Rex." "Turn it." "Major Jay Gatsby," I
read, "For  Valour Extraordinary." "Here's  another thing I always carry.  A
souvenir of Oxford days. It was taken in Trinity Quad--the man on my left is
now the Earl of Dorcaster." It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in
blazers loafing in an archway  through  which were visible a host of spires.
There was Gatsby, looking a little, not much, younger--with a cricket bat in
his hand. Then it was all  true. I saw the  skins of tigers  flaming in  his
palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with
their  crimson-lighted depths,  the gnawings of his broken heart. "I'm going
to make a big request of  you to-day," he said, pocketing his souvenirs with
satisfaction, "so I thought you  ought to know something  about me. I didn't
want you  to think  I was just some nobody. You see, I  usually  find myself
among  strangers because  I drift here  and  there trying to  forget the sad
thing  that  happened to  me."  He hesitated. "You'll  hear  about  it  this
afternoon."  "At lunch?"  "No, this afternoon.  I  happened to find out that
you're  taking  Miss  Baker to tea." "Do you mean you're in  love with  Miss
Baker?" "No, old  sport,  I'm not.  But Miss Baker has  kindly consented  to
speak  to  you about  this matter."  I  hadn't the faintest idea what  "this
matter." was, but I was more annoyed than  interested. I hadn't asked Jordan
to tea in order to discuss Mr. Jay Gatsby. I was sure  the request  would be
something utterly fantastic, and for a moment I was sorry I'd  ever set foot
upon his overpopulated lawn. He wouldn't say another  word. His  correctness
grew on him as we neared the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was
a glimpse  of red-belted  ocean-going ships, and  sped along  a cobbled slum
lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds.
Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse
of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went
by.  With fenders  spread like  wings we  scattered light through half  Long
Island City--only half, for as we  twisted among the pillars of the elevated
I  heard  the familiar  "jug--jug--SPAT!" of a  motorcycle,  and  a  frantic
policeman rode alongside. "All right, old sport," called  Gatsby. We  slowed
down.  Taking  a white card from his wallet, he waved  it  before  the man's
eyes. "Right you are," agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. "Know you next
time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse ME!" "What  was that?" I inquired. "The picture  of
Oxford?" "I was able to do the commissioner a favor once, and  he sends me a
Christmas card every year." Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through
the girders making  a constant  flicker  upon the moving cars, with the city
rising up across the  river in white heaps and sugar lumps  all built with a
wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is
always the city seen  for the first time, in  its first wild  promise of all
the mystery  and  the  beauty in the world. A dead man passed us in a hearse
heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds, and by more
cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic
eyes and short  upper lips of southeastern  Europe, and I was glad that  the
sight of  Gatsby's splendid car was included  in their sombre holiday. As we
crossed  Blackwell's  Island  a  limousine  passed  us,  driven  by  a white
chauffeur,  in  which sat  three  modish negroes, two bucks  and  a  girl. I
laughed  aloud  as  the  yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty
rivalry.  "Anything  can happen  now that  we've slid over this  bridge,"  I
thought; "anything at  all. .  .  ." Even  Gatsby could happen,  without any
particular  wonder.  Roaring  noon.  In a  well--fanned  Forty-second Street
cellar  I met Gatsby for lunch.  Blinking away the  brightness of the street
outside, my  eyes  picked him  out obscurely  in  the  anteroom, talking  to
another man.  "Mr.  Carraway,  this is  my friend Mr. Wolfshiem."  A  small,
flat-nosed Jew raised his large head  and regarded me with  two fine growths
of hair which  luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his
tiny eyes in the  half-darkness.  "--So I  took one  look  at him," said Mr.
Wolfshiem, shaking my hand earnestly, "and what do you think I did?" "What?"
I inquired politely. But evidently he was not addressing  me, for he dropped
my hand and covered Gatsby  with his expressive nose. "I handed the money to
Katspaugh and  I sid:  'all right, Katspaugh,  don't pay him a penny till he
shuts his mouth.' He shut it then and  there." Gatsby took an arm of each of
us and moved forward into  the restaurant, whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed
a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction.
"Highballs?" asked  the head waiter.  "This is a nice restaurant here," said
Mr.  Wolfshiem,  looking at the Presbyterian nymphs  on the ceiling.  "But I
like across the street better!" "Yes, highballs," agreed Gatsby, and then to
Mr. Wolfshiem: "It's  too hot  over there." "Hot and  small--yes,"  said Mr.
Wolfshiem, "but  full  of memories." "What place is that?" I asked. "The old
Metropole. "The old Metropole," brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. "Filled with
faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can't forget so
long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us at
the table, and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all  evening. When it was almost
morning the waiter  came up to him with a funny look and says somebody wants
to speak to him outside. 'all right,' says Rosy, and begins to get up, and I
pulled him  down in his chair. "'Let  the bastards come in here if they want
you, Rosy, but don't you, so help me, move outside  this room.' "It was four
o'clock  in the morning then, and if we'd of  raised the blinds we'd of seen
daylight." "Did he go?" I asked innocently.  "Sure he went." Mr. Wolfshiem's
nose  flashed at  me  indignantly.  "He turned around in the door  and says:
'Don't let  that waiter  take  away  my coffee!' Then  he  went  out on  the
sidewalk, and  they  shot him three times in his full belly and drove away."
"Four of them were electrocuted,"  I said, remembering. "Five, with Becker."
His nostrils turned to me in an interested way. "I understand you're looking
for  a  business  gonnegtion."  The  juxtaposition of these  two remarks was
startling. Gatsby answered  for me: "Oh, no," he exclaimed, "this  isn't the
man."  "No?" Mr.  Wolfshiem  seemed disappointed. "This is  just a friend. I
told  you we'd talk  about that  some other time." "I beg your pardon," said
Mr. Wolfshiem, "I  had  a  wrong  man."  A succulent hash arrived,  and  Mr.
Wolfshiem, forgetting  the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole,
began to eat with ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly
all around the room--he completed  the arc  by turning to inspect the people
directly  behind. I think that, except for my presence, he  would have taken
one short glance beneath our own table. "Look here, old sport," said Gatsby,
leaning toward me, "I'm afraid I made you a little angry this morning in the
car." There  was the smile again, but this  time I held  out  against it. "I
don't like  mysteries," I answered. "And I don't  understand  why you  won't
come  out frankly and  tell me what  you  want.  Why has it all got to  come
through Miss Baker?"  "Oh,  it's  nothing  underhand," he assured me.  "Miss
Baker's a  great sportswoman, you  know, and  she'd never do  anything  that
wasn't all right." Suddenly he  looked at his watch, jumped up,  and hurried
from the  room,  leaving  me  with Mr.  Wolfshiem at the  table. "He has  to
telephone," said  Mr. Wolfshiem, following him  with his eyes. "Fine fellow,
isn't  he?  Handsome to look at  and a perfect gentleman." "Yes."  "He's  an
Oggsford  man."  "Oh!" "He went  to Oggsford College  in England.  You  know
Oggsford College?" "I've heard of it." "It's one of the most famous colleges
in the world." "Have you known Gatsby for a long time?" I inquired. "Several
years,"  he answered  in a  gratified  way.  "I  made  the  pleasure  of his
acquaintance just after the war. But  I knew I had discovered a  man of fine
breeding  after I talked with him an  hour. I  said  to myself: 'There's the
kind  of  man  you'd  like  to take  home and introduce to  your  mother and
sister.'." He  paused. "I see you're  looking at my cuff buttons."  I hadn't
been looking  at them, but I did  now. They were composed of  oddly familiar
pieces of ivory. "Finest specimens of human molars," he informed me. "Well!"
I inspected them. "That's a very  interesting idea."  "Yeah." He flipped his
sleeves  up  under his  coat.  "Yeah, Gatsby's very careful about women.  He
would never  so much as look  at  a friend's wife." When the subject of this
instinctive trust returned to the table and sat down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his
coffee with a jerk and got to his feet. "I have enjoyed my lunch,"  he said,
"and  I'm going  to run  off from you two  young  men  before  I outstay  my
welcome."  "Don't  hurry,  Meyer,"  said  Gatsby,  without  enthusiasm.  Mr.
Wolfshiem raised his hand in a sort of benediction. "You're very polite, but
I belong to another generation," he announced solemnly.  "You sit  here  and
discuss  your  sports and your  young  ladies  and your----" He  supplied an
imaginary noun with another wave of  his hand. "As for me, I  am fifty years
old, and I won't impose myself on  you any  longer."  As  he shook hands and
turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said anything
to offend him. "He  becomes very sentimental sometimes,"  explained  Gatsby.
"This  is one of his sentimental  days.  He's quite a character  around  New
York--a denizen  of  Broadway." "Who is he,  anyhow,  an  actor?"  "No."  "A
dentist?" "Meyer  Wolfshiem?  No,  he's a  gambler." Gatsby hesitated,  then
added coolly:  "He's the  man who  fixed  the World's  Series back in 1919."
"Fixed the World's Series?" I repeated. The idea staggered me. I remembered,
of course, that  the  World's  Series  had been  fixed in 1919, but if I had
thought of it  at  all I would have thought  of it  as  a  thing that merely
HAPPENED, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one
man  could  start to play with the  faith of fifty million  people--with the
single-mindedness  of a burglar  blowing a  safe. "How  did he happen  to do
that?" I asked after a  minute. "He just saw the opportunity." "Why isn't he
in jail?" "They  can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man." I  insisted on
paying the check. As  the waiter brought my  change I  caught  sight of  Tom
Buchanan across the crowded room. "Come along with me for a minute," I said;
"I've got to  say hello to some one." When  he saw us Tom jumped up and took
half  a  dozen  steps  in  our  direction. "Where've you been?" he  demamded
eagerly.  "Daisy's  furious  because you haven't  called up."  "This  is Mr.
Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan." They shook  hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar
look  of  embarrassment came over  Gatsby's face. "How've you been, anyhow?"
demanded  Tom of me. "How'd you  happen to come  up this far to  eat?" "I've
been  having lunch with Mr. Gatsby." I turned toward  Mr. Gatsby, but he was
no longer  there.  One  October  day  in nineteen-seventeen---- (said Jordan
Baker  that afternoon, sitting up very  straight on a  straight chair in the
tea-garden  at the Plaza  Hotel)  --I was walking  along  from  one place to
another,  half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was happier  on the
lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber nobs on the soles that
bit into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little
in the wind, and whenever this happened the red, white,  and blue banners in
front of  all the houses  stretched out stiff and said TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT, in a
disapproving  way. The  largest of the banners and  the largest of the lawns
belonged to Daisy Fay's house. She  was just eighteen, two  years older than
me, and by  far  the most popular of all the  young girls in Louisville. She
dressed  in  white, and  had a  little white roadster, and all  day long the
telephone  rang in  her  house and  excited  young officers from Camp Taylor
demanded  the privilege  of monopolizing  her  that  night. "Anyways, for an
hour!" When I  came opposite her house that morning her  white roadster  was
beside  the  curb, and she  was sitting in it with a  lieutenant I had never
seen before. They  were so engrossed in  each other that she  didn't  see me
until I  was  five  feet away.  "Hello,  Jordan," she  called  unexpectedly.
"Please come here." I was flattered that  she wanted to speak to me, because
of all  the older girls I admired  her most. She asked me if I was  going to
the Red Cross and make bandages. I  was. Well, then, would I tell them  that
she  couldn't come  that day? The  officer  looked at  Daisy  while she  was
speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and
because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident  ever since.
His name was  Jay  Gatsby, and I didn't  lay eyes on him again for over four
years--even after I'd met him  on Long Island I  didn't realize it  was  the
same man.  That  was nineteen-seventeen.  By the next year I had a few beaux
myself,  and  I  began  to play in  tournaments, so I  didn't see Daisy very
often. She went with a slightly older  crowd--when she went  with  anyone at
all. Wild rumors  were circulating about  her--how her  mother had found her
packing her bag one winter night to  go  to New York and  say good-by  to  a
soldier who  was going  overseas.  She  was effectually  prevented, but  she
wasn't on speaking terms with  her family for several weeks.  After that she
didn't  play  around  with  the  soldiers  any  more,  but only  with  a few
flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town, who couldn't get into the army
at all. By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as  ever. She had a  debut
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 Seelbach
Hotel, and the day  before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued
at  three hundred and fifty  thousand dollars. I was bridesmaid. I came into
her room half an hour before  the bridal dinner, and found  her lying on her
bed as lovely as the  June night  in her  flowered dress--and  as drunk as a
monkey. she had  a bottle of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.
"'Gratulate  me," she  muttered. "Never had a drink before, but oh  how I do
enjoy it."  "What's the  matter,  Daisy?" I was scared, I can tell you;  I'd
never seen a girl like that before. "Here, deares'."  She groped around in a
waste-basket  she  had  with her  on  the bed  and pulled out the string  of
pearls. "Take 'em down-stairs and give 'em back  to  whoever they belong to.
Tell 'em all Daisy's change'  her mine.  Say:  'Daisy's change' her mine!'."
She began to cry--she  cried  and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's
maid, and we locked the door and got her into  a cold bath. She wouldn't let
go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed  it up into
a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish  when she saw  that it
was coming to pieces like snow. But she didn't say another word. We gave her
spirits of ammonia and  put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her
dress, and half  an hour later, when we walked out  of the room,  the pearls
were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o'clock she
married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three
months' trip to the  South  Seas. I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came
back, and  I thought I'd  never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If  he
left the room for a minute she'd look around uneasily, and say: "Where's Tom
gone?" and wear the most abstracted expression until she  saw him  coming in
the door. She used to sit on the  sand with his head in her lap by the hour,
rubbing  her  fingers  over his eyes  and  looking at him with  unfathomable
delight.  It was  touching  to see them together--it  made  you  laugh  in a
hushed,  fascinated  way.  That  was in  August. A week after  I left  Santa
Barbara Tom  ran  into a wagon on the Ventura road one  night, and  ripped a
front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers, too,
because her  arm was broken--she  was one of the  chambermaids  in the Santa
Barbara  Hotel. The next April Daisy had her little girl,  and  they went to
France for a year. I saw them one spring in Cannes, and later in  Deauville,
and then  they came  back to Chicago to settle  down. Daisy was  popular  in
Chicago,  as you know. They moved with a fast crowd,  all  of them young and
rich and wild,  but  she came out  with an  absolutely  perfect  reputation.
Perhaps because she doesn't drink. It's a great advantage not to drink among
hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover,  you can time
any little irregularity  of your own so that everybody else is so blind that
they don't  see or care.  Perhaps Daisy  never went in for amour at all--and
yet there's something in  that voice of hers. . .  .  Well,  about six weeks
ago, she heard the name  Gatsby for the first time in years.  It was when  I
asked you--do  you remember?--if you knew Gatsby in  West Egg. After you had
gone home she came into my room and woke me up, and said: "What Gatsby?" and
when  I described him--I was  half asleep--she said  in the strangest  voice
that  it must  be  the man she used to  know. It  wasn't until  then  that I
connected  this Gatsby with the officer in her white  car. When Jordan Baker
had finished  telling all this we had left the  Plaza for  half an  hour and
were  driving in a victoria  through  Central  Park.  The sun had gone  down
behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in  the West  Fifties, and the
clear voices of  girls, already gathered like crickets  on  the grass,  rose
through the hot twilight: "I'm the Sheik of Araby. Your  love belongs to me.
At  night  when you're are asleep Into your tent I'll  creep----" "It was  a
strange coincidence,"  I said.  "But it  wasn't a coincidence at all."  "Why
not?" "Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay."
Then it had not  been  merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June
night.  He  came  alive  to  me, delivered  suddenly  from the womb  of  his
purposeless  splendor.  "He  wants  to know,"  continued Jordan, "if  you'll
invite Daisy  to your house some afternoon and then let him come  over." The
modesty  of  the  demand shook  me. He had waited five  years  and bought  a
mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths--so that he could "come
over." some afternoon to a stranger's garden.  "Did I have to know  all this
before he could ask such a little thing?" "He's afraid, he's waited so long.
He  thought  you might be offended. You see, he's a regular tough underneath
it all." Something worried me. "Why didn't he ask you to arrange a meeting?"
"He wants  her to see  his house," she explained. "And  your house is  right
next door." "Oh!"  "I think he half expected  her  to wander into one of his
parties,  some  night," went on  Jordan, "but she  never did. Then  he began
asking people casually if they  knew her, and I was the first one he  found.
It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have heard the
elaborate way he worked  up to it.  Of  course,  I immediately  suggested  a
luncheon in New  York--and  I  thought he'd  go  mad:  "'I don't want to  do
anything out  of  the way!' he kept saying. 'I want to see  her  right  next
door.'  "When I said you were  a particular  friend of Tom's, he started  to
abandon the whole idea. He doesn't know very much about Tom, though  he says
he's read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse
of Daisy's name." It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little  bridge I
put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder and drew  her toward me and asked
her  to dinner. Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but
of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in  universal scepticism, and
who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to
beat  in my  ears  with  a  sort of  heady excitement: "There are  only  the
pursued, the  pursuing,  the busy  and the tired." "And  Daisy ought to have
something  in  her life,"  murmured Jordan to  me. "Does  she  want  to  see
Gatsby?"  "She's not  to know  about  it. Gatsby doesn't  want  her to know.
You're  just supposed  to invite her to tea." We passed a  barrier  of  dark
trees, and then  the facade 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. Chapter 5 When I came home to West  Egg  that night I was afraid for a
moment that my house  was on  fire. Two o'clock and the whole  corner of the
peninsula  was blazing with  light,  which  fell unreal on the shrubbery and
made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires. Turning a corner, I saw
that it was Gatsby's house,  lit from tower to cellar. At first I thought it
was  another   party,   a  wild   rout  that   had   resolved  itself   into
"hide-and-go-seek." or "sardines-in-the-box." with all the house thrown open
to the game. But there  wasn't a sound. Only wind in the  trees, which  blew
the wires and made the lights go off and on again as if the house had winked
into the  darkness.  As my  taxi groaned away I saw Gatsby walking toward me
across  his lawn. "Your  place  looks like the  World's Fair," I said. "Does
it?" He turned his  eyes toward it absently. "I have been glancing into some
of the rooms.  Let's go to  Coney Island,  old  sport. In my car." "It's too
late." "Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming-pool? I haven't  made
use  of it  all summer." "I've got to  go  to  bed." "All right." He waited,
looking at me with suppressed eagerness. "I talked with  Miss Baker," I said
after a moment. "I'm  going to call up  Daisy to-morrow  and invite her over
here to  tea." "Oh, that's all right," he said carelessly. "I don't want  to
put you to any trouble."  "What day  would suit you?" "What  day  would suit
YOU?" he corrected me quickly. "I  don't want to put you to any trouble, you
see." "How about the day after to-morrow?" He considered for a moment. Then,
with reluctance: "I want to get the grass cut," he  said. We both looked  at
the grass--there was a sharp line where my ragged lawn ended and the darker,
well-kept expanse of his began. I suspected that he meant my grass. "There's
another little thing," he said uncertainly, and hesitated. "Would you rather
put it off for a few days?" I asked. "Oh, it isn't about that. At least----"
He fumbled with a series of beginnings. "Why, I thought--why, look here, old
sport, you don't  make much money, do you?" "Not very much." This seemed  to
reassure  him and  he continued more confidently. "I  thought you didn't, if
you'll pardon my--You see, I carry on  a little business on the side, a sort
of side line, you  understand.  And I  thought that if you  don't  make very
much--You're selling bonds, aren't you, old sport?" "Trying to." "Well, this
would interest you. It wouldn't take up much of your time and you might pick
up  a  nice bit  of money. It happens  to  be a rather confidential sort  of
thing."  I realize now that  under different circumstances that conversation
might have been  one of  the crises  of my life. But,  because the offer was
obviously  and tactlessly for a  service to be  rendered, I  had  no  choice
except to cut him  off there.  "I've  got my hands full," I said.  "I'm much
obliged but  I couldn't take on any more work." "You wouldn't have to do any
business  with Wolfshiem." Evidently he thought  that I was shying away from
the  "gonnegtion."  mentioned at  lunch, but I assured him he was wrong.  He
waited a  moment  longer, hoping I'd  begin  a  conversation, but I was  too
absorbed to be responsive, so he went unwillingly home. The evening had made
me light-headed and happy; I think I walked into a deep  sleep as  I entered
my front door.  So I didn't know whether or not Gatsby went to Coney Island,
or for how  many  hours  he "glanced into  rooms."  while  his  house blazed
gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the  office next morning, and invited her
to come to tea. "Don't bring Tom," I warned her. "What?" "Don't  bring Tom."
"Who is 'Tom'?" she asked  innocently. The day agreed upon was pouring rain.
At eleven  o'clock a man in a  raincoat, dragging a lawn-mower, tapped at my
front  door and said that Mr. Gatsby had sent him over to cut my grass. This
reminded me that I had forgotten to tell  my  Finn to  come back, so I drove
into West Egg Village to search for her among soggy,  whitewashed alleys and
to buy some cups  and lemons and flowers. The flowers were unnecessary,  for
at  two  o'clock  a  greenhouse  arrived  from  Gatsby's,  with  innumerable
receptacles to contain it. An hour  later the  front  door opened nervously,
and Gatsby, in a  white flannel  suit, silver  shirt, and  gold-colored tie,
hurried in. He  was pale, and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath
his eyes. "Is everything all right?"  he asked immediately. "The grass looks
fine, if that's what you  mean." "What grass?" he inquired blankly. "Oh, the
grass in the yard." He  looked out the window  at it, but, judging from  his
expression, I don't believe he  saw a thing.  "Looks very good," he remarked
vaguely.  "One of the  papers said  they thought  the rain  would stop about
four. I think it was the JOURNAL. Have you  got everything  you  need in the
shape of--of tea?" I took him  into the pantry,  where  he  looked  a little
reproachfully  at the Finn. Together we scrutinized the  twelve lemon  cakes
from the delicatessen shop. "Will they do?"  I asked. "Of course, of course!
They're  fine!" and  he  added hollowly, ". . .old  sport." The rain  cooled
about half-past three  to a damp  mist, through which  occasional thin drops
swam  like  dew. Gatsby  looked with vacant eyes  through  a copy  of Clay's
ECONOMICS,  starting at the Finnish tread that shook the kitchen  floor, and
peering toward  the bleared  windows from  time to time  as if  a  series of
invisible but alarming happenings were taking place outside.  Finally he got
up  and  informed me,  in an uncertain voice, that he was going home. "Why's
that?" "Nobody's coming to tea. It's too late!" He looked at his watch as if
there  was  some pressing demand on his  time elsewhere.  "I  can't wait all
day."  "Don't  be  silly;  it's  just  two  minutes  to  four." He  sat down
miserably, as if I had pushed him, and simultaneously there was the sound of
a motor  turning into  my lane. We both jumped  up, and,  a  little harrowed
myself,  I  went out  into the yard.  Under the  dripping bare lilac-trees a
large open  car was coming up the  drive.  It stopped. Daisy's  face, tipped
sideways beneath  a three-cornered lavender hat, looked  out  at  me  with a
bright ecstatic smile.  "Is this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?"
The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild  tonic in the rain. I had to
follow the sound of it for a moment, up and  down, with my ear alone, before
any  words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint
across her cheek, and her hand was wet with glistening drops as I took it to
help her from the car. "Are you  in love with me," she  said low in  my ear,
"or  why did I have to come alone?" "That's the secret  of Castle  Rackrent.
Tell  your  chauffeur to go  far away and spend an  hour." "Come  back in an
hour,  Ferdie." Then  in a  grave murmur: "His name  is  Ferdie."  "Does the
gasoline affect his nose?" "I  don't think so," she  said innocently. "Why?"
We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living-room was deserted. "Well,
that's funny," I exclaimed. "What's funny?" She turned her head as there was
a  light  dignified knocking at the front  door. I  went out  and opened it.
Gatsby,  pale  as  death, with his hands  plunged  like weights in his  coat
pockets, was standing in a puddle of  water glaring tragically into my eyes.
With his hands  still in his coat pockets  he stalked  by  me into the hall,
turned  sharply  as  if  he  were  on  a  wire,  and  disappeared  into  the
living-room. It  wasn't  a bit funny. Aware  of the  loud beating of  my own
heart  I pulled the door to against the increasing  rain. For  half a minute
there  wasn't a sound. Then from  the living-room I heard  a sort of choking
murmur and part of a laugh, followed by Daisy's  voice on a clear artificial
note:  "I  certainly am  awfully glad to see you again." A pause; it endured
horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall, so I went  into the room. Gatsby,
his hands still in his pockets, was reclining  against the mantelpiece in  a
strained counterfeit of  perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back
so  far that it rested  against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and
from  this  position  his  distraught  eyes  stared down  at Daisy, who  was
sitting, frightened  but graceful, on  the edge of a stiff chair. "We've met
before," muttered Gatsby. His eyes  glanced  momentarily at me, and his lips
parted  with  an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily  the  clock  took this
moment to tilt dangerously at the  pressure of his head, whereupon he turned
and caught  it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place. Then he sat
down, rigidly, his  elbow on the  arm of the  sofa and his chin in his hand.
"I'm  sorry about the clock,"  he  said. My own face had now  assumed a deep
tropical burn. I couldn't muster up a single commonplace out of the thousand
in  my head. "It's an old clock," I  told  them idiotically. I think we  all
believed  for a  moment  that it had  smashed in  pieces  on  the floor. "We
haven't met for many  years," said Daisy, her voice as  matter-of-fact as it
could ever be. "Five years next November." The automatic quality of Gatsby's
answer  set  us all back at least another minute. I  had  them both on their
feet with the desperate suggestion that they help me make tea in the kitchen
when the demoniac  Finn brought  it in on a tray. Amid the welcome confusion
of cups and cakes a certain physical  decency established itself. Gatsby got
himself into a shadow and, while Daisy and I talked,  looked conscientiously
from one to the other of us with tense, unhappy eyes.  However,  as calmness
wasn't an end in itself, I made  an excuse at the first possible moment, and
got to  my feet. "Where are you going?" demanded  Gatsby in immediate alarm.
"I'll be back." "I've got to speak to you about something before you go." He
followed me wildly into the  kitchen, closed the  door, and  whispered: "Oh,
God!" in a miserable way. "What's the matter?" "This is a terrible mistake,"
he said, shaking his head from side to side, "a terrible, terrible mistake."
"You're just  embarrassed,  that's  all,"  and  luckily  I  added:  "Daisy's
embarrassed  too."  "She's embarrassed?" he repeated incredulously. "Just as
much as you are." "Don't talk so loud." "You're acting like a little boy," I
broke out impatiently. "Not only  that, but  you're rude. Daisy's sitting in
there  all  alone." He raised his hand  to stop my words, looked at  me with
unforgettable reproach, and, opening the door cautiously, went back into the
other room. I walked out the back  way--just as Gatsby had when  he had made
his  nervous circuit of  the house half  an hour before--and ran for a  huge
black knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric against the rain. Once
more  it  was  pouring,  and  my  irregular  lawn, well-shaved  by  Gatsby's
gardener, abounded in small, muddy swamps and prehistoric marshes. There was
nothing to look at from under the tree except  Gatsby's enormous house, so I
stared at it, like Kant  at  his church steeple, for  half an hour. A brewer
had built  it early in the "period." craze, a decade before, and there was a
story that he'd  agreed  to  pay  five years'  taxes on all the  neighboring
cottages if the  owners would have their roofs thatched with straw.  Perhaps
their refusal took the heart out of his plan to Found a Family--he went into
an  immediate  decline. His children  sold  his house  with the black wreath
still on the door. Americans,  while  occasionally willing to be serfs, have
always been  obstinate about being  peasantry.  After  half an hour, the sun
shone again, and the grocer's automobile rounded Gatsby's drive with the raw
material for his servants' dinner--I felt sure he wouldn't eat a spoonful. A
maid began opening  the upper windows of  his house, appeared momentarily in
each, and, leaning from  a  large  central bay, spat meditatively  into  the
garden. It was time I went back. While the rain continued it had seemed like
the murmur of  their voices, rising and swelling a little now and then  with
gusts  of  emotion. But in the new silence I  felt that  silence  had fallen
within the house too. I went in--after making  every possible  noise  in the
kitchen, short of pushing  over the stove--but I don't believe they  heard a
sound. They were sitting at either end of the couch, looking  at each  other
as if some question had been  asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of
embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears, and when I came
in  she jumped up and  began  wiping at it  with  her handkerchief  before a
mirror.  But there  was a change  in Gatsby that was simply  confounding. He
literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being
radiated  from him and filled  the little room.  "Oh,  hello, old sport," he
said, as if he hadn't seen me for years. I thought for a moment he was going
to  shake hands.  "It's  stopped raining." "Has it?" When he realized what I
was talking about, that there were twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he
smiled like a weather man, like an ecstatic patron of recurrent  light,  and
repeated  the  news  to  Daisy.  "What do  you think of  that? It's  stopped
raining." "I'm glad, Jay." Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told
only of her unexpected joy. "I want you and Daisy to come over to my house,"
he  said, "I'd  like to show her around." "You're sure you want me to come?"
"Absolutely, old sport."  Daisy went up-stairs to wash her face--too late  I
thought  with humiliation of my towels--while  Gatsby  and I  waited on  the
lawn. "My  house looks  well, doesn't it?"  he demanded. "See how  the whole
front of it catches the  light." I agreed  that it was  splendid. "Yes." His
eyes went  over it,  every  arched door  and square tower.  "It took me just
three years to earn the money that bought it." "I thought you inherited your
money." "I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in
the big panic--the  panic  of  the war." I think he hardly knew what he  was
saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered, "That's my
affair," before he realized that  it wasn't the appropriate reply. "Oh, I've
been in several things,"  he corrected himself. "I was in  the drug business
and  then  I was in  the oil business. But  I'm not  in either one now."  He
looked at me with more  attention. "Do you  mean  you've been  thinking over
what I proposed the  other night?" Before I could answer, Daisy  came out of
the  house and  two rows  of  brass buttons  on  her  dress  gleamed in  the
sunlight.  "That huge place THERE?" she cried pointing. "Do you like it?" "I
love it, but I don't see  how you live there all  alone." "I keep it  always
full of interesting people, night and day. People who do interesting things.
Celebrated people." Instead of taking the short cut along the Sound we  went
down 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 odor of jonquils and the  frothy odor of
hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate. It
was strange to reach the marble steps and find no stir of  bright dresses in
and out  the  door, and hear no sound but  bird  voices  in  the  trees. And
inside, as we wandered through  Marie Antoinette music-rooms and Restoration
salons,  I  felt that  there  were guests  concealed behind  every couch and
table,  under orders to be  breathlessly silent until we had passed through.
As Gatsby closed the  door of "the Merton  College  Library."  I could  have
sworn  I  heard  the  owl-eyed  man break  into  ghostly  laughter.  We went
up-stairs, through period bedrooms swathed  in rose  and  lavender  silk and
vivid with new  flowers, through dressing-rooms and poolrooms, and bathrooms
with sunken  baths--intruding into one chamber  where a dishevelled  man  in
pajamas was doing liver exercises on the floor. It was Mr. Klipspringer, the
"boarder." I  had seen him wandering hungrily about  the beach that morning.
Finally we came to Gatsby's own apartment, a bedroom and a bath, and an Adam
study, where we sat down and drank a glass of some Chartreuse he took from a
cupboard in the wall. He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he
revalued  everything in  his house according to  the  measure of response it
drew from  her  well-loved  eyes.  Sometimes, too, he stared  around at  his
possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and  astounding presence
none of it was any longer  real. Once  he nearly  toppled  down  a flight of
stairs. His  bedroom was  the simplest room of all--except where the dresser
was garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush with
delight, and  smoothed her hair, whereupon  Gatsby  sat  down and shaded his
eyes  and began  to  laugh.  "It's  the funniest thing, old sport," he  said
hilariously. "I can't--When I try to----" He  had passed visibly through two
states  and was  entering upon  a  third. After his  embarrassment  and  his
unreasoning joy he  was  consumed with wonder at  her presence.  He had been
full of  the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end,  waited with
his teeth set, so to  speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in
the  reaction, he  was  running down  like  an  overwound clock.  Recovering
himself in a minute  he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held
his massed  suits  and dressing-gowns and  ties,  and his shirts, piled like
bricks  in stacks a dozen  high. "I've  got  a man  in England  who  buys me
clothes. He sends  over  a  selection  of things  at  the  beginning of each
season, spring and  fall." He took out  a pile of shirts and  began throwing
them, one by one, before us,  shirts of  sheer linen and thick silk and fine
flannel,  which  lost  their  folds as they  fell  and covered the table  in
many-colored disarray. While  we  admired  he brought more and the soft rich
heap mounted higher--shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and
apple-green and  lavender  and faint orange, and  monograms of Indian  blue.
Suddenly, with  a  strained sound, Daisy bent  her head into  the shirts and
began  to cry stormily. "They're  such  beautiful shirts," she  sobbed,  her
voice muffled  in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because  I've never seen
such--such beautiful shirts before."  After the  house,  we were  to see the
grounds  and  the  swimming-pool,  and  the hydroplane  and  the  mid-summer
flowers--but outside Gatsby's window it began to rain again, so we stood  in
a row looking at the  corrugated surface of the Sound. "If it wasn't for the
mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a
green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." Daisy put her arm
through  his  abruptly, but he seemed absorbed  in  what  he had just  said.
Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light
had now vanished forever. Compared to the great  distance that had separated
him from Daisy  it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her.  It had
seemed as close as a star to the moon.  Now it was again a green light on  a
dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.  I began to walk
about the room, examining various indefinite objects in the half darkness. A
large photograph of an elderly man in yachting costume attracted me, hung on
the wall over his  desk.  "Who's  this?"  "That?  That's  Mr. Dan  Cody, old
sport." The name sounded faintly familiar. "He's dead now. He used  to be my
best  friend  years  ago."  There  was a small  picture  of  Gatsby, also in
yachting  costume,  on   the   bureau--Gatsby  with  his  head  thrown  back
defiantly--taken apparently  when  he  was  about eighteen.  "I  adore  it,"
exclaimed Daisy. "The pompadour! You never told me you had a pompadour--or a
yacht."  "Look   at  this,"   said   Gatsby  quickly.   "Here's  a   lot  of
clippings--about you." They stood side  by side examining it. I was going to
ask to see the rubies when  the phone rang, and Gatsby took up the receiver.
"Yes. . . . well, I can't talk now. . . . I can't talk now, old sport. . . .
I said a SMALL town. . . . he must know  what a small town is.  . . .  well,
he's no  use to us  if Detroit is his idea of  a  small town. . . ." He rang
off.  "Come here  QUICK!"  cried  Daisy at  the window.  The rain was  still
falling,  but the  darkness had parted in the west, and there was a pink and
golden billow of foamy clouds  above the sea. "Look at that," she whispered,
and then after  a moment: "I'd like to just get one of those pink clouds and
put you in it  and push you around." I tried to  go then, but  they wouldn't
hear of it; perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone. "I
know what we'll do," said Gatsby, "we'll have Klipspringer play the  piano."
He  went out of  the  room  calling "Ewing!" and  returned  in a few minutes
accompanied  by an embarrassed, slightly  worn young  man, with shell-rimmed
glasses  and  scanty blond  hair.  He was now decently  clothed  in a "sport
shirt,"  open at the neck, sneakers, and duck  trousers  of a  nebulous hue.
"Did we interrupt your  exercises?" inquired Daisy politely. "I was asleep,"
cried Mr.  Klipspringer, in a  spasm  of  embarrassment. "That is,  I'd BEEN
asleep.  Then I got up. . . ." "Klipspringer plays the piano," said  Gatsby,
cutting  him off.  "Don't  you, Ewing,  old sport?"  "I don't  play well.  I
don't--I  hardly  play  at  all.   I'm  all  out   of  prac----"  "We'll  go
down-stairs," interrupted  Gatsby.  He  flipped  a switch.  The gray windows
disappeared  as the house  glowed  full of light.  In  the music-room Gatsby
turned on  a solitary lamp beside the piano. He lit Daisy's cigarette from a
trembling match, and sat down with her on a couch far across the room, where
there  was no light save what  the gleaming floor bounced  in from the hall.
When Klipspringer  had played THE LOVE NEST. he  turned around  on the bench
and searched  unhappily for Gatsby in  the  gloom. "I'm all out of practice,
you see. I told you I couldn't play. I'm all out of prac----" "Don't talk so
much, old sport," commanded Gatsby. "Play!" "IN THE MORNING, IN THE EVENING,
AIN'T WE GOT FUN----" Outside the wind was loud  and there was a faint  flow
of thunder  along the Sound. All the lights were going  on in West Egg  now;
the electric trains, men-carrying, were plunging home through  the rain from
New York. It was  the hour  of a profound human change,  and  excitement was
generating on the  air. "ONE THING'S  SURE AND NOTHING'S  SURER THE RICH GET
RICHER AND THE  POOR GET--CHILDREN. IN THE MEANTIME, IN BETWEEN TIME----" As
I went over to say good-by I saw  that  the  expression  of bewilderment had
come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as
to  the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have
been moments even that afternoon whe  Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not
through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.
It had gone  beyond  her, beyond everything.  He had thrown  himself into it
with  a creative passion, adding to it  all the time,  decking it  out  with
every bright feather  that drifted  his way. No  amount of fire or freshness
can  challenge what a man will store  up in his ghostly  heart. As I watched
him he adjusted  himself a little, visibly. His hand took hold  of hers, and
as she said  something low in his  ear  he turned toward her with  a rush of
emotion.  I  think that voice held him most, with  its fluctuating, feverish
warmth, because  it  couldn't be  over-dreamed--that  voice was a  deathless
song.  They  had  forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and  held out her hand;
Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they looked
back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room
and down  the marble steps  into the  rain,  leaving  them  there  together.
Chapter 6 About this time an ambitious young reporter from New  York arrived
one  morning at Gatsby's  door  and  asked him  if he  had anything to  say.
"Anything to say about  what?" inquired Gatsby politely. "Why--any statement
to give out."  It transpired after a confused five minutes  that the man had
heard  Gatsby's  name around his  office in  a  connection  which  he either
wouldn't reveal  or  didn't fully understand.  This was his day off and with
laudable initiative he had  hurried out "to  see." It was a random shot, and
yet the  reporter's instinct was  right. Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by
the hundreds who  had accepted his hospitality and so become  authorities on
his past, had increased all summer until he fell  just short of  being news.
Contemporary legends such as the "underground pipe-line to Canada." attached
themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn't live in
a  house at  all, but in a  boat that  looked  like a house  and  was  moved
secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a
source of satisfaction  to James Gatz  of North Dakota,  isn't  easy to say.
James Gatz--that was really, or  at least legally, his name. He  had changed
it at  the age of seventeen and at  the  specific moment that witnessed  the
beginning of his career--when he saw  Dan  Cody's yacht drop anchor over the
most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing
along the beach that afternoon in a torn  green jersey and a pair of  canvas
pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed  a  rowboat, pulled out to
the TUOLOMEE, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up
in  half an hour. I suppose he'd  had the name ready for  a long  time, even
then.  His   parents  were   shiftless  and  unsuccessful  farm  people--his
imagination had never really  accepted them as his parents at all. The truth
was  that Jay  Gatsby of West Egg,  Long  Island, sprang  from his  Platonic
conception  of himself. He  was  a son of God--a phrase  which, if  it means
anything, means just that--and he must be about  His Father's  business, the
service  of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the
sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old  boy would be likely to invent,
and to this  conception he was faithful to  the end. For over a year  he had
been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger
and a salmon-fisher or in any  other capacity that brought him food and bed.
His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy
work of the bracing days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he
became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of
the  others   because  they  were  hysterical  about  things  which  in  his
overwhelming  self-absorbtion  he  took for granted. But his  heart was in a
constant,  turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted
him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable  gaudiness spun  itself out
in  his brain while the clock  ticked on the wash-stand and  the moon soaked
with wet light his tangled  clothes upon the  floor.  Each night he added to
the  pattern of his  fancies until  drowsiness closed down  upon some  vivid
scene with  an oblivious  embrace. For a while  these  reveries  provided an
outlet for his imagination; they  were a satisfactory hint of  the unreality
of reality, a promise that the rock  of the world was  founded securely on a
fairy's wing. An instinct  toward his future glory  had led him, some months
before, to the small Lutheran college of St. Olaf in southern Minnesota.  He
stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference  to the drums
of his  destiny, to destiny  itself, and despising  the  janitor's work with
which he was to pay his way through. Then  he drifted back to Lake Superior,
and  he was still searching for  something to do on the day that Dan  Cody's
yacht  dropped anchor  in  the shallows alongshore. Cody was fifty years old
then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for
metal since seventy-five. The transactions  in Montana copper that  made him
many times a millionaire  found  him  physically robust  but on the verge of
soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number  of women tried to
separate him from his money. The none too savory 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  knowledge  to  the  turgid
sub-journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores
for five  years  when he turned up as James  Gatz's destiny at Little  Girls
Point. To the young Gatz, resting on  his oars and looking up at  the railed
deck, the yacht represented all  the beauty  and glamour  in  the  world.  I
suppose he smiled at Cody--he had probably discovered that  people liked him
when he smiled. At any  rate Cody asked  him  a  few questions (one of  them
elicited the  brand new name) and found that he was quick and  extravagantly
ambitious. A  few  days  later  he took him to Duluth and bought  him a blue
coat,  six  pair of white  duck  trousers, and  a yachting cap. And when the
TUOLOMEE  left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast Gatsby left too. He
was  employed in a  vague personal  capacity--while he remained with Cody he
was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody
sober  knew what lavish doings Dan  Cody drunk might soon be about,  and  he
provided for such contingencies by  reposing more and more  trust in Gatsby.
The  arrangement  lasted five years, during which  the boat went three times
around the Continent. It might have  lasted indefinitely except for the fact
that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a  week later  Dan Cody
inhospitably  died. I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a
gray, florid man with a hard, empty  face--the pioneer debauchee, who during
one phase of American life brought back  to the Eastern  seaboard the savage
violence  of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly  due to Cody
that  Gatsby drank so little.  Sometimes in the  course of gay parties women
used  to rub champagne into  his  hair; for  himself he formed  the habit of
letting liquor alone. And it was from Cody that he inherited money--a legacy
of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn't  get it. He  never understood the
legal device that was used  against him,  but what remained of the  millions
went intact  to Ella  Kaye.  He  was  left with  his singularly  appropriate
education;  the   vague  contour  of  Jay  Gatsby  had  filled  out  to  the
substantiality of a  man. He told me  all this very much later, but I've put
it down here  with the idea of exploding  those  first wild rumors about his
antecedents, which weren't even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a
time of confusion, when I had reached the point  of believing everything and
nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while  Gatsby, so
to speak, caught  his breath,  to clear this  set of misconceptions away. It
was a  halt, too, in my association with his  affairs.  For several weeks  I
didn't  see him or hear his voice on the phone--mostly  I  was  in New York,
trotting around with  Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile
aunt--but finally I  went  over  to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn't
been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in  for a drink. I
was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was  that it hadn't
happened  before. They  were  a party of three  on horseback--Tom and  a man
named Sloane and a  pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there
previously. "I'm delighted to see you,"  said Gatsby, standing on his porch.
"I'm delighted that you dropped in." As though they cared! "Sit  right down.
Have  a cigarette or  a cigar." He walked  around the  room quickly, ringing
bells. "I'll  have something  to  drink  for you in just  a minute."  He was
profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would  be  uneasy
anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that
was all they came for. Mr.  Sloane wanted nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A
little champagne? Nothing at all, thanks. . . . I'm  sorry---- "Did you have
a nice ride?" "Very good roads around here." "I suppose the automobiles----"
"Yeah." Moved by an irresistible  impulse,  Gatsby turned  to  Tom,  who had
accepted the  introduction as  a stranger.  "I believe  we've  met somewhere
before, Mr. Buchanan." "Oh,  yes," said Tom,  gruffly  polite, but obviously
not  remembering. "So we did. I remember very well."  "About two weeks ago."
"That's right.  You  were with  Nick here."  "I  know  your wife," continued
Gatsby,  almost  aggressively.  "That  so?" Tom turned to me. "You live near
here,  Nick?" "Next  door."  "That  so?"  Mr.  Sloane didn't  enter into the
conversation,  but  lounged back  haughtily  in his  chair;  the  woman said
nothing either--until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial.
"We'll all come over to  your next party, Mr. Gatsby," she  suggested. "What
do you say?" "Certainly; I'd be delighted to have you." "Be ver' nice," said
Mr.  Sloane,  without gratitude. "Well--think  ought  to be starting  home."
"Please don't hurry,"  Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now, and
he wanted to see more of Tom. "Why don't you--why don't you stay for supper?
I wouldn't be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York." "You
come to supper with ME," said the lady enthusiastically. "Both of you." This
included  me. Mr. Sloane got to  his feet. "Come along," he said--but to her
only. "I  mean  it," she insisted. "I'd  love  to  have you.  Lots of room."
Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go, and he  didn't see  that
Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn't.  "I'm afraid I won't  be able to," I
said. "Well, you  come," she  urged,  concentrating  on  Gatsby. Mr.  Sloane
murmured something close to her ear. "We won't be late if we start now," she
insisted aloud. "I haven't got a horse," said Gatsby. "I used to ride in the
army,  but  I've never bought a horse. I'll have to  follow  you  in my car.
Excuse me for just a minute." The rest of us walked out on  the porch, where
Sloane and  the  lady began  an  impassioned conversation aside. "My  God, I
believe the man's coming," said Tom. "Doesn't he know she doesn't want him?"
"She says she does want him." "She has a big dinner party and he won't  know
a soul there."  He  frowned. "I wonder where  in the  devil he met Daisy. By
God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these
days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish." Suddenly Mr. Sloane and
the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses. "Come on," said Mr.
Sloane  to Tom, "we're late. We've got  to go." And then to me: "Tell him we
couldn't wait, will you?" Tom and I shook hands,  the rest of us exchanged a
cool nod, and they trotted quickly down the  drive,  disappearing  under the
August foliage just as Gatsby, with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out
the front door. Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone,
for  on  the following Saturday  night he came with  her to  Gatsby's party.
Perhaps   his   presence  gave   the  evening   its  peculiar   quality   of
oppressiveness--it  stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that
summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the
same profusion of  champagne,  the same  many-colored, many-keyed commotion,
but  I felt an unpleasantness  in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't
been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept
West Egg as a world complete  in itself, with its own standards and its  own
great  figures,  second to nothing  because it had no consciousness of being
so,  and  now  I  was  looking at  it  again, through  Daisy's  eyes.  It is
invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which  you have
expended your own powers of adjustment. They arrived at twilight, and, as we
strolled  out  among  the  sparkling  hundreds,  Daisy's  voice was  playing
murmurous tricks  in her throat. "These things excite me so," she whispered.
"If you want to kiss  me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know
and I'll be glad to arrange it for you.  Just mention my name. Or present  a
green card. I'm giving out green----" "Look around," suggested  Gatsby. "I'm
looking around. I'm having a  marvelous----" "You must see the faces of many
people you've  heard about." Tom's arrogant eyes roamed the crowd. "We don't
go around very much," he said.  "In fact, I was just thinking I don't know a
soul here."  "Perhaps  you know  that lady."  Gatsby  indicated  a gorgeous,
scarcely  human orchid of a  woman who sat in state under a white plum tree.
Tom and Daisy  stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling  that accompanies
the recognition  of  a hitherto  ghostly  celebrity  of  the  movies. "She's
lovely,"  said Daisy. "The man bending over  her is  her director."  He took
them  ceremoniously  from  group  to group:  "Mrs. Buchanan .  .  . and  Mr.
Buchanan----" After an instant's hesitation he added: "the polo player." "Oh
no," objected  Tom  quickly, "not me." But evidently the sound of it pleased
Gatsby, for Tom  remained  "the polo player." for  the rest of  the evening.
"I've never  met  so  many  celebrities!"  Daisy  exclaimed. "I  liked  that
man--what was his name?--with the sort of blue nose." Gatsby identified him,
adding that he  was  a small  producer. "Well,  I liked him anyhow."  "I'd a
little rather not be the polo player," said Tom pleasantly, "I'd rather look
at all these famous  people  in--in oblivion." Daisy  and Gatsby  danced.  I
remember being surprised by his graceful, conservative fox-trot--I had never
seen him  dance before. Then they sauntered over to my house and sat  on the
steps for half  an hour, while at her request  I  remained watchfully in the
garden. "In case there's a fire or a flood," she explained,  "or  any act of
God."  Tom appeared  from  his oblivion  as  we were sitting down  to supper
together. "Do  you mind if  I eat with some people  over here?" he said.  "A
fellow's getting off some funny stuff." "Go ahead," answered Daisy genially,
"and if you want to take down any addresses here's my little gold pencil." .
.  . she looked around after a moment and told me the girl was  "common  but
pretty,"  and I  knew that  except for  the  half-hour she'd been alone with
Gatsby she wasn't having a good time. We were at a particularly tipsy table.
That  was my fault--Gatsby  had been called to  the phone, and  I'd  enjoyed
these same people only two weeks before. But what had amused  me then turned
septic on the air now. "How do you feel, Miss  Baedeker?" The girl addressed
was  trying, unsuccessfully, to  slump against  my shoulder. At this inquiry
she sat up and  opened her eyes. "Wha'?"  A massive and lethargic woman, who
had  been urging  Daisy  to play golf with  her at the local club to-morrow,
spoke in Miss  Baedeker's defence: "Oh, she's all right now. When  she's had
five  or six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. I tell her she
ought  to  leave  it alone." "I do leave  it  alone," affirmed  the  accused
hollowly. "We heard  you yelling,  so  I  said to  Doc Civet  here: 'There's
somebody that needs your help, Doc.'" "She's much  obliged, I'm  sure," said
another friend, without gratitude.  "But you got her dress  all wet when you
stuck her head in the pool." "Anything  I hate is to get my head stuck in  a
pool,"  mumbled  Miss Baedeker.  "They almost  drowned me once  over in  New
Jersey." "Then you  ought to leave it alone," countered Doctor Civet. "Speak
for  yourself!" cried Miss Baedeker violently. "Your hand shakes. I wouldn't
let you operate on me!" It was like that.  Almost  the last thing I remember
was standing with  Daisy and watching  the moving-picture  director and  his
Star.  They  were  still  under the white  plum tree  and  their  faces were
touching except for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me
that he had been  very slowly bending toward her all evening  to attain this
proximity, and  even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and
kiss at her cheek. "I like her," said Daisy, "I think she's lovely." But the
rest offended  her--and  inarguably, because it  wasn't  a  gesture  but  an
emotion.  She was appalled  by West  Egg, this  unprecedented  "place." that
Broadway had  begotten upon  a Long Island fishing village--appalled  by its
raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate
that herded its inhabitants along  a  short-cut from nothing to nothing. She
saw something awful in  the very simplicity she failed to understand.  I sat
on the front steps with them while they  waited for their  car.  It was dark
here in front; only the bright  door sent ten square feet of light volleying
out  into the  soft  black morning.  Sometimes  a  shadow  moved  against  a
dressing-room  blind  above, gave  way  to  another  shadow,  an  indefinite
procession of shadows, who rouged  and powdered in an invisible glass.  "Who
is  this Gatsby  anyhow?"  demanded  Tom  suddenly.  "Some  big bootlegger?"
"Where'd you hear that?" I inquired. "I didn't hear it. I imagined it. A lot
of  these  newly  rich people  are just  big  bootleggers, you  know."  "Not
Gatsby," I said  shortly.  He was silent for  a moment. The pebbles  of  the
drive  crunched  under  his  feet. "Well,  he certainly must  have  strained
himself to get  this  menagerie together." A breeze stirred the gray haze of
Daisy's fur collar.  "At least they're  more  interesting than the people we
know," she said with an effort.  "You  didn't look  so interested." "Well, I
was." Tom laughed and  turned to me. "Did you notice Daisy's face when  that
girl asked her to put her under a cold shower?" Daisy began to sing with the
music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that
it had never  had before and would never have  again. When the  melody rose,
her voice  broke up sweetly,  following it, in  a way contralto voices have,
and each  change tipped out a little of  her  warm human magic upon the air.
"Lots  of people  come  who haven't been invited,"  she said suddenly. "That
girl hadn't been invited. They simply force their way in and he's too polite
to object." "I'd like  to know who  he is and  what he does," insisted  Tom.
"And I think I'll make a point of finding out." "I can tell  you right now,"
she answered. "He owned some drug-stores,  a  lot of drug-stores.  He  built
them up himself."  The dilatory limousine  came rolling up the drive.  "Good
night, Nick," said Daisy.  Her glance left me  and sought the lighted top of
the steps, where  THREE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING, a neat, sad little waltz  of
that year, was drifting out the open door. After all, in the very casualness
of Gatsby's party there were romantic possibilities  totally absent from her
world. What was it up there in the song  that seemed to  be calling her back
inside?  What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours?  Perhaps some
unbelievable  guest  would  arrive,  a person  infinitely  rare  and  to  be
marvelled  at,  some  authentically  radiant young  girl who with one  fresh
glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot out those five
years of unwavering  devotion. I stayed late  that night, Gatsby asked me to
wait until  he was free,  and I lingered in the garden  until the inevitable
swimming party had run  up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until
the lights were  extinguished in the guest-rooms overhead. When he came down
the steps at last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face, and
his eyes were  bright and tired. "She  didn't like it," he said immediately.
"Of course she did."  "She didn't like it,"  he insisted. "She didn't have a
good time." He was  silent, and I  guessed at his unutterable depression. "I
feel  far away from her," he said. "It's hard to make her  understand." "You
mean about the dance?" "The dance?" He dismissed all the dances he had given
with a snap of his fingers. "Old sport, the dance is unimportant." He wanted
nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved
you."  After she had obliterated four years  with that  sentence  they could
decide upon the more practical measures to be taken.  One  of them was that,
after she was free, they were to go back to  Louisville and be  married from
her house--just as if it were five years ago.  "And she doesn't understand,"
he  said. "She  used to be  able to  understand. We'd sit for hours----"  He
broke off  and began to walk up and  down a desolate path of fruit rinds and
discarded favors and crushed  flowers. "I wouldn't ask too  much of  her," I
ventured.  "You  can't  repeat the past." "Can't  repeat the past?" he cried
incredulously. "Why of course you can!" He looked  around him wildly,  as if
the past  were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of
his hand. "I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said,
nodding determinedly. "She'll see."  He talked a  lot  about the past, and I
gathered that he wanted to recover  something, some idea of himself perhaps,
that had gone into  loving Daisy. His life had  been confused and disordered
since then, but if he could once return to a  certain starting place and  go
over it all slowly, he could find out what  that  thing was. . . . . . . One
autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the  street when
the leaves were falling, and they came to  a place where there were no trees
and the  sidewalk  was  white with moonlight. They stopped  here and  turned
toward each other. Now it was a cool night  with  that mysterious excitement
in it which comes at  the two changes of the year.  The quiet lights  in the
houses  were humming  out  into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle
among the stars. Out of the corner of  his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of
the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the
trees--he  could climb to it, if  he climbed alone, and once there he  could
suck  on the pap of  life, gulp down  the  incomparable milk of  wonder. His
heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came  up  to  his own. He
knew that when he  kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions
to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp  again  like the mind of
God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had
been  struck  upon  a  star.  Then he kissed  her. At  his  lips' touch  she
blossomed for him like  a  flower and the incarnation was  complete. Through
all he  said, even through  his appalling sentimentality, I  was reminded of
something--an  elusive  rhythm,  a  fragment of lost words, that I had heard
somewhere  a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take  shape in my
mouth and  my  lips  parted  like  a dumb man's,  as  though  there was more
struggling upon  them  than a wisp of startled air. But  they made no sound,
and what I had  almost  remembered was uncommunicable forever.  Chapter 7 It
was when curiosity about  Gatsby was at  its  highest that the lights in his
house failed to go on one Saturday night--and, as obscurely as it had begun,
his  career as Trimalchio was over.  Only gradually did  I become aware that
the automobiles which turned  expectantly into his drive  stayed  for just a
minute and then drove sulkily away. Wondering if he were sick I went over to
find out--an  unfamiliar  butler  with  a  villainous  face squinted  at  me
suspiciously from the  door. "Is Mr. Gatsby  sick?" "Nope." After a pause he
added "sir." in  a dilatory, grudging way. "I hadn't seen him  around, and I
was  rather  worried. Tell  him Mr. Carraway came  over." "Who?" he demanded
rudely.  "Carraway." "Carraway.  All  right,  I'll  tell  him." Abruptly  he
slammed  the door. My  Finn informed me  that  Gatsby  had  dismissed  every
servant in his house a week ago and replaced them with half a  dozen others,
who never  went into West  Egg Village to be bribed  by  the  tradesmen, but
ordered moderate supplies over the telephone. The  grocery boy reported that
the kitchen looked like a pigsty, and the general opinion in the village was
that the new people weren't servants at  all.  Next day  Gatsby called me on
the phone. "Going away?" I  inquired. "No, old sport." "I hear you fired all
your  servants."  "I wanted somebody  who wouldn't gossip. Daisy  comes over
quite often--in the afternoons." So the whole caravansary had fallen in like
a card house at the disapproval  in her eyes. "They're some people Wolfshiem
wanted to do  something for. They're all brothers  and sisters. They used to
run a small hotel." "I see." He was calling up  at  Daisy's request--would I
come to lunch  at her house  to-morrow?  Miss Baker would be there. Half  an
hour later Daisy  herself  telephoned and seemed relieved to find that I was
coming. Something was up. And  yet I couldn't believe that they would choose
this occasion for a scene--especially for the  rather  harrowing  scene that
Gatsby had outlined in the  garden. The  next day  was broiling, almost  the
last,  certainly the warmest, of the summer. As my  train emerged  from  the
tunnel into  sunlight, only the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company
broke the simmering hush at noon. The straw seats of  the car hovered on the
edge of  combustion; the woman next  to me  perspired delicately for a while
into  her white shirtwaist,  and then,  as her newspaper dampened under  her
fingers,  lapsed  despairingly  into  deep heat  with  a  desolate  cry. Her
pocket-book slapped to the floor. "Oh, my!" she  gasped. I picked it up with
a weary bend  and handed it back  to her,  holding it at arm's length and by
the  extreme  tip  of  the corners to indicate  that  I had no designs  upon
it--but every one near by, including  the woman, suspected me just the same.
"Hot!" said the conductor  to familiar faces.  "Some weather! hot! hot! hot!
Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it  . .  .  ?" My commutation ticket
came back to me with a dark stain from his hand. That any one should care in
this  heat whose flushed lips he  kissed, whose  head made  damp  the pajama
pocket over his heart! . . . Through the hall of the Buchanans' house blew a
faint wind, carrying the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as
we  waited  at  the  door.  "The master's body!"  roared the butler into the
mouthpiece. "I'm sorry, madame, but we can't furnish it--it's far too hot to
touch this noon!" What he really said  was: "Yes . .  . yes . . . I'll see."
He set down the  receiver and  came toward us, glistening slightly,  to take
our  stiff  straw  hats.  "Madame  expects  you in  the  salon!"  he  cried,
needlessly indicating the direction. In this heat every extra gesture was an
affront  to the common  store of life. The room, shadowed well with awnings,
was dark and cool. Daisy and Jordan  lay upon an enormous couch, like silver
idols  weighing down  their own white dresses against the  singing breeze of
the  fans. "We can't  move," they  said together. Jordan's fingers, powdered
white over their tan, rested for a moment in mine. "And Mr. Thomas Buchanan,
the athlete?" I inquired. Simultaneously I heard his  voice, gruff, muffled,
husky, at  the hall  telephone. Gatsby stood in  the  centre of  the crimson
carpet and gazed around with fascinated eyes. Daisy watched him and laughed,
her sweet, exciting  laugh; a tiny gust of powder rose  from her bosom  into
the air.  "The  rumor is," whispered  Jordan, "that that's Tom's girl on the
telephone." We were silent. The voice  in the hall rose high with annoyance:
"Very  well, then, I won't  sell you the car  at  all. .  . . I'm  under  no
obligations to you at all .  . . and  as for your bothering  me about it  at
lunch time, I  won't stand that at  all!" "Holding down the  receiver," said
Daisy cynically. "No, he's  not,"  I assured  her. "It's a bona-fide deal. I
happen to know about it." Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space for
a moment with his thick  body, and hurried  into the room.  "Mr. Gatsby!" He
put out his broad, flat hand with well-concealed dislike. "I'm  glad  to see
you, sir. . . . Nick. . . ." "Make us a cold drink," cried Daisy. As he left
the room again she got up and went over  to Gatsby and pulled his face down,
kissing him on  the  mouth. "You know I love you," she murmured. "You forget
there's a lady present,"  said Jordan.  Daisy looked around doubtfully. "You
kiss Nick  too." "What a low, vulgar girl!" "I don't care!" cried Daisy, and
began to clog on the brick fireplace. Then she  remembered the heat and  sat
down guiltily  on  the  couch just as a  freshly laundered  nurse leading  a
little girl came  into the room. "Bles-sed pre-cious," she crooned,  holding
out  her  arms.  "Come  to your own  mother  that  loves  you."  The  child,
relinquished by the nurse, rushed  across the room and rooted shyly into her
mother's dress. "The bles-sed  pre-cious! Did mother get powder on  your old
yellowy hair? Stand up now, and say--How-de-do." Gatsby and I in turn leaned
down and took the small, reluctant hand. Afterward  he kept  looking  at the
child  with  surprise.  I don't think he  had ever  really believed  in  its
existence before. "I got dressed  before luncheon," said the  child, turning
eagerly to Daisy.  "That's because your mother wanted to  show you off." Her
face bent into the single wrinkle of the small, white neck. "You dream, you.
You absolute little dream." "Yes," admitted the child calmly. "Aunt Jordan's
got on a white dress too." "How do you  like mother's friends?" Daisy turned
her around so that she faced Gatsby. "Do you think they're pretty?" "Where's
Daddy?" "She doesn't look like her father," explained Daisy. "She looks like
me. She's got my hair and shape of the face." Daisy sat back upon the couch.
The  nurse  took a  step  forward  and  held  out her hand.  "Come,  Pammy."
"Good-by, sweetheart!" With a reluctant backward glance the well-disciplined
child held to her nurse's hand and was pulled out the door, just as Tom came
back, preceding four gin rickeys that clicked  full  of ice. Gatsby took  up
his drink. "They certainly look  cool,"  he said,  with visible  tension. We
drank  in  long, greedy swallows. "I read somewhere that the  sun's  getting
hotter  every year," said  Tom genially.  "It  seems  that pretty  soon  the
earth's  going  to  fall  into  the  sun--or  wait  a  minute--it's just the
opposite--the sun's getting colder every year. "Come  outside," he suggested
to Gatsby, "I'd like you to have a look  at the place." I went with them out
to  the veranda.  On the green Sound, stagnant  in the heat, one  small sail
crawled   slowly   toward  the  fresher  sea.  Gatsby's  eyes  followed   it
momentarily;  he  raised  his  hand  and pointed across  the bay. "I'm right
across from you." "So you  are." Our eyes lifted over  the rose-beds and the
hot lawn and the weedy refuse of the dog-days  along-shore. Slowly the white
wings of the boat moved against  the  blue  cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay
the  scalloped  ocean  and the  abounding blessed  isles. "There's sport for
you," said  Tom, nodding. "I'd like  to be out there with him for  about  an
hour." We  had luncheon in the dining-room,  darkened  too against the heat,
and  drank down nervous gayety  with  the  cold  ale.  "What'll  we  do with
ourselves  this  afternoon?" cried Daisy,  "and the day after  that, and the
next thirty  years?"  "Don't be  morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over
again when it gets crisp in the fall." "But it's so hot," insisted Daisy, on
the verge of tears,  "and  everything's so confused. Let's all go  to town!"
Her voice struggled on through  the  heat,  beating  against it, molding its
senselessness into forms. "I've heard  of  making a garage out of a stable,"
Tom was  saying to Gatsby, "but I'm the first man who ever made a stable out
of  a  garage." "Who wants  to  go  to  town?"  demanded Daisy  insistently.
Gatsby's eyes floated toward her. "Ah," she cried, "you look so cool." Their
eyes met, and they stared  together  at  each other, alone in space. With an
effort  she glanced  down  at the  table.  "You  always  look so cool,"  she
repeated. She had told  him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was
astounded. His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and then back
at Daisy  as if he had just recognized her as some  one he  knew a long time
ago. "You resemble  the advertisement  of the man," she  went on innocently.
"You  know  the  advertisement  of the  man----" "All  right," broke in  Tom
quickly, "I'm perfectly willing to go to town.  Come on--we're all  going to
town." He  got up, his eyes still  flashing between  Gatsby and his wife. No
one  moved.  "Come  on!" His temper cracked  a  little.  "What's the matter,
anyhow? If we're going to town, let's  start."  His hand, trembling with his
effort  at  self-control,  bore to his  lips  the last of his glass  of ale.
Daisy's  voice got us  to our  feet and out on  to the blazing gravel drive.
"Are we just going to go?" she objected. "Like this? Aren't we  going to let
any one smoke a cigarette first?" "Everybody smoked all through lunch." "Oh,
let's have fun," she begged him. "It's too hot to  fuss." He didn't  answer.
"Have it your own way,"  she said. "Come on, Jordan." They went up-stairs to
get ready while we three men  stood there shuffling the hot pebbles with our
feet. A silver curve of the moon  hovered already in the western sky. Gatsby
started to speak, changed his mind, but not before Tom wheeled and faced him
expectantly. "Have  you got your stables here?" asked Gatsby with an effort.
"About a quarter of a mile down the road." "Oh."  A pause. "I don't see  the
idea of going to town," broke out Tom savagely. "Women get  these notions in
their  heads----"  "Shall we take anything to drink?" called  Daisy from  an
upper  window. "I'll get some whiskey," answered Tom. He went inside. Gatsby
turned to me rigidly: "I can't say anything in his house, old sport." "She's
got an indiscreet voice,"  I remarked. "It's full of----" I hesitated.  "Her
voice is full of money," he said suddenly. That was it. I'd never understood
before. It was full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and
fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . high in a white
palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . . Tom came out of the house
wrapping a quart  bottle  in a towel,  followed by Daisy and Jordan  wearing
small tight hats of metallic cloth and carrying light capes over their arms.
"Shall  we all  go in my car?"  suggested Gatsby. He  felt  the  hot,  green
leather of the seat. "I ought to have left it in the shade." "Is it standard
shift?" demanded Tom. "Yes." "Well, you take my coupe  and let me drive your
car  to town."  The suggestion was distasteful  to Gatsby.  "I  don't  think
there's much gas," he objected. "Plenty of gas,"  said Tom boisterously.  He
looked at the gauge. "And if it runs out I can stop at a drug-store. You can
buy  anything  at a drug-store  nowadays."  A pause followed this apparently
pointless   remark.  Daisy  looked  at  Tom  frowning,  and  an  indefinable
expression, at once definitely unfamiliar  and vaguely recognizable, as if I
had only  heard it  described in words, passed over Gatsby's face. "Come on,
Daisy," said Tom, pressing her with his hand toward Gatsby's car. "I'll take
you in this circus wagon." He  opened the  door, but  she moved out from the
circle  of  his  arm.  "You  take Nick and  Jordan. We'll follow you  in the
coupe." She walked close  to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand. Jordan
and Tom  and I  got  into  the  front seat of  Gatsby's car, Tom  pushed the
unfamiliar gears  tentatively,  and we shot  off into  the  oppressive heat,
leaving them  out of  sight behind. "Did you see that?"  demanded Tom.  "See
what?" He  looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and I  must have known
all along. "You  think I'm pretty dumb, don't you?" he suggested. "Perhaps I
am,  but I have a--almost  a  second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to
do. Maybe you don't believe that, but  science----" He paused. The immediate
contingency overtook him, pulled  him back from the edge  of the theoretical
abyss. "I've  made a  small investigation  of this fellow," he continued. "I
could  have gone  deeper  if I'd  known----" "Do you  mean  you've been to a
medium?" inquired Jordan humorously. "What?" Confused, he stared at us as we
laughed.  "A medium?" "About Gatsby." "About Gatsby!  No, I  haven't. I said
I'd been making a small investigation of his past." "And you found he was an
Oxford man," said  Jordan helpfully. "An  Oxford  man!" He  was incredulous.
"Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit." "Nevertheless he's  an Oxford man."
"Oxford, New  Mexico," snorted Tom contemptuously, "or something like that."
"Listen, Tom. If  you're  such a snob, why  did you  invite  him  to lunch?"
demanded Jordan  crossly. "Daisy invited him; she  knew him before  we  were
married--God  knows where!" We were all irritable now  with the  fading ale,
and  aware  of  it  we drove for a  while in silence. Then  as Doctor T.  J.
Eckleburg's faded eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered  Gatsby's
caution about gasoline. "We've got enough to get us to town," said Tom. "But
there's a garage right here," objected Jordan. "I don't want to  get stalled
in this baking heat."  Tom threw on both brakes impatiently, and we  slid to
an abrupt dusty stop  under Wilson's sign.  After  a  moment the  proprietor
emerged from the interior of  his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at the
car. "Let's have some gas!" cried Tom roughly. "What do you think we stopped
for--to admire the view?" "I'm sick," said Wilson without moving. "Been sick
all  day."  "What's the matter?" "I'm all run  down."  "Well,  shall  I help
myself?" Tom  demanded.  "You  sounded  well  enough on the  phone." With an
effort Wilson left the shade and support of the doorway and, breathing hard,
unscrewed the cap of the tank. In the sunlight his face was green. "I didn't
mean to interrupt your lunch," he said. "But I need money  pretty bad, and I
was wondering what you were going to do with your old car." "How do you like
this one?" inquired Tom. "I bought  it last week." "It's a nice yellow one,"
said Wilson, as he strained  at the handle.  "Like to buy it?" "Big chance,"
Wilson smiled faintly. "No, but I could make some money on the other." "What
do you want money for, all of a sudden?" "I've been here too long. I want to
get away. My  wife and I want to go West." "Your  wife does," exclaimed Tom,
startled. "She's  been talking  about it for ten  years."  He rested  for  a
moment against the pump,  shading his eyes. "And now she's going whether she
wants to or not. I'm going to get her  away." The coupe flashed by us with a
flurry of dust and the flash of a waving hand. "What do I owe you?" demanded
Tom  harshly.  "I  just got wised  up to something funny the last two days,"
remarked Wilson. "That's why I want to get away. That's why I been bothering
you about  the  car."  "What do I owe you?" "Dollar twenty."  The relentless
beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had a bad moment there before
I realized that  so  far  his  suspicions  hadn't alighted on  Tom.  He  had
discovered that Myrtle had  some  sort of life  apart  from him  in  another
world,  and the shock had made him physically sick. I stared at him and then
at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less  than  an hour before--and it
occurred to me  that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or
race, so profound as the difference  between the  sick and the well.  Wilson
was so sick that he  looked  guilty, unforgivably guilty--as  if he had just
got some poor girl with child. "I'll let you have that car," said Tom. "I'll
send  it  over  to-morrow  afternoon."  That  locality  was  always  vaguely
disquieting, even in  the broad glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head
as though I had been warned of something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant
eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept  their vigil, but  I perceived, after  a
moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity  from less
than twenty feet away. In one of  the  windows over the garage  the curtains
had been moved  aside  a little,  and Myrtle Wilson was  peering down at the
car.  So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being  observed,
and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly
developing  picture.  Her  expression  was  curiously  familiar--it  was  an
expression I had often seen on women's faces, but on Myrtle Wilson's face it
seemed purposeless and  inexplicable until  I realized that her  eyes,  wide
with jealous terror,  were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan  Baker,  whom she
took to be his wife.  There is no confusion like the  confusion of a  simple
mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips  of panic. His wife
and  his  mistress, until an  hour ago secure  and  inviolate, were slipping
precipitately from his control.  Instinct  made  him step on the accelerator
with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving  Wilson  behind, and
we sped  along toward  Astoria at  fifty  miles  an  hour, until,  among the
spidery  girders of the elevated, we came  in sight  of the easy-going  blue
coupe. "Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool," suggested Jordan.
"I  love  New  York  on  summer  afternoons when  every one's away.  There's
something very sensuous about it--overripe,  as if all sorts of funny fruits
were going  to fall into your hands." The word "sensuous" had  the effect of
further disquieting Tom, but before he could invent a protest the coupe came
to a stop, and Daisy signaled us to draw up alongside. "Where are we going?"
she cried. "How about the movies?" "It's so  hot," she complained.  "You go.
We'll ride around and meet you after." With an effort her wit  rose faintly,
"We'll meet you on some corner. I'll be the man smoking two cigarettes." "We
can't argue about it here,"  Tom  said impatiently, as  a  truck  gave out a
cursing whistle behind us. "You follow me to the south side of Central Park,
in front of the Plaza." Several times he turned his head and looked back for
their car, and if the traffic delayed them he slowed up until they came into
sight. I think he was afraid they would dart  down a side  street and out of
his life forever. But they didn't. And we all  took the less explicable step
of  engaging the  parlor of a suite  in the Plaza Hotel.  The prolonged  and
tumultuous  argument that  ended by herding  us  into  that room eludes  me,
though  I have a  sharp physical  memory  that,  in the  course  of  it,  my
underwear kept climbing  like a damp  snake around  my legs and intermittent
beads of sweat raced cool across my back. The notion originated with Daisy's
suggestion  that  we  hire five bath-rooms  and  take  cold  baths, and then
assumed more  tangible form as "a  place  to  have a mint julep." Each of us
said over and  over that it was a "crazy  idea."--we all talked at once to a
baffled clerk and thought, or pretended  to think,  that  we were being very
funny.  . . . The  room was large and stifling,  and, though it  was already
four o'clock, opening the windows admitted Only a gust of hot shrubbery from
the Park. Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to us, fixing her
hair. "It's  a  swell suite," whispered  Jordan respectfully,  and every one
laughed. "Open  another  window,"  commanded Daisy, without turning  around.
"There aren't  any more." "Well, we'd  better telephone for an axe----" "The
thing to do is to forget about the heat," said Tom impatiently. "You make it
ten times worse  by  crabbing about  it." He  unrolled the bottle of whiskey
from the towel and put it on the table.  "Why not let her alone, old sport?"
remarked Gatsby. "You're the  one that  wanted to come to town." There was a
moment  of silence. The telephone book slipped from its nail and splashed to
the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered, "Excuse me."--but  this time  no  one
laughed. "I'll pick it  up," I offered. "I've got it."  Gatsby examined  the
parted string, muttered "Hum!" in an interested way, and tossed the book  on
a  chair. "That's a great expression of yours, isn't  it?" said Tom sharply.
"What is?" "All  this 'old  sport' business. Where'd you pick that up?" "Now
see here, Tom," said Daisy, turning around from the mirror, "if you're going
to make personal remarks I won't stay here a minute. Call  up and order some
ice for the mint julep."  As Tom  took  up  the receiver the compressed heat
exploded  into sound  and we  were  listening to  the  portentous chords  of
Mendelssohn's Wedding  March  from  the  ballroom  below.  "Imagine marrying
anybody  in this heat!" cried  Jordan dismally. "Still--I was married in the
middle  of June,"  Daisy remembered, "Louisville  in June! Somebody fainted.
Who was  it  fainted,  Tom?"  "Biloxi,"  he answered  shortly. "A man  named
Biloxi. 'blocks' Biloxi, and he  made boxes--that's a  fact--and he was from
Biloxi,  Tennessee." "They  carried  him into  my  house,"  appended Jordan,
"because we lived just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks,
until Daddy told him he had  to get out. The day  after he left Daddy died."
After a moment she  added  as if she might have  sounded  irreverent, "There
wasn't  any  connection."  "I used to  know a Bill Biloxi  from  Memphis," I
remarked. "That was  his cousin.  I knew  his whole family history before he
left. He gave me an aluminum putter  that I use to-day."  The music had died
down as the ceremony began and now a  long  cheer floated  in at the window,
followed by intermittent cries of  "Yea-ea-ea!" and  finally  by a  burst of
jazz as the dancing began. "We're  getting  old,"  said  Daisy. "If we  were
young we'd rise and dance."  "Remember Biloxi," Jordan  warned her. "Where'd
you know him, Tom?" "Biloxi?" He concentrated with an effort. "I didn't know
him. He was a friend of Daisy's." "He was not," she denied. "I'd never  seen
him before. He came down in the private car." "Well, he said he knew you. He
said he was raised in  Louisville. Asa Bird brought him  around at  the last
minute and asked if we  had room for  him."  Jordan smiled. "He was probably
bumming his way  home. He told me he was  president of your class  at Yale."
Tom and  I looked at each other blankly.  "Biloxi?" "First  place, we didn't
have any president----" Gatsby's foot beat  a short, restless tattoo and Tom
eyed him  suddenly. "By the  way, Mr.  Gatsby, I understand you're an Oxford
man." "Not  exactly." "Oh,  yes,  I understand you went to  Oxford." "Yes--I
went there." A pause. Then Tom's voice, incredulous and insulting: "You must
have gone there about the time Biloxi went to  New  Haven." Another pause. A
waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint  and  ice  but, the silence was
unbroken  by  his  "thank you." and  the  soft  closing  of the  door.  This
tremendous  detail was to be cleared up at last. "I  told you I went there,"
said  Gatsby.  "I  heard  you,  but  I'd like  to  know when."  "It  was  in
nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That's why I can't really call
myself  an  Oxford  man." Tom  glanced  around to  see  if  we mirrored  his
unbelief. But we were all  looking at Gatsby. "It was  an  opportunity  they
gave to some of the officers after the  Armistice," he continued.  "We could
go to any of the universities in England or France." I wanted to  get up and
slap him on the back.  I had  one of those renewals of complete faith in him
that  I'd experienced before. Daisy rose,  smiling faintly, and  went to the
table.  "Open  the whiskey, Tom," she ordered,  "and  I'll  make you  a mint
julep. Then you won't seem so stupid  to yourself. . . . Look at  the mint!"
"Wait a minute,"  snapped Tom, "I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more question."
"Go on," Gatsby said politely. "What kind of a row  are you trying  to cause
in my house  anyhow?"  They  were out in  the  open at  last and  Gatsby was
content.  "He isn't causing a row." Daisy looked desperately from one to the
other.  "You're   causing  a  row.  Please  have  a  little   self-control."
"Self-control!" Repeated Tom incredulously.  "I  suppose the latest thing is
to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if
that's  the  idea you  can  count me  out. . .  .  Nowadays  people begin by
sneering at  family  life and  family  institutions, and next  they'll throw
everything  overboard  and  have  intermarriage  between  black and  white."
Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the
last  barrier of civilization.  "We're all white here,"  murmured Jordan. "I
know I'm not very popular. I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got to
make  your house into a  pigsty in order  to have any friends--in the modern
world." Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh  whenever  he
opened his mouth. The  transition  from libertine to  prig was so  complete.
"I've  got something to  tell YOU,  old  sport----" began  Gatsby. But Daisy
guessed  at  his  intention. "Please  don't!"  she  interrupted  helplessly.
"Please let's all go home. Why don't  we all go home?" "That's a good idea."
I got up. "Come on, Tom.  Nobody  wants  a drink." "I want to know  what Mr.
Gatsby has to tell me." "Your wife  doesn't  love  you," said Gatsby. "She's
never  loved  you.  She loves  me."  "You  must  be  crazy!"  exclaimed  Tom
automatically. Gatsby sprang to  his feet, vivid with excitement. "She never
loved you,  do you hear?" he cried. "She only married you because I was poor
and she was tired of waiting  for  me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her
heart she never loved  any one except me!"  At this point Jordan and I tried
to  go, but  Tom  and  Gatsby  insisted  with competitive firmness  that  we
remain--as though neither of them had anything  to conceal and it would be a
privilege to partake vicariously of their emotions. "Sit down, Daisy," Tom's
voice groped unsuccessfully for the paternal note. "What's been going on?  I
want to hear all about it." "I told you what's been  going on," said Gatsby.
"Going on for five years--and you didn't know." Tom turned to Daisy sharply.
"You've been seeing this fellow for five years?"  "Not seeing," said Gatsby.
"No, we couldn't  meet. But both of us loved each other all  that time,  old
sport,  and  you didn't know. I  used to laugh sometimes."--but there was no
laughter in his eyes----"  to think that you didn't know." "Oh--that's all."
Tom tapped his  thick fingers together  like  a clergyman and leaned back in
his chair. "You're crazy!"  he exploded. "I  can't speak about what happened
five  years ago, because I didn't know  Daisy then--and  I'll be damned if I
see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the
back door.  But all the rest of that's a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when
she married  me and she loves me now." "No,"  said Gatsby, shaking his head.
"She does, though. The trouble is  that sometimes she gets foolish ideas  in
her  head and doesn't know what she's  doing." He nodded sagely. "And what's
more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go  off on a spree and make a fool
of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time."
"You're revolting," said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice, dropping an
octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: "Do you know why we left
Chicago? I'm surprised  that  they  didn't  treat  you to the  story of that
little spree." Gatsby walked over and stood  beside her. "Daisy,  that's all
over now," he said earnestly. "It doesn't matter any more. Just tell him the
truth--that you never loved him--and it's all wiped out forever." She looked
at  him blindly. "Why--how could I  love  him--possibly?" "You  never  loved
him." She  hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a  sort of appeal,
as  though she realized at  last what  she  was doing--and as though she had
never,  all along, intended doing anything at all. But  it  was done now. It
was  too late. "I never  loved him," she said,  with perceptible reluctance.
"Not  at Kapiolani?" demanded Tom suddenly. "No." From the ballroom beneath,
muffled and  suffocating chords were  drifting up on hot waves of air.  "Not
that day I carried you  down  from the Punch Bowl to keep your  shoes  dry?"
There was a husky tenderness in his tone. . . . "Daisy?" "Please don't." Her
voice was  cold,  but the rancor was gone  from it.  She looked  at  Gatsby.
"There, Jay," she said--but her hand as she  tried to light a  cigarette was
trembling.  Suddenly she  threw the  cigarette  and the burning match on the
carpet. "Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now--isn't
that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly.  "I did
love  him once--but I loved you too." Gatsby's eyes  opened and closed. "You
loved  me  TOO?"  he repeated. "Even that's a lie," said Tom savagely.  "She
didn't know you were alive. Why--there're things  between Daisy and  me that
you'll never  know, things that neither  of us can ever  forget." The  words
seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.  "I want to speak to Daisy alone," he
insisted. "She's all excited now----" "Even alone I can't say  I never loved
Tom," she admitted in a pitiful voice. "It wouldn't  be true." "Of course it
wouldn't," agreed Tom. She  turned to  her husband. "As if  it  mattered  to
you," she  said. "Of course it matters. I'm going to take better care of you
from now on."  "You don't understand,"  said Gatsby,  with a touch of panic.
"You're  not going to take care of her  any more." "I'm not?" Tom opened his
eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to control himself now. "Why's that?"
"Daisy's leaving  you." "Nonsense." "I am, though," she  said with a visible
effort. "She's not  leaving  me!"  Tom's words  suddenly  leaned  down  over
Gatsby. "Certainly not for a common swindler who'd have to steal the ring he
put on her finger." "I won't stand this!" cried Daisy. "Oh, please let's get
out." "Who are you,  anyhow?" broke out Tom. "You're one  of that bunch that
hangs  around with Meyer Wolfshiem--that  much I happen to know. I've made a
little   investigation   into  your  affairs--and   I'll  carry  it  further
to-morrow." "You  can  suit  yourself about that,  old  sport."  said Gatsby
steadily. "I  found out  what your  'drug-stores' were." He turned to us and
spoke  rapidly.  "He and  this  Wolfshiem  bought up  a  lot  of side-street
drug-stores here  and in Chicago and  sold  grain alcohol over  the counter.
That's one  of his little  stunts.  I picked  him for a bootlegger the first
time I  saw  him,  and I  wasn't  far wrong."  "What about it?"  said Gatsby
politely. "I guess your friend Walter Chase wasn't too  proud to come in  on
it." "And you left him in the lurch, didn't  you? You let him go to jail for
a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear  Walter on the subject of
YOU." "He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old
sport."  "Don't you  call me 'old sport'!" cried Tom.  Gatsby  said nothing.
"Walter could have you up on the  betting laws too, but Wolfshiem scared him
into  shutting his  mouth." That  unfamiliar yet  recognizable look was back
again  in  Gatsby's face. "That drug-store business was just  small change,"
continued Tom  slowly, "but you've got something on now that Walter's afraid
to  tell  me about." I glanced  at  Daisy, who was staring terrified between
Gatsby and her husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible
but absorbing  object  on  the  tip of  her  chin.  Then  I  turned back  to
Gatsby--and was  startled a