of +enchanted objects had diminished by one. + +I began to walk about the room, examining various indefinite objects +in the half darkness. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting +costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk. + +“Who’s this?” + +“That? That’s Mr. Dan Cody, old sport.” + +The name sounded faintly familiar. + +“He’s dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago.” + +There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the +bureau—Gatsby with his head thrown back defiantly—taken apparently +when he was about eighteen. + +“I adore it,” exclaimed Daisy. “The pompadour! You never told me you +had a pompadour—or a yacht.” + +“Look at this,” said Gatsby quickly. “Here’s a lot of clippings—about +you.” + +They stood side by side examining it. I was going to ask to see the +rubies when the phone rang, and Gatsby took up the receiver. + +“Yes … Well, I can’t talk now … I can’t talk now, old sport … I said a +small town … He must know what a small town is … Well, he’s no use to +us if Detroit is his idea of a small town …” + +He rang off. + +“Come here quick!” cried Daisy at the window. + +The rain was still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west, +and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea. + +“Look at that,” she whispered, and then after a moment: “I’d like to +just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you +around.” + +I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my presence +made them feel more satisfactorily alone. + +“I know what we’ll do,” said Gatsby, “we’ll have Klipspringer play the +piano.” + +He went out of the room calling “Ewing!” and returned in a few minutes +accompanied by an embarrassed, slightly worn young man, with +shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair. He was now decently +clothed in a “sport shirt,” open at the neck, sneakers, and duck +trousers of a nebulous hue. + +“Did we interrupt your exercise?” inquired Daisy politely. + +“I was asleep,” cried Mr. Klipspringer, in a spasm of embarrassment. +“That is, I’d been asleep. Then I got up …” + +“Klipspringer plays the piano,” said Gatsby, cutting him off. “Don’t +you, Ewing, old sport?” + +“I don’t play well. I don’t—hardly play at all. I’m all out of prac—” + +“We’ll go downstairs,” interrupted Gatsby. He flipped a switch. The +grey windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light. + +In the music-room Gatsby turned on a solitary lamp beside the piano. +He lit Daisy’s cigarette from a trembling match, and sat down with her +on a couch far across the room, where there was no light save what the +gleaming floor bounced in from the hall. + +When Klipspringer had played “The Love Nest” he turned around on the +bench and searched unhappily for Gatsby in the gloom. + +“I’m all out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn’t play. I’m all +out of prac—” + +“Don’t talk so much, old sport,” commanded Gatsby. “Play!” + + “In the morning, In the evening, Ain’t we got fun—” + +Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along +the Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the electric +trains, men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain from New +York. It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was +generating on the air. + + “One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer The rich get richer and the + poor get—children. In the meantime, In between time—” + +As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of +bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt +had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost +five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when +Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but +because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond +her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative +passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright +feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can +challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart. + +As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took +hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned +toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, +with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be +over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song. + +They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; +Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they +looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went +out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them +there together. + + + VI + +About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one +morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say. + +“Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby politely. + +“Why—any statement to give out.” + +It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard +Gatsby’s name around his office in a connection which he either +wouldn’t reveal or didn’t fully understand. This was his day off and +with laudable initiative he had hurried out “to see.” + +It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right. +Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his +hospitality and so become authorities upon his past, had increased all +summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends +such as the “underground pipeline to Canada” attached themselves to +him, and there was one persistent story that he didn’t live in a house +at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly +up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a +source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to +say. + +James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had +changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that +witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht +drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was +James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a +torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay +Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and +informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an +hour. + +I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His +parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination +had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was +that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic +conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means +anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, +the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented +just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be +likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. + +For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of +Lake Superior as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher or in any other +capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body +lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing +days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became +contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of +the others because they were hysterical about things which in his +overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted. + +But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque +and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of +ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock +ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled +clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his +fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an +oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for +his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of +reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on +a fairy’s wing. + +An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, +to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf’s in southern Minnesota. He +stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the +drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor’s +work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to +Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the +day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore. + +Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, +of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five. The +transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire +found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, +suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him +from his money. The none too savoury ramifications by which Ella Kaye, +the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and +sent him to sea in a yacht, were common property of the turgid +journalism in 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable +shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz’s destiny in +Little Girl Bay. + +To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, +that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. I +suppose he smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that people liked +him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of +them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and +extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and +bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trousers, and a +yachting cap. And when the Tuolomee left for the West Indies and the +Barbary Coast, Gatsby left too. + +He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with +Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even +jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk +might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by +reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five +years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent. +It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye +came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody +inhospitably died. + +I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby’s bedroom, a grey, florid +man with a hard, empty face—the pioneer debauchee, who during one +phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage +violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to +Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay +parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he +formed the habit of letting liquor alone. + +And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five +thousand dollars. He didn’t get it. He never understood the legal +device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions +went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate +education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the +substantiality of a man. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +He told me all this very much later, but I’ve put it down here with +the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents, +which weren’t even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time +of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and +nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while +Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of +misconceptions away. + +It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several +weeks I didn’t see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in +New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself +with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday +afternoon. I hadn’t been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom +Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled, naturally, but the really +surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened before. + +They were a party of three on horseback—Tom and a man named Sloane and +a pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there previously. + +“I’m delighted to see you,” said Gatsby, standing on his porch. “I’m +delighted that you dropped in.” + +As though they cared! + +“Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar.” He walked around the +room quickly, ringing bells. “I’ll have something to drink for you in +just a minute.” + +He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he +would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in +a vague way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted +nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all, +thanks … I’m sorry— + +“Did you have a nice ride?” + +“Very good roads around here.” + +“I suppose the automobiles—” + +“Yeah.” + +Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had +accepted the introduction as a stranger. + +“I believe we’ve met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.” + +“Oh, yes,” said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously not remembering. +“So we did. I remember very well.” + +“About two weeks ago.” + +“That’s right. You were with Nick here.” + +“I know your wife,” continued Gatsby, almost aggressively. + +“That so?” + +Tom turned to me. + +“You live near here, Nick?” + +“Next door.” + +“That so?” + +Mr. Sloane didn’t enter into the conversation, but lounged back +haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either—until +unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial. + +“We’ll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby,” she suggested. +“What do you say?” + +“Certainly; I’d be delighted to have you.” + +“Be ver’ nice,” said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. “Well—think ought +to be starting home.” + +“Please don’t hurry,” Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself +now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. “Why don’t you—why don’t you +stay for supper? I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people dropped +in from New York.” + +“You come to supper with me,” said the lady enthusiastically. “Both of +you.” + +This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet. + +“Come along,” he said—but to her only. + +“I mean it,” she insisted. “I’d love to have you. Lots of room.” + +Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn’t see +that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn’t. + +“I’m afraid I won’t be able to,” I said. + +“Well, you come,” she urged, concentrating on Gatsby. + +Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear. + +“We won’t be late if we start now,” she insisted aloud. + +“I haven’t got a horse,” said Gatsby. “I used to ride in the army, but +I’ve never bought a horse. I’ll have to follow you in my car. Excuse +me for just a minute.” + +The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady +began an impassioned conversation aside. + +“My God, I believe the man’s coming,” said Tom. “Doesn’t he know she +doesn’t want him?” + +“She says she does want him.” + +“She has a big dinner party and he won’t know a soul there.” He +frowned. “I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be +old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to +suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.” + +Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted +their horses. + +“Come on,” said Mr. Sloane to Tom, “we’re late. We’ve got to go.” And +then to me: “Tell him we couldn’t wait, will you?” + +Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod, and they +trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August foliage +just as Gatsby, with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out the +front door. + +Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy’s running around alone, for on +the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby’s +party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of +oppressiveness—it stands out in my memory from Gatsby’s other parties +that summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of +people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-coloured, +many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a +pervading harshness that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps I had +merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete +in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to +nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was +looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably saddening +to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your +own powers of adjustment. + +They arrived at twilight, and, as we strolled out among the sparkling +hundreds, Daisy’s voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat. + +“These things excite me so,” she whispered. “If you want to kiss me +any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I’ll be glad +to arrange it for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green card. +I’m giving out green—” + +“Look around,” suggested Gatsby. + +“I’m looking around. I’m having a marvellous—” + +“You must see the faces of many people you’ve heard about.” + +Tom’s arrogant eyes roamed the crowd. + +“We don’t go around very much,” he said; “in fact, I was just thinking +I don’t know a soul here.” + +“Perhaps you know that lady.” Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely +human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white-plum tree. Tom +and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies +the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies. + +“She’s lovely,” said Daisy. + +“The man bending over her is her director.” + +He took them ceremoniously from group to group: + +“Mrs. Buchanan … and Mr. Buchanan—” After an instant’s hesitation he +added: “the polo player.” + +“Oh no,” objected Tom quickly, “not me.” + +But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for Tom remained “the +polo player” for the rest of the evening. + +“I’ve never met so many celebrities,” Daisy exclaimed. “I liked that +man—what was his name?—with the sort of blue nose.” + +Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer. + +“Well, I liked him anyhow.” + +“I’d a little rather not be the polo player,” said Tom pleasantly, +“I’d rather look at all these famous people in—in oblivion.” + +Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised by his graceful, +conservative foxtrot—I had never seen him dance before. Then they +sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour, +while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden. “In case +there’s a fire or a flood,” she explained, “or any act of God.” + +Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper +together. “Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?” he +said. “A fellow’s getting off some funny stuff.” + +“Go ahead,” answered Daisy genially, “and if you want to take down any +addresses here’s my little gold pencil.” … She looked around after a +moment and told me the girl was “common but pretty,” and I knew that +except for the half-hour she’d been alone with Gatsby she wasn’t +having a good time. + +We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault—Gatsby had +been called to the phone, and I’d enjoyed these same people only two +weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air +now. + +“How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?” + +The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my +shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes. + +“Wha’?” + +A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf +with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker’s defence: + +“Oh, she’s all right now. When she’s had five or six cocktails she +always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it +alone.” + +“I do leave it alone,” affirmed the accused hollowly. + +“We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: ‘There’s somebody +that needs your help, Doc.’ ” + +“She’s much obliged, I’m sure,” said another friend, without +gratitude, “but you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in +the pool.” + +“Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,” mumbled Miss +Baedeker. “They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey.” + +“Then you ought to leave it alone,” countered Doctor Civet. + +“Speak for yourself!” cried Miss Baedeker violently. “Your hand +shakes. I wouldn’t let you operate on me!” + +It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with +Daisy and watching the moving-picture director and his Star. They were +still under the white-plum tree and their faces were touching except +for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he +had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this +proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate +degree and kiss at her cheek. + +“I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.” + +But the rest offended her—and inarguably because it wasn’t a gesture +but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented +“place” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing +village—appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under the old +euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants +along a shortcut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in +the very simplicity she failed to understand. + +I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. +It was dark here in front; only the bright door sent ten square feet +of light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a shadow +moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow, +an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an +invisible glass. + +“Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” demanded Tom suddenly. “Some big +bootlegger?” + +“Where’d you hear that?” I inquired. + +“I didn’t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are +just big bootleggers, you know.” + +“Not Gatsby,” I said shortly. + +He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the drive crunched under +his feet. + +“Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie +together.” + +A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy’s fur collar. + +“At least they are more interesting than the people we know,” she said +with an effort. + +“You didn’t look so interested.” + +“Well, I was.” + +Tom laughed and turned to me. + +“Did you notice Daisy’s face when that girl asked her to put her under +a cold shower?” + +Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, +bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and +would never have again. When the melody rose her voice broke up +sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change +tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air. + +“Lots of people come who haven’t been invited,” she said +suddenly. “That girl hadn’t been invited. They simply force their way +in and he’s too polite to object.” + +“I’d like to know who he is and what he does,” insisted Tom. “And I +think I’ll make a point of finding out.” + +“I can tell you right now,” she answered. “He owned some drugstores, a +lot of drugstores. He built them up himself.” + +The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive. + +“Good night, Nick,” said Daisy. + +Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps, where +“Three O’Clock in the Morning,” a neat, sad little waltz of that year, +was drifting out the open door. After all, in the very casualness of +Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from +her world. What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling +her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours? +Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare +and to be marvelled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with +one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would +blot out those five years of unwavering devotion. + +I stayed late that night. Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free, +and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party had +run up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights +were extinguished in the guestrooms overhead. When he came down the +steps at last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face, +and his eyes were bright and tired. + +“She didn’t like it,” he said immediately. + +“Of course she did.” + +“She didn’t like it,” he insisted. “She didn’t have a good time.” + +He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable depression. + +“I feel far away from her,” he said. “It’s hard to make her +understand.” + +“You mean about the dance?” + +“The dance?” He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of +his fingers. “Old sport, the dance is unimportant.” + +He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and +say: “I never loved you.” After she had obliterated four years with +that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be +taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back +to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five +years ago. + +“And she doesn’t understand,” he said. “She used to be able to +understand. We’d sit for hours—” + +He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit +rinds and discarded favours and crushed flowers. + +“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the +past.” + +“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you +can!” + +He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the +shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. + +“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, +nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.” + +He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to +recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into +loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, +but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it +all slowly, he could find out what that thing was … + +… One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the +street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where +there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They +stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night +with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes +of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the +darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the +corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really +formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could +climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the +pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. + +His heart beat faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He +knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable +visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like +the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the +tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At +his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the +incarnation was complete. + +Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was +reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, +that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase +tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, +as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled +air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was +uncommunicable forever. + + + VII + +It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights +in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as +it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over. Only gradually did I +become aware that the automobiles which turned expectantly into his +drive stayed for just a minute and then drove sulkily away. Wondering +if he were sick I went over to find out—an unfamiliar butler with a +villainous face squinted at me suspiciously from the door. + +“Is Mr. Gatsby sick?” + +“Nope.” After a pause he added “sir” in a dilatory, grudging way. + +“I hadn’t seen him around, and I was rather worried. Tell him Mr. +Carraway came over.” + +“Who?” he demanded rudely. + +“Carraway.” + +“Carraway. All right, I’ll tell him.” + +Abruptly he slammed the door. + +My Finn informed me that Gatsby had dismissed every servant in his +house a week ago and replaced them with half a dozen others, who never +went into West Egg village to be bribed by the tradesmen, but ordered +moderate supplies over the telephone. The grocery boy reported that +the kitchen looked like a pigsty, and the general opinion in the +village was that the new people weren’t servants at all. + +Next day Gatsby called me on the phone. + +“Going away?” I inquired. + +“No, old sport.” + +“I hear you fired all your servants.” + +“I wanted somebody who wouldn’t gossip. Daisy comes over quite +often—in the afternoons.” + +So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the +disapproval in her eyes. + +“They’re some people Wolfshiem wanted to do something for. They’re all +brothers and sisters. They used to run a small hotel.” + +“I see.” + +He was calling up at Daisy’s request—would I come to lunch at her +house tomorrow? Miss Baker would be there. Half an hour later Daisy +herself telephoned and seemed relieved to find that I was +coming. Something was up. And yet I couldn’t believe that they would +choose this occasion for a scene—especially for the rather harrowing +scene that Gatsby had outlined in the garden. + +The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest, of +the summer. As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only +the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering +hush at noon. The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of +combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into +her white shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her +fingers, lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry. Her +pocketbook slapped to the floor. + +“Oh, my!” she gasped. + +I picked it up with a weary bend and handed it back to her, holding it +at arm’s length and by the extreme tip of the corners to indicate that +I had no designs upon it—but everyone near by, including the woman, +suspected me just the same. + +“Hot!” said the conductor to familiar faces. “Some weather! … Hot! … +Hot! … Hot! … Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it … ?” + +My commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand. +That anyone should care in this heat whose flushed lips he kissed, +whose head made damp the pyjama pocket over his heart! + +… Through the hall of the Buchanans’ house blew a faint wind, carrying +the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as we waited at +the door. + +“The master’s body?” roared the butler into the mouthpiece. “I’m +sorry, madame, but we can’t furnish it—it’s far too hot to touch this +noon!” + +What he really said was: “Yes … Yes … I’ll see.” + +He set down the receiver and came toward us, glistening slightly, to +take our stiff straw hats. + +“Madame expects you in the salon!” he cried, needlessly indicating the +direction. In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the +common store of life. + +The room, shadowed well with awnings, was dark and cool. Daisy and +Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down +their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans. + +“We can’t move,” they said together. + +Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a moment +in mine. + +“And Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the athlete?” I inquired. + +Simultaneously I heard his voice, gruff, muffled, husky, at the hall +telephone. + +Gatsby stood in the centre of the crimson carpet and gazed around with +fascinated eyes. Daisy watched him and laughed, her sweet, exciting +laugh; a tiny gust of powder rose from her bosom into the air. + +“The rumour is,” whispered Jordan, “that that’s Tom’s girl on the +telephone.” + +We were silent. The voice in the hall rose high with annoyance: “Very +well, then, I won’t sell you the car at all … I’m under no obligations +to you at all … and as for your bothering me about it at lunch time, I +won’t stand that at all!” + +“Holding down the receiver,” said Daisy cynically. + +“No, he’s not,” I assured her. “It’s a bona-fide deal. I happen to +know about it.” + +Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space for a moment with his +thick body, and hurried into the room. + +“Mr. Gatsby!” He put out his broad, flat hand with well-concealed +dislike. “I’m glad to see you, sir … Nick …” + +“Make us a cold drink,” cried Daisy. + +As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and +pulled his face down, kissing him on the mouth. + +“You know I love you,” she murmured. + +“You forget there’s a lady present,” said Jordan. + +Daisy looked around doubtfully. + +“You kiss Nick too.” + +“What a low, vulgar girl!” + +“I don’t care!” cried Daisy, and began to clog on the brick fireplace. +Then she remembered the heat and sat down guiltily on the couch just +as a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came into the room. + +“Bles-sed pre-cious,” she crooned, holding out her arms. “Come to your +own mother that loves you.” + +The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across the room and +rooted shyly into her mother’s dress. + +“The bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your old yellowy +hair? Stand up now, and say—How-de-do.” + +Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small reluctant hand. +Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don’t think he +had ever really believed in its existence before. + +“I got dressed before luncheon,” said the child, turning eagerly to +Daisy. + +“That’s because your mother wanted to show you off.” Her face bent +into the single wrinkle of the small white neck. “You dream, you. You +absolute little dream.” + +“Yes,” admitted the child calmly. “Aunt Jordan’s got on a white dress +too.” + +“How do you like mother’s friends?” Daisy turned her around so that +she faced Gatsby. “Do you think they’re pretty?” + +“Where’s Daddy?” + +“She doesn’t look like her father,” explained Daisy. “She looks like +me. She’s got my hair and shape of the face.” + +Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took a step forward and held +out her hand. + +“Come, Pammy.” + +“Goodbye, sweetheart!” + +With a reluctant backward glance the well-disciplined child held to +her nurse’s hand and was pulled out the door, just as Tom came back, +preceding four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice. + +Gatsby took up his drink. + +“They certainly look cool,” he said, with visible tension. + +We drank in long, greedy swallows. + +“I read somewhere that the sun’s getting hotter every year,” said Tom +genially. “It seems that pretty soon the earth’s going to fall into +the sun—or wait a minute—it’s just the opposite—the sun’s getting +colder every year. + +“Come outside,” he suggested to Gatsby, “I’d like you to have a look +at the place.” + +I went with them out to the veranda. On the green Sound, stagnant in +the heat, one small sail crawled slowly toward the fresher sea. +Gatsby’s eyes followed it momentarily; he raised his hand and pointed +across the bay. + +“I’m right across from you.” + +“So you are.” + +Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot lawn and the weedy +refuse of the dog-days alongshore. Slowly the white wings of the boat +moved against the blue cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay the scalloped +ocean and the abounding blessed isles. + +“There’s sport for you,” said Tom, nodding. “I’d like to be out there +with him for about an hour.” + +We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened too against the heat, and +drank down nervous gaiety with the cold ale. + +“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the +day after that, and the next thirty years?” + +“Don’t be morbid,” Jordan said. “Life starts all over again when it +gets crisp in the fall.” + +“But it’s so hot,” insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, “and +everything’s so confused. Let’s all go to town!” + +Her voice struggled on through the heat, beating against it, moulding +its senselessness into forms. + +“I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,” Tom was saying to +Gatsby, “but I’m the first man who ever made a stable out of a +garage.” + +“Who wants to go to town?” demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby’s eyes +floated toward her. “Ah,” she cried, “you look so cool.” + +Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in +space. With an effort she glanced down at the table. + +“You always look so cool,” she repeated. + +She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was +astounded. His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and +then back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as someone he knew +a long time ago. + +“You resemble the advertisement of the man,” she went on innocently. +“You know the advertisement of the man—” + +“All right,” broke in Tom quickly, “I’m perfectly willing to go to +town. Come on—we’re all going to town.” + +He got up, his eyes still flashing between Gatsby and his wife. No one +moved. + +“Come on!” His temper cracked a little. “What’s the matter, anyhow? +If we’re going to town, let’s start.” + +His hand, trembling with his effort at self-control, bore to his lips +the last of his glass of ale. Daisy’s voice got us to our feet and out +on to the blazing gravel drive. + +“Are we just going to go?” she objected. “Like this? Aren’t we going +to let anyone smoke a cigarette first?” + +“Everybody smoked all through lunch.” + +“Oh, let’s have fun,” she begged him. “It’s too hot to fuss.” + +He didn’t answer. + +“Have it your own way,” she said. “Come on, Jordan.” + +They went upstairs to get ready while we three men stood there +shuffling the hot pebbles with our feet. A silver curve of the moon +hovered already in the western sky. Gatsby started to speak, changed +his mind, but not before Tom wheeled and faced him expectantly. + +“Have you got your stables here?” asked Gatsby with an effort. + +“About a quarter of a mile down the road.” + +“Oh.” + +A pause. + +“I don’t see the idea of going to town,” broke out Tom savagely. +“Women get these notions in their heads—” + +“Shall we take anything to drink?” called Daisy from an upper window. + +“I’ll get some whisky,” answered Tom. He went inside. + +Gatsby turned to me rigidly: + +“I can’t say anything in his house, old sport.” + +“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of—” I +hesitated. + +“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. + +That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that +was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of +it, the cymbals’ song of it … High in a white palace the king’s +daughter, the golden girl … + +Tom came out of the house wrapping a quart bottle in a towel, followed +by Daisy and Jordan wearing small tight hats of metallic cloth and +carrying light capes over their arms. + +“Shall we all go in my car?” suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot, green +leather of the seat. “I ought to have left it in the shade.” + +“Is it standard shift?” demanded Tom. + +“Yes.” + +“Well, you take my coupé and let me drive your car to town.” + +The suggestion was distasteful to Gatsby. + +“I don’t think there’s much gas,” he objected. + +“Plenty of gas,” said Tom boisterously. He looked at the gauge. “And +if it runs out I can stop at a drugstore. You can buy anything at a +drugstore nowadays.” + +A pause followed this apparently pointless remark. Daisy looked at Tom +frowning, and an indefinable expression, at once definitely unfamiliar +and vaguely recognizable, as if I had only heard it described in +words, passed over Gatsby’s face. + +“Come on, Daisy,” said Tom, pressing her with his hand toward Gatsby’s +car. “I’ll take you in this circus wagon.” + +He opened the door, but she moved out from the circle of his arm. + +“You take Nick and Jordan. We’ll follow you in the coupé.” + +She walked close to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand. Jordan +and Tom and I got into the front seat of Gatsby’s car, Tom pushed the +unfamiliar gears tentatively, and we shot off into the oppressive +heat, leaving them out of sight behind. + +“Did you see that?” demanded Tom. + +“See what?” + +He looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and I must have known +all along. + +“You think I’m pretty dumb, don’t you?” he suggested. “Perhaps I am, +but I have a—almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to +do. Maybe you don’t believe that, but science—” + +He paused. The immediate contingency overtook him, pulled him back +from the edge of theoretical abyss. + +“I’ve made a small investigation of this fellow,” he continued. “I +could have gone deeper if I’d known—” + +“Do you mean you’ve been to a medium?” inquired Jordan humorously. + +“What?” Confused, he stared at us as we laughed. “A medium?” + +“About Gatsby.” + +“About Gatsby! No, I haven’t. I said I’d been making a small +investigation of his past.” + +“And you found he was an Oxford man,” said Jordan helpfully. + +“An Oxford man!” He was incredulous. “Like hell he is! He wears a pink +suit.” + +“Nevertheless he’s an Oxford man.” + +“Oxford, New Mexico,” snorted Tom contemptuously, “or something like +that.” + +“Listen, Tom. If you’re such a snob, why did you invite him to lunch?” +demanded Jordan crossly. + +“Daisy invited him; she knew him before we were married—God knows +where!” + +We were all irritable now with the fading ale, and aware of it we +drove for a while in silence. Then as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s faded +eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby’s caution +about gasoline. + +“We’ve got enough to get us to town,” said Tom. + +“But there’s a garage right here,” objected Jordan. “I don’t want to +get stalled in this baking heat.” + +Tom threw on both brakes impatiently, and we slid to an abrupt dusty +stop under Wilson’s sign. After a moment the proprietor emerged from +the interior of his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at the car. + +“Let’s have some gas!” cried Tom roughly. “What do you think we +stopped for—to admire the view?” + +“I’m sick,” said Wilson without moving. “Been sick all day.” + +“What’s the matter?” + +“I’m all run down.” + +“Well, shall I help myself?” Tom demanded. “You sounded well enough on +the phone.” + +With an effort Wilson left the shade and support of the doorway and, +breathing hard, unscrewed the cap of the tank. In the sunlight his +face was green. + +“I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch,” he said. “But I need money +pretty bad, and I was wondering what you were going to do with your +old car.” + +“How do you like this one?” inquired Tom. “I bought it last week.” + +“It’s a nice yellow one,” said Wilson, as he strained at the handle. + +“Like to buy it?” + +“Big chance,” Wilson smiled faintly. “No, but I could make some money +on the other.” + +“What do you want money for, all of a sudden?” + +“I’ve been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want to go +West.” + +“Your wife does,” exclaimed Tom, startled. + +“She’s been talking about it for ten years.” He rested for a moment +against the pump, shading his eyes. “And now she’s going whether she +wants to or not. I’m going to get her away.” + +The coupé flashed by us with a flurry of dust and the flash of a +waving hand. + +“What do I owe you?” demanded Tom harshly. + +“I just got wised up to something funny the last two days,” remarked +Wilson. “That’s why I want to get away. That’s why I been bothering +you about the car.” + +“What do I owe you?” + +“Dollar twenty.” + +The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had a +bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions hadn’t +alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life +apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically +sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel +discovery less than an hour before—and it occurred to me that there +was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as +the difference between the sick and the well. Wilson was so sick that +he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he had just got some poor +girl with child. + +“I’ll let you have that car,” said Tom. “I’ll send it over tomorrow +afternoon.” + +That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare +of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of +something behind. Over the ash-heaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. J. +Eckleburg kept their vigil, but I perceived, after a moment, that +other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than +twenty feet away. + +In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved +aside a little, and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car. So +engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and +one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a +slowly developing picture. Her expression was curiously familiar—it +was an expression I had often seen on women’s faces, but on Myrtle +Wilson’s face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized +that her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on +Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we +drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his +mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping +precipitately from his control. Instinct made him step on the +accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving +Wilson behind, and we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an +hour, until, among the spidery girders of the elevated, we came in +sight of the easygoing blue coupé. + +“Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool,” suggested +Jordan. “I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s away. +There’s something very sensuous about it—overripe, as if all sorts of +funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.” + +The word “sensuous” had the effect of further disquieting Tom, but +before he could invent a protest the coupé came to a stop, and Daisy +signalled us to draw up alongside. + +“Where are we going?” she cried. + +“How about the movies?” + +“It’s so hot,” she complained. “You go. We’ll ride around and meet you +after.” With an effort her wit rose faintly. “We’ll meet you on some +corner. I’ll be the man smoking two cigarettes.” + +“We can’t argue about it here,” Tom said impatiently, as a truck gave +out a cursing whistle behind us. “You follow me to the south side of +Central Park, in front of the Plaza.” + +Several times he turned his head and looked back for their car, and if +the traffic delayed them he slowed up until they came into sight. I +think he was afraid they would dart down a side-street and out of his +life forever. + +But they didn’t. And we all took the less explicable step of engaging +the parlour of a suite in the Plaza Hotel. + +The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into +that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in +the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around +my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back. +The notion originated with Daisy’s suggestion that we hire five +bathrooms and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as +“a place to have a mint julep.” Each of us said over and over that it +was a “crazy idea”—we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and +thought, or pretended to think, that we were being very funny … + +The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four +o’clock, opening the windows admitted only a gust of hot shrubbery +from the Park. Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to us, +fixing her hair. + +“It’s a swell suite,” whispered Jordan respectfully, and everyone +laughed. + +“Open another window,” commanded Daisy, without turning around. + +“There aren’t any more.” + +“Well, we’d better telephone for an axe—” + +“The thing to do is to forget about the heat,” said Tom impatiently. +“You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it.” + +He unrolled the bottle of whisky from the towel and put it on the +table. + +“Why not let her alone, old sport?” remarked Gatsby. “You’re the one +that wanted to come to town.” + +There was a moment of silence. The telephone book slipped from its +nail and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered, “Excuse +me”—but this time no one laughed. + +“I’ll pick it up,” I offered. + +“I’ve got it.” Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered “Hum!” in +an interested way, and tossed the book on a chair. + +“That’s a great expression of yours, isn’t it?” said Tom sharply. + +“What is?” + +“All this ‘old sport’ business. Where’d you pick that up?” + +“Now see here, Tom,” said Daisy, turning around from the mirror, “if +you’re going to make personal remarks I won’t stay here a minute. +Call up and order some ice for the mint julep.” + +As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound +and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn’s +Wedding March from the ballroom below. + +“Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!” cried Jordan dismally. + +“Still—I was married in the middle of June,” Daisy remembered. +“Louisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?” + +“Biloxi,” he answered shortly. + +“A man named Biloxi. ‘Blocks’ Biloxi, and he made boxes—that’s a +fact—and he was from Biloxi, Tennessee.” + +“They carried him into my house,” appended Jordan, “because we lived +just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy +told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy died.” After +a moment she added as if she might have sounded irreverent, “There +wasn’t any connection.” + +“I used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis,” I remarked. + +“That was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he +left. He gave me an aluminium putter that I use today.” + +The music had died down as the ceremony began and now a long cheer +floated in at the window, followed by intermittent cries of +“Yea—ea—ea!” and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began. + +“We’re getting old,” said Daisy. “If we were young we’d rise and +dance.” + +“Remember Biloxi,” Jordan warned her. “Where’d you know him, Tom?” + +“Biloxi?” He concentrated with an effort. “I didn’t know him. He was a +friend of Daisy’s.” + +“He was not,” she denied. “I’d never seen him before. He came down in +the private car.” + +“Well, he said he knew you. He said he was raised in Louisville. Asa +Bird brought him around at the last minute and asked if we had room +for him.” + +Jordan smiled. + +“He was probably bumming his way home. He told me he was president of +your class at Yale.” + +Tom and I looked at each other blankly. + +“Biloxi?” + +“First place, we didn’t have any president—” + +Gatsby’s foot beat a short, restless tattoo and Tom eyed him suddenly. + +“By the way, Mr. Gatsby, I understand you’re an Oxford man.” + +“Not exactly.” + +“Oh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford.” + +“Yes—I went there.” + +A pause. Then Tom’s voice, incredulous and insulting: + +“You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.” + +Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint and ice +but the silence was unbroken by his “thank you” and the soft closing +of the door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared up at last. + +“I told you I went there,” said Gatsby. + +“I heard you, but I’d like to know when.” + +“It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That’s why I +can’t really call myself an Oxford man.” + +Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief. But we were all +looking at Gatsby. + +“It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the +armistice,” he continued. “We could go to any of the universities in +England or France.” + +I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those +renewals of complete faith in him that I’d experienced before. + +Daisy rose, smiling faintly, and went to the table. + +“Open the whisky, Tom,” she ordered, “and I’ll make you a mint julep. +Then you won’t seem so stupid to yourself … Look at the mint!” + +“Wait a minute,” snapped Tom, “I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more +question.” + +“Go on,” Gatsby said politely. + +“What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?” + +They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content. + +“He isn’t causing a row,” Daisy looked desperately from one to the +other. “You’re causing a row. Please have a little self-control.” + +“Self-control!” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest +thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your +wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out … Nowadays people +begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next +they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between +black and white.” + +Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone +on the last barrier of civilization. + +“We’re all white here,” murmured Jordan. + +“I know I’m not very popular. I don’t give big parties. I suppose +you’ve got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any +friends—in the modern world.” + +Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he +opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so +complete. + +“I’ve got something to tell you, old sport—” began Gatsby. But Daisy +guessed at his intention. + +“Please don’t!” she interrupted helplessly. “Please let’s all go +home. Why don’t we all go home?” + +“That’s a good idea,” I got up. “Come on, Tom. Nobody wants a drink.” + +“I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me.” + +“Your wife doesn’t love you,” said Gatsby. “She’s never loved you. +She loves me.” + +“You must be crazy!” exclaimed Tom automatically. + +Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement. + +“She never loved you, do you hear?” he cried. “She only married you +because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a +terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me!” + +At this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted +with competitive firmness that we remain—as though neither of them had +anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously +of their emotions. + +“Sit down, Daisy,” Tom’s voice groped unsuccessfully for the paternal +note. “What’s been going on? I want to hear all about it.” + +“I told you what’s been going on,” said Gatsby. “Going on for five +years—and you didn’t know.” + +Tom turned to Daisy sharply. + +“You’ve been seeing this fellow for five years?” + +“Not seeing,” said Gatsby. “No, we couldn’t meet. But both of us loved +each other all that time, old sport, and you didn’t know. I used to +laugh sometimes”—but there was no laughter in his eyes—“to think that +you didn’t know.” + +“Oh—that’s all.” Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a +clergyman and leaned back in his chair. + +“You’re crazy!” he exploded. “I can’t speak about what happened five +years ago, because I didn’t know Daisy then—and I’ll be damned if I +see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries +to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a God damned lie. Daisy +loved me when she married me and she loves me now.” + +“No,” said Gatsby, shaking his head. + +“She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish +ideas in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing.” He nodded +sagely. “And what’s more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off +on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in +my heart I love her all the time.” + +“You’re revolting,” said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice, +dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: “Do +you know why we left Chicago? I’m surprised that they didn’t treat you +to the story of that little spree.” + +Gatsby walked over and stood beside her. + +“Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter +any more. Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it’s +all wiped out forever.” + +She looked at him blindly. “Why—how could I love him—possibly?” + +“You never loved him.” + +She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, +as though she realized at last what she was doing—and as though she +had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done +now. It was too late. + +“I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance. + +“Not at Kapiolani?” demanded Tom suddenly. + +“No.” + +From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were +drifting up on hot waves of air. + +“Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your +shoes dry?” There was a husky tenderness in his tone … “Daisy?” + +“Please don’t.” Her voice was cold, but the rancour was gone from it. +She looked at Gatsby. “There, Jay,” she said—but her hand as she tried +to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette +and the burning match on the carpet. + +“Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you now—isn’t +that enough? I can’t help what’s past.” She began to sob +helplessly. “I did love him once—but I loved you too.” + +Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed. + +“You loved me too?” he repeated. + +“Even that’s a lie,” said Tom savagely. “She didn’t know you were +alive. Why—there’s things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know, +things that neither of us can ever forget.” + +The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby. + +“I want to speak to Daisy alone,” he insisted. “She’s all excited +now—” + +“Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,” she admitted in a pitiful +voice. “It wouldn’t be true.” + +“Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Tom. + +She turned to her husband. + +“As if it mattered to you,” she said. + +“Of course it matters. I’m going to take better care of you from now +on.” + +“You don’t understand,” said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. “You’re +not going to take care of her any more.” + +“I’m not?” Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to +control himself now. “Why’s that?” + +“Daisy’s leaving you.” + +“Nonsense.” + +“I am, though,” she said with a visible effort. + +“She’s not leaving me!” Tom’s words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. +“Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he +put on her finger.” + +“I won’t stand this!” cried Daisy. “Oh, please let’s get out.” + +“Who are you, anyhow?” broke out Tom. “You’re one of that bunch that +hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem—that much I happen to know. I’ve +made a little investigation into your affairs—and I’ll carry it +further tomorrow.” + +“You can suit yourself about that, old sport,” said Gatsby steadily. + +“I found out what your ‘drugstores’ were.” He turned to us and spoke +rapidly. “He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street +drugstores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the +counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a +bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong.” + +“What about it?” said Gatsby politely. “I guess your friend Walter +Chase wasn’t too proud to come in on it.” + +“And you left him in the lurch, didn’t you? You let him go to jail for +a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the +subject of you.” + +“He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old +sport.” + +“Don’t you call me ‘old sport’!” cried Tom. Gatsby said +nothing. “Walter could have you up on the betting laws too, but +Wolfshiem scared him into shutting his mouth.” + +That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsby’s face. + +“That drugstore business was just small change,” continued Tom slowly, +“but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me +about.” + +I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her +husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but +absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to +Gatsby—and was startled at his expression. He looked—and this is said +in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he had +“killed a man.” For a moment the set of his face could be described in +just that fantastic way. + +It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying +everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been +made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into +herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the +afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, +struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across +the room. + +The voice begged again to go. + +“Please, Tom! I can’t stand this any more.” + +Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage +she had had, were definitely gone. + +“You two start on home, Daisy,” said Tom. “In Mr. Gatsby’s car.” + +She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous +scorn. + +“Go on. He won’t annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous +little flirtation is over.” + +They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, +isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity. + +After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of +whisky in the towel. + +“Want any of this stuff? Jordan? … Nick?” + +I didn’t answer. + +“Nick?” He asked again. + +“What?” + +“Want any?” + +“No … I just remembered that today’s my birthday.” + +I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a +new decade. + +It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupé with him and started +for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but +his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamour on +the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy +has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments +fade with the city lights behind. Thirty—the promise of a decade of +loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning +briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside +me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten +dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face +fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of +thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand. + +So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the +ash-heaps was the principal witness at the inquest. He had slept +through the heat until after five, when he strolled over to the +garage, and found George Wilson sick in his office—really sick, pale +as his own pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go +to bed, but Wilson refused, saying that he’d miss a lot of business if +he did. While his neighbour was trying to persuade him a violent +racket broke out overhead. + +“I’ve got my wife locked in up there,” explained Wilson calmly. +“She’s going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then we’re +going to move away.” + +Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbours for four years, and +Wilson had never seemed faintly capable of such a statement. +Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn’t working, he +sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars +that passed along the road. When anyone spoke to him he invariably +laughed in an agreeable, colourless way. He was his wife’s man and not +his own. + +So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson +wouldn’t say a word—instead he began to throw curious, suspicious +glances at his visitor and ask him what he’d been doing at certain +times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy, some +workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant, and Michaelis +took the opportunity to get away, intending to come back later. But he +didn’t. He supposed he forgot to, that’s all. When he came outside +again, a little after seven, he was reminded of the conversation +because he heard Mrs. Wilson’s voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in +the garage. + +“Beat me!” he heard her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you dirty +little coward!” + +A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and +shouting—before he could move from his door the business was over. + +The “death car” as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out +of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then +disappeared around the next bend. Mavro Michaelis wasn’t even sure of +its colour—he told the first policeman that it was light green. The +other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards +beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life +violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark +blood with the dust. + +Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open +her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left +breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen +for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at +the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the +tremendous vitality she had stored so long. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still +some distance away. + +“Wreck!” said Tom. “That’s good. Wilson’ll have a little business at +last.” + +He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping, until, as +we came nearer, the hushed, intent faces of the people at the garage +door made him automatically put on the brakes. + +“We’ll take a look,” he said doubtfully, “just a look.” + +I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued incessantly +from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coupé and walked +toward the door resolved itself into the words “Oh, my God!” uttered +over and over in a gasping moan. + +“There’s some bad trouble here,” said Tom excitedly. + +He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle of heads into the +garage, which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging metal +basket overhead. Then he made a harsh sound in his throat, and with a +violent thrusting movement of his powerful arms pushed his way +through. + +The circle closed up again with a running murmur of expostulation; it +was a minute before I could see anything at all. Then new arrivals +deranged the line, and Jordan and I were pushed suddenly inside. + +Myrtle Wilson’s body, wrapped in a blanket, and then in another +blanket, as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night, lay on +a worktable by the wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bending +over it, motionless. Next to him stood a motorcycle policeman taking +down names with much sweat and correction in a little book. At first I +couldn’t find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed +clamorously through the bare garage—then I saw Wilson standing on the +raised threshold of his office, swaying back and forth and holding to +the doorposts with both hands. Some man was talking to him in a low +voice and attempting, from time to time, to lay a hand on his +shoulder, but Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would drop slowly +from the swinging light to the laden table by the wall, and then jerk +back to the light again, and he gave out incessantly his high, +horrible call: + +“Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!” + +Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and, after staring around +the garage with glazed eyes, addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to +the policeman. + +“M-a-v—” the policeman was saying, “—o—” + +“No, r—” corrected the man, “M-a-v-r-o—” + +“Listen to me!” muttered Tom fiercely. + +“r—” said the policeman, “o—” + +“g—” + +“g—” He looked up as Tom’s broad hand fell sharply on his shoulder. +“What you want, fella?” + +“What happened?—that’s what I want to know.” + +“Auto hit her. Ins’antly killed.” + +“Instantly killed,” repeated Tom, staring. + +“She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even stopus car.” + +“There was two cars,” said Michaelis, “one comin’, one goin’, see?” + +“Going where?” asked the policeman keenly. + +“One goin’ each way. Well, she”—his hand rose toward the blankets but +stopped halfway and fell to his side—“she ran out there an’ the one +comin’ from N’York knock right into her, goin’ thirty or forty miles +an hour.” + +“What’s the name of this place here?” demanded the officer. + +“Hasn’t got any name.” + +A pale well-dressed negro stepped near. + +“It was a yellow car,” he said, “big yellow car. New.” + +“See the accident?” asked the policeman. + +“No, but the car passed me down the road, going faster’n forty. Going +fifty, sixty.” + +“Come here and let’s have your name. Look out now. I want to get his +name.” + +Some words of this conversation must have reached Wilson, swaying in +the office door, for suddenly a new theme found voice among his +grasping cries: + +“You don’t have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind +of car it was!” + +Watching Tom, I saw the wad of muscle back of his shoulder tighten +under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wilson and, standing in +front of him, seized him firmly by the upper arms. + +“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” he said with soothing +gruffness. + +Wilson’s eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tiptoes and then +would have collapsed to his knees had not Tom held him upright. + +“Listen,” said Tom, shaking him a little. “I just got here a minute +ago, from New York. I was bringing you that coupé we’ve been talking +about. That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn’t mine—do you +hear? I haven’t seen it all afternoon.” + +Only the negro and I were near enough to hear what he said, but the +policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with truculent +eyes. + +“What’s all that?” he demanded. + +“I’m a friend of his.” Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on +Wilson’s body. “He says he knows the car that did it … It was a yellow +car.” + +Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look suspiciously at Tom. + +“And what colour’s your car?” + +“It’s a blue car, a coupé.” + +“We’ve come straight from New York,” I said. + +Someone who had been driving a little behind us confirmed this, and +the policeman turned away. + +“Now, if you’ll let me have that name again correct—” + +Picking up Wilson like a doll, Tom carried him into the office, set +him down in a chair, and came back. + +“If somebody’ll come here and sit with him,” he snapped +authoritatively. He watched while the two men standing closest glanced +at each other and went unwillingly into the room. Then Tom shut the +door on them and came down the single step, his eyes avoiding the +table. As he passed close to me he whispered: “Let’s get out.” + +Self-consciously, with his authoritative arms breaking the way, we +pushed through the still gathering crowd, passing a hurried doctor, +case in hand, who had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago. + +Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend—then his foot came down +hard, and the coupé raced along through the night. In a little while I +heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down +his face. + +“The God damned coward!” he whimpered. “He didn’t even stop his car.” + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +The Buchanans’ house floated suddenly toward us through the dark +rustling trees. Tom stopped beside the porch and looked up at the +second floor, where two windows bloomed with light among the vines. + +“Daisy’s home,” he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me and +frowned slightly. + +“I ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There’s nothing we can +do tonight.” + +A change had come over him, and he spoke gravely, and with decision. +As we walked across the moonlight gravel to the porch he disposed of +the situation in a few brisk phrases. + +“I’ll telephone for a taxi to take you home, and while you’re waiting +you and Jordan better go in the kitchen and have them get you some +supper—if you want any.” He opened the door. “Come in.” + +“No, thanks. But I’d be glad if you’d order me the taxi. I’ll wait +outside.” + +Jordan put her hand on my arm. + +“Won’t you come in, Nick?” + +“No, thanks.” + +I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jordan +lingered for a moment more. + +“It’s only half-past nine,” she said. + +I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day, +and suddenly that included Jordan too. She must have seen something of +this in my expression, for she turned abruptly away and ran up the +porch steps into the house. I sat down for a few minutes with my head +in my hands, until I heard the phone taken up inside and the butler’s +voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the drive away from +the house, intending to wait by the gate. + +I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped +from between two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird +by that time, because I could think of nothing except the luminosity +of his pink suit under the moon. + +“What are you doing?” I inquired. + +“Just standing here, old sport.” + +Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he was +going to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn’t have been surprised to +see sinister faces, the faces of “Wolfshiem’s people,” behind him in +the dark shrubbery. + +“Did you see any trouble on the road?” he asked after a minute. + +“Yes.” + +He hesitated. + +“Was she killed?” + +“Yes.” + +“I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It’s better that the shock +should all come at once. She stood it pretty well.” + +He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered. + +“I got to West Egg by a side road,” he went on, “and left the car in +my garage. I don’t think anybody saw us, but of course I can’t be +sure.” + +I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to +tell him he was wrong. + +“Who was the woman?” he inquired. + +“Her name was Wilson. Her husband owns the garage. How the devil did +it happen?” + +“Well, I tried to swing the wheel—” He broke off, and suddenly I +guessed at the truth. + +“Was Daisy driving?” + +“Yes,” he said after a moment, “but of course I’ll say I was. You see, +when we left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would +steady her to drive—and this woman rushed out at us just as we were +passing a car coming the other way. It all happened in a minute, but +it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were +somebody she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward +the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back. The second +my hand reached the wheel I felt the shock—it must have killed her +instantly.” + +“It ripped her open—” + +“Don’t tell me, old sport.” He winced. “Anyhow—Daisy stepped on it. I +tried to make her stop, but she couldn’t, so I pulled on the emergency +brake. Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on. + +“She’ll be all right tomorrow,” he said presently. “I’m just going to +wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness +this afternoon. She’s locked herself into her room, and if he tries +any brutality she’s going to turn the light out and on again.” + +“He won’t touch her,” I said. “He’s not thinking about her.” + +“I don’t trust him, old sport.” + +“How long are you going to wait?” + +“All night, if necessary. Anyhow, till they all go to bed.” + +A new point of view occurred to me. Suppose Tom found out that Daisy +had been driving. He might think he saw a connection in it—he might +think anything. I looked at the house; there were two or three bright +windows downstairs and the pink glow from Daisy’s room on the ground +floor. + +“You wait here,” I said. “I’ll see if there’s any sign of a +commotion.” + +I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel +softly, and tiptoed up the veranda steps. The drawing-room curtains +were open, and I saw that the room was empty. Crossing the porch where +we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small +rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind +was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill. + +Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, +with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of +ale. He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his +earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a +while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement. + +They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the +ale—and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air +of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said +that they were conspiring together. + +As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the +dark road toward the house. Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in +the drive. + +“Is it all quiet up there?” he asked anxiously. + +“Yes, it’s all quiet.” I hesitated. “You’d better come home and get +some sleep.” + +He shook his head. + +“I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.” + +He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his +scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of +the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the +moonlight—watching over nothing. + + + VIII + +I couldn’t sleep all night; a foghorn was groaning incessantly on the +Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, +frightening dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby’s drive, +and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress—I felt that I +had something to tell him, something to warn him about, and morning +would be too late. + +Crossing his lawn, I saw that his front door was still open and he was +leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep. + +“Nothing happened,” he said wanly. “I waited, and about four o’clock +she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned +out the light.” + +His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when +we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside +curtains that were like pavilions, and felt over innumerable feet of +dark wall for electric light switches—once I tumbled with a sort of +splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable +amount of dust everywhere, and the rooms were musty, as though they +hadn’t been aired for many days. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar +table, with two stale, dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French +windows of the drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the darkness. + +“You ought to go away,” I said. “It’s pretty certain they’ll trace +your car.” + +“Go away now, old sport?” + +“Go to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal.” + +He wouldn’t consider it. He couldn’t possibly leave Daisy until he +knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and +I couldn’t bear to shake him free. + +It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with +Dan Cody—told it to me because “Jay Gatsby” had broken up like glass +against Tom’s hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza was played +out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything now, without +reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy. + +She was the first “nice” girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed +capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with +indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly +desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from +Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a +beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless +intensity, was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her +as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, +a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other +bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its +corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already +in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s +shining motorcars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely +withered. It excited him, too, that many men had already loved +Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all +about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still +vibrant emotions. + +But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a colossal +accident. However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was +at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the +invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he +made the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and +unscrupulously—eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took +her because he had no real right to touch her hand. + +He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under +false pretences. I don’t mean that he had traded on his phantom +millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he +let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as +herself—that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of +fact, he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing +behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government +to be blown anywhere about the world. + +But he didn’t despise himself and it didn’t turn out as he had +imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go—but +now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a +grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize +just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be. She vanished into her +rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. He felt +married to her, that was all. + +When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, +who was, somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought +luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as +she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She +had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming +than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and +mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many +clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the +hot struggles of the poor. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +“I can’t describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her, +old sport. I even hoped for a while that she’d throw me over, but she +didn’t, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot +because I knew different things from her … Well, there I was, way off +my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden +I didn’t care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have +a better time telling her what I was going to do?” + +On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisy in his +arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with fire in the +room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he changed his +arm a little, and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon +had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep memory +for the long parting the next day promised. They had never been closer +in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with +another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder +or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were +asleep. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a captain before he +went to the front, and following the Argonne battles he got his +majority and the command of the divisional machine-guns. After the +armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or +misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now—there +was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy’s letters. She didn’t see +why he couldn’t come. She was feeling the pressure of the world +outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her +and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all. + +For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids +and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of +the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new +tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the +“Beale Street Blues” while a hundred pairs of golden and silver +slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were +always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, +while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the +sad horns around the floor. + +Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the +season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with +half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and +chiffon of an evening-dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor +beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a +decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision +must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable +practicality—that was close at hand. + +That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom +Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his +position, and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain +struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was +still at Oxford. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of +the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey-turning, +gold-turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew +and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a +slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, +lovely day. + +“I don’t think she ever loved him.” Gatsby turned around from a window +and looked at me challengingly. “You must remember, old sport, she was +very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that +frightened her—that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap +sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying.” + +He sat down gloomily. + +“Of course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were +first married—and loved me more even then, do you see?” + +Suddenly he came out with a curious remark. + +“In any case,” he said, “it was just personal.” + +What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his +conception of the affair that couldn’t be measured? + +He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their +wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to +Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, +walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through +the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which +they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy’s house had always +seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses, so his idea +of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded +with a melancholy beauty. + +He left feeling that if he had searched harder, he might have found +her—that he was leaving her behind. The day-coach—he was penniless +now—was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a +folding-chair, and the station slid away and the backs of unfamiliar +buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields, where a yellow +trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have +seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street. + +The track curved and now it was going away from the sun, which, as it +sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing +city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand +desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of +the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too +fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part +of it, the freshest and the best, forever. + +It was nine o’clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the +porch. The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there +was an autumn flavour in the air. The gardener, the last one of +Gatsby’s former servants, came to the foot of the steps. + +“I’m going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves’ll start +falling pretty soon, and then there’s always trouble with the pipes.” + +“Don’t do it today,” Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically. +“You know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer?” + +I looked at my watch and stood up. + +“Twelve minutes to my train.” + +I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a decent stroke of +work, but it was more than that—I didn’t want to leave Gatsby. I +missed that train, and then another, before I could get myself away. + +“I’ll call you up,” I said finally. + +“Do, old sport.” + +“I’ll call you about noon.” + +We walked slowly down the steps. + +“I suppose Daisy’ll call too.” He looked at me anxiously, as if he +hoped I’d corroborate this. + +“I suppose so.” + +“Well, goodbye.” + +We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I +remembered something and turned around. + +“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the +whole damn bunch put together.” + +I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever +gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he +nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and +understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact +all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of +colour against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I +first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and +drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his +corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his +incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye. + +I thanked him for his hospitality. We were always thanking him for +that—I and the others. + +“Goodbye,” I called. “I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby.” + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +Up in the city, I tried for a while to list the quotations on an +interminable amount of stock, then I fell asleep in my swivel-chair. +Just before noon the phone woke me, and I started up with sweat +breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called me +up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between +hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other +way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool, +as if a divot from a green golf-links had come sailing in at the +office window, but this morning it seemed harsh and dry. + +“I’ve left Daisy’s house,” she said. “I’m at Hempstead, and I’m going +down to Southampton this afternoon.” + +Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy’s house, but the act +annoyed me, and her next remark made me rigid. + +“You weren’t so nice to me last night.” + +“How could it have mattered then?” + +Silence for a moment. Then: + +“However—I want to see you.” + +“I want to see you, too.” + +“Suppose I don’t go to Southampton, and come into town this +afternoon?” + +“No—I don’t think this afternoon.” + +“Very well.” + +“It’s impossible this afternoon. Various—” + +We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren’t talking +any longer. I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I +know I didn’t care. I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table +that day if I never talked to her again in this world. + +I called Gatsby’s house a few minutes later, but the line was busy. I +tried four times; finally an exasperated central told me the wire was +being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out my +timetable, I drew a small circle around the three-fifty train. Then I +leaned back in my chair and tried to think. It was just noon. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +When I passed the ash-heaps on the train that morning I had crossed +deliberately to the other side of the car. I supposed there’d be a +curious crowd around there all day with little boys searching for dark +spots in the dust, and some garrulous man telling over and over what +had happened, until it became less and less real even to him and he +could tell it no longer, and Myrtle Wilson’s tragic achievement was +forgotten. Now I want to go back a little and tell what happened at +the garage after we left there the night before. + +They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. She must have +broken her rule against drinking that night, for when she arrived she +was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had +already gone to Flushing. When they convinced her of this, she +immediately fainted, as if that was the intolerable part of the +affair. Someone, kind or curious, took her in his car and drove her in +the wake of her sister’s body. + +Until long after midnight a changing crowd lapped up against the front +of the garage, while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on +the couch inside. For a while the door of the office was open, and +everyone who came into the garage glanced irresistibly through it. +Finally someone said it was a shame, and closed the door. Michaelis +and several other men were with him; first, four or five men, later +two or three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask the last stranger +to wait there fifteen minutes longer, while he went back to his own +place and made a pot of coffee. After that, he stayed there alone with +Wilson until dawn. + +About three o’clock the quality of Wilson’s incoherent muttering +changed—he grew quieter and began to talk about the yellow car. He +announced that he had a way of finding out whom the yellow car +belonged to, and then he blurted out that a couple of months ago his +wife had come from the city with her face bruised and her nose +swollen. + +But when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry “Oh, +my God!” again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt +to distract him. + +“How long have you been married, George? Come on there, try and sit +still a minute, and answer my question. How long have you been +married?” + +“Twelve years.” + +“Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit still—I asked you a +question. Did you ever have any children?” + +The hard brown beetles kept thudding against the dull light, and +whenever Michaelis heard a car go tearing along the road outside it +sounded to him like the car that hadn’t stopped a few hours before. +He didn’t like to go into the garage, because the work bench was +stained where the body had been lying, so he moved uncomfortably +around the office—he knew every object in it before morning—and from +time to time sat down beside Wilson trying to keep him more quiet. + +“Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you +haven’t been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church +and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?” + +“Don’t belong to any.” + +“You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must +have gone to church once. Didn’t you get married in a church? Listen, +George, listen to me. Didn’t you get married in a church?” + +“That was a long time ago.” + +The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking—for a moment +he was silent. Then the same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came +back into his faded eyes. + +“Look in the drawer there,” he said, pointing at the desk. + +“Which drawer?” + +“That drawer—that one.” + +Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it +but a small, expensive dog-leash, made of leather and braided +silver. It was apparently new. + +“This?” he inquired, holding it up. + +Wilson stared and nodded. + +“I found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it, but I +knew it was something funny.” + +“You mean your wife bought it?” + +“She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau.” + +Michaelis didn’t see anything odd in that, and he gave Wilson a dozen +reasons why his wife might have bought the dog-leash. But conceivably +Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before, from Myrtle, +because he began saying “Oh, my God!” again in a whisper—his comforter +left several explanations in the air. + +“Then he killed her,” said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly. + +“Who did?” + +“I have a way of finding out.” + +“You’re morbid, George,” said his friend. “This has been a strain to +you and you don’t know what you’re saying. You’d better try and sit +quiet till morning.” + +“He murdered her.” + +“It was an accident, George.” + +Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened +slightly with the ghost of a superior “Hm!” + +“I know,” he said definitely. “I’m one of these trusting fellas and I +don’t think any harm to nobody, but when I get to know a thing I know +it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he +wouldn’t stop.” + +Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn’t occurred to him that there +was any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson had +been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any +particular car. + +“How could she of been like that?” + +“She’s a deep one,” said Wilson, as if that answered the question. +“Ah-h-h—” + +He began to rock again, and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his +hand. + +“Maybe you got some friend that I could telephone for, George?” + +This was a forlorn hope—he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend: +there was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a little later +when he noticed a change in the room, a blue quickening by the window, +and realized that dawn wasn’t far off. About five o’clock it was blue +enough outside to snap off the light. + +Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash-heaps, where small grey +clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the +faint dawn wind. + +“I spoke to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. “I told her she +might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the +window”—with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and +leaned with his face pressed against it—“and I said ‘God knows what +you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but +you can’t fool God!’ ” + +Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at +the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and +enormous, from the dissolving night. + +“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson. + +“That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him. Something made him +turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson +stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding +into the twilight. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +By six o’clock Michaelis was worn out, and grateful for the sound of a +car stopping outside. It was one of the watchers of the night before +who had promised to come back, so he cooked breakfast for three, which +he and the other man ate together. Wilson was quieter now, and +Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and +hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone. + +His movements—he was on foot all the time—were afterward traced to +Port Roosevelt and then to Gad’s Hill, where he bought a sandwich that +he didn’t eat, and a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and +walking slowly, for he didn’t reach Gad’s Hill until noon. Thus far +there was no difficulty in accounting for his time—there were boys who +had seen a man “acting sort of crazy,” and motorists at whom he stared +oddly from the side of the road. Then for three hours he disappeared +from view. The police, on the strength of what he said to Michaelis, +that he “had a way of finding out,” supposed that he spent that time +going from garage to garage thereabout, inquiring for a yellow car. On +the other hand, no garage man who had seen him ever came forward, and +perhaps he had an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted to +know. By half-past two he was in West Egg, where he asked someone the +way to Gatsby’s house. So by that time he knew Gatsby’s name. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit and left word with the +butler that if anyone phoned word was to be brought to him at the +pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that had +amused his guests during the summer, and the chauffeur helped him to +pump it up. Then he gave instructions that the open car wasn’t to be +taken out under any circumstances—and this was strange, because the +front right fender needed repair. + +Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he +stopped and shifted it a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he +needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among +the yellowing trees. + +No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep +and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was anyone +to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t +believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was +true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a +high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have +looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered +as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight +was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without +being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted +fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward +him through the amorphous trees. + +The chauffeur—he was one of Wolfshiem’s protégés—heard the +shots—afterwards he could only say that he hadn’t thought anything +much about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby’s house +and my rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that +alarmed anyone. But they knew then, I firmly believe. With scarcely a +word said, four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener, and I hurried +down to the pool. + +There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the +fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. +With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden +mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that +scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental +course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves +revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red +circle in the water. + +It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener +saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was +complete. + + + IX + +After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and +the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and +newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door. A rope stretched +across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but +little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard, and +there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the +pool. Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the +expression “madman” as he bent over Wilson’s body that afternoon, and +the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper +reports next morning. + +Most of those reports were a nightmare—grotesque, circumstantial, +eager, and untrue. When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought +to light Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale +would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade—but Catherine, who might +have said anything, didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount +of character about it too—looked at the coroner with determined eyes +under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never +seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, +that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced +herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very +suggestion was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a +man “deranged by grief” in order that the case might remain in its +simplest form. And it rested there. + +But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself +on Gatsby’s side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the +catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every +practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and +confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or +speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because +no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense +personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the end. + +I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her +instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away +early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them. + +“Left no address?” + +“No.” + +“Say when they’d be back?” + +“No.” + +“Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?” + +“I don’t know. Can’t say.” + +I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where +he lay and reassure him: “I’ll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don’t +worry. Just trust me and I’ll get somebody for you—” + +Meyer Wolfshiem’s name wasn’t in the phone book. The butler gave me +his office address on Broadway, and I called Information, but by the +time I had the number it was long after five, and no one answered the +phone. + +“Will you ring again?” + +“I’ve rung three times.” + +“It’s very important.” + +“Sorry. I’m afraid no one’s there.” + +I went back to the drawing-room and thought for an instant that they +were chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled +it. But, though they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with +shocked eyes, his protest continued in my brain: + +“Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got +to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.” + +Someone started to ask me questions, but I broke away and going +upstairs looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk—he’d +never told me definitely that his parents were dead. But there was +nothing—only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence, +staring down from the wall. + +Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem, +which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next +train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure +he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there’d be a +wire from Daisy before noon—but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem +arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and +newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem’s answer I began +to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby +and me against them all. + + Dear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most terrible shocks of + my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a + mad act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down + now as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get + mixed up in this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little + later let me know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when + I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and + out. + + Yours truly + + Meyer Wolfshiem + +and then hasty addenda beneath: + + Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all. + +When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was +calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came +through as a man’s voice, very thin and far away. + +“This is Slagle speaking …” + +“Yes?” The name was unfamiliar. + +“Hell of a note, isn’t it? Get my wire?” + +“There haven’t been any wires.” + +“Young Parke’s in trouble,” he said rapidly. “They picked him up when +he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New +York giving ’em the numbers just five minutes before. What d’you know +about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns—” + +“Hello!” I interrupted breathlessly. “Look here—this isn’t Mr. +Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby’s dead.” + +There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an +exclamation … then a quick squawk as the connection was broken. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz +arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was +leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came. + +It was Gatsby’s father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed, +bundled up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His +eyes leaked continuously with excitement, and when I took the bag and +umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse +grey beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on +the point of collapse, so I took him into the music-room and made him +sit down while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn’t eat, and +the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand. + +“I saw it in the Chicago newspaper,” he said. “It was all in the +Chicago newspaper. I started right away.” + +“I didn’t know how to reach you.” + +His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room. + +“It was a madman,” he said. “He must have been mad.” + +“Wouldn’t you like some coffee?” I urged him. + +“I don’t want anything. I’m all right now, Mr.—” + +“Carraway.” + +“Well, I’m all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?” + +I took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him +there. Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into +the hall; when I told them who had arrived, they went reluctantly +away. + +After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth +ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and +unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the +quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the +first time and saw the height and splendour of the hall and the great +rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be +mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs; while he +took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been +deferred until he came. + +“I didn’t know what you’d want, Mr. Gatsby—” + +“Gatz is my name.” + +“—Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body West.” + +He shook his head. + +“Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in +the East. Were you a friend of my boy’s, Mr.—?” + +“We were close friends.” + +“He had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man, +but he had a lot of brain power here.” + +He touched his head impressively, and I nodded. + +“If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. +Hill. He’d of helped build up the country.” + +“That’s true,” I said, uncomfortably. + +He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the +bed, and lay down stiffly—was instantly asleep. + +That night an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to +know who I was before he would give his name. + +“This is Mr. Carraway,” I said. + +“Oh!” He sounded relieved. “This is Klipspringer.” + +I was relieved too, for that seemed to promise another friend at +Gatsby’s grave. I didn’t want it to be in the papers and draw a +sightseeing crowd, so I’d been calling up a few people myself. They +were hard to find. + +“The funeral’s tomorrow,” I said. “Three o’clock, here at the house. +I wish you’d tell anybody who’d be interested.” + +“Oh, I will,” he broke out hastily. “Of course I’m not likely to see +anybody, but if I do.” + +His tone made me suspicious. + +“Of course you’ll be there yourself.” + +“Well, I’ll certainly try. What I called up about is—” + +“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “How about saying you’ll come?” + +“Well, the fact is—the truth of the matter is that I’m staying with +some people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with +them tomorrow. In fact, there’s a sort of picnic or something. Of +course I’ll do my best to get away.” + +I ejaculated an unrestrained “Huh!” and he must have heard me, for he +went on nervously: + +“What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if +it’d be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see, +they’re tennis shoes, and I’m sort of helpless without them. My +address is care of B. F.—” + +I didn’t hear the rest of the name, because I hung up the receiver. + +After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby—one gentleman to whom I +telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was +my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at +Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby’s liquor, and I should have known +better than to call him. + +The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer +Wolfshiem; I couldn’t seem to reach him any other way. The door that I +pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked “The +Swastika Holding Company,” and at first there didn’t seem to be anyone +inside. But when I’d shouted “hello” several times in vain, an +argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess +appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile +eyes. + +“Nobody’s in,” she said. “Mr. Wolfshiem’s gone to Chicago.” + +The first part of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to +whistle “The Rosary,” tunelessly, inside. + +“Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.” + +“I can’t get him back from Chicago, can I?” + +At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem’s, called “Stella!” +from the other side of the door. + +“Leave your name on the desk,” she said quickly. “I’ll give it to him +when he gets back.” + +“But I know he’s there.” + +She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up +and down her hips. + +“You young men think you can force your way in here any time,” she +scolded. “We’re getting sickantired of it. When I say he’s in Chicago, +he’s in Chicago.” + +I mentioned Gatsby. + +“Oh-h!” She looked at me over again. “Will you just—What was your +name?” + +She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the +doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking +in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered +me a cigar. + +“My memory goes back to when first I met him,” he said. “A young major +just out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. +He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he +couldn’t buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he +came into Winebrenner’s poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a +job. He hadn’t eat anything for a couple of days. ‘Come on have some +lunch with me,’ I said. He ate more than four dollars’ worth of food +in half an hour.” + +“Did you start him in business?” I inquired. + +“Start him! I made him.” + +“Oh.” + +“I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right +away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told +me he was at Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join +the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did +some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like +that in everything”—he held up two bulbous fingers—“always together.” + +I wondered if this partnership had included the World’s Series +transaction in 1919. + +“Now he’s dead,” I said after a moment. “You were his closest friend, +so I know you’ll want to come to his funeral this afternoon.” + +“I’d like to come.” + +“Well, come then.” + +The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head +his eyes filled with tears. + +“I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it,” he said. + +“There’s nothing to get mixed up in. It’s all over now.” + +“When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any +way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different—if a friend +of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may +think that’s sentimental, but I mean it—to the bitter end.” + +I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, +so I stood up. + +“Are you a college man?” he inquired suddenly. + +For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a “gonnegtion,” but he +only nodded and shook my hand. + +“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and +not after he is dead,” he suggested. “After that my own rule is to let +everything alone.” + +When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West +Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found +Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his +son and in his son’s possessions was continually increasing and now he +had something to show me. + +“Jimmy sent me this picture.” He took out his wallet with trembling +fingers. “Look there.” + +It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty +with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. “Look +there!” and then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so +often that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself. + +“Jimmy sent it to me. I think it’s a very pretty picture. It shows up +well.” + +“Very well. Had you seen him lately?” + +“He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in +now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see +now there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of +him. And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me.” + +He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another +minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and +pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called Hopalong +Cassidy. + +“Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows +you.” + +He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On +the last flyleaf was printed the word schedule, and the date September +12, 1906. And underneath: + + Rise from bed 6:00 a.m. + Dumbell exercise and wall-scaling 6:15-6:30 ” + Study electricity, etc. 7:15-8:15 ” + Work 8:30-4:30 p.m. + Baseball and sports 4:30-5:00 ” + Practise elocution, poise and how to attain it 5:00-6:00 ” + Study needed inventions 7:00-9:00 ” + + General Resolves + + * No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable] + + * No more smokeing or chewing. + + * Bath every other day + + * Read one improving book or magazine per week + + * Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week + + * Be better to parents + +“I came across this book by accident,” said the old man. “It just +shows you, don’t it?” + +“It just shows you.” + +“Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this +or something. Do you notice what he’s got about improving his mind? He +was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat +him for it.” + +He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then +looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the +list for my own use. + +A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and +I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did +Gatsby’s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and +stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he +spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced +several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait +for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery +and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate—first a motor hearse, +horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and me in the +limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman +from West Egg, in Gatsby’s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we +started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then +the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I +looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found +marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one night three months +before. + +I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the +funeral, or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and +he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled +from Gatsby’s grave. + +I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already +too far away, and I could only remember, without resentment, that +Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur +“Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,” and then the owl-eyed +man said “Amen to that,” in a brave voice. + +We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke +to me by the gate. + +“I couldn’t get to the house,” he remarked. + +“Neither could anybody else.” + +“Go on!” He started. “Why, my God! they used to go there by the +hundreds.” + +He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in. + +“The poor son-of-a-bitch,” he said. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school +and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than +Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a +December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into +their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember +the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the +chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught +sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: “Are you +going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long +green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky +yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking +cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate. + +When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, +began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and +the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild +brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we +walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware +of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we +melted indistinguishably into it again. + +That’s my Middle West—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede +towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street +lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly +wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a +little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent +from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are +still called through decades by a family’s name. I see now that this +has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and +Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some +deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. + +Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware +of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the +Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the +children and the very old—even then it had always for me a quality of +distortion. West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic +dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at +once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging +sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress +suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a +drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over +the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a +house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one +cares. + +After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted +beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle +leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the +line I decided to come back home. + +There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant +thing that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I wanted to +leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent +sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and +around what had happened to us together, and what had happened +afterward to me, and she lay perfectly still, listening, in a big +chair. + +She was dressed to play golf, and I remember thinking she looked like +a good illustration, her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the +colour of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the +fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without +comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that, though +there were several she could have married at a nod of her head, but I +pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn’t +making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up +to say goodbye. + +“Nevertheless you did throw me over,” said Jordan suddenly. “You threw +me over on the telephone. I don’t give a damn about you now, but it +was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while.” + +We shook hands. + +“Oh, and do you remember”—she added—“a conversation we had once about +driving a car?” + +“Why—not exactly.” + +“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? +Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me +to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, +straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.” + +“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and +call it honour.” + +She didn’t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously +sorry, I turned away. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead +of me along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a +little from his body as if to fight off interference, his head moving +sharply here and there, adapting itself to his restless eyes. Just as +I slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped and began frowning into +the windows of a jewellery store. Suddenly he saw me and walked back, +holding out his hand. + +“What’s the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?” + +“Yes. You know what I think of you.” + +“You’re crazy, Nick,” he said quickly. “Crazy as hell. I don’t know +what’s the matter with you.” + +“Tom,” I inquired, “what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?” + +He stared at me without a word, and I knew I had guessed right about +those missing hours. I started to turn away, but he took a step after +me and grabbed my arm. + +“I told him the truth,” he said. “He came to the door while we were +getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren’t in +he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if +I hadn’t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his +pocket every minute he was in the house—” He broke off defiantly. +“What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw +dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s, but he was a tough +one. He ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never even +stopped his car.” + +There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it +wasn’t true. + +“And if you think I didn’t have my share of suffering—look here, when +I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits +sitting there on the sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. By +God it was awful—” + +I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done +was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and +confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up +things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their +vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let +other people clean up the mess they had made … + +I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as +though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewellery +store to buy a pearl necklace—or perhaps only a pair of cuff +buttons—rid of my provincial squeamishness forever. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +Gatsby’s house was still empty when I left—the grass on his lawn had +grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never +took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and +pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to +East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had made a story +about it all his own. I didn’t want to hear it and I avoided him when +I got off the train. + +I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, +dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still +hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, +and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a +material car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I +didn’t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away +at the ends of the earth and didn’t know that the party was over. + +On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, +I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once +more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a +piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, +drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the +beach and sprawled out on the sand. + +Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any +lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the +Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to +melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that +flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new +world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s +house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all +human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his +breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic +contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the +last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for +wonder. + +And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of +Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of +Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream +must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He +did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that +vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic +rolled on under the night. + +Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by +year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no +matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further … And +one fine morning— + +So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into +the past. |