{"id":3533,"date":"2025-07-12T02:15:47","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T02:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=3533"},"modified":"2025-07-12T02:15:47","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T02:15:47","slug":"the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=3533","title":{"rendered":"The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/the-great-american-novel-quiz\">Great Gatsby<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/classic-american-books-everyone-should-read\">F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/a> was first published in 1925. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island,  New York, the novel tells the story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby\u00a0and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.<\/p>\n<p><em>This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/h2>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"__youtube_prefs__ epyt-facade no-lazyload\"><button class=\"epyt-facade-play\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/h3>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em>Once again<br \/>to<br \/>Zelda<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;<br \/>If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,<br \/>Till she cry \u201cLover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,<br \/>I must have you!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Thomas Parke d\u2019Invilliers<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I<\/h2>\n<p>In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I\u2019ve been turning over in my mind ever since.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhenever you feel like criticizing anyone,\u201d he told me, \u201cjust remember that all the people in this world haven\u2019t had the advantages that you\u2019ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t say any more, but we\u2019ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I\u2019m 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\u2014frequently 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t care what it\u2019s 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\u2014Gatsby, 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 \u201ccreative temperament\u201d\u2014it 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\u2014Gatsby 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>I never saw this great-uncle, but I\u2019m supposed to look like him\u2014with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father\u2019s 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\u2014so 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, \u201cWhy\u2014ye-es,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014at least I had him for a few days until he ran away\u2014and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.<\/p>\n<p>It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you get to West Egg village?\u201d he asked helplessly.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/10-genuinely-terrifying-books\">the shining<\/a> 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\u2014one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News\u2014and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the \u201cwell-rounded man.\u201d This isn\u2019t just an epigram\u2014life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014and 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\u2014like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end\u2014but 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.<\/p>\n<p>I lived at West Egg, the\u2014well, 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\u2014it was a factual imitation of some H\u00f4tel 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\u2019s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires\u2014all for eighty dollars a month.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven\u2014a 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\u2014even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach\u2014but now he\u2019d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n<p>Why they came East I don\u2019t 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\u2019t believe it\u2014I had no sight into Daisy\u2019s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014finally 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014he 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\u2014a cruel body.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, don\u2019t think my opinion on these matters is final,\u201d he seemed to say, \u201cjust because I\u2019m stronger and more of a man than you are.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got a nice place here,\u201d he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt belonged to Demaine, the oil man.\u201d He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. \u201cWe\u2019ll go inside.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.<\/p>\n<p>The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise\u2014she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression\u2014then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m p-paralysed with happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019ve heard it said that Daisy\u2019s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, Miss Baker\u2019s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again\u2014the 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cListen,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo they miss me?\u201d she cried ecstatically.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there\u2019s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow gorgeous! Let\u2019s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!\u201d Then she added irrelevantly: \u201cYou ought to see the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d like to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s asleep. She\u2019s three years old. Haven\u2019t you ever seen her?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, you ought to see her. She\u2019s\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat you doing, Nick?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a bond man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho with?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I told him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNever heard of them,\u201d he remarked decisively.<\/p>\n<p>This annoyed me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou will,\u201d I answered shortly. \u201cYou will if you stay in the East.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, I\u2019ll stay in the East, don\u2019t you worry,\u201d he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. \u201cI\u2019d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At this point Miss Baker said: \u201cAbsolutely!\u201d with such suddenness that I started\u2014it 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m stiff,\u201d she complained, \u201cI\u2019ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t look at me,\u201d Daisy retorted, \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, thanks,\u201d said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. \u201cI\u2019m absolutely in training.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her host looked at her incredulously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou are!\u201d He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. \u201cHow you ever get anything done is beyond me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she \u201cgot done.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou live in West Egg,\u201d she remarked contemptuously. \u201cI know somebody there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know a single\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou must know Gatsby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGatsby?\u201d demanded Daisy. \u201cWhat Gatsby?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy\u00a0<em>candles<\/em>?\u201d objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. \u201cIn two weeks it\u2019ll be the longest day in the year.\u201d She looked at us all radiantly. \u201cDo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe ought to plan something,\u201d yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right,\u201d said Daisy. \u201cWhat\u2019ll we plan?\u201d She turned to me helplessly: \u201cWhat do people plan?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook!\u201d she complained; \u201cI hurt it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We all looked\u2014the knuckle was black and blue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou did it, Tom,\u201d she said accusingly. \u201cI know you didn\u2019t mean to, but you\u00a0<em>did<\/em>\u00a0do it. That\u2019s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hate that word \u2018hulking,\u2019\u200a\u201d objected Tom crossly, \u201ceven in kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHulking,\u201d insisted Daisy.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,\u201d I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. \u201cCan\u2019t you talk about crops or something?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCivilization\u2019s going to pieces,\u201d broke out Tom violently. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read\u00a0<em>The Rise of the Coloured Empires<\/em>\u00a0by this man Goddard?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy, no,\u201d I answered, rather surprised by his tone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, it\u2019s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don\u2019t look out the white race will be\u2014will be utterly submerged. It\u2019s all scientific stuff; it\u2019s been proved.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTom\u2019s getting very profound,\u201d said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. \u201cHe reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, these books are all scientific,\u201d insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. \u201cThis fellow has worked out the whole thing. It\u2019s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got to beat them down,\u201d whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou ought to live in California\u2014\u201d began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis idea is that we\u2019re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and\u2014\u201d After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. \u201c\u2014And we\u2019ve produced all the things that go to make civilization\u2014oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll tell you a family secret,\u201d she whispered enthusiastically. \u201cIt\u2019s about the butler\u2019s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler\u2019s nose?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s why I came over tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, he wasn\u2019t 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\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThings went from bad to worse,\u201d suggested Miss Baker.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened\u2014then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.<\/p>\n<p>The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a\u2014of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn\u2019t he?\u201d She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: \u201cAn absolute rose?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said \u201c<em>Sh!<\/em>\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour\u2014\u201d I began.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t talk. I want to hear what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs something happening?\u201d I inquired innocently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou mean to say you don\u2019t know?\u201d said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. \u201cI thought everybody knew.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy\u2014\u201d she said hesitantly. \u201cTom\u2019s got some woman in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGot some woman?\u201d I repeated blankly.<\/p>\n<p>Miss Baker nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don\u2019t you think?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt couldn\u2019t be helped!\u201d cried Daisy with tense gaiety.<\/p>\n<p>She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: \u201cI looked outdoors for a minute, and it\u2019s very romantic outdoors. There\u2019s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He\u2019s singing away\u2014\u201d Her voice sang: \u201cIt\u2019s romantic, isn\u2019t it, Tom?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery romantic,\u201d he said, and then miserably to me: \u201cIf it\u2019s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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\u2019s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing\u2014my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t know each other very well, Nick,\u201d she said suddenly. \u201cEven if we are cousins. You didn\u2019t come to my wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wasn\u2019t back from the war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s true.\u201d She hesitated. \u201cWell, I\u2019ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I\u2019m pretty cynical about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn\u2019t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose she talks, and\u2014eats, and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, yes.\u201d She looked at me absently. \u201cListen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery much.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019ll show you how I\u2019ve gotten to feel about\u2014things. 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. \u2018All right,\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019m glad it\u2019s a girl. And I hope she\u2019ll be a fool\u2014that\u2019s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou see I think everything\u2019s terrible anyhow,\u201d she went on in a convinced way. \u201cEverybody thinks so\u2014the most advanced people. And I\u00a0<em>know<\/em>. I\u2019ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.\u201d Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom\u2019s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. \u201cSophisticated\u2014God, I\u2019m sophisticated!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u00a0<em>Saturday Evening Post<\/em>\u2014the 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.<\/p>\n<p>When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be continued,\u201d she said, tossing the magazine on the table, \u201cin our very next issue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTen o\u2019clock,\u201d she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. \u201cTime for this good girl to go to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJordan\u2019s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,\u201d explained Daisy, \u201cover at Westchester.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh\u2014you\u2019re\u00a0<em>Jor<\/em>dan Baker.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I knew now why her face was familiar\u2014its 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood night,\u201d she said softly. \u201cWake me at eight, won\u2019t you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019ll get up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course you will,\u201d confirmed Daisy. \u201cIn fact I think I\u2019ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I\u2019ll sort of\u2014oh\u2014fling you together. You know\u2014lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood night,\u201d called Miss Baker from the stairs. \u201cI haven\u2019t heard a word.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s a nice girl,\u201d said Tom after a moment. \u201cThey oughtn\u2019t to let her run around the country this way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho oughtn\u2019t to?\u201d inquired Daisy coldly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick\u2019s going to look after her, aren\u2019t you, Nick? She\u2019s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs she from New York?\u201d I asked quickly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?\u201d demanded Tom suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid I?\u201d She looked at me. \u201cI can\u2019t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I\u2019m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t believe everything you hear, Nick,\u201d he advised me.<\/p>\n<p>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: \u201cWait!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI forgot to ask you something, and it\u2019s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d corroborated Tom kindly. \u201cWe heard that you were engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a libel. I\u2019m too poor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut we heard it,\u201d insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. \u201cWe heard it from three people, so it must be true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn\u2019t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can\u2019t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.<\/p>\n<p>Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich\u2014nevertheless, 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\u2014but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he \u201chad some woman in New York\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn\u2019t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone\u2014he 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\u2014and 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.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">II<\/h2>\n<p>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\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014their 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s mistress.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular caf\u00e9s 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\u2014but 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re getting off,\u201d he insisted. \u201cI want you to meet my girl.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I think he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n<p>I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg\u2019s 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\u2014<em>Repairs.<\/em>\u00a0<strong>George B. Wilson.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Cars bought and sold.<\/em>\u2014and I followed Tom inside.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHello, Wilson, old man,\u201d said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. \u201cHow\u2019s business?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t complain,\u201d answered Wilson unconvincingly. \u201cWhen are you going to sell me that car?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNext week; I\u2019ve got my man working on it now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWorks pretty slow, don\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, he doesn\u2019t,\u201d said Tom coldly. \u201cAnd if you feel that way about it, maybe I\u2019d better sell it somewhere else after all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t mean that,\u201d explained Wilson quickly. \u201cI just meant\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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 cr\u00eape-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:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet some chairs, why don\u2019t you, so somebody can sit down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, sure,\u201d 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\u2014except his wife, who moved close to Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to see you,\u201d said Tom intently. \u201cGet on the next train.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll meet you by the newsstand on the lower level.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTerrible place, isn\u2019t it,\u201d said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAwful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt does her good to get away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoesn\u2019t her husband object?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He\u2019s so dumb he doesn\u2019t know he\u2019s alive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York\u2014or 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u00a0<em>Town Tattle<\/em>\u00a0and 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to get one of those dogs,\u201d she said earnestly. \u201cI want to get one for the apartment. They\u2019re nice to have\u2014a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat kind are they?\u201d asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly, as he came to the taxi-window.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll kinds. What kind do you want, lady?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d like to get one of those police dogs; I don\u2019t suppose you got that kind?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s no police dog,\u201d said Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, it\u2019s not exactly a police dog,\u201d said the man with disappointment in his voice. \u201cIt\u2019s more of an Airedale.\u201d He passed his hand over the brown washrag of a back. \u201cLook at that coat. Some coat. That\u2019s a dog that\u2019ll never bother you with catching cold.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s cute,\u201d said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. \u201cHow much is it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat dog?\u201d He looked at it admiringly. \u201cThat dog will cost you ten dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Airedale\u2014undoubtedly there was an Airedale concerned in it somewhere, though its feet were startlingly white\u2014changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson\u2019s lap, where she fondled the weatherproof coat with rapture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs it a boy or a girl?\u201d she asked delicately.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat dog? That dog\u2019s a boy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a bitch,\u201d said Tom decisively. \u201cHere\u2019s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We drove over to Fifth Avenue, warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon. I wouldn\u2019t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHold on,\u201d I said, \u201cI have to leave you here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo you don\u2019t,\u201d interposed Tom quickly. \u201cMyrtle\u2019ll be hurt if you don\u2019t come up to the apartment. Won\u2019t you, Myrtle?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome on,\u201d she urged. \u201cI\u2019ll telephone my sister Catherine. She\u2019s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I\u2019d like to, but\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to have the McKees come up,\u201d she announced as we rose in the elevator. \u201cAnd, of course, I got to call up my sister, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The apartment was on the top floor\u2014a 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\u00a0<em>Town Tattle<\/em>\u00a0lay on the table together with a copy of\u00a0<em>Simon Called Peter<\/em>, 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\u2014one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whisky from a locked bureau door.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom\u2019s 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\u00a0<em>Simon Called Peter<\/em>\u2014either it was terrible stuff or the whisky distorted things, because it didn\u2019t make any sense to me.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cartistic game,\u201d and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy dear,\u201d she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, \u201cmost 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\u2019d of thought she had my appendicitis out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat was the name of the woman?\u201d asked Mrs. McKee.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people\u2019s feet in their own homes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like your dress,\u201d remarked Mrs. McKee, \u201cI think it\u2019s adorable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just a crazy old thing,\u201d she said. \u201cI just slip it on sometimes when I don\u2019t care what I look like.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,\u201d pursued Mrs. McKee. \u201cIf Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI should change the light,\u201d he said after a moment. \u201cI\u2019d like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I\u2019d try to get hold of all the back hair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wouldn\u2019t think of changing the light,\u201d cried Mrs. McKee. \u201cI think it\u2019s\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her husband said \u201c<em>Sh!<\/em>\u201d and we all looked at the subject again, whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou McKees have something to drink,\u201d he said. \u201cGet some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told that boy about the ice.\u201d Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. \u201cThese people! You have to keep after them all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve done some nice things out on Long Island,\u201d asserted Mr. McKee.<\/p>\n<p>Tom looked at him blankly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwo of them we have framed downstairs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwo what?\u201d demanded Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwo studies. One of them I call\u00a0<em>Montauk Point\u2014The Gulls<\/em>, and the other I call\u00a0<em>Montauk Point\u2014The Sea<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you live down on Long Island, too?\u201d she inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI live at West Egg.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReally? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby\u2019s. Do you know him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI live next door to him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, they say he\u2019s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm\u2019s. That\u2019s where all his money comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReally?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m scared of him. I\u2019d hate to have him get anything on me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This absorbing information about my neighbour was interrupted by Mrs. McKee\u2019s pointing suddenly at Catherine:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChester, I think you could do something with\u00a0<em>her<\/em>,\u201d she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way, and turned his attention to Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAsk Myrtle,\u201d said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. \u201cShe\u2019ll give you a letter of introduction, won\u2019t you, Myrtle?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo what?\u201d she asked, startled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him.\u201d His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented, \u201c\u200a\u2018George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,\u2019 or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNeither of them can stand the person they\u2019re married to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan\u2019t\u00a0<em>stand<\/em>\u00a0them.\u201d She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. \u201cWhat I say is, why go on living with them if they can\u2019t stand them? If I was them I\u2019d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoesn\u2019t she like Wilson either?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle, who had overheard the question, and it was violent and obscene.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou see,\u201d cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. \u201cIt\u2019s really his wife that\u2019s keeping them apart. She\u2019s a Catholic, and they don\u2019t believe in divorce.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen they do get married,\u201d continued Catherine, \u201cthey\u2019re going West to live for a while until it blows over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019d be more discreet to go to Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, do you like Europe?\u201d she exclaimed surprisingly. \u201cI just got back from Monte Carlo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReally.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust last year. I went over there with another girl.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStay long?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean\u2014then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI almost made a mistake, too,\u201d she declared vigorously. \u201cI almost married a little kike who\u2019d been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: \u2018Lucille, that man\u2019s way below you!\u2019 But if I hadn\u2019t met Chester, he\u2019d of got me sure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, but listen,\u201d said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, \u201cat least you didn\u2019t marry him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know I didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I married him,\u201d said Myrtle, ambiguously. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the difference between your case and mine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy did you, Myrtle?\u201d demanded Catherine. \u201cNobody forced you to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Myrtle considered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI married him because I thought he was a gentleman,\u201d she said finally. \u201cI thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn\u2019t fit to lick my shoe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou were crazy about him for a while,\u201d said Catherine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCrazy about him!\u201d cried Myrtle incredulously. \u201cWho said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She pointed suddenly at me, and everyone looked at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression that I expected no affection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe only\u00a0<em>crazy<\/em>\u00a0I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody\u2019s 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: \u2018Oh, is that your suit?\u2019 I said. \u2018This is the first I ever heard about it.\u2019 But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe really ought to get away from him,\u201d resumed Catherine to me. \u201cThey\u2019ve been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom\u2019s the first sweetie she ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bottle of whisky\u2014a second one\u2014was now in constant demand by all present, excepting Catherine, who \u201cfelt just as good on nothing at all.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt 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\u2019t 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\u2019d 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\u2019t hardly know I wasn\u2019t getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was \u2018You can\u2019t live forever; you can\u2019t live forever.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial laughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy dear,\u201d she cried, \u201cI\u2019m going to give you this dress as soon as I\u2019m through with it. I\u2019ve got to get another one tomorrow. I\u2019m going to make a list of all the things I\u2019ve 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\u2019s grave that\u2019ll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won\u2019t forget all the things I got to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was nine o\u2019clock\u2014almost 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s name.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDaisy! Daisy! Daisy!\u201d shouted Mrs. Wilson. \u201cI\u2019ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.<\/p>\n<p>Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women\u2019s 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\u2014his 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\u00a0<em>Town Tattle<\/em>\u00a0over the tapestry scenes of Versailles. Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from the chandelier, I followed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome to lunch some day,\u201d he suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKeep your hands off the lever,\u201d snapped the elevator boy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI beg your pardon,\u201d said Mr. McKee with dignity, \u201cI didn\u2019t know I was touching it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right,\u201d I agreed, \u201cI\u2019ll be glad to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeauty and the Beast\u2026 Loneliness\u2026 Old Grocery Horse\u2026 Brook\u2019n Bridge\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning\u00a0<em>Tribune<\/em>, and waiting for the four o\u2019clock train.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">III<\/h2>\n<p>There was music from my neighbour\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York\u2014every 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\u2019s thumb.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d\u2019oeuvre, 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.<\/p>\n<p>By seven o\u2019clock 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\u2019s names.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s understudy from the Follies. The party has begun.<\/p>\n<p>I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby\u2019s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited\u2014they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin\u2019s-egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer: the honour would be entirely Gatsby\u2019s, it said, if I would attend his \u201clittle party\u201d 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\u2014signed Jay Gatsby, in a majestic hand.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t know\u2014though 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passersby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHello!\u201d I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought you might be here,\u201d she responded absently as I came up. \u201cI remembered you lived next door to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHello!\u201d they cried together. \u201cSorry you didn\u2019t win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t know who we are,\u201d said one of the girls in yellow, \u201cbut we met you here about a month ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ve dyed your hair since then,\u201d 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\u2019s basket. With Jordan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you come to these parties often?\u201d inquired Jordan of the girl beside her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe last one was the one I met you at,\u201d answered the girl, in an alert confident voice. She turned to her companion: \u201cWasn\u2019t it for you, Lucille?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was for Lucille, too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like to come,\u201d Lucille said. \u201cI 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\u2014inside of a week I got a package from Croirier\u2019s with a new evening gown in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you keep it?\u201d asked Jordan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSure 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s something funny about a fellow that\u2019ll do a thing like that,\u201d said the other girl eagerly. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t want any trouble with\u00a0<em>any<\/em>body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho doesn\u2019t?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGatsby. Somebody told me\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomebody told me they thought he killed a man once.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s so much\u00a0<em>that<\/em>,\u201d argued Lucille sceptically; \u201cIt\u2019s more that he was a German spy during the war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the men nodded in confirmation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany,\u201d he assured us positively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, no,\u201d said the first girl, \u201cit couldn\u2019t be that, because he was in the American army during the war.\u201d As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. \u201cYou look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody\u2019s looking at him. I\u2019ll bet he killed a man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The first supper\u2014there would be another one after midnight\u2014was 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\u2019s 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\u2014East Egg condescending to West Egg and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gaiety.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s get out,\u201d whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half-hour; \u201cthis is much too polite for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded, but Gatsby was not there. She couldn\u2019t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do you think?\u201d he demanded impetuously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He waved his hand toward the bookshelves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout that. As a matter of fact you needn\u2019t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They\u2019re real.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe books?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbsolutely real\u2014have pages and everything. I thought they\u2019d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they\u2019re absolutely real. Pages and\u2014Here! Lemme show you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the\u00a0<em>Stoddard Lectures<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee!\u201d he cried triumphantly. \u201cIt\u2019s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella\u2019s a regular Belasco. It\u2019s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too\u2014didn\u2019t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho brought you?\u201d he demanded. \u201cOr did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully, without answering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was brought by a woman named Roosevelt,\u201d he continued. \u201cMrs. Claud Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I\u2019ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHas it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA little bit, I think. I can\u2019t tell yet. I\u2019ve only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They\u2019re real. They\u2019re\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou told us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014and 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 \u201cstunts\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour face is familiar,\u201d he said politely. \u201cWeren\u2019t you in the First Division during the war?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was in the Sixteenth until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I\u2019d seen you somewhere before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWant to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat time?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny time that suits you best.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around and smiled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHaving a gay time now?\u201d she inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMuch better.\u201d I turned again to my new acquaintance. \u201cThis is an unusual party for me. I haven\u2019t even seen the host. I live over there\u2014\u201d I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, \u201cand this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m Gatsby,\u201d he said suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat!\u201d I exclaimed. \u201cOh, I beg your pardon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought you knew, old sport. I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m not a very good host.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He smiled understandingly\u2014much 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\u2014or seemed to face\u2014the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on\u00a0<em>you<\/em>\u00a0with 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\u2014and 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\u2019d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you want anything just ask for it, old sport,\u201d he urged me. \u201cExcuse me. I will rejoin you later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan\u2014constrained to assure her of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho is he?\u201d I demanded. \u201cDo you know?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s just a man named Gatsby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere is he from, I mean? And what does he do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow\u00a0<em>you<\/em>\u2019re started on the subject,\u201d she answered with a wan smile. \u201cWell, he told me once he was an Oxford man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A dim background started to take shape behind him, but at her next remark it faded away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, I don\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she insisted, \u201cI just don\u2019t think he went there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl\u2019s \u201cI think he killed a man,\u201d 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\u2019t\u2014at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn\u2019t\u2014drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnyhow, he gives large parties,\u201d said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete. \u201cAnd I like large parties. They\u2019re so intimate. At small parties there isn\u2019t any privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLadies and gentlemen,\u201d he cried. \u201cAt the request of Mr. Gatsby we are going to play for you Mr. Vladmir Tostoff\u2019s latest work, which attracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the papers you know there was a big sensation.\u201d He smiled with jovial condescension, and added: \u201cSome sensation!\u201d Whereupon everybody laughed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe piece is known,\u201d he concluded lustily, \u201cas \u2018Vladmir Tostoff\u2019s Jazz History of the World!\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The nature of Mr. Tostoff\u2019s 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 \u201cJazz History of the World\u201d was over, girls were putting their heads on men\u2019s shoulders in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward playfully into men\u2019s arms, even into groups, knowing that someone would arrest their falls\u2014but no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby\u2019s shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby\u2019s head for one link.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI beg your pardon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby\u2019s butler was suddenly standing beside us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMiss Baker?\u201d he inquired. \u201cI beg your pardon, but Mr. Gatsby would like to speak to you alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith me?\u201d she exclaimed in surprise.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, madame.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s undergraduate, who was now engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who implored me to join him, I went inside.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014she 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\u2014not 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe had a fight with a man who says he\u2019s her husband,\u201d explained a girl at my elbow.<\/p>\n<p>I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands. Even Jordan\u2019s 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\u2014at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed: \u201cYou promised!\u201d into his ear.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhenever he sees I\u2019m having a good time he wants to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNever heard anything so selfish in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re always the first ones to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo are we.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, we\u2019re almost the last tonight,\u201d said one of the men sheepishly. \u201cThe orchestra left half an hour ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In spite of the wives\u2019 agreement that such malevolence was beyond credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives were lifted, kicking, into the night.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan\u2019s party were calling impatiently to her from the porch, but she lingered for a moment to shake hands.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve just heard the most amazing thing,\u201d she whispered. \u201cHow long were we in there?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy, about an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was\u2026 simply amazing,\u201d she repeated abstractedly. \u201cBut I swore I wouldn\u2019t tell it and here I am tantalizing you.\u201d She yawned gracefully in my face. \u201cPlease come and see me\u2026 Phone book\u2026 Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard\u2026 My aunt\u2026\u201d She was hurrying off as she talked\u2014her brown hand waved a jaunty salute as she melted into her party at the door.<\/p>\n<p>Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I had stayed so late, I joined the last of Gatsby\u2019s guests, who were clustered around him. I wanted to explain that I\u2019d hunted for him early in the evening and to apologize for not having known him in the garden.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t mention it,\u201d he enjoined me eagerly. \u201cDon\u2019t give it another thought, old sport.\u201d The familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. \u201cAnd don\u2019t forget we\u2019re going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning, at nine o\u2019clock.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then the butler, behind his shoulder:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPhiladelphia wants you on the phone, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right, in a minute. Tell them I\u2019ll be right there\u2026 Good night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood night.\u201d He smiled\u2014and 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. \u201cGood night, old sport\u2026 Good night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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 coup\u00e9 which had left Gatsby\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee!\u201d he explained. \u201cIt went in the ditch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fact was infinitely astonishing to him, and I recognized first the unusual quality of wonder, and then the man\u2014it was the late patron of Gatsby\u2019s library.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow\u2019d it happen?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He shrugged his shoulders.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know nothing whatever about mechanics,\u201d he said decisively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t ask me,\u201d said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole matter. \u201cI know very little about driving\u2014next to nothing. It happened, and that\u2019s all I know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, if you\u2019re a poor driver you oughtn\u2019t to try driving at night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I wasn\u2019t even trying,\u201d he explained indignantly, \u201cI wasn\u2019t even trying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>An awed hush fell upon the bystanders.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you want to commit suicide?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even\u00a0<em>try<\/em>ing!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t understand,\u201d explained the criminal. \u201cI wasn\u2019t driving. There\u2019s another man in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The shock that followed this declaration found voice in a sustained \u201cAh-h-h!\u201d as the door of the coup\u00e9 swung slowly open. The crowd\u2014it was now a crowd\u2014stepped 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWha\u2019s matter?\u201d he inquired calmly. \u201cDid we run outa gas?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel\u2014he stared at it for a moment, and then looked upward as though he suspected that it had dropped from the sky.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt came off,\u201d someone explained.<\/p>\n<p>He nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt first I din\u2019 notice we\u2019d stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders, he remarked in a determined voice:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWonder\u2019ff tell me where there\u2019s a gas\u2019line station?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBack out,\u201d he suggested after a moment. \u201cPut her in reverse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the\u00a0<em>wheel<\/em>\u2019s off!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He hesitated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo harm in trying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>I took dinner usually at the Yale Club\u2014for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day\u2014and 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner\u2014young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.<\/p>\n<p>Again at eight o\u2019clock, 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something\u2014most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don\u2019t in the beginning\u2014and 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\u2014and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy\u2019s. At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers\u2014a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semifinal round. The thing approached the proportions of a scandal\u2014then 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply\u2014I 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\u2019s coat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re a rotten driver,\u201d I protested. \u201cEither you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn\u2019t to drive at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am careful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, you\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, other people are,\u201d she said lightly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s that got to do with it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019ll keep out of my way,\u201d she insisted. \u201cIt takes two to make an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope I never will,\u201d she answered. \u201cI hate careless people. That\u2019s why I like you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019d been writing letters once a week and signing them: \u201cLove, Nick,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">IV<\/h2>\n<p>On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby\u2019s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s a bootlegger,\u201d said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. \u201cOne 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a timetable the names of those who came to Gatsby\u2019s house that summer. It is an old timetable now, disintegrating at its folds, and headed \u201cThis schedule in effect July 5th, 1922.\u201d But I can still read the grey names, and they will give you a better impression than my generalities of those who accepted Gatsby\u2019s hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever about him.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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\u2019s girls.<\/p>\n<p>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. (\u201cRot-Gut\u201d) Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly\u2014they 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.<\/p>\n<p>A man named Klipspringer was there so often that he became known as \u201cthe boarder\u201d\u2014I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical people there were Gus Waize and Horace O\u2019Donavan 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014Jaqueline, 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.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina O\u2019Brien 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 fianc\u00e9e, 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.<\/p>\n<p>All these people came to Gatsby\u2019s house in the summer.<\/p>\n<p>At nine o\u2019clock, one morning late in July, Gatsby\u2019s gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody from its three-noted horn.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood morning, old sport. You\u2019re having lunch with me today and I thought we\u2019d ride up together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American\u2014that 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.<\/p>\n<p>He saw me looking with admiration at his car.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s pretty, isn\u2019t it, old sport?\u201d He jumped off to give me a better view. \u201cHaven\u2019t you ever seen it before?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>And then came that disconcerting ride. We hadn\u2019t reached West Egg village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-coloured suit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook here, old sport,\u201d he broke out surprisingly, \u201cwhat\u2019s your opinion of me, anyhow?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I\u2019m going to tell you something about my life,\u201d he interrupted. \u201cI don\u2019t want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavoured conversation in his halls.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll tell you God\u2019s truth.\u201d His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by. \u201cI am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West\u2014all 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looked at me sideways\u2014and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase \u201ceducated at Oxford,\u201d 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\u2019t something a little sinister about him, after all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat part of the Middle West?\u201d I inquired casually.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSan Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy family all died and I came into a good deal of money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe\u2014Paris, Venice, Rome\u2014collecting 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201ccharacter\u201d leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen 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\u2019t 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\u2014even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them\u2014with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro\u2019s 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\u2019s warm little heart. My incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines.<\/p>\n<p>He reached in his pocket, and a piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, fell into my palm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s the one from Montenegro.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic look. \u201cOrderi di Danilo,\u201d ran the circular legend, \u201cMontenegro, Nicolas Rex.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTurn it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMajor Jay Gatsby,\u201d I read, \u201cFor Valour Extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere\u2019s another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It was taken in Trinity Quad\u2014the man on my left is now the Earl of Doncaster.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014with a cricket bat in his hand.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to make a big request of you today,\u201d he said, pocketing his souvenirs with satisfaction, \u201cso I thought you ought to know something about me. I didn\u2019t 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.\u201d He hesitated. \u201cYou\u2019ll hear about it this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt lunch?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, this afternoon. I happened to find out that you\u2019re taking Miss Baker to tea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you mean you\u2019re in love with Miss Baker?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, old sport, I\u2019m not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak to you about this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hadn\u2019t the faintest idea what \u201cthis matter\u201d was, but I was more annoyed than interested. I hadn\u2019t 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\u2019d ever set foot upon his overpopulated lawn.<\/p>\n<p>He wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half Astoria\u2014only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I heard the familiar \u201cjug-jug-<em>spat<\/em>!\u201d of a motorcycle, and a frantic policeman rode alongside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right, old sport,\u201d called Gatsby. We slowed down. Taking a white card from his wallet, he waved it before the man\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight you are,\u201d agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. \u201cKnow you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse\u00a0<em>me<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat was that?\u201d I inquired. \u201cThe picture of Oxford?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was able to do the commissioner a favour once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s splendid car was included in their sombre holiday. As we crossed Blackwell\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnything can happen now that we\u2019ve slid over this bridge,\u201d I thought; \u201canything at all\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2014So I took one look at him,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand earnestly, \u201cand what do you think I did?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d I inquired politely.<\/p>\n<p>But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI handed the money to Katspaugh and I said: \u2018All right, Katspaugh, don\u2019t pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth.\u2019 He shut it then and there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHighballs?\u201d asked the head waiter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a nice restaurant here,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, looking at the presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. \u201cBut I like across the street better!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, highballs,\u201d agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: \u201cIt\u2019s too hot over there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHot and small\u2014yes,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, \u201cbut full of memories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat place is that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe old Metropole.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe old Metropole,\u201d brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. \u201cFilled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can\u2019t 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. \u2018All right,\u2019 says Rosy, and begins to get up, and I pulled him down in his chair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u200a\u2018Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don\u2019t you, so help me, move outside this room.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was four o\u2019clock in the morning then, and if we\u2019d of raised the blinds we\u2019d of seen daylight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid he go?\u201d I asked innocently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSure he went.\u201d Mr. Wolfshiem\u2019s nose flashed at me indignantly. \u201cHe turned around in the door and says: \u2018Don\u2019t let that waiter take away my coffee!\u2019 Then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFour of them were electrocuted,\u201d I said, remembering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFive, with Becker.\u201d His nostrils turned to me in an interested way. \u201cI understand you\u2019re looking for a business gonnegtion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered for me:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, no,\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cthis isn\u2019t the man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo?\u201d Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is just a friend. I told you we\u2019d talk about that some other time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI beg your pardon,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, \u201cI had a wrong man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014he 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook here, old sport,\u201d said Gatsby, leaning toward me, \u201cI\u2019m afraid I made you a little angry this morning in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t like mysteries,\u201d I answered, \u201cand I don\u2019t understand why you won\u2019t come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to come through Miss Baker?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, it\u2019s nothing underhand,\u201d he assured me. \u201cMiss Baker\u2019s a great sportswoman, you know, and she\u2019d never do anything that wasn\u2019t all right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up, and hurried from the room, leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe has to telephone,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his eyes. \u201cFine fellow, isn\u2019t he? Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s an Oggsford man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve heard of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s one of the most famous colleges in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you known Gatsby for a long time?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeveral years,\u201d he answered in a gratified way. \u201cI 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: \u2018There\u2019s the kind of man you\u2019d like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister.\u2019\u200a\u201d He paused. \u201cI see you\u2019re looking at my cuff buttons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hadn\u2019t been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFinest specimens of human molars,\u201d he informed me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell!\u201d I inspected them. \u201cThat\u2019s a very interesting idea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah.\u201d He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. \u201cYeah, Gatsby\u2019s very careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend\u2019s wife.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have enjoyed my lunch,\u201d he said, \u201cand I\u2019m going to run off from you two young men before I outstay my welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t hurry Meyer,\u201d said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem raised his hand in a sort of benediction.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re very polite, but I belong to another generation,\u201d he announced solemnly. \u201cYou sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your\u2014\u201d He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand. \u201cAs for me, I am fifty years old, and I won\u2019t impose myself on you any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe becomes very sentimental sometimes,\u201d explained Gatsby. \u201cThis is one of his sentimental days. He\u2019s quite a character around New York\u2014a denizen of Broadway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho is he, anyhow, an actor?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA dentist?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMeyer Wolfshiem? No, he\u2019s a gambler.\u201d Gatsby hesitated, then added, coolly: \u201cHe\u2019s the man who fixed the World\u2019s Series back in 1919.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFixed the World\u2019s Series?\u201d I repeated.<\/p>\n<p>The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World\u2019s 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\u00a0<em>happened<\/em>, 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\u2014with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow did he happen to do that?\u201d I asked after a minute.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe just saw the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy isn\u2019t he in jail?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey can\u2019t get him, old sport. He\u2019s a smart man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome along with me for a minute,\u201d I said; \u201cI\u2019ve got to say hello to someone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere\u2019ve you been?\u201d he demanded eagerly. \u201cDaisy\u2019s furious because you haven\u2019t called up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsby\u2019s face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow\u2019ve you been, anyhow?\u201d demanded Tom of me. \u201cHow\u2019d you happen to come up this far to eat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.<\/p>\n<p>One October day in nineteen-seventeen\u2014<\/p>\n<p>(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)<\/p>\n<p>\u2014I 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\u00a0<em>tut-tut-tut-tut<\/em>, in a disapproving way.<\/p>\n<p>The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay\u2019s 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. \u201cAnyways, for an hour!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t see me until I was five feet away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHello, Jordan,\u201d she called unexpectedly. \u201cPlease come here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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\u2019t lay eyes on him again for over four years\u2014even after I\u2019d met him on Long Island I didn\u2019t realize it was the same man.<\/p>\n<p>That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn\u2019t see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowd\u2014when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumours were circulating about her\u2014how 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\u2019t on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she didn\u2019t play around with the soldiers any more, but only with a few flat-footed, shortsighted young men in town, who couldn\u2019t get into the army at all.<\/p>\n<p>By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a d\u00e9but 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u200a\u2019Gratulate me,\u201d she muttered. \u201cNever had a drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Daisy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was scared, I can tell you; I\u2019d never seen a girl like that before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere, dearies.\u201d She groped around in a wastebasket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. \u201cTake \u2019em downstairs and give \u2019em back to whoever they belong to. Tell \u2019em all Daisy\u2019s change\u2019 her mine. Say: \u2018Daisy\u2019s change\u2019 her mine!\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She began to cry\u2014she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother\u2019s maid, and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>But she didn\u2019t 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\u2019clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months\u2019 trip to the South Seas.<\/p>\n<p>I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back, and I thought I\u2019d never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute she\u2019d look around uneasily, and say: \u201cWhere\u2019s Tom gone?\u201d 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\u2014it 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\u2014she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t drink. It\u2019s 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\u2019t see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all\u2014and yet there\u2019s something in that voice of hers\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you\u2014do you remember?\u2014if you knew Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me up, and said: \u201cWhat Gatsby?\u201d and when I described him\u2014I was half asleep\u2014she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used to know. It wasn\u2019t until then that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white car.<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m the Sheik of Araby.<br \/>Your love belongs to me.<br \/>At night when you\u2019re asleep<br \/>Into your tent I\u2019ll creep\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a strange coincidence,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it wasn\u2019t a coincidence at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe wants to know,\u201d continued Jordan, \u201cif you\u2019ll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths\u2014so that he could \u201ccome over\u201d some afternoon to a stranger\u2019s garden.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s afraid, he\u2019s waited so long. He thought you might be offended. You see, he\u2019s regular tough underneath it all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Something worried me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy didn\u2019t he ask you to arrange a meeting?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe wants her to see his house,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd your house is right next door.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night,\u201d went on Jordan, \u201cbut 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\u2014and I thought he\u2019d go mad:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u200a\u2018I don\u2019t want to do anything out of the way!\u2019 he kept saying. \u2018I want to see her right next door.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I said you were a particular friend of Tom\u2019s, he started to abandon the whole idea. He doesn\u2019t know very much about Tom, though he says he\u2019s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy\u2019s name.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan\u2019s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn\u2019t 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: \u201cThere are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd Daisy ought to have something in her life,\u201d murmured Jordan to me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes she want to see Gatsby?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s not to know about it. Gatsby doesn\u2019t want her to know. You\u2019re just supposed to invite her to tea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the fa\u00e7ade 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.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">V<\/h2>\n<p>When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that my house was on fire. Two o\u2019clock 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\u2019s house, lit from tower to cellar.<\/p>\n<p>At first I thought it was another party, a wild rout that had resolved itself into \u201chide-and-go-seek\u201d or \u201csardines-in-the-box\u201d with all the house thrown open to the game. But there wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour place looks like the World\u2019s Fair,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes it?\u201d He turned his eyes toward it absently. \u201cI have been glancing into some of the rooms. Let\u2019s go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming pool? I haven\u2019t made use of it all summer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got to go to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He waited, looking at me with suppressed eagerness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI talked with Miss Baker,\u201d I said after a moment. \u201cI\u2019m going to call up Daisy tomorrow and invite her over here to tea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, that\u2019s all right,\u201d he said carelessly. \u201cI don\u2019t want to put you to any trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat day would suit you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat day would suit\u00a0<em>you<\/em>?\u201d he corrected me quickly. \u201cI don\u2019t want to put you to any trouble, you see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow about the day after tomorrow?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He considered for a moment. Then, with reluctance: \u201cI want to get the grass cut,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>We both looked down at the grass\u2014there 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s another little thing,\u201d he said uncertainly, and hesitated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWould you rather put it off for a few days?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, it isn\u2019t about that. At least\u2014\u201d He fumbled with a series of beginnings. \u201cWhy, I thought\u2014why, look here, old sport, you don\u2019t make much money, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot very much.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought you didn\u2019t, if you\u2019ll pardon my\u2014you see, I carry on a little business on the side, a sort of side line, you understand. And I thought that if you don\u2019t make very much\u2014You\u2019re selling bonds, aren\u2019t you, old sport?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTrying to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, this would interest you. It wouldn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got my hands full,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m much obliged but I couldn\u2019t take on any more work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t have to do any business with Wolfshiem.\u201d Evidently he thought that I was shying away from the \u201cgonnegtion\u201d mentioned at lunch, but I assured him he was wrong. He waited a moment longer, hoping I\u2019d begin a conversation, but I was too absorbed to be responsive, so he went unwillingly home.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t know whether or not Gatsby went to Coney Island, or for how many hours he \u201cglanced into rooms\u201d while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the office next morning, and invited her to come to tea.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t bring Tom,\u201d I warned her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t bring Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho is \u2018Tom\u2019?\u201d she asked innocently.<\/p>\n<p>The day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven o\u2019clock 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.<\/p>\n<p>The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o\u2019clock a greenhouse arrived from Gatsby\u2019s, 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs everything all right?\u201d he asked immediately.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe grass looks fine, if that\u2019s what you mean.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat grass?\u201d he inquired blankly. \u201cOh, the grass in the yard.\u201d He looked out the window at it, but, judging from his expression, I don\u2019t believe he saw a thing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLooks very good,\u201d he remarked vaguely. \u201cOne of the papers said they thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was\u00a0<em>The Journal<\/em>. Have you got everything you need in the shape of\u2014of tea?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWill they do?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, of course! They\u2019re fine!\u201d and he added hollowly, \u201c\u2026 old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s\u00a0<em>Economics<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody\u2019s coming to tea. It\u2019s too late!\u201d He looked at his watch as if there was some pressing demand on his time elsewhere. \u201cI can\u2019t wait all day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t be silly; it\u2019s just two minutes to four.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Under the dripping bare lilac-trees a large open car was coming up the drive. It stopped. Daisy\u2019s face, tipped sideways beneath a three-cornered lavender hat, looked out at me with a bright ecstatic smile.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you in love with me,\u201d she said low in my ear, \u201cor why did I have to come alone?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far away and spend an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome back in an hour, Ferdie.\u201d Then in a grave murmur: \u201cHis name is Ferdie.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes the gasoline affect his nose?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d she said innocently. \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living-room was deserted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, that\u2019s funny,\u201d I exclaimed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s funny?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of my own heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain.<\/p>\n<p>For half a minute there wasn\u2019t a sound. Then from the living-room I heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh, followed by Daisy\u2019s voice on a clear artificial note:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI certainly am awfully glad to see you again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall, so I went into the room.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve met before,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sorry about the clock,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn\u2019t muster up a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an old clock,\u201d I told them idiotically.<\/p>\n<p>I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe haven\u2019t met for many years,\u201d said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFive years next November.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The automatic quality of Gatsby\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t an end in itself, I made an excuse at the first possible moment, and got to my feet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere are you going?\u201d demanded Gatsby in immediate alarm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll be back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got to speak to you about something before you go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door, and whispered: \u201cOh, God!\u201d in a miserable way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a terrible mistake,\u201d he said, shaking his head from side to side, \u201ca terrible, terrible mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re just embarrassed, that\u2019s all,\u201d and luckily I added: \u201cDaisy\u2019s embarrassed too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s embarrassed?\u201d he repeated incredulously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust as much as you are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t talk so loud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re acting like a little boy,\u201d I broke out impatiently. \u201cNot only that, but you\u2019re rude. Daisy\u2019s sitting in there all alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>I walked out the back way\u2014just as Gatsby had when he had made his nervous circuit of the house half an hour before\u2014and 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\u2019s gardener, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except Gatsby\u2019s 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 \u201cperiod\u201d craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he\u2019d agreed to pay five years\u2019 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\u2014he 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.<\/p>\n<p>After half an hour, the sun shone again, and the grocer\u2019s automobile rounded Gatsby\u2019s drive with the raw material for his servants\u2019 dinner\u2014I felt sure he wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>I went in\u2014after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove\u2014but I don\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, hello, old sport,\u201d he said, as if he hadn\u2019t seen me for years. I thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s stopped raining.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHas it?\u201d 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. \u201cWhat do you think of that? It\u2019s stopped raining.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m glad, Jay.\u201d Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want you and Daisy to come over to my house,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019d like to show her around.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re sure you want me to come?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbsolutely, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Daisy went upstairs to wash her face\u2014too late I thought with humiliation of my towels\u2014while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy house looks well, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d he demanded. \u201cSee how the whole front of it catches the light.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I agreed that it was splendid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. \u201cIt took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought you inherited your money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI did, old sport,\u201d he said automatically, \u201cbut I lost most of it in the big panic\u2014the panic of the war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered: \u201cThat\u2019s my affair,\u201d before he realized that it wasn\u2019t an appropriate reply.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, I\u2019ve been in several things,\u201d he corrected himself. \u201cI was in the drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I\u2019m not in either one now.\u201d He looked at me with more attention. \u201cDo you mean you\u2019ve been thinking over what I proposed the other night?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat huge place\u00a0<em>there<\/em>?\u201d she cried pointing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you like it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love it, but I don\u2019t see how you live there all alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People who do interesting things. Celebrated people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cthe Merton College Library\u201d I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ghostly laughter.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014intruding into one chamber where a dishevelled man in pyjamas was doing liver exercises on the floor. It was Mr. Klipspringer, the \u201cboarder.\u201d I had seen him wandering hungrily about the beach that morning. Finally we came to Gatsby\u2019s own apartment, a bedroom and a bath, and an Adam\u2019s study, where we sat down and drank a glass of some Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the wall.<\/p>\n<p>He hadn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>His bedroom was the simplest room of all\u2014except 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the funniest thing, old sport,\u201d he said hilariously. \u201cI can\u2019t\u2014When I try to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014shirts 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re such beautiful shirts,\u201d she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. \u201cIt makes me sad because I\u2019ve never seen such\u2014such beautiful shirts before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and the hydroplane, and the midsummer flowers\u2014but outside Gatsby\u2019s window it began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated surface of the Sound.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,\u201d said Gatsby. \u201cYou always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho\u2019s this?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat? That\u2019s Mr. Dan Cody, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The name sounded faintly familiar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the bureau\u2014Gatsby with his head thrown back defiantly\u2014taken apparently when he was about eighteen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI adore it,\u201d exclaimed Daisy. \u201cThe pompadour! You never told me you had a pompadour\u2014or a yacht.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook at this,\u201d said Gatsby quickly. \u201cHere\u2019s a lot of clippings\u2014about you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes\u2026 Well, I can\u2019t talk now\u2026 I can\u2019t talk now, old sport\u2026 I said a\u00a0<em>small<\/em>\u00a0town\u2026 He must know what a small town is\u2026 Well, he\u2019s no use to us if Detroit is his idea of a small town\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He rang off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome here\u00a0<em>quick<\/em>!\u201d cried Daisy at the window.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook at that,\u201d she whispered, and then after a moment: \u201cI\u2019d like to just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I tried to go then, but they wouldn\u2019t hear of it; perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know what we\u2019ll do,\u201d said Gatsby, \u201cwe\u2019ll have Klipspringer play the piano.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He went out of the room calling \u201cEwing!\u201d 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 \u201csport shirt,\u201d open at the neck, sneakers, and duck trousers of a nebulous hue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid we interrupt your exercise?\u201d inquired Daisy politely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was asleep,\u201d cried Mr. Klipspringer, in a spasm of embarrassment. \u201cThat is, I\u2019d\u00a0<em>been<\/em>\u00a0asleep. Then I got up\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKlipspringer plays the piano,\u201d said Gatsby, cutting him off. \u201cDon\u2019t you, Ewing, old sport?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t play well. I don\u2019t\u2014hardly play at all. I\u2019m all out of prac\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll go downstairs,\u201d interrupted Gatsby. He flipped a switch. The grey windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light.<\/p>\n<p>In the music-room Gatsby turned on a solitary lamp beside the piano. He lit Daisy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>When Klipspringer had played \u201cThe Love Nest\u201d he turned around on the bench and searched unhappily for Gatsby in the gloom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m all out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn\u2019t play. I\u2019m all out of prac\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t talk so much, old sport,\u201d commanded Gatsby. \u201cPlay!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the morning,<br \/>In the evening,<br \/>Ain\u2019t we got fun\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne thing\u2019s sure and nothing\u2019s surer<br \/>The rich get richer and the poor get\u2014children.<br \/>In the meantime,<br \/>In between time\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby\u2019s 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\u2014not 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t be over-dreamed\u2014that voice was a deathless song.<\/p>\n<p>They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">VI<\/h2>\n<p>About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby\u2019s door and asked him if he had anything to say.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnything to say about what?\u201d inquired Gatsby politely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy\u2014any statement to give out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard Gatsby\u2019s name around his office in a connection which he either wouldn\u2019t reveal or didn\u2019t fully understand. This was his day off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out \u201cto see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was a random shot, and yet the reporter\u2019s instinct was right. Gatsby\u2019s 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 \u201cunderground pipeline to Canada\u201d attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn\u2019t 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\u2019t easy to say.<\/p>\n<p>James Gatz\u2014that 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\u2014when he saw Dan Cody\u2019s 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\u00a0<em>Tuolomee<\/em>, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose he\u2019d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people\u2014his 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\u2014a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that\u2014and he must be about His Father\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s wing.<\/p>\n<p>An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s destiny in Little Girl Bay.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014he 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\u00a0<em>Tuolomee<\/em>\u00a0left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast, Gatsby left too.<\/p>\n<p>He was employed in a vague personal capacity\u2014while 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.<\/p>\n<p>I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby\u2019s bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face\u2014the 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.<\/p>\n<p>And it was from Cody that he inherited money\u2014a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>He told me all this very much later, but I\u2019ve put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents, which weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several weeks I didn\u2019t see him or hear his voice on the phone\u2014mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt\u2014but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn\u2019t 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\u2019t happened before.<\/p>\n<p>They were a party of three on horseback\u2014Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there previously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m delighted to see you,\u201d said Gatsby, standing on his porch. \u201cI\u2019m delighted that you dropped in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As though they cared!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar.\u201d He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. \u201cI\u2019ll have something to drink for you in just a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2026 I\u2019m sorry\u2014<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you have a nice ride?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery good roads around here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose the automobiles\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had accepted the introduction as a stranger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe we\u2019ve met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, yes,\u201d said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously not remembering. \u201cSo we did. I remember very well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout two weeks ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s right. You were with Nick here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know your wife,\u201d continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat so?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom turned to me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou live near here, Nick?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNext door.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat so?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Sloane didn\u2019t enter into the conversation, but lounged back haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either\u2014until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby,\u201d she suggested. \u201cWhat do you say?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCertainly; I\u2019d be delighted to have you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBe ver\u2019 nice,\u201d said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. \u201cWell\u2014think ought to be starting home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease don\u2019t hurry,\u201d Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you\u2014why don\u2019t you stay for supper? I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou come to supper with\u00a0<em>me<\/em>,\u201d said the lady enthusiastically. \u201cBoth of you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome along,\u201d he said\u2014but to her only.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean it,\u201d she insisted. \u201cI\u2019d love to have you. Lots of room.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn\u2019t see that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m afraid I won\u2019t be able to,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, you come,\u201d she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe won\u2019t be late if we start now,\u201d she insisted aloud.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI haven\u2019t got a horse,\u201d said Gatsby. \u201cI used to ride in the army, but I\u2019ve never bought a horse. I\u2019ll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began an impassioned conversation aside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy God, I believe the man\u2019s coming,\u201d said Tom. \u201cDoesn\u2019t he know she doesn\u2019t want him?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe says she does want him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe has a big dinner party and he won\u2019t know a soul there.\u201d He frowned. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome on,\u201d said Mr. Sloane to Tom, \u201cwe\u2019re late. We\u2019ve got to go.\u201d And then to me: \u201cTell him we couldn\u2019t wait, will you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy\u2019s running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby\u2019s party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness\u2014it stands out in my memory from Gatsby\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019s eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.<\/p>\n<p>They arrived at twilight, and, as we strolled out among the sparkling hundreds, Daisy\u2019s voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese things excite me\u00a0<em>so<\/em>,\u201d she whispered. \u201cIf you want to kiss me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I\u2019ll be glad to arrange it for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green card. I\u2019m giving out green\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook around,\u201d suggested Gatsby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m looking around. I\u2019m having a marvellous\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou must see the faces of many people you\u2019ve heard about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom\u2019s arrogant eyes roamed the crowd.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t go around very much,\u201d he said; \u201cin fact, I was just thinking I don\u2019t know a soul here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerhaps you know that lady.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s lovely,\u201d said Daisy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe man bending over her is her director.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He took them ceremoniously from group to group:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMrs. Buchanan\u2026 and Mr. Buchanan\u2014\u201d After an instant\u2019s hesitation he added: \u201cthe polo player.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh no,\u201d objected Tom quickly, \u201cnot me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for Tom remained \u201cthe polo player\u201d for the rest of the evening.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never met so many celebrities,\u201d Daisy exclaimed. \u201cI liked that man\u2014what was his name?\u2014with the sort of blue nose.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I liked him anyhow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d a little rather not be the polo player,\u201d said Tom pleasantly, \u201cI\u2019d rather look at all these famous people in\u2014in oblivion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised by his graceful, conservative foxtrot\u2014I 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. \u201cIn case there\u2019s a fire or a flood,\u201d she explained, \u201cor any act of God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together. \u201cDo you mind if I eat with some people over here?\u201d he said. \u201cA fellow\u2019s getting off some funny stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo ahead,\u201d answered Daisy genially, \u201cand if you want to take down any addresses here\u2019s my little gold pencil.\u201d\u2026 She looked around after a moment and told me the girl was \u201ccommon but pretty,\u201d and I knew that except for the half-hour she\u2019d been alone with Gatsby she wasn\u2019t having a good time.<\/p>\n<p>We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault\u2014Gatsby had been called to the phone, and I\u2019d enjoyed these same people only two weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you feel, Miss Baedeker?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWha\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker\u2019s defence:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, she\u2019s all right now. When she\u2019s had five or six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do leave it alone,\u201d affirmed the accused hollowly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: \u2018There\u2019s somebody that needs your help, Doc.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s much obliged, I\u2019m sure,\u201d said another friend, without gratitude, \u201cbut you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in the pool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,\u201d mumbled Miss Baedeker. \u201cThey almost drowned me once over in New Jersey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen you ought to leave it alone,\u201d countered Doctor Civet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpeak for yourself!\u201d cried Miss Baedeker violently. \u201cYour hand shakes. I wouldn\u2019t let you operate on me!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like her,\u201d said Daisy, \u201cI think she\u2019s lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the rest offended her\u2014and inarguably because it wasn\u2019t a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented \u201cplace\u201d that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village\u2014appalled 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho is this Gatsby anyhow?\u201d demanded Tom suddenly. \u201cSome big bootlegger?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere\u2019d you hear that?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot Gatsby,\u201d I said shortly.<\/p>\n<p>He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the drive crunched under his feet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy\u2019s fur collar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt least they are more interesting than the people we know,\u201d she said with an effort.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou didn\u2019t look so interested.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I was.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom laughed and turned to me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you notice Daisy\u2019s face when that girl asked her to put her under a cold shower?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLots of people come who haven\u2019t been invited,\u201d she said suddenly. \u201cThat girl hadn\u2019t been invited. They simply force their way in and he\u2019s too polite to object.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d like to know who he is and what he does,\u201d insisted Tom. \u201cAnd I think I\u2019ll make a point of finding out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can tell you right now,\u201d she answered. \u201cHe owned some drugstores, a lot of drugstores. He built them up himself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood night, Nick,\u201d said Daisy.<\/p>\n<p>Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps, where \u201cThree O\u2019Clock in the Morning,\u201d a neat, sad little waltz of that year, was drifting out the open door. After all, in the very casualness of Gatsby\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe didn\u2019t like it,\u201d he said immediately.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course she did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe didn\u2019t like it,\u201d he insisted. \u201cShe didn\u2019t have a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable depression.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel far away from her,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to make her understand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou mean about the dance?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe dance?\u201d He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of his fingers. \u201cOld sport, the dance is unimportant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: \u201cI never loved you.\u201d 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\u2014just as if it were five years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd she doesn\u2019t understand,\u201d he said. \u201cShe used to be able to understand. We\u2019d sit for hours\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favours and crushed flowers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wouldn\u2019t ask too much of her,\u201d I ventured. \u201cYou can\u2019t repeat the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan\u2019t repeat the past?\u201d he cried incredulously. \u201cWhy of course you can!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to fix everything just the way it was before,\u201d he said, nodding determinedly. \u201cShe\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2026 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\u2014he 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.<\/p>\n<p>His heart beat faster as Daisy\u2019s 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\u2019 touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.<\/p>\n<p>Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something\u2014an 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\u2019s, 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.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">VII<\/h2>\n<p>It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night\u2014and, 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\u2014an unfamiliar butler with a villainous face squinted at me suspiciously from the door.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs Mr. Gatsby sick?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNope.\u201d After a pause he added \u201csir\u201d in a dilatory, grudging way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hadn\u2019t seen him around, and I was rather worried. Tell him Mr. Carraway came over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho?\u201d he demanded rudely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCarraway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCarraway. All right, I\u2019ll tell him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Abruptly he slammed the door.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t servants at all.<\/p>\n<p>Next day Gatsby called me on the phone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGoing away?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hear you fired all your servants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wanted somebody who wouldn\u2019t gossip. Daisy comes over quite often\u2014in the afternoons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re some people Wolfshiem wanted to do something for. They\u2019re all brothers and sisters. They used to run a small hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was calling up at Daisy\u2019s request\u2014would 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\u2019t believe that they would choose this occasion for a scene\u2014especially for the rather harrowing scene that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, my!\u201d she gasped.<\/p>\n<p>I picked it up with a weary bend and handed it back to her, holding it at arm\u2019s length and by the extreme tip of the corners to indicate that I had no designs upon it\u2014but everyone near by, including the woman, suspected me just the same.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHot!\u201d said the conductor to familiar faces. \u201cSome weather!\u2026 Hot!\u2026 Hot!\u2026 Hot!\u2026 Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it\u2026\u200a?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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!<\/p>\n<p>\u2026 Through the hall of the Buchanans\u2019 house blew a faint wind, carrying the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as we waited at the door.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe master\u2019s body?\u201d roared the butler into the mouthpiece. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, madame, but we can\u2019t furnish it\u2014it\u2019s far too hot to touch this noon!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What he really said was: \u201cYes\u2026 Yes\u2026 I\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He set down the receiver and came toward us, glistening slightly, to take our stiff straw hats.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMadame expects you in the salon!\u201d he cried, needlessly indicating the direction. In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can\u2019t move,\u201d they said together.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan\u2019s fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a moment in mine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the athlete?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n<p>Simultaneously I heard his voice, gruff, muffled, husky, at the hall telephone.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe rumour is,\u201d whispered Jordan, \u201cthat that\u2019s Tom\u2019s girl on the telephone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We were silent. The voice in the hall rose high with annoyance: \u201cVery well, then, I won\u2019t sell you the car at all\u2026 I\u2019m under no obligations to you at all\u2026 and as for your bothering me about it at lunch time, I won\u2019t stand that at all!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHolding down the receiver,\u201d said Daisy cynically.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, he\u2019s not,\u201d I assured her. \u201cIt\u2019s a bona-fide deal. I happen to know about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space for a moment with his thick body, and hurried into the room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr. Gatsby!\u201d He put out his broad, flat hand with well-concealed dislike. \u201cI\u2019m glad to see you, sir\u2026 Nick\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMake us a cold drink,\u201d cried Daisy.<\/p>\n<p>As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and pulled his face down, kissing him on the mouth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know I love you,\u201d she murmured.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou forget there\u2019s a lady present,\u201d said Jordan.<\/p>\n<p>Daisy looked around doubtfully.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou kiss Nick too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat a low, vulgar girl!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t care!\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBles-sed pre-cious,\u201d she crooned, holding out her arms. \u201cCome to your own mother that loves you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across the room and rooted shyly into her mother\u2019s dress.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your old yellowy hair? Stand up now, and say\u2014How-de-do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small reluctant hand. Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don\u2019t think he had ever really believed in its existence before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI got dressed before luncheon,\u201d said the child, turning eagerly to Daisy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s because your mother wanted to show you off.\u201d Her face bent into the single wrinkle of the small white neck. \u201cYou dream, you. You absolute little dream.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d admitted the child calmly. \u201cAunt Jordan\u2019s got on a white dress too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you like mother\u2019s friends?\u201d Daisy turned her around so that she faced Gatsby. \u201cDo you think they\u2019re pretty?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere\u2019s Daddy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe doesn\u2019t look like her father,\u201d explained Daisy. \u201cShe looks like me. She\u2019s got my hair and shape of the face.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took a step forward and held out her hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome, Pammy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGoodbye, sweetheart!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With a reluctant backward glance the well-disciplined child held to her nurse\u2019s hand and was pulled out the door, just as Tom came back, preceding four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice.<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby took up his drink.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey certainly look cool,\u201d he said, with visible tension.<\/p>\n<p>We drank in long, greedy swallows.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI read somewhere that the sun\u2019s getting hotter every year,\u201d said Tom genially. \u201cIt seems that pretty soon the earth\u2019s going to fall into the sun\u2014or wait a minute\u2014it\u2019s just the opposite\u2014the sun\u2019s getting colder every year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome outside,\u201d he suggested to Gatsby, \u201cI\u2019d like you to have a look at the place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s eyes followed it momentarily; he raised his hand and pointed across the bay.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m right across from you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo you are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s sport for you,\u201d said Tom, nodding. \u201cI\u2019d like to be out there with him for about an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened too against the heat, and drank down nervous gaiety with the cold ale.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?\u201d cried Daisy, \u201cand the day after that, and the next thirty years?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t be morbid,\u201d Jordan said. \u201cLife starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it\u2019s so hot,\u201d insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, \u201cand everything\u2019s so confused. Let\u2019s all go to town!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her voice struggled on through the heat, beating against it, moulding its senselessness into forms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,\u201d Tom was saying to Gatsby, \u201cbut I\u2019m the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho wants to go to town?\u201d demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby\u2019s eyes floated toward her. \u201cAh,\u201d she cried, \u201cyou look so cool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou always look so cool,\u201d she repeated.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou resemble the advertisement of the man,\u201d she went on innocently. \u201cYou know the advertisement of the man\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right,\u201d broke in Tom quickly, \u201cI\u2019m perfectly willing to go to town. Come on\u2014we\u2019re all going to town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He got up, his eyes still flashing between Gatsby and his wife. No one moved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome on!\u201d His temper cracked a little. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, anyhow? If we\u2019re going to town, let\u2019s start.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His hand, trembling with his effort at self-control, bore to his lips the last of his glass of ale. Daisy\u2019s voice got us to our feet and out on to the blazing gravel drive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre we just going to go?\u201d she objected. \u201cLike this? Aren\u2019t we going to let anyone smoke a cigarette first?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody smoked all through lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, let\u2019s have fun,\u201d she begged him. \u201cIt\u2019s too hot to fuss.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave it your own way,\u201d she said. \u201cCome on, Jordan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you got your stables here?\u201d asked Gatsby with an effort.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout a quarter of a mile down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A pause.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t see the idea of going to town,\u201d broke out Tom savagely. \u201cWomen get these notions in their heads\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShall we take anything to drink?\u201d called Daisy from an upper window.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll get some whisky,\u201d answered Tom. He went inside.<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby turned to me rigidly:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t say anything in his house, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s got an indiscreet voice,\u201d I remarked. \u201cIt\u2019s full of\u2014\u201d I hesitated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer voice is full of money,\u201d he said suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>That was it. I\u2019d never understood before. It was full of money\u2014that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals\u2019 song of it\u2026 High in a white palace the king\u2019s daughter, the golden girl\u2026<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShall we all go in my car?\u201d suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot, green leather of the seat. \u201cI ought to have left it in the shade.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs it standard shift?\u201d demanded Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, you take my coup\u00e9 and let me drive your car to town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The suggestion was distasteful to Gatsby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s much gas,\u201d he objected.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlenty of gas,\u201d said Tom boisterously. He looked at the gauge. \u201cAnd if it runs out I can stop at a drugstore. You can buy anything at a drugstore nowadays.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome on, Daisy,\u201d said Tom, pressing her with his hand toward Gatsby\u2019s car. \u201cI\u2019ll take you in this circus wagon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He opened the door, but she moved out from the circle of his arm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou take Nick and Jordan. We\u2019ll follow you in the coup\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She walked close to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand. Jordan and Tom and I got into the front seat of Gatsby\u2019s car, Tom pushed the unfamiliar gears tentatively, and we shot off into the oppressive heat, leaving them out of sight behind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you see that?\u201d demanded Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and I must have known all along.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou think I\u2019m pretty dumb, don\u2019t you?\u201d he suggested. \u201cPerhaps I am, but I have a\u2014almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do. Maybe you don\u2019t believe that, but science\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He paused. The immediate contingency overtook him, pulled him back from the edge of theoretical abyss.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve made a small investigation of this fellow,\u201d he continued. \u201cI could have gone deeper if I\u2019d known\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you mean you\u2019ve been to a medium?\u201d inquired Jordan humorously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d Confused, he stared at us as we laughed. \u201cA medium?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout Gatsby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout Gatsby! No, I haven\u2019t. I said I\u2019d been making a small investigation of his past.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you found he was an Oxford man,\u201d said Jordan helpfully.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAn Oxford man!\u201d He was incredulous. \u201cLike hell he is! He wears a pink suit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNevertheless he\u2019s an Oxford man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOxford, New Mexico,\u201d snorted Tom contemptuously, \u201cor something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cListen, Tom. If you\u2019re such a snob, why did you invite him to lunch?\u201d demanded Jordan crossly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDaisy invited him; she knew him before we were married\u2014God knows where!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s faded eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby\u2019s caution about gasoline.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got enough to get us to town,\u201d said Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut there\u2019s a garage right here,\u201d objected Jordan. \u201cI don\u2019t want to get stalled in this baking heat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom threw on both brakes impatiently, and we slid to an abrupt dusty stop under Wilson\u2019s sign. After a moment the proprietor emerged from the interior of his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at the car.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s have some gas!\u201d cried Tom roughly. \u201cWhat do you think we stopped for\u2014to admire the view?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sick,\u201d said Wilson without moving. \u201cBeen sick all day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m all run down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, shall I help myself?\u201d Tom demanded. \u201cYou sounded well enough on the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t mean to interrupt your lunch,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I need money pretty bad, and I was wondering what you were going to do with your old car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you like this one?\u201d inquired Tom. \u201cI bought it last week.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a nice yellow one,\u201d said Wilson, as he strained at the handle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike to buy it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBig chance,\u201d Wilson smiled faintly. \u201cNo, but I could make some money on the other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do you want money for, all of a sudden?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want to go West.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour wife does,\u201d exclaimed Tom, startled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s been talking about it for ten years.\u201d He rested for a moment against the pump, shading his eyes. \u201cAnd now she\u2019s going whether she wants to or not. I\u2019m going to get her away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The coup\u00e9 flashed by us with a flurry of dust and the flash of a waving hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do I owe you?\u201d demanded Tom harshly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just got wised up to something funny the last two days,\u201d remarked Wilson. \u201cThat\u2019s why I want to get away. That\u2019s why I been bothering you about the car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do I owe you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDollar twenty.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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\u2014and 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\u2014as if he had just got some poor girl with child.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll let you have that car,\u201d said Tom. \u201cI\u2019ll send it over tomorrow afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014it was an expression I had often seen on women\u2019s faces, but on Myrtle Wilson\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 coup\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool,\u201d suggested Jordan. \u201cI love New York on summer afternoons when everyone\u2019s away. There\u2019s something very sensuous about it\u2014overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The word \u201csensuous\u201d had the effect of further disquieting Tom, but before he could invent a protest the coup\u00e9 came to a stop, and Daisy signalled us to draw up alongside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere are we going?\u201d she cried.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow about the movies?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s so hot,\u201d she complained. \u201cYou go. We\u2019ll ride around and meet you after.\u201d With an effort her wit rose faintly. \u201cWe\u2019ll meet you on some corner. I\u2019ll be the man smoking two cigarettes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can\u2019t argue about it here,\u201d Tom said impatiently, as a truck gave out a cursing whistle behind us. \u201cYou follow me to the south side of Central Park, in front of the Plaza.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>But they didn\u2019t. And we all took the less explicable step of engaging the parlour of a suite in the Plaza Hotel.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s suggestion that we hire five bathrooms and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as \u201ca place to have a mint julep.\u201d Each of us said over and over that it was a \u201ccrazy idea\u201d\u2014we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and thought, or pretended to think, that we were being very funny\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four o\u2019clock, 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a swell suite,\u201d whispered Jordan respectfully, and everyone laughed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOpen another window,\u201d commanded Daisy, without turning around.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere aren\u2019t any more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, we\u2019d better telephone for an axe\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe thing to do is to forget about the heat,\u201d said Tom impatiently. \u201cYou make it ten times worse by crabbing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He unrolled the bottle of whisky from the towel and put it on the table.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy not let her alone, old sport?\u201d remarked Gatsby. \u201cYou\u2019re the one that wanted to come to town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was a moment of silence. The telephone book slipped from its nail and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered, \u201cExcuse me\u201d\u2014but this time no one laughed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll pick it up,\u201d I offered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got it.\u201d Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered \u201cHum!\u201d in an interested way, and tossed the book on a chair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s a great expression of yours, isn\u2019t it?\u201d said Tom sharply.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll this \u2018old sport\u2019 business. Where\u2019d you pick that up?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow see here, Tom,\u201d said Daisy, turning around from the mirror, \u201cif you\u2019re going to make personal remarks I won\u2019t stay here a minute. Call up and order some ice for the mint julep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn\u2019s Wedding March from the ballroom below.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cImagine marrying anybody in this heat!\u201d cried Jordan dismally.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStill\u2014I was married in the middle of June,\u201d Daisy remembered. \u201cLouisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBiloxi,\u201d he answered shortly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA man named Biloxi. \u2018Blocks\u2019 Biloxi, and he made boxes\u2014that\u2019s a fact\u2014and he was from Biloxi, Tennessee.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey carried him into my house,\u201d appended Jordan, \u201cbecause 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.\u201d After a moment she added as if she might have sounded irreverent, \u201cThere wasn\u2019t any connection.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis,\u201d I remarked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he left. He gave me an aluminium putter that I use today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The music had died down as the ceremony began and now a long cheer floated in at the window, followed by intermittent cries of \u201cYea\u2014ea\u2014ea!\u201d and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re getting old,\u201d said Daisy. \u201cIf we were young we\u2019d rise and dance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRemember Biloxi,\u201d Jordan warned her. \u201cWhere\u2019d you know him, Tom?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBiloxi?\u201d He concentrated with an effort. \u201cI didn\u2019t know him. He was a friend of Daisy\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was not,\u201d she denied. \u201cI\u2019d never seen him before. He came down in the private car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jordan smiled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was probably bumming his way home. He told me he was president of your class at Yale.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom and I looked at each other blankly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBil<em>oxi<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst place, we didn\u2019t have any president\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby\u2019s foot beat a short, restless tattoo and Tom eyed him suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy the way, Mr. Gatsby, I understand you\u2019re an Oxford man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes\u2014I went there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A pause. Then Tom\u2019s voice, incredulous and insulting:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint and ice but the silence was unbroken by his \u201cthank you\u201d and the soft closing of the door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared up at last.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told you I went there,\u201d said Gatsby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI heard you, but I\u2019d like to know when.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That\u2019s why I can\u2019t really call myself an Oxford man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief. But we were all looking at Gatsby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the armistice,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe could go to any of the universities in England or France.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those renewals of complete faith in him that I\u2019d experienced before.<\/p>\n<p>Daisy rose, smiling faintly, and went to the table.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOpen the whisky, Tom,\u201d she ordered, \u201cand I\u2019ll make you a mint julep. Then you won\u2019t seem so stupid to yourself\u2026 Look at the mint!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWait a minute,\u201d snapped Tom, \u201cI want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more question.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo on,\u201d Gatsby said politely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe isn\u2019t causing a row,\u201d Daisy looked desperately from one to the other. \u201cYou\u2019re causing a row. Please have a little self-control.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSelf-control!\u201d repeated Tom incredulously. \u201cI suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that\u2019s the idea you can count me out\u2026 Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they\u2019ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re all white here,\u201d murmured Jordan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know I\u2019m not very popular. I don\u2019t give big parties. I suppose you\u2019ve got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends\u2014in the modern world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got something to tell\u00a0<em>you<\/em>, old sport\u2014\u201d began Gatsby. But Daisy guessed at his intention.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease don\u2019t!\u201d she interrupted helplessly. \u201cPlease let\u2019s all go home. Why don\u2019t we all go home?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s a good idea,\u201d I got up. \u201cCome on, Tom. Nobody wants a drink.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour wife doesn\u2019t love you,\u201d said Gatsby. \u201cShe\u2019s never loved you. She loves me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou must be crazy!\u201d exclaimed Tom automatically.<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe never loved you, do you hear?\u201d he cried. \u201cShe 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted with competitive firmness that we remain\u2014as though neither of them had anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of their emotions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSit down, Daisy,\u201d Tom\u2019s voice groped unsuccessfully for the paternal note. \u201cWhat\u2019s been going on? I want to hear all about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told you what\u2019s been going on,\u201d said Gatsby. \u201cGoing on for five years\u2014and you didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom turned to Daisy sharply.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ve been seeing this fellow for five years?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot seeing,\u201d said Gatsby. \u201cNo, we couldn\u2019t meet. But both of us loved each other all that time, old sport, and you didn\u2019t know. I used to laugh sometimes\u201d\u2014but there was no laughter in his eyes\u2014\u201cto think that you didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh\u2014that\u2019s all.\u201d Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a clergyman and leaned back in his chair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re crazy!\u201d he exploded. \u201cI can\u2019t speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn\u2019t know Daisy then\u2014and I\u2019ll 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\u2019s a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d said Gatsby, shaking his head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s doing.\u201d He nodded sagely. \u201cAnd what\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re revolting,\u201d said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: \u201cDo you know why we left Chicago? I\u2019m surprised that they didn\u2019t treat you to the story of that little spree.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDaisy, that\u2019s all over now,\u201d he said earnestly. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter any more. Just tell him the truth\u2014that you never loved him\u2014and it\u2019s all wiped out forever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She looked at him blindly. \u201cWhy\u2014how could I love him\u2014possibly?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou never loved him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing\u2014and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never loved him,\u201d she said, with perceptible reluctance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot at Kapiolani?\u201d demanded Tom suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?\u201d There was a husky tenderness in his tone\u2026 \u201cDaisy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease don\u2019t.\u201d Her voice was cold, but the rancour was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. \u201cThere, Jay,\u201d she said\u2014but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette and the burning match on the carpet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, you want too much!\u201d she cried to Gatsby. \u201cI love you now\u2014isn\u2019t that enough? I can\u2019t help what\u2019s past.\u201d She began to sob helplessly. \u201cI did love him once\u2014but I loved you too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby\u2019s eyes opened and closed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou loved me\u00a0<em>too<\/em>?\u201d he repeated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven that\u2019s a lie,\u201d said Tom savagely. \u201cShe didn\u2019t know you were alive. Why\u2014there\u2019s things between Daisy and me that you\u2019ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to speak to Daisy alone,\u201d he insisted. \u201cShe\u2019s all excited now\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven alone I can\u2019t say I never loved Tom,\u201d she admitted in a pitiful voice. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course it wouldn\u2019t,\u201d agreed Tom.<\/p>\n<p>She turned to her husband.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs if it mattered to you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course it matters. I\u2019m going to take better care of you from now on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t understand,\u201d said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to take care of her any more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not?\u201d Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to control himself now. \u201cWhy\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDaisy\u2019s leaving you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am, though,\u201d she said with a visible effort.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s not leaving me!\u201d Tom\u2019s words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. \u201cCertainly not for a common swindler who\u2019d have to steal the ring he put on her finger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI won\u2019t stand this!\u201d cried Daisy. \u201cOh, please let\u2019s get out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho are you, anyhow?\u201d broke out Tom. \u201cYou\u2019re one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem\u2014that much I happen to know. I\u2019ve made a little investigation into your affairs\u2014and I\u2019ll carry it further tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can suit yourself about that, old sport,\u201d said Gatsby steadily.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI found out what your \u2018drugstores\u2019 were.\u201d He turned to us and spoke rapidly. \u201cHe and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drugstores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That\u2019s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn\u2019t far wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat about it?\u201d said Gatsby politely. \u201cI guess your friend Walter Chase wasn\u2019t too proud to come in on it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you left him in the lurch, didn\u2019t you? You let him go to jail for a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the subject of\u00a0<em>you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t you call me \u2018old sport\u2019!\u201d cried Tom. Gatsby said nothing. \u201cWalter could have you up on the betting laws too, but Wolfshiem scared him into shutting his mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsby\u2019s face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat drugstore business was just small change,\u201d continued Tom slowly, \u201cbut you\u2019ve got something on now that Walter\u2019s afraid to tell me about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014and was startled at his expression. He looked\u2014and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden\u2014as if he had \u201ckilled a man.\u201d For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The voice begged again to go.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Please<\/em>, Tom! I can\u2019t stand this any more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage she had had, were definitely gone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou two start on home, Daisy,\u201d said Tom. \u201cIn Mr. Gatsby\u2019s car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo on. He won\u2019t annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.<\/p>\n<p>After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of whisky in the towel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWant any of this stuff? Jordan?\u2026 Nick?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNick?\u201d He asked again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWant any?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo\u2026 I just remembered that today\u2019s my birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.<\/p>\n<p>It was seven o\u2019clock when we got into the coup\u00e9 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\u2014the 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\u2019s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.<\/p>\n<p>So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014really sick, pale as his own pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go to bed, but Wilson refused, saying that he\u2019d miss a lot of business if he did. While his neighbour was trying to persuade him a violent racket broke out overhead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got my wife locked in up there,\u201d explained Wilson calmly. \u201cShe\u2019s going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then we\u2019re going to move away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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\u2019s man and not his own.<\/p>\n<p>So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson wouldn\u2019t say a word\u2014instead he began to throw curious, suspicious glances at his visitor and ask him what he\u2019d 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\u2019t. He supposed he forgot to, that\u2019s all. When he came outside again, a little after seven, he was reminded of the conversation because he heard Mrs. Wilson\u2019s voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in the garage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeat me!\u201d he heard her cry. \u201cThrow me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting\u2014before he could move from his door the business was over.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cdeath car\u201d as the newspapers called it, didn\u2019t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend. Mavro Michaelis wasn\u2019t even sure of its colour\u2014he 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still some distance away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWreck!\u201d said Tom. \u201cThat\u2019s good. Wilson\u2019ll have a little business at last.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll take a look,\u201d he said doubtfully, \u201cjust a look.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued incessantly from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coup\u00e9 and walked toward the door resolved itself into the words \u201cOh, my God!\u201d uttered over and over in a gasping moan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s some bad trouble here,\u201d said Tom excitedly.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Myrtle Wilson\u2019s 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\u2019t find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed clamorously through the bare garage\u2014then 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:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>M<\/em>\u2013<em>a<\/em>\u2013<em>v<\/em>\u2014\u201d the policeman was saying, \u201c\u2014<em>o<\/em>\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u00a0<em>r<\/em>\u2014\u201d corrected the man, \u201c<em>M<\/em>\u2013<em>a<\/em>\u2013<em>v<\/em>\u2013<em>r<\/em>\u2013<em>o<\/em>\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cListen to me!\u201d muttered Tom fiercely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>r<\/em>\u2014\u201d said the policeman, \u201c<em>o<\/em>\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>g<\/em>\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>g<\/em>\u2014\u201d He looked up as Tom\u2019s broad hand fell sharply on his shoulder. \u201cWhat you want, fella?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happened?\u2014that\u2019s what I want to know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAuto hit her. Ins\u2019antly killed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstantly killed,\u201d repeated Tom, staring.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn\u2019t even stopus car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was two cars,\u201d said Michaelis, \u201cone comin\u2019, one goin\u2019, see?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGoing where?\u201d asked the policeman keenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne goin\u2019 each way. Well, she\u201d\u2014his hand rose toward the blankets but stopped halfway and fell to his side\u2014\u201cshe ran out there an\u2019 the one comin\u2019 from N\u2019York knock right into her, goin\u2019 thirty or forty miles an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s the name of this place here?\u201d demanded the officer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHasn\u2019t got any name.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A pale well-dressed negro stepped near.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a yellow car,\u201d he said, \u201cbig yellow car. New.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee the accident?\u201d asked the policeman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, but the car passed me down the road, going faster\u2019n forty. Going fifty, sixty.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome here and let\u2019s have your name. Look out now. I want to get his name.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind of car it was!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ve got to pull yourself together,\u201d he said with soothing gruffness.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson\u2019s eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tiptoes and then would have collapsed to his knees had not Tom held him upright.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cListen,\u201d said Tom, shaking him a little. \u201cI just got here a minute ago, from New York. I was bringing you that coup\u00e9 we\u2019ve been talking about. That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn\u2019t mine\u2014do you hear? I haven\u2019t seen it all afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s all that?\u201d he demanded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a friend of his.\u201d Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on Wilson\u2019s body. \u201cHe says he knows the car that did it\u2026 It was a yellow car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look suspiciously at Tom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd what colour\u2019s your car?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a blue car, a coup\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve come straight from New York,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>Someone who had been driving a little behind us confirmed this, and the policeman turned away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, if you\u2019ll let me have that name again correct\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Picking up Wilson like a doll, Tom carried him into the office, set him down in a chair, and came back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf somebody\u2019ll come here and sit with him,\u201d 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: \u201cLet\u2019s get out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend\u2014then his foot came down hard, and the coup\u00e9 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe God damned coward!\u201d he whimpered. \u201cHe didn\u2019t even stop his car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Buchanans\u2019 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDaisy\u2019s home,\u201d he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me and frowned slightly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There\u2019s nothing we can do tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll telephone for a taxi to take you home, and while you\u2019re waiting you and Jordan better go in the kitchen and have them get you some supper\u2014if you want any.\u201d He opened the door. \u201cCome in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, thanks. But I\u2019d be glad if you\u2019d order me the taxi. I\u2019ll wait outside.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jordan put her hand on my arm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWon\u2019t you come in, Nick?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jordan lingered for a moment more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s only half-past nine,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d be damned if I\u2019d go in; I\u2019d 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\u2019s voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the drive away from the house, intending to wait by the gate.<\/p>\n<p>I hadn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust standing here, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he was going to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn\u2019t have been surprised to see sinister faces, the faces of \u201cWolfshiem\u2019s people,\u201d behind him in the dark shrubbery.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you see any trouble on the road?\u201d he asked after a minute.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He hesitated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWas she killed?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It\u2019s better that the shock should all come at once. She stood it pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He spoke as if Daisy\u2019s reaction was the only thing that mattered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI got to West Egg by a side road,\u201d he went on, \u201cand left the car in my garage. I don\u2019t think anybody saw us, but of course I can\u2019t be sure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I disliked him so much by this time that I didn\u2019t find it necessary to tell him he was wrong.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho was the woman?\u201d he inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer name was Wilson. Her husband owns the garage. How the devil did it happen?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I tried to swing the wheel\u2014\u201d He broke off, and suddenly I guessed at the truth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWas Daisy driving?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d he said after a moment, \u201cbut of course I\u2019ll say I was. You see, when we left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would steady her to drive\u2014and 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\u2014it must have killed her instantly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt ripped her open\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t tell me, old sport.\u201d He winced. \u201cAnyhow\u2014Daisy stepped on it. I tried to make her stop, but she couldn\u2019t, so I pulled on the emergency brake. Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019ll be all right tomorrow,\u201d he said presently. \u201cI\u2019m just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness this afternoon. She\u2019s locked herself into her room, and if he tries any brutality she\u2019s going to turn the light out and on again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe won\u2019t touch her,\u201d I said. \u201cHe\u2019s not thinking about her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t trust him, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow long are you going to wait?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll night, if necessary. Anyhow, till they all go to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014he might think anything. I looked at the house; there were two or three bright windows downstairs and the pink glow from Daisy\u2019s room on the ground floor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou wait here,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll see if there\u2019s any sign of a commotion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>They weren\u2019t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale\u2014and yet they weren\u2019t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs it all quiet up there?\u201d he asked anxiously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, it\u2019s all quiet.\u201d I hesitated. \u201cYou\u2019d better come home and get some sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He shook his head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014watching over nothing.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">VIII<\/h2>\n<p>I couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s drive, and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress\u2014I felt that I had something to tell him, something to warn him about, and morning would be too late.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNothing happened,\u201d he said wanly. \u201cI waited, and about four o\u2019clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014once 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou ought to go away,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty certain they\u2019ll trace your car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo away\u00a0<em>now<\/em>, old sport?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He wouldn\u2019t consider it. He couldn\u2019t possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn\u2019t bear to shake him free.<\/p>\n<p>It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody\u2014told it to me because \u201cJay Gatsby\u201d had broken up like glass against Tom\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>She was the first \u201cnice\u201d 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\u2014he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity, was that Daisy lived there\u2014it 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\u2019s shining motorcars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy\u2014it 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.<\/p>\n<p>But he knew that he was in Daisy\u2019s 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\u2014eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.<\/p>\n<p>He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretences. I don\u2019t 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\u2014that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities\u2014he 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.<\/p>\n<p>But he didn\u2019t despise himself and it didn\u2019t turn out as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go\u2014but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn\u2019t realize just how extraordinary a \u201cnice\u201d girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby\u2014nothing. He felt married to her, that was all.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her, old sport. I even hoped for a while that she\u2019d throw me over, but she didn\u2019t, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot because I knew different things from her\u2026 Well, there I was, way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn\u2019t care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy\u2019s letters. She didn\u2019t see why he couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cBeale Street Blues\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014and the decision must be made by some force\u2014of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality\u2014that was close at hand.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think she ever loved him.\u201d Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly. \u201cYou must remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that frightened her\u2014that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He sat down gloomily.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were first married\u2014and loved me more even then, do you see?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly he came out with a curious remark.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn any case,\u201d he said, \u201cit was just personal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn\u2019t be measured?<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>He left feeling that if he had searched harder, he might have found her\u2014that he was leaving her behind. The day-coach\u2014he was penniless now\u2014was 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>It was nine o\u2019clock 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\u2019s former servants, came to the foot of the steps.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves\u2019ll start falling pretty soon, and then there\u2019s always trouble with the pipes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t do it today,\u201d Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically. \u201cYou know, old sport, I\u2019ve never used that pool all summer?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked at my watch and stood up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwelve minutes to my train.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t want to go to the city. I wasn\u2019t worth a decent stroke of work, but it was more than that\u2014I didn\u2019t want to leave Gatsby. I missed that train, and then another, before I could get myself away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll call you up,\u201d I said finally.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo, old sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll call you about noon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We walked slowly down the steps.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose Daisy\u2019ll call too.\u201d He looked at me anxiously, as if he hoped I\u2019d corroborate this.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re a rotten crowd,\u201d I shouted across the lawn. \u201cYou\u2019re worth the whole damn bunch put together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve 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\u2019d 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\u2014and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye.<\/p>\n<p>I thanked him for his hospitality. We were always thanking him for that\u2014I and the others.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGoodbye,\u201d I called. \u201cI enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve left Daisy\u2019s house,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m at Hempstead, and I\u2019m going down to Southampton this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy\u2019s house, but the act annoyed me, and her next remark made me rigid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou weren\u2019t so nice to me last night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow could it have mattered then?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Silence for a moment. Then:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever\u2014I want to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to see you, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuppose I don\u2019t go to Southampton, and come into town this afternoon?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo\u2014I don\u2019t think this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s impossible this afternoon. Various\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren\u2019t talking any longer. I don\u2019t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn\u2019t care. I couldn\u2019t have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to her again in this world.<\/p>\n<p>I called Gatsby\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019d 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s body.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>About three o\u2019clock the quality of Wilson\u2019s incoherent muttering changed\u2014he 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.<\/p>\n<p>But when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry \u201cOh, my God!\u201d again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt to distract him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwelve years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEver had any children? Come on, George, sit still\u2014I asked you a question. Did you ever have any children?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t stopped a few hours before. He didn\u2019t 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\u2014he knew every object in it before morning\u2014and from time to time sat down beside Wilson trying to keep him more quiet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you haven\u2019t 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t belong to any.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must have gone to church once. Didn\u2019t you get married in a church? Listen, George, listen to me. Didn\u2019t you get married in a church?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was a long time ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking\u2014for a moment he was silent. Then the same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came back into his faded eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook in the drawer there,\u201d he said, pointing at the desk.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhich drawer?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat drawer\u2014that one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis?\u201d he inquired, holding it up.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson stared and nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it, but I knew it was something funny.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou mean your wife bought it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michaelis didn\u2019t 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 \u201cOh, my God!\u201d again in a whisper\u2014his comforter left several explanations in the air.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen he killed her,\u201d said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho did?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have a way of finding out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re morbid, George,\u201d said his friend. \u201cThis has been a strain to you and you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re saying. You\u2019d better try and sit quiet till morning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe murdered her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was an accident, George.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a superior \u201cHm!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know,\u201d he said definitely. \u201cI\u2019m one of these trusting fellas and I don\u2019t think any harm to\u00a0<em>no<\/em>body, 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\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow could she of been like that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s a deep one,\u201d said Wilson, as if that answered the question. \u201cAh-h-h\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He began to rock again, and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe you got some friend that I could telephone for, George?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This was a forlorn hope\u2014he 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\u2019t far off. About five o\u2019clock it was blue enough outside to snap off the light.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI spoke to her,\u201d he muttered, after a long silence. \u201cI told her she might fool me but she couldn\u2019t fool God. I took her to the window\u201d\u2014with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it\u2014\u201cand I said \u2018God knows what you\u2019ve been doing, everything you\u2019ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can\u2019t fool God!\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod sees everything,\u201d repeated Wilson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s an advertisement,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>By six o\u2019clock 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.<\/p>\n<p>His movements\u2014he was on foot all the time\u2014were afterward traced to Port Roosevelt and then to Gad\u2019s Hill, where he bought a sandwich that he didn\u2019t eat, and a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and walking slowly, for he didn\u2019t reach Gad\u2019s Hill until noon. Thus far there was no difficulty in accounting for his time\u2014there were boys who had seen a man \u201cacting sort of crazy,\u201d 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 \u201chad a way of finding out,\u201d 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\u2019s house. So by that time he knew Gatsby\u2019s name.<\/p>\n<p>At two o\u2019clock 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\u2019t to be taken out under any circumstances\u2014and this was strange, because the front right fender needed repair.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o\u2019clock\u2014until long after there was anyone to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn\u2019t 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\u2026 like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.<\/p>\n<p>The chauffeur\u2014he was one of Wolfshiem\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9s\u2014heard the shots\u2014afterwards he could only say that he hadn\u2019t thought anything much about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson\u2019s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">IX<\/h2>\n<p>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\u2019s 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 \u201cmadman\u201d as he bent over Wilson\u2019s body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning.<\/p>\n<p>Most of those reports were a nightmare\u2014grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis\u2019s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson\u2019s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade\u2014but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn\u2019t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too\u2014looked 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 \u201cderanged by grief\u201d in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And it rested there.<\/p>\n<p>But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on Gatsby\u2019s 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\u2019t move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested\u2014interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the end.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLeft no address?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSay when they\u2019d be back?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny idea where they are? How I could reach them?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know. Can\u2019t say.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: \u201cI\u2019ll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don\u2019t worry. Just trust me and I\u2019ll get somebody for you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meyer Wolfshiem\u2019s name wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWill you ring again?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve rung three times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very important.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSorry. I\u2019m afraid no one\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook here, old sport, you\u2019ve got to get somebody for me. You\u2019ve got to try hard. I can\u2019t go through this alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Someone started to ask me questions, but I broke away and going upstairs looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk\u2014he\u2019d never told me definitely that his parents were dead. But there was nothing\u2014only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence, staring down from the wall.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there\u2019d be a wire from Daisy before noon\u2014but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem\u2019s answer I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Yours truly<\/p>\n<p>Meyer Wolfshiem<\/p>\n<p>and then hasty addenda beneath:<\/p>\n<p>Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s voice, very thin and far away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is Slagle speaking\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes?\u201d The name was unfamiliar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHell of a note, isn\u2019t it? Get my wire?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere haven\u2019t been any wires.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYoung Parke\u2019s in trouble,\u201d he said rapidly. \u201cThey picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving \u2019em the numbers just five minutes before. What d\u2019you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHello!\u201d I interrupted breathlessly. \u201cLook here\u2014this isn\u2019t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby\u2019s dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an exclamation\u2026 then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>It was Gatsby\u2019s 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\u2019t eat, and the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI saw it in the Chicago newspaper,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was all in the Chicago newspaper. I started right away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t know how to reach you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a madman,\u201d he said. \u201cHe must have been mad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWouldn\u2019t you like some coffee?\u201d I urged him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want anything. I\u2019m all right now, Mr.\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCarraway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I\u2019m all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t know what you\u2019d want, Mr. Gatsby\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGatz is my name.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2014Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body West.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He shook his head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in the East. Were you a friend of my boy\u2019s, Mr.\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were close friends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He touched his head impressively, and I nodded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf he\u2019d of lived, he\u2019d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He\u2019d of helped build up the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d I said, uncomfortably.<\/p>\n<p>He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly\u2014was instantly asleep.<\/p>\n<p>That night an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to know who I was before he would give his name.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is Mr. Carraway,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh!\u201d He sounded relieved. \u201cThis is Klipspringer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was relieved too, for that seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby\u2019s grave. I didn\u2019t want it to be in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd, so I\u2019d been calling up a few people myself. They were hard to find.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe funeral\u2019s tomorrow,\u201d I said. \u201cThree o\u2019clock, here at the house. I wish you\u2019d tell anybody who\u2019d be interested.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, I will,\u201d he broke out hastily. \u201cOf course I\u2019m not likely to see anybody, but if I do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His tone made me suspicious.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course you\u2019ll be there yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I\u2019ll certainly try. What I called up about is\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWait a minute,\u201d I interrupted. \u201cHow about saying you\u2019ll come?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, the fact is\u2014the truth of the matter is that I\u2019m staying with some people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with them tomorrow. In fact, there\u2019s a sort of picnic or something. Of course I\u2019ll do my best to get away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I ejaculated an unrestrained \u201cHuh!\u201d and he must have heard me, for he went on nervously:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if it\u2019d be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see, they\u2019re tennis shoes, and I\u2019m sort of helpless without them. My address is care of B. F.\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t hear the rest of the name, because I hung up the receiver.<\/p>\n<p>After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby\u2014one 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\u2019s liquor, and I should have known better than to call him.<\/p>\n<p>The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn\u2019t seem to reach him any other way. The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked \u201cThe Swastika Holding Company,\u201d and at first there didn\u2019t seem to be anyone inside. But when I\u2019d shouted \u201chello\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody\u2019s in,\u201d she said. \u201cMr. Wolfshiem\u2019s gone to Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The first part of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to whistle \u201cThe Rosary,\u201d tunelessly, inside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t get him back from Chicago, can I?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem\u2019s, called \u201cStella!\u201d from the other side of the door.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLeave your name on the desk,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cI\u2019ll give it to him when he gets back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I know he\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou young men think you can force your way in here any time,\u201d she scolded. \u201cWe\u2019re getting sickantired of it. When I say he\u2019s in Chicago, he\u2019s in Chi<em>ca<\/em>go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I mentioned Gatsby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh-h!\u201d She looked at me over again. \u201cWill you just\u2014What was your name?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy memory goes back to when first I met him,\u201d he said. \u201cA 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\u2019t buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he came into Winebrenner\u2019s poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn\u2019t eat anything for a couple of days. \u2018Come on have some lunch with me,\u2019 I said. He ate more than four dollars\u2019 worth of food in half an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you start him in business?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStart him! I made him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI 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\u201d\u2014he held up two bulbous fingers\u2014\u201calways together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I wondered if this partnership had included the World\u2019s Series transaction in 1919.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow he\u2019s dead,\u201d I said after a moment. \u201cYou were his closest friend, so I know you\u2019ll want to come to his funeral this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d like to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, come then.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t do it\u2014I can\u2019t get mixed up in it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s nothing to get mixed up in. It\u2019s all over now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen 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\u2014if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that\u2019s sentimental, but I mean it\u2014to the bitter end.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre you a college man?\u201d he inquired suddenly.<\/p>\n<p>For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a \u201cgonnegtion,\u201d but he only nodded and shook my hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,\u201d he suggested. \u201cAfter that my own rule is to let everything alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s possessions was continually increasing and now he had something to show me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJimmy sent me this picture.\u201d He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. \u201cLook there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. \u201cLook there!\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJimmy sent it to me. I think it\u2019s a very pretty picture. It shows up well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery well. Had you seen him lately?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u00a0<em>Hopalong Cassidy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last flyleaf was printed the word\u00a0<strong>schedule<\/strong>, and the date September 12, 1906. And underneath:<\/p>\n<p>General Resolves<\/p>\n<p>No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]<\/p>\n<p>No more smokeing or chewing.<\/p>\n<p>Bath every other day<\/p>\n<p>Read one improving book or magazine per week<\/p>\n<p>Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week<\/p>\n<p>Be better to parents<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI came across this book by accident,\u201d said the old man. \u201cIt just shows you, don\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt just shows you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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\u2019t any use. Nobody came.<\/p>\n<p>About five o\u2019clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate\u2014first 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\u2019s 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\u2019s books in the library one night three months before.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d never seen him since then. I don\u2019t 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\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur \u201cBlessed are the dead that the rain falls on,\u201d and then the owl-eyed man said \u201cAmen to that,\u201d in a brave voice.<\/p>\n<p>We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI couldn\u2019t get to the house,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNeither could anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo on!\u201d He started. \u201cWhy, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe poor son-of-a-bitch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019clock 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\u2019s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: \u201cAre you going to the Ordways\u2019? the Herseys\u2019? the Schultzes\u2019?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s my Middle West\u2014not 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\u2019s name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all\u2014Tom 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014even 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\u2014the wrong house. But no one knows the woman\u2019s name, and no one cares.<\/p>\n<p>After Gatsby\u2019s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes\u2019 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNevertheless you did throw me over,\u201d said Jordan suddenly. \u201cYou threw me over on the telephone. I don\u2019t give a damn about you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We shook hands.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, and do you remember\u201d\u2014she added\u2014\u201ca conversation we had once about driving a car?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy\u2014not exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m thirty,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She didn\u2019t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes. You know what I think of you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re crazy, Nick,\u201d he said quickly. \u201cCrazy as hell. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s the matter with you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTom,\u201d I inquired, \u201cwhat did you say to Wilson that afternoon?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told him the truth,\u201d he said. \u201cHe came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren\u2019t in he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn\u2019t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house\u2014\u201d He broke off defiantly. \u201cWhat if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy\u2019s, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you\u2019d run over a dog and never even stopped his car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd if you think I didn\u2019t have my share of suffering\u2014look 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\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I couldn\u2019t 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\u2014they 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\u2026<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons\u2014rid of my provincial squeamishness forever.<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby\u2019s house was still empty when I left\u2014the 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\u2019t want to hear it and I avoided him when I got off the train.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends of the earth and didn\u2019t know that the party was over.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019 eyes\u2014a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby\u2019s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that\u2019s no matter\u2014tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further\u2026 And one fine morning\u2014<\/p>\n<p>So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Best F. Scott Fitzgerald Books to Read<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3ny2xGs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4dkzMRN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3ygJ56x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4d1A00q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><br \/>\nClick on the image to buy a copy<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n<p>If you enjoyed The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/the-curious-case-of-benjamin-button\">The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F Scott Fitzgerald<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Narrated by Scotty Smith, courtesy of Librivox<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published in 1925. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, New York, the novel tells the story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby\u00a0and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}