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  <title-info>
   <genre>prose_classic</genre>
   <author>
    <first-name>Francis</first-name>
    <middle-name>Scott Key</middle-name>
    <last-name>Fitzgerald</last-name>
   </author>
   <book-title>The Great Gatsby</book-title>
   <annotation>
    <p>Set in the post-Great War Long Is­land/New York world of the rich. The nar­ra­tor, Nick Car­raway, sym­pa­thet­i­cally records the pathos of Gatsby’s ro­man­tic dream which founders on the re­al­ity of cor­rup­tion, the in­su­lated self­ish­ness of Tom and Daisy, and the cut­ting edge of vi­o­lence.</p>
   </annotation>
   <date value="1925-01-01">1925</date>
   <lang>en</lang>
  </title-info>
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    <nickname>Sclex</nickname>
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   <date value="2009-07-03">2009-07-03</date>
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    <p>Эта книга есть в виде сканов на <a l:href="http://books.google.com/">http://books.google.com</a> (даже в нескольких вариантах), поэтому, пожалуйста, сверяйтесь, если будете вносить изменения в текст.</p>
    <p>Version 1.0—making FB2 from RTF v1.5 from irc.undernet.org, #bookz by Sclex.</p>
    <p>Version 1.1—readcheck by Sclex.</p>
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 <body>
  <title>
   <p>Francis Scott Fitzgerald</p>
   <p>The Great Gatsby</p>
  </title>
  <section>
   <title>
    <p>CHAPTER I</p>
   </title>
   <p>In my younger and more vul­ner­a­ble years my fa­ther gave me some ad­vice that I’ve been turn­ing over in my mind ever since.</p>
   <p>“When­ever you feel like crit­i­ciz­ing any one,” he told me, “just re­mem­ber that all the peo­ple in this world haven’t had the ad­van­tages that you’ve had.”</p>
   <p>He didn’t say any more, but we’ve al­ways been un­usu­ally com­mu­nica­tive in a re­served way, and I un­der­stood that he meant a great deal more than that. In con­se­quence, I’m in­clined to re­serve all judg­ments, a habit that has opened up many cu­ri­ous na­tures to me and also made me the vic­tim of not a few vet­eran bores. The ab­nor­mal mind is quick to de­tect and at­tach it­self to this qual­ity when it ap­pears in a nor­mal per­son, and so it came about that in col­lege I was un­justly ac­cused of being a politi­cian, be­cause I was privy to the se­cret grief’s of wild, un­known men. Most of the con­fi­dences were un­sought—fre­quently I have feigned sleep, pre­oc­cu­pa­tion, or a hos­tile lev­ity when I re­al­ized by some un­mis­tak­able sign that an in­ti­mate rev­e­la­tion was quiv­er­ing on the hori­zon; for the in­ti­mate rev­e­la­tions of young men, or at least the terms in which they ex­press them, are usu­ally pla­gia­ris­tic and marred by ob­vi­ous sup­pres­sions. Re­serv­ing judg­ments is a mat­ter of in­fi­nite hope. I am still a lit­tle afraid of miss­ing some­thing if I for­get that, as my fa­ther snob­bishly sug­gested, and I snob­bishly re­peat, a sense of the fun­da­men­tal de­cen­cies is parceled out un­equally at birth.</p>
   <p>And, after boast­ing this way of my tol­er­ance, I come to the ad­mis­sion that it has a limit. Con­duct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a cer­tain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last au­tumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uni­form and at a sort of moral at­ten­tion for­ever; I wanted no more ri­otous ex­cur­sions with priv­i­leged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was ex­empt from my re­ac­tion—Gatsby, who rep­re­sented every­thing for which I have an un­af­fected scorn. If per­son­al­ity is an un­bro­ken se­ries of suc­cess­ful ges­tures, then there was some­thing gor­geous about him; some height­ened sen­si­tiv­ity to the promises of life, as if he were re­lated to one of those in­tri­cate ma­chines that reg­is­ter earth­quakes ten thou­sand miles away. This re­spon­sive­ness had noth­ing to do with that flabby im­pres­sion­abil­ity which is dig­ni­fied under the name of the “cre­ative tem­pera­ment”—it was an ex­tra­or­di­nary gift for hope, a ro­man­tic readi­ness such as I have never found in any other per­son and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that tem­porar­ily closed out my in­ter­est in the abortive sor­rows and short-winded ela­tions of men.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>My fam­ily has been promi­nent, well-to-do peo­ple in this Mid­dle West­ern city for three gen­er­a­tions. The Car­raways are some­thing of a clan, and we have a tra­di­tion that we’re de­scended from the Dukes of Buc­cleuch, but the ac­tual founder of my line was my grand­fa­ther’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a sub­sti­tute to the Civil War, and started the ’J ’whole­sale hard­ware busi­ness that my fa­ther car­ries on to-day.</p>
   <p>I never saw this great-un­cle, but I’m sup­posed to look like him—with spe­cial ref­er­ence to the rather hard­boiled paint­ing that hangs in fa­ther’s of­fice. I grad­u­ated from New Haven in 1915, just a quar­ter of a cen­tury after my fa­ther, and a lit­tle later I par­tic­i­pated in that de­layed Teu­tonic mi­gra­tion known as the Great War. I en­joyed the counter-raid so thor­oughly that I came back rest­less. In­stead of being the warm cen­ter of the world, the Mid­dle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the uni­verse—so I de­cided to go East and learn the bond busi­ness. Every­body I knew was in the bond busi­ness, so I sup­posed it could sup­port one more sin­gle man. All my aunts and un­cles talked it over as if they were choos­ing a prep school for me, and fi­nally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hes­i­tant faces. Fa­ther agreed to fi­nance me for a year, and after var­i­ous de­lays I came East, per­ma­nently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.</p>
   <p>The prac­ti­cal thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm sea­son, and I had just left a coun­try of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the of­fice sug­gested that we take a house to­gether in a com­mut­ing town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten card­board bun­ga­low at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm or­dered him to Wash­ing­ton, and I went out to the coun­try alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked break­fast and mut­tered Finnish wis­dom to her­self over the elec­tric stove.</p>
   <p>It was lonely for a day or so until one morn­ing some man, more re­cently ar­rived than I, stopped me on the road.</p>
   <p>“How do you get to West Egg vil­lage?” he asked help­lessly.</p>
   <p>I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an orig­i­nal set­tler. He had ca­su­ally con­ferred on me the free­dom of the neigh­bor­hood.</p>
   <p>And so with the sun­shine and the great bursts of leaves grow­ing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that fa­mil­iar con­vic­tion that life was be­gin­ning over again with the sum­mer.</p>
   <p>There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giv­ing air. I bought a dozen vol­umes on bank­ing and credit and in­vest­ment se­cu­ri­ties, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promis­ing to un­fold the shin­ing se­crets that only Midas and Mor­gan and Mae­ce­nas knew. And I had the high in­ten­tion of read­ing many other books be­sides. I was rather lit­er­ary in col­lege—one year I wrote a se­ries of very solemn and ob­vi­ous ed­i­to­ri­als for the <emphasis>Yale News</emphasis>—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and be­come again that most lim­ited of all spe­cial­ists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epi­gram—life is much more suc­cess­fully looked at from a sin­gle win­dow, after all.</p>
   <p>It was a mat­ter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest com­mu­ni­ties in North Amer­ica. It was on that slen­der ri­otous is­land which ex­tends it­self due east of New York—and where there are, among other nat­ural cu­riosi­ties, two un­usual for­ma­tions of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enor­mous eggs, iden­ti­cal in con­tour and sep­a­rated only by a cour­tesy bay, jut out into the most do­mes­ti­cated body of salt water in the West­ern hemi­sphere, the great wet barn­yard of Long Is­land Sound. They are not per­fect ovals—like the egg in the Colum­bus story, they are both crushed flat at the con­tact end—but their phys­i­cal re­sem­blance must be a source of per­pet­ual con­fu­sion to the gulls that fly over­head. To the wing­less a more ar­rest­ing phe­nom­e­non is their dis­sim­i­lar­ity in every par­tic­u­lar ex­cept shape and size.</p>
   <p>I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fash­ion­able of the two, though this is a most su­per­fi­cial tag to ex­press the bizarre and not a lit­tle sin­is­ter con­trast be­tween them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed be­tween two huge places that rented for twelve or fif­teen thou­sand a sea­son. The one on my right was a colos­sal af­fair by any stan­dard—it was a fac­tual im­i­ta­tion of some Hotel de Ville in Nor­mandy, with a tower on one side, spank­ing new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a mar­ble swim­ming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and gar­den. It was Gatsby’s man­sion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a man­sion, in­hab­ited by a gen­tle­man of that name. My own house was an eye­sore, but it was a small eye­sore, and it had been over­looked, so I had a view of the water, a par­tial view of my neigh­bor’s lawn, and the con­sol­ing prox­im­ity of mil­lion­aires—all for eighty dol­lars a month.</p>
   <p>Across the cour­tesy bay the white palaces of fash­ion­able East Egg glit­tered along the water, and the his­tory of the sum­mer re­ally be­gins on the evening I drove over there to have din­ner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my sec­ond cousin once re­moved, and I’d known Tom in col­lege. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.</p>
   <p>Her hus­band, among var­i­ous phys­i­cal ac­com­plish­ments, had been one of the most pow­er­ful ends that ever played foot­ball at New Haven—a na­tional fig­ure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute lim­ited ex­cel­lence at twenty-one that every­thing af­ter­ward sa­vors of an­ti­cli­max. His fam­ily were enor­mously wealthy—even in col­lege his free­dom with money was a mat­ter for re­proach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fash­ion that rather took your breath away; for in­stance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake For­est. It was hard to re­al­ize that a man in my own gen­er­a­tion was wealthy enough to do that.</p>
   <p>Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son, and then drifted here and there un­rest­fully wher­ever peo­ple played polo and were rich to­gether. This was a per­ma­nent move, said Daisy over the tele­phone, but I didn’t be­lieve it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on for­ever seek­ing, a lit­tle wist­fully, for the dra­matic tur­bu­lence of some ir­recov­er­able foot­ball game.</p>
   <p>And so it hap­pened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elab­o­rate than I ex­pected, a cheer­ful red-and-white Geor­gian Colo­nial man­sion, over­look­ing the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran to­ward the front door for a quar­ter of a mile, jump­ing over sun­di­als and brick walks and burn­ing gar­dens—fi­nally when it reached the house drift­ing up the side in bright vines as though from the mo­men­tum of its run. The front was bro­ken by a line of French win­dows, glow­ing now with re­flected gold and wide open to the warm windy af­ter­noon, and Tom Buchanan in rid­ing clothes was stand­ing with his legs apart on the front porch.</p>
   <p>He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a su­per­cil­ious man­ner. Two shin­ing ar­ro­gant eyes had es­tab­lished dom­i­nance over his face and gave him the ap­pear­ance of al­ways lean­ing ag­gres­sively for­ward. Not even the ef­fem­i­nate swank of his rid­ing clothes could hide the enor­mous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glis­ten­ing boots until he strained the top lac­ing, and you could see a great pack of mus­cle shift­ing when his shoul­der moved under his thin coat. It was a body ca­pa­ble of enor­mous lever­age—a cruel body.</p>
   <p>His speak­ing voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the im­pres­sion of frac­tious­ness he con­veyed. There was a touch of pa­ter­nal con­tempt in it, even to­ward peo­ple he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.</p>
   <p>“Now, don’t think my opin­ion on these mat­ters is final,” he seemed to say, “just be­cause I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same se­nior so­ci­ety, and while we were never in­ti­mate I al­ways had the im­pres­sion that he ap­proved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, de­fi­ant wist­ful­ness of his own.</p>
   <p>We talked for a few min­utes on the sunny porch.</p>
   <p>“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flash­ing about rest­lessly.</p>
   <p>Turn­ing me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, in­clud­ing in its sweep a sunken Ital­ian gar­den, a half acre of deep, pun­gent roses, and a snub-nosed mo­tor­boat that bumped the tide off­shore.</p>
   <p>“It be­longed to De­maine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, po­litely and abruptly. “We’ll go in­side.”</p>
   <p>We walked through a high hall­way into a bright rosy-col­ored space, frag­ilely bound into the house by French win­dows at ei­ther end. The win­dows were ajar and gleam­ing white against the fresh grass out­side that seemed to grow a lit­tle way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew cur­tains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twist­ing them up to­ward the frosted wed­ding-cake of the ceil­ing, and then rip­pled over the wine-col­ored rug, mak­ing a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.</p>
   <p>The only com­pletely sta­tion­ary ob­ject in the room was an enor­mous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an an­chored bal­loon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rip­pling and flut­ter­ing as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few mo­ments lis­ten­ing to the whip and snap of the cur­tains and the groan of a pic­ture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear win­dows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the cur­tains and the rugs and the two young women bal­looned slowly to the floor.</p>
   <p>The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was ex­tended full length at her end of the divan, com­pletely mo­tion­less, and with her chin raised a lit­tle, as if she were bal­anc­ing some­thing on it, which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the cor­ner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—in­deed, I was al­most sur­prised into mur­mur­ing an apol­ogy for hav­ing dis­turbed her by com­ing in.</p>
   <p>The other girl, Daisy, made an at­tempt to rise—she leaned slightly for­ward with a con­sci­en­tious ex­pres­sion—then she laughed, an ab­surd, charm­ing lit­tle laugh, and I laughed too and came for­ward into the room.</p>
   <p>“I’m p-par­a­lyzed with hap­pi­ness.”</p>
   <p>She laughed again, as if she said some­thing very witty, and held my hand for a mo­ment, look­ing up into my face, promis­ing that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a mur­mur that the sur­name of the bal­anc­ing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s mur­mur was only to make peo­ple lean to­ward her; an ir­rel­e­vant crit­i­cism that made it no less charm­ing.)</p>
   <p>At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips flut­tered, she nod­ded at me al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the ob­ject she was bal­anc­ing had ob­vi­ously tot­tered a lit­tle and given her some­thing of a fright. Again a sort of apol­ogy arose to my lips. Al­most any ex­hi­bi­tion of com­plete self-suf­fi­ciency draws a stunned trib­ute from me.</p>
   <p>I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me ques­tions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear fol­lows up and down, as if each speech is an arrange­ment of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright pas­sion­ate mouth, but there was an ex­cite­ment in her voice that men who had cared for her found dif­fi­cult to for­get: a singing com­pul­sion, a whis­pered “Lis­ten,” a promise that she had done gay, ex­cit­ing things just a while since and that there were gay, ex­cit­ing things hov­er­ing in the next hour.</p>
   <p>I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen peo­ple had sent their love through me.</p>
   <p>“Do they miss me?” she cried ec­sta­t­i­cally.</p>
   <p>“The whole town is des­o­late. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourn­ing wreath, and there’s a per­sis­tent wail all night along the north shore.”</p>
   <p>“How gor­geous! Let’s go back, Tom. To-mor­row!” Then she added ir­rel­e­vantly: “You ought to see the baby.”</p>
   <p>“I’d like to.”</p>
   <p>“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”</p>
   <p>“Never.”</p>
   <p>“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”</p>
   <p>Tom Buchanan, who had been hov­er­ing rest­lessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoul­der.</p>
   <p>“What you doing, Nick?”</p>
   <p>“I’m a bond man.”</p>
   <p>“Who with?”</p>
   <p>I told him.</p>
   <p>“Never heard of them,” he re­marked de­ci­sively.</p>
   <p>This an­noyed me.</p>
   <p>“You will,” I an­swered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glanc­ing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for some­thing more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live any­where else.”</p>
   <p>At this point Miss Baker said: “Ab­solutely!” with such sud­den­ness that I started—it was the first word she had ut­tered since I came into the room. Ev­i­dently it sur­prised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a se­ries of rapid, deft move­ments stood up into the room.</p>
   <p>“I’m stiff,” she com­plained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can re­mem­ber.”</p>
   <p>“Don’t look at me,” Daisy re­torted, “I’ve been try­ing to get you to New York all af­ter­noon.”</p>
   <p>“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cock­tails just in from the pantry, “I’m ab­solutely in train­ing.”</p>
   <p>Her host looked at her in­cred­u­lously. “You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bot­tom of a glass. “How you ever get any­thing done is be­yond me.”</p>
   <p>I looked at Miss Baker, won­der­ing what it was she “got done.” I en­joyed look­ing at her. She was a slen­der, small-breasted girl, with an erect car­riage, which she ac­cen­tu­ated by throw­ing her body back­ward at the shoul­ders like a young cadet. Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with po­lite rec­i­p­ro­cal cu­rios­ity out of a wan, charm­ing, dis­con­tented face. It oc­curred to me now that I had seen her, or a pic­ture of her, some­where be­fore.</p>
   <p>“You live in West Egg,” she re­marked con­temp­tu­ously. “I know some­body there.”</p>
   <p>“I don’t know a sin­gle—”</p>
   <p>“You must know Gatsby.”</p>
   <p>“Gatsby?” de­manded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”</p>
   <p>Be­fore I could reply that he was my neigh­bor din­ner was an­nounced; wedg­ing his tense arm im­per­a­tively under mine, Tom Buchanan com­pelled me from the room as though he were mov­ing a checker to an­other square.</p>
   <p>Slen­derly, lan­guidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women pre­ceded us out onto a rosy-col­ored porch, open to­ward the sun­set, where four can­dles flick­ered on the table in the di­min­ished wind.</p>
   <p>“Why <emphasis>can­dles?</emphasis>” ob­jected Daisy, frown­ing. She snapped them out with her fin­gers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all ra­di­antly. “Do you al­ways watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I al­ways watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”</p>
   <p>“We ought to plan some­thing,” yawned Miss Baker, sit­ting down at the table as if she were get­ting into bed.</p>
   <p>“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me help­lessly: “What do peo­ple plan?”</p>
   <p>Be­fore I could an­swer her eyes fas­tened with an awed ex­pres­sion on her lit­tle fin­ger.</p>
   <p>“Look!” she com­plained; “I hurt it.”</p>
   <p>We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.</p>
   <p>“You did it, Tom,” she said ac­cus­ingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you <emphasis>did</emphasis> do it. That’s what I get for mar­ry­ing a brute of a man, a great, big, hulk­ing phys­i­cal spec­i­men of a—”</p>
   <p>“I hate that word hulk­ing,” ob­jected Tom crossly, “even in kid­ding.”</p>
   <p>“Hulk­ing,” in­sisted Daisy.</p>
   <p>Some­times she and Miss Baker talked at once, un­ob­tru­sively and with a ban­ter­ing in­con­se­quence that was never quite chat­ter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their im­per­sonal eyes in the ab­sence of all de­sire. They were here, and they ac­cepted Tom and me, mak­ing only a po­lite pleas­ant ef­fort to en­ter­tain or to be en­ter­tained. They knew that presently din­ner would be over and a lit­tle later the evening, too, would be over and ca­su­ally put away. It was sharply dif­fer­ent from the West, where an evening was hur­ried from phase to phase to­ward its close, in a con­tin­u­ally dis­ap­pointed an­tic­i­pa­tion or else in sheer ner­vous dread of the mo­ment it­self.</p>
   <p>“You make me feel un­civ­i­lized, Daisy,” I con­fessed on my sec­ond glass of corky but rather im­pres­sive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or some­thing?”</p>
   <p>I meant noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar by this re­mark, but it was taken up in an un­ex­pected way.</p>
   <p>“Civ­i­liza­tion’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom vi­o­lently. “I’ve got­ten to be a ter­ri­ble pes­simist about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Col­ored Em­pires’ by this man God­dard?”</p>
   <p>“Why, no,” I an­swered, rather sur­prised by his tone.</p>
   <p>“Well, it’s a fine book, and every­body ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be ut­terly sub­merged. It’s all sci­en­tific stuff; it’s been proved.”</p>
   <p>“Tom’s get­ting very pro­found,” said Daisy, with an ex­pres­sion of un­thought­ful sad­ness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”</p>
   <p>“Well, these books are all sci­en­tific,” in­sisted Tom, glanc­ing at her im­pa­tiently. “This fel­low has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dom­i­nant race, to watch out or these other races will have con­trol of things.”</p>
   <p>“We’ve got to beat them down,” whis­pered Daisy, wink­ing fe­ro­ciously to­ward the fer­vent sun.</p>
   <p>“You ought to live in Cal­i­for­nia—” began Miss Baker, but Tom in­ter­rupted her by shift­ing heav­ily in his chair.</p>
   <p>“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an in­fin­i­tes­i­mal hes­i­ta­tion he in­cluded Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve pro­duced all the things that go to make civ­i­liza­tion—oh, sci­ence and art, and all that. Do you see?”</p>
   <p>There was some­thing pa­thetic in his con­cen­tra­tion, as if his com­pla­cency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, al­most im­me­di­ately, the tele­phone rang in­side and the but­ler left the porch Daisy seized upon the mo­men­tary in­ter­rup­tion and leaned to­ward me.</p>
   <p>“I’ll tell you a fam­ily se­cret,” she whis­pered en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. “It’s about the but­ler’s nose. Do you want to bear about the but­ler’s nose?”</p>
   <p>“That’s why I came over to-night.”</p>
   <p>“Well, he wasn’t al­ways a but­ler; he used to be the sil­ver pol­isher for some peo­ple in New York that had a sil­ver ser­vice for two hun­dred peo­ple. He had to pol­ish it from morn­ing till night, until fi­nally it began to af­fect his nose—”</p>
   <p>“Things went from bad to worse,” sug­gested Miss Baker.</p>
   <p>“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until fi­nally he had to give up his po­si­tion.”</p>
   <p>For a mo­ment the last sun­shine fell with ro­man­tic af­fec­tion upon her glow­ing face; her voice com­pelled me for­ward breath­lessly as I lis­tened—then the glow faded, each light de­sert­ing her with lin­ger­ing re­gret, like chil­dren leav­ing a pleas­ant street at dusk.</p>
   <p>The but­ler came back and mur­mured some­thing close to Tom’s ear, where­upon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and with­out a word went in­side. As if his ab­sence quick­ened some­thing within her, Daisy leaned for­ward again, her voice glow­ing and singing.</p>
   <p>“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You re­mind me of a—of a rose, an ab­solute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for con­fir­ma­tion: “An ab­solute rose?”</p>
   <p>This was un­true. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only ex­tem­po­riz­ing, but a stir­ring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was try­ing to come out to you con­cealed in one of those breath­less, thrilling words. Then sud­denly she threw her nap­kin on the table and ex­cused her­self and went into the house.</p>
   <p>Miss Baker and I ex­changed a short glance con­sciously de­void of mean­ing. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warn­ing voice. A sub­dued im­pas­sioned mur­mur was au­di­ble in the room be­yond, and Miss Baker leaned for­ward unashamed, try­ing to hear. The mur­mur trem­bled on the verge of co­her­ence, sank down, mounted ex­cit­edly, and then ceased al­to­gether.</p>
   <p>“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neigh­bor—” I said.</p>
   <p>“Don’t talk. I want to hear what hap­pens.”</p>
   <p>“Is some­thing hap­pen­ing?” I in­quired in­no­cently.</p>
   <p>“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, hon­estly sur­prised. “I thought every­body knew.”</p>
   <p>“I don’t.”</p>
   <p>“Why—” she said hes­i­tantly, “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”</p>
   <p>“Got some woman?” I re­peated blankly.</p>
   <p>Miss Baker nod­ded.</p>
   <p>“She might have the de­cency not to tele­phone him at din­ner time. Don’t you think?”</p>
   <p>Al­most be­fore I had grasped her mean­ing there was the flut­ter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.</p>
   <p>“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gayety.</p>
   <p>She sat down, glanced search­ingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and con­tin­ued: “I looked out­doors for a minute, and it’s very ro­man­tic out­doors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightin­gale come over on the Cu­nard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s ro­man­tic, isn’t it, Tom?”</p>
   <p>“Very ro­man­tic,” he said, and then mis­er­ably to me: “If it’s light enough after din­ner, I want to take you down to the sta­bles.”</p>
   <p>The tele­phone rang in­side, star­tlingly, and as Daisy shook her head de­ci­sively at Tom the sub­ject of the sta­bles, in fact all sub­jects, van­ished into air. Among the bro­ken frag­ments of the last five min­utes at table I re­mem­ber the can­dles being lit again, point­lessly, and I was con­scious of want­ing to look squarely at every one, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were think­ing, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mas­tered a cer­tain hardy skep­ti­cism, was able ut­terly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metal­lic ur­gency out of mind. To a cer­tain tem­pera­ment the sit­u­a­tion might have seemed in­trigu­ing—my own in­stinct was to tele­phone im­me­di­ately for the po­lice.</p>
   <p>The horses, need­less to say, were not men­tioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with sev­eral feet of twi­light be­tween them, strolled back into the li­brary, as if to a vigil be­side a per­fectly tan­gi­ble body, while, try­ing to look pleas­antly in­ter­ested and a lit­tle deaf, I fol­lowed Daisy around a chain of con­nect­ing ve­ran­das to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker set­tee.</p>
   <p>Daisy took her face in her hands as if feel­ing its lovely shape, and her eyes moved grad­u­ally out into the vel­vet dusk. I saw that tur­bu­lent emo­tions pos­sessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some seda­tive ques­tions about her lit­tle girl.</p>
   <p>“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said sud­denly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wed­ding.”</p>
   <p>“I wasn’t back from the war.”</p>
   <p>“That’s true.” She hes­i­tated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time. Nick, and I’m pretty cyn­i­cal about every­thing.”</p>
   <p>Ev­i­dently she had rea­son to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more, and after a mo­ment I re­turned rather fee­bly to the sub­ject of her daugh­ter.</p>
   <p>“I sup­pose she talks, and—eats, and every­thing.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, yes.” She looked at me ab­sently. “Lis­ten, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”</p>
   <p>“Very much.”</p>
   <p>“It’ll show you how I’ve got­ten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an ut­terly aban­doned feel­ing, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beau­ti­ful lit­tle fool.’ ”</p>
   <p>“You see I think every­thing’s ter­ri­ble any­how,” she went on in a con­vinced way. “Every­body thinks so—the most ad­vanced peo­ple. And I <emphasis>know.</emphasis> I’ve been every­where and seen every­thing and done every­thing.” Her eyes flashed around her in a de­fi­ant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “So­phis­ti­cated—God, I’m so­phis­ti­cated!”</p>
   <p>The in­stant her voice broke off ceas­ing to com­pel my at­ten­tion, my be­lief, I felt the basic in­sin­cer­ity of what she had said. It made me un­easy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a con­trib­u­tory emo­tion from me. I waited, and sure enough in a mo­ment she looked at me with an ab­solute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had as­serted her mem­ber­ship in a rather dis­tin­guished se­cret so­ci­ety to which she and Tom be­longed.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>In­side, the crim­son room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at ei­ther end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from <emphasis>The Sat­ur­day Evening Post</emphasis>—the words, mur­murous and un­in­flected, run­ning to­gether in a sooth­ing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the au­tumn-leaf yel­low of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flut­ter of slen­der mus­cles in her arms.</p>
   <p>When we came in she held us silent for a mo­ment with a lifted hand.</p>
   <p>“To be con­tin­ued,” she said, toss­ing the mag­a­zine on the table, “in our very next issue.”</p>
   <p>Her body as­serted it­self with a rest­less move­ment of her knee, and she stood up.</p>
   <p>“Ten o’clock,” she re­marked, ap­par­ently find­ing the time on the ceil­ing. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”</p>
   <p>“Jor­dan’s going to play in the tour­na­ment to­mor­row,” ex­plained Daisy, “over at Westch­ester.”</p>
   <p>“Oh—you’re Jor­dan Baker.”</p>
   <p>I knew now why her face was fa­mil­iar—its pleas­ing con­temp­tu­ous ex­pres­sion had looked out at me from many ro­togravure pic­tures of the sport­ing life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a crit­i­cal, un­pleas­ant story, but what it was I had for­got­ten long ago.</p>
   <p>“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you?”</p>
   <p>“If you’ll get up.”</p>
   <p>“I will. Good night, Mr. Car­raway. See you anon.”</p>
   <p>“Of course you will,” con­firmed Daisy. “In fact, I think I’ll arrange a mar­riage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you to­gether. You know—lock you up ac­ci­den­tally in linen clos­ets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing -—”</p>
   <p>“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”</p>
   <p>“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a mo­ment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the coun­try this way.”</p>
   <p>“Who oughtn’t to?” in­quired Daisy coldly.</p>
   <p>“Her fam­ily.”</p>
   <p>“Her fam­ily is one aunt about a thou­sand years old. Be­sides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of week-ends out here this sum­mer. I think the home in­flu­ence will be very good for her.”</p>
   <p>Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a mo­ment in si­lence.</p>
   <p>“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.</p>
   <p>“From Louisville. Our white girl­hood was passed to­gether there. Our beau­ti­ful white—”</p>
   <p>“Did you give Nick a lit­tle heart-to-heart talk on the ve­randa?” de­manded Tom sud­denly.</p>
   <p>“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to re­mem­ber, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”</p>
   <p>“Don’t be­lieve every­thing you hear, Nick,” he ad­vised me.</p>
   <p>I said lightly that I had heard noth­ing at all, and a few min­utes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheer­ful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremp­to­rily called: “Wait! I for­got to ask you some­thing, and it’s im­por­tant. We heard you were en­gaged to a girl out West.”</p>
   <p>“That’s right,” cor­rob­o­rated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were en­gaged.”</p>
   <p>“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”</p>
   <p>“But we heard it,” in­sisted Daisy, sur­pris­ing me by open­ing up again’ in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three peo­ple, so it must be true.”</p>
   <p>Of course I knew what they were re­fer­ring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely en­gaged. The fact that gos­sip had pub­lished the banns was one of the rea­sons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on ac­count of ru­mors, and on the other hand I had no in­ten­tion of being ru­mored into mar­riage.</p>
   <p>Their in­ter­est rather touched me and made them less re­motely rich—nev­er­the­less, I was con­fused and a lit­tle dis­gusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but ap­par­ently there were no such in­ten­tions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was re­ally less sur­pris­ing than that he had been de­pressed by a book. Some­thing was mak­ing him nib­ble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy phys­i­cal ego­tism no longer nour­ished his peremp­tory heart.</p>
   <p>Al­ready it was deep sum­mer on road-house roofs and in front of way­side garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my es­tate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an aban­doned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leav­ing a loud, bright night, with wings beat­ing in the trees and a per­sis­tent organ sound as the full bel­lows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The sil­hou­ette of a mov­ing cat wa­vered across the moon­light, and turn­ing my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a fig­ure had emerged from the shadow of my neigh­bor’s man­sion and was stand­ing with his hands in his pock­ets re­gard­ing the sil­ver pep­per of the stars. Some­thing in his leisurely move­ments and the se­cure po­si­tion of his feet upon the lawn sug­gested that it was Mr. Gatsby him­self, come out to de­ter­mine what share was his of our local heav­ens.</p>
   <p>I de­cided to call to him. Miss Baker had men­tioned him at din­ner, and that would do for an in­tro­duc­tion. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sud­den in­ti­ma­tion that he was con­tent to be alone—he stretched out his arms to­ward the dark water in a cu­ri­ous way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trem­bling. In­vol­un­tar­ily I glanced sea­ward—and dis­tin­guished noth­ing ex­cept a sin­gle green light, minute and far way, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had van­ished, and I was alone again in the un­quiet dark­ness.</p>
</section>
  <section>
   <title>
        <p>CHAPTER II</p>
   </title>
   <p>About half way be­tween West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the rail­road and runs be­side it for a quar­ter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a cer­tain des­o­late area of land. This is a val­ley of ashes—a fan­tas­tic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gar­dens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chim­neys and ris­ing smoke and, fi­nally, with a tran­scen­dent ef­fort, of men who move dimly and al­ready crum­bling through the pow­dery air. Oc­ca­sion­ally a line of gray cars crawls along an in­vis­i­ble track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and im­me­di­ately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an im­pen­e­tra­ble cloud, which screens their ob­scure op­er­a­tions from your sight.</p>
   <p>But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift end­lessly over it, you per­ceive, after a mo­ment, the eyes of Doc­tor T. J. Eck­le­burg. The eyes of Doc­tor T. J. Eck­le­burg are blue and gi­gan­tic—their reti­nas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, in­stead, from a pair of enor­mous yel­low spec­ta­cles which pass over a non-ex­is­tent nose. Ev­i­dently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fat­ten his prac­tice in the bor­ough of Queens, and then sank down him­self into eter­nal blind­ness, or for­got them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a lit­tle by many paint­less days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dump­ing ground.</p>
   <p>The val­ley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the draw­bridge is up to let barges through, the pas­sen­gers on wait­ing trains can stare at the dis­mal scene for as long as half an hour. There is al­ways a halt there of at least a minute, and it was be­cause of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mis­tress.</p>
   <p>The fact that he had one was in­sisted upon wher­ever he was known. His ac­quain­tances re­sented the fact that he turned up in pop­u­lar restau­rants with her and, leav­ing her at a table, saun­tered about, chat­ting with whom­so­ever he knew. Though I was cu­ri­ous to see her, I had no de­sire to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one af­ter­noon and when we stopped by the ash­heaps he jumped to his feet and, tak­ing hold of my elbow, lit­er­ally forced me from the car.</p>
   <p>“We’re get­ting off,” he in­sisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”</p>
   <p>I think he’d tanked up a good deal at lun­cheon, and his de­ter­mi­na­tion to have my com­pany bor­dered on vi­o­lence. The su­per­cil­ious as­sump­tion was that on Sun­day af­ter­noon I had noth­ing bet­ter to do.</p>
   <p>I fol­lowed him over a low white­washed rail­road fence, and we walked back a hun­dred yards along the road under Doc­tor Eck­le­burg’s per­sis­tent stare. The only build­ing in sight was a small block of yel­low brick sit­ting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of com­pact Main Street min­is­ter­ing to it, and con­tigu­ous to ab­solutely noth­ing. One of the three shops it con­tained was for rent and an­other was an all-night restau­rant, ap­proached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—<emphasis>Re­pairs.</emphasis> George B. Wil­son, Cars <emphasis>bought and sold.</emphasis>—and I fol­lowed Tom in­side.</p>
   <p>The in­te­rior was un­pros­per­ous and bare; the only car vis­i­ble was the dust-cov­ered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim cor­ner. It had oc­curred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind, and that sump­tu­ous and ro­man­tic apart­ments were con­cealed over­head, when the pro­pri­etor him­self ap­peared in the door of an of­fice, wip­ing his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blond, spir­it­less man, anaemic, and faintly hand­some. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.</p>
   <p>“Hello, Wil­son, old man,” said Tom, slap­ping him jovially on the shoul­der. “How’s busi­ness?”</p>
   <p>“I can’t com­plain,” an­swered Wil­son un­con­vinc­ingly. “When are you going to sell me that car?”</p>
   <p>“Next week; I’ve got my man work­ing on it now.”</p>
   <p>“Works pretty slow, don’t he?”</p>
   <p>“No, he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d bet­ter sell it some­where else after all.”</p>
   <p>“I don’t mean that,” ex­plained Wil­son quickly. “I just meant—”</p>
   <p>His voice faded off and Tom glanced im­pa­tiently around the garage. Then I heard foot­steps on a stairs, and in a mo­ment the thick­ish fig­ure of a woman blocked out the light from the of­fice door. She was in the mid­dle thir­ties, and faintly stout, but she car­ried her sur­plus flesh sen­su­ously as some women can. Her face, above a spot­ted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, con­tained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an im­me­di­ately per­cep­ti­ble vi­tal­ity about her as if the nerves of her body were con­tin­u­ally smoul­der­ing. She smiled slowly and, walk­ing through her hus­band as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, look­ing him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and with­out turn­ing around spoke to her hus­band in a soft, coarse voice:</p>
   <p>“Get some chairs, why don’t you, so some­body can sit down.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, sure,” agreed Wil­son hur­riedly, and went to­ward the lit­tle of­fice min­gling im­me­di­ately with the ce­ment color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled every­thing in the vicin­ity—ex­cept his wife, who moved close to Tom.</p>
   <p>“I want to see you,” said Tom in­tently. “Get on the next train.”</p>
   <p>“All right.”</p>
   <p>“I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.”</p>
   <p>She nod­ded and moved away from him just as George Wil­son emerged with two chairs from his of­fice door.</p>
   <p>We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days be­fore the Fourth of July, and a gray, scrawny Ital­ian child was set­ting tor­pe­does in a row along the rail­road track.</p>
   <p>“Ter­ri­ble place, isn’t it,” said Tom, ex­chang­ing a frown with Doc­tor Eck­le­burg.</p>
   <p>“Awful.”</p>
   <p>“It does her good to get away.”</p>
   <p>“Doesn’t her hus­band ob­ject?”</p>
   <p>“Wil­son? He thinks she goes to see her sis­ter in New York. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.”</p>
   <p>So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up to­gether to New York—or not quite to­gether, for Mrs. Wil­son sat dis­creetly in an­other car. Tom de­ferred that much to the sen­si­bil­i­ties of those East Eg­gers who might be on the train.</p>
   <p>She had changed her dress to a brown fig­ured muslin, which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the plat­form in New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of <emphasis>Town Tat­tle</emphasis> and a mov­ing-pic­ture mag­a­zine, and in the sta­tion drug­store some cold cream and a small flask of per­fume. Up-stairs, in the solemn echo­ing drive she let four taxi­cabs drive away be­fore she se­lected a new one, laven­der-col­ored with gray up­hol­stery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the sta­tion into the glow­ing sun­shine. But im­me­di­ately she turned sharply from the win­dow and, lean­ing for­ward, tapped on the front glass.</p>
   <p>“I want to get one of those dogs,” she said earnestly. “I want to get one for the apart­ment. They’re nice to have—a dog.”</p>
   <p>We backed up to a gray old man who bore an ab­surd re­sem­blance to John D. Rock­e­feller. In a bas­ket swung from his neck cow­ered a dozen very re­cent pup­pies of an in­de­ter­mi­nate breed.</p>
   <p>“What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wil­son ea­gerly, as he came to the taxi-win­dow.</p>
   <p>“All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?”</p>
   <p>“I’d like to get one of those po­lice dogs; I don’t sup­pose you got that kind?”</p>
   <p>The man peered doubt­fully into the bas­ket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wrig­gling, by the back of the neck.</p>
   <p>“That’s no po­lice dog,” said Tom.</p>
   <p>“No, it’s not ex­actly a <emphasis>po­lice</emphasis> dog,” said the man with dis­ap­point­ment in his voice. “It’s more of an Airedale.” He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. “Look at that coat. Some coat. That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catch­ing cold.”</p>
   <p>“I think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Wil­son en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. “How much is it?”</p>
   <p>“That dog?” He looked at it ad­mir­ingly. “That dog will cost you ten dol­lars.”</p>
   <p>The Airedale—un­doubt­edly there was an Airedale con­cerned in it some­where, though its feet were star­tlingly white—changed hands and set­tled down into Mrs. Wil­son’s lap, where she fon­dled the weath­er­proof coat with rap­ture.</p>
   <p>“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked del­i­cately.</p>
   <p>“That dog? That dog’s a boy.”</p>
   <p>“It’s a bitch,” said Tom de­ci­sively. “Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it.”</p>
   <p>We drove over to Fifth Av­enue, so warm and soft, al­most pas­toral, on the sum­mer Sun­day af­ter­noon that I wouldn’t have been sur­prised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the cor­ner.</p>
   <p>“Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.”</p>
   <p>“No, you don’t,” in­ter­posed Tom quickly. “Myr­tle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apart­ment. Won’t you, Myr­tle?”</p>
   <p>“Come on,” she urged. “I’ll tele­phone my sis­ter Cather­ine. She’s said to be very beau­ti­ful by peo­ple who ought to know.”</p>
   <p>“Well, I’d like to, but—”</p>
   <p>We went on, cut­ting back again over the Park to­ward the West Hun­dreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apart­ment-houses. Throw­ing a regal home­com­ing glance around the neigh­bor­hood, Mrs. Wil­son gath­ered up her dog and her other pur­chases, and went haugh­tily in.</p>
   <p>“I’m going to have the Mc­K­ees come up,” she an­nounced as we rose in the el­e­va­tor. “And, of course, I got to call up my sis­ter, too.”</p>
   <p>The apart­ment was on the top floor—a small liv­ing-room, a small din­ing-room, a small bed­room, and a bath. The liv­ing-room was crowded to the doors with a set of ta­pes­tried fur­ni­ture en­tirely too large for it, so that to move about was to stum­ble con­tin­u­ally over scenes of ladies swing­ing in the gar­dens of Ver­sailles. The only pic­ture was an over-en­larged pho­to­graph, ap­par­ently a hen sit­ting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a dis­tance, how­ever, the hen re­solved it­self into a bon­net, and the coun­te­nance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room. Sev­eral old copies of <emphasis>Town Tat­tle</emphasis> lay on the table to­gether with a copy of <emphasis>Simon Called Peter,</emphasis> and some of the small scan­dal mag­a­zines of Broad-way. Mrs. Wil­son was first con­cerned with the dog. A re­luc­tant el­e­va­tor boy went for a box full of straw and some milk, to which he added on his own ini­tia­tive a tin of large, hard dog-bis­cuits—one of which de­com­posed ap­a­thet­i­cally in the saucer of milk all af­ter­noon. Mean­while Tom brought out a bot­tle of whiskey from a locked bu­reau door.</p>
   <p>I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the sec­ond time was that af­ter­noon; so every­thing that hap­pened has a dim, hazy cast over it, al­though until after eight o’clock the apart­ment was full of cheer­ful sun. Sit­ting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wil­son called up sev­eral peo­ple on the tele­phone; then there were no cig­a­rettes, and I went out to buy some at the drug­store on the cor­ner. When I came back they had dis­ap­peared, so I sat down dis­creetly in the liv­ing-room and read a chap­ter of <emphasis>Simon Called Peter</emphasis>—ei­ther it was ter­ri­ble stuff or the whiskey dis­torted things, be­cause it didn’t make any sense to me.</p>
   <p>Just as Tom and Myr­tle (after the first drink Mrs. Wil­son and I called each other by our first names) reap­peared, com­pany com­menced to ar­rive at the apart­ment-door.</p>
   <p>The sis­ter, Cather­ine, was a slen­der, worldly girl of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a com­plex­ion pow­dered milky white. Her eye­brows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rak­ish angle but the ef­forts of na­ture to­ward the restora­tion of the old align­ment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an in­ces­sant click­ing as in­nu­mer­able pot­tery bracelets jin­gled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a pro­pri­etary haste, and looked around so pos­ses­sively at the fur­ni­ture that I won­dered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed im­mod­er­ately, re­peated my ques­tion aloud, and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.</p>
   <p>Mr. McKee was a pale, fem­i­nine man from the flat below. He had just shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheek­bone, and he was most re­spect­ful in his greet­ing to every one in the room. He in­formed me that he was in the “artis­tic game,” and I gath­ered later that he was a pho­tog­ra­pher and had made the dim en­large­ment of Mrs. Wil­son’s mother which hov­ered like an ec­to­plasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, lan­guid, hand­some, and hor­ri­ble. She told me with pride that her hus­band had pho­tographed her a hun­dred and twenty-seven times since they had been mar­ried.</p>
   <p>Mrs. Wil­son had changed her cos­tume some time be­fore, and was now at­tired in an elab­o­rate af­ter­noon dress of cream-col­ored chif­fon, which gave out a con­tin­ual rus­tle as she swept about the room. With the in­flu­ence of the dress her per­son­al­ity had also un­der­gone a change. The in­tense vi­tal­ity that had been so re­mark­able in the garage was con­verted into im­pres­sive hau­teur. Her laugh­ter, her ges­tures, her as­ser­tions be­came more vi­o­lently af­fected mo­ment by mo­ment, and as she ex­panded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be re­volv­ing on a noisy, creak­ing pivot through the smoky air.</p>
   <p>“My dear,” she told her sis­ter in a high, minc­ing shout, “most of these fel­las will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet, and when she gave me the bill you’d of thought she had my ap­pen­dici­tis out.”</p>
   <p>“What was the name of the woman?” asked Mrs. McKee.</p>
   <p>“Mrs. Eber­hardt. She goes around look­ing at peo­ple’s feet in their own homes.”</p>
   <p>“I like your dress,” re­marked Mrs. McKee, “I think it’s adorable.”</p>
   <p>Mrs. Wil­son re­jected the com­pli­ment by rais­ing her eye­brow in dis­dain.</p>
   <p>“It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I just slip it on some­times when I don’t care what I look like.”</p>
   <p>“But it looks won­der­ful on you, if you know what I mean,” pur­sued Mrs. McKee. “If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make some­thing of it.”</p>
   <p>We all looked in si­lence at Mrs. Wil­son, who re­moved a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a bril­liant smile. Mr. McKee re­garded her in­tently with his head on one side, and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.</p>
   <p>“I should change the light,” he said after a mo­ment. “I’d like to bring out the mod­el­ling of the fea­tures. And I’d try to get hold of all the back hair.”</p>
   <p>“I wouldn’t think of chang­ing the light,” cried Mrs. McKee. “I think it’s—”</p>
   <p>Her hus­band said <emphasis>“Sh!”</emphasis> and we all looked at the sub­ject again, where­upon Tom Buchanan yawned au­di­bly and got to his feet.</p>
   <p>“You Mc­K­ees have some­thing to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and min­eral water, Myr­tle, be­fore every­body goes to sleep.”</p>
   <p>“I told that boy about the ice.” Myr­tle raised her eye­brows in de­spair at the shift­less­ness of the lower or­ders. “These peo­ple! You have to keep after them all the time.”</p>
   <p>She looked at me and laughed point­lessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ec­stasy, and swept into the kitchen, im­ply­ing that a dozen chefs awaited her or­ders there.</p>
   <p>“I’ve done some nice things out on Long Is­land,” as­serted Mr. McKee.</p>
   <p>Tom looked at him blankly.</p>
   <p>“Two of them we have framed down-stairs.”</p>
   <p>“Two what?” de­manded Tom.</p>
   <p>“Two stud­ies. One of them I call <emphasis>Mon­tauk Point—The Gulls,</emphasis> and the other I call <emphasis>Mon­tauk Point-The Sea.</emphasis>”</p>
   <p>The sis­ter Cather­ine sat down be­side me on the couch.</p>
   <p>“Do you live down on Long Is­land, too?” she in­quired.</p>
   <p>“I live at West Egg.”</p>
   <p>“Re­ally? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby’s. Do you know him?”</p>
   <p>“I live next door to him.”</p>
   <p>“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wil­helm’s. That’s where all his money comes from.”</p>
   <p>“Re­ally?”</p>
   <p>She nod­ded.</p>
   <p>“I’m scared of him. I’d hate to have him get any­thing on me.”</p>
   <p>This ab­sorb­ing in­for­ma­tion about my neigh­bor was in­ter­rupted by Mrs. McKee’s point­ing sud­denly at Cather­ine:</p>
   <p>“Chester, I think you could do some­thing with <emphasis>her,</emphasis>” she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nod­ded in a bored way, and turned his at­ten­tion to Tom.</p>
   <p>“I’d like to do more work on Long Is­land, if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start.”</p>
   <p>“Ask Myr­tle,” said Tom, break­ing into a short shout of laugh­ter as Mrs. Wil­son en­tered with a tray. “She’ll give you a let­ter of in­tro­duc­tion, won’t you, Myr­tle?”</p>
   <p>“Do what?” she asked, star­tled.</p>
   <p>“You’ll give McKee a let­ter of in­tro­duc­tion to your hus­band, so he can do some stud­ies of him.” His lips moved silently for a mo­ment as he in­vented. “<emphasis>George B. Wil­son at the Gaso­line Pump,</emphasis> or some­thing like that.”</p>
   <p>Cather­ine leaned close to me and whis­pered in my ear:</p>
   <p>“Nei­ther of them can stand the per­son they’re mar­ried to.”</p>
   <p>“Can’t they?”</p>
   <p>“Can’t <emphasis>stand</emphasis> them.” She looked at Myr­tle and then at Tom. “What I say is, why go on liv­ing with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them I’d get a di­vorce and get mar­ried to each other right away.”</p>
   <p>“Doesn’t she like Wil­son ei­ther?”</p>
   <p>The an­swer to this was un­ex­pected. It came from Myr­tle, who had over­heard the ques­tion, and it was vi­o­lent and ob­scene.</p>
   <p>“You see,” cried Cather­ine tri­umphantly. She low­ered her voice again. “It’s re­ally his wife that’s keep­ing them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t be­lieve in di­vorce.”</p>
   <p>Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a lit­tle shocked at the elab­o­rate­ness of the lie.</p>
   <p>“When they do get mar­ried,” con­tin­ued Cather­ine, “they’re going West to live for a while until it blows over.”</p>
   <p>“It’d be more dis­creet to go to Eu­rope.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, do you like Eu­rope?” she ex­claimed sur­pris­ingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo.”</p>
   <p>“Re­ally.”</p>
   <p>“Just last year. I went over there with an­other girl.”</p>
   <p>“Stay long?”</p>
   <p>“No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Mar­seilles. We had over twelve hun­dred dol­lars when we started, but we got gypped out of it all in two days in the pri­vate rooms. We had an awful time get­ting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!”</p>
   <p>The late af­ter­noon sky bloomed in the win­dow for a mo­ment like the blue honey of the Mediter­ranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room.</p>
   <p>“I al­most made a mis­take, too,” she de­clared vig­or­ously. “I al­most mar­ried a lit­tle kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Every­body kept say­ing to me: ‘Lu­cille, that man’s ’way below you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d of got me sure.”</p>
   <p>“Yes, but lis­ten,” said Myr­tle Wil­son, nod­ding her head up and down, “at least you didn’t marry him.”</p>
   <p>“I know I didn’t.”</p>
   <p>“Well, I mar­ried him,” said Myr­tle, am­bigu­ously. “And that’s the dif­fer­ence be­tween your case and mine.”</p>
   <p>“Why did you, Myr­tle?” de­manded Cather­ine. “No­body forced you to.”</p>
   <p>Myr­tle con­sid­ered.</p>
   <p>“I mar­ried him be­cause I thought he was a gen­tle­man,” she said fi­nally. “I thought he knew some­thing about breed­ing but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”</p>
   <p>“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Cather­ine.</p>
   <p>“Crazy about him!” cried Myr­tle in­cred­u­lously. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”</p>
   <p>She pointed sud­denly at me, and every one looked at me ac­cus­ingly. I tried to show by my ex­pres­sion that I had played no part in her past.</p>
   <p>“The only <emphasis>crazy</emphasis> I was when I mar­ried him. I knew right away I made a mis­take. He bor­rowed some­body’s best suit to get mar­ried in, and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out.” She looked around to see who was lis­ten­ing. “ ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘This is the first I ever heard about it. But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all af­ter­noon.”</p>
   <p>“She re­ally ought to get away from him,” re­sumed Cather­ine to me. “They’ve been liv­ing over that garage for eleven years. And Tom’s the first sweetie she ever had.”</p>
   <p>The bot­tle of whiskey—a sec­ond one—was now in con­stant de­mand by all pre­sent, ex­cept­ing Cather­ine, who “felt just as good on noth­ing at all.” Tom rang for the jan­i­tor and sent him for some cel­e­brated sand­wiches, which were a com­plete sup­per in them­selves. I wanted to get out and walk east­ward to­ward the Park through the soft twi­light, but each time I tried to go I be­came en­tan­gled in some wild, stri­dent ar­gu­ment which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yel­low win­dows must have con­tributed their share of human se­crecy to the ca­sual watcher in the dark­en­ing streets, and I was him too, look­ing up and won­der­ing. I was within and with­out, si­mul­ta­ne­ously en­chanted and re­pelled by the in­ex­haustible va­ri­ety of life.</p>
   <p>Myr­tle pulled her chair close to mine, and sud­denly her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meet­ing with Tom.</p>
   <p>“It was on the two lit­tle seats fac­ing each other that are al­ways the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sis­ter and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me I had to pre­tend to be look­ing at the ad­ver­tise­ment over his head. When we came into the sta­tion he was next to me, and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call po­lice­man, but he knew I lied. I was so ex­cited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t get­ting into a sub­way train. All I kept think­ing about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live for­ever; you can’t live for­ever.’ ”</p>
   <p>She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her ar­ti­fi­cial laugh­ter.</p>
   <p>“My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you this dress as soon as I’m through with it. I’ve got to get an­other one to-mor­row. I’m going to make a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A mas­sage and a wave, and a col­lar for the dog, and one of those cute lit­tle ash-trays where you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s grave that’ll last all sum­mer. I got to write down a list so I won’t for­get all the things I got to do.”</p>
   <p>It was nine o’clock—al­most im­me­di­ately af­ter­ward I looked at my watch and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap, like a pho­to­graph of a man of ac­tion. Tak­ing out my hand­ker­chief I wiped from his cheek the re­mains of the spot of dried lather that had wor­ried me all the af­ter­noon.</p>
   <p>The lit­tle dog was sit­ting on the table look­ing with blind eyes through the smoke, and from time to time groan­ing faintly. Peo­ple dis­ap­peared, reap­peared, made plans to go some­where, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time to­ward mid­night Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wil­son stood face to face, dis­cussing in im­pas­sioned voices whether Mrs. Wil­son had any right to men­tion Daisy’s name.</p>
   <p>“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wil­son. “I’ll say it when­ever I want to! Daisy! Dai—”</p>
   <p>Mak­ing a short deft move­ment, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.</p>
   <p>Then there were bloody tow­els upon the bath­room floor, and women’s voices scold­ing, and high over the con­fu­sion along bro­ken wail of pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze to­ward the door. When he had gone halfway he turned around and stared at the scene—his wife and Cather­ine scold­ing and con­sol­ing as they stum­bled here and there among the crowded fur­ni­ture with ar­ti­cles of aid, and the de­spair­ing fig­ure on the couch, bleed­ing flu­ently, and try­ing to spread a copy of <emphasis>Town Tat­tle</emphasis> over the ta­pes­try scenes of Ver­sailles. Then Mr. McKee turned and con­tin­ued on out the door. Tak­ing my hat from the chan­de­lier, I fol­lowed.</p>
   <p>“Come to lunch some day,” he sug­gested, as we groaned down in the el­e­va­tor.</p>
   <p>“Where?”</p>
   <p>“Any­where.”</p>
   <p>“Keep your hands off the lever,” snapped the el­e­va­tor boy.</p>
   <p>“I beg your par­don,” said Mr. McKee with dig­nity, “I didn’t know I was touch­ing it.”</p>
   <p>“All right,” I agreed, “I’ll be glad to.”</p>
   <p>… I was stand­ing be­side his bed and he was sit­ting up be­tween the sheets, clad in his un­der­wear, with a great port­fo­lio in his hands.</p>
   <p>“Beauty and the Beast… Lone­li­ness… Old Gro­cery Horse… Brook’n Bridge....”</p>
   <p>Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Penn­syl­va­nia Sta­tion, star­ing at the morn­ing <emphasis>Tri­bune,</emphasis> and wait­ing for the four o’clock train.</p>
  </section>
  <section>
   <title>
        <p>CHAPTER III</p>
   </title>
   <p>There was music from my neigh­bor’s house through the sum­mer nights. In his blue gar­dens men and girls came and went like moths among the whis­per­ings and the cham­pagne and the stars. At high tide in the af­ter­noon I watched his guests div­ing from the tower of his raft, or tak­ing the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two mo­tor-boats slit the wa­ters of the Sound, draw­ing aqua­planes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce be­came an om­nibus, bear­ing par­ties to and from the city be­tween nine in the morn­ing and long past mid­night, while his sta­tion wagon scam­pered like a brisk yel­low bug to meet all trains. And on Mon­days eight ser­vants, in­clud­ing an extra gar­dener, toiled all day with mops and scrub­bing-brushes and ham­mers and gar­den-shears, re­pair­ing the rav­ages of the night be­fore.</p>
   <p>Every Fri­day five crates of or­anges and lemons ar­rived from a fruiterer in New York—every Mon­day these same or­anges, and lemons left his back door in a pyra­mid of pulp­less halves. There was a ma­chine in the kitchen which could ex­tract the juice of two hun­dred or­anges in half an hour if a lit­tle but­ton was pressed two hun­dred times by a but­ler’s thumb.</p>
   <p>At least once a fort­night a crop of cater­ers came down with sev­eral hun­dred feet of can­vas and enough col­ored lights to make a Christ­mas tree of Gatsby’s enor­mous gar­den. On buf­fet ta­bles, gar­nished with glis­ten­ing hors-d’oeu­vre, spiced baked hams crowded against sal­ads of har­le­quin de­signs and pas­try pigs and turkeys be­witched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cor­dials so long for­got­ten that most of his fe­male guests were too young to know one from an­other.</p>
   <p>By seven o’clock the or­ches­tra has ar­rived, no thin five-piece af­fair, but a whole pit­ful of oboes and trom­bones and sax­o­phones and viols and cor­nets and pic­co­los, and low and high drums. The last swim­mers have come in from the beach now and are dress­ing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and al­ready the halls and sa­lons and ve­ran­das are gaudy with pri­mary col­ors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls be­yond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and float­ing rounds of cock­tails per­me­ate the gar­den out­side, until the air is alive with chat­ter and laugh­ter, and ca­sual in­nu­endo and in­tro­duc­tions for­got­ten on the spot, and en­thu­si­as­tic meet­ings be­tween women who never knew each other’s names.</p>
   <p>The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the or­ches­tra is play­ing yel­low cock­tail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laugh­ter is eas­ier minute by minute, spilled with prodi­gal­ity, tipped out at a cheer­ful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new ar­rivals, dis­solve and form in the same breath; al­ready there are wan­der­ers, con­fi­dent girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more sta­ble, be­come for a sharp, joy­ous mo­ment the cen­ter of a group, and then, ex­cited with tri­umph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the con­stantly chang­ing light.</p>
   <p>Sud­denly one of these gyp­sies, in trem­bling opal, seizes a cock­tail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, mov­ing her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the can­vas plat­form. A mo­men­tary hush; the or­ches­tra leader varies his rhythm oblig­ingly for her, and there is a burst of chat­ter as the er­ro­neous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s un­der­study from the <emphasis>Fol­lies.</emphasis> The party has begun.</p>
   <p>I be­lieve that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had ac­tu­ally been in­vited. Peo­ple were not in­vited—they went there. They got into au­to­mo­biles which bore them out to Long Is­land, and some­how they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there they were in­tro­duced by some­body who knew Gatsby, and after that they con­ducted them­selves ac­cord­ing to the rules of be­hav­ior as­so­ci­ated with an amuse­ment park. Some­times they came and went with­out hav­ing met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a sim­plic­ity of heart that was its own ticket of ad­mis­sion.</p>
   <p>I had been ac­tu­ally in­vited. A chauf­feur in a uni­form of robin’s-egg blue crossed my lawn early that Sat­ur­day morn­ing with a sur­pris­ingly for­mal note from his em­ployer: the honor would be en­tirely Gatsby’s, it said, if I would at­tend his “lit­tle party” that night. He had seen me sev­eral times, and had in­tended to call on me long be­fore, but a pe­cu­liar com­bi­na­tion of cir­cum­stances had pre­vented it—signed Jay Gatsby, in a ma­jes­tic hand.</p>
   <p>Dressed up in white flan­nels I went over to his lawn a lit­tle after seven, and wan­dered around rather ill at ease among swirls and ed­dies of peo­ple I didn’t know—though here and there was a face I had no­ticed on the com­mut­ing train. I was im­me­di­ately struck by the num­ber of young Eng­lish­men dot­ted about; all well dressed, all look­ing a lit­tle hun­gry, and all talk­ing in low, earnest voices to solid and pros­per­ous Amer­i­cans. I was sure that they were sell­ing some­thing: bonds or in­sur­ance or au­to­mo­biles. They were at least ag­o­niz­ingly aware of the easy money in the vicin­ity and con­vinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.</p>
   <p>As soon as I ar­rived I made an at­tempt to find my host, but the two or three peo­ple of whom I asked his where­abouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and de­nied so ve­he­mently any knowl­edge of his move­ments, that I slunk off in the di­rec­tion of the cock­tail table—the only place in the gar­den where a sin­gle man could linger with­out look­ing pur­pose­less and alone.</p>
   <p>I was on my way to get roar­ing drunk from sheer em­bar­rass­ment when Jor­dan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the mar­ble steps, lean­ing a lit­tle back­ward and look­ing with con­temp­tu­ous in­ter­est down into the gar­den.</p>
   <p>Wel­come or not, I found it nec­es­sary to at­tach my­self to some one be­fore I should begin to ad­dress cor­dial re­marks to the passers-by.</p>
   <p>“Hello!” I roared, ad­vanc­ing to­ward her. My voice seemed un­nat­u­rally loud across the gar­den.</p>
   <p>“I thought you might be here,” she re­sponded ab­sently as I came up. “I re­mem­bered you lived next door to—”</p>
   <p>She held my hand im­per­son­ally, as a promise that she’d take care of me in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yel­low dresses, who stopped at the foot of the steps.</p>
   <p>“Hello!” they cried to­gether. “Sorry you didn’t win.”</p>
   <p>That was for the golf tour­na­ment. She had lost in the fi­nals the week be­fore.</p>
   <p>“You don’t know who we are,” said one of the girls in yel­low, “but we met you here about a month ago.”</p>
   <p>“You’ve dyed your hair since then,” re­marked Jor­dan, and I started, but the girls had moved ca­su­ally on and her re­mark was ad­dressed to the pre­ma­ture moon, pro­duced like the sup­per, no doubt, out of a caterer’s bas­ket. With Jor­dan’s slen­der golden arm rest­ing in mine, we de­scended the steps and saun­tered about the gar­den. A tray of cock­tails floated at us through the twi­light, and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yel­low and three men, each one in­tro­duced to us as Mr. Mum­ble.</p>
   <p>“Do you come to these par­ties often?” in­quired Jor­dan of the girl be­side her.</p>
   <p>“The last one was the one I met you at,” an­swered the girl, in an alert con­fi­dent voice. She turned to her com­pan­ion: “Wasn’t it for you, Lu­cille?”</p>
   <p>It was for Lu­cille, too.</p>
   <p>“I like to come,” Lu­cille said. “I never care what I do, so I al­ways have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked me my name and ad­dress—in­side of a week I got a pack­age from Croirier’s with a new evening gown in it.”</p>
   <p>“Did you keep it?” asked Jor­dan.</p>
   <p>“Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the bust and had to be al­tered. It was gas blue with laven­der beads. Two hun­dred and sixty-five dol­lars.”</p>
   <p>“There’s some­thing funny about a fel­low that’ll do a thing like that,” said the other girl ea­gerly. “He doesn’t want any trou­ble with any­body.”</p>
   <p>“Who doesn’t?” I in­quired. “Gatsby. Some­body told me—” The two girls and Jor­dan leaned to­gether con­fi­den­tially. “Some­body told me they thought he killed a man once.”</p>
   <p>A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mum­bles bent for­ward and lis­tened ea­gerly.</p>
   <p>“I don’t think it’s so much <emphasis>that,</emphasis>” ar­gued Lu­cille scep­ti­cally; “it’s more that he was a Ger­man spy dur­ing the war.”</p>
   <p>One of the men nod­ded in con­fir­ma­tion.</p>
   <p>“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Ger­many,” he as­sured us pos­i­tively.</p>
   <p>“Oh, no,” said the first girl. “it couldn’t be that, be­cause he was in the Amer­i­can army dur­ing the war.” As our credulity switched back to her she leaned for­ward with en­thu­si­asm. “You look at him some­times when he thinks no­body’s look­ing at him. I’ll bet he killed a man.”</p>
   <p>She nar­rowed her eyes and shiv­ered. Lu­cille shiv­ered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was tes­ti­mony to the ro­man­tic spec­u­la­tion he in­spired that there were whis­pers about him from those who had found lit­tle that it was nec­es­sary to whis­per about in this world.</p>
   <p>The first sup­per—there would be an­other one after mid­night—was now being served, and Jor­dan in­vited me to join her own party, who were spread around a table on the other side of the gar­den. There were three mar­ried cou­ples and Jor­dan’s es­cort, a per­sis­tent un­der­grad­u­ate given to vi­o­lent in­nu­endo, and ob­vi­ously under the im­pres­sion that sooner or later Jor­dan was going to yield him up her per­son to a greater or lesser de­gree. In­stead of ram­bling, this party had pre­served a dig­ni­fied ho­mo­gene­ity, and as­sumed to it­self the func­tion of rep­re­sent­ing the staid no­bil­ity of the coun­try­side—East Egg con­de­scend­ing to West Egg, and care­fully on guard against its spec­tro­scopic gayety.</p>
   <p>“Let’s get out,” whis­pered Jor­dan, after a some­how waste­ful and in­ap­pro­pri­ate half-hour; “this is much too po­lite for me.”</p>
   <p>We got up, and she ex­plained that we were going to find the host: I had never met him, she said, and it was mak­ing me un­easy. The un­der­grad­u­ate nod­ded in a cyn­i­cal, melan­choly way.</p>
   <p>The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded, but Gatsby was not there. She couldn’t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t on the ve­randa. On a chance we tried an im­por­tant-look­ing door, and walked into a high Gothic li­brary, pan­elled with carved Eng­lish oak, and prob­a­bly trans­ported com­plete from some ruin over­seas.</p>
   <p>A stout, mid­dle-aged man, with enor­mous owl-eyed spec­ta­cles, was sit­ting some­what drunk on the edge of a great table, star­ing with un­steady con­cen­tra­tion at the shelves of books. As we en­tered he wheeled ex­cit­edly around and ex­am­ined Jor­dan from head to foot.</p>
   <p>“What do you think?” he de­manded im­petu­ously.</p>
   <p>“About what?”</p>
   <p>He waved his hand to­ward the book-shelves.</p>
   <p>“About that. As a mat­ter of fact you needn’t bother to as­cer­tain. I as­cer­tained. They’re real.”</p>
   <p>“The books?”</p>
   <p>He nod­ded.</p>
   <p>“Ab­solutely real—have pages and every­thing. I thought they’d be a nice durable card­board. Mat­ter of fact, they’re ab­solutely real. Pages and—Here! Lemme show you.”</p>
   <p>Tak­ing our scep­ti­cism for granted, he rushed to the book­cases and re­turned with Vol­ume One of the “Stod­dard Lec­tures.”</p>
   <p>“See!” he cried tri­umphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed mat­ter. It fooled me. This fella’s a reg­u­lar Be­lasco. It’s a tri­umph. What thor­ough­ness! What re­al­ism! Knew when to stop, too—didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you ex­pect?”</p>
   <p>He snatched the book from me and re­placed it hastily on its shelf, mut­ter­ing that if one brick was re­moved the whole li­brary was li­able to col­lapse.</p>
   <p>“Who brought you?” he de­manded. “Or did you just come? I was brought. Most peo­ple were brought.”</p>
   <p>Jor­dan looked at him alertly, cheer­fully, with­out an­swer­ing.</p>
   <p>“I was brought by a woman named Roo­sevelt,” he con­tin­ued. “Mrs. Claude Roo­sevelt. Do you know her? I met her some­where last night. I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a li­brary.”</p>
   <p>“Has it?”</p>
   <p>“A lit­tle bit, I think. I can’t tell yet. I’ve only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They’re real. They’re—”</p>
   <p>“You told us.”</p>
   <p>We shook hands with him gravely and went back out­doors.</p>
   <p>There was danc­ing now on the can­vas in the gar­den; old men push­ing young girls back­ward in eter­nal grace­less cir­cles, su­pe­rior cou­ples hold­ing each other tor­tu­ously, fash­ion­ably, and keep­ing in the cor­ners—and a great num­ber of sin­gle girls danc­ing in­di­vid­u­al­is­ti­cally or re­liev­ing the or­ches­tra for a mo­ment of the bur­den of the banjo or the traps. By mid­night the hi­lar­ity had in­creased. A cel­e­brated tenor had sung in Ital­ian, and a no­to­ri­ous con­tralto had sung in jazz, and be­tween the num­bers peo­ple were doing “stunts” all over the gar­den, while happy, vac­u­ous bursts of laugh­ter rose to­ward the sum­mer sky. A pair of stage twins, who turned out to be the girls in yel­low, did a baby act in cos­tume, and cham­pagne was served in glasses big­ger than fin­ger-bowls. The moon had risen higher, and float­ing in the Sound was a tri­an­gle of sil­ver scales, trem­bling a lit­tle to the stiff, tinny drip of the ban­joes on the lawn.</p>
   <p>I was still with Jor­dan Baker. We were sit­ting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy lit­tle girl, who gave way upon the slight­est provo­ca­tion to un­con­trol­lable laugh­ter. I was en­joy­ing my­self now. I had taken two fin­ger-bowls of cham­pagne, and the scene had changed be­fore my eyes into some­thing sig­nif­i­cant, el­e­men­tal, and pro­found.</p>
   <p>At a lull in the en­ter­tain­ment the man looked at me and smiled.</p>
   <p>“Your face is fa­mil­iar,” he said, po­litely. “Weren’t you in the Third Di­vi­sion dur­ing the war?”</p>
   <p>“Why, yes. I was in the ninth ma­chine-gun bat­tal­ion.”</p>
   <p>“I was in the Sev­enth In­fantry until June nine­teen-eigh­teen. I knew I’d seen you some­where be­fore.”</p>
   <p>We talked for a mo­ment about some wet, gray lit­tle vil­lages in France. Ev­i­dently he lived in this vicin­ity, for he told me that he had just bought a hy­droplane, and was going to try it out in the morn­ing.</p>
   <p>“Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound.”</p>
   <p>“What time?”</p>
   <p>“Any time that suits you best.”</p>
   <p>It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jor­dan looked around and smiled.</p>
   <p>“Hav­ing a gay time now?” she in­quired.</p>
   <p>“Much bet­ter.” I turned again to my new ac­quain­tance. “This is an un­usual party for me. I haven’t even seen the host. I live over there—” I waved my hand at the in­vis­i­ble hedge in the dis­tance, “and this man Gatsby sent over his chauf­feur with an in­vi­ta­tion.”</p>
   <p>For a mo­ment he looked at me as if he failed to un­der­stand.</p>
   <p>“I’m Gatsby,” he said sud­denly.</p>
   <p>“What!” I ex­claimed. “Oh, I beg your par­don.”</p>
   <p>“I thought you knew, old sport. I’m afraid I’m not a very good host.”</p>
   <p>He smiled un­der­stand­ingly—much more than un­der­stand­ingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a qual­ity of eter­nal re­as­sur­ance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole ex­ter­nal world for an in­stant, and then con­cen­trated on <emphasis>you</emphasis> with an ir­re­sistible prej­u­dice in your favor. It un­der­stood you just as far as you wanted to be un­der­stood, be­lieved in you as you would like to be­lieve in your­self, and as­sured you that it had pre­cisely the im­pres­sion of you that, at your best, you hoped to con­vey. Pre­cisely at that point it van­ished—and I was look­ing at an el­e­gant young rough­neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elab­o­rate for­mal­ity of speech just missed being ab­surd. Some time be­fore he in­tro­duced him­self I’d got a strong im­pres­sion that he was pick­ing his words with care.</p>
   <p>Al­most at the mo­ment when Mr. Gatsby iden­ti­fied him­self, a but­ler hur­ried to­ward him with the in­for­ma­tion that Chicago was call­ing him on the wire. He ex­cused him­self with a small bow that in­cluded each of us in turn.</p>
   <p>“If you want any­thing just ask for it, old sport,” he urged me. “Ex­cuse me. I will re­join you later.”</p>
   <p>When he was gone I turned im­me­di­ately to Jor­dan—con­strained to as­sure her of my sur­prise. I had ex­pected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and cor­pu­lent per­son in his mid­dle years.</p>
   <p>“Who is he?” I de­manded. “Do you know?”</p>
   <p>“He’s just a man named Gatsby.”</p>
   <p>“Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?”</p>
   <p>“Now <emphasis>you’re</emphasis> started on the sub­ject,” she an­swered with a wan smile. “Well, he told me once he was an Ox­ford man.”</p>
   <p>A dim back­ground started to take shape be­hind him, but at her next re­mark it faded away.</p>
   <p>“How­ever, I don’t be­lieve it.”</p>
   <p>“Why not?”</p>
   <p>“I don’t know,” she in­sisted, “I just don’t think he went there.”</p>
   <p>Some­thing in her tone re­minded me of the other girl’s “I think he killed a man,” and had the ef­fect of stim­u­lat­ing my cu­rios­ity. I would have ac­cepted with­out ques­tion the in­for­ma­tion that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York. That was com­pre­hen­si­ble. But young men didn’t—at least in my provin­cial in­ex­pe­ri­ence I be­lieved they didn’t—drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Is­land Sound.</p>
   <p>“Any­how, he gives large par­ties,” said Jor­dan, chang­ing the sub­ject with an urban dis­taste for the con­crete. “And I like large par­ties. They’re so in­ti­mate. At small par­ties there isn’t any pri­vacy.”</p>
   <p>There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the or­ches­tra leader rang out sud­denly above the echolalia of the gar­den.</p>
   <p>“Ladies and gen­tle­men,” he cried. “At the re­quest of Mr. Gatsby we are going to play for you Mr. Vladimir Tostoff’s lat­est work, which at­tracted so much at­ten­tion at Carnegie Hall last May. If you read the pa­pers, you know there was a big sen­sa­tion.” He smiled with jovial con­de­scen­sion, and added:</p>
   <p>“Some sen­sa­tion!” Where­upon every­body laughed.</p>
   <p>“The piece is known,” he con­cluded lustily, “as Vladimir Tostoff’s <emphasis>Jazz His­tory of the World.</emphasis>”</p>
   <p>The na­ture of Mr. Tostoff’s com­po­si­tion eluded me, be­cause just as it began my eyes fell on Gatsby, stand­ing alone on the mar­ble steps and look­ing from one group to an­other with ap­prov­ing eyes. His tanned skin was drawn at­trac­tively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day. I could see noth­ing sin­is­ter about him. I won­dered if the fact that he was not drink­ing helped to set him off from his guests, for it seemed to me that he grew more cor­rect as the fra­ter­nal hi­lar­ity in­creased. When the <emphasis>Jazz His­tory of the World</emphasis> was over, girls were putting their heads on men’s shoul­ders in a pup­py­ish, con­vivial way, girls were swoon­ing back­ward play­fully into men’s arms, even into groups, know­ing that some one would ar­rest their falls—but no one swooned back­ward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby’s shoul­der, and no singing quar­tets were formed with Gatsby’s head for one link.</p>
   <p>“I beg your par­don.”</p>
   <p>Gatsby’s but­ler was sud­denly stand­ing be­side us.</p>
   <p>“Miss Baker?” he in­quired. “I beg your par­don, but Mr. Gatsby would like to speak to you alone.”</p>
   <p>“With me?” she ex­claimed in sur­prise.</p>
   <p>“Yes, madame.”</p>
   <p>She got up slowly, rais­ing her eye­brows at me in as­ton­ish­ment, and fol­lowed the but­ler to­ward the house. I no­ticed that she wore her evening-dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a jaun­ti­ness about her move­ments as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp morn­ings.</p>
   <p>I was alone and it was al­most two. For some time con­fused and in­trigu­ing sounds had is­sued from a long, many-win­dowed room which over­hung the ter­race. Elud­ing Jor­dan’s un­der­grad­u­ate, who was now en­gaged in an ob­stet­ri­cal con­ver­sa­tion with two cho­rus girls, and who im­plored me to join him, I went in­side.</p>
   <p>The large room was full of peo­ple. One of the girls in yel­low was play­ing the piano, and be­side her stood a tall, red-haired young lady from a fa­mous cho­rus, en­gaged in song. She had drunk a quan­tity of cham­pagne, and dur­ing the course of her song she had de­cided, in­eptly, that every­thing was very, very sad—she was not only singing, she was weep­ing too. When­ever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasp­ing, bro­ken sobs, and then took up the lyric in a qua­ver­ing so­prano. The tears coursed down her cheeks—not freely, how­ever, for when they came into con­tact with her heav­ily beaded eye­lashes they as­sumed an inky color, and pur­sued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A hu­mor­ous sug­ges­tion was made that she sing the notes on her face, where­upon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair, and went off into a deep vi­nous sleep.</p>
   <p>“She had a fight with a man who says he’s her hus­band,” ex­plained a girl at my elbow.</p>
   <p>I looked around. Most of the re­main­ing women were now hav­ing fights with men said to be their hus­bands. Even Jor­dan’s party, the quar­tet from East Egg, were rent asun­der by dis­sen­sion. One of the men was talk­ing with cu­ri­ous in­ten­sity to a young ac­tress, and his wife, after at­tempt­ing to laugh at the sit­u­a­tion in a dig­ni­fied and in­dif­fer­ent way, broke down en­tirely and re­sorted to flank at­tacks—at in­ter­vals she ap­peared sud­denly at his side like an angry di­a­mond, and hissed: “You promised!” into his ear.</p>
   <p>The re­luc­tance to go home was not con­fined to way­ward men. The hall was at pre­sent oc­cu­pied by two de­plorably sober men and their highly in­dig­nant wives. The wives were sym­pa­thiz­ing with each other in slightly raised voices.</p>
   <p>“When­ever he sees I’m hav­ing a good time he wants to go home.”</p>
   <p>“Never heard any­thing so self­ish in my life.”</p>
   <p>“We’re al­ways the first ones to leave.”</p>
   <p>“So are we.”</p>
   <p>“Well, we’re al­most the last tonight,” said one of the men sheep­ishly. “The or­ches­tra left half an hour ago.”</p>
   <p>In spite of this wives’ agree­ment that such malev­o­lence was be­yond cred­i­bil­ity, the dis­pute ended in a short strug­gle, and both wives were lifted, kick­ing, into the night.</p>
   <p>As I waited for my hat in the hall the door of the li­brary opened and Jor­dan Baker and Gatsby came out to­gether. He was say­ing some last word to her, but the ea­ger­ness in his man­ner tight­ened abruptly into for­mal­ity as sev­eral peo­ple ap­proached him to say good-by.</p>
   <p>Jor­dan’s party were call­ing im­pa­tiently to her from the porch, but she lin­gered for a mo­ment to shake hands.</p>
   <p>“I’ve just heard the most amaz­ing thing,” she whis­pered. “How long were we in there?”</p>
   <p>“Why, about an hour.”</p>
   <p>“It was… sim­ply amaz­ing,” she re­peated ab­stract­edly. “But I swore I wouldn’t tell it and here I am tan­ta­liz­ing you.” She yawned grace­fully in my face. “Please come and see me.... Phone book.... Under the name of Mrs. Sigour­ney Howard.... My aunt....” She was hur­ry­ing off as she talked—her brown hand waved a jaunty salute as she melted into her party at the door.</p>
   <p>Rather ashamed that on my first ap­pear­ance I had stayed so late, I joined the last of Gatsby’s guests, who were clus­tered around him. I wanted to ex­plain that I’d hunted for him early in the evening and to apol­o­gize for not hav­ing known him in the gar­den.</p>
   <p>“Don’t men­tion it,” he en­joined me ea­gerly. “Don’t give it an­other thought, old sport.” The fa­mil­iar ex­pres­sion held no more fa­mil­iar­ity than the hand which re­as­sur­ingly brushed my shoul­der. “And don’t for­get we’re going up in the hy­droplane to­mor­row morn­ing, at nine o’clock.”</p>
   <p>Then the but­ler, be­hind his shoul­der:</p>
   <p>“Philadel­phia wants you on the phone, sir.”</p>
   <p>“All right, in a minute. Tell them I’ll be right there.... Good night.”</p>
   <p>“Good night.”</p>
   <p>“Good night.” He smiled -- and sud­denly there seemed to be a pleas­ant sig­nif­i­cance in hav­ing been among the last to go, as if he had de­sired it all the time. “Good night, old sport.... Good night.”</p>
   <p>But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the door a dozen head­lights il­lu­mi­nated a bizarre and tu­mul­tuous scene. In the ditch be­side the road, right side up, but vi­o­lently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupe which had left Gatsby’s drive not two min­utes be­fore. The sharp jut of a wall ac­counted for the de­tach­ment of the wheel, which was now get­ting con­sid­er­able at­ten­tion from half a dozen cu­ri­ous chauf­feurs. How­ever, as they had left their cars block­ing the road, a harsh, dis­cor­dant din from those in the rear had been au­di­ble for some time, and added to the al­ready vi­o­lent con­fu­sion of the scene.</p>
   <p>A man in a long duster had dis­mounted from the wreck and now stood in the mid­dle of the road, look­ing from the car to the tire and from the tire to the ob­servers in a pleas­ant, puz­zled way.</p>
   <p>“See!” he ex­plained. “It went in the ditch.”</p>
   <p>The fact was in­fi­nitely as­ton­ish­ing to him, and I rec­og­nized first the un­usual qual­ity of won­der, and then the man—it was the late pa­tron of Gatsby’s li­brary.</p>
   <p>“How’d it hap­pen?”</p>
   <p>He shrugged his shoul­ders.</p>
   <p>“I know noth­ing what­ever about me­chan­ics,” he said de­ci­sively.</p>
   <p>“But how did it hap­pen? Did you run into the wall?”</p>
   <p>“Don’t ask me,” said Owl Eyes, wash­ing his hands of the whole mat­ter. “I know very lit­tle about dri­ving—next to noth­ing. It hap­pened, and that’s all I know.”</p>
   <p>“Well, if you’re a poor dri­ver you oughtn’t to try dri­ving at night.”</p>
   <p>“But I wasn’t even try­ing,” he ex­plained in­dig­nantly, “I wasn’t even try­ing.”</p>
   <p>An awed hush fell upon the by­standers.</p>
   <p>“Do you want to com­mit sui­cide?”</p>
   <p>“You’re lucky it was just a wheel! A bad dri­ver and not even <emphasis>try­ing!</emphasis>”</p>
   <p>“You don’t un­der­stand,” ex­plained the crim­i­nal. “I wasn’t dri­ving. There’s an­other man in the car.”</p>
   <p>The shock that fol­lowed this de­c­la­ra­tion found voice in a sus­tained “Ah-h-h!” as the door of the coupe swung slowly open. The crowd—it was now a crowd—stepped back in­vol­un­tar­ily, and when the door had opened wide there was a ghostly pause. Then, very grad­u­ally, part by part, a pale, dan­gling in­di­vid­ual stepped out of the wreck, paw­ing ten­ta­tively at the ground with a large un­cer­tain danc­ing shoe.</p>
   <p>Blinded by the glare of the head­lights and con­fused by the in­ces­sant groan­ing of the horns, the ap­pari­tion stood sway­ing for a mo­ment be­fore he per­ceived the man in the duster.</p>
   <p>“Wha’s mat­ter?” he in­quired calmly. “Did we run outa gas?”</p>
   <p>“Look!”</p>
   <p>Half a dozen fin­gers pointed at the am­pu­tated wheel—he stared at it for a mo­ment, and then looked up­ward as though he sus­pected that it had dropped from the sky. “It came off,” some one ex­plained.</p>
   <p>He nod­ded.</p>
   <p>“At first I din’ no­tice we’d stopped.”</p>
   <p>A pause. Then, tak­ing a long breath and straight­en­ing his shoul­ders, he re­marked in a de­ter­mined voice:</p>
   <p>“Won­der’ff tell me where there’s a gas’line sta­tion?”</p>
   <p>At least a dozen men, some of them a lit­tle bet­ter off than he was, ex­plained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any phys­i­cal bond.</p>
   <p>“Back out,” he sug­gested after a mo­ment. “Put her in re­verse.”</p>
   <p>“But the <emphasis>wheel’s</emphasis> off!”</p>
   <p>He hes­i­tated.</p>
   <p>“No harm in try­ing,” he said.</p>
   <p>The cat­er­waul­ing horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn to­ward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon was shin­ing over Gatsby’s house, mak­ing the night fine as be­fore, and sur­viv­ing the laugh­ter and the sound of his still glow­ing gar­den. A sud­den empti­ness seemed to flow now from the win­dows and the great doors, en­dow­ing with com­plete iso­la­tion the fig­ure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a for­mal ges­ture of farewell.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>Read­ing over what I have writ­ten so far, I see I have given the im­pres­sion that the events of three nights sev­eral weeks apart were all that ab­sorbed me. On the con­trary, they were merely ca­sual events in a crowded sum­mer, and, until much later, they ab­sorbed me in­fi­nitely less than my per­sonal af­fairs.</p>
   <p>Most of the time I worked. In the early morn­ing the sun threw my shadow west­ward as I hur­ried down the white chasms of lower New York to the Pro­bity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-sales­men by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restau­rants on lit­tle pig sausages and mashed pota­toes and cof­fee. I even had a short af­fair with a girl who lived in Jer­sey City and worked in the ac­count­ing de­part­ment, but her brother began throw­ing mean looks in my di­rec­tion, so when she went on her va­ca­tion in July I let it blow qui­etly away.</p>
   <p>I took din­ner usu­ally at the Yale Club—for some rea­son it was the gloomi­est event of my day—and then I went up-stairs to the li­brary and stud­ied in­vest­ments and se­cu­ri­ties for a con­sci­en­tious hour. There were gen­er­ally a few ri­ot­ers around, but they never came into the li­brary, so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was mel­low, I strolled down Madi­son Av­enue past the old Mur­ray Hill Hotel, and over 33d Street to the Penn­syl­va­nia Sta­tion.</p>
   <p>I began to like New York, the racy, ad­ven­tur­ous feel of it at night, and the sat­is­fac­tion that the con­stant flicker of men and women and ma­chines gives to the rest­less eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Av­enue and pick out ro­man­tic women from the crowd and imag­ine that in a few min­utes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or dis­ap­prove. Some­times, in my mind, I fol­lowed them to their apart­ments on the cor­ners of hid­den streets, and they turned and smiled back at me be­fore they faded through a door into warm dark­ness. At the en­chanted met­ro­pol­i­tan twi­light I felt a haunt­ing lone­li­ness some­times, and felt it in oth­ers—poor young clerks who loi­tered in front of win­dows wait­ing until it was time for a soli­tary restau­rant din­ner—young clerks in the dusk, wast­ing the most poignant mo­ments of night and life.</p>
   <p>Again at eight o’clock, when the dark lanes of the For­ties were five deep with throb­bing taxi­cabs, bound for the the­ater dis­trict, I left a sink­ing in my heart. Forms leaned to­gether in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laugh­ter from un­heard jokes, and lighted cig­a­rettes out­lined un­in­tel­li­gi­ble ges­tures in­side. Imag­in­ing that I, too, was hur­ry­ing to­ward gayety and shar­ing their in­ti­mate ex­cite­ment, I wished them well.</p>
   <p>For a while I lost sight of Jor­dan Baker, and then in mid­sum­mer I found her again. At first I was flat­tered to go places with her, be­cause she was a golf cham­pion, and every­one knew her name. Then it was some­thing more. I wasn’t ac­tu­ally in love, but I felt a sort of ten­der cu­rios­ity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world con­cealed some­thing—most af­fec­ta­tions con­ceal some­thing even­tu­ally, even though they don’t in the be­gin­ning—and one day I found what it was. When we were on a house-party to­gether up in War­wick, she left a bor­rowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about it—and sud­denly I re­mem­bered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy’s. At her first big golf tour­na­ment there was a row that nearly reached the news­pa­pers—a sug­ges­tion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi­fi­nal round. The thing ap­proached the pro­por­tions of a scan­dal—then died away. A caddy re­tracted his state­ment, and the only other wit­ness ad­mit­ted that he might have been mis­taken. The in­ci­dent and the name had re­mained to­gether in my mind.</p>
   <p>Jor­dan Baker in­stinc­tively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was be­cause she felt safer on a plane where any di­ver­gence from a code would be thought im­pos­si­ble. She was in­cur­ably dis­hon­est. She wasn’t able to en­dure being at a dis­ad­van­tage and, given this un­will­ing­ness, I sup­pose she had begun deal­ing in sub­terfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, in­so­lent smile turned to the world and yet sat­isfy the de­mands of her hard, jaunty body.</p>
   <p>It made no dif­fer­ence to me. Dis­hon­esty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was ca­su­ally sorry, and then I for­got. It was on that same house-party that we had a cu­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tion about dri­ving a car. It started be­cause she passed so close to some work­man that our fender flicked a but­ton on one man’s coat.</p>
   <p>“You’re a rot­ten dri­ver,” I protested. “Ei­ther you ought to be more care­ful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.”</p>
   <p>“I am care­ful.”</p>
   <p>“No, you’re not.”</p>
   <p>“Well, other peo­ple are,” she said lightly.</p>
   <p>“What’s that got to do with it?”</p>
   <p>“They’ll keep out of my way,” she in­sisted. “It takes two to make an ac­ci­dent.”</p>
   <p>“Sup­pose you met some­body just as care­less as your­self.”</p>
   <p>“I hope I never will,” she an­swered. “I hate care­less peo­ple. That’s why I like you.”</p>
   <p>Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had de­lib­er­ately shifted our re­la­tions, and for a mo­ment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-think­ing and full of in­te­rior rules that act as brakes on my de­sires, and I knew that first I had to get my­self def­i­nitely out of that tan­gle back home. I’d been writ­ing let­ters once a week and sign­ing them:</p>
   <p>“Love, Nick,” and all I could think of was how, when that cer­tain girl played ten­nis, a faint mus­tache of per­spi­ra­tion ap­peared on her upper lip. Nev­er­the­less there was a vague un­der­stand­ing that had to be tact­fully bro­ken off be­fore I was free.</p>
   <p>Every one sus­pects him­self of at least one of the car­di­nal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few hon­est peo­ple that I have ever known.</p>
 </section>
  <section>
   <title>
        <p>CHAPTER IV</p>
   </title>
   <p>On Sun­day morn­ing while church bells rang in the vil­lages along­shore, the world and its mis­tress re­turned to Gatsby’s house and twin­kled hi­lar­i­ously on his lawn.</p>
   <p>“He’s a boot­leg­ger,” said the young ladies, mov­ing some­where be­tween his cock­tails and his flow­ers. “One time he killed a man who had found out that he was nephew to Von Hin­den­burg and sec­ond cousin to the devil. Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crys­tal glass.”</p>
   <p>Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a timetable the names of those who came to Gatsby’s house that sum­mer. It is an old time-table now, dis­in­te­grat­ing at its folds, and headed “This sched­ule in ef­fect July 5th, 1922.” But I can still read the gray names, and they will give you a bet­ter im­pres­sion than my gen­er­al­i­ties of those who ac­cepted Gatsby’s hos­pi­tal­ity and paid him the sub­tle trib­ute of know­ing noth­ing what­ever about him.</p>
   <p>From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beck­ers and the Leeches, and a man named Bun­sen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doc­tor Web­ster Civet, who was drowned last sum­mer up in Maine. And the Horn­beams and the Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan named Black­buck, who al­ways gath­ered in a cor­ner and flipped up their noses like goats at whoso­ever came near. And the Is­mays and the Chrysties (or rather Hu­bert Auer­bach and Mr. Chrystie’s wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, turned cot­ton-white one win­ter af­ter­noon for no good rea­son at all.</p>
   <p>Clarence En­dive was from East Egg, as I re­mem­ber. He came only once, in white knicker­bock­ers, and had a fight with a bum named Etty in the gar­den. From far­ther out on the Is­land came the Chea­dles and the 0. R. P. Schraed­ers, and the Stonewall Jack­son Abrams of Geor­gia, and the Fish­guards and the Rip­ley Snells. Snell was there three days be­fore he went to the pen­i­ten­tiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett’s au­to­mo­bile ran over his right hand. The Dan­cies came, too, and S. B. White­bait, who was well over sixty, and Mau­rice A. Flink, and the Ham­mer­heads, and Bel­uga the to­bacco im­porter, and Bel­uga’s girls.</p>
   <p>From West Egg came the Poles and the Mul­readys and Cecil Roe­buck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick the State sen­a­tor and New­ton Or­chid, who con­trolled Films Par Ex­cel­lence, and Eck­haust and Clyde Co-hen and Don S. Schwartze (the son) and Arthur Mc­Carty, all con­nected with the movies in one way or an­other. And the Catlips and the Be­m­bergs and G. Earl Mul­doon, brother to that Mul­doon who af­ter­ward stran­gled his wife. Da Fontano the pro­moter came there, and Ed Legros and James B. (“Rot-Gut”) Fer­ret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly—they came to gam­ble, and when Fer­ret wan­dered into the gar­den it meant he was cleaned out and As­so­ci­ated Trac­tion would have to fluc­tu­ate prof­itably next day.</p>
   <p>A man named Klip­springer was there so often and so long that he be­came known as “the boarder”—I doubt if he had any other home. Of the­atri­cal peo­ple there were Gus Waize and Ho­race O’Don­a­van and Lester Myer and George Duck­weed and Fran­cis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes and the Back-hys­sons and the Den­nick­ers and Rus­sell Betty and the Cor­ri­g­ans and the Kelle­hers and the Dew­ers and the Scullys and S. W. Belcher and the Smirkes and the young Quinns, di­vorced now, and Henry L. Pal­metto, who killed him­self by jump­ing in front of a sub­way train in Times Square.</p>
   <p>Benny Mc­Cle­na­han ar­rived al­ways with four girls. They were never quite the same ones in phys­i­cal per­son, but they were so iden­ti­cal one with an­other that it in­evitably seemed they had been there be­fore. I have for­got­ten their names—Jaque­line, I think, or else Con­suela, or Glo­ria or Judy or June, and their last names were ei­ther the melo­di­ous names of flow­ers and months or the sterner ones of the great Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ists whose cousins, if pressed, they would con­fess them­selves to be.</p>
   <p>In ad­di­tion to all these I can re­mem­ber that Faustina O’Brien came there at least once and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer, who had his nose shot off in the war, and Mr. Al­brucks­burger and Miss Haag, his fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Pe­ters and Mr. P. Jew­ett, once head of the Amer­i­can Le­gion, and Miss Clau­dia Hip, with a man re­puted to be her chauf­feur, and a prince of some­thing, whom we called Duke, and whose name, if I ever knew it, I have for­got­ten.</p>
   <p>All these peo­ple came to Gatsby’s house in the sum­mer.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>At nine o’clock, one morn­ing late in July, Gatsby’s gor­geous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody from its three-noted horn. It was the first time he had called on me, though I had gone to two of his par­ties, mounted in his hy­droplane, and, at his ur­gent in­vi­ta­tion, made fre­quent use of his beach.</p>
   <p>“Good morn­ing, old sport. You’re hav­ing lunch with me today and I thought we’d ride up to­gether.”</p>
   <p>He was bal­anc­ing him­self on the dash­board of his car with that re­source­ful­ness of move­ment that is so pe­cu­liarly Amer­i­can—that comes, I sup­pose, with the ab­sence of lift­ing work or rigid sit­ting in youth and, even more, with the form­less grace of our ner­vous, spo­radic games. This qual­ity was con­tin­u­ally break­ing through his punc­til­ious man­ner in the shape of rest­less­ness. He was never quite still; there was al­ways a tap­ping foot some­where or the im­pa­tient open­ing and clos­ing of a hand.</p>
   <p>He saw me look­ing with ad­mi­ra­tion at his car.</p>
   <p>“It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport!” He jumped off to give me a bet­ter view. “Haven’t you ever seen it be­fore?”</p>
   <p>I’d seen it. Every­body had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its mon­strous length with tri­umphant hat-boxes and sup­per-boxes, and tool-boxes, and ter­raced , with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mir­rored a dozen suns. Sit­ting down be­hind many lay­ers of glass in a sort of green leather con­ser­va­tory, we started to town.</p>
   <p>I had talked with him per­haps six times in the past month and found, to my dis­ap­point­ment, that he had lit­tle to say. So my first im­pres­sion, that he was a per­son of some un­de­fined con­se­quence, had grad­u­ally faded and he had be­come sim­ply the pro­pri­etor of an elab­o­rate road-house next door.</p>
   <p>And then came that dis­con­cert­ing ride. We hadn’t reached West Egg Vil­lage be­fore Gatsby began leav­ing his el­e­gant sen­tences un­fin­ished and slap­ping him­self in­de­ci­sively on the knee of his caramel-col­ored suit.</p>
   <p>“Look here, old sport,” he broke out sur­pris­ingly, “what’s your opin­ion of me, any­how?”</p>
   <p>A lit­tle over­whelmed, I began the gen­er­al­ized eva­sions which that ques­tion de­serves.</p>
   <p>“Well, I’m going to tell you some­thing about my life,” he in­ter­rupted. “I don’t want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these sto­ries you hear.”</p>
   <p>So he was aware of the bizarre ac­cu­sa­tions that fla­vored con­ver­sa­tion in his halls.</p>
   <p>“I’ll tell you God’s truth.” His right hand sud­denly or­dered di­vine ret­ri­bu­tion to stand by. “I am the son of some wealthy peo­ple in the Mid­dle West—all dead now. I was brought up in Amer­ica but ed­u­cated at Ox­ford, be­cause all my an­ces­tors have been ed­u­cated there for many years. It is a fam­ily tra­di­tion.”</p>
   <p>He looked at me side­ways—and I knew why Jor­dan Baker had be­lieved he was lying. He hur­ried the phrase “ed­u­cated at Ox­ford,” or swal­lowed it, or choked on it, as though it had both­ered him be­fore. And with this doubt, his whole state­ment fell pieces, and I won­dered if there wasn’t some­thing a lit­tle sin­is­ter about him, after all.</p>
   <p>“What part of the Mid­dle West?” I in­quired ca­su­ally.</p>
   <p>“San Fran­cisco.”</p>
   <p>“I see.”</p>
   <p>“My fam­ily all died and I came into a good deal of money.”</p>
   <p>His voice was solemn, as if the mem­ory of that sud­den ex­tinc­tion of a clan still haunted him. For a mo­ment I sus­pected that he was pulling my leg, but a glance at him con­vinced me oth­er­wise.</p>
   <p>“After that I lived like a young rajah in all the cap­i­tals of Eu­rope—Paris, Venice, Rome—col­lect­ing jew­els, chiefly ru­bies, hunt­ing big game, paint­ing a lit­tle, things for my­self only, and try­ing to for­get some­thing very sad that had hap­pened to me long ago.”</p>
   <p>With an ef­fort I man­aged to re­strain my in­cred­u­lous laugh­ter. The very phrases were worn so thread­bare that they evoked no image ex­cept that of a tur­baned “char­ac­ter” leak­ing saw­dust at every pore as he pur­sued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.</p>
   <p>“Then came the war, old sport. It was a great re­lief, and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed to bear an en­chanted life. I ac­cepted a com­mis­sion as first lieu­tenant when it began. In the Ar­gonne For­est I took two ma­chine-gun de­tach­ments so far for­ward that there was a half mile gap on ei­ther side of us where the in­fantry couldn’t ad­vance. We stayed there two days and two nights, a hun­dred and thirty men with six­teen Lewis guns, and when the in­fantry came up at last they found the in­signia of three Ger­man di­vi­sions among the piles of dead. I was pro­moted to be a major, and every Al­lied gov­ern­ment gave me a dec­o­ra­tion—even Mon­tene­gro, lit­tle Mon­tene­gro down on the Adri­atic Sea!”</p>
   <p>Lit­tle Mon­tene­gro! He lifted up the words and nod­ded at them—with his smile. The smile com­pre­hended Mon­tene­gro’s trou­bled his­tory and sym­pa­thized with the brave strug­gles of the Mon­tene­grin peo­ple. It ap­pre­ci­ated fully the chain of na­tional cir­cum­stances which had elicited this trib­ute from Mon­tene­gro’s warm lit­tle heart. My in­credulity was sub­merged in fas­ci­na­tion now; it was like skim­ming hastily through a dozen mag­a­zines.</p>
   <p>He reached in his pocket, and a piece of metal, slung on a rib­bon, fell into my palm.</p>
   <p>“That’s the one from Mon­tene­gro.”</p>
   <p>To my as­ton­ish­ment, the thing had an au­then­tic look. “Or­deri de Danilo,” ran the cir­cu­lar leg­end, “Mon­tene­gro, Nico­las Rex.”</p>
   <p>“Turn it.”</p>
   <p>“Major Jay Gatsby,” I read, “For Val­our Ex­tra­or­di­nary.”</p>
   <p>“Here’s an­other thing I al­ways carry. A sou­venir of Ox­ford days. It was taken in Trin­ity Quad—the man on my left is now the Earl of Don­caster.”</p>
   <p>It was a pho­to­graph of half a dozen young men in blaz­ers loaf­ing in an arch­way through which were vis­i­ble a host of spires. There was Gatsby, look­ing a lit­tle, not much, younger—with a cricket bat in his hand.</p>
   <p>Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flam­ing in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him open­ing a chest of ru­bies to ease, with their crim­son-lighted depths, the draw­ings of his bro­ken heart.</p>
   <p>“I’m going to make a big re­quest of you today,” he said, pock­et­ing his sou­venirs with sat­is­fac­tion, so I thought you ought to know some­thing about’ me.</p>
   <p>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.”</p>
   <p>“At lunch?”</p>
   <p>“No, this af­ter­noon. I hap­pened to find out that you’re tak­ing Miss Baker to tea.”</p>
   <p>“Do you mean you’re in love with Miss Baker?”</p>
   <p>“No, old sport, I’m not. But Miss Baker has kindly con­sented to speak to you about this mat­ter.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>With fend­ers spread like wings we, scat­tered light through half As­to­ria—only half, for as we twisted among the pil­lars of the el­e­vated I heard the fa­mil­iar <emphasis>“jug-jug-spatr”</emphasis> of a mo­tor­cy­cle, and a fran­tic po­lice­man rode along­side.</p>
   <p>“All right, old sport,” called Gatsby. We slowed down. Tak­ing a white card from his wal­let, he waved it be­fore the man’s eyes.</p>
   <p>“Right you are,” agreed the po­lice­man, tip­ping his cap. “Know you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Ex­cuse <emphasis>me!</emphasis>”</p>
   <p>“What was that?” I in­quired. “The pic­ture of Ox­ford?”</p>
   <p>“I was able to do the com­mis­sioner a favor once, and he sends me a Christ­mas card every year.”</p>
   <p>Over the great bridge, with the sun­light through the gird­ers mak­ing a con­stant flicker upon the mov­ing cars, with the city ris­ing up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of 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.</p>
   <p>A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, fol­lowed by two car­riages with drawn blinds, and by more cheer­ful car­riages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of south­east­ern Eu­rope, and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby’s splen­did car was in­cluded in their somber 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.</p>
   <p>“Any­thing can hap­pen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,” I thought; “any­thing at all. …”</p>
   <p>Even Gatsby could hap­pen, with­out any par­tic­u­lar won­der.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>Roar­ing noon. In a well-fanned Forty-sec­ond Street cel­lar I met Gatsby for lunch. Blink­ing away the bright­ness of the street out­side, my eyes picked him out ob­scurely in the an­te­room, talk­ing to an­other man.</p>
   <p>“Mr. Car­raway, this is my friend Mr. Wolf­sheim.”</p>
   <p>A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and re­garded me with two fine growths of hair which lux­u­ri­ated in ei­ther nos­tril. After a mo­ment I dis­cov­ered his tiny eyes in the half-dark­ness.</p>
   <p>“—So I took one look at him,” said Mr. Wolf­sheim, shak­ing my hand earnestly, “and what do you think I did?”</p>
   <p>“What?” I in­quired po­litely.</p>
   <p>But ev­i­dently he was not ad­dress­ing me, for he dropped my hand and cov­ered Gatsby with his ex­pres­sive nose.</p>
   <p>“I handed the money to Katspaugh and I said: ‘All right, Katspaugh, don’t pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth.’ He shut it then and there.”</p>
   <p>Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved for­ward into the restau­rant, where­upon Mr. Wolf­sheim swal­lowed a new sen­tence he was start­ing and lapsed into a som­nam­bu­la­tory ab­strac­tion.</p>
   <p>“High­balls?” asked the head waiter.</p>
   <p>“This is a nice restau­rant here,” said Mr. Wolf­sheim, look­ing at the Pres­by­ter­ian nymphs on the ceil­ing. “But I like across the street bet­ter!”</p>
   <p>“Yes, high­balls,” agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolf­sheim: “It’s too hot over there.”</p>
   <p>“Hot and small—yes,” said Mr. Wolf­sheim, “but full of mem­o­ries.”</p>
   <p>“What place is that?” I asked.</p>
   <p>“The old Metro­pole.”</p>
   <p>“The old Metro­pole,” brooded Mr. Wolf­sheim gloomily. “Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with fiends 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.”</p>
   <p>“Let the bas­tards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don’t you, so help me, move out­side this room.”</p>
   <p>“It was four o’clock in the morn­ing then, and if we’d of raised the blinds we’d of seen day­light.”</p>
   <p>“Did he go?” I asked in­no­cently.</p>
   <p>“Sure he went.” Mr. Wolf­sheim’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.”</p>
   <p>“Four of them were elec­tro­cuted,” I said.</p>
   <p>“Five, with Becker.” His nos­trils turned to be in an in­ter­ested way. “I un­der­stand you’re look­ing for a busi­ness gonneg­tion.”</p>
   <p>The jux­ta­po­si­tion of these two re­marks was star­tling. Gatsby an­swered for me:</p>
   <p>“Oh, no,” he ex­claimed, “this isn’t the man.”</p>
   <p>“No?” Mr. Wolf­sheim seemed dis­ap­pointed.</p>
   <p>“This is just a friend. I told you we’d talk about that some other time.”</p>
   <p>“I beg your par­don,” said Mr. Wolf­sheim, “I had a wrong man.”</p>
   <p>A suc­cu­lent hash ar­rived, and Mr. Wolf­sheim, for get­ting 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.</p>
   <p>“Look here, old sport,” said Gatsby lean­ing to­ward me, “I’m afraid I made you a lit­tle angry this morn­ing in the car.”</p>
   <p>There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it.</p>
   <p>“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?”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>Sud­denly he looked at his watch, jumped up, and hur­ried from the room, leav­ing me with Mr. Wolf­sheim at the table.</p>
   <p>“He has to tele­phone,” said Mr. Wolf­sheim, fol­low­ing him with his eyes. “Fine fel­low, isn’t he? Hand­some to look at and a per­fect gen­tle­man.”</p>
   <p>“Yes.”</p>
   <p>“He’s an Og­gs­ford man.”</p>
   <p>“Oh!”</p>
   <p>“He went to Og­gs­ford Col­lege in Eng­land. You know Og­gs­ford Col­lege?”</p>
   <p>“I’ve heard of it.”</p>
   <p>“It’s one of the most fa­mous col­leges in the world.”</p>
   <p>“Have you known Gatsby for a long time?” I in­quired.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>I hadn’t been look­ing at them, but I did now. They were com­posed of oddly fa­mil­iar pieces of ivory.</p>
   <p>“Finest spec­i­mens of human mo­lars,” he in­formed me.</p>
   <p>“Well!” I in­spected them. “That’s a very in­ter­est­ing idea.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>When the sub­ject of this in­stinc­tive trust re­turned to the table and sat down Mr. Wolf­sheim drank his cof­fee with a jerk and got to his feet.</p>
   <p>“I have en­joyed my lunch,” he said, “and I’m going to run off from you two young men be­fore I out­stay my wel­come.”</p>
   <p>“Don’t hurry, Meyer,” said Gatsby, with­out en­thu­si­asm. Mr. Wolf­sheim raised his hand in a sort of bene­dic­tion.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trem­bling. I won­dered if I had said any­thing to of­fend him.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“Who is he, any­how, an actor?”</p>
   <p>“No.”</p>
   <p>“A den­tist?”</p>
   <p>“Meyer Wolf­sheim? No, he’s a gam­bler.” Gatsby hes­i­tated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Se­ries back in 1919”.</p>
   <p>“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 <emphasis>hap­pened,</emphasis> 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.</p>
   <p>“How did he hap­pen to do that?” I asked after a minute.</p>
   <p>“He just saw the op­por­tu­nity.”</p>
   <p>“Why isn’t he in jail?”</p>
   <p>“They can’t get him, old sport. He’s a smart man.”</p>
   <p>I in­sisted on pay­ing the check. As the waiter brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.</p>
   <p>“Come along with me for a minute”, I said; “I’ve got to say hello to some one.”</p>
   <p>When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our di­rec­tion.</p>
   <p>“Where’ve you been?” he de­manded ea­gerly. “Daisy’s fu­ri­ous be­cause you haven’t called up.”</p>
   <p>“This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.”</p>
   <p>They shook hands briefly, and a strained, un­fa­mil­iar look of em­bar­rass­ment came over Gatsby’s face.</p>
   <p>“How’ve you been, any­how?” de­manded Tom of me.</p>
   <p>“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.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>One Oc­to­ber day in nine­teen-sev­en­teen—</p>
   <p>(said Jor­dan Baker that af­ter­noon, sit­ting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-gar­den at the Plaza Hotel)</p>
   <p>—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 <emphasis>tut-tut-tut-tut,</emphasis> in a dis­ap­prov­ing way.</p>
   <p>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!”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Hello, Jor­dan,” she called un­ex­pect­edly. “Please come here.”</p>
   <p>I was flat­tered that she wanted to speak to me, be­cause of all the older girls I ad­mired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross 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 some time, 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.</p>
   <p>That was nine­teen-sev­en­teen. By the next year I had a few beaux my­self, and I began to play in tour­na­ments, so I didn’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.</p>
   <p>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 Muhlbach Hotel, and the day be­fore the wed­ding he gave her a string of pearls val­ued at three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand dol­lars.</p>
   <p>I was a brides­maid. I came into her room half an hour be­fore the bridal din­ner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flow­ered dress—and as drunk as a mon­key. She had a bot­tle of Sauterne in one hand and a let­ter in the other.</p>
   <p>“Grat­u­late me,” she mut­tered. “Never had a drink be­fore, but oh how I do enjoy it.”</p>
   <p>“What’s the mat­ter, Daisy?”</p>
   <p>I was scared, I can tell you; I’d never seen a girl like that be­fore.</p>
   <p>“Here, deares.” She groped around in a waste-bas­ket she had with her oh 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!’ ”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>The next April Daisy had her lit­tle girl, and they went to France for a year. I saw them one spring in Cannes, and later in Deauville, and then they came back to Chicago to set­tle down. Daisy was pop­u­lar in Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an ab­solutely per­fect rep­u­ta­tion. Per­haps be­cause she doesn’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. …</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>When Jor­dan Baker had fin­ished telling all this we had left the Plaza for half an hour and were dri­ving in a vic­to­ria through Cen­tral Park. The sun had gone down be­hind the tall apart­ments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the clear voices of lit­tle girls al­ready gath­ered like crick­ets on the grass, rose through the hot twi­light:</p>
   <poem>
    <stanza>
     <v><emphasis>“I’m the Sheik of Araby.</emphasis></v>
     <v><emphasis>Your love be­longs to me.</emphasis></v>
     <v><emphasis>At night when you’re asleep</emphasis></v>
     <v><emphasis>Into your tent I’ll creep—”</emphasis></v>
    </stanza>
   </poem>
   <p>“It was a strange co­in­ci­dence,” I said.</p>
   <p>“But it wasn’t a co­in­ci­dence at all.”</p>
   <p>“Why not?”</p>
   <p>“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”</p>
   <p>Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had as­pired on that June night. He came alive to me, de­liv­ered sud­denly from the womb of his pur­pose­less splen­dor.</p>
   <p>“He wants to know,” con­tin­ued Jor­dan, “if you’ll in­vite Daisy to your house some af­ter­noon and then let him come over.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Did I have to know all this be­fore he could ask such a lit­tle thing?”</p>
   <p>“He’s afraid, he’s waited so long. He thought you might be of­fended. You see, he’s a reg­u­lar tough un­der­neath it all.”</p>
   <p>Some­thing wor­ried me.</p>
   <p>“Why didn’t he ask you to arrange a meet­ing?”</p>
   <p>“He wants her to see his house,” she ex­plained. “And your house is right next door.”</p>
   <p>“Oh!”</p>
   <p>“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:</p>
   <p>“ ‘I don’t want to do any­thing out of the way!’ he kept say­ing. ‘I want to see her right next door.’ ”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>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.”</p>
   <p>“And Daisy ought to have some­thing in her life,” mur­mured Jor­dan to me.</p>
   <p>“Does she want to see Gatsby?”</p>
   <p>“She’s not to know about it. Gatsby doesn’t want her to know. You’re just sup­posed to in­vite her to tea.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
</section>
  <section>
   <title>
    <p>CHAPTER V</p>
   </title>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Your place looks like the World’s Fair,” I said.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“It’s too late.”</p>
   <p>“Well, sup­pose we take a plunge in the swim­ming-pool? I haven’t made use of it all sum­mer.”</p>
   <p>“I’ve got to go to bed.”</p>
   <p>“All right.”</p>
   <p>He waited, look­ing at me with sup­pressed ea­ger­ness.</p>
   <p>“I talked with Miss Baker,” I said after a mo­ment, “I’m going to call up Daisy to­mor­row and in­vite her over here to tea.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, that’s all right,” he said care­lessly. “I don’t want to put you to any trou­ble.”</p>
   <p>“What day would suit you?”</p>
   <p>“What day would suit <emphasis>you?</emphasis>” he cor­rected me quickly. “I don’t want to put you to any trou­ble, you see.”</p>
   <p>“How about the day after to­mor­row?”</p>
   <p>He con­sid­ered for a mo­ment. Then, with re­luc­tance:</p>
   <p>“I want to get the grass cut,” he said.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“There’s an­other lit­tle thing,” he said un­cer­tainly, and hes­i­tated.</p>
   <p>“Would you rather put it off for a few days?” I asked.</p>
   <p>“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?”</p>
   <p>“Not very much.”</p>
   <p>This seemed to re­as­sure him and he con­tin­ued more con­fi­dently.</p>
   <p>“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?”</p>
   <p>“Try­ing to.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>I re­al­ize now that under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances that con­ver­sa­tion might have been one of the crises of my life. But, be­cause the offer was ob­vi­ously and tact­lessly for a ser­vice to be ren­dered, I had no choice ex­cept to cut him off there.</p>
   <p>“I’ve got my hands full,” I said. “I’m much obliged but I couldn’t take on any more work.”</p>
   <p>“You wouldn’t have to do any busi­ness with Wolf­sheim.” 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.</p>
   <p>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 don’t know whether or not Gatsby went to Coney Is­land, or for how many hours he “glanced into rooms” while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the of­fice next morn­ing, and in­vited her to come to tea.</p>
   <p>“Don’t bring Tom,” I warned her.</p>
   <p>“What?”</p>
   <p>“Don’t bring Tom.”</p>
   <p>“Who is Tom’?” she asked in­no­cently.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Is every­thing all right?” he asked im­me­di­ately.</p>
   <p>“The grass looks fine, if that’s what you mean.”</p>
   <p>“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.</p>
   <p>“Looks very good,” he re­marked vaguely. “One of the pa­pers said they thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was <emphasis>The Jour­nal.</emphasis> Have you got every­thing you need in the shape of—of tea?”</p>
   <p>I took him into the pantry, where he looked a lit­tle re­proach­fully at the Finn. To­gether we scru­ti­nized the twelve lemon cakes from the del­i­catessen shop.</p>
   <p>“Will they do?” I asked.</p>
   <p>“Of course, of course! They’re fine!” and he added hol­lowly, “… old sport.”</p>
   <p>The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp mist, through which oc­ca­sional thin drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with va­cant eyes through a copy of Clay’s <emphasis>Eco­nom­ics,</emphasis> 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.</p>
   <p>“Why’s that?”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“Don’t be silly; it’s just two min­utes to four.”</p>
   <p>He sat down mis­er­ably, as if I had pushed him, and si­mul­ta­ne­ously there was the sound of a motor turn­ing into my lane. We both jumped up, and, a lit­tle har­rowed my­self, I went out into the yard.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Is this ab­solutely where you live, my dear­est one?”</p>
   <p>The ex­hil­a­rat­ing rip­ple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I had to fol­low the sound of it for a mo­ment, up and down, with my ear alone, be­fore any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with glis­ten­ing drops as I took it to help her from the car.</p>
   <p>“Are you in love with me,” she said low in my ear, “or why did I have to come alone?”</p>
   <p>“That’s the se­cret of Cas­tle Rack­rent. Tell your chauf­feur to go far away and spend an hour.”</p>
   <p>“Come back in an hour, Fer­die.” Then in a grave mur­mur: “His name is Fer­die.”</p>
   <p>“Does the gaso­line af­fect his nose?”</p>
   <p>“I don’t think so,” she said in­no­cently. “Why?”</p>
   <p>We went in. To my over­whelm­ing sur­prise the liv­ing-room was de­serted.</p>
   <p>“Well, that’s funny,” I ex­claimed.</p>
   <p>“What’s funny?”</p>
   <p>She turned her head as there was a light dig­ni­fied knock­ing at the front door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pock­ets, was stand­ing in a pud­dle of water glar­ing trag­i­cally into my eyes.</p>
   <p>With his hands still in his coat pock­ets he stalked by me into the hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire, and dis­ap­peared into the liv­ing-room. It wasn’t a bit funny. Aware of the loud beat­ing of my own heart I pulled the door to against the in­creas­ing rain.</p>
   <p>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:</p>
   <p>“I cer­tainly am aw­fully glad to see you again.”</p>
   <p>A pause; it en­dured hor­ri­bly. I had noth­ing to do in the hall, so I went into the room.</p>
   <p>Gatsby, his hands still in his pock­ets, was re­clin­ing against the man­tel­piece in a strained coun­ter­feit of per­fect ease, even of bore­dom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a de­funct man­tel­piece clock, and from this po­si­tion his dis­traught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sit­ting, fright­ened but grace­ful, on the edge of a stiff chair.</p>
   <p>“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.</p>
   <p>“I’m sorry about the clock,” he said.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“It’s an old clock,” I told them id­i­ot­i­cally.</p>
   <p>I think we all be­lieved for a mo­ment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.</p>
   <p>“We haven’t met for many years,” said Daisy, her voice as mat­ter-of-fact as it could ever be.</p>
   <p>“Five years next No­vem­ber.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>Amid the wel­come con­fu­sion of cups and cakes a cer­tain phys­i­cal de­cency es­tab­lished it­self. Gatsby got him­self into a shadow and, while Daisy and I talked, looked con­sci­en­tiously from one to the other of us with tense, un­happy eyes. How­ever, as calm­ness wasn’t an end in it­self, I made an ex­cuse at the first pos­si­ble mo­ment, and got to my feet.</p>
   <p>“Where are you going?” de­manded Gatsby in im­me­di­ate alarm.</p>
   <p>“I’ll be back.”</p>
   <p>“I’ve got to speak to you about some­thing be­fore you go.”</p>
   <p>He fol­lowed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door, and whis­pered: “Oh, God!” in a mis­er­able way.</p>
   <p>“What’s the mat­ter?”</p>
   <p>“This is a ter­ri­ble mis­take,” he said, shak­ing his head from side to side, “a ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble mis­take.”</p>
   <p>“You’re just em­bar­rassed, that’s all,” and luck­ily I added: “Daisy’s em­bar­rassed too.”</p>
   <p>“She’s em­bar­rassed?” he re­peated in­cred­u­lously.</p>
   <p>“Just as much as you are.”</p>
   <p>“Don’t talk so loud.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me with un­for­get­table re­proach, and, open­ing the door cau­tiously, went back into the other room.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“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.</p>
   <p>“It’s stopped rain­ing.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“I’m glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, griev­ing beauty, told only of her un­ex­pected joy.</p>
   <p>“I want you and Daisy to come over to my house,” he said, “I’d like to show her around.”</p>
   <p>“You’re sure you want me to come?”</p>
   <p>“Ab­solutely, old sport.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“My house looks well, doesn’t it?” he de­manded. “See how the whole front of it catches the light.”</p>
   <p>I agreed that it was splen­did.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“I thought you in­her­ited your money.”</p>
   <p>“I did, old sport,” he said au­to­mat­i­cally, “but I lost most of it in the big panic—the panic of the war.”</p>
   <p>I think he hardly knew what he was say­ing, for when I asked him what busi­ness he was in he an­swered: “That’s my af­fair,” be­fore he re­al­ized that it wasn’t an ap­pro­pri­ate reply.</p>
   <p>“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?”</p>
   <p>Be­fore I could an­swer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass but­tons on her dress gleamed in the sun­light.</p>
   <p>“That huge place <emphasis>there?</emphasis>” she cried point­ing.</p>
   <p>“Do you like it?”</p>
   <p>“I love it, but I don’t see how you live there all alone.”</p>
   <p>“I keep it al­ways full of in­ter­est­ing peo­ple, night and day. Peo­ple who do in­ter­est­ing things. Cel­e­brated peo­ple.”</p>
   <p>In­stead of tak­ing the short cut along the Sound we went down to the road and en­tered by the big postern. With en­chant­ing mur­murs Daisy ad­mired this as­pect or that of the feu­dal sil­hou­ette against the sky, ad­mired the gar­dens, the sparkling 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 of the door, and hear no sound but bird voices in the trees.</p>
   <p>And in­side, as we wan­dered through Marie An­toinette mu­sic-rooms and Restora­tion sa­lons, I felt that there were guests con­cealed be­hind every couch and table, under or­ders to be breath­lessly silent until we had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of “the Mer­ton Col­lege Li­brary” I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ghostly laugh­ter.</p>
   <p>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 di­sheveled 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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“It’s the fun­ni­est thing, old sport,” he said hi­lar­i­ously. “I can’t—when I try to”</p>
   <p>He had passed vis­i­bly through two states and was en­ter­ing upon a third. After his em­bar­rass­ment and his un­rea­son­ing joy he was con­sumed with won­der at her pres­ence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an in­con­ceiv­able pitch of in­ten­sity. Now, in the re­ac­tion, he was run­ning down like an over­wound clock.</p>
   <p>Re­cov­er­ing him­self in a minute he opened for us two hulk­ing patent cab­i­nets which held his massed suits and dress­ing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>He took out a pile of shirts and began throw­ing them, one by one, be­fore us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flan­nel, which lost their folds as they fell and cov­ered the table in many-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, with mono­grams of In­dian blue. Sud­denly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swim­ming-pool, and the hy­droplane and the mid­sum­mer flow­ers—but out­side Gatsby’s win­dow it began to rain again, so we stood in a row look­ing at the cor­ru­gated sur­face of the Sound.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed ab­sorbed in what he had just said. Pos­si­bly it had oc­curred to him that the colos­sal sig­nif­i­cance of that light had now van­ished for­ever. Com­pared to the great dis­tance that had sep­a­rated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, al­most touch­ing her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of en­chanted ob­jects had di­min­ished by one.</p>
   <p>I began to walk about the room, ex­am­in­ing var­i­ous in­def­i­nite ob­jects in the half dark­ness. A large pho­to­graph of an el­derly man in yacht­ing cos­tume at­tracted me, hung on the wall over his desk.</p>
   <p>“Who’s this?”</p>
   <p>“That? That’s Mr. Dan Cody, old sport.”</p>
   <p>The name sounded faintly fa­mil­iar.</p>
   <p>“He’s dead now; He used to be my best friend years ago.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“I adore it,” ex­claimed Daisy. “The pom­padour! You never told me you had a pom­padour—or a yacht.”</p>
   <p>“Look at this,” said Gatsby quickly. “Here’s a lot of clip­pings—about you.”</p>
   <p>They stood side by side ex­am­in­ing it. I was going to ask to see the ru­bies when the phone rang, and Gatsby took up the re­ceiver.</p>
   <p>“Yes. … Well, I can’t talk now. … I can’t talk now, old sport. … I said a <emphasis>small</emphasis> 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. …”</p>
   <p>He rang off.</p>
   <p>“Come here <emphasis>quick!</emphasis>” cried Daisy at the win­dow.</p>
   <p>The rain was still falling, but the dark­ness had parted in the west, and there was a pink and golden bil­low of foamy clouds above the sea.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; per­haps my pres­ence made them feel more sat­is­fac­to­rily alone.</p>
   <p>“I know what we’ll do,” said Gatsby, “we’ll have Klip­springer play the piano.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Did we in­ter­rupt your ex­er­cises?” in­quired Daisy po­litely.</p>
   <p>“I was asleep,” cried Mr. Klip­springer, in a spasm of em­bar­rass­ment. “That is, I’d <emphasis>been</emphasis> asleep. Then I got up. …”</p>
   <p>“Klip­springer plays the piano,” said Gatsby, cut­ting him off. “Don’t you, Ewing, old sport?”</p>
   <p>“I don’t play well. I don’t—I hardly play at all. I’m all out of prac—”</p>
   <p>“We’ll go down­stairs,” in­ter­rupted Gatsby. He flipped a switch. The gray win­dows dis­ap­peared as the house glowed full of light.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>When Klip­springer had played <emphasis>The Love Nest</emphasis> he turned around on the bench and searched un­hap­pily for Gatsby in the gloom.</p>
   <p>“I’m all out of prac­tice, you see. I told you I couldn’t play. I’m all out of prac—”</p>
   <p>“Don’t talk so much, old sport,” com­manded Gatsby. “Play!”</p>
   <poem>
    <stanza>
     <v><emphasis>“In the morn­ing,</emphasis></v>
     <v><emphasis>In the evening,</emphasis></v>
     <v><emphasis>Ain’t we got fun”</emphasis></v>
    </stanza>
   </poem>
   <p>Out­side the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thun­der along the Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the elec­tric trains, men-car­ry­ing, were plung­ing home through the rain from New York. It was the hour of a pro­found human change, and ex­cite­ment was gen­er­at­ing on the air</p>
   <poem>
    <stanza>
     <v><emphasis>“One thing’s sure and noth­ing’s surer</emphasis></v>
     <v><emphasis>The rich get richer and the poor get—chil­dren.</emphasis></v>
     <v><emphasis>In the mean­time,</emphasis></v>
     <v><emphasis>In be­tween time—”</emphasis></v>
    </stanza>
   </poem>
   <p>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 when Daisy tum­bled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but be­cause of the colos­sal vi­tal­ity of his il­lu­sion. It had gone be­yond her, be­yond every­thing. He had thrown him­self into it with a cre­ative pas­sion, adding to it all the time, deck­ing it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or fresh­ness can chal­lenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.</p>
   <p>As I watched him he ad­justed him­self a lit­tle, vis­i­bly. His hand took hold of hers, and as she said some­thing low in his ear he turned to­ward her with a rush of emo­tion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluc­tu­at­ing, fever­ish warmth, be­cause it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a death­less song.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
 </section>
  <section>
   <title>
    <p>CHAPTER VI</p>
   </title>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Any­thing to say about what?” in­quired Gatsby po­litely.</p>
   <p>“Why—any state­ment to give out.”</p>
   <p>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.”</p>
   <p>It was a ran­dom shot, and yet the re­porter’s in­stinct was right. Gatsby’s no­to­ri­ety, spread about by the hun­dreds who had ac­cepted his hos­pi­tal­ity and so be­come au­thor­i­ties upon his past, had in­creased all sum­mer until he fell just short of being news. Con­tem­po­rary leg­ends such as the “un­der­ground 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.</p>
   <p>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 <emphasis>Tuolomee,</emphasis> and in­formed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>For over a year he had been beat­ing his way along the south shore of Lake Su­pe­rior as a clam-dig­ger and a salmon-fisher or in any other ca­pac­ity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hard­en­ing body lived nat­u­rally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the brac­ing days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he be­came con­temp­tu­ous of them, of young vir­gins be­cause they were ig­no­rant, of the oth­ers be­cause they were hys­ter­i­cal about things which in his over­whelm­ing self-ab­sorp­tion he took for granted.</p>
   <p>But his heart was in a con­stant, tur­bu­lent riot. The most grotesque and fan­tas­tic con­ceits haunted him in his bed at night. A uni­verse of in­ef­fa­ble gaudi­ness spun it­self out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash­stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tan­gled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pat­tern of his fan­cies until drowsi­ness closed down upon some vivid scene with an obliv­i­ous em­brace. For a while these rever­ies pro­vided an out­let for his imag­i­na­tion; they were a sat­is­fac­tory hint of the un­re­al­ity of re­al­ity, a promise that the rock of the world was founded se­curely on a fairy’s wing.</p>
   <p>An in­stinct to­ward his fu­ture glory had led him, some months be­fore, to the small Lutheran col­lege of St. Olaf’s in south­ern Min­nesota. He stayed there two weeks, dis­mayed at its fe­ro­cious in­dif­fer­ence to the drums of his des­tiny, to des­tiny it­self, and de­spis­ing the jan­i­tor’s work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake Su­pe­rior, and he was still search­ing for some­thing to do on the day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped an­chor in the shal­lows along­shore.</p>
   <p>Cody was fifty years old then, a prod­uct of the Nevada sil­ver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since sev­enty-five. The trans­ac­tions in Mon­tana cop­per that made him many times a mil­lion­aire found him phys­i­cally ro­bust but on the verge of soft-mind­ed­ness, and, sus­pect­ing this, an in­fi­nite num­ber of women tried to sep­a­rate him from his money. The none too 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 or sup­pressed jour­nal­ism of 1902. He had been coast­ing along all too hos­pitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz’s des­tiny in Lit­tle Girl Bay.</p>
   <p>To young Gatz, rest­ing on his oars and look­ing up at the railed deck, that yacht rep­re­sented all the beauty and glam­our in the world. I sup­pose he smiled at Cody—he had prob­a­bly dis­cov­ered that peo­ple liked him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few ques­tions (one of them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and ex­trav­a­gantly am­bi­tious. A few days later he took him to Du­luth and bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trousers, and a yacht­ing cap. And when the <emphasis>Tuolomee</emphasis> left for the West In­dies and the Bar­bary Coast Gatsby left too.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“I’m de­lighted to see you,” said Gatsby, stand­ing on his porch. “I’m de­lighted that you dropped in.”</p>
   <p>As though they cared!</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>He was pro­foundly af­fected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be un­easy any­how until he had given them some­thing, re­al­iz­ing in a vague way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted noth­ing. A lemon­ade? No thanks. A lit­tle cham­pagne? Noth­ing at all, thanks. … I’m sorry—</p>
   <p>“Did you have a nice ride?”</p>
   <p>“Very good roads around here.”</p>
   <p>“I sup­pose the au­to­mo­biles—”</p>
   <p>“Yeah.”</p>
   <p>Moved by an ir­re­sistible im­pulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had ac­cepted the in­tro­duc­tion as a stranger.</p>
   <p>“I be­lieve we’ve met some­where be­fore, Mr. Buchanan.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, yes,” said Tom, gruffly po­lite, but ob­vi­ously not re­mem­ber­ing. “So we did. I re­mem­ber very well.”</p>
   <p>“About two weeks ago.”</p>
   <p>“That’s right. You were with Nick here.”</p>
   <p>“I know your wife,” con­tin­ued Gatsby, al­most ag­gres­sively.</p>
   <p>“That so?”</p>
   <p>Tom turned to me.</p>
   <p>“You live near here, Nick?”</p>
   <p>“Next door.”</p>
   <p>“That so?”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“We’ll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby,” she sug­gested. “What do you say?”</p>
   <p>“Cer­tainly; I’d be de­lighted to have you.”</p>
   <p>“Be ver’nice,” said Mr. Sloane, with­out grat­i­tude. “Well—think ought to be start­ing home.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“You come to sup­per with <emphasis>me,</emphasis>” said the lady en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. “Both of you.”</p>
   <p>This in­cluded me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.</p>
   <p>“Come along,” he said—but to her only.</p>
   <p>“I mean it,” she in­sisted. “I’d love to have you. Lots of room.”</p>
   <p>Gatsby looked at me ques­tion­ingly. He wanted to go, and he didn’t see that Mr. Sloane had de­ter­mined he shouldn’t.</p>
   <p>“I’m afraid I won’t be able to,” I said.</p>
   <p>“Well, you come,” she urged, con­cen­trat­ing on Gatsby.</p>
   <p>Mr. Sloane mur­mured some­thing close to her ear.</p>
   <p>“We won’t be late if we start now,” she in­sisted aloud.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began an im­pas­sioned con­ver­sa­tion aside.</p>
   <p>“My God, I be­lieve the man’s com­ing,” said Tom. “Doesn’t he know she doesn’t want him?”</p>
   <p>“She says she does want him.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>Sud­denly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses.</p>
   <p>“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?”</p>
   <p>Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us ex­changed a cool nod, and they trot­ted quickly down the drive, dis­ap­pear­ing under the Au­gust fo­liage just as Gatsby, with hat and light over­coat in hand, came out the front door.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>They ar­rived at twi­light, and, as we strolled out among the sparkling hun­dreds, Daisy’s voice was play­ing mur­murous tricks in her throat.</p>
   <p>“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—”</p>
   <p>“Look around,” sug­gested Gatsby.</p>
   <p>“I’m look­ing around. I’m hav­ing a mar­vel­lous—”</p>
   <p>“You must see the faces of many peo­ple you’ve heard about.”</p>
   <p>Tom’s ar­ro­gant eyes roamed the crowd.</p>
   <p>“We don’t go around very much,” he said; “in fact, I was just think­ing I don’t know a soul here.”</p>
   <p>“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 par­tic­u­larly un­real feel­ing that ac­com­pa­nies the recog­ni­tion of a hith­erto ghostly celebrity of the movies.</p>
   <p>“She’s lovely,” said Daisy.</p>
   <p>“The man bend­ing over her is her di­rec­tor.”</p>
   <p>He took them cer­e­mo­ni­ously from group to group:</p>
   <p>“Mrs. Buchanan … and Mr. Buchanan—” After an in­stant’s hes­i­ta­tion he added: “the polo player.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, no,” ob­jected Tom quickly, “not me.”</p>
   <p>But ev­i­dently the sound of it pleased Gatsby, for Tom re­mained “the polo player” for the rest of the evening.</p>
   <p>“I’ve never met so many celebri­ties,” Daisy ex­claimed. “I liked that man—what was his name?—with the sort of blue nose.”</p>
   <p>Gatsby iden­ti­fied him, adding that he was a small pro­ducer. “Well, I liked him any­how.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>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.”</p>
   <p>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.”</p>
   <p>“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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?”</p>
   <p>The girl ad­dressed was try­ing, un­suc­cess­fully, to slump against my shoul­der. At this in­quiry she sat up and opened her eyes.</p>
   <p>“Wha’?”</p>
   <p>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:</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“I do leave it alone,” af­firmed the ac­cused hol­lowly.</p>
   <p>“We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here:</p>
   <p>“There’s some­body that needs your help, Doc.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“Any­thing I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,” mum­bled Miss Baedeker. “They al­most drowned me once over in New Jer­sey.”</p>
   <p>“Then you ought to leave it alone,” coun­tered Doc­tor Civet.</p>
   <p>“Speak for your­self!” cried Miss Baedeker vi­o­lently. “Your hand shakes. I wouldn’t let you op­er­ate on me!”</p>
   <p>It was like that. Al­most the last thing I re­mem­ber was stand­ing with Daisy and watch­ing the mov­ing-pic­ture di­rec­tor and his Star. They were still under the white-plum tree and their faces were touch­ing ex­cept for a pale, thin ray of moon­light be­tween. It oc­curred to me that he had been very slowly bend­ing to­ward her all evening to at­tain this prox­im­ity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ul­ti­mate de­gree and kiss at her cheek.</p>
   <p>“I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It was dark here in front; only the bright door sent ten square feet of light vol­ley­ing out into the soft black morn­ing. Some­times a shadow moved against a dress­ing-room blind above, gave way to an­other shadow, an in­def­i­nite pro­ces­sion of shad­ows, that rouged and pow­dered in an in­vis­i­ble glass.</p>
   <p>“Who is this Gatsby any­how?” de­manded Tom sud­denly. “Some big boot­leg­ger?”</p>
   <p>“Where’d you hear that?” I in­quired.</p>
   <p>“I didn’t hear it. I imag­ined it. A lot of these newly rich peo­ple are just big boot­leg­gers, you know.”</p>
   <p>“Not Gatsby,” I said shortly.</p>
   <p>He was silent for a mo­ment. The peb­bles of the drive crunched under his feet.</p>
   <p>“Well, he cer­tainly must have strained him­self to get this menagerie to­gether.”</p>
   <p>A breeze stirred the gray haze of Daisy’s fur col­lar.</p>
   <p>“At least they’re more in­ter­est­ing than the peo­ple we know,” she said with an ef­fort.</p>
   <p>“You didn’t look so in­ter­ested.”</p>
   <p>“Well, I was.”</p>
   <p>Tom laughed and turned to me.</p>
   <p>“Did you no­tice Daisy’s face when that girl asked her to put her under a cold shower?”</p>
   <p>Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhyth­mic whis­per, bring­ing out a mean­ing in each word that it had never had be­fore and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, fol­low­ing it, in a way con­tralto voices have, and each change tipped out a lit­tle of her warm human magic upon the air.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“I can tell you right now,” she an­swered. “He owned some drug­stores, a lot of drug­stores. He built them up him­self.”</p>
   <p>The dila­tory lim­ou­sine came rolling up the drive.</p>
   <p>“Good night, Nick,” said Daisy.</p>
   <p>Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps, where <emphasis>Three O’clock in the Morn­ing,</emphasis> 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.</p>
   <p>I stayed late that night, Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free, and I lin­gered in the gar­den until the in­evitable swim­ming party had run up, chilled and ex­alted, from the black beach, until the lights were ex­tin­guished in the 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.</p>
   <p>“She didn’t like it,” he said im­me­di­ately.</p>
   <p>“Of course she did.”</p>
   <p>“She didn’t like it,” he in­sisted. “She didn’t have a good time.”</p>
   <p>He was silent, and I guessed at his un­ut­ter­able de­pres­sion.</p>
   <p>“I feel far away from her,” he said. “It’s hard to make her un­der­stand.”</p>
   <p>“You mean about the dance?”</p>
   <p>“The dance?” He dis­missed all the dances he had given with a snap of his fin­gers. “Old sport, the dance is unim­por­tant.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“And she doesn’t un­der­stand,” he said. “She used to be able to un­der­stand. We’d sit for hours—”</p>
   <p>He broke off and began to walk up and down a des­o­late path of fruit rinds and dis­carded fa­vors and crushed flow­ers.</p>
   <p>“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ven­tured. “You can’t re­peat the past.”</p>
   <p>“Can’t re­peat the past?” he cried in­cred­u­lously. “Why of course you can!”</p>
   <p>He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurk­ing here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.</p>
   <p>“I’m going to fix every­thing just the way it was be­fore,” he said, nod­ding de­ter­minedly. “She’ll see.”</p>
   <p>He talked a lot about the past, and I gath­ered that he wanted to re­cover some­thing, some idea of him­self per­haps, that had gone into lov­ing Daisy. His life had been con­fused and dis­or­dered since then, but if he could once re­turn to a cer­tain start­ing place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was. …</p>
   <p>… 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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
 </section>
  <section>
   <title>
        <p>CHAPTER VII</p>
   </title>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Is Mr. Gatsby sick?”</p>
   <p>“Nope.” After a pause he added “sir” in a dila­tory, grudg­ing way.</p>
   <p>“I hadn’t seen him around, and I was rather wor­ried. Tell him Mr. Car­raway came over.”</p>
   <p>“Who?” he de­manded rudely.</p>
   <p>“Car­raway.”</p>
   <p>“Car­raway. All right, I’ll tell him.”</p>
   <p>Abruptly he slammed the door.</p>
   <p>My Finn in­formed me that Gatsby had dis­missed every ser­vant in his house a week ago and re­placed them with half a dozen oth­ers, who never went into West Egg Vil­lage to be bribed by the trades­men, but or­dered mod­er­ate sup­plies over the tele­phone. The gro­cery boy re­ported that the kitchen looked like a pigsty, and the gen­eral opin­ion in the vil­lage was that the new peo­ple weren’t ser­vants at all.</p>
   <p>Next day Gatsby called me on the phone.</p>
   <p>“Going away?” I in­quired.</p>
   <p>“No, old sport.”</p>
   <p>“I hear you fired all your ser­vants.”</p>
   <p>“I wanted some­body who wouldn’t gos­sip. Daisy comes over quite often—in the af­ter­noons.”</p>
   <p>So the whole car­a­vansary had fallen in like a card house at the dis­ap­proval in her eyes.</p>
   <p>“They’re some peo­ple Wolf­sheim wanted to do some­thing for. They’re all broth­ers and sis­ters. They used to run a small hotel.”</p>
   <p>“I see.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>The next day was broil­ing, al­most the last, cer­tainly the warmest, of the sum­mer. As my train emerged from the tun­nel into sun­light, only the hot whis­tles of the Na­tional Bis­cuit Com­pany broke the sim­mer­ing hush at noon. The straw seats of the car hov­ered on the edge of com­bus­tion; the woman next to me per­spired del­i­cately for a while into her white shirt­waist, and then, as her news­pa­per damp­ened under her fin­gers, lapsed de­spair­ingly into deep heat with a des­o­late cry. Her pocket-book slapped to the floor.</p>
   <p>“Oh, my!” she gasped.</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Hot!” said the con­duc­tor to fa­mil­iar faces. “Some weather! … Hot! … Hot! … Hot! … Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it…?”</p>
   <p>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!</p>
   <p>… 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.</p>
   <p>“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!”</p>
   <p>What he re­ally said was: “Yes … Yes … I’ll see.”</p>
   <p>He set down the re­ceiver and came to­ward us, glis­ten­ing slightly, to take our stiff straw hats.</p>
   <p>“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.</p>
   <p>The room, shad­owed well with awnings, was dark and cool. Daisy and Jor­dan lay upon an enor­mous couch, like sil­ver idols weigh­ing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans.</p>
   <p>“We can’t move,” they said to­gether.</p>
   <p>Jor­dan’s fin­gers, pow­dered white over their tan, rested for a mo­ment in mine.</p>
   <p>“And Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the ath­lete?” I in­quired.</p>
   <p>Si­mul­ta­ne­ously I heard his voice, gruff, muf­fled, husky, at the hall tele­phone.</p>
   <p>Gatsby stood in the cen­tre of the crim­son car­pet and gazed around with fas­ci­nated eyes. Daisy watched him and laughed, her sweet, ex­cit­ing laugh; a tiny gust of pow­der rose from her bosom into the air.</p>
   <p>“The rumor is,” whis­pered Jor­dan, “that that’s Tom’s girl on the tele­phone.”</p>
   <p>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!”</p>
   <p>“Hold­ing down the re­ceiver,” said Daisy cyn­i­cally.</p>
   <p>“No, he’s not,” I as­sured her. “It’s a bona-fide deal. I hap­pen to know about it.”</p>
   <p>Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space for a mo­ment with his thick body, and hur­ried into the room.</p>
   <p>“Mr. Gatsby!” He put out his broad, flat hand with well-con­cealed dis­like. “I’m glad to see you, sir. … Nick. …”</p>
   <p>“Make us a cold drink,” cried Daisy.</p>
   <p>As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and pulled his face down, kiss­ing him on the mouth.</p>
   <p>“You know I love you,” she mur­mured.</p>
   <p>“You for­get there’s a lady pre­sent,” said Jor­dan.</p>
   <p>Daisy looked around doubt­fully.</p>
   <p>“You kiss Nick too.”</p>
   <p>“What a low, vul­gar girl!”</p>
   <p>“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.</p>
   <p>“Bles-sed pre-cious,” she crooned, hold­ing out her arms. “Come to your own mother that loves you.”</p>
   <p>The child, re­lin­quished by the nurse, rushed across the room and rooted shyly into her mother’s dress.</p>
   <p>“The bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get pow­der on your old yel­lowy hair? Stand up now, and say—How-de-do.”</p>
   <p>Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small re­luc­tant hand. Af­ter­ward he kept look­ing at the child with sur­prise. I don’t think he had ever re­ally be­lieved in its ex­is­tence be­fore.</p>
   <p>“I got dressed be­fore lun­cheon,” said the child, turn­ing ea­gerly to Daisy.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“Yes,” ad­mit­ted the child calmly. “Aunt Jor­dan’s got on a white dress too.”</p>
   <p>“How do you like mother’s friends?” Daisy turned her around so that she faced Gatsby. “Do you think they’re pretty?”</p>
   <p>“Where’s Daddy?”</p>
   <p>“She doesn’t look like her fa­ther,” ex­plained Daisy. “She looks like me. She’s got my hair and shape of the face.”</p>
   <p>Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took a step for­ward and held out her hand.</p>
   <p>“Come, Pammy.”</p>
   <p>“Good-by, sweet­heart!”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>Gatsby took up his drink.</p>
   <p>“They cer­tainly look cool,” he said, with vis­i­ble ten­sion.</p>
   <p>We drank in long, greedy swal­lows.</p>
   <p>“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 waft a minute—it’s just the op­po­site—the sun’s get­ting colder every year.”</p>
   <p>“Come out­side,” he sug­gested to Gatsby, “I’d like you to have a look at the place.”</p>
   <p>I went with them out to the ve­randa. On the green Sound, stag­nant in the heat, one small sail crawled slowly to­ward the fresher sea. Gatsby’s eyes fol­lowed it mo­men­tar­ily; he raised his hand and pointed across the bay.</p>
   <p>“I’m right across from you.”</p>
   <p>“So you are.”</p>
   <p>Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot lawn and the weedy refuse of the dog-days along­shore. Slowly the white wings of the boat moved against the blue cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay the scal­loped ocean and the abound­ing blessed isles.</p>
   <p>“There’s sport for you,” said Tom, nod­ding. “I’d like to be out there with him for about an hour.”</p>
   <p>We had lun­cheon in the din­ing-room, dark­ened too against the heat, and drank down ner­vous gayety with the cold ale.</p>
   <p>“What’ll we do with our­selves this af­ter­noon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?”</p>
   <p>“Don’t be mor­bid,” Jor­dan said. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”</p>
   <p>“But it’s so hot,” in­sisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, “and every­thing’s so con­fused. Let’s all go to town!”</p>
   <p>Her voice strug­gled on through the heat, beat­ing against it, mold­ing its sense­less­ness into forms.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“Who wants to go to town?” de­manded Daisy in­sis­tently. Gatsby’s eyes floated to­ward her. “Ah,” she cried, “you look so cool.”</p>
   <p>Their eyes met, and they stared to­gether at each other, alone in space. With an ef­fort she glanced down at the table.</p>
   <p>“You al­ways look so cool,” she re­peated.</p>
   <p>She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was as­tounded. His mouth opened a lit­tle, and he looked at Gatsby, and then back at Daisy as if he had just rec­og­nized her as some one he knew a long time ago.</p>
   <p>“You re­sem­ble the ad­ver­tise­ment of the man,” she went on in­no­cently. “You know the ad­ver­tise­ment of the man—”</p>
   <p>“All right,” broke in Tom quickly, “I’m per­fectly will­ing to go to town. Come on—we’re all going to town.”</p>
   <p>He got up, his eyes still flash­ing be­tween Gatsby and his wife. No one moved.</p>
   <p>“Come on!” His tem­per cracked a lit­tle. “What’s the mat­ter, any­how? If we’re going to town, let’s start.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Are we just going to go?” she ob­jected. “Like this? Aren’t we going to let any one smoke a cig­a­rette first?”</p>
   <p>“Every­body smoked all through lunch.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, let’s have fun,” she begged him. “It’s too hot to fuss.”</p>
   <p>He didn’t an­swer.</p>
   <p>“Have it your own way,” she said. “Come on, Jor­dan.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Have you got your sta­bles here?” asked Gatsby with an ef­fort.</p>
   <p>“About a quar­ter of a mile down the road.”</p>
   <p>“Oh.”</p>
   <p>A pause.</p>
   <p>“I don’t see the idea of going to town,” broke out Tom sav­agely. “Women get these no­tions in their heads—”</p>
   <p>“Shall we take any­thing to drink?” called Daisy from an upper win­dow.</p>
   <p>“I’ll get some whiskey,” an­swered Tom. He went in­side.</p>
   <p>Gatsby turned to me rigidly:</p>
   <p>“I can’t say any­thing in his house, old sport.”</p>
   <p>“She’s got an in­dis­creet voice,” I re­marked. “It’s full of—” I hes­i­tated.</p>
   <p>“Her voice is full of money,” he said sud­denly.</p>
   <p>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....</p>
   <p>Tom came out of the house wrap­ping a quart bot­tle in a towel, fol­lowed by Daisy and Jor­dan wear­ing small tight hats of metal­lic cloth and car­ry­ing light capes over their arms.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“Is it stan­dard shift?” de­manded Tom.</p>
   <p>“Yes.”</p>
   <p>“Well, you take my coupe and let me drive your car to town.”</p>
   <p>The sug­ges­tion was dis­taste­ful to Gatsby.</p>
   <p>“I don’t think there’s much gas,” he ob­jected.</p>
   <p>“Plenty of gas,” said Tom bois­ter­ously. He looked at the gauge. “And if it runs out I can stop at a drug­store. You can buy any­thing at a drug­store nowa­days.”</p>
   <p>A pause fol­lowed this ap­par­ently point­less re­mark. Daisy looked at Tom frown­ing, and an in­de­fin­able ex­pres­sion, at once def­i­nitely un­fa­mil­iar and vaguely rec­og­niz­able, as if I had only heard it de­scribed in words, passed over Gatsby’s face.</p>
   <p>“Come on, Daisy,” said Tom, press­ing her with his hand to­ward Gatsby’s car. “I’ll take you in this cir­cus wagon.”</p>
   <p>He opened the door, but she moved out from the cir­cle of his arm.</p>
   <p>“You take Nick and Jor­dan. We’ll fol­low you in the coupe.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Did you see that?” de­manded Tom.</p>
   <p>“See what?”</p>
   <p>He looked at me keenly, re­al­iz­ing that Jor­dan and I must have known all along.</p>
   <p>“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—”</p>
   <p>He paused. The im­me­di­ate con­tin­gency over­took him, pulled him back from the edge of the the­o­ret­i­cal abyss.</p>
   <p>“I’ve made a small in­ves­ti­ga­tion of this fel­low,” he con­tin­ued. “I could have gone deeper if I’d known—”</p>
   <p>“Do you mean you’ve been to a medium?” in­quired Jor­dan hu­mor­ously.</p>
   <p>“What?” Con­fused, he stared at us as we laughed. “A medium?”</p>
   <p>“About Gatsby.”</p>
   <p>“About Gatsby! No, I haven’t. I said I’d been mak­ing a small in­ves­ti­ga­tion of his past.”</p>
   <p>“And you found he was an Ox­ford man,” said Jor­dan help­fully.</p>
   <p>“An Ox­ford man!” He was in­cred­u­lous. “Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit.”</p>
   <p>“Nev­er­the­less he’s an Ox­ford man.”</p>
   <p>“Ox­ford, New Mex­ico,” snorted Tom con­temp­tu­ously, “or some­thing like that.”</p>
   <p>“Lis­ten, Tom. If you’re such a snob, why did you in­vite him to lunch?” de­manded Jor­dan crossly.</p>
   <p>“Daisy in­vited him; she knew him be­fore we were mar­ried—God knows where!”</p>
   <p>We were all ir­ri­ta­ble now with the fad­ing ale, and aware of it we drove for a while in si­lence. Then as Doc­tor T. J. Eck­le­burg’s faded eyes came into sight down the road, I re­mem­bered Gatsby’s cau­tion about gaso­line.</p>
   <p>“We’ve got enough to get us to town,” said Tom.</p>
   <p>“But there’s a garage right here,” ob­jected Jor­dan. “I don’t want to get stalled in this bak­ing heat.”</p>
   <p>Tom threw on both brakes im­pa­tiently, and we slid to an abrupt dusty spot under Wil­son’s sign. After a mo­ment the pro­pri­etor emerged from the in­te­rior of his es­tab­lish­ment and gazed hol­low-eyed at the car.</p>
   <p>“Let’s have some gas!” cried Tom roughly. “What do you think we stopped for—to ad­mire the view?”</p>
   <p>“I’m sick,” said Wil­son with­out mov­ing. “Been sick all day.”</p>
   <p>“What’s the mat­ter?”</p>
   <p>“I’m all run down.”</p>
   <p>“Well, shall I help my­self?” Tom de­manded. “You sounded well enough on the phone.”</p>
   <p>With an ef­fort Wil­son left the shade and sup­port of the door­way and, breath­ing hard, un­screwed the cap of the tank. In the sun­light his face was green.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“How do you like this one?” in­quired Tom. “I bought it last week.”</p>
   <p>“It’s a nice yel­low one,” said Wil­son, as he strained at the han­dle.</p>
   <p>“Like to buy it?”</p>
   <p>“Big chance,” Wil­son smiled faintly. “No, but I could make some money on the other.”</p>
   <p>“What do you want money for, all of a sud­den?”</p>
   <p>“I’ve been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want to go West.”</p>
   <p>“Your wife does,” ex­claimed Tom, star­tled.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>The coupe flashed by us with a flurry of dust and the flash of a wav­ing hand.</p>
   <p>“What do I owe you?” de­manded Tom harshly.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“What do I owe you?”</p>
   <p>“Dol­lar twenty.”</p>
   <p>The re­lent­less beat­ing heat was be­gin­ning to con­fuse me and I had a bad mo­ment there be­fore I re­al­ized that so far his sus­pi­cions hadn’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 oc­cured 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 just got some poor girl with child.</p>
   <p>“I’ll let you have that car,” said Tom. “I’ll send it over to-mor­row af­ter­noon.”</p>
   <p>That lo­cal­ity was al­ways vaguely dis­qui­et­ing, even in the broad glare of af­ter­noon, and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of some­thing be­hind. Over the ash­heaps the giant eyes of Doc­tor T. J. Eck­le­burg kept their vigil, but I per­ceived, after a mo­ment, that the other eyes were re­gard­ing us less than twenty feet away.</p>
   <p>In one of the win­dows over the garage the cur­tains had been moved aside a lit­tle, and Myr­tle Wil­son was peer­ing down at the car. So en­grossed was she that she had no con­scious­ness of being ob­served, and one emo­tion after an­other crept into her face like ob­jects into a slowly de­vel­op­ing pic­ture. Her ex­pres­sion was cu­ri­ously fa­mil­iar—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.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>There is no con­fu­sion like the con­fu­sion of a sim­ple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feel­ing the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mis­tress, until an hour ago se­cure and in­vi­o­late, were slip­ping pre­cip­i­tately from his con­trol. In­stinct made him step on the ac­cel­er­a­tor with the dou­ble pur­pose of over­tak­ing Daisy and leav­ing Wil­son be­hind, and we sped along to­ward As­to­ria at fifty miles an hour, until, among the spi­dery gird­ers of the el­e­vated, we came in sight of the easy­go­ing blue coupe.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>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 sig­nalled us to draw up along­side. “Where are we going?” she cried. “How about the movies?”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>Sev­eral times he turned his head and looked back for their car, and if the traf­fic de­layed them he slowed up until they came into sight. I think he was afraid they would dart down a side street and out of his life for­ever.</p>
   <p>But they didn’t. And we all took the less ex­plic­a­ble step of en­gag­ing the par­lor of a suite in the Plaza Hotel.</p>
   <p>The pro­longed and tu­mul­tuous ar­gu­ment that ended by herd­ing us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp phys­i­cal mem­ory that, in the course of it, my un­der­wear kept climb­ing like a damp snake around my legs and in­ter­mit­tent beads of sweat raced cool across my back. The no­tion orig­i­nated with Daisy’s sug­ges­tion that we hire five bath­rooms and take cold baths, and then as­sumed more tan­gi­ble form as “a place to have a mint julep.” Each of us said over and over that it was a “crazy idea”—we all talked at once to a baf­fled clerk and thought, or pre­tended to think, that we were being very funny…</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“It’s a swell suite,” whis­pered Jor­dan re­spect­fully, and every one laughed.</p>
   <p>“Open an­other win­dow,” com­manded Daisy, with­out turn­ing around.</p>
   <p>“There aren’t any more.”</p>
   <p>“Well, we’d bet­ter tele­phone for an axe—”</p>
   <p>“The thing to do is to for­get about the heat,” said Tom im­pa­tiently. “You make it ten times worse by crab­bing about it.”</p>
   <p>He un­rolled the bot­tle of whiskey from the towel and put it on the table.</p>
   <p>“Why not let her alone, old sport?” re­marked Gatsby. “You’re the one that wanted to come to town.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“I’ll pick it up,” I of­fered.</p>
   <p>“I’ve got it.” Gatsby ex­am­ined the parted string, mut­tered “Hum!” in an in­ter­ested way, and tossed the book on a chair.</p>
   <p>“That’s a great ex­pres­sion of yours, isn’t it?” said Tom sharply.</p>
   <p>“What is?”</p>
   <p>“All this ‘old sport’ busi­ness. Where’d you pick-that up?”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Imag­ine mar­ry­ing any­body in this heat!” cried Jor­dan dis­mally.</p>
   <p>“Still—I was mar­ried in the mid­dle of June,” Daisy re­mem­bered, “Louisville in June! Some­body fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?”</p>
   <p>“Biloxi,” he an­swered shortly.</p>
   <p>“A man named Biloxi. ‘Blocks’ Biloxi, and he made boxes—that’s a fact—and he was from Biloxi, Mis­sis­sippi.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“I used to know a Bill Biloxi from Mem­phis,” I re­marked.</p>
   <p>“That was his cousin. I knew his whole fam­ily his­tory be­fore he left. He gave me an alu­minum put­ter that I use today.”</p>
   <p>The music had died down as the cer­e­mony began and now a long cheer floated in at the win­dow, fol­lowed by in­ter­mit­tent cries of “Yea—ea—ea!” and fi­nally by a burst of jazz as the danc­ing began.</p>
   <p>“We’re get­ting old,” said Daisy. “If we were young we’d rise and dance.”</p>
   <p>“Re­mem­ber Biloxi,” Jor­dan warned her. “Where’d you know him, Tom?”</p>
   <p>“Biloxi?” He con­cen­trated with an ef­fort. “I didn’t know him. He was a friend of Daisy’s.”</p>
   <p>“He was not,” she de­nied. “I’d never seen him be­fore. He came down in the pri­vate car.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>Jor­dan smiled. “He was prob­a­bly bum­ming his way home. He told me he was pres­i­dent of your class at Yale.”</p>
   <p>Tom and I looked at each other blankly.</p>
   <p>“Biloxi?”</p>
   <p>“First place, we didn’t have any pres­i­dent—”</p>
   <p>Gatsby’s foot beat a short, rest­less tat­too and Tom eyed him sud­denly.</p>
   <p>“By the way, Mr. Gatsby, I un­der­stand you’re an Ox­ford man.”</p>
   <p>“Not ex­actly.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, yes, I un­der­stand you went to Ox­ford.”</p>
   <p>“Yes—I went there.”</p>
   <p>A pause. Then Tom’s voice in­cred­u­lous and in­sult­ing:</p>
   <p>“You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“I told you I went there,” said Gatsby.</p>
   <p>“I heard you, but I’d like to know when.”</p>
   <p>“It was in nine­teen-nine­teen. I only stayed five months. That’s why I can’t re­ally call my­self an Ox­ford man.”</p>
   <p>Tom glanced around to see if we mir­rored his un­be­lief. But we were all look­ing at Gatsby.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those re­newals of com­plete faith in him that I’d ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore.</p>
   <p>Daisy rose, smil­ing faintly, and went to the table.</p>
   <p>“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!”</p>
   <p>“Wait a minute,” snapped Tom, “I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more ques­tion.”</p>
   <p>“Go on,” Gatsby said po­litely.</p>
   <p>“What kind of a row are you try­ing to cause in my house any­how?”</p>
   <p>They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was con­tent.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>Flushed with his im­pas­sioned gib­ber­ish, he saw him­self stand­ing alone on the last bar­rier of civ­i­liza­tion.</p>
   <p>“We’re all white here,” mur­mured Jor­dan.</p>
   <p>“I know I’m not very pop­u­lar. I don’t give <emphasis>big</emphasis> par­ties. I sup­pose you’ve got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends—in the mod­ern world.”</p>
   <p>Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh when­ever he opened his mouth. The tran­si­tion from lib­er­tine to prig was so com­plete.</p>
   <p>“I’ve got some­thing to tell <emphasis>you,</emphasis> old sport—” began Gatsby. But Daisy guessed at his in­ten­tion.</p>
   <p>“Please don’t!” she in­ter­rupted help­lessly. “Please let’s all go home. Why don’t we all go home?”</p>
   <p>“That’s a good idea.” I got up. “Come on, Tom. No­body wants a drink.”</p>
   <p>“I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me.”</p>
   <p>“Your wife doesn’t love you,” said Gatsby. “She’s never loved you. She loves me.”</p>
   <p>“You must be crazy!” ex­claimed Tom au­to­mat­i­cally.</p>
   <p>Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with ex­cite­ment.</p>
   <p>“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!”</p>
   <p>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.</p>
   <p>“Sit down, Daisy,” Tom’s voice groped un­suc­cess­fully for the pa­ter­nal note. “What’s been going on? I want to hear all about it.”</p>
   <p>“I told you what’s been going on,” said Gatsby. “Going on for five years—and you didn’t know.”</p>
   <p>Tom turned to Daisy sharply.</p>
   <p>“You’ve been see­ing this fel­low for five years?”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“Oh—that’s all.” Tom tapped his thick fin­gers to­gether like a cler­gy­man and leaned back in his chair.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“No,” said Gatsby, shak­ing his head.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>Gatsby walked over and stood be­side her.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>She looked at him blindly. “Why—how could I love him—pos­si­bly?”</p>
   <p>“You never loved him.”</p>
   <p>She hes­i­tated. Her eyes fell on Jor­dan and me with a sort of ap­peal, as though she re­al­ized at last what she was doing—and as though she had never, all along, in­tended doing any­thing at all. But it was done now. It was too late.</p>
   <p>“I never loved him,” she said, with per­cep­ti­ble re­luc­tance.</p>
   <p>“Not at Ka­pi­olani?” de­manded Tom sud­denly.</p>
   <p>“No.”</p>
   <p>From the ball­room be­neath, muf­fled and suf­fo­cat­ing chords were drift­ing up on hot waves of air.</p>
   <p>“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?”</p>
   <p>“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.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed.</p>
   <p>“You loved me <emphasis>too?</emphasis>” he re­peated.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>The words seemed to bite phys­i­cally into Gatsby.</p>
   <p>“I want to speak to Daisy alone,” he in­sisted. “She’s all ex­cited now—”</p>
   <p>“Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,” she ad­mit­ted in a piti­ful voice. “It wouldn’t be true.”</p>
   <p>“Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Tom.</p>
   <p>She turned to her hus­band.</p>
   <p>“As if it mat­tered to you,” she said.</p>
   <p>“Of course it mat­ters. I’m going to take bet­ter care of you from now on.”</p>
   <p>“You don’t un­der­stand,” said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. “You’re not going to take care of her any more.”</p>
   <p>“I’m not?” Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could af­ford to con­trol him­self now. “Why’s that?”</p>
   <p>“Daisy’s leav­ing you.”</p>
   <p>“Non­sense.”</p>
   <p>“I am, though,” she said with a vis­i­ble ef­fort.</p>
   <p>“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.”</p>
   <p>“I won’t stand this!” cried Daisy. “Oh, please let’s get out.”</p>
   <p>“Who are you, any­how?” broke out Tom. “You’re one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolf­sheim—that much I hap­pen to know. I’ve made a lit­tle in­ves­ti­ga­tion, into your af­fairs—and I’ll carry it fur­ther to-mor­row.”</p>
   <p>“You can suit your­self about that, old sport,” said Gatsby steadily.</p>
   <p>“I found out what your ‘drug­stores’ were.” He turned to us and spoke rapidly. “He and this Wolf­sheim bought up a lot of side-street drug­stores here and in Chicago and sold grain al­co­hol over the counter. That’s one of his lit­tle stunts. I picked him for a boot­leg­ger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong.”</p>
   <p>“What about it?” said Gatsby po­litely. “I guess your friend Wal­ter Chase wasn’t too proud to come in on it.”</p>
   <p>“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 <emphasis>you.</emphasis>”</p>
   <p>“He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old sport.”</p>
   <p>“Don’t you call me ‘old sport’!” cried Tom. Gatsby said noth­ing. “Wal­ter could have you up on the bet­ting laws too, but Wolf­sheim scared him into shut­ting his mouth.”</p>
   <p>That un­fa­mil­iar yet rec­og­niz­able look was back again in Gatsby’s face.</p>
   <p>“That drug­store busi­ness was just small change,” con­tin­ued Tom slowly, “but you’ve got some­thing on now that Wal­ter’s afraid to tell me about.”</p>
   <p>I glanced at Daisy, who was star­ing ter­ri­fied be­tween Gatsby and her hus­band, and at Jor­dan, who had begun to bal­ance an in­vis­i­ble but ab­sorb­ing ob­ject on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to Gatsby—and was star­tled at his ex­pres­sion. He looked—and this is said in all con­tempt for the bab­bled slan­der of his gar­den—as if he had “killed a man.” For a mo­ment the set of his face could be de­scribed in just that fan­tas­tic way.</p>
   <p>It passed, and he began to talk ex­cit­edly to Daisy, deny­ing every­thing, de­fend­ing his name against ac­cu­sa­tions that had not been made. But with every word she was draw­ing fur­ther and fur­ther into her­self, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the af­ter­noon slipped away, try­ing to touch what was no longer tan­gi­ble, strug­gling un­hap­pily, un­de­spair­ingly, to­ward that lost voice across the room.</p>
   <p>The voice begged again to go.</p>
   <p>“<emphasis>Please,</emphasis> Tom! I can’t stand this any more.”</p>
   <p>Her fright­ened eyes told that what­ever in­ten­tions, what­ever courage she had had, were def­i­nitely gone.</p>
   <p>“You two start on home. Daisy,” said Tom. “In Mr. Gatsby’s car.”</p>
   <p>She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he in­sisted with mag­nan­i­mous scorn.</p>
   <p>“Go on. He won’t annoy you. I think he re­al­izes that his pre­sump­tu­ous lit­tle flir­ta­tion is over.”</p>
   <p>They were gone, with­out a word, snapped out, made ac­ci­den­tal, iso­lated, like ghosts, even from our pity.</p>
   <p>After a mo­ment Tom got up and began wrap­ping the un­opened bot­tle of whiskey in the towel.</p>
   <p>“Want any of this stuff? Jor­dan? … Nick?”</p>
   <p>I didn’t an­swer.</p>
   <p>“Nick?” He asked again.</p>
   <p>“What?”</p>
   <p>“Want any?”</p>
   <p>“No … I just re­mem­bered that today’s my birth­day.”</p>
   <p>I was thirty. Be­fore me stretched the por­ten­tous, men­ac­ing road of a new decade.</p>
   <p>It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupe with him and started for Long Is­land. Tom talked in­ces­santly, ex­ult­ing and laugh­ing, but his voice was as re­mote from Jor­dan and me as the for­eign clamor on the side­walk or the tu­mult of the el­e­vated over­head. Human sym­pa­thy has its lim­its, and we were con­tent to let all their tragic ar­gu­ments fade with the city lights be­hind. Thirty—the promise of a decade of lone­li­ness, a thin­ning list of sin­gle men to know, a thin­ning brief­case of en­thu­si­asm, thin­ning hair. But there was Jor­dan be­side me, who, un­like Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-for­got­ten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoul­der and the for­mi­da­ble stroke of thirty died away with the re­as­sur­ing pres­sure of her hand.</p>
   <p>So we drove on to­ward death through the cool­ing twi­light.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the cof­fee joint be­side the ash­heaps was the prin­ci­pal wit­ness at the in­quest. He had slept through the heat until after five, when he strolled over to the garage, and found George Wil­son sick in his of­fice—re­ally sick, pale as his own pale hair and shak­ing all over. Michaelis ad­vised him to go to bed, but Wil­son re­fused, say­ing that he’d miss a lot of busi­ness if he did. While his neigh­bor was try­ing to per­suade him a vi­o­lent racket broke out over­head.</p>
   <p>“I’ve got my wife locked in up there,” ex­plained Wil­son calmly. “She’s going to stay there till the day after to-mor­row, and then we’re going to move away.”</p>
   <p>Michaelis was as­ton­ished; they had been neigh­bors for four years, and Wil­son had never seemed faintly ca­pa­ble of such a state­ment. Gen­er­ally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn’t work­ing, he sat on a chair in the door­way and stared at the peo­ple and the cars that passed along the road. When any one spoke to him he in­vari­ably laughed in an agree­able, col­or­less way. He was his wife’s man and not his own.</p>
   <p>So nat­u­rally Michaelis tried to find out what had hap­pened, but Wil­son wouldn’t say a word—in­stead he began to throw cu­ri­ous, sus­pi­cious glances at his vis­i­tor and ask him what he’d been doing at cer­tain times on cer­tain days. Just as the lat­ter was get­ting un­easy, some work­men came past the door bound for his restau­rant, and Michaelis took the op­por­tu­nity to get away, in­tend­ing to come back later. But he didn’t. He sup­posed he for­got to, that’s all. When he came out­side again, a lit­tle after seven, he was re­minded of the con­ver­sa­tion be­cause he heard Mrs. Wil­son’s voice, loud and scold­ing, down-stairs in the garage.</p>
   <p>“Beat me!” he heard her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you dirty lit­tle cow­ard!”</p>
   <p>A mo­ment later she rushed out into the dusk, wav­ing her hands and shout­ing—be­fore he could move from his door the busi­ness was over.</p>
   <p>The “death car” as the news­pa­pers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gath­er­ing dark­ness, wa­vered trag­i­cally for a mo­ment, and then dis­ap­peared around the next bend. Michaelis wasn’t even sure of its color—he told the first po­lice­man that it was light green. The other car, the one going to­ward New York, came to rest a hun­dred yards be­yond, and its dri­ver hur­ried back to where Myr­tle Wil­son, her life vi­o­lently ex­tin­guished, knelt in the road and min­gled her thick dark blood with the dust.</p>
   <p>Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open her shirt­waist, still damp with per­spi­ra­tion, they saw that her left breast was swing­ing loose like a flap, and there was no need to lis­ten for the heart be­neath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the cor­ners, as though she had choked a lit­tle in giv­ing up the tremen­dous vi­tal­ity she had stored so long.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>We saw the three or four au­to­mo­biles and the crowd when we were still some dis­tance away.</p>
   <p>“Wreck!” said Tom. “That’s good. Wil­son’ll have a lit­tle busi­ness at last.”</p>
   <p>He slowed down, but still with­out any in­ten­tion of stop­ping until, as we came nearer, the hushed, in­tent faces of the peo­ple at the garage door made him au­to­mat­i­cally put on the brakes.</p>
   <p>“We’ll take a look,” he said doubt­fully, “just a look.”</p>
   <p>I be­came aware now of a hol­low, wail­ing sound which is­sued in­ces­santly from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coupe and walked to­ward the door re­solved it­self into the words “Oh, my God!” ut­tered over and over in a gasp­ing moan.</p>
   <p>“There’s some bad trou­ble here,” said Tom ex­cit­edly.</p>
   <p>He reached up on tip­toes and peered over a cir­cle of heads into the garage, which was lit only by a yel­low light in a swing­ing wire bas­ket over­head. Then he made a harsh sound in his throat, and with a vi­o­lent thrust­ing move­ment of his pow­er­ful arms pushed his way through.</p>
   <p>The cir­cle closed up again with a run­ning mur­mur of ex­pos­tu­la­tion; it was a minute be­fore I could see any­thing at all. Then new ar­rivals de­ranged the line, and Jor­dan and I were pushed sud­denly in­side.</p>
   <p>Myr­tle Wil­son’s body, wrapped in a blan­ket, and then in an­other blan­ket, as though she suf­fered from a chill in the hot night, lay on a work-table by the wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bend­ing over it, mo­tion­less. Next to him stood a mo­tor­cy­cle po­lice­man tak­ing down names with much sweat and cor­rec­tion in a lit­tle book. At first I couldn’t find the source of the high, groan­ing words that echoed clam­orously through the bare garage—then I saw Wil­son stand­ing on the raised thresh­old of his of­fice, sway­ing back and forth and hold­ing to the door­posts with both hands. Some man was talk­ing to him in a low voice and at­tempt­ing, from time to time, to lay a hand on his shoul­der, but Wil­son nei­ther heard nor saw. His eyes would drop slowly from the swing­ing light to the laden table by the wall, and then jerk back to the light again, and he gave out in­ces­santly his high, hor­ri­ble call:</p>
   <p>“Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!”</p>
   <p>Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and, after star­ing around the garage with glazed eyes, ad­dressed a mum­bled in­co­her­ent re­mark to the po­lice­man.</p>
   <p>“M-a-v—” the po­lice­man was say­ing, “—o—”</p>
   <p>“No, r—” cor­rected the man, “M-a-v-r-o—”</p>
   <p>“Lis­ten to me!” mut­tered Tom fiercely.</p>
   <p>“r” said the po­lice­man, “o—”</p>
   <p>“g—”</p>
   <p>“g—” He looked up as Tom’s broad hand fell sharply on his shoul­der. “What you want, fella?”</p>
   <p>“What hap­pened?—that’s what I want to know.”</p>
   <p>“Auto hit her. Ins’antly killed.”</p>
   <p>“In­stantly killed,” re­peated Tom, star­ing.</p>
   <p>“She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even sto­pus car.”</p>
   <p>“There was two cars,” said Michaelis, “one comin’, one goin’, see?”</p>
   <p>“Going where?” asked the po­lice­man keenly.</p>
   <p>“One goin’ each way. Well, she”—his hand rose to­ward the blan­kets but stopped half way and fell to his side—“she ran out there an’ the one comin’ from N’York knock right into her, goin’ thirty or forty miles an hour.”</p>
   <p>“What’s the name of this place here?” de­manded the of­fi­cer.</p>
   <p>“Hasn’t got any name.”</p>
   <p>A pale well-dressed negro stepped near.</p>
   <p>“It was a yel­low car,” he said, “big yel­low car. New.”</p>
   <p>“See the ac­ci­dent?” asked the po­lice­man.</p>
   <p>“No, but the car passed me down the road, going faster’n forty. Going fifty, sixty.”</p>
   <p>“Come here and let’s have your name. Look out now. I want to get his name.”</p>
   <p>Some words of this con­ver­sa­tion must have reached Wil­son, sway­ing in the of­fice door, for sud­denly a new theme found voice among his gasp­ing cries:</p>
   <p>“You don’t have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind of car it was!”</p>
   <p>Watch­ing Tom, I saw the wad of mus­cle back of his shoul­der tighten under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wil­son and, stand­ing in front of him, seized him firmly by the upper arms.</p>
   <p>“You’ve got to pull your­self to­gether,” he said with sooth­ing gruff­ness.</p>
   <p>Wil­son’s eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tip­toes and then would have col­lapsed to his knees had not Tom held him up­right.</p>
   <p>“Lis­ten,” said Tom, shak­ing him a lit­tle. “I just got here a minute ago, from New York. I was bring­ing you that coupe we’ve been talk­ing about. That yel­low car I was dri­ving this af­ter­noon wasn’t mine—do you hear? I haven’t seen it all af­ter­noon.”</p>
   <p>Only the negro and I were near enough to hear what he said, but the po­lice­man caught some­thing in the tone and looked over with tru­cu­lent eyes.</p>
   <p>“What’s all that?” he de­manded.</p>
   <p>“I’m a friend of his.” Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on Wil­son’s body. “He says he knows the car that did it. … It was a yel­low car.”</p>
   <p>Some dim im­pulse moved the po­lice­man to look sus­pi­ciously at Tom.</p>
   <p>“And what color’s your car?”</p>
   <p>“It’s a blue car, a coupe.”</p>
   <p>“We’ve come straight from New York.” I said.</p>
   <p>Some­one who had been dri­ving a lit­tle be­hind us con­firmed this, and the po­lice­man turned away.</p>
   <p>“Now, if you’ll let me have that name again cor­rect—”</p>
   <p>Pick­ing up Wil­son like a doll, Tom car­ried him into the of­fice, set him down in a chair, and came back.</p>
   <p>“If some­body’ll come here and sit with him,” he snapped au­thor­i­ta­tively. He watched while the two men stand­ing clos­est glanced at each other and went un­will­ingly into the room. Then Tom shut the door on them and came down the sin­gle step, his eyes avoid­ing the table. As he passed close to me he whis­pered: “Let’s get out.”</p>
   <p>Self-con­sciously, with his au­thor­i­ta­tive arms break­ing the way, we pushed through the still gath­er­ing crowd, pass­ing a hur­ried doc­tor, case in hand, who had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago.</p>
   <p>Tom drove slowly until we were be­yond the bend—then his foot came down hard, and the coupe raced along through the night. In a lit­tle while I heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were over­flow­ing down his face.</p>
   <p>“The God damned cow­ard!” he whim­pered. “He didn’t even stop his car.”</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>The Buchanans’ house floated sud­denly to­ward us through the dark rustling trees. Tom stopped be­side the porch and looked up at the sec­ond floor, where two win­dows bloomed with light among the vines.</p>
   <p>“Daisy’s home,” he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me and frowned slightly.</p>
   <p>“I ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There’s noth­ing we can do to-night.”</p>
   <p>A change had come over him, and he spoke gravely, and with de­ci­sion. As we walked across the moon­light gravel to the porch he dis­posed of the sit­u­a­tion in a few brisk phrases.</p>
   <p>“I’ll tele­phone for a taxi to take you home, and while you’re wait­ing you and Jor­dan bet­ter go in the kitchen and have them get you some sup­per—if you want any.” He opened the door. “Come in.”</p>
   <p>“No, thanks. But I’d be glad if you’d order me the taxi. I’ll wait out­side.”</p>
   <p>Jor­dan put her hand on my arm.</p>
   <p>“Won’t you come in, Nick?”</p>
   <p>“No, thanks.”</p>
   <p>I was feel­ing a lit­tle sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jor­dan lin­gered for a mo­ment more.</p>
   <p>“It’s only half-past nine,” she said.</p>
   <p>I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day, and sud­denly that in­cluded Jor­dan too. She must have seen some­thing of this in my ex­pres­sion, for she turned abruptly away and ran up the porch steps into the house. I sat down for a few min­utes with my head in my hands, until I heard the phone taken up in­side and the but­ler’s voice call­ing a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the drive away from the house, in­tend­ing to wait by the gate.</p>
   <p>I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped from be­tween two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird by that time, be­cause I could think of noth­ing ex­cept the lu­mi­nos­ity of his pink suit under the moon.</p>
   <p>“What are you doing?” I in­quired.</p>
   <p>“Just stand­ing here, old sport.”</p>
   <p>Some­how, that seemed a de­spi­ca­ble oc­cu­pa­tion. For all I knew he was going to rob the house in a mo­ment; I wouldn’t have been sur­prised to see sin­is­ter faces, the faces of “Wolf­sheim’s peo­ple,” be­hind him in the dark shrub­bery.</p>
   <p>“Did you see any trou­ble on the road?” he asked after a minute.</p>
   <p>“Yes.”</p>
   <p>He hes­i­tated.</p>
   <p>“Was she killed?”</p>
   <p>“Yes.”</p>
   <p>“I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It’s bet­ter that the shock should all come at once. She stood it pretty well.”</p>
   <p>He spoke as if Daisy’s re­ac­tion was the only thing that mat­tered.</p>
   <p>“I got to West Egg by a side road,” he went on, “and left the car in my garage. I don’t think any­body saw us, but of course I can’t be sure.”</p>
   <p>I dis­liked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it nec­es­sary to tell him he was wrong.</p>
   <p>“Who was the woman?” he in­quired.</p>
   <p>“Her name was Wil­son. Her hus­band owns the garage. How the devil did it hap­pen?”</p>
   <p>“Well, I tried to swing the wheel—” He broke off, and sud­denly I guessed at the truth.</p>
   <p>“Was Daisy dri­ving?”</p>
   <p>“Yes,” he said after a mo­ment, “but of course I’ll say I was. You see, when we left New York she was very ner­vous and she thought it would steady her to drive—and this woman rushed out at us just as we were pass­ing a car com­ing the other way. It all hap­pened in a minute, but it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were some­body she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman to­ward the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back. The sec­ond my hand reached the wheel I felt the shock—it must have killed her in­stantly.”</p>
   <p>“It ripped her open—”</p>
   <p>“Don’t tell me, old sport.” He winced. “Any­how—Daisy stepped on it. I tried to make her stop, but she couldn’t, so I pulled on the emer­gency brake. Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on.</p>
   <p>“She’ll be all right to-mor­row,” he said presently. “I’m just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that un­pleas­ant­ness this af­ter­noon. She’s locked her­self into her room, and if he tries any bru­tal­ity she’s going to turn the light out and on again.”</p>
   <p>“He won’t touch her,” I said. “He’s not think­ing about her.”</p>
   <p>“I don’t trust him, old sport.”</p>
   <p>“How long are you going to wait?”</p>
   <p>“All night, if nec­es­sary. Any­how, till they all go to bed.”</p>
   <p>A new point of view oc­curred to me. Sup­pose Tom found out that Daisy had been dri­ving. He might think he saw a con­nec­tion in it—he might think any­thing. I looked at the house; there were two or three bright win­dows down­stairs and the pink glow from Daisy’s room on the sec­ond floor.</p>
   <p>“You wait here,” I said. “I’ll see if there’s any sign of a com­mo­tion.”</p>
   <p>I walked back along the bor­der of the lawn, tra­versed the gravel softly, and tip­toed up the ve­randa steps. The draw­ing-room cur­tains were open, and I saw that the room was empty. Cross­ing the porch where we had dined that June night three months be­fore, I came to a small rec­tan­gle of light which I guessed was the pantry win­dow. The blind was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill.</p>
   <p>Daisy and Tom were sit­ting op­po­site each other at the kitchen table, with a plate of cold fried chicken be­tween them, and two bot­tles of ale. He was talk­ing in­tently across the table at her, and in his earnest­ness his hand had fallen upon and cov­ered her own. Once in a while she looked up at him and nod­ded in agree­ment.</p>
   <p>They weren’t happy, and nei­ther of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren’t un­happy ei­ther. There was an un­mis­tak­able air of nat­ural in­ti­macy about the pic­ture, and any­body would have said that they were con­spir­ing to­gether.</p>
   <p>As I tip­toed from the porch I heard my taxi feel­ing its way along the dark road to­ward the house. Gatsby was wait­ing where I had left him in the drive.</p>
   <p>“Is it all quiet up there?” he asked anx­iously.</p>
   <p>“Yes, it’s all quiet. I hes­i­tated. “You’d bet­ter come home and get some sleep.”</p>
   <p>He shook his head.</p>
   <p>“I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.”</p>
   <p>He put his hands in his coat pock­ets and turned back ea­gerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my pres­ence marred the sa­cred­ness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him stand­ing there in the moon­light—watch­ing over noth­ing.</p>
</section>
  <section>
   <title>
    <p>CHAPTER VIII</p>
   </title>
   <p>I couldn’t sleep all night; a fog-horn was groan­ing in­ces­santly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick be­tween grotesque re­al­ity and sav­age, fright­en­ing dreams. To­ward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby’s drive, and im­me­di­ately I jumped out of bed and began to dress—I felt that I had some­thing to tell him, some­thing to warn him about, and morn­ing would be too late.</p>
   <p>Cross­ing his lawn, I saw that his front door was still open and he was lean­ing against a table in the hall, heavy with de­jec­tion or sleep.</p>
   <p>“Noth­ing hap­pened,” he said wanly. “I waited, and about four o’clock she came to the win­dow and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light.”</p>
   <p>His house had never seemed so enor­mous to me as it did that night when we hunted through the great rooms for cig­a­rettes. We pushed aside cur­tains that were like pavil­ions, and felt over in­nu­mer­able feet of dark wall for elec­tric light switches—once I tum­bled with a sort of splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an in­ex­plic­a­ble amount of dust every­where, and the rooms were musty, as though they hadn’t been aired for many days. I found the hu­mi­dor on an un­fa­mil­iar table, with two stale, dry cig­a­rettes in­side. Throw­ing open the French win­dows of the draw­ing-room, we sat smok­ing out into the dark­ness.</p>
   <p>“You ought to go away,” I said. “It’s pretty cer­tain they’ll trace your car.”</p>
   <p>“Go away <emphasis>now,</emphasis> old sport?”</p>
   <p>“Go to At­lantic City for a week, or up to Mon­treal.”</p>
   <p>He wouldn’t con­sider it. He couldn’t pos­si­bly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutch­ing at some last hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free.</p>
   <p>It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody—told it to me be­cause “Jay Gatsby” had bro­ken up like glass against Tom’s hard mal­ice, and the long se­cret ex­trav­a­ganza was played out. I think that he would have ac­knowl­edged any­thing now, with­out re­serve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.</p>
   <p>She was the first “nice” girl he had ever known. In var­i­ous un­re­vealed ca­pac­i­ties he had come in con­tact with such peo­ple, but al­ways with in­dis­cernible barbed wire be­tween. He found her ex­cit­ingly de­sir­able. He went to her house, at first with other of­fi­cers from Camp Tay­lor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a beau­ti­ful house be­fore. But what gave it an air of breath­less in­ten­sity was that Daisy lived there—it was as ca­sual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mys­tery about it, a hint of bed­rooms up-stairs more beau­ti­ful and cool than other bed­rooms, of gay and ra­di­ant ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place through its cor­ri­dors, and of ro­mances that were not musty and laid away al­ready in laven­der, but fresh and breath­ing and redo­lent of this year’s shin­ing mo­tor-cars and of dances whose flow­ers were scarcely with­ered. It ex­cited him, too, that many men had al­ready loved Daisy—it in­creased her value in his eyes. He felt their pres­ence all about the house, per­vad­ing the air with the shades and echoes of still vi­brant emo­tions.</p>
   <p>But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a colos­sal ac­ci­dent. How­ever glo­ri­ous might be his fu­ture as Jay Gatsby, he was at pre­sent a pen­ni­less young man with­out a past, and at any mo­ment the in­vis­i­ble cloak of his uni­form might slip from his shoul­ders. So he made the most of his time. He took what he could get, rav­en­ously and un­scrupu­lously—even­tu­ally he took Daisy one still Oc­to­ber night, took her be­cause he had no real right to touch her hand.</p>
   <p>He might have de­spised him­self, for he had cer­tainly taken her under false pre­tenses. I don’t mean that he had traded on his phan­tom mil­lions, but he had de­lib­er­ately given Daisy a sense of se­cu­rity; he let her be­lieve that he was a per­son from much the same stra­tum as her­self—that he was fully able to take care of her. As a mat­ter of fact, he had no such fa­cil­i­ties—he had no com­fort­able fam­ily stand­ing be­hind him, and he was li­able at the whim of an im­per­sonal gov­ern­ment to be blown any­where about the world.</p>
   <p>But he didn’t de­spise him­self and it didn’t turn out as he had imag­ined. He had in­tended, prob­a­bly, to take what he could and go—but now he found that he had com­mit­ted him­self to the fol­low­ing of a grail. He knew that Daisy was ex­tra­or­di­nary, but he didn’t re­al­ize just how ex­tra­or­di­nary a “nice” girl could be. She van­ished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leav­ing Gatsby—noth­ing. He felt mar­ried to her, that was all.</p>
   <p>When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breath­less, who was, some­how, be­trayed. Her porch was bright with the bought lux­ury of star-shine; the wicker of the set­tee squeaked fash­ion­ably as she turned to­ward him and he kissed her cu­ri­ous and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charm­ing than ever, and Gatsby was over­whelm­ingly aware of the youth and mys­tery that wealth im­pris­ons and pre­serves, of the fresh­ness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleam­ing like sil­ver, safe and proud above the hot strug­gles of the poor.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>“I can’t de­scribe to you how sur­prised I was to find out I loved her, old sport. I even hoped for a while that she’d throw me over, but she didn’t, be­cause she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot be­cause I knew dif­fer­ent things from her… Well, there I was, ’way off my am­bi­tions, get­ting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sud­den I didn’t care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have a bet­ter time telling her what I was going to do?”</p>
   <p>On the last af­ter­noon be­fore he went abroad, he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he changed his arm a lit­tle, and once he kissed her dark shin­ing hair. The af­ter­noon had made them tran­quil for a while, as if to give them a deep mem­ory for the long part­ing the next day promised. They had never been closer in their month of love, nor com­mu­ni­cated more pro­foundly one with an­other, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoul­der or when he touched the end of her fin­gers, gen­tly, as though she were asleep.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>He did ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily well in the war. He was a cap­tain be­fore he went to the front, and fol­low­ing the Ar­gonne bat­tles he got his ma­jor­ity and the com­mand of the di­vi­sional ma­chine-guns. After the Armistice he tried fran­ti­cally to get home, but some com­pli­ca­tion or mis­un­der­stand­ing sent him to Ox­ford in­stead. He was wor­ried now—there was a qual­ity of ner­vous de­spair in Daisy’s let­ters. She didn’t see why he couldn’t come. She was feel­ing the pres­sure of the world out­side, and she wanted to see him and feel his pres­ence be­side her and be re­as­sured that she was doing the right thing after all.</p>
   <p>For Daisy was young and her ar­ti­fi­cial world was redo­lent of or­chids and pleas­ant, cheer­ful snob­bery and or­ches­tras which set the rhythm of the year, sum­ming up the sad­ness and sug­ges­tive­ness of life in new tunes. All night the sax­o­phones wailed the hope­less com­ment of the <emphasis>Beale Street Blues</emphasis> while a hun­dred pairs of golden and sil­ver slip­pers shuf­fled the shin­ing dust. At the gray tea hour there were al­ways rooms that throbbed in­ces­santly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.</p>
   <p>Through this twi­light uni­verse Daisy began to move again with the sea­son; sud­denly she was again keep­ing half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drows­ing asleep at dawn with the beads and chif­fon of an evening dress tan­gled among dying or­chids on the floor be­side her bed. And all the time some­thing within her was cry­ing for a de­ci­sion. She wanted her life shaped now, im­me­di­ately—and the de­ci­sion must be made by some force—of love, of money, of un­ques­tion­able prac­ti­cal­ity—that was close at hand.</p>
   <p>That force took shape in the mid­dle of spring with the ar­rival of Tom Buchanan. There was a whole­some bulk­i­ness about his per­son and his po­si­tion, and Daisy was flat­tered. Doubt­less there was a cer­tain strug­gle and a cer­tain re­lief. The let­ter reached Gatsby while he was still at Ox­ford.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>It was dawn now on Long Is­land and we went about open­ing the rest of the win­dows down­stairs, fill­ing the house with gray-turn­ing, gold-turn­ing light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleas­ant move­ment in the air, scarcely a wind, promis­ing a cool, lovely day.</p>
   <p>“I don’t think she ever loved him,” Gatsby turned around from a win­dow and looked at me chal­leng­ingly. “You must re­mem­ber, old sport, she was very ex­cited this af­ter­noon. He told her those things in a way that fright­ened her—that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper. And the re­sult was she hardly knew what she was say­ing.” He sat down gloomily.</p>
   <p>“Of course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were first mar­ried—and loved me more even then, do you see?” Sud­denly he came out with a cu­ri­ous re­mark. “In any case,” he said, “it was just per­sonal.” What could you make of that, ex­cept to sus­pect some in­ten­sity in his con­cep­tion of the af­fair that couldn’t be mea­sured?</p>
   <p>He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wed­ding trip, and made a mis­er­able but ir­re­sistible jour­ney to Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walk­ing the streets where their foot­steps had clicked to­gether through the No­vem­ber night and re­vis­it­ing the out-of-the-way places to which they had dri­ven in her white car. Just as Daisy’s house had al­ways seemed to him more mys­te­ri­ous and gay than other houses, so his idea of the city it­self, even though she was gone from it, was per­vaded with a melan­choly beauty.</p>
   <p>He left, feel­ing that if he had searched harder, he might have found her—that he was leav­ing her be­hind. The day-coach—he was pen­ni­less now—was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a fold­ing-chair, and the sta­tion slid away and the backs of un­fa­mil­iar build­ings moved by. Then out into the spring fields, where a yel­low trol­ley raced them for a minute with the peo­ple in it who might once have seen the pale magic of her face along the ca­sual street.</p>
   <p>The track curved and now it was going away from the sun, which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread it­self in bene­dic­tion over the van­ish­ing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand des­per­ately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a frag­ment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the fresh­est and the best, for­ever.</p>
   <p>It was nine o’clock when we fin­ished break­fast and went out on the porch. The night had made a sharp dif­fer­ence in the weather and there was an au­tumn fla­vor in the air. The gar­dener, the last one of Gatsby’s for­mer ser­vants, came to the foot of the steps.</p>
   <p>“I’m going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby, Leaves’ll start falling pretty soon, and then there’s al­ways trou­ble with the pipes.”</p>
   <p>“Don’t do it to-day,” Gatsby an­swered. He turned to me apolo­get­i­cally. “You know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all sum­mer?”</p>
   <p>I looked at my watch and stood up.</p>
   <p>“Twelve min­utes to my train.”</p>
   <p>I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a de­cent stroke of work, but it was more than that—I didn’t want to leave Gatsby. I missed that train, and then an­other, be­fore I could get my­self away.</p>
   <p>“I’ll call you up,” I said fi­nally.</p>
   <p>“Do, old sport.”</p>
   <p>“I’ll call you about noon.”</p>
   <p>We walked slowly down the steps.</p>
   <p>“I sup­pose Daisy’ll call too.” He looked at me anx­iously, as if he hoped I’d cor­rob­o­rate this.</p>
   <p>“I sup­pose so.”</p>
   <p>“Well, good-by.”</p>
   <p>We shook hands and I started away. Just be­fore I reached the hedge I re­mem­bered some­thing and turned around.</p>
   <p>“They’re a rot­ten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put to­gether.”</p>
   <p>I’ve al­ways been glad I said that. It was the only com­pli­ment I ever gave him, be­cause I dis­ap­proved of him from be­gin­ning to end. First he nod­ded po­litely, and then his face broke into that ra­di­ant and un­der­stand­ing smile, as if we’d been in ec­sta­tic ca­hoots on that fact all the time. His gor­geous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I first came to his an­ces­tral home, three months be­fore. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his cor­rup­tion—and he had stood on those steps, con­ceal­ing his in­cor­rupt­ible dream, as he waved them good-by.</p>
   <p>I thanked him for his hos­pi­tal­ity. We were al­ways thank­ing him for that—I and the oth­ers.</p>
   <p>“Good-by,” I called. “I en­joyed break­fast, Gatsby.”</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>Up in the city. I tried for a while to list the quo­ta­tions on an in­ter­minable amount of stock, then I fell asleep in my swivel-chair. Just be­fore noon the phone woke me, and I started up with sweat break­ing out on my fore­head. It was Jor­dan Baker; she often called me up at this hour be­cause the un­cer­tainty of her own move­ments be­tween ho­tels and clubs and pri­vate houses made her hard to find in any other way. Usu­ally her voice came over the wire as some­thing fresh and cool, as if a divot from a green golf-links had come sail­ing in at the of­fice win­dow, but this morn­ing it seemed harsh and dry.</p>
   <p>“I’ve left Daisy’s house,” she said. “I’m at Hemp-stead, and I’m going down to Southamp­ton this af­ter­noon.”</p>
   <p>Prob­a­bly it had been tact­ful to leave Daisy’s house, but the act an­noyed me, and her next re­mark made me rigid.</p>
   <p>“You weren’t so nice to me last night.”</p>
   <p>“How could it have mat­tered then?”</p>
   <p>Si­lence for a mo­ment. Then:</p>
   <p>“How­ever—I want to see you.”</p>
   <p>“I want to see you, too.”</p>
   <p>“Sup­pose I don’t go to Southamp­ton, and come into town this af­ter­noon?”</p>
   <p>“No—I don’t think this af­ter­noon.”</p>
   <p>“Very well.”</p>
   <p>“It’s im­pos­si­ble this af­ter­noon. Var­i­ous—”</p>
   <p>We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren’t talk­ing any longer. I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn’t care. I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to her again in this world.</p>
   <p>I called Gatsby’s house a few min­utes later, but the line was busy. I tried four times; fi­nally an ex­as­per­ated cen­tral told me the wire was being kept open for long dis­tance from De­troit. Tak­ing out my time-table, I drew a small cir­cle around the three-fifty train. Then I leaned back in my chair and tried to think. It was just noon.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>When I passed the ash­heaps on the train that morn­ing I had crossed de­lib­er­ately to the other side of the car. I sup­posed there’d be a cu­ri­ous crowd around there all day with lit­tle boys search­ing for dark sports in the dust, and some gar­ru­lous man telling over and over what had hap­pened, until it be­came less and less real even to him and he could tell it no longer, and Myr­tle Wil­son’s tragic achieve­ment was for­got­ten. Now I want to go back a lit­tle and tell what hap­pened at the garage after we left there the night be­fore.</p>
   <p>They had dif­fi­culty in lo­cat­ing the sis­ter, Cather­ine. She must have bro­ken her rule against drink­ing that night, for when she ar­rived she was stu­pid with liquor and un­able to un­der­stand that the am­bu­lance had al­ready gone to Flush­ing. When they con­vinced her of this, she im­me­di­ately fainted, as if that was the in­tol­er­a­ble part of the af­fair. Some­one, kind or cu­ri­ous, took her in his car and drove her in the wake of her sis­ter’s body.</p>
   <p>Until long after mid­night a chang­ing crowd lapped up against the front of the garage, while George Wil­son rocked him­self back and forth on the couch in­side. For a while the door of the of­fice was open, and every one who came into the garage glanced ir­re­sistibly through it. Fi­nally some one said it was a shame, and closed the door. Michaelis and sev­eral other men were with him; first, four or five men, later two or three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask the last stranger to wait there fif­teen min­utes longer, while he went back to his own place and made a pot of cof­fee. After that, he stayed there alone with Wil­son until dawn.</p>
   <p>About three o’clock the qual­ity of Wil­son’s in­co­her­ent mut­ter­ing changed—he grew qui­eter and began to talk about the yel­low car. He an­nounced that he had a way of find­ing out whom the yel­low car be­longed to, and then he blurted out that a cou­ple of months ago his wife had come from the city with her face bruised and her nose swollen.</p>
   <p>But when he heard him­self say this, he flinched and began to cry “Oh, my God!” again in his groan­ing voice. Michaelis made a clumsy at­tempt to dis­tract him.</p>
   <p>“How long have you been mar­ried, George? Come on there, try and sit still a minute and an­swer my ques­tion. How long have you been mar­ried?”</p>
   <p>“Twelve years.”</p>
   <p>“Ever had any chil­dren? Come on, George, sit still—I asked you a ques­tion. Did you ever have any chil­dren?”</p>
   <p>The hard brown bee­tles kept thud­ding against the dull light, and when­ever Michaelis heard a car go tear­ing along the road out­side it sounded to him like the car that hadn’t stopped a few hours be­fore. He didn’t like to go into the garage, be­cause the work bench was stained where the body had been lying, so he moved un­com­fort­ably around the of­fice—he knew every ob­ject in it be­fore morn­ing—and from time to time sat down be­side Wil­son try­ing to keep him more quiet.</p>
   <p>“Have you got a church you go to some­times, George? Maybe even if you haven’t been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?”</p>
   <p>“Don’t be­long to any.”</p>
   <p>“You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must have gone to church once. Didn’t you get mar­ried in a church? Lis­ten, George, lis­ten to me. Didn’t you get mar­ried in a church?”</p>
   <p>“That was a long time ago.”</p>
   <p>The ef­fort of an­swer­ing broke the rhythm of his rock­ing—for a mo­ment he was silent. Then the same half-know­ing, half-be­wil­dered look came back into his faded eyes.</p>
   <p>“Look in the drawer there,” he said, point­ing at the desk.</p>
   <p>“Which drawer?”</p>
   <p>“That drawer—that one.”</p>
   <p>Michaelis opened the drawer near­est his hand. There was noth­ing in it but a small, ex­pen­sive dog-leash, made of leather and braided sil­ver. It was ap­par­ently new.</p>
   <p>“This?” he in­quired, hold­ing it up.</p>
   <p>Wil­son stared and nod­ded.</p>
   <p>“I found it yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. She tried to tell me about it, but I knew it was some­thing funny.”</p>
   <p>“You mean your wife bought it?”</p>
   <p>“She had it wrapped in tis­sue paper on her bu­reau.”</p>
   <p>Michaelis didn’t see any­thing odd in that, and he gave Wil­son a dozen rea­sons why his wife might have bought the dog-leash. But con­ceiv­ably Wil­son had heard some of these same ex­pla­na­tions be­fore, from Myr­tle, be­cause he began say­ing “Oh, my God!” again in a whis­per—his com­forter left sev­eral ex­pla­na­tions in the air.</p>
   <p>“Then he killed her,” said Wil­son. His mouth dropped open sud­denly.</p>
   <p>“Who did?”</p>
   <p>“I have a way of find­ing out.”</p>
   <p>“You’re mor­bid, George,” said his friend. “This has been a strain to you and you don’t know what you’re say­ing. You’d bet­ter try and sit quiet till morn­ing.”</p>
   <p>“He mur­dered her.”</p>
   <p>“It was an ac­ci­dent, George.”</p>
   <p>Wil­son shook his head. His eyes nar­rowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a su­pe­rior “Hm!”</p>
   <p>“I know,” he said def­i­nitely, “I’m one of these trust­ing fel­las and I don’t think any harm to no­body, but when I get to know a thing I know it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he wouldn’t stop.”</p>
   <p>Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn’t oc­curred to him that there was any spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance in it. He be­lieved that Mrs. Wil­son had been run­ning away from her hus­band, rather than try­ing to stop any par­tic­u­lar car.</p>
   <p>“How could she of been like that?”</p>
   <p>“She’s a deep one,” said Wil­son, as if that an­swered the ques­tion. “Ah-h-h—”</p>
   <p>He began to rock again, and Michaelis stood twist­ing the leash in his hand.</p>
   <p>“Maybe you got some friend that I could tele­phone for, George?”</p>
   <p>This was a for­lorn hope—he was al­most sure that Wil­son had no friend: there was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a lit­tle later when he no­ticed a change in the room, a blue quick­en­ing by the win­dow, and re­al­ized that dawn wasn’t far off. About five o’clock it was blue enough out­side to snap off the light.</p>
   <p>Wil­son’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash­heaps, where small gray clouds took on fan­tas­tic shapes and scur­ried here and there in the faint dawn wind.</p>
   <p>“I spoke to her,” he mut­tered, after a long si­lence. “I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the win­dow”—with an ef­fort he got up and walked to the rear win­dow and leaned with his face pressed against it—“and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, every­thing you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’ ”</p>
   <p>Stand­ing be­hind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was look­ing at the eyes of Doc­tor T. J. Eck­le­burg which had just emerged, pale and enor­mous, from the dis­solv­ing night.</p>
   <p>“God sees every­thing,” re­peated Wil­son.</p>
   <p>“That’s an ad­ver­tise­ment,” Michaelis as­sured him. Some­thing made him turn away from the win­dow and look back into the room. But Wil­son stood there a long time, his face close to the win­dow pane, nod­ding into the twi­light.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>By six o’clock Michaelis was worn out, and grate­ful for the sound of a car stop­ping out­side. It was one of the watch­ers of the night be­fore who had promised to come back, so he cooked break­fast for three, which he and the other man ate to­gether. Wil­son was qui­eter now, and Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and hur­ried back to the garage, Wil­son was gone.</p>
   <p>His move­ments—he was on foot all the time—were af­ter­ward traced to Port Roo­sevelt and then to Gad’s Hill, where he bought a sand­wich that he didn’t eat, and a cup of cof­fee. He must have been tired and walk­ing slowly, for he didn’t reach Gad’s Hill until noon. Thus far there was no dif­fi­culty in ac­count­ing for his time—there were boys who had seen a man “act­ing sort of crazy,” and mo­torists at whom he stared oddly from the side of the road. Then for three hours he dis­ap­peared from view. The po­lice, on the strength of what he said to Michaelis, that he “had a way of find­ing out,” sup­posed that he spent that time going from garage to garage there­about, in­quir­ing for a yel­low car. On the other hand, no garage man who had seen him ever came for­ward, and per­haps he had an eas­ier, surer way of find­ing out what he wanted to know. By half past two he was in West Egg, where he asked some one the way to Gatsby’s house. So by that time he knew Gatsby’s name.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit and left word with the but­ler that if any one phoned word was to be brought to him at the pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneu­matic mat­tress that had amused his guests dur­ing the sum­mer, and the chauf­feur helped him pump it up. Then he gave in­struc­tions that the open car wasn’t to be taken out under any cir­cum­stances—and this was strange, be­cause the front right fender needed re­pair.</p>
   <p>Gatsby shoul­dered the mat­tress and started for the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a lit­tle, and the chauf­feur asked him if he needed help, but he shook his head and in a mo­ment dis­ap­peared among the yel­low­ing trees.</p>
   <p>No tele­phone mes­sage ar­rived, but the but­ler went with­out his sleep and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby him­self didn’t be­lieve it would come, and per­haps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for liv­ing too long with a sin­gle dream. He must have looked up at an un­fa­mil­iar sky through fright­en­ing leaves and shiv­ered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sun­light was upon the scarcely cre­ated grass. A new world, ma­te­r­ial with­out being real, where poor ghosts, breath­ing dreams like air, drifted for­tu­itously about… like that ashen, fan­tas­tic fig­ure glid­ing to­ward him through the amor­phous trees.</p>
   <p>The chauf­feur—he was one of Wolf­sheim’s protégés—heard the shots—af­ter­ward he could only say that he hadn’t thought any­thing much about them. I drove from the sta­tion di­rectly to Gatsby’s house and my rush­ing anx­iously up the front steps was the first thing that alarmed any one. But they knew then, I firmly be­lieve. With scarcely a word said, four of us, the chauf­feur, but­ler, gar­dener, and I, hur­ried down to the pool.</p>
   <p>There was a faint, barely per­cep­ti­ble move­ment of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way to­ward the drain at the other. With lit­tle rip­ples that were hardly the shad­ows of waves, the laden mat­tress moved ir­reg­u­larly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely cor­ru­gated the sur­face was enough to dis­turb its ac­ci­den­tal course with its ac­ci­den­tal bur­den. The touch of a clus­ter of leaves re­volved it slowly, trac­ing, like the leg of tran­sit, a thin red cir­cle in the water.</p>
   <p>It was after we started with Gatsby to­ward the house that the gar­dener saw Wil­son’s body a lit­tle way off in the grass, and the holo­caust was com­plete.</p>
</section>
  <section>
   <title>
    <p>CHAPTER IX</p>
   </title>
   <p>After two years I re­mem­ber the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an end­less drill of po­lice and pho­tog­ra­phers and news­pa­per men in and out of Gatsby’s front door. A rope stretched across the main gate and a po­lice­man by it kept out the cu­ri­ous, but lit­tle boys soon dis­cov­ered that they could enter through my yard, and there were al­ways a few of them clus­tered open-mouthed about the pool. Some one with a pos­i­tive man­ner, per­haps a de­tec­tive, used the ex­pres­sion “mad­man” as he bent over Wil­son’s body that af­ter­noon, and the ad­ven­ti­tious au­thor­ity of his voice set the key for the news­pa­per re­ports next morn­ing.</p>
   <p>Most of those re­ports were a night­mare—grotesque, cir­cum­stan­tial, eager, and un­true. When Michaelis’s tes­ti­mony at the in­quest brought to light Wil­son’s sus­pi­cions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade—but Cather­ine, who might have said any­thing, didn’t say a word. She showed a sur­pris­ing amount of char­ac­ter about it too—looked at the coro­ner with de­ter­mined eyes under that cor­rected brow of hers, and swore that her sis­ter had never seen Gatsby, that her sis­ter was com­pletely happy with her hus­band, that her sis­ter had been into no mis­chief what­ever. She con­vinced her­self of it, and cried into her hand­ker­chief, as if the very sug­ges­tion was more than she could en­dure. So Wil­son was re­duced to a man “de­ranged by grief” in order that the case might re­main in its sim­plest form. And it rested there.</p>
   <p>But all this part of it seemed re­mote and unessen­tial. I found my­self on Gatsby’s side, and alone. From the mo­ment I tele­phoned news of the cat­a­stro­phe to West Egg Vil­lage, every sur­mise about him, and every prac­ti­cal ques­tion, was re­ferred to me. At first I was sur­prised and con­fused; then, as he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was re­spon­si­ble, be­cause no one else was in­ter­ested—in­ter­ested, I mean, with that in­tense per­sonal in­ter­est to which every one has some vague right at the end.</p>
   <p>I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her in­stinc­tively and with­out hes­i­ta­tion. But she and Tom had gone away early that af­ter­noon, and taken bag­gage with them.</p>
   <p>“Left no ad­dress?”</p>
   <p>“No.”</p>
   <p>“Say when they’d be back?”</p>
   <p>“No.”</p>
   <p>“Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?”</p>
   <p>“I don’t know. Can’t say.”</p>
   <p>I wanted to get some­body for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and re­as­sure him: “I’ll get some­body for you, Gatsby. Don’t worry. Just trust me and I’ll get some­body for you—”</p>
   <p>Meyer Wolf­sheim’s name wasn’t in the phone book. The but­ler gave me his of­fice ad­dress on Broad­way, and I called In­for­ma­tion, but by the time I had the num­ber it was long after five, and no one an­swered the phone.</p>
   <p>“Will you ring again?”</p>
   <p>“I’ve rung them three times.”</p>
   <p>“It’s very im­por­tant.”</p>
   <p>“Sorry. I’m afraid no one’s there.”</p>
   <p>I went back to the draw­ing-room and thought for an in­stant that they were chance vis­i­tors, all these of­fi­cial peo­ple who sud­denly filled it. But, as they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with un­moved eyes, his protest con­tin­ued in my brain:</p>
   <p>“Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get some­body for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.”</p>
   <p>Some one started to ask me ques­tions, but I broke away and going up-stairs looked hastily through the un­locked parts of his desk—he’d never told me def­i­nitely that his par­ents were dead. But there was noth­ing—only the pic­ture of Dan Cody, a token of for­got­ten vi­o­lence, star­ing down from the wall.</p>
   <p>Next morn­ing I sent the but­ler to New York with a let­ter to Wolf­sheim, which asked for in­for­ma­tion and urged him to come out on the next train. That re­quest seemed su­per­flu­ous when I wrote it. I was sure he’d start when he saw the news­pa­pers, just as I was sure there’d be a wire from Daisy be­fore noon—but nei­ther a wire nor Mr. Wolf­sheim ar­rived; no one ar­rived ex­cept more po­lice and pho­tog­ra­phers and news­pa­per men. When the but­ler brought back Wolf­sheim’s an­swer I began to have a feel­ing of de­fi­ance, of scorn­ful sol­i­dar­ity be­tween Gatsby and me against them all.</p>
   <cite>
    <p>Dear Mr. Car­raway. This has been one of the most ter­ri­ble shocks of my life to me I hardly can be­lieve it that it is true at all. Such a mad act as that man did should make us all think. I can­not come down now as I am tied up in some very im­por­tant busi­ness and can­not get mixed up in this thing now. If there is any­thing I can do a lit­tle later let me know in a let­ter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like this and am com­pletely knocked down and out.</p>
    <text-author>Yours truly</text-author>
    <text-author><emphasis>Meyer Wolf­sheim</emphasis></text-author>
   </cite>
   <p>and then hasty ad­denda be­neath:</p>
   <cite>
    <p>Let me know about the fu­neral etc do not know his fam­ily at all.</p>
   </cite>
   <p>When the phone rang that af­ter­noon and Long Dis­tance said Chicago was call­ing I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the con­nec­tion came through as a man’s voice, very thin and far away.</p>
   <p>“This is Sla­gle speak­ing…”</p>
   <p>“Yes?” The name was un­fa­mil­iar.</p>
   <p>“Hell of a note, isn’t it? Get my wire?”</p>
   <p>“There haven’t been any wires.”</p>
   <p>“Young Parke’s in trou­ble,” he said rapidly. “They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a cir­cu­lar from New York giv­ing ’em the num­bers just five min­utes be­fore. What d’you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns—”</p>
   <p>“Hello!” I in­ter­rupted breath­lessly. “Look here—this isn’t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby’s dead.”</p>
   <p>There was a long si­lence on the other end of the wire, fol­lowed by an ex­cla­ma­tion … then a quick squawk as the con­nec­tion was bro­ken.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz ar­rived from a town in Min­nesota. It said only that the sender was leav­ing im­me­di­ately and to post­pone the fu­neral until he came.</p>
   <p>It was Gatsby’s fa­ther, a solemn old man, very help­less and dis­mayed, bun­dled up in a long cheap ul­ster against the warm Sep­tem­ber day. His eyes leaked con­tin­u­ously with ex­cite­ment, and when I took the bag and um­brella from his hands he began to pull so in­ces­santly at his sparse gray beard that I had dif­fi­culty in get­ting off his coat. He was on the point of col­lapse, so I took him into the music room and made him sit down while I sent for some­thing to eat. But he wouldn’t eat, and the glass of milk spilled from his trem­bling hand.</p>
   <p>“I saw it in the Chicago news­pa­per,” he said. “It was all in the Chicago news­pa­per. I started right away.”</p>
   <p>“I didn’t know how to reach you.”</p>
   <p>His eyes, see­ing noth­ing, moved cease­lessly about the room.</p>
   <p>“It was a mad­man,” he said. “He must have been mad.”</p>
   <p>“Wouldn’t you like some cof­fee?” I urged him.</p>
   <p>“I don’t want any­thing. I’m all right now, Mr.—”</p>
   <p>“Car­raway.”</p>
   <p>“Well, I’m all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?”</p>
   <p>I took him into the draw­ing-room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some lit­tle boys had come up on the steps and were look­ing into the hall; when I told them who had ar­rived, they went re­luc­tantly away.</p>
   <p>After a lit­tle while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leak­ing iso­lated and un­punc­tual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the qual­ity of ghastly sur­prise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splen­dor of the hall and the great rooms open­ing out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bed­room up-stairs; while he took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrange­ments had been de­ferred until he came.</p>
   <p>“I didn’t know what you’d want, Mr. Gatsby—”</p>
   <p>“Gatz is my name.”</p>
   <p>“—Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body West.”</p>
   <p>He shook his head.</p>
   <p>“Jimmy al­ways liked it bet­ter down East. He rose up to his po­si­tion in the East. Were you a friend of my boy’s, Mr.—?”</p>
   <p>“We were close friends.”</p>
   <p>“He had a big fu­ture be­fore him, you know. He was only a young man, but he had a lot of brain power here.”</p>
   <p>He touched his head im­pres­sively, and I nod­ded.</p>
   <p>“If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He’d of helped build up the coun­try.”</p>
   <p>“That’s true,” I said, un­com­fort­ably.</p>
   <p>He fum­bled at the em­broi­dered cov­er­let, try­ing to take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly—was in­stantly asleep.</p>
   <p>That night an ob­vi­ously fright­ened per­son called up, and de­manded to know who I was be­fore he would give his name.</p>
   <p>“This is Mr. Car­raway,” I said.</p>
   <p>“Oh!” He sounded re­lieved. “This is Klip­springer.”</p>
   <p>I was re­lieved too, for that seemed to promise an­other friend at Gatsby’s grave. I didn’t want it to be in the pa­pers and draw a sight-see­ing crowd, so I’d been call­ing up a few peo­ple my­self. They were hard to find.</p>
   <p>“The fu­neral’s to­mor­row,” I said. “Three o’clock, here at the house. I wish you’d tell any­body who’d be in­ter­ested.”</p>
   <p>“Oh, I will,” he broke out hastily. “Of course I’m not likely to see any­body, but if I do.”</p>
   <p>His tone made me sus­pi­cious.</p>
   <p>“Of course you’ll be there your­self.”</p>
   <p>“Well, I’ll cer­tainly try. What I called up about is—”</p>
   <p>“Wait a minute,” I in­ter­rupted. “How about say­ing you’ll come?”</p>
   <p>“Well, the fact is—the truth of the mat­ter is that I’m stay­ing with some peo­ple up here in Green­wich, and they rather ex­pect me to be with them to­mor­row. In fact, there’s a sort of pic­nic or some­thing. Of course I’ll do my very best to get away.”</p>
   <p>I ejac­u­lated an un­re­strained “Huh!” and he must have heard me, for he went on ner­vously:</p>
   <p>“What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I won­der if it’d be too much trou­ble to have the but­ler send them on. You see, they’re ten­nis shoes, and I’m sort of help­less with­out them. My ad­dress is care of B. F.—”</p>
   <p>I didn’t hear the rest of the name, be­cause I hung up the re­ceiver.</p>
   <p>After that I felt a cer­tain shame for Gatsby—one gen­tle­man to whom I tele­phoned im­plied that he had got what he de­served. How­ever, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bit­terly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby’s liquor, and I should have known bet­ter than to call him.</p>
   <p>The morn­ing of the fu­neral I went up to New York to see Meyer Wolf­sheim; I couldn’t seem to reach him any other way. The door that I pushed open, on the ad­vice of an el­e­va­tor boy, was marked “The Swastika Hold­ing Com­pany,” and at first there didn’t seem to be any one in­side. But when I’d shouted “hello” sev­eral times in vain, an ar­gu­ment broke out be­hind a par­ti­tion, and presently a lovely Jew­ess ap­peared at an in­te­rior door and scru­ti­nized me with black hos­tile eyes.</p>
   <p>“No­body’s in,” she said. “Mr. Wolf­sheim’s gone to Chicago.”</p>
   <p>The first part of this was ob­vi­ously un­true, for some one had begun to whis­tle “The Rosary,” tune­lessly, in­side.</p>
   <p>“Please say that Mr. Car­raway wants to see him.”</p>
   <p>“I can’t get him back from Chicago, can I?”</p>
   <p>At this mo­ment a voice, un­mis­tak­ably Wolf­sheim’s, called “Stella!” from the other side of the door.</p>
   <p>“Leave your name on the desk,” she said quickly. “I’ll give it to him when he gets back.”</p>
   <p>“But I know he’s there.”</p>
   <p>She took a step to­ward me and began to slide her hands in­dig­nantly up and down her hips.</p>
   <p>“You young men think you can force your way in here any time,” she scolded. “We’re get­ting sick­an­tired of it. When I say he’s in Chicago, he’s in Chicago.”</p>
   <p>I men­tioned Gatsby.</p>
   <p>“Oh-h!” She looked at me over again. “Will you just—What was your name?”</p>
   <p>She van­ished. In a mo­ment Meyer Wolf­sheim stood solemnly in the door­way, hold­ing out both hands. He drew me into his of­fice, re­mark­ing in a rev­er­ent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and of­fered me a cigar.</p>
   <p>“My mem­ory goes back to when first I met him,” he said. “A young major just out of the army and cov­ered over with medals he got in the war. He was so hard up he had to keep on wear­ing his uni­form be­cause he couldn’t buy some reg­u­lar clothes. First time I saw him was when he come into Wine­bren­ner’s pool­room at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn’t eat any­thing for a cou­ple of days. ‘Come on have some lunch with me,’ I said. He ate more than four dol­lars’ worth of food in half an hour.”</p>
   <p>“Did you start him in busi­ness?” I in­quired.</p>
   <p>“Start him! I made him.”</p>
   <p>“Oh.”</p>
   <p>“I raised him up out of noth­ing, right out of the gut­ter. I saw right away he was a fine-ap­pear­ing, gen­tle­manly young man, and when he told me he was an Og­gs­ford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the Amer­i­can Le­gion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Al­bany. We were so thick like that in every­thing”—he held up two bul­bous fin­gers—“al­ways to­gether.”</p>
   <p>I won­dered if this part­ner­ship had in­cluded the World’s Se­ries trans­ac­tion in 1919.</p>
   <p>“Now he’s dead,” I said after a mo­ment. “You were his clos­est friend, so I know you’ll want to come to his fu­neral this af­ter­noon.”</p>
   <p>“I’d like to come.”</p>
   <p>“Well, come then.”</p>
   <p>The hair in his nos­trils quiv­ered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.</p>
   <p>“I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it,” he said.</p>
   <p>“There’s noth­ing to get mixed up in. It’s all over now.”</p>
   <p>“When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was dif­fer­ent—if a friend of mine died, no mat­ter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that’s sen­ti­men­tal, but I mean it—to the bit­ter end.”</p>
   <p>I saw that for some rea­son of his own he was de­ter­mined not to come, so I stood up.</p>
   <p>“Are you a col­lege man?” he in­quired sud­denly.</p>
   <p>For a mo­ment I thought he was going to sug­gest a “gonneg­tion,” but he only nod­ded and shook my hand.</p>
   <p>“Let us learn to show our friend­ship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,” he sug­gested. “After that, my own rule is to let every­thing alone.”</p>
   <p>When I left his of­fice the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a driz­zle. After chang­ing my clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walk­ing up and down ex­cit­edly in the hall. His pride in his son and in his son’s pos­ses­sions was con­tin­u­ally in­creas­ing and now he had some­thing to show me.</p>
   <p>“Jimmy sent me this pic­ture.” He took out his wal­let with trem­bling fin­gers. “Look there.”</p>
   <p>It was a pho­to­graph of the house, cracked in the cor­ners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every de­tail to me ea­gerly. “Look there!” and then sought ad­mi­ra­tion from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think it was more real to him now than the house it­self.</p>
   <p>“Jimmy sent it to me. I think it’s a very pretty pic­ture. It shows up well.”</p>
   <p>“Very well. Had you seen him lately?”</p>
   <p>“He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see now there was a rea­son for it. He knew he had a big fu­ture in front of him. And ever since he made a suc­cess he was very gen­er­ous with me.”</p>
   <p>He seemed re­luc­tant to put away the pic­ture, held it for an­other minute, lin­ger­ingly, be­fore my eyes. Then he re­turned the wal­let and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called <emphasis>Hopa­long Cas­sidy.</emphasis></p>
   <p>“Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.”</p>
   <p>He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last fly-leaf was printed the word sched­ule, and the date <emphasis>Sep­tem­ber 12, 1906.</emphasis> And un­der­neath:</p>
   <cite>
    <p>Rise from bed ............ 6.00 A.M.</p>
    <p>Dumb­bell ex­er­cise and wall-scal­ing .... 6.15—6.30 ”</p>
    <p>Study elec­tric­ity, etc. .......... 7.15—8.15 ”</p>
    <p>Work ............... 8.30—4.30 P.M.</p>
    <p>Base­ball and sports .......... 4.30—5.00 ”</p>
    <p>Prac­tice elo­cu­tion, poise and how to at­tain it 5.00—6.00 ”</p>
    <p>Study needed in­ven­tions ........ 7.00—9.00 ”</p>
    <empty-line/>
    <p>GEN­ERAL RE­SOLVES</p>
    <p>No wast­ing time at Shat­ters or [a name, in­de­ci­pher­able]</p>
    <p>No more smok­ing or chew­ing</p>
    <p>Bath every other day</p>
    <p>Read one im­prov­ing book or mag­a­zine per week</p>
    <p>Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week</p>
    <p>Be bet­ter to par­ents</p>
  </cite>
   <p>“I come across this book by ac­ci­dent,” said the old man. “It just shows you, don’t it?</p>
   <p>“Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He al­ways had some re­solves like this or some­thing. Do you no­tice what he’s got about im­prov­ing his mind? He was al­ways great for that. He told me I ate like a hog once, and I beat him for it.”</p>
   <p>He was re­luc­tant to close the book, read­ing each item aloud and then look­ing ea­gerly at me. I think he rather ex­pected me to copy down the list for my own use.</p>
   <p>A lit­tle be­fore three the Lutheran min­is­ter ar­rived from Flush­ing, and I began to look in­vol­un­tar­ily out the win­dows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s fa­ther. And as the time passed and the ser­vants came in and stood wait­ing in the hall, his eyes began to blink anx­iously, and he spoke of the rain in a wor­ried, un­cer­tain way. The min­is­ter glanced sev­eral times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. No­body came.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>About five o’clock our pro­ces­sion of three cars reached the ceme­tery and stopped in a thick driz­zle be­side the gate—first a motor hearse, hor­ri­bly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the min­is­ter and I in the lim­ou­sine, and a lit­tle later four or five ser­vants and the post­man from West Egg, in Gatsby’s sta­tion wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the ceme­tery I heard a car stop and then the sound of some one splash­ing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found mar­vel­ling over Gatsby’s books in the li­brary one night three months be­fore.</p>
   <p>I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the fu­neral, or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see the pro­tect­ing can­vas un­rolled from Gatsby’s grave.</p>
   <p>I tried to think about Gatsby then for a mo­ment, but he was al­ready too far away, and I could only re­mem­ber, with­out re­sent­ment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a mes­sage or a flower. Dimly I heard some one mur­mur “Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,” and then the owl-eyed man said “Amen to that,” in a brave voice.</p>
   <p>We strag­gled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate.</p>
   <p>“I couldn’t get to the house,” he re­marked.</p>
   <p>“Nei­ther could any­body else.”</p>
   <p>“Go on!” He started. “Why, my God! they used to go there by the hun­dreds.”</p>
   <p>He took off his glasses and wiped them again, out­side and in.</p>
   <p>“The poor son-of-a-bitch,” he said.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>One of my most vivid mem­o­ries is of com­ing back West from prep school and later from col­lege at Christ­mas time. Those who went far­ther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Sta­tion at six o’clock of a De­cem­ber evening, with a few Chicago friends, al­ready caught up into their own hol­i­day gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I re­mem­ber the fur coats of the girls re­turn­ing from Miss This-or-That’s and the chat­ter of frozen breath and the hands wav­ing over­head as we caught sight of old ac­quain­tances, and the match­ings of in­vi­ta­tions: “Are you going to the Or­d­ways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long green tick­ets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yel­low cars of the Chicago, Mil­wau­kee and St. Paul rail­road look­ing cheer­ful as Christ­mas it­self on the tracks be­side the gate.</p>
   <p>When we pulled out into the win­ter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out be­side us and twin­kle against the win­dows, and the dim lights of small Wis­con­sin sta­tions moved by, a sharp wild brace came sud­denly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from din­ner through the cold vestibules, un­ut­ter­ably aware of our iden­tity with this coun­try for one strange hour, be­fore we melted in­dis­tin­guish­ably into it again.</p>
   <p>That’s my Mid­dle West—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling re­turn­ing trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shad­ows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted win­dows on the snow. I am part of that, a lit­tle solemn with the feel of those long win­ters, a lit­tle com­pla­cent from grow­ing up in the Car­raway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a fam­ily’s name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jor­dan and I, were all West­ern­ers, and per­haps we pos­sessed some de­fi­ciency in com­mon which made us sub­tly un­adapt­able to East­ern life.</p>
   <p>Even when the East ex­cited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its su­pe­ri­or­ity to the bored, sprawl­ing, swollen towns be­yond the Ohio, with their in­ter­minable in­qui­si­tions which spared only the chil­dren and the very old—even then it had al­ways for me a qual­ity of dis­tor­tion. West Egg, es­pe­cially, still fig­ures in my more fan­tas­tic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hun­dred houses, at once con­ven­tional and grotesque, crouch­ing under a sullen, over­hang­ing sky and a lus­tre­less moon. In the fore­ground four solemn men in dress suits are walk­ing along the side­walk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dan­gles over the side, sparkles cold with jew­els. Gravely the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.</p>
   <p>After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, dis­torted be­yond my eyes’ power of cor­rec­tion. So when the blue smoke of brit­tle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laun­dry stiff on the line I de­cided to come back home.</p>
   <p>There was one thing to be done be­fore I left, an awk­ward, un­pleas­ant thing that per­haps had bet­ter have been let alone. But I wanted to leave things in order and not just trust that oblig­ing and in­dif­fer­ent sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jor­dan Baker and talked over and around what had hap­pened to us to­gether, and what had hap­pened af­ter­ward to me, and she lay per­fectly still, lis­ten­ing, in a big chair.</p>
   <p>She was dressed to play golf, and I re­mem­ber think­ing she looked like a good il­lus­tra­tion, her chin raised a lit­tle jaun­tily, her hair the color of an au­tumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fin­ger­less glove on her knee. When I had fin­ished she told me with­out com­ment that she was en­gaged to an­other man. I doubted that, though there were sev­eral she could have mar­ried at a nod of her head, but I pre­tended to be sur­prised. For just a minute I won­dered if I wasn’t mak­ing a mis­take, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say good-by.</p>
   <p>“Nev­er­the­less you did throw me over,” said Jor­dan sud­denly. “You threw me over on the tele­phone. I don’t give a damn about you now, but it was a new ex­pe­ri­ence for me, and I felt a lit­tle dizzy for a while.”</p>
   <p>We shook hands.</p>
   <p>“Oh, and do you re­mem­ber”—she added—“a con­ver­sa­tion we had once about dri­ving a car?”</p>
   <p>“Why—not ex­actly.”</p>
   <p>“You said a bad dri­ver was only safe until she met an­other bad dri­ver? Well, I met an­other bad dri­ver, didn’t I? I mean it was care­less of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an hon­est, straight­for­ward per­son. I thought it was your se­cret pride.”</p>
   <p>“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to my­self and call it honor.”</p>
   <p>She didn’t an­swer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremen­dously sorry, I turned away.</p>
   <empty-line/>
   <p>One af­ter­noon late in Oc­to­ber I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walk­ing ahead of me along Fifth Av­enue in his alert, ag­gres­sive way, his hands out a lit­tle from his body as if to fight off in­ter­fer­ence, his head mov­ing sharply here and there, adapt­ing it­self to his rest­less eyes. Just as I slowed up to avoid over­tak­ing him he stopped and began frown­ing into the win­dows of a jew­elry store. Sud­denly he saw me and walked back, hold­ing out his hand.</p>
   <p>“What’s the mat­ter, Nick? Do you ob­ject to shak­ing hands with me?”</p>
   <p>“Yes. You know what I think of you.”</p>
   <p>“You’re crazy, Nick,” he said quickly. “Crazy as hell. I don’t know what’s the mat­ter with you.”</p>
   <p>“Tom,” I in­quired, “what did you say to Wil­son that af­ter­noon?”</p>
   <p>He stared at me with­out a word, and I knew I had guessed right about those miss­ing hours. I started to turn away, but he took a step after me and grabbed my arm.</p>
   <p>“I told him the truth,” he said. “He came to the door while we were get­ting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren’t in he tried to force his way up-stairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a re­volver in his pocket every minute he was in the house—” He broke off de­fi­antly. “What if I did tell him? That fel­low had it com­ing to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myr­tle like you’d run over a dog and never even stopped his car.”</p>
   <p>There was noth­ing I could say, ex­cept the one un­ut­ter­able fact that it wasn’t true.</p>
   <p>“And if you think I didn’t have my share of suf­fer­ing—look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog-bis­cuits sit­ting there on the side­board, I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful—”</p>
   <p>I couldn’t for­give him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, en­tirely jus­ti­fied. It was all very care­less and con­fused. They were care­less peo­ples, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and crea­tures and then re­treated back into their money or their vast care­less­ness, or what­ever it was that kept them to­gether, and let other peo­ple clean up the mess they had made....</p>
   <p>I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt sud­denly as though I were talk­ing to a child. Then he went into the jew­elry store to buy a pearl neck­lace—or per­haps only a pair of cuff but­tons—rid of my provin­cial squea­mish­ness for­ever.</p>
   <p>Gatsby’s house was still empty when I left—the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the taxi dri­vers in the vil­lage never took a fare past the en­trance gate with­out stop­ping for a minute and point­ing in­side; per­haps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the ac­ci­dent, and per­haps he had made a story about it all his own. I didn’t want to hear it and I avoided him when I got off the train.</p>
   <p>I spent my Sat­ur­day nights in New York, be­cause those gleam­ing, daz­zling par­ties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laugh­ter, faint and in­ces­sant, from his gar­den, and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a ma­te­r­ial car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn’t in­ves­ti­gate. Prob­a­bly it was some final guest who had been away at the ends of the earth and didn’t know that the party was over.</p>
   <p>On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the gro­cer, I went over and looked at that huge in­co­her­ent fail­ure of a house once more. On the white steps an ob­scene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moon­light, and I erased it, draw­ing my shoe rasp­ingly along the stone. Then I wan­dered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.</p>
   <p>Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights ex­cept the shad­owy, mov­ing glow of a fer­ry­boat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessen­tial houses began to melt away until grad­u­ally I be­came aware of the old is­land here that flow­ered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its van­ished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pan­dered in whis­pers to the last and great­est of all human dreams; for a tran­si­tory en­chanted mo­ment man must have held his breath in the pres­ence of this con­ti­nent, com­pelled into an aes­thetic con­tem­pla­tion he nei­ther un­der­stood nor de­sired, face to face for the last time in his­tory with some­thing com­men­su­rate to his ca­pac­ity for won­der.</p>
   <p>And as I sat there brood­ing on the old, un­known world, I thought of Gatsby’s won­der when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was al­ready be­hind him, some­where back in that vast ob­scu­rity be­yond the city, where the dark fields of the re­pub­lic rolled on under the night.</p>
   <p>Gatsby be­lieved in the green light, the or­gias­tic fu­ture that year by year re­cedes be­fore us. It eluded us then, but that’s no mat­ter—to­mor­row we will run faster, stretch out our arms far­ther.... And one fine morn­ing—</p>
   <p>So we beat on, boats against the cur­rent, borne back cease­lessly into the past.</p>
</section>
 </body>
</FictionBook>