From 500a039f13d2770d6a8673b54b8fb7fcd960a0d6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Cassie Jones <code@witchoflight.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 17:24:13 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Remove the goof files

---
 bee-movie.txt | 3268 -------------------------
 gatsby.txt    | 6333 -------------------------------------------------
 2 files changed, 9601 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 bee-movie.txt
 delete mode 100644 gatsby.txt

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-According to all known laws
-of aviation,
-
-there is no way a bee
-should be able to fly.
-
-Its wings are too small to get
-its fat little body off the ground.
-
-The bee, of course, flies anyway
-
-because bees don't care
-what humans think is impossible.
-
-Yellow, black. Yellow, black.
-Yellow, black. Yellow, black.
-
-Ooh, black and yellow!
-Let's shake it up a little.
-
-Barry! Breakfast is ready!
-
-Coming!
-
-Hang on a second.
-
-Hello?
-
-- Barry?
-- Adam?
-
-- Can you believe this is happening?
-- I can't. I'll pick you up.
-
-Looking sharp.
-
-Use the stairs. Your father
-paid good money for those.
-
-Sorry. I'm excited.
-
-Here's the graduate.
-We're very proud of you, son.
-
-A perfect report card, all B's.
-
-Very proud.
-
-Ma! I got a thing going here.
-
-- You got lint on your fuzz.
-- Ow! That's me!
-
-- Wave to us! We'll be in row 118,000.
-- Bye!
-
-Barry, I told you,
-stop flying in the house!
-
-- Hey, Adam.
-- Hey, Barry.
-
-- Is that fuzz gel?
-- A little. Special day, graduation.
-
-Never thought I'd make it.
-
-Three days grade school,
-three days high school.
-
-Those were awkward.
-
-Three days college. I'm glad I took
-a day and hitchhiked around the hive.
-
-You did come back different.
-
-- Hi, Barry.
-- Artie, growing a mustache? Looks good.
-
-- Hear about Frankie?
-- Yeah.
-
-- You going to the funeral?
-- No, I'm not going.
-
-Everybody knows,
-sting someone, you die.
-
-Don't waste it on a squirrel.
-Such a hothead.
-
-I guess he could have
-just gotten out of the way.
-
-I love this incorporating
-an amusement park into our day.
-
-That's why we don't need vacations.
-
-Boy, quite a bit of pomp...
-under the circumstances.
-
-- Well, Adam, today we are men.
-- We are!
-
-- Bee-men.
-- Amen!
-
-Hallelujah!
-
-Students, faculty, distinguished bees,
-
-please welcome Dean Buzzwell.
-
-Welcome, New Hive City
-graduating class of...
-
-...9:15.
-
-That concludes our ceremonies.
-
-And begins your career
-at Honex Industries!
-
-Will we pick ourjob today?
-
-I heard it's just orientation.
-
-Heads up! Here we go.
-
-Keep your hands and antennas
-inside the tram at all times.
-
-- Wonder what it'll be like?
-- A little scary.
-
-Welcome to Honex,
-a division of Honesco
-
-and a part of the Hexagon Group.
-
-This is it!
-
-Wow.
-
-Wow.
-
-We know that you, as a bee,
-have worked your whole life
-
-to get to the point where you
-can work for your whole life.
-
-Honey begins when our valiant Pollen
-Jocks bring the nectar to the hive.
-
-Our top-secret formula
-
-is automatically color-corrected,
-scent-adjusted and bubble-contoured
-
-into this soothing sweet syrup
-
-with its distinctive
-golden glow you know as...
-
-Honey!
-
-- That girl was hot.
-- She's my cousin!
-
-- She is?
-- Yes, we're all cousins.
-
-- Right. You're right.
-- At Honex, we constantly strive
-
-to improve every aspect
-of bee existence.
-
-These bees are stress-testing
-a new helmet technology.
-
-- What do you think he makes?
-- Not enough.
-
-Here we have our latest advancement,
-the Krelman.
-
-- What does that do?
-- Catches that little strand of honey
-
-that hangs after you pour it.
-Saves us millions.
-
-Can anyone work on the Krelman?
-
-Of course. Most bee jobs are
-small ones. But bees know
-
-that every small job,
-if it's done well, means a lot.
-
-But choose carefully
-
-because you'll stay in the job
-you pick for the rest of your life.
-
-The same job the rest of your life?
-I didn't know that.
-
-What's the difference?
-
-You'll be happy to know that bees,
-as a species, haven't had one day off
-
-in 27 million years.
-
-So you'll just work us to death?
-
-We'll sure try.
-
-Wow! That blew my mind!
-
-"What's the difference?"
-How can you say that?
-
-One job forever?
-That's an insane choice to have to make.
-
-I'm relieved. Now we only have
-to make one decision in life.
-
-But, Adam, how could they
-never have told us that?
-
-Why would you question anything?
-We're bees.
-
-We're the most perfectly
-functioning society on Earth.
-
-You ever think maybe things
-work a little too well here?
-
-Like what? Give me one example.
-
-I don't know. But you know
-what I'm talking about.
-
-Please clear the gate.
-Royal Nectar Force on approach.
-
-Wait a second. Check it out.
-
-- Hey, those are Pollen Jocks!
-- Wow.
-
-I've never seen them this close.
-
-They know what it's like
-outside the hive.
-
-Yeah, but some don't come back.
-
-- Hey, Jocks!
-- Hi, Jocks!
-
-You guys did great!
-
-You're monsters!
-You're sky freaks! I love it! I love it!
-
-- I wonder where they were.
-- I don't know.
-
-Their day's not planned.
-
-Outside the hive, flying who knows
-where, doing who knows what.
-
-You can'tjust decide to be a Pollen
-Jock. You have to be bred for that.
-
-Right.
-
-Look. That's more pollen
-than you and I will see in a lifetime.
-
-It's just a status symbol.
-Bees make too much of it.
-
-Perhaps. Unless you're wearing it
-and the ladies see you wearing it.
-
-Those ladies?
-Aren't they our cousins too?
-
-Distant. Distant.
-
-Look at these two.
-
-- Couple of Hive Harrys.
-- Let's have fun with them.
-
-It must be dangerous
-being a Pollen Jock.
-
-Yeah. Once a bear pinned me
-against a mushroom!
-
-He had a paw on my throat,
-and with the other, he was slapping me!
-
-- Oh, my!
-- I never thought I'd knock him out.
-
-What were you doing during this?
-
-Trying to alert the authorities.
-
-I can autograph that.
-
-A little gusty out there today,
-wasn't it, comrades?
-
-Yeah. Gusty.
-
-We're hitting a sunflower patch
-six miles from here tomorrow.
-
-- Six miles, huh?
-- Barry!
-
-A puddle jump for us,
-but maybe you're not up for it.
-
-- Maybe I am.
-- You are not!
-
-We're going 0900 at J-Gate.
-
-What do you think, buzzy-boy?
-Are you bee enough?
-
-I might be. It all depends
-on what 0900 means.
-
-Hey, Honex!
-
-Dad, you surprised me.
-
-You decide what you're interested in?
-
-- Well, there's a lot of choices.
-- But you only get one.
-
-Do you ever get bored
-doing the same job every day?
-
-Son, let me tell you about stirring.
-
-You grab that stick, and you just
-move it around, and you stir it around.
-
-You get yourself into a rhythm.
-It's a beautiful thing.
-
-You know, Dad,
-the more I think about it,
-
-maybe the honey field
-just isn't right for me.
-
-You were thinking of what,
-making balloon animals?
-
-That's a bad job
-for a guy with a stinger.
-
-Janet, your son's not sure
-he wants to go into honey!
-
-- Barry, you are so funny sometimes.
-- I'm not trying to be funny.
-
-You're not funny! You're going
-into honey. Our son, the stirrer!
-
-- You're gonna be a stirrer?
-- No one's listening to me!
-
-Wait till you see the sticks I have.
-
-I could say anything right now.
-I'm gonna get an ant tattoo!
-
-Let's open some honey and celebrate!
-
-Maybe I'll pierce my thorax.
-Shave my antennae.
-
-Shack up with a grasshopper. Get
-a gold tooth and call everybody "dawg"!
-
-I'm so proud.
-
-- We're starting work today!
-- Today's the day.
-
-Come on! All the good jobs
-will be gone.
-
-Yeah, right.
-
-Pollen counting, stunt bee, pouring,
-stirrer, front desk, hair removal...
-
-- Is it still available?
-- Hang on. Two left!
-
-One of them's yours! Congratulations!
-Step to the side.
-
-- What'd you get?
-- Picking crud out. Stellar!
-
-Wow!
-
-Couple of newbies?
-
-Yes, sir! Our first day! We are ready!
-
-Make your choice.
-
-- You want to go first?
-- No, you go.
-
-Oh, my. What's available?
-
-Restroom attendant's open,
-not for the reason you think.
-
-- Any chance of getting the Krelman?
-- Sure, you're on.
-
-I'm sorry, the Krelman just closed out.
-
-Wax monkey's always open.
-
-The Krelman opened up again.
-
-What happened?
-
-A bee died. Makes an opening. See?
-He's dead. Another dead one.
-
-Deady. Deadified. Two more dead.
-
-Dead from the neck up.
-Dead from the neck down. That's life!
-
-Oh, this is so hard!
-
-Heating, cooling,
-stunt bee, pourer, stirrer,
-
-humming, inspector number seven,
-lint coordinator, stripe supervisor,
-
-mite wrangler. Barry, what
-do you think I should... Barry?
-
-Barry!
-
-All right, we've got the sunflower patch
-in quadrant nine...
-
-What happened to you?
-Where are you?
-
-- I'm going out.
-- Out? Out where?
-
-- Out there.
-- Oh, no!
-
-I have to, before I go
-to work for the rest of my life.
-
-You're gonna die! You're crazy! Hello?
-
-Another call coming in.
-
-If anyone's feeling brave,
-there's a Korean deli on 83rd
-
-that gets their roses today.
-
-Hey, guys.
-
-- Look at that.
-- Isn't that the kid we saw yesterday?
-
-Hold it, son, flight deck's restricted.
-
-It's OK, Lou. We're gonna take him up.
-
-Really? Feeling lucky, are you?
-
-Sign here, here. Just initial that.
-
-- Thank you.
-- OK.
-
-You got a rain advisory today,
-
-and as you all know,
-bees cannot fly in rain.
-
-So be careful. As always,
-watch your brooms,
-
-hockey sticks, dogs,
-birds, bears and bats.
-
-Also, I got a couple of reports
-of root beer being poured on us.
-
-Murphy's in a home because of it,
-babbling like a cicada!
-
-- That's awful.
-- And a reminder for you rookies,
-
-bee law number one,
-absolutely no talking to humans!
-
-All right, launch positions!
-
-Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz,
-buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz!
-
-Black and yellow!
-
-Hello!
-
-You ready for this, hot shot?
-
-Yeah. Yeah, bring it on.
-
-Wind, check.
-
-- Antennae, check.
-- Nectar pack, check.
-
-- Wings, check.
-- Stinger, check.
-
-Scared out of my shorts, check.
-
-OK, ladies,
-
-let's move it out!
-
-Pound those petunias,
-you striped stem-suckers!
-
-All of you, drain those flowers!
-
-Wow! I'm out!
-
-I can't believe I'm out!
-
-So blue.
-
-I feel so fast and free!
-
-Box kite!
-
-Wow!
-
-Flowers!
-
-This is Blue Leader.
-We have roses visual.
-
-Bring it around 30 degrees and hold.
-
-Roses!
-
-30 degrees, roger. Bringing it around.
-
-Stand to the side, kid.
-It's got a bit of a kick.
-
-That is one nectar collector!
-
-- Ever see pollination up close?
-- No, sir.
-
-I pick up some pollen here, sprinkle it
-over here. Maybe a dash over there,
-
-a pinch on that one.
-See that? It's a little bit of magic.
-
-That's amazing. Why do we do that?
-
-That's pollen power. More pollen, more
-flowers, more nectar, more honey for us.
-
-Cool.
-
-I'm picking up a lot of bright yellow.
-Could be daisies. Don't we need those?
-
-Copy that visual.
-
-Wait. One of these flowers
-seems to be on the move.
-
-Say again? You're reporting
-a moving flower?
-
-Affirmative.
-
-That was on the line!
-
-This is the coolest. What is it?
-
-I don't know, but I'm loving this color.
-
-It smells good.
-Not like a flower, but I like it.
-
-Yeah, fuzzy.
-
-Chemical-y.
-
-Careful, guys. It's a little grabby.
-
-My sweet lord of bees!
-
-Candy-brain, get off there!
-
-Problem!
-
-- Guys!
-- This could be bad.
-
-Affirmative.
-
-Very close.
-
-Gonna hurt.
-
-Mama's little boy.
-
-You are way out of position, rookie!
-
-Coming in at you like a missile!
-
-Help me!
-
-I don't think these are flowers.
-
-- Should we tell him?
-- I think he knows.
-
-What is this?!
-
-Match point!
-
-You can start packing up, honey,
-because you're about to eat it!
-
-Yowser!
-
-Gross.
-
-There's a bee in the car!
-
-- Do something!
-- I'm driving!
-
-- Hi, bee.
-- He's back here!
-
-He's going to sting me!
-
-Nobody move. If you don't move,
-he won't sting you. Freeze!
-
-He blinked!
-
-Spray him, Granny!
-
-What are you doing?!
-
-Wow... the tension level
-out here is unbelievable.
-
-I gotta get home.
-
-Can't fly in rain.
-
-Can't fly in rain.
-
-Can't fly in rain.
-
-Mayday! Mayday! Bee going down!
-
-Ken, could you close
-the window please?
-
-Ken, could you close
-the window please?
-
-Check out my new resume.
-I made it into a fold-out brochure.
-
-You see? Folds out.
-
-Oh, no. More humans. I don't need this.
-
-What was that?
-
-Maybe this time. This time. This time.
-This time! This time! This...
-
-Drapes!
-
-That is diabolical.
-
-It's fantastic. It's got all my special
-skills, even my top-ten favorite movies.
-
-What's number one? Star Wars?
-
-Nah, I don't go for that...
-
-...kind of stuff.
-
-No wonder we shouldn't talk to them.
-They're out of their minds.
-
-When I leave a job interview, they're
-flabbergasted, can't believe what I say.
-
-There's the sun. Maybe that's a way out.
-
-I don't remember the sun
-having a big 75 on it.
-
-I predicted global warming.
-
-I could feel it getting hotter.
-At first I thought it was just me.
-
-Wait! Stop! Bee!
-
-Stand back. These are winter boots.
-
-Wait!
-
-Don't kill him!
-
-You know I'm allergic to them!
-This thing could kill me!
-
-Why does his life have
-less value than yours?
-
-Why does his life have any less value
-than mine? Is that your statement?
-
-I'm just saying all life has value. You
-don't know what he's capable of feeling.
-
-My brochure!
-
-There you go, little guy.
-
-I'm not scared of him.
-It's an allergic thing.
-
-Put that on your resume brochure.
-
-My whole face could puff up.
-
-Make it one of your special skills.
-
-Knocking someone out
-is also a special skill.
-
-Right. Bye, Vanessa. Thanks.
-
-- Vanessa, next week? Yogurt night?
-- Sure, Ken. You know, whatever.
-
-- You could put carob chips on there.
-- Bye.
-
-- Supposed to be less calories.
-- Bye.
-
-I gotta say something.
-
-She saved my life.
-I gotta say something.
-
-All right, here it goes.
-
-Nah.
-
-What would I say?
-
-I could really get in trouble.
-
-It's a bee law.
-You're not supposed to talk to a human.
-
-I can't believe I'm doing this.
-
-I've got to.
-
-Oh, I can't do it. Come on!
-
-No. Yes. No.
-
-Do it. I can't.
-
-How should I start it?
-"You like jazz?" No, that's no good.
-
-Here she comes! Speak, you fool!
-
-Hi!
-
-I'm sorry.
-
-- You're talking.
-- Yes, I know.
-
-You're talking!
-
-I'm so sorry.
-
-No, it's OK. It's fine.
-I know I'm dreaming.
-
-But I don't recall going to bed.
-
-Well, I'm sure this
-is very disconcerting.
-
-This is a bit of a surprise to me.
-I mean, you're a bee!
-
-I am. And I'm not supposed
-to be doing this,
-
-but they were all trying to kill me.
-
-And if it wasn't for you...
-
-I had to thank you.
-It's just how I was raised.
-
-That was a little weird.
-
-- I'm talking with a bee.
-- Yeah.
-
-I'm talking to a bee.
-And the bee is talking to me!
-
-I just want to say I'm grateful.
-I'll leave now.
-
-- Wait! How did you learn to do that?
-- What?
-
-The talking thing.
-
-Same way you did, I guess.
-"Mama, Dada, honey." You pick it up.
-
-- That's very funny.
-- Yeah.
-
-Bees are funny. If we didn't laugh,
-we'd cry with what we have to deal with.
-
-Anyway...
-
-Can I...
-
-...get you something?
-- Like what?
-
-I don't know. I mean...
-I don't know. Coffee?
-
-I don't want to put you out.
-
-It's no trouble. It takes two minutes.
-
-- It's just coffee.
-- I hate to impose.
-
-- Don't be ridiculous!
-- Actually, I would love a cup.
-
-Hey, you want rum cake?
-
-- I shouldn't.
-- Have some.
-
-- No, I can't.
-- Come on!
-
-I'm trying to lose a couple micrograms.
-
-- Where?
-- These stripes don't help.
-
-You look great!
-
-I don't know if you know
-anything about fashion.
-
-Are you all right?
-
-No.
-
-He's making the tie in the cab
-as they're flying up Madison.
-
-He finally gets there.
-
-He runs up the steps into the church.
-The wedding is on.
-
-And he says, "Watermelon?
-I thought you said Guatemalan.
-
-Why would I marry a watermelon?"
-
-Is that a bee joke?
-
-That's the kind of stuff we do.
-
-Yeah, different.
-
-So, what are you gonna do, Barry?
-
-About work? I don't know.
-
-I want to do my part for the hive,
-but I can't do it the way they want.
-
-I know how you feel.
-
-- You do?
-- Sure.
-
-My parents wanted me to be a lawyer or
-a doctor, but I wanted to be a florist.
-
-- Really?
-- My only interest is flowers.
-
-Our new queen was just elected
-with that same campaign slogan.
-
-Anyway, if you look...
-
-There's my hive right there. See it?
-
-You're in Sheep Meadow!
-
-Yes! I'm right off the Turtle Pond!
-
-No way! I know that area.
-I lost a toe ring there once.
-
-- Why do girls put rings on their toes?
-- Why not?
-
-- It's like putting a hat on your knee.
-- Maybe I'll try that.
-
-- You all right, ma'am?
-- Oh, yeah. Fine.
-
-Just having two cups of coffee!
-
-Anyway, this has been great.
-Thanks for the coffee.
-
-Yeah, it's no trouble.
-
-Sorry I couldn't finish it. If I did,
-I'd be up the rest of my life.
-
-Are you...?
-
-Can I take a piece of this with me?
-
-Sure! Here, have a crumb.
-
-- Thanks!
-- Yeah.
-
-All right. Well, then...
-I guess I'll see you around.
-
-Or not.
-
-OK, Barry.
-
-And thank you
-so much again... for before.
-
-Oh, that? That was nothing.
-
-Well, not nothing, but... Anyway...
-
-This can't possibly work.
-
-He's all set to go.
-We may as well try it.
-
-OK, Dave, pull the chute.
-
-- Sounds amazing.
-- It was amazing!
-
-It was the scariest,
-happiest moment of my life.
-
-Humans! I can't believe
-you were with humans!
-
-Giant, scary humans!
-What were they like?
-
-Huge and crazy. They talk crazy.
-
-They eat crazy giant things.
-They drive crazy.
-
-- Do they try and kill you, like on TV?
-- Some of them. But some of them don't.
-
-- How'd you get back?
-- Poodle.
-
-You did it, and I'm glad. You saw
-whatever you wanted to see.
-
-You had your "experience." Now you
-can pick out yourjob and be normal.
-
-- Well...
-- Well?
-
-Well, I met someone.
-
-You did? Was she Bee-ish?
-
-- A wasp?! Your parents will kill you!
-- No, no, no, not a wasp.
-
-- Spider?
-- I'm not attracted to spiders.
-
-I know it's the hottest thing,
-with the eight legs and all.
-
-I can't get by that face.
-
-So who is she?
-
-She's... human.
-
-No, no. That's a bee law.
-You wouldn't break a bee law.
-
-- Her name's Vanessa.
-- Oh, boy.
-
-She's so nice. And she's a florist!
-
-Oh, no! You're dating a human florist!
-
-We're not dating.
-
-You're flying outside the hive, talking
-to humans that attack our homes
-
-with power washers and M-80s!
-One-eighth a stick of dynamite!
-
-She saved my life!
-And she understands me.
-
-This is over!
-
-Eat this.
-
-This is not over! What was that?
-
-- They call it a crumb.
-- It was so stingin' stripey!
-
-And that's not what they eat.
-That's what falls off what they eat!
-
-- You know what a Cinnabon is?
-- No.
-
-It's bread and cinnamon and frosting.
-They heat it up...
-
-Sit down!
-
-...really hot!
-- Listen to me!
-
-We are not them! We're us.
-There's us and there's them!
-
-Yes, but who can deny
-the heart that is yearning?
-
-There's no yearning.
-Stop yearning. Listen to me!
-
-You have got to start thinking bee,
-my friend. Thinking bee!
-
-- Thinking bee.
-- Thinking bee.
-
-Thinking bee! Thinking bee!
-Thinking bee! Thinking bee!
-
-There he is. He's in the pool.
-
-You know what your problem is, Barry?
-
-I gotta start thinking bee?
-
-How much longer will this go on?
-
-It's been three days!
-Why aren't you working?
-
-I've got a lot of big life decisions
-to think about.
-
-What life? You have no life!
-You have no job. You're barely a bee!
-
-Would it kill you
-to make a little honey?
-
-Barry, come out.
-Your father's talking to you.
-
-Martin, would you talk to him?
-
-Barry, I'm talking to you!
-
-You coming?
-
-Got everything?
-
-All set!
-
-Go ahead. I'll catch up.
-
-Don't be too long.
-
-Watch this!
-
-Vanessa!
-
-- We're still here.
-- I told you not to yell at him.
-
-He doesn't respond to yelling!
-
-- Then why yell at me?
-- Because you don't listen!
-
-I'm not listening to this.
-
-Sorry, I've gotta go.
-
-- Where are you going?
-- I'm meeting a friend.
-
-A girl? Is this why you can't decide?
-
-Bye.
-
-I just hope she's Bee-ish.
-
-They have a huge parade
-of flowers every year in Pasadena?
-
-To be in the Tournament of Roses,
-that's every florist's dream!
-
-Up on a float, surrounded
-by flowers, crowds cheering.
-
-A tournament. Do the roses
-compete in athletic events?
-
-No. All right, I've got one.
-How come you don't fly everywhere?
-
-It's exhausting. Why don't you
-run everywhere? It's faster.
-
-Yeah, OK, I see, I see.
-All right, your turn.
-
-TiVo. You can just freeze live TV?
-That's insane!
-
-You don't have that?
-
-We have Hivo, but it's a disease.
-It's a horrible, horrible disease.
-
-Oh, my.
-
-Dumb bees!
-
-You must want to sting all those jerks.
-
-We try not to sting.
-It's usually fatal for us.
-
-So you have to watch your temper.
-
-Very carefully.
-You kick a wall, take a walk,
-
-write an angry letter and throw it out.
-Work through it like any emotion:
-
-Anger, jealousy, lust.
-
-Oh, my goodness! Are you OK?
-
-Yeah.
-
-- What is wrong with you?!
-- It's a bug.
-
-He's not bothering anybody.
-Get out of here, you creep!
-
-What was that? A Pic 'N' Save circular?
-
-Yeah, it was. How did you know?
-
-It felt like about 10 pages.
-Seventy-five is pretty much our limit.
-
-You've really got that
-down to a science.
-
-- I lost a cousin to Italian Vogue.
-- I'll bet.
-
-What in the name
-of Mighty Hercules is this?
-
-How did this get here?
-Cute Bee, Golden Blossom,
-
-Ray Liotta Private Select?
-
-- Is he that actor?
-- I never heard of him.
-
-- Why is this here?
-- For people. We eat it.
-
-You don't have
-enough food of your own?
-
-- Well, yes.
-- How do you get it?
-
-- Bees make it.
-- I know who makes it!
-
-And it's hard to make it!
-
-There's heating, cooling, stirring.
-You need a whole Krelman thing!
-
-- It's organic.
-- It's our-ganic!
-
-It's just honey, Barry.
-
-Just what?!
-
-Bees don't know about this!
-This is stealing! A lot of stealing!
-
-You've taken our homes, schools,
-hospitals! This is all we have!
-
-And it's on sale?!
-I'm getting to the bottom of this.
-
-I'm getting to the bottom
-of all of this!
-
-Hey, Hector.
-
-- You almost done?
-- Almost.
-
-He is here. I sense it.
-
-Well, I guess I'll go home now
-
-and just leave this nice honey out,
-with no one around.
-
-You're busted, box boy!
-
-I knew I heard something.
-So you can talk!
-
-I can talk.
-And now you'll start talking!
-
-Where you getting the sweet stuff?
-Who's your supplier?
-
-I don't understand.
-I thought we were friends.
-
-The last thing we want
-to do is upset bees!
-
-You're too late! It's ours now!
-
-You, sir, have crossed
-the wrong sword!
-
-You, sir, will be lunch
-for my iguana, Ignacio!
-
-Where is the honey coming from?
-
-Tell me where!
-
-Honey Farms! It comes from Honey Farms!
-
-Crazy person!
-
-What horrible thing has happened here?
-
-These faces, they never knew
-what hit them. And now
-
-they're on the road to nowhere!
-
-Just keep still.
-
-What? You're not dead?
-
-Do I look dead? They will wipe anything
-that moves. Where you headed?
-
-To Honey Farms.
-I am onto something huge here.
-
-I'm going to Alaska. Moose blood,
-crazy stuff. Blows your head off!
-
-I'm going to Tacoma.
-
-- And you?
-- He really is dead.
-
-All right.
-
-Uh-oh!
-
-- What is that?!
-- Oh, no!
-
-- A wiper! Triple blade!
-- Triple blade?
-
-Jump on! It's your only chance, bee!
-
-Why does everything have
-to be so doggone clean?!
-
-How much do you people need to see?!
-
-Open your eyes!
-Stick your head out the window!
-
-From NPR News in Washington,
-I'm Carl Kasell.
-
-But don't kill no more bugs!
-
-- Bee!
-- Moose blood guy!!
-
-- You hear something?
-- Like what?
-
-Like tiny screaming.
-
-Turn off the radio.
-
-Whassup, bee boy?
-
-Hey, Blood.
-
-Just a row of honey jars,
-as far as the eye could see.
-
-Wow!
-
-I assume wherever this truck goes
-is where they're getting it.
-
-I mean, that honey's ours.
-
-- Bees hang tight.
-- We're all jammed in.
-
-It's a close community.
-
-Not us, man. We on our own.
-Every mosquito on his own.
-
-- What if you get in trouble?
-- You a mosquito, you in trouble.
-
-Nobody likes us. They just smack.
-See a mosquito, smack, smack!
-
-At least you're out in the world.
-You must meet girls.
-
-Mosquito girls try to trade up,
-get with a moth, dragonfly.
-
-Mosquito girl don't want no mosquito.
-
-You got to be kidding me!
-
-Mooseblood's about to leave
-the building! So long, bee!
-
-- Hey, guys!
-- Mooseblood!
-
-I knew I'd catch y'all down here.
-Did you bring your crazy straw?
-
-We throw it in jars, slap a label on it,
-and it's pretty much pure profit.
-
-What is this place?
-
-A bee's got a brain
-the size of a pinhead.
-
-They are pinheads!
-
-Pinhead.
-
-- Check out the new smoker.
-- Oh, sweet. That's the one you want.
-
-The Thomas 3000!
-
-Smoker?
-
-Ninety puffs a minute, semi-automatic.
-Twice the nicotine, all the tar.
-
-A couple breaths of this
-knocks them right out.
-
-They make the honey,
-and we make the money.
-
-"They make the honey,
-and we make the money"?
-
-Oh, my!
-
-What's going on? Are you OK?
-
-Yeah. It doesn't last too long.
-
-Do you know you're
-in a fake hive with fake walls?
-
-Our queen was moved here.
-We had no choice.
-
-This is your queen?
-That's a man in women's clothes!
-
-That's a drag queen!
-
-What is this?
-
-Oh, no!
-
-There's hundreds of them!
-
-Bee honey.
-
-Our honey is being brazenly stolen
-on a massive scale!
-
-This is worse than anything bears
-have done! I intend to do something.
-
-Oh, Barry, stop.
-
-Who told you humans are taking
-our honey? That's a rumor.
-
-Do these look like rumors?
-
-That's a conspiracy theory.
-These are obviously doctored photos.
-
-How did you get mixed up in this?
-
-He's been talking to humans.
-
-- What?
-- Talking to humans?!
-
-He has a human girlfriend.
-And they make out!
-
-Make out? Barry!
-
-We do not.
-
-- You wish you could.
-- Whose side are you on?
-
-The bees!
-
-I dated a cricket once in San Antonio.
-Those crazy legs kept me up all night.
-
-Barry, this is what you want
-to do with your life?
-
-I want to do it for all our lives.
-Nobody works harder than bees!
-
-Dad, I remember you
-coming home so overworked
-
-your hands were still stirring.
-You couldn't stop.
-
-I remember that.
-
-What right do they have to our honey?
-
-We live on two cups a year. They put it
-in lip balm for no reason whatsoever!
-
-Even if it's true, what can one bee do?
-
-Sting them where it really hurts.
-
-In the face! The eye!
-
-- That would hurt.
-- No.
-
-Up the nose? That's a killer.
-
-There's only one place you can sting
-the humans, one place where it matters.
-
-Hive at Five, the hive's only
-full-hour action news source.
-
-No more bee beards!
-
-With Bob Bumble at the anchor desk.
-
-Weather with Storm Stinger.
-
-Sports with Buzz Larvi.
-
-And Jeanette Chung.
-
-- Good evening. I'm Bob Bumble.
-- And I'm Jeanette Chung.
-
-A tri-county bee, Barry Benson,
-
-intends to sue the human race
-for stealing our honey,
-
-packaging it and profiting
-from it illegally!
-
-Tomorrow night on Bee Larry King,
-
-we'll have three former queens here in
-our studio, discussing their new book,
-
-Classy Ladies,
-out this week on Hexagon.
-
-Tonight we're talking to Barry Benson.
-
-Did you ever think, "I'm a kid
-from the hive. I can't do this"?
-
-Bees have never been afraid
-to change the world.
-
-What about Bee Columbus?
-Bee Gandhi? Bejesus?
-
-Where I'm from, we'd never sue humans.
-
-We were thinking
-of stickball or candy stores.
-
-How old are you?
-
-The bee community
-is supporting you in this case,
-
-which will be the trial
-of the bee century.
-
-You know, they have a Larry King
-in the human world too.
-
-It's a common name. Next week...
-
-He looks like you and has a show
-and suspenders and colored dots...
-
-Next week...
-
-Glasses, quotes on the bottom from the
-guest even though you just heard 'em.
-
-Bear Week next week!
-They're scary, hairy and here live.
-
-Always leans forward, pointy shoulders,
-squinty eyes, very Jewish.
-
-In tennis, you attack
-at the point of weakness!
-
-It was my grandmother, Ken. She's 81.
-
-Honey, her backhand's a joke!
-I'm not gonna take advantage of that?
-
-Quiet, please.
-Actual work going on here.
-
-- Is that that same bee?
-- Yes, it is!
-
-I'm helping him sue the human race.
-
-- Hello.
-- Hello, bee.
-
-This is Ken.
-
-Yeah, I remember you. Timberland, size
-ten and a half. Vibram sole, I believe.
-
-Why does he talk again?
-
-Listen, you better go
-'cause we're really busy working.
-
-But it's our yogurt night!
-
-Bye-bye.
-
-Why is yogurt night so difficult?!
-
-You poor thing.
-You two have been at this for hours!
-
-Yes, and Adam here
-has been a huge help.
-
-- Frosting...
-- How many sugars?
-
-Just one. I try not
-to use the competition.
-
-So why are you helping me?
-
-Bees have good qualities.
-
-And it takes my mind off the shop.
-
-Instead of flowers, people
-are giving balloon bouquets now.
-
-Those are great, if you're three.
-
-And artificial flowers.
-
-- Oh, those just get me psychotic!
-- Yeah, me too.
-
-Bent stingers, pointless pollination.
-
-Bees must hate those fake things!
-
-Nothing worse
-than a daffodil that's had work done.
-
-Maybe this could make up
-for it a little bit.
-
-- This lawsuit's a pretty big deal.
-- I guess.
-
-You sure you want to go through with it?
-
-Am I sure? When I'm done with
-the humans, they won't be able
-
-to say, "Honey, I'm home,"
-without paying a royalty!
-
-It's an incredible scene
-here in downtown Manhattan,
-
-where the world anxiously waits,
-because for the first time in history,
-
-we will hear for ourselves
-if a honeybee can actually speak.
-
-What have we gotten into here, Barry?
-
-It's pretty big, isn't it?
-
-I can't believe how many humans
-don't work during the day.
-
-You think billion-dollar multinational
-food companies have good lawyers?
-
-Everybody needs to stay
-behind the barricade.
-
-- What's the matter?
-- I don't know, I just got a chill.
-
-Well, if it isn't the bee team.
-
-You boys work on this?
-
-All rise! The Honorable
-Judge Bumbleton presiding.
-
-All right. Case number 4475,
-
-Superior Court of New York,
-Barry Bee Benson v. the Honey Industry
-
-is now in session.
-
-Mr. Montgomery, you're representing
-the five food companies collectively?
-
-A privilege.
-
-Mr. Benson... you're representing
-all the bees of the world?
-
-I'm kidding. Yes, Your Honor,
-we're ready to proceed.
-
-Mr. Montgomery,
-your opening statement, please.
-
-Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
-
-my grandmother was a simple woman.
-
-Born on a farm, she believed
-it was man's divine right
-
-to benefit from the bounty
-of nature God put before us.
-
-If we lived in the topsy-turvy world
-Mr. Benson imagines,
-
-just think of what would it mean.
-
-I would have to negotiate
-with the silkworm
-
-for the elastic in my britches!
-
-Talking bee!
-
-How do we know this isn't some sort of
-
-holographic motion-picture-capture
-Hollywood wizardry?
-
-They could be using laser beams!
-
-Robotics! Ventriloquism!
-Cloning! For all we know,
-
-he could be on steroids!
-
-Mr. Benson?
-
-Ladies and gentlemen,
-there's no trickery here.
-
-I'm just an ordinary bee.
-Honey's pretty important to me.
-
-It's important to all bees.
-We invented it!
-
-We make it. And we protect it
-with our lives.
-
-Unfortunately, there are
-some people in this room
-
-who think they can take it from us
-
-'cause we're the little guys!
-I'm hoping that, after this is all over,
-
-you'll see how, by taking our honey,
-you not only take everything we have
-
-but everything we are!
-
-I wish he'd dress like that
-all the time. So nice!
-
-Call your first witness.
-
-So, Mr. Klauss Vanderhayden
-of Honey Farms, big company you have.
-
-I suppose so.
-
-I see you also own
-Honeyburton and Honron!
-
-Yes, they provide beekeepers
-for our farms.
-
-Beekeeper. I find that
-to be a very disturbing term.
-
-I don't imagine you employ
-any bee-free-ers, do you?
-
-- No.
-- I couldn't hear you.
-
-- No.
-- No.
-
-Because you don't free bees.
-You keep bees. Not only that,
-
-it seems you thought a bear would be
-an appropriate image for a jar of honey.
-
-They're very lovable creatures.
-
-Yogi Bear, Fozzie Bear, Build-A-Bear.
-
-You mean like this?
-
-Bears kill bees!
-
-How'd you like his head crashing
-through your living room?!
-
-Biting into your couch!
-Spitting out your throw pillows!
-
-OK, that's enough. Take him away.
-
-So, Mr. Sting, thank you for being here.
-Your name intrigues me.
-
-- Where have I heard it before?
-- I was with a band called The Police.
-
-But you've never been
-a police officer, have you?
-
-No, I haven't.
-
-No, you haven't. And so here
-we have yet another example
-
-of bee culture casually
-stolen by a human
-
-for nothing more than
-a prance-about stage name.
-
-Oh, please.
-
-Have you ever been stung, Mr. Sting?
-
-Because I'm feeling
-a little stung, Sting.
-
-Or should I say... Mr. Gordon M. Sumner!
-
-That's not his real name?! You idiots!
-
-Mr. Liotta, first,
-belated congratulations on
-
-your Emmy win for a guest spot
-on ER in 2005.
-
-Thank you. Thank you.
-
-I see from your resume
-that you're devilishly handsome
-
-with a churning inner turmoil
-that's ready to blow.
-
-I enjoy what I do. Is that a crime?
-
-Not yet it isn't. But is this
-what it's come to for you?
-
-Exploiting tiny, helpless bees
-so you don't
-
-have to rehearse
-your part and learn your lines, sir?
-
-Watch it, Benson!
-I could blow right now!
-
-This isn't a goodfella.
-This is a badfella!
-
-Why doesn't someone just step on
-this creep, and we can all go home?!
-
-- Order in this court!
-- You're all thinking it!
-
-Order! Order, I say!
-
-- Say it!
-- Mr. Liotta, please sit down!
-
-I think it was awfully nice
-of that bear to pitch in like that.
-
-I think the jury's on our side.
-
-Are we doing everything right, legally?
-
-I'm a florist.
-
-Right. Well, here's to a great team.
-
-To a great team!
-
-Well, hello.
-
-- Ken!
-- Hello.
-
-I didn't think you were coming.
-
-No, I was just late.
-I tried to call, but... the battery.
-
-I didn't want all this to go to waste,
-so I called Barry. Luckily, he was free.
-
-Oh, that was lucky.
-
-There's a little left.
-I could heat it up.
-
-Yeah, heat it up, sure, whatever.
-
-So I hear you're quite a tennis player.
-
-I'm not much for the game myself.
-The ball's a little grabby.
-
-That's where I usually sit.
-Right... there.
-
-Ken, Barry was looking at your resume,
-
-and he agreed with me that eating with
-chopsticks isn't really a special skill.
-
-You think I don't see what you're doing?
-
-I know how hard it is to find
-the rightjob. We have that in common.
-
-Do we?
-
-Bees have 100 percent employment,
-but we do jobs like taking the crud out.
-
-That's just what
-I was thinking about doing.
-
-Ken, I let Barry borrow your razor
-for his fuzz. I hope that was all right.
-
-I'm going to drain the old stinger.
-
-Yeah, you do that.
-
-Look at that.
-
-You know, I've just about had it
-
-with your little mind games.
-
-- What's that?
-- Italian Vogue.
-
-Mamma mia, that's a lot of pages.
-
-A lot of ads.
-
-Remember what Van said, why is
-your life more valuable than mine?
-
-Funny, I just can't seem to recall that!
-
-I think something stinks in here!
-
-I love the smell of flowers.
-
-How do you like the smell of flames?!
-
-Not as much.
-
-Water bug! Not taking sides!
-
-Ken, I'm wearing a Chapstick hat!
-This is pathetic!
-
-I've got issues!
-
-Well, well, well, a royal flush!
-
-- You're bluffing.
-- Am I?
-
-Surf's up, dude!
-
-Poo water!
-
-That bowl is gnarly.
-
-Except for those dirty yellow rings!
-
-Kenneth! What are you doing?!
-
-You know, I don't even like honey!
-I don't eat it!
-
-We need to talk!
-
-He's just a little bee!
-
-And he happens to be
-the nicest bee I've met in a long time!
-
-Long time? What are you talking about?!
-Are there other bugs in your life?
-
-No, but there are other things bugging
-me in life. And you're one of them!
-
-Fine! Talking bees, no yogurt night...
-
-My nerves are fried from riding
-on this emotional roller coaster!
-
-Goodbye, Ken.
-
-And for your information,
-
-I prefer sugar-free, artificial
-sweeteners made by man!
-
-I'm sorry about all that.
-
-I know it's got
-an aftertaste! I like it!
-
-I always felt there was some kind
-of barrier between Ken and me.
-
-I couldn't overcome it.
-Oh, well.
-
-Are you OK for the trial?
-
-I believe Mr. Montgomery
-is about out of ideas.
-
-We would like to call
-Mr. Barry Benson Bee to the stand.
-
-Good idea! You can really see why he's
-considered one of the best lawyers...
-
-Yeah.
-
-Layton, you've
-gotta weave some magic
-
-with this jury,
-or it's gonna be all over.
-
-Don't worry. The only thing I have
-to do to turn this jury around
-
-is to remind them
-of what they don't like about bees.
-
-- You got the tweezers?
-- Are you allergic?
-
-Only to losing, son. Only to losing.
-
-Mr. Benson Bee, I'll ask you
-what I think we'd all like to know.
-
-What exactly is your relationship
-
-to that woman?
-
-We're friends.
-
-- Good friends?
-- Yes.
-
-How good? Do you live together?
-
-Wait a minute...
-
-Are you her little...
-
-...bedbug?
-
-I've seen a bee documentary or two.
-From what I understand,
-
-doesn't your queen give birth
-to all the bee children?
-
-- Yeah, but...
-- So those aren't your real parents!
-
-- Oh, Barry...
-- Yes, they are!
-
-Hold me back!
-
-You're an illegitimate bee,
-aren't you, Benson?
-
-He's denouncing bees!
-
-Don't y'all date your cousins?
-
-- Objection!
-- I'm going to pincushion this guy!
-
-Adam, don't! It's what he wants!
-
-Oh, I'm hit!!
-
-Oh, lordy, I am hit!
-
-Order! Order!
-
-The venom! The venom
-is coursing through my veins!
-
-I have been felled
-by a winged beast of destruction!
-
-You see? You can't treat them
-like equals! They're striped savages!
-
-Stinging's the only thing
-they know! It's their way!
-
-- Adam, stay with me.
-- I can't feel my legs.
-
-What angel of mercy
-will come forward to suck the poison
-
-from my heaving buttocks?
-
-I will have order in this court. Order!
-
-Order, please!
-
-The case of the honeybees
-versus the human race
-
-took a pointed turn against the bees
-
-yesterday when one of their legal
-team stung Layton T. Montgomery.
-
-- Hey, buddy.
-- Hey.
-
-- Is there much pain?
-- Yeah.
-
-I...
-
-I blew the whole case, didn't I?
-
-It doesn't matter. What matters is
-you're alive. You could have died.
-
-I'd be better off dead. Look at me.
-
-They got it from the cafeteria
-downstairs, in a tuna sandwich.
-
-Look, there's
-a little celery still on it.
-
-What was it like to sting someone?
-
-I can't explain it. It was all...
-
-All adrenaline and then...
-and then ecstasy!
-
-All right.
-
-You think it was all a trap?
-
-Of course. I'm sorry.
-I flew us right into this.
-
-What were we thinking? Look at us. We're
-just a couple of bugs in this world.
-
-What will the humans do to us
-if they win?
-
-I don't know.
-
-I hear they put the roaches in motels.
-That doesn't sound so bad.
-
-Adam, they check in,
-but they don't check out!
-
-Oh, my.
-
-Could you get a nurse
-to close that window?
-
-- Why?
-- The smoke.
-
-Bees don't smoke.
-
-Right. Bees don't smoke.
-
-Bees don't smoke!
-But some bees are smoking.
-
-That's it! That's our case!
-
-It is? It's not over?
-
-Get dressed. I've gotta go somewhere.
-
-Get back to the court and stall.
-Stall any way you can.
-
-And assuming you've done step correctly, you're ready for the tub.
-
-Mr. Flayman.
-
-Yes? Yes, Your Honor!
-
-Where is the rest of your team?
-
-Well, Your Honor, it's interesting.
-
-Bees are trained to fly haphazardly,
-
-and as a result,
-we don't make very good time.
-
-I actually heard a funny story about...
-
-Your Honor,
-haven't these ridiculous bugs
-
-taken up enough
-of this court's valuable time?
-
-How much longer will we allow
-these absurd shenanigans to go on?
-
-They have presented no compelling
-evidence to support their charges
-
-against my clients,
-who run legitimate businesses.
-
-I move for a complete dismissal
-of this entire case!
-
-Mr. Flayman, I'm afraid I'm going
-
-to have to consider
-Mr. Montgomery's motion.
-
-But you can't! We have a terrific case.
-
-Where is your proof?
-Where is the evidence?
-
-Show me the smoking gun!
-
-Hold it, Your Honor!
-You want a smoking gun?
-
-Here is your smoking gun.
-
-What is that?
-
-It's a bee smoker!
-
-What, this?
-This harmless little contraption?
-
-This couldn't hurt a fly,
-let alone a bee.
-
-Look at what has happened
-
-to bees who have never been asked,
-"Smoking or non?"
-
-Is this what nature intended for us?
-
-To be forcibly addicted
-to smoke machines
-
-and man-made wooden slat work camps?
-
-Living out our lives as honey slaves
-to the white man?
-
-- What are we gonna do?
-- He's playing the species card.
-
-Ladies and gentlemen, please,
-free these bees!
-
-Free the bees! Free the bees!
-
-Free the bees!
-
-Free the bees! Free the bees!
-
-The court finds in favor of the bees!
-
-Vanessa, we won!
-
-I knew you could do it! High-five!
-
-Sorry.
-
-I'm OK! You know what this means?
-
-All the honey
-will finally belong to the bees.
-
-Now we won't have
-to work so hard all the time.
-
-This is an unholy perversion
-of the balance of nature, Benson.
-
-You'll regret this.
-
-Barry, how much honey is out there?
-
-All right. One at a time.
-
-Barry, who are you wearing?
-
-My sweater is Ralph Lauren,
-and I have no pants.
-
-- What if Montgomery's right?
-- What do you mean?
-
-We've been living the bee way
-a long time, 27 million years.
-
-Congratulations on your victory.
-What will you demand as a settlement?
-
-First, we'll demand a complete shutdown
-of all bee work camps.
-
-Then we want back the honey
-that was ours to begin with,
-
-every last drop.
-
-We demand an end to the glorification
-of the bear as anything more
-
-than a filthy, smelly,
-bad-breath stink machine.
-
-We're all aware
-of what they do in the woods.
-
-Wait for my signal.
-
-Take him out.
-
-He'll have nauseous
-for a few hours, then he'll be fine.
-
-And we will no longer tolerate
-bee-negative nicknames...
-
-But it's just a prance-about stage name!
-
-...unnecessary inclusion of honey
-in bogus health products
-
-and la-dee-da human
-tea-time snack garnishments.
-
-Can't breathe.
-
-Bring it in, boys!
-
-Hold it right there! Good.
-
-Tap it.
-
-Mr. Buzzwell, we just passed three cups,
-and there's gallons more coming!
-
-- I think we need to shut down!
-- Shut down? We've never shut down.
-
-Shut down honey production!
-
-Stop making honey!
-
-Turn your key, sir!
-
-What do we do now?
-
-Cannonball!
-
-We're shutting honey production!
-
-Mission abort.
-
-Aborting pollination and nectar detail.
-Returning to base.
-
-Adam, you wouldn't believe
-how much honey was out there.
-
-Oh, yeah?
-
-What's going on? Where is everybody?
-
-- Are they out celebrating?
-- They're home.
-
-They don't know what to do.
-Laying out, sleeping in.
-
-I heard your Uncle Carl was on his way
-to San Antonio with a cricket.
-
-At least we got our honey back.
-
-Sometimes I think, so what if humans
-liked our honey? Who wouldn't?
-
-It's the greatest thing in the world!
-I was excited to be part of making it.
-
-This was my new desk. This was my
-new job. I wanted to do it really well.
-
-And now...
-
-Now I can't.
-
-I don't understand
-why they're not happy.
-
-I thought their lives would be better!
-
-They're doing nothing. It's amazing.
-Honey really changes people.
-
-You don't have any idea
-what's going on, do you?
-
-- What did you want to show me?
-- This.
-
-What happened here?
-
-That is not the half of it.
-
-Oh, no. Oh, my.
-
-They're all wilting.
-
-Doesn't look very good, does it?
-
-No.
-
-And whose fault do you think that is?
-
-You know, I'm gonna guess bees.
-
-Bees?
-
-Specifically, me.
-
-I didn't think bees not needing to make
-honey would affect all these things.
-
-It's notjust flowers.
-Fruits, vegetables, they all need bees.
-
-That's our whole SAT test right there.
-
-Take away produce, that affects
-the entire animal kingdom.
-
-And then, of course...
-
-The human species?
-
-So if there's no more pollination,
-
-it could all just go south here,
-couldn't it?
-
-I know this is also partly my fault.
-
-How about a suicide pact?
-
-How do we do it?
-
-- I'll sting you, you step on me.
-- Thatjust kills you twice.
-
-Right, right.
-
-Listen, Barry...
-sorry, but I gotta get going.
-
-I had to open my mouth and talk.
-
-Vanessa?
-
-Vanessa? Why are you leaving?
-Where are you going?
-
-To the final Tournament of Roses parade
-in Pasadena.
-
-They've moved it to this weekend
-because all the flowers are dying.
-
-It's the last chance
-I'll ever have to see it.
-
-Vanessa, I just wanna say I'm sorry.
-I never meant it to turn out like this.
-
-I know. Me neither.
-
-Tournament of Roses.
-Roses can't do sports.
-
-Wait a minute. Roses. Roses?
-
-Roses!
-
-Vanessa!
-
-Roses?!
-
-Barry?
-
-- Roses are flowers!
-- Yes, they are.
-
-Flowers, bees, pollen!
-
-I know.
-That's why this is the last parade.
-
-Maybe not.
-Could you ask him to slow down?
-
-Could you slow down?
-
-Barry!
-
-OK, I made a huge mistake.
-This is a total disaster, all my fault.
-
-Yes, it kind of is.
-
-I've ruined the planet.
-I wanted to help you
-
-with the flower shop.
-I've made it worse.
-
-Actually, it's completely closed down.
-
-I thought maybe you were remodeling.
-
-But I have another idea, and it's
-greater than my previous ideas combined.
-
-I don't want to hear it!
-
-All right, they have the roses,
-the roses have the pollen.
-
-I know every bee, plant
-and flower bud in this park.
-
-All we gotta do is get what they've got
-back here with what we've got.
-
-- Bees.
-- Park.
-
-- Pollen!
-- Flowers.
-
-- Repollination!
-- Across the nation!
-
-Tournament of Roses,
-Pasadena, California.
-
-They've got nothing
-but flowers, floats and cotton candy.
-
-Security will be tight.
-
-I have an idea.
-
-Vanessa Bloome, FTD.
-
-Official floral business. It's real.
-
-Sorry, ma'am. Nice brooch.
-
-Thank you. It was a gift.
-
-Once inside,
-we just pick the right float.
-
-How about The Princess and the Pea?
-
-I could be the princess,
-and you could be the pea!
-
-Yes, I got it.
-
-- Where should I sit?
-- What are you?
-
-- I believe I'm the pea.
-- The pea?
-
-It goes under the mattresses.
-
-- Not in this fairy tale, sweetheart.
-- I'm getting the marshal.
-
-You do that!
-This whole parade is a fiasco!
-
-Let's see what this baby'll do.
-
-Hey, what are you doing?!
-
-Then all we do
-is blend in with traffic...
-
-...without arousing suspicion.
-
-Once at the airport,
-there's no stopping us.
-
-Stop! Security.
-
-- You and your insect pack your float?
-- Yes.
-
-Has it been
-in your possession the entire time?
-
-Would you remove your shoes?
-
-- Remove your stinger.
-- It's part of me.
-
-I know. Just having some fun.
-Enjoy your flight.
-
-Then if we're lucky, we'll have
-just enough pollen to do the job.
-
-Can you believe how lucky we are? We
-have just enough pollen to do the job!
-
-I think this is gonna work.
-
-It's got to work.
-
-Attention, passengers,
-this is Captain Scott.
-
-We have a bit of bad weather
-in New York.
-
-It looks like we'll experience
-a couple hours delay.
-
-Barry, these are cut flowers
-with no water. They'll never make it.
-
-I gotta get up there
-and talk to them.
-
-Be careful.
-
-Can I get help
-with the Sky Mall magazine?
-
-I'd like to order the talking
-inflatable nose and ear hair trimmer.
-
-Captain, I'm in a real situation.
-
-- What'd you say, Hal?
-- Nothing.
-
-Bee!
-
-Don't freak out! My entire species...
-
-What are you doing?
-
-- Wait a minute! I'm an attorney!
-- Who's an attorney?
-
-Don't move.
-
-Oh, Barry.
-
-Good afternoon, passengers.
-This is your captain.
-
-Would a Miss Vanessa Bloome in 24B
-please report to the cockpit?
-
-And please hurry!
-
-What happened here?
-
-There was a DustBuster,
-a toupee, a life raft exploded.
-
-One's bald, one's in a boat,
-they're both unconscious!
-
-- Is that another bee joke?
-- No!
-
-No one's flying the plane!
-
-This is JFK control tower, Flight 356.
-What's your status?
-
-This is Vanessa Bloome.
-I'm a florist from New York.
-
-Where's the pilot?
-
-He's unconscious,
-and so is the copilot.
-
-Not good. Does anyone onboard
-have flight experience?
-
-As a matter of fact, there is.
-
-- Who's that?
-- Barry Benson.
-
-From the honey trial?! Oh, great.
-
-Vanessa, this is nothing more
-than a big metal bee.
-
-It's got giant wings, huge engines.
-
-I can't fly a plane.
-
-- Why not? Isn't John Travolta a pilot?
-- Yes.
-
-How hard could it be?
-
-Wait, Barry!
-We're headed into some lightning.
-
-This is Bob Bumble. We have some
-late-breaking news from JFK Airport,
-
-where a suspenseful scene
-is developing.
-
-Barry Benson,
-fresh from his legal victory...
-
-That's Barry!
-
-...is attempting to land a plane,
-loaded with people, flowers
-
-and an incapacitated flight crew.
-
-Flowers?!
-
-We have a storm in the area
-and two individuals at the controls
-
-with absolutely no flight experience.
-
-Just a minute.
-There's a bee on that plane.
-
-I'm quite familiar with Mr. Benson
-and his no-account compadres.
-
-They've done enough damage.
-
-But isn't he your only hope?
-
-Technically, a bee
-shouldn't be able to fly at all.
-
-Their wings are too small...
-
-Haven't we heard this a million times?
-
-"The surface area of the wings
-and body mass make no sense."
-
-- Get this on the air!
-- Got it.
-
-- Stand by.
-- We're going live.
-
-The way we work may be a mystery to you.
-
-Making honey takes a lot of bees
-doing a lot of small jobs.
-
-But let me tell you about a small job.
-
-If you do it well,
-it makes a big difference.
-
-More than we realized.
-To us, to everyone.
-
-That's why I want to get bees
-back to working together.
-
-That's the bee way!
-We're not made of Jell-O.
-
-We get behind a fellow.
-
-- Black and yellow!
-- Hello!
-
-Left, right, down, hover.
-
-- Hover?
-- Forget hover.
-
-This isn't so hard.
-Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
-
-Barry, what happened?!
-
-Wait, I think we were
-on autopilot the whole time.
-
-- That may have been helping me.
-- And now we're not!
-
-So it turns out I cannot fly a plane.
-
-All of you, let's get
-behind this fellow! Move it out!
-
-Move out!
-
-Our only chance is if I do what I'd do,
-you copy me with the wings of the plane!
-
-Don't have to yell.
-
-I'm not yelling!
-We're in a lot of trouble.
-
-It's very hard to concentrate
-with that panicky tone in your voice!
-
-It's not a tone. I'm panicking!
-
-I can't do this!
-
-Vanessa, pull yourself together.
-You have to snap out of it!
-
-You snap out of it.
-
-You snap out of it.
-
-- You snap out of it!
-- You snap out of it!
-
-- You snap out of it!
-- You snap out of it!
-
-- You snap out of it!
-- You snap out of it!
-
-- Hold it!
-- Why? Come on, it's my turn.
-
-How is the plane flying?
-
-I don't know.
-
-Hello?
-
-Benson, got any flowers
-for a happy occasion in there?
-
-The Pollen Jocks!
-
-They do get behind a fellow.
-
-- Black and yellow.
-- Hello.
-
-All right, let's drop this tin can
-on the blacktop.
-
-Where? I can't see anything. Can you?
-
-No, nothing. It's all cloudy.
-
-Come on. You got to think bee, Barry.
-
-- Thinking bee.
-- Thinking bee.
-
-Thinking bee!
-Thinking bee! Thinking bee!
-
-Wait a minute.
-I think I'm feeling something.
-
-- What?
-- I don't know. It's strong, pulling me.
-
-Like a 27-million-year-old instinct.
-
-Bring the nose down.
-
-Thinking bee!
-Thinking bee! Thinking bee!
-
-- What in the world is on the tarmac?
-- Get some lights on that!
-
-Thinking bee!
-Thinking bee! Thinking bee!
-
-- Vanessa, aim for the flower.
-- OK.
-
-Cut the engines. We're going in
-on bee power. Ready, boys?
-
-Affirmative!
-
-Good. Good. Easy, now. That's it.
-
-Land on that flower!
-
-Ready? Full reverse!
-
-Spin it around!
-
-- Not that flower! The other one!
-- Which one?
-
-- That flower.
-- I'm aiming at the flower!
-
-That's a fat guy in a flowered shirt.
-I mean the giant pulsating flower
-
-made of millions of bees!
-
-Pull forward. Nose down. Tail up.
-
-Rotate around it.
-
-- This is insane, Barry!
-- This's the only way I know how to fly.
-
-Am I koo-koo-kachoo, or is this plane
-flying in an insect-like pattern?
-
-Get your nose in there. Don't be afraid.
-Smell it. Full reverse!
-
-Just drop it. Be a part of it.
-
-Aim for the center!
-
-Now drop it in! Drop it in, woman!
-
-Come on, already.
-
-Barry, we did it!
-You taught me how to fly!
-
-- Yes. No high-five!
-- Right.
-
-Barry, it worked!
-Did you see the giant flower?
-
-What giant flower? Where? Of course
-I saw the flower! That was genius!
-
-- Thank you.
-- But we're not done yet.
-
-Listen, everyone!
-
-This runway is covered
-with the last pollen
-
-from the last flowers
-available anywhere on Earth.
-
-That means this is our last chance.
-
-We're the only ones who make honey,
-pollinate flowers and dress like this.
-
-If we're gonna survive as a species,
-this is our moment! What do you say?
-
-Are we going to be bees, orjust
-Museum of Natural History keychains?
-
-We're bees!
-
-Keychain!
-
-Then follow me! Except Keychain.
-
-Hold on, Barry. Here.
-
-You've earned this.
-
-Yeah!
-
-I'm a Pollen Jock! And it's a perfect
-fit. All I gotta do are the sleeves.
-
-Oh, yeah.
-
-That's our Barry.
-
-Mom! The bees are back!
-
-If anybody needs
-to make a call, now's the time.
-
-I got a feeling we'll be
-working late tonight!
-
-Here's your change. Have a great
-afternoon! Can I help who's next?
-
-Would you like some honey with that?
-It is bee-approved. Don't forget these.
-
-Milk, cream, cheese, it's all me.
-And I don't see a nickel!
-
-Sometimes I just feel
-like a piece of meat!
-
-I had no idea.
-
-Barry, I'm sorry.
-Have you got a moment?
-
-Would you excuse me?
-My mosquito associate will help you.
-
-Sorry I'm late.
-
-He's a lawyer too?
-
-I was already a blood-sucking parasite.
-All I needed was a briefcase.
-
-Have a great afternoon!
-
-Barry, I just got this huge tulip order,
-and I can't get them anywhere.
-
-No problem, Vannie.
-Just leave it to me.
-
-You're a lifesaver, Barry.
-Can I help who's next?
-
-All right, scramble, jocks!
-It's time to fly.
-
-Thank you, Barry!
-
-That bee is living my life!
-
-Let it go, Kenny.
-
-- When will this nightmare end?!
-- Let it all go.
-
-- Beautiful day to fly.
-- Sure is.
-
-Between you and me,
-I was dying to get out of that office.
-
-You have got
-to start thinking bee, my friend.
-
-- Thinking bee!
-- Me?
-
-Hold it. Let's just stop
-for a second. Hold it.
-
-I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone.
-Can we stop here?
-
-I'm not making a major life decision
-during a production number!
-
-All right. Take ten, everybody.
-Wrap it up, guys.
-
-I had virtually no rehearsal for that.
diff --git a/gatsby.txt b/gatsby.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 614ffc5..0000000
--- a/gatsby.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,6333 +0,0 @@
-Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
-  If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
-Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
-  I must have you!"
-
-                    --THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERS
-
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 1
-
-
-
-In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice
-that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
-
-"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just
-remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages
-that you've had."
-
-He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative
-in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more
-than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all 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 griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were
-unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile
-levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate
-revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations
-of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are
-usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving
-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
-parcelled out unequally at birth.
-
-And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission
-that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet
-marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on.
-When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the
-world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I
-wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the
-human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was
-exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I
-have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of
-successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some
-heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related
-to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten
-thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that
-flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the
-"creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic
-readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it
-is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right
-at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the
-wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the
-abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
-
-
-My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western
-city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we
-have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the
-actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in
-fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale
-hardware business that my father carries on today.
-
-I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him--with
-special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in
-Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a
-century after my father, and a little later I participated in that
-delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the
-counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being
-the warm 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.
-
-The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm
-season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees,
-so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house
-together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found
-the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but
-at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out
-to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days
-until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed
-and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the
-electric stove.
-
-It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently
-arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
-
-"How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.
-
-I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a
-pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the
-freedom of the neighborhood.
-
-And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the
-trees--just as things grow in fast movies--I had that familiar
-conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
-
-There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be
-pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen
-volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood
-on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to
-unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas
-knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides.
-I was rather literary in college--one year I wrote a series of very
-solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"--and now I was going
-to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most
-limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an
-epigram--life is much more successfully looked at from a single window,
-after all.
-
-It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of
-the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender
-riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where
-there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of
-land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in
-contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most
-domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great
-wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals--like the
-egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact
-end--but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual
-confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more
-arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except
-shape and size.
-
-I lived at West Egg, the--well, the less fashionable of the two, though
-this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little
-sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the
-egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge
-places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on
-my right was a colossal affair by any standard--it was a factual
-imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side,
-spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool
-and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion.
-Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by
-a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a
-small eye-sore, 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.
-
-Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg
-glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins
-on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom
-Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom
-in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in
-Chicago.
-
-Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of
-the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--a
-national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute
-limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of
-anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy--even in college his
-freedom with money was a matter for reproach--but now he'd left Chicago
-and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for
-instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest.
-It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy
-enough to do that.
-
-Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no
-particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever
-people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move,
-said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it--I had no sight
-into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking
-a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable
-football game.
-
-And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East
-Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was
-even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian
-Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach
-and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over
-sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached
-the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the
-momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows,
-glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy
-afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his
-legs apart on the front porch.
-
-He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired
-man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.
-Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and
-gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not
-even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous
-power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he
-strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle
-shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body
-capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.
-
-His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of
-fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in
-it, even toward people he liked--and there were men at New Haven who had
-hated his guts.
-
-"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to
-say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We
-were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I
-always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like
-him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
-
-We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
-
-"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about
-restlessly.
-
-Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the
-front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half
-acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped
-the tide off shore.
-
-"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again,
-politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."
-
-We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-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.
-
-The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch
-on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored
-balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and
-fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight
-around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the
-whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.
-Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught
-wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two
-young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
-
-The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length
-at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised
-a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely
-to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of
-it--indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having
-disturbed her by coming in.
-
-The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly
-forward with a conscientious expression--then she laughed, an absurd,
-charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the
-room.
-
-"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."
-
-She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand
-for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one
-in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had.
-She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker.
-(I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people
-lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
-
-At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost
-imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again--the object
-she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something
-of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any
-exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
-
-I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low,
-thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and
-down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be
-played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it,
-bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth--but there was an excitement
-in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget:
-a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done
-gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay,
-exciting things hovering in the next hour.
-
-I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east
-and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
-
-"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.
-
-"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel
-painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all
-night along the North Shore."
-
-"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added
-irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."
-
-"I'd like to."
-
-"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"
-
-"Never."
-
-"Well, you ought to see her. She's----"
-
-Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped
-and rested his hand on my shoulder.
-
-"What you doing, Nick?"
-
-"I'm a bond man."
-
-"Who with?"
-
-I told him.
-
-"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.
-
-This annoyed me.
-
-"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."
-
-"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at
-Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more.
-"I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."
-
-At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I
-started--it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room.
-Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and
-with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
-
-"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long
-as I can remember."
-
-"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New
-York all afternoon."
-
-"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the
-pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."
-
-Her host looked at her incredulously.
-
-"You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of
-a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."
-
-I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed
-looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect
-carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the
-shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at
-me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented
-face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her,
-somewhere before.
-
-"You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody
-there."
-
-"I don't know a single----"
-
-"You must know Gatsby."
-
-"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"
-
-Before I could reply that he was my 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.
-
-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.
-
-"Why CANDLES?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her
-fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year."
-She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day
-of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the
-year and then miss it."
-
-"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the
-table as if she were getting into bed.
-
-"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly.
-"What do people plan?"
-
-Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her
-little finger.
-
-"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."
-
-We all looked--the knuckle was black and blue.
-
-"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to
-but you DID do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man,
-a great big hulking physical specimen of a----"
-
-"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."
-
-"Hulking," insisted Daisy.
-
-Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a
-bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool
-as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all
-desire. They were here--and they accepted Tom and me, making only a
-polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew
-that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too
-would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the
-West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its
-close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer
-nervous dread of the moment itself.
-
-"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass
-of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or
-something?"
-
-I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an
-unexpected way.
-
-"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently.
-"I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read
-'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"
-
-"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
-
-"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if
-we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged.
-It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."
-
-"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of
-unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them.
-What was that word we----"
-
-"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her
-impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us
-who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have
-control of things."
-
-"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously
-toward the fervent sun.
-
-"You ought to live in California--" began Miss Baker but Tom
-interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
-
-"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are
-and----" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a
-slight nod and she winked at me again. "--and we've produced all the
-things that go to make civilization--oh, science and art and all that.
-Do you see?"
-
-There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency,
-more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost
-immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy
-seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.
-
-"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's
-about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"
-
-"That's why I came over tonight."
-
-"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for
-some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people.
-He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to
-affect his nose----"
-
-"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.
-
-"Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up
-his position."
-
-For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon
-her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as
-I listened--then the glow faded, each light deserting her with
-lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
-
-The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear
-whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went
-inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned
-forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
-
-"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a--of a rose, an
-absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation.
-"An absolute rose?"
-
-This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only
-extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her
-heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those
-breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the
-table and excused herself and went into the house.
-
-Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of
-meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in
-a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room
-beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The
-murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted
-excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
-
-"This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor----" I said.
-
-"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."
-
-"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.
-
-"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised.
-"I thought everybody knew."
-
-"I don't."
-
-"Why----" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."
-
-"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.
-
-Miss Baker nodded.
-
-"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't
-you think?"
-
-Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of
-a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back
-at the table.
-
-"It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.
-
-She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and
-continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic
-outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale
-come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away----" her
-voice sang "----It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?"
-
-"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough
-after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."
-
-The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her
-head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all
-subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the
-last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again,
-pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at 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.
-
-The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss
-Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into
-the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while
-trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed
-Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In
-its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
-
-Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and
-her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent
-emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some
-sedative questions about her little girl.
-
-"We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly.
-"Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."
-
-"I wasn't back from the war."
-
-"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick,
-and I'm pretty cynical about everything."
-
-Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more,
-and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her
-daughter.
-
-"I suppose she talks, and--eats, and everything."
-
-"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what
-I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"
-
-"Very much."
-
-"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about--things. Well, she was less
-than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether
-with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it
-was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head
-away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope
-she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world,
-a beautiful little fool."
-
-"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a
-convinced way. "Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I KNOW.
-I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything."
-Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she
-laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!"
-
-The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention,
-my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said.
-It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick
-of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited,
-and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk
-on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather
-distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
-
-
-Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker
-sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from
-the "Saturday Evening Post"--the words, murmurous and
-uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The 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.
-
-When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
-
-"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our
-very next issue."
-
-Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she
-stood up.
-
-"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the
-ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."
-
-"Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy,
-"over at Westchester."
-
-"Oh,--you're JORdan Baker."
-
-I knew now why her face was familiar--its pleasing contemptuous
-expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of
-the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I
-had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story,
-but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
-
-"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."
-
-"If you'll get up."
-
-"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."
-
-"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange
-a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of--oh--fling you
-together. You know--lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push
-you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing----"
-
-"Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."
-
-"She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her
-run around the country this way."
-
-"Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly.
-
-"Her family."
-
-"Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's
-going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of
-week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very
-good for her."
-
-Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
-
-"Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.
-
-"From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our
-beautiful white----"
-
-"Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?"
-demanded Tom suddenly.
-
-"Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think
-we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of
-crept up on us and first thing you know----"
-
-"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.
-
-I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later
-I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by
-side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy
-peremptorily called "Wait!
-
-"I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were
-engaged to a girl out West."
-
-"That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were
-engaged."
-
-"It's libel. I'm too poor."
-
-"But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in
-a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."
-
-Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely
-engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the
-reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on
-account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being
-rumored into marriage.
-
-Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely
-rich--nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove
-away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of
-the house, child in arms--but apparently there were no such intentions
-in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York"
-was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book.
-Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his
-sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
-
-Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside
-garages, where new red 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.
-
-I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and
-that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave
-a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone--he stretched out his
-arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him
-I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and
-distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away,
-that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby
-he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 2
-
-
-
-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 grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives
-out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey
-men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud
-which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
-
-But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift
-endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.
-J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and
-gigantic--their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but,
-instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a
-nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
-fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself
-into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes,
-dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over
-the solemn dumping ground.
-
-The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and
-when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on
-waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an
-hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was
-because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.
-
-The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His
-acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular
-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.
-
-"We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl."
-
-I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to
-have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that
-on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.
-
-I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked
-back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent
-stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick
-sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street
-ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the
-three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night
-restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a
-garage--Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold--and I followed
-Tom inside.
-
-The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the
-dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had
-occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that
-sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the
-proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands
-on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and
-faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his
-light blue eyes.
-
-"Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the
-shoulder. "How's business?"
-
-"I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going
-to sell me that car?"
-
-"Next week; I've got my man working on it now."
-
-"Works pretty slow, don't he?"
-
-"No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it,
-maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."
-
-"I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant----"
-
-His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then
-I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a
-woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle
-thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her 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:
-
-"Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."
-
-"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office,
-mingling immediately with the cement 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.
-
-"I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train."
-
-"All right."
-
-"I'll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level."
-
-She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson
-emerged with two chairs from his office door.
-
-We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before
-the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting
-torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.
-
-"Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor
-Eckleburg.
-
-"Awful."
-
-"It does her good to get away."
-
-"Doesn't her husband object?"
-
-"Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb
-he doesn't know he's alive."
-
-So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York--or not
-quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom
-deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be
-on the train.
-
-She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin which stretched
-tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in
-New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of "Town Tattle" and a
-moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream
-and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive
-she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one,
-lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the
-mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she
-turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the
-front glass.
-
-"I want to get one of those dogs," she said earnestly. "I want to get one
-for the apartment. They're nice to have--a dog."
-
-We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John
-D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very
-recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.
-
-"What kind are they?" asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly as he came to the
-taxi-window.
-
-"All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?"
-
-"I'd like to get one of those police dogs; I don't suppose you got that
-kind?"
-
-The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew
-one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.
-
-"That's no police dog," said Tom.
-
-"No, it's not exactly a polICE dog," said the man with disappointment
-in his voice. "It's more of an airedale." He passed his hand over the
-brown wash-rag of a back. "Look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog
-that'll never bother you with catching cold."
-
-"I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"
-
-"That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten
-dollars."
-
-The airedale--undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere
-though its feet were startlingly white--changed hands and settled down
-into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with
-rapture.
-
-"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.
-
-"That dog? That dog's a boy."
-
-"It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten
-more dogs with it."
-
-We drove over to Fifth Avenue, 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.
-
-"Hold on," I said, "I have to leave you here."
-
-"No, you don't," interposed Tom quickly. "Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't 
-come up to the apartment. Won't you,
-Myrtle?"
-
-"Come on," she urged. "I'll telephone my sister Catherine. She's said to
-be very beautiful by people who ought to know."
-
-"Well, I'd like to, but----"
-
-We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds.
-At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of
-apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the
-neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases
-and went haughtily in.
-
-"I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the
-elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too."
-
-The apartment was on the top floor--a small living room, a small
-dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to
-the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it
-so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of
-ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was
-an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred
-rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself
-into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down
-into the room. Several old copies of "Town Tattle "lay on the table
-together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small
-scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with
-the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and
-some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large
-hard dog biscuits--one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer
-of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey
-from a locked bureau door.
-
-I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that
-afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it
-although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful
-sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the
-telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at
-the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so
-I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon
-Called Peter"--either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted
-things because it didn't make any sense to me.
-
-Just as Tom and Myrtle--after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called
-each other by our first names--reappeared, company commenced to arrive
-at the apartment door.
-
-The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty
-with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky
-white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more
-rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the
-old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about
-there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets
-jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary
-haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered
-if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated
-my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.
-
-Mr. McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below. He had just
-shaved for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone and he
-was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He
-informed me that he was in the "artistic game" and I gathered later
-that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs.
-Wilson's mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife
-was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride
-that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times
-since they had been married.
-
-Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now
-attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream 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.
-
-"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 appendicitus out."
-
-"What was the name of the woman?" asked Mrs. McKee.
-
-"Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people's feet in their own
-homes."
-
-"I like your dress," remarked Mrs. McKee, "I think it's adorable."
-
-Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.
-
-"It's just a crazy old thing," she said. "I just slip it on sometimes when
-I don't care what I look like."
-
-"But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean," pursued
-Mrs. McKee. "If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could
-make something of it."
-
-We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from
-over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee
-regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand
-back and forth slowly in front of his face.
-
-"I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to bring
-out the modelling of the features. And I'd try to get hold of all the
-back hair."
-
-"I wouldn't think of changing the light," cried Mrs. McKee. "I think
-it's----"
-
-Her husband said "SH!" and we all looked at the subject again whereupon
-Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.
-
-"You McKees have something to drink," he said. "Get some more ice and
-mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep."
-
-"I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair
-at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep
-after them all the time."
-
-She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the
-dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that
-a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.
-
-"I've done some nice things out on Long Island," asserted Mr. McKee.
-
-Tom looked at him blankly.
-
-"Two of them we have framed downstairs."
-
-"Two what?" demanded Tom.
-
-"Two studies. One of them I call 'Montauk Point--the Gulls,' and the
-other I call 'Montauk Point--the Sea.' "
-
-The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
-
-"Do you live down on Long Island, too?" she inquired.
-
-"I live at West Egg."
-
-"Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named
-Gatsby's. Do you know him?"
-
-"I live next door to him."
-
-"Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's
-where all his money comes from."
-
-"Really?"
-
-She nodded.
-
-"I'm scared of him. I'd hate to have him get anything on me."
-
-This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by
-Mrs. McKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:
-
-"Chester, I think you could do something with HER," she broke out,
-but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention
-to Tom.
-
-"I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All
-I ask is that they should give me a start."
-
-"Ask Myrtle," said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as
-Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of
-introduction, won't you, Myrtle?"
-
-"Do what?" she asked, startled.
-
-"You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can
-do some studies of him." His lips moved silently for a moment as he
-invented. " 'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like
-that."
-
-
-Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them
-can stand the person they're married to."
-
-"Can't they?"
-
-"Can't STAND them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is,
-why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get
-a divorce and get married to each other right away."
-
-"Doesn't she like Wilson either?"
-
-The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had overheard
-the question and it was violent and obscene.
-
-"You see?" cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again.
-"It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and
-they don't believe in divorce."
-
-Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness
-of the lie.
-
-"When they do get married," continued Catherine, "they're going west to
-live for a while until it blows over."
-
-"It'd be more discreet to go to Europe."
-
-"Oh, do you like Europe?" she exclaimed surprisingly. "I just got back
-from Monte Carlo."
-
-"Really."
-
-"Just last year. I went over there with another girl."
-
-"Stay long?"
-
-"No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles.
-We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started but we got 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!"
-
-The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue
-honey of the Mediterranean--then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me
-back into the room.
-
-"I almost made a mistake, too," she declared vigorously. "I almost
-married a little kyke who'd been after me for years. I knew he was
-below me. Everybody kept saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's way below
-you!' But if I hadn't met Chester, he'd of got me sure."
-
-"Yes, but listen," said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down,
-"at least you didn't marry him."
-
-"I know I didn't."
-
-"Well, I married him," said Myrtle, ambiguously. "And that's the
-difference between your case and mine."
-
-"Why did you, Myrtle?" demanded Catherine. "Nobody forced you to."
-
-Myrtle considered.
-
-"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally.
-"I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick
-my shoe."
-
-"You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine.
-
-"Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about
-him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man
-there."
-
-She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly.
-I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.
-
-"The only CRAZY I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a
-mistake. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never
-even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out.
-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."
-
-"She really ought to get away from him," resumed Catherine to me.
-"They've been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom's the
-first sweetie she ever had."
-
-The bottle of 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.
-
-Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath
-poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.
-
-"It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the
-last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my
-sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather
-shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at
-me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head.
-When we came into the station he was next to me and his white
-shirt-front pressed against my arm--and so I told him I'd have to call
-a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into
-a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway
-train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live
-forever, you can't live forever.' "
-
-She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial
-laughter.
-
-"My dear," she cried, "I'm going to give you this dress as soon as I'm
-through with it. I've got to get another one tomorrow. I'm going to
-make a list of all the things I've got to get. A massage and a wave
-and a collar for the dog and one of those cute little 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."
-
-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.
-
-The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through
-the smoke and from time to time groaning faintly. People disappeared,
-reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other,
-searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time
-toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face
-discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to
-mention Daisy's name.
-
-"Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want
-to! Daisy! Dai----"
-
-Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his
-open hand.
-
-Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's
-voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of
-pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the door.
-When he had gone half way he turned around and stared at the scene--his
-wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled here and
-there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and the
-despairing figure on the couch bleeding fluently and trying to spread
-a copy of "Town Tattle" over the tapestry scenes of Versailles.
-Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from
-the chandelier I followed.
-
-"Come to lunch some day," he suggested, as we groaned down in the
-elevator.
-
-"Where?"
-
-"Anywhere."
-
-"Keep your hands off the lever," snapped the elevator boy.
-
-"I beg your pardon," said Mr. McKee with dignity, "I didn't know I was
-touching it."
-
-"All right," I agreed, "I'll be glad to."
-
-. . . I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the
-sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.
-
-"Beauty and the Beast . . . Loneliness . . . Old Grocery Horse . . .
-Brook'n Bridge . . . ."
-
-Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania
-Station, staring at the morning "Tribune" and waiting for the four
-o'clock train.
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 3
-
-
-
-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.
-
-Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer
-in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back
-door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the
-kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an
-hour, if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's
-thumb.
-
-At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several
-hundred feet of canvas and enough 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.
-
-By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived--no thin five-piece affair
-but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and
-cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. The last swimmers have
-come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from
-New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and
-salons and verandas are gaudy with primary 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.
-
-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.
-
-Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out
-of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like
-Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the
-orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her and there is a
-burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda
-Gray's understudy from the "Follies." The party has begun.
-
-I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of
-the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not
-invited--they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out
-to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there
-they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby and after that they
-conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with
-amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby
-at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own
-ticket of admission.
-
-I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin's egg
-blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly
-formal note from his employer--the 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.
-
-Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after
-seven and wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies
-of people I didn't know--though here and there was a face I had noticed
-on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of young
-Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry
-and all talking in low earnest voices to solid and prosperous
-Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or
-insurance or automobiles. They were, at least, agonizingly aware of the
-easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few
-words in the right key.
-
-As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or
-three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an
-amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements
-that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table--the only place
-in the garden where a single man could linger without looking
-purposeless and alone.
-
-I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when
-Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble
-steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest
-down into the garden.
-
-Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone
-before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by.
-
-"Hello!" I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally
-loud across the garden.
-
-"I thought you might be here," she responded absently as I came up.
-"I remembered you lived next door to----"
-
-She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she'd take care
-of me in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses
-who stopped at the foot of the steps.
-
-"Hello!" they cried together. "Sorry you didn't win."
-
-That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week
-before.
-
-"You don't know who we are," said one of the girls in yellow, "but we
-met you here about a month ago."
-
-"You've dyed your hair since then," remarked Jordan, and I started
-but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the
-premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's
-basket. With Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine we descended
-the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails floated at
-us through the twilight and we sat down at a table with the two girls in
-yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble.
-
-"Do you come to these parties often?" inquired Jordan of the girl
-beside her.
-
-"The last one was the one I met you at," answered the girl, in an alert,
-confident voice. She turned to her companion: "Wasn't it for you,
-Lucille?"
-
-It was for Lucille, too.
-
-"I like to come," Lucille said. "I never care what I do, so I always have
-a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked
-me my name and address--inside of a week I got a package from Croirier's
-with a new evening gown in it."
-
-"Did you keep it?" asked Jordan.
-
-"Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the
-bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two
-hundred and sixty-five dollars."
-
-"There's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that,"
-said the other girl eagerly. "He doesn't want any trouble with ANYbody."
-
-"Who doesn't?" I inquired.
-
-"Gatsby. Somebody told me----"
-
-The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.
-
-"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."
-
-A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and
-listened eagerly.
-
-"I don't think it's so much THAT," argued Lucille skeptically; "it's
-more that he was a German spy during the war."
-
-One of the men nodded in confirmation.
-
-"I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in
-Germany," he assured us positively.
-
-"Oh, no," said the first girl, "it couldn't be that, because he was in
-the American army during the war." As our credulity switched back to
-her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. "You look at him sometimes when
-he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man."
-
-She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and
-looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he
-inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little
-that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.
-
-The first supper--there would be another one after midnight--was now
-being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party who were
-spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were
-three married couples and Jordan's escort, a persistent undergraduate
-given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression
-that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person
-to a greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling this party
-had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the
-function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside--East
-Egg condescending to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its
-spectroscopic gayety.
-
-"Let's get out," whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and
-inappropriate half hour. "This is much too polite for me."
-
-We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host--I
-had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The
-undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.
-
-The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded but Gatsby was not there.
-She couldn't find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn't on the
-veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked
-into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and
-probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.
-
-A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was
-sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with
-unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he
-wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.
-
-"What do you think?" he demanded impetuously.
-
-"About what?"
-
-He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.
-
-"About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I
-ascertained. They're real."
-
-"The books?"
-
-He nodded.
-
-"Absolutely real--have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice
-durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages
-and--Here! Lemme show you."
-
-Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and
-returned with Volume One of the "Stoddard Lectures."
-
-"See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter.
-It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What
-thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too--didn't cut the pages.
-But what do you want? What do you expect?"
-
-He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf
-muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable
-to collapse.
-
-"Who brought you?" he demanded. "Or did you just come? I was brought.
-Most people were brought."
-
-Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully without answering.
-
-"I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt," he continued. "Mrs. Claud
-Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I've
-been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me
-up to sit in a library."
-
-"Has it?"
-
-"A little bit, I think. I can't tell yet. I've only been here
-an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They're real. They're----"
-
-"You told us."
-
-We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.
-
-There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden, old men pushing
-young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples
-holding each other tortuously, fashionably and keeping in the
-corners--and a great number of single girls dancing 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.
-
-I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of
-about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest
-provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I
-had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed
-before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.
-
-At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.
-
-"Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the Third
-Division during the war?"
-
-"Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion."
-
-"I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd
-seen you somewhere before."
-
-We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France.
-Evidently he lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just
-bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.
-
-"Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound."
-
-"What time?"
-
-"Any time that suits you best."
-
-It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around
-and smiled.
-
-"Having a gay time now?" she inquired.
-
-"Much better." I turned again to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual
-party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there----" I waved
-my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, "and this man Gatsby sent
-over his chauffeur with an invitation."
-
-For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.
-
-"I'm Gatsby," he said suddenly.
-
-"What!" I exclaimed. "Oh, I beg your pardon."
-
-"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."
-
-He smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was
-one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance
-in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or
-seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then
-concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It
-understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in
-you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it
-had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to
-convey. Precisely at that point it vanished--and I was looking at an
-elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate
-formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he
-introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his
-words with care.
-
-Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself a butler
-hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him on
-the wire. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of us
-in turn.
-
-"If you want anything just ask for it, old sport," he urged me.
-"Excuse me. I will rejoin you later."
-
-When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan--constrained to assure her
-of my surprise. I had expected that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and
-corpulent person in his middle years.
-
-"Who is he?" I demanded. "Do you know?"
-
-"He's just a man named Gatsby."
-
-"Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?"
-
-"Now YOU're started on the subject," she answered with a wan smile.
-"Well,--he told me once he was an Oxford man."
-
-A dim background started to take shape behind him but at her
-next remark it faded away.
-
-"However, I don't believe it."
-
-"Why not?"
-
-"I don't know," she insisted, "I just don't think he went there."
-
-Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl's "I think
-he killed a man," and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity. I
-would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang
-from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York.
-That was comprehensible. But young men didn't--at least in my provincial
-inexperience I believed they didn't--drift coolly out of nowhere and buy
-a palace on Long Island Sound.
-
-"Anyhow he gives large parties," said Jordan, changing the subject
-with an urbane distaste for the concrete. "And I like large parties.
-They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy."
-
-There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra leader
-rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden.
-
-"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried. "At the request of Mr. Gatsby we are
-going to play for you Mr. 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 "Some sensation!" whereupon everybody laughed.
-
-"The piece is known," he concluded lustily, "as 'Vladimir Tostoff's
-Jazz History of the World.' "
-
-The nature of Mr. Tostoff's composition eluded me, because just as
-it began my eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps
-and looking from one group to another with approving eyes.
-His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and
-his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day. I could
-see nothing sinister about him. I wondered if the fact that he was
-not drinking helped to set him off from his guests, for it seemed
-to me that he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased.
-When the "Jazz History of the World" was over girls were putting
-their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were
-swooning backward playfully into men's arms, even into groups knowing
-that 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.
-
-"I beg your pardon."
-
-Gatsby's butler was suddenly standing beside us.
-
-"Miss Baker?" he inquired. "I beg your pardon but Mr. Gatsby would like
-to speak to you alone."
-
-"With me?" she exclaimed in surprise.
-
-"Yes, madame."
-
-She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in astonishment,
-and followed the butler toward the house. I noticed that she wore
-her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes--there
-was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to
-walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings.
-
-I was alone and it was almost two. For some time confused and
-intriguing sounds had issued from a long many-windowed room which
-overhung the terrace. Eluding Jordan's undergraduate who was now
-engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who
-implored me to join him, I went inside.
-
-The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was
-playing the piano and beside her stood a tall, red haired young lady
-from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of
-champagne and during the course of her song she had decided ineptly
-that everything was very very sad--she was not only singing, she was
-weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with
-gasping broken sobs and then took up the lyric again in a quavering
-soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks--not freely, however, for when
-they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an
-inky 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.
-
-"She had a fight with a man who says he's her husband," explained a
-girl at my elbow.
-
-I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights
-with men said to be their husbands. Even Jordan's party, the quartet
-from East Egg, were rent asunder by dissension. One of the men was
-talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife after
-attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent
-way broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks--at intervals she
-appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed "You
-promised!" into his ear.
-
-The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall was at
-present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly indignant
-wives. The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised
-voices.
-
-"Whenever he sees I'm having a good time he wants to go home."
-
-"Never heard anything so selfish in my life."
-
-"We're always the first ones to leave."
-
-"So are we."
-
-"Well, we're almost the last tonight," said one of the men sheepishly.
-"The orchestra left half an hour ago."
-
-In spite of the wives' agreement that such malevolence was beyond
-credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives were
-lifted kicking into the night.
-
-As I waited for my hat in the hall the door of the library opened and
-Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together. He was saying some last word
-to her but the eagerness in his manner tightened abruptly into
-formality as several people approached him to say goodbye.
-
-Jordan's party were calling impatiently to her from the porch but she
-lingered for a moment to shake hands.
-
-"I've just heard the most amazing thing," she whispered. "How long were
-we in there?"
-
-"Why,--about an hour."
-
-"It was--simply amazing," she repeated abstractedly. "But I swore
-I wouldn't tell it and here I am tantalizing you." She yawned
-gracefully in my face. "Please come and see me. . . . Phone book.
-. . . Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard. . . . My aunt. . . ."
-She was hurrying off as she talked--her brown hand waved a
-jaunty salute as she melted into her party at the door.
-
-Rather ashamed that on my first appearance I had stayed so late, I
-joined the last of Gatsby's guests who were clustered around him. I
-wanted to explain that I'd hunted for him early in the evening and to
-apologize for not having known him in the garden.
-
-"Don't mention it," he enjoined me eagerly. "Don't give it another
-thought, old sport." The familiar expression held no more familiarity
-than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. "And don't forget
-we're going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."
-
-Then the butler, behind his shoulder:
-
-"Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir."
-
-"All right, in a minute. Tell them I'll be right there. . . . good
-night."
-
-"Good night."
-
-"Good night." He smiled--and suddenly there seemed to be a pleasant
-significance in having been among the last to go, as if he had desired
-it all the time. "Good night, old sport. . . . Good night."
-
-But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over.
-Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and
-tumultuous scene. In the ditch beside the road, right side up but
-violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupé which had left Gatsby's
-drive not two minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall accounted for the
-detachment of the wheel which was now getting considerable attention from
-half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However, as they had left their cars
-blocking the road a harsh discordant din from those in the rear had been
-audible for some time and added to the already violent confusion of
-the scene.
-
-A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in
-the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tire and from the
-tire to the observers in a pleasant, puzzled way.
-
-"See!" he explained. "It went in the ditch."
-
-The fact was infinitely astonishing to him--and I recognized first the
-unusual quality of wonder and then the man--it was the late patron of
-Gatsby's library.
-
-"How'd it happen?"
-
-He shrugged his shoulders.
-
-"I know nothing whatever about mechanics," he said decisively.
-
-"But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?"
-
-"Don't ask me," said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole matter.
-"I know very little about driving--next to nothing. It happened,
-and that's all I know."
-
-"Well, if you're a poor driver you oughtn't to try driving at night."
-
-"But I wasn't even trying," he explained indignantly, "I wasn't even
-trying."
-
-An awed hush fell upon the bystanders.
-
-"Do you want to commit suicide?"
-
-"You're lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even TRYing!"
-
-"You don't understand," explained the criminal. "I wasn't driving. There's
-another man in the car."
-
-The shock that followed this declaration found voice in a sustained
-"Ah-h-h!" as the door of the coupé swung slowly open. The crowd--it was
-now a crowd--stepped back involuntarily and when the door had opened wide
-there was a ghostly pause. Then, very gradually, part by part, a pale
-dangling individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing tentatively at the
-ground with a large uncertain dancing shoe.
-
-Blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant
-groaning of the horns the apparition stood swaying for a moment before
-he perceived the man in the duster.
-
-"Wha's matter?" he inquired calmly. "Did we run outa gas?"
-
-"Look!"
-
-Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel--he stared
-at it for a moment and then looked upward as though he suspected that
-it had dropped from the sky.
-
-"It came off," some one explained.
-
-He nodded.
-
-"At first I din' notice we'd stopped."
-
-A pause. Then, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders
-he remarked in a determined voice:
-
-"Wonder'ff tell me where there's a gas'line station?"
-
-At least a dozen men, some of them little better off than he was,
-explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical
-bond.
-
-"Back out," he suggested after a moment. "Put her in reverse."
-
-"But the WHEEL'S off!"
-
-He hesitated.
-
-"No harm in trying," he said.
-
-The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and
-cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon
-was shining over Gatsby's house, making the night fine as before and
-surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A
-sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great
-doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host who
-stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.
-
-
-Reading over what I have written so far I see I have given the
-impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all
-that absorbed me. On the contrary they were merely casual events in a
-crowded summer and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less
-than my personal affairs.
-
-Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow
-westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the
-Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their
-first names and lunched with them in dark crowded restaurants on
-little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short
-affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the
-accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my
-direction so when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow
-quietly away.
-
-I took dinner usually at the Yale Club--for some reason it was the
-gloomiest event of my day--and then I went upstairs to the library and
-studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour.
-There were generally a few rioters around but they never came into the
-library so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was
-mellow I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel
-and over Thirty-third Street to the Pennsylvania Station.
-
-I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night
-and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and
-machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and
-pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few
-minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever
-know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their
-apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled
-back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the
-enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes,
-and felt it in others--poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows
-waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner--young clerks
-in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
-
-Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five
-deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a
-sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited,
-and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted
-cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that
-I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate
-excitement, I wished them well.
-
-For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found
-her again. At first I was flattered to go places with her because she
-was a golf champion and every one 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 semi-final round. The thing approached
-the proportions of a scandal--then died away. A caddy retracted his
-statement and the only other witness admitted that he might have been
-mistaken. The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.
-
-Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever shrewd men and now I saw
-that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence
-from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest.
-She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this
-unwillingness I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she
-was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the
-world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body.
-
-It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never
-blame deeply--I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. It was on that
-same house party that we had a curious conversation about driving a
-car. It started because she passed so close to some workmen that our
-fender flicked a button on one man's coat.
-
-"You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more
-careful or you oughtn't to drive at all."
-
-"I am careful."
-
-"No, you're not."
-
-"Well, other people are," she said lightly.
-
-"What's that got to do with it?"
-
-"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an
-accident."
-
-"Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself."
-
-"I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why
-I like you."
-
-Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had
-deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved
-her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes
-on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of
-that tangle back home. I'd been writing letters once a week and signing
-them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when that certain
-girl played tennis, a faint 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.
-
-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.
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 4
-
-
-
-On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages along shore
-the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby's house and twinkled
-hilariously on his lawn.
-
-"He's a bootlegger," said the young ladies, moving somewhere between
-his cocktails and his flowers. "One time he killed a man who had found out
-that he was nephew to von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil.
-Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crystal
-glass."
-
-Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a time-table 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 grey names and they will give
-you a better impression than my generalities of those who accepted
-Gatsby's hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing
-whatever about him.
-
-From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches and a
-man named Bunsen whom I knew at Yale and Doctor Webster Civet who
-was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie
-Voltaires and a whole clan named Blackbuck who always gathered in a
-corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whosoever came near.
-And the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr.
-Chrystie's wife) and Edgar Beaver, whose hair they say turned
-cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all.
-
-Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only
-once, in white knickerbockers, and had a fight with a bum named
-Etty in the garden. From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles
-and the O. R. P. Schraeders and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of
-Georgia and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there
-three days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the
-gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett's automobile ran over his right
-hand. The Dancies came too and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over
-sixty, and Maurice A. Flink and the Hammerheads and Beluga the
-tobacco importer and Beluga's girls.
-
-From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and
-Cecil Schoen and Gulick the state senator and Newton Orchid who
-controlled Films Par Excellence and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don
-S. 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.
-
-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 Meyer and
-George Duckweed and Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes
-and the Backhyssons and the Dennickers and Russel Betty and the
-Corrigans and the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S. W.
-Belcher and the Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry
-L. Palmetto who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train
-in Times Square.
-
-Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite
-the same ones in physical person but they were so identical one with
-another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before. I have
-forgotten their names--Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela or Gloria
-or Judy or June, and their last names were either the melodious names
-of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American
-capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to
-be.
-
-In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina O'Brien came
-there at least once and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer who had
-his nose shot off in the war and Mr. Albrucksburger and Miss Haag, his
-fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Peters, and Mr. P. Jewett, once head of the
-American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip with a man reputed to be her
-chauffeur, and a prince of something whom we called Duke and whose name,
-if I ever knew it, I have forgotten.
-
-All these people came to Gatsby's house in the summer.
-
-
-At nine o'clock, one morning late in July Gatsby's gorgeous car
-lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody
-from its three noted horn. It was the first time he had called on me
-though I had gone to two of his parties, mounted in his hydroplane,
-and, at his urgent invitation, made frequent use of his beach.
-
-"Good morning, old sport. You're having lunch with me today and I
-thought we'd ride up together."
-
-He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that
-resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American--that comes,
-I suppose, with the absence of lifting work 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.
-
-He saw me looking with admiration at his car.
-
-"It's pretty, isn't it, old sport." He jumped off to give me a better
-view. "Haven't you ever seen it before?"
-
-I'd seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright
-with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with
-triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a
-labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind
-many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory we started
-to town.
-
-I had talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and
-found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say. So my first
-impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had
-gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate
-roadhouse next door.
-
-And then came that disconcerting ride. We hadn't reached West Egg
-village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished
-and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-colored
-suit.
-
-"Look here, old sport," he broke out surprisingly. "What's your opinion
-of me, anyhow?"
-
-A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which
-that question deserves.
-
-"Well, I'm going to tell you something about my life," he interrupted.
-"I don't want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you
-hear."
-
-So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavored conversation in
-his halls.
-
-"I'll tell you God's truth." His right hand suddenly ordered divine
-retribution to stand by. "I am the son of some wealthy people in the
-middle-west--all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at
-Oxford because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years.
-It is a family tradition."
-
-He looked at me sideways--and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was
-lying. He hurried the phrase "educated at Oxford," or swallowed it or
-choked on it as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt
-his whole statement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn't
-something a little sinister about him after all.
-
-"What part of the middle-west?" I inquired casually.
-
-"San Francisco."
-
-"I see."
-
-"My family all died and I came into a good deal of money."
-
-His voice was solemn as if the memory of that sudden extinction of a clan
-still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg
-but a glance at him convinced me otherwise.
-
-"After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of
-Europe--Paris, Venice, Rome--collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting
-big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to
-forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago."
-
-With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very
-phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a
-turbaned "character" leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a
-tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.
-
-"Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief and I tried very
-hard to die but I seemed to bear an enchanted life. I accepted a
-commission as first lieutenant when it began. In the Argonne Forest I
-took 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!"
-
-Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them--with
-his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro's troubled history and
-sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It
-appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had
-elicited this tribute from Montenegro's warm little heart. My
-incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming
-hastily through a dozen magazines.
-
-He reached in his pocket and a piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, fell
-into my palm.
-
-"That's the one from Montenegro."
-
-To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic look.
-
-_Orderi di Danilo_, ran the circular legend, _Montenegro, Nicolas Rex_.
-
-"Turn it."
-
-_Major Jay Gatsby_, I read, _For Valour Extraordinary_.
-
-"Here's another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It was
-taken in Trinity Quad--the man on my left is now the Earl of Dorcaster."
-
-It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an
-archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby,
-looking a little, not much, younger--with a cricket bat in his hand.
-
-Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace
-on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with
-their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
-
-"I'm going to make a big request of you today," he said, pocketing his
-souvenirs with satisfaction, "so I thought you ought to know something
-about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody. You see,
-I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there
-trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me." He hesitated.
-"You'll hear about it this afternoon."
-
-"At lunch?"
-
-"No, this afternoon. I happened to find out that you're taking Miss Baker
-to tea."
-
-"Do you mean you're in love with Miss Baker?"
-
-"No, old sport, I'm not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak
-to you about this matter."
-
-I hadn't the faintest idea what "this matter" was, but I was more
-annoyed than interested. I hadn't asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss
-Mr. Jay Gatsby. I was sure the request would be something utterly
-fantastic and for a moment I was sorry I'd ever set foot upon his
-overpopulated lawn.
-
-He wouldn't say another word. His correctness grew on him as we neared
-the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of
-red-belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with
-the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded gilt nineteen-hundreds. Then
-the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse
-of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we
-went by.
-
-With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half
-Astoria--only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the
-elevated I heard the familiar "jug--jug--SPAT!" of a motor cycle, and a
-frantic policeman rode alongside.
-
-"All right, old sport," called Gatsby. We slowed down. Taking a white
-card from his wallet he waved it before the man's eyes.
-
-"Right you are," agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. "Know you next
-time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse ME!"
-
-"What was that?" I inquired.  "The picture of Oxford?"
-
-"I was able to do the commissioner a favor once, and he sends me a
-Christmas card every year."
-
-Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a
-constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the
-river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of
-non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always
-the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the
-mystery and the beauty in the world.
-
-A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two
-carriages with drawn blinds and by more cheerful carriages for
-friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short
-upper lips of south-eastern 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.
-
-"Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge," I thought;
-"anything at all. . . ."
-
-Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.
-
-
-Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby
-for lunch. Blinking away the brightness of the street outside my eyes
-picked him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to another man.
-
-"Mr. Carraway this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem."
-
-A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two
-fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I
-discovered his tiny eyes in the half darkness.
-
-"--so I took one look at him--" said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand
-earnestly, "--and what do you think I did?"
-
-"What?" I inquired politely.
-
-But evidently he was not addressing me for he dropped my hand and
-covered Gatsby with his expressive nose.
-
-"I handed the money to Katspaugh and I sid, 'All right, Katspaugh,
-don't pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth.' He shut it then and
-there."
-
-Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the
-restaurant whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was
-starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction.
-
-"Highballs?" asked the head waiter.
-
-"This is a nice restaurant here," said Mr. Wolfshiem looking at the
-Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. "But I like across the street better!"
-
-"Yes, highballs," agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: "It's too hot
-over there."
-
-"Hot and small--yes," said Mr. Wolfshiem, "but full of memories."
-
-"What place is that?" I asked.
-
-"The old Metropole.
-
-"The old Metropole," brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. "Filled with faces
-dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can't forget so
-long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us
-at the table and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all evening. When it was
-almost morning the waiter came up to him with a funny look and says
-somebody wants to speak to him outside. 'All right,' says Rosy and begins
-to get up and I pulled him down in his chair.
-
-" 'Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don't you,
-so help me, move outside this room.'
-
-"It was four o'clock in the morning then, and if we'd of raised the blinds
-we'd of seen daylight."
-
-"Did he go?" I asked innocently.
-
-"Sure he went,"--Mr. Wolfshiem's nose flashed at me indignantly--"He
-turned around in the door and says, 'Don't let that waiter take away
-my coffee!' Then he went out on the sidewalk and they shot him
-three times in his full belly and drove away."
-
-"Four of them were electrocuted," I said, remembering.
-
-"Five with Becker." His nostrils turned to me in an interested way.
-"I understand you're looking for a business gonnegtion."
-
-The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered
-for me:
-
-"Oh, no," he exclaimed, "this isn't the man!"
-
-"No?" Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed.
-
-"This is just a friend. I told you we'd talk about that some other
-time."
-
-"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Wolfshiem, "I had a wrong man."
-
-A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the more
-sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with
-ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around the
-room--he completed the arc by turning to inspect the people directly
-behind. I think that, except for my presence, he would have taken one
-short glance beneath our own table.
-
-"Look here, old sport," said Gatsby, leaning toward me, "I'm afraid I
-made you a little angry this morning in the car."
-
-There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it.
-
-"I don't like mysteries," I answered. "And I don't understand why you
-won't come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to
-come through Miss Baker?"
-
-"Oh, it's nothing underhand," he assured me. "Miss Baker's a great
-sportswoman, you know, and she'd never do anything that wasn't all right."
-
-Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up and hurried from the room
-leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table.
-
-"He has to telephone," said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his eyes.
-"Fine fellow, isn't he? Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman."
-
-"Yes."
-
-"He's an Oggsford man."
-
-"Oh!"
-
-"He went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?"
-
-"I've heard of it."
-
-"It's one of the most famous colleges in the world."
-
-"Have you known Gatsby for a long time?" I inquired.
-
-"Several years," he answered in a gratified way. "I made the pleasure of
-his acquaintance just after the war. But I knew I had discovered a man of
-fine breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to myself: 'There's
-the kind of man you'd like to take home and introduce to your mother and
-sister.' " He paused. "I see you're looking at my cuff buttons."
-
-I hadn't been looking at them, but I did now.  They were composed of
-oddly familiar pieces of ivory.
-
-"Finest specimens of human molars," he informed me.
-
-"Well!" I inspected them. "That's a very interesting idea."
-
-"Yeah." He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. "Yeah, Gatsby's very
-careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend's wife."
-
-When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat
-down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet.
-
-"I have enjoyed my lunch," he said, "and I'm going to run off from you
-two young men before I outstay my welcome."
-
-"Don't hurry, Meyer," said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem
-raised his hand in a sort of benediction.
-
-"You're very polite but I belong to another generation," he announced
-solemnly. "You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and
-your----" He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his
-hand--"As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won't impose myself
-on you any longer."
-
-As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling.
-I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.
-
-"He becomes very sentimental sometimes," explained Gatsby. "This is one of
-his sentimental days. He's quite a character around New York--a denizen of
-Broadway."
-
-"Who is he anyhow--an actor?"
-
-"No."
-
-"A dentist?"
-
-"Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added
-coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919."
-
-"Fixed the World's Series?" I repeated.
-
-The idea staggered me. I remembered of course that the World's Series
-had been fixed in 1919 but if I had thought of it at all I would have
-thought of it as a thing that merely HAPPENED, the end of some
-inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to
-play with the faith of fifty million people--with the single-mindedness
-of a burglar blowing a safe.
-
-"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.
-
-"He just saw the opportunity."
-
-"Why isn't he in jail?"
-
-"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man."
-
-I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I caught
-sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.
-
-"Come along with me for a minute," I said. "I've got to say hello
-to someone."
-
-When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our
-direction.
-
-"Where've you been?" he demanded eagerly. "Daisy's furious because you
-haven't called up."
-
-"This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan."
-
-They shook hands briefly and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment
-came over Gatsby's face.
-
-"How've you been, anyhow?" demanded Tom of me. "How'd you happen to come
-up this far to eat?"
-
-"I've been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby."
-
-I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.
-
-
-One October day in nineteen-seventeen----
-(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight
-chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)
---I was walking along from one place to another half on the sidewalks and
-half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from
-England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground.
-I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the wind and
-whenever this happened the red, white and blue banners in front of all
-the houses stretched out stiff and said TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT in a disapproving
-way.
-
-The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to
-Daisy Fay's house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and
-by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She
-dressed in white, and had a little white roadster and all day long
-the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp
-Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night, "anyways,
-for an hour!"
-
-When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside
-the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen
-before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didn't see me until
-I was five feet away.
-
-"Hello Jordan," she called unexpectedly. "Please come here."
-
-I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older
-girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross and
-make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she couldn't come
-that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way
-that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it
-seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since. His name
-was Jay Gatsby and I didn't lay eyes on him again for over four
-years--even after I'd met him on Long Island I didn't realize it was the
-same man.
-
-That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux myself,
-and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn't see Daisy very often.
-She went with a slightly older crowd--when she went with anyone at all.
-Wild rumors were circulating about her--how her mother had found her
-packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a
-soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she
-wasn't on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After
-that she didn't play around with the soldiers any more but only
-with a few flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town who couldn't
-get into the army at all.
-
-By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut
-after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a
-man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago with
-more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came
-down with a hundred people in four private cars and hired a whole
-floor of the Seelbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her
-a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
-
-I was bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal
-dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in
-her flowered dress--and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of
-sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.
-
-" 'Gratulate me," she muttered. "Never had a drink before but oh, how I do
-enjoy it."
-
-"What's the matter, Daisy?"
-
-I was scared, I can tell you; I'd never seen a girl like that before.
-
-"Here, dearis." She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her
-on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. "Take 'em downstairs and
-give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her
-mine. Say 'Daisy's change' her mine!'."
-
-She began to cry--she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her
-mother's maid and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She
-wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and
-squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the
-soap dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.
-
-But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put
-ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress and half an
-hour later when we walked out of the room the pearls were around her
-neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o'clock she married Tom
-Buchanan without so much as a shiver and started off on a three months'
-trip to the South Seas.
-
-I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back and I thought I'd
-never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a
-minute she'd look around uneasily and say "Where's Tom gone?" and
-wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the
-door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour
-rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable
-delight. It was touching to see them together--it made you laugh in a
-hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa
-Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped
-a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the
-papers too because her arm was broken--she was one of the chambermaids
-in the Santa Barbara Hotel.
-
-The next April Daisy had her little girl and they went to France for a
-year. I saw them one spring in Cannes and later in Deauville and then
-they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in Chicago,
-as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich
-and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation.
-Perhaps because she doesn't drink. It's a great advantage not to drink
-among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover,
-you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else
-is so blind that they don't see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in
-for amour at all--and yet there's something in that voice of hers. . . .
-
-Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time
-in years. It was when I asked you--do you remember?--if you knew Gatsby
-in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me
-up, and said "What Gatsby?" and when I described him--I was half
-asleep--she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used
-to know. It wasn't until then that I connected this Gatsby with the
-officer in her white car.
-
-
-When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this we had left the Plaza
-for half an hour and were driving in a Victoria through Central Park.
-The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in
-the West Fifties and the clear voices of girls, already gathered like
-crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight:
-
-
-    "I'm the Sheik of Araby,
-    Your love belongs to me.
-    At night when you're are asleep,
-    Into your tent I'll creep----"
-
-
-"It was a strange coincidence," I said.
-
-"But it wasn't a coincidence at all."
-
-"Why not?"
-
-"Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay."
-
-Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired
-on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the
-womb of his purposeless splendor.
-
-"He wants to know--" continued Jordan "--if you'll invite Daisy to your
-house some afternoon and then let him come over."
-
-The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a
-mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths so that he could
-"come over" some afternoon to a stranger's garden.
-
-"Did I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?"
-
-"He's afraid. He's waited so long. He thought you might be offended.
-You see he's a regular tough underneath it all."
-
-Something worried me.
-
-"Why didn't he ask you to arrange a meeting?"
-
-"He wants her to see his house," she explained. "And your house is right
-next door."
-
-"Oh!"
-
-"I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties,
-some night," went on Jordan, "but she never did. Then he began asking
-people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found.
-It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have
-heard the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately
-suggested a luncheon in New York--and I thought he'd go mad:
-
-" 'I don't want to do anything out of the way!' he kept saying. 'I want to
-see her right next door.'
-
-"When I said you were a particular friend of Tom's he started to abandon
-the whole idea. He doesn't know very much about Tom, though he says he's
-read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse
-of Daisy's name."
-
-It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm
-around Jordan's golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to
-dinner. Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more but of
-this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and
-who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began
-to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the
-pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired."
-
-"And Daisy ought to have something in her life," murmured Jordan to me.
-
-"Does she want to see Gatsby?"
-
-"She's not to know about it. Gatsby doesn't want her to know. You're
-just supposed to invite her to tea."
-
-We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of Fifty-ninth
-Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park.
-Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan I had no girl whose disembodied face
-floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs and so I drew up the
-girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled and so
-I drew her up again, closer, this time to my face.
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 5
-
-
-
-When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that
-my house was on fire. Two o'clock and the whole corner of the peninsula
-was blazing with light which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin
-elongating glints upon the roadside wires. Turning a corner I saw that it
-was Gatsby's house, lit from tower to cellar.
-
-At first I thought it was another party, a wild rout that had resolved
-itself into "hide-and-go-seek" or "sardines-in-the-box" with all the
-house thrown open to the game. But there wasn't a sound. Only wind in
-the trees which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on again
-as if the house had winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned away I
-saw Gatsby walking toward me across his lawn.
-
-"Your place looks like the world's fair," I said.
-
-"Does it?" He turned his eyes toward it absently. "I have been glancing
-into some of the rooms. Let's go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car."
-
-"It's too late."
-
-"Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming pool? I haven't made use
-of it all summer."
-
-"I've got to go to bed."
-
-"All right."
-
-He waited, looking at me with suppressed eagerness.
-
-"I talked with Miss Baker," I said after a moment. "I'm going to call up
-Daisy tomorrow and invite her over here to tea."
-
-"Oh, that's all right," he said carelessly. "I don't want to put you to
-any trouble."
-
-"What day would suit you?"
-
-"What day would suit YOU?" he corrected me quickly. "I don't want to put
-you to any trouble, you see."
-
-"How about the day after tomorrow?" He considered for a moment. Then,
-with reluctance:
-
-"I want to get the grass cut," he said.
-
-We both looked at the grass--there was a sharp line where my ragged lawn
-ended and the darker, well-kept expanse of his began. I suspected that
-he meant my grass.
-
-"There's another little thing," he said uncertainly, and hesitated.
-
-"Would you rather put it off for a few days?" I asked.
-
-"Oh, it isn't about that. At least----" He fumbled with a series of
-beginnings. "Why, I thought--why, look here, old sport, you don't make
-much money, do you?"
-
-"Not very much."
-
-This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.
-
-"I thought you didn't, if you'll pardon my--you see, I carry on a
-little business on the side, a sort of sideline, you understand. And I
-thought that if you don't make very much--You're selling bonds, aren't
-you, old sport?"
-
-"Trying to."
-
-"Well, this would interest you. It wouldn't take up much of your
-time and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It happens to be
-a rather confidential sort of thing."
-
-I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might
-have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer was
-obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice
-except to cut him off there.
-
-"I've got my hands full," I said. "I'm much obliged but I couldn't take
-on any more work."
-
-"You wouldn't have to do any business with Wolfshiem." Evidently he
-thought that I was shying away from the "gonnegtion" mentioned at lunch,
-but I assured him he was wrong. He waited a moment longer, hoping I'd
-begin a conversation, but I was too absorbed to be responsive, so he went
-unwillingly home.
-
-The evening had made me light-headed and happy; I think I walked into a
-deep sleep as I entered my front door. So I didn't know whether or not
-Gatsby went to Coney Island or for how many hours he "glanced into
-rooms" while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the
-office next morning and invited her to come to tea.
-
-"Don't bring Tom," I warned her.
-
-"What?"
-
-"Don't bring Tom."
-
-"Who is 'Tom'?" she asked innocently.
-
-The day agreed upon was pouring rain. At eleven o'clock a man in a
-raincoat dragging a lawn-mower tapped at my front door and said that
-Mr. Gatsby had sent him over to cut my grass. This reminded me that I
-had forgotten to tell my Finn to come back so I drove into West Egg
-Village to search for her among soggy white-washed alleys and to buy
-some cups and lemons and flowers.
-
-The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o'clock a greenhouse arrived
-from Gatsby's, with innumerable receptacles to contain it. An hour
-later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby in a white flannel
-suit, silver shirt and gold-colored tie hurried in. He was pale and
-there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.
-
-"Is everything all right?" he asked immediately.
-
-"The grass looks fine, if that's what you mean."
-
-"What grass?" he inquired blankly. "Oh, the grass in the yard." He looked
-out the window at it, but judging from his expression I don't believe
-he saw a thing.
-
-"Looks very good," he remarked vaguely. "One of the papers said they
-thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was 'The Journal.' Have
-you got everything you need in the shape of--of tea?"
-
-I took him into the pantry where he looked a little reproachfully at the
-Finn. Together we scrutinized the twelve lemon cakes from the delicatessen
-shop.
-
-"Will they do?" I asked.
-
-"Of course, of course! They're fine!" and he added hollowly, ". . .old
-sport."
-
-The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp mist through which
-occasional thin drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes
-through a copy of Clay's "Economics," starting at the Finnish tread that
-shook the kitchen floor and peering toward the bleared windows from time
-to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were taking
-place outside. Finally he got up and informed me in an uncertain voice
-that he was going home.
-
-"Why's that?"
-
-"Nobody's coming to tea. It's too late!" He looked at his watch as if
-there was some pressing demand on his time elsewhere. "I can't wait
-all day."
-
-"Don't be silly; it's just two minutes to four."
-
-He sat down, miserably, as if I had pushed him, and simultaneously there
-was the sound of a motor turning into my lane. We both jumped up and,
-a little harrowed myself, I went out into the yard.
-
-Under the dripping bare lilac trees a large open car was coming up the
-drive. It stopped. Daisy's face, tipped sideways beneath a
-three-cornered lavender hat, looked out at me with a bright ecstatic
-smile.
-
-"Is this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?"
-
-The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I had
-to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone
-before any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of
-blue paint across her cheek and her hand was wet with glistening drops as
-I took it to help her from the car.
-
-"Are you in love with me," she said low in my ear. "Or why did I have
-to come alone?"
-
-"That's the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far
-away and spend an hour."
-
-"Come back in an hour, Ferdie." Then in a grave murmur, "His name is
-Ferdie."
-
-"Does the gasoline affect his nose?"
-
-"I don't think so," she said innocently. "Why?"
-
-We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living room was deserted.
-
-"Well, that's funny!" I exclaimed.
-
-"What's funny?"
-
-She turned her head as there was a light, dignified knocking at the front
-door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands
-plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of
-water glaring tragically into my eyes.
-
-With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked by me into the
-hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire and disappeared into the
-living room. It wasn't a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of my own
-heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain.
-
-For half a minute there wasn't a sound. Then from the living room I
-heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh followed by Daisy's
-voice on a clear artificial note.
-
-"I certainly am awfully glad to see you again."
-
-A pause; it endured horribly. I had nothing to do in the hall so I went
-into the room.
-
-Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the
-mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom.
-His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a
-defunct mantelpiece clock and from this position his distraught eyes
-stared down at Daisy who was sitting frightened but graceful on the
-edge of a stiff chair.
-
-"We've met before," muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at
-me and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily
-the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his
-head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers and set
-it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the
-sofa and his chin in his hand.
-
-"I'm sorry about the clock," he said.
-
-My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn't muster up
-a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head.
-
-"It's an old clock," I told them idiotically.
-
-I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on
-the floor.
-
-"We haven't met for many years," said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact
-as it could ever be.
-
-"Five years next November."
-
-The automatic quality of Gatsby's answer set us all back at least another
-minute. I had them both on their feet with the desperate suggestion that
-they help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac Finn brought it in
-on a tray.
-
-Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical decency
-established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow and while Daisy
-and I talked looked conscientiously from one to the other of us with
-tense unhappy eyes. However, as calmness wasn't an end in itself I
-made an excuse at the first possible moment and got to my feet.
-
-"Where are you going?" demanded Gatsby in immediate alarm.
-
-"I'll be back."
-
-"I've got to speak to you about something before you go."
-
-He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door and whispered:
-"Oh, God!" in a miserable way.
-
-"What's the matter?"
-
-"This is a terrible mistake," he said, shaking his head from side to
-side, "a terrible, terrible mistake."
-
-"You're just embarrassed, that's all," and luckily I added: "Daisy's
-embarrassed too."
-
-"She's embarrassed?" he repeated incredulously.
-
-"Just as much as you are."
-
-"Don't talk so loud."
-
-"You're acting like a little boy," I broke out impatiently. "Not only
-that but you're rude. Daisy's sitting in there all alone."
-
-
-He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me with unforgettable
-reproach and opening the door cautiously went back into the other room.
-
-I walked out the back way--just as Gatsby had when he had made his
-nervous circuit of the house half an hour before--and ran for a huge
-black knotted tree whose massed leaves made a fabric against the rain.
-Once more it was pouring and my irregular lawn, well-shaved by
-Gatsby's gardener, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric
-marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except
-Gatsby's enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church
-steeple, for half an hour. A brewer had built it early in the "period"
-craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay
-five years' taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would
-have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the
-heart out of his plan to Found a Family--he went into an immediate
-decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the
-door. Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always
-been obstinate about being peasantry.
-
-After half an hour the sun shone again and the grocer's automobile
-rounded Gatsby's drive with the raw material for his servants' dinner--I
-felt sure he wouldn't eat a spoonful. A maid began opening the upper
-windows of his house, appeared momentarily in each, and, leaning from a
-large central bay, spat meditatively into the garden. It was time I
-went back. While the rain continued it had seemed like the murmur of
-their voices, rising and swelling a little, now and then, with gusts of
-emotion. But in the new silence I felt that silence had fallen within
-the house too.
-
-I went in--after making every possible noise in the kitchen short of
-pushing over the stove--but I don't believe they heard a sound. They
-were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if
-some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of
-embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears and when I
-came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before
-a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding.
-He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new
-well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.
-
-"Oh, hello, old sport," he said, as if he hadn't seen me for years. I
-thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.
-
-"It's stopped raining."
-
-"Has it?" When he realized what I was talking about, that there were
-twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man,
-like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to
-Daisy. "What do you think of that? It's stopped raining."
-
-"I'm glad, Jay." Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only
-of her unexpected joy.
-
-"I want you and Daisy to come over to my house," he said, "I'd like to
-show her around."
-
-"You're sure you want me to come?"
-
-"Absolutely, old sport."
-
-Daisy went upstairs to wash her face--too late I thought with humiliation
-of my towels--while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.
-
-"My house looks well, doesn't it?" he demanded. "See how the whole
-front of it catches the light."
-
-I agreed that it was splendid.
-
-"Yes." His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. "It took
-me just three years to earn the money that bought it."
-
-"I thought you inherited your money."
-
-"I did, old sport," he said automatically, "but I lost most of it in
-the big panic--the panic of the war."
-
-I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what
-business he was in he answered "That's my affair," before he realized
-that it wasn't the appropriate reply.
-
-"Oh, I've been in several things," he corrected himself. "I was in the
-drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I'm not in either
-one now." He looked at me with more attention. "Do you mean you've been
-thinking over what I proposed the other night?"
-
-Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass
-buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.
-
-"That huge place THERE?" she cried pointing.
-
-"Do you like it?"
-
-"I love it, but I don't see how you live there all alone."
-
-"I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People who
-do interesting things. Celebrated people."
-
-Instead of taking the short cut along the Sound we went down the road and
-entered by the big postern. With enchanting murmurs Daisy admired this
-aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky, admired the
-gardens, the sparkling odor of jonquils and the frothy odor of hawthorn
-and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate.
-It was strange to reach the marble steps and find no stir of bright
-dresses in and out the door, and hear no sound but bird voices in the
-trees.
-
-And inside as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music rooms and
-Restoration salons I felt that there were guests concealed behind
-every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we
-had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of "the Merton College
-Library" I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into
-ghostly laughter.
-
-We went upstairs, through period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender
-silk and vivid with new flowers, through dressing rooms and poolrooms,
-and bathrooms with sunken baths--intruding into one chamber where a
-dishevelled man in pajamas was doing liver exercises on the floor. It
-was Mr. Klipspringer, the "boarder." I had seen him wandering hungrily
-about the beach that morning. Finally we came to Gatsby's own apartment,
-a bedroom and a bath and an Adam study, where we sat down and drank a
-glass of some Chartreuse he took from a cupboard in the wall.
-
-He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy and I think he revalued
-everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew
-from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his
-possessions in a dazed way as though in her actual and astounding
-presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a
-flight of stairs.
-
-His bedroom was the simplest room of all--except where the dresser was
-garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush
-with delight and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and
-shaded his eyes and began to laugh.
-
-"It's the funniest thing, old sport," he said hilariously. "I can't--when
-I try to----"
-
-He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third.
-After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with
-wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it
-right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an
-inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running
-down like an overwound clock.
-
-Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent
-cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and
-his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.
-
-"I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection
-of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall."
-
-He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one
-before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel
-which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in
-many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft
-rich heap mounted higher--shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in
-coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of
-Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into
-the shirts and began to cry stormily.
-
-"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the
-thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such--such beautiful
-shirts before."
-
-
-After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and the
-hydroplane and the midsummer flowers--but outside Gatsby's window it
-began to rain again so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated
-surface of the Sound.
-
-"If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said
-Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of
-your dock."
-
-Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed
-in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the
-colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared
-to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed
-very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star
-to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of
-enchanted objects had diminished by one.
-
-I began to walk about the room, examining various indefinite objects in
-the half darkness. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting
-costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk.
-
-"Who's this?"
-
-"That? That's Mr. Dan Cody, old sport."
-
-The name sounded faintly familiar.
-
-"He's dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago."
-
-There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the
-bureau--Gatsby with his head thrown back defiantly--taken apparently
-when he was about eighteen.
-
-"I adore it!" exclaimed Daisy. "The pompadour! You never told me you had
-a pompadour--or a yacht."
-
-"Look at this," said Gatsby quickly. "Here's a lot of clippings--about
-you."
-
-They stood side by side examining it. I was going to ask to see the rubies
-when the phone rang and Gatsby took up the receiver.
-
-"Yes. . . . Well, I can't talk now. . . . I can't talk now, old
-sport. . . . I said a SMALL town. . . . He must know what a small town
-is. . . . Well, he's no use to us if Detroit is his idea of a small
-town. . . ."
-
-He rang off.
-
-"Come here QUICK!" cried Daisy at the window.
-
-The rain was still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west,
-and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea.
-
-"Look at that," she whispered, and then after a moment: "I'd like to
-just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you
-around."
-
-I tried to go then, but they wouldn't hear of it; perhaps my presence
-made them feel more satisfactorily alone.
-
-"I know what we'll do," said Gatsby, "we'll have Klipspringer play the
-piano."
-
-He went out of the room calling "Ewing!" and returned in a few
-minutes accompanied by an embarrassed, slightly worn young man with
-shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blonde hair. He was now decently clothed
-in a "sport shirt" open at the neck, sneakers and duck trousers of a
-nebulous hue.
-
-"Did we interrupt your exercises?" inquired Daisy politely.
-
-"I was asleep," cried Mr. Klipspringer, in a spasm of embarrassment.
-"That is, I'd BEEN asleep. Then I got up. . . ."
-
-"Klipspringer plays the piano," said Gatsby, cutting him off. "Don't you,
-Ewing, old sport?"
-
-"I don't play well. I don't--I hardly play at all. I'm all out of
-prac----"
-
-"We'll go downstairs," interrupted Gatsby. He flipped a switch. The
-grey windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light.
-
-In the music room Gatsby turned on a solitary lamp beside the piano. He
-lit Daisy's cigarette from a trembling match, and sat down with her on
-a couch far across the room where there was no light save what the
-gleaming floor bounced in from the hall.
-
-When Klipspringer had played "The Love Nest" he turned around on the
-bench and searched unhappily for Gatsby in the gloom.
-
-"I'm all out of practice, you see. I told you I couldn't play. I'm all
-out of prac----"
-
-"Don't talk so much, old sport," commanded Gatsby. "Play!"
-
-
-    IN THE MORNING,
-    IN THE EVENING,
-       AIN'T WE GOT FUN----
-
-Outside the wind was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder along the
-Sound. All the lights were going on in West Egg now; the electric trains,
-men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain from New York. It was
-the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on
-the air.
-
-
-    ONE THING'S SURE AND NOTHING'S SURER
-    THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET--CHILDREN.
-       IN THE MEANTIME,
-       IN BETWEEN TIME----
-
-
-As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment
-had come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to
-him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five
-years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when
-Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but
-because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond
-her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative
-passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright
-feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can
-challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
-
-As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took
-hold of hers and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward
-her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most with its
-fluctuating, feverish warmth because it couldn't be over-dreamed--that
-voice was a deathless song.
-
-They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand;
-Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they
-looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out
-of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there
-together.
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 6
-
-
-
-About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one
-morning at Gatsby's door and asked him if he had anything to say.
-
-"Anything to say about what?" inquired Gatsby politely.
-
-"Why,--any statement to give out."
-
-It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard
-Gatsby's name around his office in a connection which he either
-wouldn't reveal or didn't fully understand. This was his day off
-and with laudable initiative he had hurried out "to see."
-
-It was a random shot, and yet the reporter's instinct was right. Gatsby's
-notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his
-hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased
-all summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary
-legends such as the "underground pipe-line to Canada" attached
-themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he
-didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house
-and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why
-these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North
-Dakota, isn't easy to say.
-
-James Gatz--that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had
-changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that
-witnessed the beginning of his career--when he saw Dan Cody's yacht drop
-anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz
-who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green
-jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who
-borrowed a row-boat, pulled out to the TUOLOMEE and informed Cody that
-a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.
-
-I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His
-parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people--his imagination had
-never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that
-Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic
-conception of himself. He was a son of God--a phrase which, if it means
-anything, means just that--and he must be about His Father's Business,
-the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty. So he invented
-just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be
-likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.
-
-For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of
-Lake Superior as a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other
-capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived
-naturally through the half fierce, half lazy work of the bracing days.
-He knew women early and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous
-of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others
-because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming
-self-absorption he took for granted.
-
-But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque
-and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe
-of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the
-clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet
-light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the
-pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid
-scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an
-outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the
-unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded
-securely on a fairy's wing.
-
-An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to
-the small Lutheran college of St. Olaf in southern Minnesota. He stayed
-there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of
-his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor's work with
-which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake
-Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day
-that Dan Cody's yacht dropped anchor in the shallows along shore.
-
-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 journalism
-of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five
-years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny at Little Girl Bay.
-
-To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed
-deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world. I
-suppose he smiled at Cody--he had probably discovered that people liked
-him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of
-them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick, and
-extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and
-bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers and a yachting
-cap. And when the TUOLOMEE left for the West Indies and the Barbary
-Coast Gatsby left too.
-
-He was employed in a vague personal capacity--while he remained with
-Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor,
-for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be
-about and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more
-trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years during which the
-boat went three times around the continent. It might have lasted
-indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night
-in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.
-
-I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid
-man with a hard empty face--the pioneer debauchee who during one phase
-of American life brought back to the eastern seaboard the savage
-violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to
-Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties
-women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the
-habit of letting liquor alone.
-
-And it was from Cody that he inherited money--a legacy of twenty-five
-thousand dollars. He didn't get it. He never understood the legal
-device that was used against him but what remained of the millions
-went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate
-education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the
-substantiality of a man.
-
-
-He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the
-idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which
-weren't even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of
-confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and
-nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while
-Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of
-misconceptions away.
-
-It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For
-several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone--mostly
-I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to
-ingratiate myself with her senile aunt--but finally I went over to
-his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn't been there two minutes when
-somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled,
-naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadn't happened
-before.
-
-They were a party of three on horseback--Tom and a man named Sloane and
-a pretty woman in a brown riding habit who had been there previously.
-
-"I'm delighted to see you," said Gatsby standing on his porch.
-"I'm delighted that you dropped in."
-
-As though they cared!
-
-"Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar." He walked around the room
-quickly, ringing bells. "I'll have something to drink for you in just
-a minute."
-
-He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be
-uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague
-way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. A
-lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all,
-thanks. . . . I'm sorry----
-
-"Did you have a nice ride?"
-
-"Very good roads around here."
-
-"I suppose the automobiles----"
-
-"Yeah."
-
-Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom who had accepted
-the introduction as a stranger.
-
-"I believe we've met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan."
-
-"Oh, yes," said Tom, gruffly polite but obviously not remembering.
-"So we did. I remember very well."
-
-"About two weeks ago."
-
-"That's right. You were with Nick here."
-
-"I know your wife," continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.
-
-"That so?"
-
-Tom turned to me.
-
-"You live near here, Nick?"
-
-"Next door."
-
-"That so?"
-
-Mr. Sloane didn't enter into the conversation but lounged back haughtily
-in his chair; the woman said nothing either--until unexpectedly, after
-two highballs, she became cordial.
-
-"We'll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby," she suggested.
-"What do you say?"
-
-"Certainly. I'd be delighted to have you."
-
-"Be ver' nice," said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. "Well--think ought to
-be starting home."
-
-"Please don't hurry," Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now
-and he wanted to see more of Tom. "Why don't you--why don't you stay for
-supper? I wouldn't be surprised if some other people dropped in from
-New York."
-
-"You come to supper with ME," said the lady enthusiastically.
-"Both of you."
-
-This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.
-
-"Come along," he said--but to her only.
-
-"I mean it," she insisted. "I'd love to have you. Lots of room."
-
-Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn't see
-that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn't.
-
-"I'm afraid I won't be able to," I said.
-
-"Well, you come," she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.
-
-Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.
-
-"We won't be late if we start now," she insisted aloud.
-
-"I haven't got a horse," said Gatsby. "I used to ride in the army but
-I've never bought a horse. I'll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me
-for just a minute."
-
-The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began
-an impassioned conversation aside.
-
-"My God, I believe the man's coming," said Tom. "Doesn't he know she
-doesn't want him?"
-
-"She says she does want him."
-
-"She has a big dinner party and he won't know a soul there." He frowned.
-"I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be
-old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to
-suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish."
-
-Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted
-their horses.
-
-"Come on," said Mr. Sloane to Tom, "we're late. We've got to go." And then
-to me: "Tell him we couldn't wait, will you?"
-
-Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod and
-they trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August
-foliage just as Gatsby with hat and light overcoat in hand came out
-the front door.
-
-Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the
-following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Perhaps
-his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness--it
-stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. There
-were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same
-profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion,
-but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that
-hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it,
-grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own
-standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had
-no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again,
-through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new
-eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of
-adjustment.
-
-They arrived at twilight and as we strolled out among the sparkling
-hundreds Daisy's voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
-
-"These things excite me SO," she whispered. "If you want to kiss me
-any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I'll be glad
-to arrange it for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green card.
-I'm giving out green----"
-
-"Look around," suggested Gatsby.
-
-"I'm looking around. I'm having a marvelous----"
-
-"You must see the faces of many people you've heard about."
-
-Tom's arrogant eyes roamed the crowd.
-
-"We don't go around very much," he said. "In fact I was just thinking
-I don't know a soul here."
-
-"Perhaps you know that lady." Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human
-orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy
-stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the
-recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.
-
-"She's lovely," said Daisy.
-
-"The man bending over her is her director."
-
-He took them ceremoniously from group to group:
-
-"Mrs. Buchanan . . . and Mr. Buchanan----" After an instant's hesitation
-he added: "the polo player."
-
-"Oh no," objected Tom quickly, "Not me."
-
-But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for Tom remained "the polo
-player" for the rest of the evening.
-
-"I've never met so many celebrities!" Daisy exclaimed. "I liked that
-man--what was his name?--with the sort of blue nose."
-
-Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.
-
-"Well, I liked him anyhow."
-
-"I'd a little rather not be the polo player," said Tom pleasantly, "I'd
-rather look at all these famous people in--in oblivion."
-
-Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised by his graceful,
-conservative fox-trot--I had never seen him dance before. Then they
-sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour while
-at her request I remained watchfully in the garden: "In case there's a
-fire or a flood," she explained, "or any act of God."
-
-Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together.
-"Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?" he said. "A fellow's
-getting off some funny stuff."
-
-"Go ahead," answered Daisy genially, "And if you want to take down any
-addresses here's my little gold pencil. . . ." She looked around after
-a moment and told me the girl was "common but pretty," and I knew that
-except for the half hour she'd been alone with Gatsby she wasn't having
-a good time.
-
-We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault--Gatsby had
-been called to the phone and I'd enjoyed these same people only two
-weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.
-
-"How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?"
-
-The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my
-shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.
-
-"Wha?"
-
-A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf
-with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker's defence:
-
-"Oh, she's all right now. When she's had five or six cocktails she always
-starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone."
-
-"I do leave it alone," affirmed the accused hollowly.
-
-"We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: 'There's somebody
-that needs your help, Doc.' "
-
-"She's much obliged, I'm sure," said another friend, without gratitude.
-"But you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in the pool."
-
-"Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool," mumbled Miss
-Baedeker. "They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey."
-
-"Then you ought to leave it alone," countered Doctor Civet.
-
-"Speak for yourself!" cried Miss Baedeker violently. "Your hand shakes.
-I wouldn't let you operate on me!"
-
-It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with
-Daisy and watching the moving picture director and his Star. They were
-still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except
-for a pale thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he
-had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this
-proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree
-and kiss at her cheek.
-
-"I like her," said Daisy, "I think she's lovely."
-
-But the rest offended her--and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but
-an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place"
-that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village--appalled
-by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too
-obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing
-to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed
-to understand.
-
-I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It
-was dark here in front: only the bright door sent ten square feet of
-light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a shadow
-moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow,
-an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an
-invisible glass.
-
-"Who is this Gatsby anyhow?" demanded Tom suddenly. "Some big bootlegger?"
-
-"Where'd you hear that?" I inquired.
-
-"I didn't hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are
-just big bootleggers, you know."
-
-"Not Gatsby," I said shortly.
-
-He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the drive crunched under his
-feet.
-
-"Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie
-together."
-
-A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy's fur collar.
-
-"At least they're more interesting than the people we know," she said
-with an effort.
-
-"You didn't look so interested."
-
-"Well, I was."
-
-Tom laughed and turned to me.
-
-"Did you notice Daisy's face when that girl asked her to put her under
-a cold shower?"
-
-Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper,
-bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had
-before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice
-broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and
-each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.
-
-"Lots of people come who haven't been invited," she said suddenly.
-"That girl hadn't been invited. They simply force their way in and he's
-too polite to object."
-
-"I'd like to know who he is and what he does," insisted Tom. "And I think
-I'll make a point of finding out."
-
-"I can tell you right now," she answered. "He owned some drug stores,
-a lot of drug stores. He built them up himself."
-
-The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.
-
-"Good night, Nick," said Daisy.
-
-Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps where
-"Three o'Clock in the Morning," a neat, sad little waltz of that year,
-was drifting out the open door. After all, in the very casualness of
-Gatsby's party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from
-her world. What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling
-her back inside? What would happen now in the dim incalculable hours?
-Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare
-and to be marvelled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with
-one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot
-out those five years of unwavering devotion.
-
-
-I stayed late that night. Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free
-and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party had run
-up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights were
-extinguished in the guest rooms overhead. When he came down the steps at
-last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face, and his eyes
-were bright and tired.
-
-"She didn't like it," he said immediately.
-
-"Of course she did."
-
-"She didn't like it," he insisted. "She didn't have a good time."
-
-He was silent and I guessed at his unutterable depression.
-
-"I feel far away from her," he said. "It's hard to make her understand."
-
-"You mean about the dance?"
-
-"The dance?" He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of
-his fingers. "Old sport, the dance is unimportant."
-
-He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say:
-"I never loved you." After she had obliterated three years with that
-sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken.
-One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to
-Louisville and be married from her house--just as if it were five
-years ago.
-
-"And she doesn't understand," he said. "She used to be able to
-understand. We'd sit for hours----"
-
-He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds
-and discarded favors and crushed flowers.
-
-"I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."
-
-"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
-
-He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the
-shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
-
-"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said,
-nodding determinedly. "She'll see."
-
-He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover
-something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.
-His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could
-once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he
-could find out what that thing was. . . .
-
-. . . One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down
-the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where
-there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight.
-They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night
-with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of
-the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the
-darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the
-corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really
-formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees--he could
-climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the
-pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
-
-His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his
-own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his
-unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp
-again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer
-to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed
-her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the
-incarnation was complete.
-
-Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was
-reminded of something--an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that
-I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to
-take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though
-there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But
-they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was
-uncommunicable forever.
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 7
-
-
-
-It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights
-in his house failed to go on one Saturday night--and, as obscurely as it
-had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over.
-
-Only gradually did I become aware that the automobiles which turned
-expectantly into his drive stayed for just a minute and then drove
-sulkily away. Wondering if he were sick I went over to find out--an
-unfamiliar butler with a villainous face squinted at me suspiciously
-from the door.
-
-"Is Mr. Gatsby sick?"
-
-"Nope." After a pause he added "sir" in a dilatory, grudging way.
-
-"I hadn't seen him around, and I was rather worried. Tell him Mr. Carraway
-came over."
-
-"Who?" he demanded rudely.
-
-"Carraway."
-
-"Carraway. All right, I'll tell him." Abruptly he slammed the door.
-
-My Finn informed me that Gatsby had dismissed every servant in his
-house a week ago and replaced them with half a dozen others, who never
-went into West Egg Village to be bribed by the tradesmen, but ordered
-moderate supplies over the telephone. The grocery boy reported that the
-kitchen looked like a pigsty, and the general opinion in the village was
-that the new people weren't servants at all.
-
-Next day Gatsby called me on the phone.
-
-"Going away?" I inquired.
-
-"No, old sport."
-
-"I hear you fired all your servants."
-
-"I wanted somebody who wouldn't gossip. Daisy comes over quite often--in
-the afternoons."
-
-So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the
-disapproval in her eyes.
-
-"They're some people Wolfshiem wanted to do something for. They're all
-brothers and sisters. They used to run a small hotel."
-
-"I see."
-
-He was calling up at Daisy's request--would I come to lunch at
-her house tomorrow? Miss Baker would be there. Half an hour later
-Daisy herself telephoned and seemed relieved to find that I was coming.
-Something was up. And yet I couldn't believe that they would choose
-this occasion for a scene--especially for the rather harrowing scene
-that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.
-
-The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest, of
-the summer. As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the
-hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush
-at noon. The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion;
-the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into her white
-shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her fingers,
-lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry. Her pocket-book
-slapped to the floor.
-
-"Oh, my!" she gasped.
-
-I picked it up with a weary bend and handed it back to her, holding it
-at arm's length and by the extreme tip of the corners to indicate that
-I had no designs upon it--but every one near by, including the woman,
-suspected me just the same.
-
-"Hot!" said the conductor to familiar faces. "Some weather! Hot! Hot! Hot!
-Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it . . . ?"
-
-My commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand.
-That any one should care in this heat whose flushed lips he kissed,
-whose head made damp the pajama pocket over his heart!
-
-. . . Through the hall of the Buchanans' house blew a faint wind,
-carrying the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as we
-waited at the door.
-
-"The master's body!" roared the butler into the mouthpiece. "I'm sorry,
-madame, but we can't furnish it--it's far too hot to touch this noon!"
-
-What he really said was: "Yes . . . yes . . . I'll see."
-
-He set down the receiver and came toward us, glistening slightly, to take
-our stiff straw hats.
-
-"Madame expects you in the salon!" he cried, needlessly indicating the
-direction. In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the
-common store of life.
-
-The room, shadowed well with awnings, was dark and cool. Daisy and
-Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols, weighing down
-their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans.
-
-"We can't move," they said together.
-
-Jordan's fingers, powdered white over their tan, rested for a moment in
-mine.
-
-"And Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the athlete?" I inquired.
-
-Simultaneously I heard his voice, gruff, muffled, husky, at the hall
-telephone.
-
-Gatsby stood in the center of the crimson carpet and gazed around with
-fascinated eyes. Daisy watched him and laughed, her sweet, exciting
-laugh; a tiny gust of powder rose from her bosom into the air.
-
-"The rumor is," whispered Jordan, "that that's Tom's girl on the
-telephone."
-
-We were silent. The voice in the hall rose high with annoyance.
-"Very well, then, I won't sell you the car at all. . . . I'm
-under no obligations to you at all. . . . And as for your bothering me
-about it at lunch time I won't stand that at all!"
-
-"Holding down the receiver," said Daisy cynically.
-
-"No, he's not," I assured her. "It's a bona fide deal. I happen to
-know about it."
-
-Tom flung open the door, blocked out its space for a moment with his
-thick body, and hurried into the room.
-
-"Mr. Gatsby!" He put out his broad, flat hand with well-concealed
-dislike. "I'm glad to see you, sir. . . . Nick. . . ."
-
-"Make us a cold drink," cried Daisy.
-
-As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and pulled
-his face down kissing him on the mouth.
-
-"You know I love you," she murmured.
-
-"You forget there's a lady present," said Jordan.
-
-Daisy looked around doubtfully.
-
-"You kiss Nick too."
-
-"What a low, vulgar girl!"
-
-"I don't care!" cried Daisy and began to clog on the brick fireplace.
-Then she remembered the heat and sat down guiltily on the couch just as
-a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came into the room.
-
-"Bles-sed pre-cious," she crooned, holding out her arms. "Come to your
-own mother that loves you."
-
-The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across the room and rooted
-shyly into her mother's dress.
-
-"The Bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your old yellowy
-hair? Stand up now, and say How-de-do."
-
-Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small reluctant hand.
-Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don't think he had
-ever really believed in its existence before.
-
-"I got dressed before luncheon," said the child, turning eagerly to
-Daisy.
-
-"That's because your mother wanted to show you off." Her face bent into
-the single wrinkle of the small white neck. "You dream, you. You absolute
-little dream."
-
-"Yes," admitted the child calmly. "Aunt Jordan's got on a white
-dress too."
-
-"How do you like mother's friends?" Daisy turned her around so that she
-faced Gatsby. "Do you think they're pretty?"
-
-"Where's Daddy?"
-
-"She doesn't look like her father," explained Daisy. "She looks like me.
-She's got my hair and shape of the face."
-
-Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took a step forward and held
-out her hand.
-
-"Come, Pammy."
-
-"Goodbye, sweetheart!"
-
-With a reluctant backward glance the well-disciplined child held to her
-nurse's hand and was pulled out the door, just as Tom came back,
-preceding four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice.
-
-Gatsby took up his drink.
-
-"They certainly look cool," he said, with visible tension.
-
-We drank in long greedy swallows.
-
-"I read somewhere that the sun's getting hotter every year," said Tom
-genially. "It seems that pretty soon the earth's going to fall into the
-sun--or wait a minute--it's just the opposite--the sun's getting colder
-every year.
-
-"Come outside," he suggested to Gatsby, "I'd like you to have a look at
-the place."
-
-I went with them out to the veranda. On the green Sound, stagnant in the
-heat, one small sail crawled slowly toward the fresher sea. Gatsby's eyes
-followed it momentarily; he raised his hand and pointed across the bay.
-
-"I'm right across from you."
-
-"So you are."
-
-Our eyes lifted over the rosebeds and the hot lawn and the weedy refuse
-of the dog days along shore. Slowly the white wings of the boat moved
-against the blue cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay the scalloped ocean and
-the abounding blessed isles.
-
-"There's sport for you," said Tom, nodding. "I'd like to be out there
-with him for about an hour."
-
-We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened, too, against the heat,
-and drank down nervous gayety with the cold ale.
-
-"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the
-day after that, and the next thirty years?"
-
-"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets
-crisp in the fall."
-
-"But it's so hot," insisted Daisy, on the verge of tears, "And
-everything's so confused. Let's all go to town!"
-
-Her voice struggled on through the heat, beating against it, moulding its
-senselessness into forms.
-
-"I've heard of making a garage out of a stable," Tom was saying to
-Gatsby, "but I'm the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage."
-
-"Who wants to go to town?" demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby's eyes
-floated toward her. "Ah," she cried, "you look so cool."
-
-Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space.
-With an effort she glanced down at the table.
-
-"You always look so cool," she repeated.
-
-She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was
-astounded. His mouth opened a little and he looked at Gatsby and then
-back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as some one he knew a
-long time ago.
-
-"You resemble the advertisement of the man," she went on innocently.
-"You know the advertisement of the man----"
-
-"All right," broke in Tom quickly, "I'm perfectly willing to go to
-town. Come on--we're all going to town."
-
-He got up, his eyes still flashing between Gatsby and his wife.
-No one moved.
-
-"Come on!" His temper cracked a little. "What's the matter, anyhow?
-If we're going to town let's start."
-
-His hand, trembling with his effort at self control, bore to his lips the
-last of his glass of ale. Daisy's voice got us to our feet and out on
-to the blazing gravel drive.
-
-"Are we just going to go?" she objected. "Like this? Aren't we going to
-let any one smoke a cigarette first?"
-
-"Everybody smoked all through lunch."
-
-"Oh, let's have fun," she begged him. "It's too hot to fuss."
-
-He didn't answer.
-
-"Have it your own way," she said. "Come on, Jordan."
-
-They went upstairs to get ready while we three men stood there shuffling
-the hot pebbles with our feet. A silver curve of the moon hovered already
-in the western sky. Gatsby started to speak, changed his mind, but not
-before Tom wheeled and faced him expectantly.
-
-"Have you got your stables here?" asked Gatsby with an effort.
-
-"About a quarter of a mile down the road."
-
-"Oh."
-
-A pause.
-
-"I don't see the idea of going to town," broke out Tom savagely.
-"Women get these notions in their heads----"
-
-"Shall we take anything to drink?" called Daisy from an upper window.
-
-"I'll get some whiskey," answered Tom. He went inside.
-
-Gatsby turned to me rigidly:
-
-"I can't say anything in his house, old sport."
-
-"She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked. "It's full of----"
-
-I hesitated.
-
-"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.
-
-That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money--that was
-the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the
-cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter,
-the golden girl. . . .
-
-Tom came out of the house wrapping a quart bottle in a towel, followed
-by Daisy and Jordan wearing small tight hats of metallic cloth and
-carrying light capes over their arms.
-
-"Shall we all go in my car?" suggested Gatsby. He felt the hot, green
-leather of the seat. "I ought to have left it in the shade."
-
-"Is it standard shift?" demanded Tom.
-
-"Yes."
-
-"Well, you take my coupé and let me drive your car to town."
-
-The suggestion was distasteful to Gatsby.
-
-"I don't think there's much gas," he objected.
-
-"Plenty of gas," said Tom boisterously. He looked at the gauge.
-"And if it runs out I can stop at a drug store. You can buy anything at a
-drug store nowadays."
-
-A pause followed this apparently pointless remark. Daisy looked at Tom
-frowning and an indefinable expression, at once definitely unfamiliar
-and vaguely recognizable, as if I had only heard it described in words,
-passed over Gatsby's face.
-
-"Come on, Daisy," said Tom, pressing her with his hand toward Gatsby's
-car. "I'll take you in this circus wagon."
-
-He opened the door but she moved out from the circle of his arm.
-
-"You take Nick and Jordan. We'll follow you in the coupé."
-
-She walked close to Gatsby, touching his coat with her hand. Jordan and
-Tom and I got into the front seat of Gatsby's car, Tom pushed the
-unfamiliar gears tentatively and we shot off into the oppressive heat
-leaving them out of sight behind.
-
-"Did you see that?" demanded Tom.
-
-"See what?"
-
-He looked at me keenly, realizing that Jordan and I must have known all
-along.
-
-"You think I'm pretty dumb, don't you?" he suggested. "Perhaps I am, but
-I have a--almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do.
-Maybe you don't believe that, but science----"
-
-He paused. The immediate contingency overtook him, pulled him back from
-the edge of the theoretical abyss.
-
-"I've made a small investigation of this fellow," he continued. "I could
-have gone deeper if I'd known----"
-
-"Do you mean you've been to a medium?" inquired Jordan humorously.
-
-"What?" Confused, he stared at us as we laughed. "A medium?"
-
-"About Gatsby."
-
-"About Gatsby! No, I haven't. I said I'd been making a small
-investigation of his past."
-
-"And you found he was an Oxford man," said Jordan helpfully.
-
-"An Oxford man!" He was incredulous. "Like hell he is! He wears a
-pink suit."
-
-"Nevertheless he's an Oxford man."
-
-"Oxford, New Mexico," snorted Tom contemptuously, "or something like
-that."
-
-"Listen, Tom. If you're such a snob, why did you invite him to lunch?"
-demanded Jordan crossly.
-
-"Daisy invited him; she knew him before we were married--God knows
-where!"
-
-We were all irritable now with the fading ale and, aware of it,
-we drove for a while in silence. Then as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's faded
-eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby's caution about
-gasoline.
-
-"We've got enough to get us to town," said Tom.
-
-"But there's a garage right here," objected Jordan. "I don't want to get
-stalled in this baking heat."
-
-Tom threw on both brakes impatiently and we slid to an abrupt
-dusty stop under Wilson's sign. After a moment the proprietor emerged
-from the interior of his establishment and gazed hollow-eyed at the car.
-
-"Let's have some gas!" cried Tom roughly. "What do you think we stopped
-for--to admire the view?"
-
-"I'm sick," said Wilson without moving. "I been sick all day."
-
-"What's the matter?"
-
-"I'm all run down."
-
-"Well, shall I help myself?" Tom demanded. "You sounded well enough
-on the phone."
-
-With an effort Wilson left the shade and support of the doorway and,
-breathing hard, unscrewed the cap of the tank. In the sunlight his face
-was green.
-
-"I didn't mean to interrupt your lunch," he said. "But I need money
-pretty bad and I was wondering what you were going to do with your
-old car."
-
-"How do you like this one?" inquired Tom. "I bought it last week."
-
-"It's a nice yellow one," said Wilson, as he strained at the handle.
-
-"Like to buy it?"
-
-"Big chance," Wilson smiled faintly. "No, but I could make some money
-on the other."
-
-"What do you want money for, all of a sudden?"
-
-"I've been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want to
-go west."
-
-"Your wife does!" exclaimed Tom, startled.
-
-"She's been talking about it for ten years." He rested for a moment
-against the pump, shading his eyes. "And now she's going whether she wants
-to or not. I'm going to get her away."
-
-The coupé flashed by us with a flurry of dust and the flash of a
-waving hand.
-
-"What do I owe you?" demanded Tom harshly.
-
-"I just got wised up to something funny the last two days," remarked
-Wilson. "That's why I want to get away. That's why I been bothering you
-about the car."
-
-"What do I owe you?"
-
-"Dollar twenty."
-
-The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had
-a bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions
-hadn't alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some
-sort of life apart from him in another world and the shock had
-made him physically sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made
-a parallel discovery less than an hour before--and it occurred to me
-that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so
-profound as the difference between the sick and the well. Wilson was so
-sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty--as if he had just got
-some poor girl with child.
-
-"I'll let you have that car," said Tom. "I'll send it over tomorrow
-afternoon."
-
-That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad
-glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been
-warned of something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of
-Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil but I perceived, after
-a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity
-from less than twenty feet away.
-
-In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved aside
-a little and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car. So engrossed
-was she that she had no consciousness of being observed and one
-emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly
-developing picture. Her expression was curiously familiar--it was an
-expression I had often seen on women's faces but on Myrtle Wilson's
-face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized that her
-eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan
-Baker, whom she took to be his wife.
-
-
-There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we
-drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his
-mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping
-precipitately from his control. Instinct made him step on the
-accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving
-Wilson behind, and we sped along toward Astoria at fifty miles an hour,
-until, among the spidery girders of the elevated, we came in sight of
-the easygoing blue coupé.
-
-"Those big movies around Fiftieth Street are cool," suggested Jordan.
-"I love New York on summer afternoons when every one's away. There's
-something very sensuous about it--overripe, as if all sorts of funny
-fruits were going to fall into your hands."
-
-The word "sensuous" had the effect of further disquieting Tom but before
-he could invent a protest the coupé came to a stop and Daisy signalled us
-to draw up alongside.
-
-"Where are we going?" she cried.
-
-"How about the movies?"
-
-"It's so hot," she complained. "You go. We'll ride around and meet you
-after." With an effort her wit rose faintly, "We'll meet you on some
-corner. I'll be the man smoking two cigarettes."
-
-"We can't argue about it here," Tom said impatiently as a truck gave
-out a cursing whistle behind us. "You follow me to the south side of
-Central Park, in front of the Plaza."
-
-Several times he turned his head and looked back for their car,
-and if the traffic delayed them he slowed up until they came into
-sight. I think he was afraid they would dart down a side street and out
-of his life forever.
-
-But they didn't. And we all took the less explicable step of engaging
-the parlor of a suite in the Plaza Hotel.
-
-The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into
-that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the
-course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my
-legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back. The
-notion originated with Daisy's suggestion that we hire five bathrooms
-and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as "a place to
-have a mint julep." Each of us said over and over that it was a "crazy
-idea"--we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and thought, or
-pretended to think, that we were being very funny. . . .
-
-The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four
-o'clock, opening the windows admitted only a gust of hot shrubbery from
-the Park. Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to us,
-fixing her hair.
-
-"It's a swell suite," whispered Jordan respectfully and every one
-laughed.
-
-"Open another window," commanded Daisy, without turning around.
-
-"There aren't any more."
-
-"Well, we'd better telephone for an axe----"
-
-"The thing to do is to forget about the heat," said Tom impatiently.
-"You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it."
-
-He unrolled the bottle of whiskey from the towel and put it on the table.
-
-"Why not let her alone, old sport?" remarked Gatsby. "You're the one that
-wanted to come to town."
-
-There was a moment of silence. The telephone book slipped from its nail
-and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered "Excuse me"--but
-this time no one laughed.
-
-"I'll pick it up," I offered.
-
-"I've got it." Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered "Hum!" in an
-interested way, and tossed the book on a chair.
-
-"That's a great expression of yours, isn't it?" said Tom sharply.
-
-"What is?"
-
-"All this 'old sport' business. Where'd you pick that up?"
-
-"Now see here, Tom," said Daisy, turning around from the mirror, "if
-you're going to make personal remarks I won't stay here a minute. Call
-up and order some ice for the mint julep."
-
-As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and
-we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March
-from the ballroom below.
-
-"Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!" cried Jordan dismally.
-
-"Still--I was married in the middle of June," Daisy remembered,
-"Louisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?"
-
-"Biloxi," he answered shortly.
-
-"A man named Biloxi. 'Blocks' Biloxi, and he made boxes--that's a
-fact--and he was from Biloxi, Tennessee."
-
-"They carried him into my house," appended Jordan, "because we lived
-just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy
-told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy died." After a
-moment she added as if she might have sounded irreverent, "There
-wasn't any connection."
-
-"I used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis," I remarked.
-
-"That was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he left.
-He gave me an aluminum putter that I use today."
-
-The music had died down as the ceremony began and now a long cheer floated
-in at the window, followed by intermittent cries of "Yea--ea--ea!"
-and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began.
-
-"We're getting old," said Daisy. "If we were young we'd rise and dance."
-
-"Remember Biloxi," Jordan warned her. "Where'd you know him, Tom?"
-
-"Biloxi?" He concentrated with an effort. "I didn't know him. He was a
-friend of Daisy's."
-
-"He was not," she denied. "I'd never seen him before. He came down in
-the private car."
-
-"Well, he said he knew you. He said he was raised in Louisville.
-Asa Bird brought him around at the last minute and asked if we had room
-for him."
-
-Jordan smiled.
-
-"He was probably bumming his way home. He told me he was president of
-your class at Yale."
-
-Tom and I looked at each other blankly.
-
-"BilOxi?"
-
-"First place, we didn't have any president----"
-
-Gatsby's foot beat a short, restless tattoo and Tom eyed him suddenly.
-
-"By the way, Mr. Gatsby, I understand you're an Oxford man."
-
-"Not exactly."
-
-"Oh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford."
-
-"Yes--I went there."
-
-A pause. Then Tom's voice, incredulous and insulting:
-
-"You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven."
-
-Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint and ice but
-the silence was unbroken by his "Thank you" and the soft closing of the
-door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared up at last.
-
-"I told you I went there," said Gatsby.
-
-"I heard you, but I'd like to know when."
-
-"It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That's why I
-can't really call myself an Oxford man."
-
-Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief. But we were all
-looking at Gatsby.
-
-"It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the
-Armistice," he continued. "We could go to any of the universities in
-England or France."
-
-I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those renewals
-of complete faith in him that I'd experienced before.
-
-Daisy rose, smiling faintly, and went to the table.
-
-"Open the whiskey, Tom," she ordered. "And I'll make you a mint julep.
-Then you won't seem so stupid to yourself. . . . Look at the mint!"
-
-"Wait a minute," snapped Tom, "I want to ask Mr. Gatsby one more
-question."
-
-"Go on," Gatsby said politely.
-
-"What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?"
-
-They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.
-
-"He isn't causing a row." Daisy looked desperately from one to the
-other. "You're causing a row. Please have a little self control."
-
-"Self control!" repeated Tom incredulously. "I suppose the latest thing
-is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.
-Well, if that's the idea you can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin
-by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they'll
-throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black
-and white."
-
-Flushed with his impassioned gibberish he saw himself standing alone on
-the last barrier of civilization.
-
-"We're all white here," murmured Jordan.
-
-"I know I'm not very popular. I don't give big parties. I suppose
-you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any
-friends--in the modern world."
-
-Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened
-his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.
-
-"I've got something to tell YOU, old sport,----" began Gatsby. But Daisy
-guessed at his intention.
-
-"Please don't!" she interrupted helplessly. "Please let's all go home.
-Why don't we all go home?"
-
-"That's a good idea." I got up. "Come on, Tom. Nobody wants a drink."
-
-"I want to know what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me."
-
-"Your wife doesn't love you," said Gatsby. "She's never loved you.
-She loves me."
-
-"You must be crazy!" exclaimed Tom automatically.
-
-Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement.
-
-"She never loved you, do you hear?" he cried. "She only married you
-because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible
-mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me!"
-
-At this point Jordan and I tried to go but Tom and Gatsby insisted with
-competitive firmness that we remain--as though neither of them had
-anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously
-of their emotions.
-
-"Sit down Daisy." Tom's voice groped unsuccessfully for the paternal
-note. "What's been going on? I want to hear all about it."
-
-"I told you what's been going on," said Gatsby. "Going on for five
-years--and you didn't know."
-
-Tom turned to Daisy sharply.
-
-"You've been seeing this fellow for five years?"
-
-"Not seeing," said Gatsby. "No, we couldn't meet. But both of us loved
-each other all that time, old sport, and you didn't know. I used to laugh
-sometimes--"but there was no laughter in his eyes, "to think that you
-didn't know."
-
-"Oh--that's all." Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a clergyman
-and leaned back in his chair.
-
-"You're crazy!" he exploded. "I can't speak about what happened five years
-ago, because I didn't know Daisy then--and I'll be damned if I see how you
-got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back
-door. But all the rest of that's a God Damned lie. Daisy loved me when
-she married me and she loves me now."
-
-"No," said Gatsby, shaking his head.
-
-"She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas
-in her head and doesn't know what she's doing." He nodded sagely. "And
-what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree
-and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I
-love her all the time."
-
-"You're revolting," said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice,
-dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: "Do you
-know why we left Chicago? I'm surprised that they didn't treat you to
-the story of that little spree."
-
-Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.
-
-"Daisy, that's all over now," he said earnestly. "It doesn't matter any
-more. Just tell him the truth--that you never loved him--and it's all
-wiped out forever."
-
-She looked at him blindly. "Why,--how could I love him--possibly?"
-
-"You never loved him."
-
-She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal,
-as though she realized at last what she was doing--and as though she had
-never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now.
-It was too late.
-
-"I never loved him," she said, with perceptible reluctance.
-
-"Not at Kapiolani?" demanded Tom suddenly.
-
-"No."
-
-From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up
-on hot waves of air.
-
-"Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes
-dry?" There was a husky tenderness in his tone. ". . . Daisy?"
-
-"Please don't." Her voice was cold, but the rancour was gone from it.
-She looked at Gatsby. "There, Jay," she said--but her hand as she tried
-to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette and
-the burning match on the carpet.
-
-"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now--isn't that
-enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly.
-"I did love him once--but I loved you too."
-
-Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.
-
-"You loved me TOO?" he repeated.
-
-"Even that's a lie," said Tom savagely. "She didn't know you were alive.
-Why,--there're things between Daisy and me that you'll never know,
-things that neither of us can ever forget."
-
-The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
-
-"I want to speak to Daisy alone," he insisted. "She's all excited now----"
-
-"Even alone I can't say I never loved Tom," she admitted in a pitiful
-voice. "It wouldn't be true."
-
-"Of course it wouldn't," agreed Tom.
-
-She turned to her husband.
-
-"As if it mattered to you," she said.
-
-"Of course it matters. I'm going to take better care of you from now on."
-
-"You don't understand," said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. "You're not
-going to take care of her any more."
-
-"I'm not?" Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to
-control himself now. "Why's that?"
-
-"Daisy's leaving you."
-
-"Nonsense."
-
-"I am, though," she said with a visible effort.
-
-"She's not leaving me!" Tom's words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby.
-"Certainly not for a common swindler who'd have to steal the ring he
-put on her finger."
-
-"I won't stand this!" cried Daisy. "Oh, please let's get out."
-
-"Who are you, anyhow?" broke out Tom. "You're one of that bunch that
-hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem--that much I happen to know. I've made
-a little investigation into your affairs--and I'll carry it further
-tomorrow."
-
-"You can suit yourself about that, old sport." said Gatsby steadily.
-
-"I found out what your 'drug stores' were." He turned to us and spoke
-rapidly. "He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug stores
-here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of
-his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw
-him and I wasn't far wrong."
-
-"What about it?" said Gatsby politely. "I guess your friend Walter Chase
-wasn't too proud to come in on it."
-
-"And you left him in the lurch, didn't you? You let him go to jail for
-a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the subject
-of YOU."
-
-"He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old
-sport."
-
-"Don't you call me 'old sport'!" cried Tom. Gatsby said nothing.
-"Walter could have you up on the betting laws too, but Wolfshiem scared
-him into shutting his mouth."
-
-That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsby's face.
-
-"That drug store business was just small change," continued Tom slowly,
-"but you've got something on now that Walter's afraid to tell me
-about."
-
-I glanced at Daisy who was staring terrified between Gatsby
-and her husband and at Jordan who had begun to balance an invisible
-but absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to
-Gatsby--and was startled at his expression. He looked--and this is said
-in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden--as if he had
-"killed a man." For a moment the set of his face could be described in
-just that fantastic way.
-
-It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything,
-defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with
-every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave
-that up and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped
-away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling
-unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.
-
-The voice begged again to go.
-
-"PLEASE, Tom! I can't stand this any more."
-
-Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage
-she had had, were definitely gone.
-
-"You two start on home, Daisy," said Tom. "In Mr. Gatsby's car."
-
-She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.
-
-"Go on. He won't annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous
-little flirtation is over."
-
-They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated,
-like ghosts even from our pity.
-
-After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of
-whiskey in the towel.
-
-"Want any of this stuff? Jordan? . . . Nick?"
-
-I didn't answer.
-
-"Nick?" He asked again.
-
-"What?"
-
-"Want any?"
-
-"No . . . I just remembered that today's my birthday."
-
-I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous menacing road of a
-new decade.
-
-It was seven o'clock when we got into the coupé with him and started
-for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his
-voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign 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
-brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside
-me who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten
-dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face
-fell lazily against my coat's shoulder and the formidable stroke of
-thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.
-
-So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
-
-
-The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the
-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.
-
-"I've got my wife locked in up there," explained Wilson calmly.
-"She's going to stay there till the day after tomorrow and then we're
-going to move away."
-
-Michaelis was astonished; they had been 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.
-
-So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson
-wouldn't say a word--instead he began to throw curious, suspicious
-glances at his visitor and ask him what he'd been doing at certain
-times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy some
-workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant and Michaelis took
-the opportunity to get away, intending to come back later. But he didn't.
-He supposed he forgot to, that's all. When he came outside again
-a little after seven he was reminded of the conversation because he
-heard Mrs. Wilson's voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in the garage.
-
-"Beat me!" he heard her cry. "Throw me down and beat me, you dirty
-little coward!"
-
-A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and
-shouting; before he could move from his door the business was over.
-
-The "death car" as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out
-of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then
-disappeared around the next bend. 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.
-
-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.
-
-
-We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still
-some distance away.
-
-"Wreck!" said Tom. "That's good. Wilson'll have a little business
-at last."
-
-He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping until,
-as we came nearer, the hushed intent faces of the people at the garage
-door made him automatically put on the brakes.
-
-"We'll take a look," he said doubtfully, "just a look."
-
-I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued incessantly
-from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coupé and walked
-toward the door resolved itself into the words "Oh, my God!" uttered over
-and over in a gasping moan.
-
-"There's some bad trouble here," said Tom excitedly.
-
-He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle of heads into the
-garage which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging 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.
-
-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
-disarranged the line and Jordan and I were pushed suddenly inside.
-
-Myrtle Wilson's body wrapped in a blanket and then in another
-blanket as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night lay on a
-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.
-
-"O, my Ga-od! O, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!"
-
-Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and after staring around the
-garage with glazed eyes addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to the
-policeman.
-
-"M-a-v--" the policeman was saying, "--o----"
-
-"No,--r--" corrected the man, "M-a-v-r-o----"
-
-"Listen to me!" muttered Tom fiercely.
-
-"r--" said the policeman, "o----"
-
-"g----"
-
-"g--" He looked up as Tom's broad hand fell sharply on his shoulder.
-"What you want, fella?"
-
-"What happened--that's what I want to know!"
-
-"Auto hit her. Ins'antly killed."
-
-"Instantly killed," repeated Tom, staring.
-
-"She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn't even stopus car."
-
-"There was two cars," said Michaelis, "one comin', one goin', see?"
-
-"Going where?" asked the policeman keenly.
-
-"One goin' each way. Well, she--" His hand rose toward the blankets but
-stopped 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."
-
-"What's the name of this place here?" demanded the officer.
-
-"Hasn't got any name."
-
-A pale, well-dressed Negro stepped near.
-
-"It was a yellow car," he said, "big yellow car. New."
-
-"See the accident?" asked the policeman.
-
-"No, but the car passed me down the road, going faster'n forty. Going
-fifty, sixty."
-
-"Come here and let's have your name. Look out now. I want to get his
-name."
-
-Some words of this conversation must have reached Wilson swaying
-in the office door, for suddenly a new theme found voice among
-his gasping cries.
-
-"You don't have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind of
-car it was!"
-
-Watching Tom I saw the wad of muscle back of his shoulder tighten
-under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wilson and standing
-in front of him seized him firmly by the upper arms.
-
-"You've got to pull yourself together," he said with soothing
-gruffness.
-
-Wilson's eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tiptoes and then
-would have collapsed to his knees had not Tom held him upright.
-
-"Listen," said Tom, shaking him a little. "I just got here a minute ago,
-from New York. I was bringing you that coupé we've been talking about.
-That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn't mine, do you hear? I
-haven't seen it all afternoon."
-
-Only the Negro and I were near enough to hear what he said but the
-policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with truculent
-eyes.
-
-"What's all that?" he demanded.
-
-"I'm a friend of his." Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on
-Wilson's body. "He says he knows the car that did it. . . . It was a yellow
-car."
-
-Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look suspiciously at Tom.
-
-"And what color's your car?"
-
-"It's a blue car, a coupé."
-
-"We've come straight from New York," I said.
-
-Some one who had been driving a little behind us confirmed this and
-the policeman turned away.
-
-"Now, if you'll let me have that name again correct----"
-
-Picking up Wilson like a doll Tom carried him into the office,
-set him down in a chair and came back.
-
-"If somebody'll come here and sit with him!" he snapped
-authoritatively. He watched while the two men standing closest glanced
-at each other and went unwillingly into the room. Then Tom shut the
-door on them and came down the single step, his eyes avoiding the
-table. As he passed close to me he whispered "Let's get out."
-
-Self consciously, with his authoritative arms breaking the way, we
-pushed through the still gathering crowd, passing a hurried doctor,
-case in hand, who had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago.
-
-Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend--then his foot came down
-hard and the coupé raced along through the night. In a little while I
-heard a low husky sob and saw that the tears were overflowing down his
-face.
-
-"The God Damn coward!" he whimpered. "He didn't even stop his car."
-
-
-The Buchanans' house floated suddenly toward us through the dark rustling
-trees. Tom stopped beside the porch and looked up at the second floor
-where two windows bloomed with light among the vines.
-
-"Daisy's home," he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me and
-frowned slightly.
-
-"I ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There's nothing we can
-do tonight."
-
-A change had come over him and he spoke gravely, and with decision.
-As we walked across the moonlight gravel to the porch he disposed of
-the situation in a few brisk phrases.
-
-"I'll telephone for a taxi to take you home, and while you're waiting
-you and Jordan better go in the kitchen and have them get you some
-supper--if you want any." He opened the door. "Come in."
-
-"No thanks. But I'd be glad if you'd order me the taxi. I'll wait
-outside."
-
-Jordan put her hand on my arm.
-
-"Won't you come in, Nick?"
-
-"No thanks."
-
-I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jordan lingered
-for a moment more.
-
-"It's only half past nine," she said.
-
-I'd be damned if I'd go in; I'd had enough of all of them for one day
-and suddenly that included Jordan too. She must have seen something of
-this in my expression for she turned abruptly away and ran up the
-porch steps into the house. I sat down for a few minutes with my head
-in my hands, until I heard the phone taken up inside and the butler's
-voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the drive away from the
-house intending to wait by the gate.
-
-I hadn't gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped from
-between two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird by that
-time because I could think of nothing except the luminosity of his
-pink suit under the moon.
-
-"What are you doing?" I inquired.
-
-"Just standing here, old sport."
-
-Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he was going
-to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn't have been surprised to see
-sinister faces, the faces of "Wolfshiem's people," behind him in the
-dark shrubbery.
-
-"Did you see any trouble on the road?" he asked after a minute.
-
-"Yes."
-
-He hesitated.
-
-"Was she killed?"
-
-"Yes."
-
-"I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It's better that the shock
-should all come at once. She stood it pretty well."
-
-He spoke as if Daisy's reaction was the only thing that mattered.
-
-"I got to West Egg by a side road," he went on, "and left the car in my
-garage. I don't think anybody saw us but of course I can't be sure."
-
-I disliked him so much by this time that I didn't find it necessary to
-tell him he was wrong.
-
-"Who was the woman?" he inquired.
-
-"Her name was Wilson. Her husband owns the garage. How the devil did it
-happen?"
-
-"Well, I tried to swing the wheel----" He broke off, and suddenly I
-guessed at the truth.
-
-"Was Daisy driving?"
-
-"Yes," he said after a moment, "but of course I'll say I was. You see,
-when we left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would
-steady her to drive--and this woman rushed out at us just as we were
-passing a car coming the other way. It all happened in a minute but it
-seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were somebody
-she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward the other
-car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back. The second my hand
-reached the wheel I felt the shock--it must have killed her instantly."
-
-"It ripped her open----"
-
-"Don't tell me, old sport." He winced. "Anyhow--Daisy stepped on it.
-I tried to make her stop, but she couldn't so I pulled on the emergency
-brake. Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on.
-
-"She'll be all right tomorrow," he said presently. "I'm just going to
-wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness
-this afternoon. She's locked herself into her room and if he tries any
-brutality she's going to turn the light out and on again."
-
-"He won't touch her," I said. "He's not thinking about her."
-
-"I don't trust him, old sport."
-
-"How long are you going to wait?"
-
-"All night if necessary. Anyhow till they all go to bed."
-
-A new point of view occurred to me. Suppose Tom found out that Daisy had
-been driving. He might think he saw a connection in it--he might think
-anything. I looked at the house: there were two or three bright windows
-downstairs and the pink glow from Daisy's room on the second floor.
-
-"You wait here," I said. "I'll see if there's any sign of a commotion."
-
-I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel softly
-and tiptoed up the veranda steps. The drawing-room curtains were open,
-and I saw that the room was empty. Crossing the porch where we had dined
-that June night three months before I came to a small rectangle of light
-which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind was drawn but I found
-a rift at the sill.
-
-Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table
-with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of
-ale. He was talking intently across the table at her and in his
-earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a
-while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.
-
-They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the
-ale--and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air
-of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that
-they were conspiring together.
-
-As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the
-dark road toward the house. Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in
-the drive.
-
-"Is it all quiet up there?" he asked anxiously.
-
-"Yes, it's all quiet." I hesitated. "You'd better come home and get
-some sleep."
-
-He shook his head.
-
-"I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport."
-
-He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his
-scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of
-the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the
-moonlight--watching over nothing.
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 8
-
-
-
-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.
-
-Crossing his lawn I saw that his front door was still open and he was
-leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep.
-
-"Nothing happened," he said wanly. "I waited, and about four o'clock she
-came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out
-the light."
-
-His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we
-hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside curtains
-that were like pavilions and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for
-electric light switches--once I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the
-keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount of dust
-everywhere and the rooms were musty as though they hadn't been aired for
-many days. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table with two stale dry
-cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French windows of the
-drawing-room we sat smoking out into the darkness.
-
-"You ought to go away," I said. "It's pretty certain they'll trace
-your car."
-
-"Go away NOW, old sport?"
-
-"Go to Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal."
-
-He wouldn't consider it. He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he knew
-what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and I
-couldn't bear to shake him free.
-
-It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with
-Dan Cody--told it to me because "Jay Gatsby" had broken up like glass
-against Tom's hard malice and the long secret extravaganza was played
-out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything, now, without
-reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.
-
-She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed
-capacities he had come in contact with such people but always
-with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly
-desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers
-from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him--he had never been
-in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless
-intensity was that Daisy lived there--it was as casual a thing to her
-as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it,
-a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other
-bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its
-corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in
-lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining
-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.
-
-But he knew that he was in Daisy's house by a colossal accident.
-However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a
-penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible
-cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made
-the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and
-unscrupulously--eventually he took Daisy one still October night,
-took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.
-
-He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under
-false 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.
-
-But he didn't despise himself and it didn't turn out as he had
-imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go--but
-now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail.
-He knew that Daisy was extraordinary but he didn't realize just how
-extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. She vanished into her rich
-house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby--nothing. He felt
-married to her, that was all.
-
-When they met again two days later it was Gatsby who was breathless,
-who was somehow betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought
-luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably
-as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth.
-She had caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more charming
-than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery
-that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes
-and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot
-struggles of the poor.
-
-
-"I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her,
-old sport. I even hoped for a while that she'd throw me over, but she
-didn't, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot
-because I knew different things from her. . . . Well, there I was,
-way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and
-all of a sudden I didn't care. What was the use of doing great
-things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going
-to do?"
-
-On the last afternoon before he went abroad he sat with Daisy in
-his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day with fire
-in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he
-changed his arm a little and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The
-afternoon had made them tranquil for a while as if to give them a deep
-memory for the long parting the next day promised. They had never been
-closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one
-with another than when she brushed silent lips against his coat's
-shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though
-she were asleep.
-
-
-He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a captain before he went
-to the front and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and
-the command of the divisional machine guns. After the Armistice
-he tried frantically to get home but some complication or
-misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now--there
-was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters. She didn't see why
-he couldn't come. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside
-and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be
-reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.
-
-For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids
-and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of
-the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new
-tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the
-"Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver
-slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were
-always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low sweet fever,
-while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the
-sad horns around the floor.
-
-Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the
-season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with
-half a dozen men and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and
-chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor
-beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a
-decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately--and the decision
-must be made by some force--of love, of money, of unquestionable
-practicality--that was close at hand.
-
-That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom
-Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his
-position and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain
-struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was
-still at Oxford.
-
-
-It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of
-the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey turning,
-gold turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew
-and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a
-slow pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool
-lovely day.
-
-"I don't think she ever loved him." Gatsby turned around from a window
-and looked at me challengingly. "You must remember, old sport, she was
-very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that
-frightened her--that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper.
-And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying."
-
-He sat down gloomily.
-
-"Of course she might have loved him, just for a minute, when they were
-first married--and loved me more even then, do you see?"
-
-Suddenly he came out with a curious remark:
-
-"In any case," he said, "it was just personal."
-
-What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in
-his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured?
-
-He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding
-trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville
-on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the
-streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the
-November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which
-they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had always
-seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses so his
-idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded
-with a melancholy beauty.
-
-He left feeling that if he had searched harder he might have found
-her--that he was leaving her behind. The day-coach--he was penniless
-now--was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a
-folding-chair, and the station slid away and the backs of unfamiliar
-buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields, where a yellow
-trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have
-seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street.
-
-The track curved and now it was going away from the sun which, as it
-sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing
-city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand
-desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of
-the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too
-fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of
-it, the freshest and the best, forever.
-
-
-It was nine o'clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the
-porch. The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there
-was an autumn flavor in the air. The gardener, the last one of Gatsby's
-former servants, came to the foot of the steps.
-
-"I'm going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves'll start falling
-pretty soon and then there's always trouble with the pipes."
-
-"Don't do it today," Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically.
-"You know, old sport, I've never used that pool all summer?"
-
-I looked at my watch and stood up.
-
-"Twelve minutes to my train."
-
-I didn't want to go to the city. I wasn't worth a decent stroke of work
-but it was more than that--I didn't want to leave Gatsby. I missed that
-train, and then another, before I could get myself away.
-
-"I'll call you up," I said finally.
-
-"Do, old sport."
-
-"I'll call you about noon."
-
-We walked slowly down the steps.
-
-"I suppose Daisy'll call too." He looked at me anxiously as if he
-hoped I'd corroborate this.
-
-"I suppose so."
-
-"Well--goodbye."
-
-We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I
-remembered something and turned around.
-
-"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the
-whole damn bunch put together."
-
-I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave
-him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded
-politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding
-smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time.
-His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of 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 goodbye.
-
-I thanked him for his hospitality. We were always thanking him for
-that--I and the others.
-
-"Goodbye," I called. "I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby."
-
-
-Up in the city I tried for a while to list the quotations on an
-interminable amount of stock, then I fell asleep in my swivel-chair.
-Just before noon the phone woke me and I started up with sweat
-breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called
-me up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements
-between hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find
-in any other way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something
-fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf links had come
-sailing in at the office window but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.
-
-"I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm at Hempstead and I'm going down
-to Southampton this afternoon."
-
-Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act
-annoyed me and her next remark made me rigid.
-
-"You weren't so nice to me last night."
-
-"How could it have mattered then?"
-
-Silence for a moment. Then--
-
-"However--I want to see you."
-
-"I want to see you too."
-
-"Suppose I don't go to Southampton, and come into town this afternoon?"
-
-"No--I don't think this afternoon."
-
-"Very well."
-
-"It's impossible this afternoon. Various----"
-
-We talked like that for a while and then abruptly we weren't talking any
-longer. I don't know which of us hung up with a sharp click but I know I
-didn't care. I couldn't have talked to her across a tea-table that day if
-I never talked to her again in this world.
-
-I called Gatsby's house a few minutes later, but the line was busy. I
-tried four times; finally an exasperated central told me the wire was
-being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out my
-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.
-
-
-When I passed the ashheaps on the train that morning I had crossed
-deliberately to the other side of the car. I suppose there'd be a
-curious crowd around there all day with little boys searching for dark
-spots in the dust and some garrulous man telling over and over what
-had happened until it became less and less real even to him and he
-could tell it no longer and Myrtle Wilson's tragic achievement was
-forgotten. Now I want to go back a little and tell what happened at the
-garage after we left there the night before.
-
-They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. She must
-have broken her rule against drinking that night for when she
-arrived she was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the
-ambulance had already gone to Flushing. When they convinced her of
-this she immediately fainted as if that was the intolerable part of
-the affair. Someone kind or curious took her in his car and drove
-her in the wake of her sister's body.
-
-Until long after midnight a changing crowd lapped up against the front
-of the garage while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on the
-couch inside. For a while the door of the office was open and
-everyone who came into the garage glanced irresistibly through it.
-Finally someone said it was a shame and closed the door. Michaelis and
-several other men were with him--first four or five men, later two or
-three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask the last stranger to wait
-there fifteen minutes longer while he went back to his own place and made
-a pot of coffee. After that he stayed there alone with Wilson until dawn.
-
-About three o'clock the quality of Wilson's incoherent muttering
-changed--he grew quieter and began to talk about the yellow car. He
-announced that he had a way of finding out whom the yellow car belonged
-to, and then he blurted out that a couple of months ago his wife had
-come from the city with her face bruised and her nose swollen.
-
-But when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry "Oh,
-my God!" again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt
-to distract him.
-
-"How long have you been married, George? Come on there, try and sit
-still a minute and answer my question. How long have you been married?"
-
-"Twelve years."
-
-"Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit still--I asked you a
-question. Did you ever have any children?"
-
-The hard brown beetles kept thudding against the dull light and whenever
-Michaelis heard a car go tearing along the road outside it sounded to him
-like the car that hadn't stopped a few hours before. He didn't like to go
-into the garage because the work bench was stained where the body had
-been lying so he moved uncomfortably around the office--he knew every
-object in it before morning--and from time to time sat down beside Wilson
-trying to keep him more quiet.
-
-"Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you
-haven't been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church
-and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?"
-
-"Don't belong to any."
-
-"You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must have
-gone to church once. Didn't you get married in a church? Listen, George,
-listen to me. Didn't you get married in a church?"
-
-"That was a long time ago."
-
-The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking--for a moment he
-was silent. Then the same half knowing, half bewildered look came back
-into his faded eyes.
-
-"Look in the drawer there," he said, pointing at the desk.
-
-"Which drawer?"
-
-"That drawer--that one."
-
-Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it but
-a small expensive dog leash made of leather and braided silver. It was
-apparently new.
-
-"This?" he inquired, holding it up.
-
-Wilson stared and nodded.
-
-"I found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it but I
-knew it was something funny."
-
-"You mean your wife bought it?"
-
-"She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau."
-
-Michaelis didn't see anything odd in that and he gave Wilson a dozen
-reasons why his wife might have bought the dog leash. But conceivably
-Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before, from Myrtle,
-because he began saying "Oh, my God!" again in a whisper--his comforter
-left several explanations in the air.
-
-"Then he killed her," said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly.
-
-"Who did?"
-
-"I have a way of finding out."
-
-"You're morbid, George," said his friend. "This has been a strain to you
-and you don't know what you're saying. You'd better try and sit quiet
-till morning."
-
-"He murdered her."
-
-"It was an accident, George."
-
-Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly
-with the ghost of a superior "Hm!"
-
-"I know," he said definitely, "I'm one of these trusting fellas and I
-don't think any harm to NObody, but when I get to know a thing I know
-it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he
-wouldn't stop."
-
-Michaelis had seen this too but it hadn't occurred to him that there was
-any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson had been
-running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any
-particular car.
-
-"How could she of been like that?"
-
-"She's a deep one," said Wilson, as if that answered the question.
-"Ah-h-h----"
-
-He began to rock again and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in
-his hand.
-
-"Maybe you got some friend that I could telephone for, George?"
-
-This was a forlorn hope--he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend:
-there was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a little later when
-he noticed a change in the room, a blue quickening by the window, and
-realized that dawn wasn't far off. About five o'clock it was blue enough
-outside to snap off the light.
-
-Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small grey
-clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint
-dawn wind.
-
-"I spoke to her," he muttered, after a long silence. "I told her she might
-fool me but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window--" With an
-effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face
-pressed against it, "--and I said 'God knows what you've been doing,
-everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God!' "
-
-Standing behind him Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the
-eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg which had just emerged pale and enormous
-from the dissolving night.
-
-"God sees everything," repeated Wilson.
-
-"That's an advertisement," Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn
-away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a
-long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.
-
-
-By six o'clock Michaelis was worn out and grateful for the sound of a
-car stopping outside. It was one of the watchers of the night before
-who had promised to come back so he cooked breakfast for three which
-he and the other man ate together. Wilson was quieter now and Michaelis
-went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and hurried back to the
-garage Wilson was gone.
-
-His movements--he was on foot all the time--were afterward traced to Port
-Roosevelt and then to Gad's Hill where he bought a sandwich that he
-didn't eat and a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and walking
-slowly for he didn't reach Gad's Hill until noon. Thus far there was
-no difficulty in accounting for his time--there were boys who had seen a
-man "acting sort of crazy" and motorists at whom he stared oddly from
-the side of the road. Then for three hours he disappeared from view.
-The police, on the strength of what he said to Michaelis, that he "had
-a way of finding out," supposed that he spent that time going from
-garage to garage thereabouts inquiring for a yellow car. On the other
-hand no garage man who had seen him ever came forward--and perhaps he
-had an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted to know. By
-half past two he was in West Egg where he asked someone the way to
-Gatsby's house. So by that time he knew Gatsby's name.
-
-
-At two o'clock Gatsby put on his bathing suit and left word with the
-butler that if 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.
-
-Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he
-stopped and shifted it a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he
-needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among
-the yellowing trees.
-
-No telephone message arrived but the butler went without his sleep and
-waited for it until four o'clock--until long after there was 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.
-
-The chauffeur--he was one of Wolfshiem'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.
-
-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 compass, a thin red circle
-in the water.
-
-It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener
-saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was
-complete.
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 9
-
-
-
-After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the
-next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and
-newspaper men in and out of Gatsby's front door. A rope stretched
-across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but
-little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard and
-there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool.
-Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the
-expression "mad man" as he bent over Wilson's body that afternoon, and
-the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper
-reports next morning.
-
-Most of those reports were a nightmare--grotesque, circumstantial,
-eager and untrue. When Michaelis's testimony at the inquest brought to
-light Wilson's suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would
-shortly be served up in racy pasquinade--but Catherine, who might have
-said anything, didn't say a word. She showed a surprising amount of
-character about it too--looked at the coroner with determined eyes under
-that corrected brow of hers and swore that her sister had never seen
-Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her
-sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it
-and cried into her handkerchief as if the very suggestion was more
-than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man "deranged by
-grief" in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And
-it rested there.
-
-But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on
-Gatsby's side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of
-the catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and
-every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and
-confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or
-speak hour upon hour it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no
-one else was interested--interested, I mean, with that intense personal
-interest to which every one has some vague right at the end.
-
-I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her
-instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away
-early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.
-
-"Left no address?"
-
-"No."
-
-"Say when they'd be back?"
-
-"No."
-
-"Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?"
-
-"I don't know. Can't say."
-
-I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he
-lay and reassure him: "I'll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don't worry.
-Just trust me and I'll get somebody for you----"
-
-Meyer Wolfshiem's name wasn't in the phone book. The butler gave me his
-office address on Broadway and I called Information, but by the time I
-had the number it was long after five and no one answered the phone.
-
-"Will you ring again?"
-
-"I've rung them three times."
-
-"It's very important."
-
-"Sorry. I'm afraid no one's there."
-
-I went back to the drawing room and thought for an instant that they were
-chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled it. But
-as they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eyes,
-his protest continued in my brain.
-
-"Look here, old sport, you've got to get somebody for me. You've got
-to try hard. I can't go through this alone."
-
-Some one started to ask me questions but I broke away and going upstairs
-looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk--he'd never told me
-definitely that his parents were dead. But there was nothing--only the
-picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence staring down from
-the wall.
-
-Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem
-which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next
-train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he'd
-start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there'd be a wire
-from Daisy before noon--but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem arrived, no
-one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men.
-When the butler brought back Wolfshiem's answer I began to have a
-feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me
-against them all.
-
-
-_Dear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most terrible shocks of my
-life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a mad
-act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down now as
-I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in
-this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later let me
-know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a
-thing like this and am completely knocked down and out.
-
-                                        Yours truly
-                                                      MEYER WOLFSHIEM_
-
-and then hasty addenda beneath:
-
-_Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all._
-
-
-When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was
-calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came
-through as a man's voice, very thin and far away.
-
-"This is Slagle speaking. . . ."
-
-"Yes?" The name was unfamiliar.
-
-"Hell of a note, isn't it? Get my wire?"
-
-"There haven't been any wires."
-
-"Young Parke's in trouble," he said rapidly. "They picked him up when he
-handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York
-giving 'em the numbers just five minutes before. What d'you know about
-that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns----"
-
-"Hello!" I interrupted breathlessly. "Look here--this isn't Mr. Gatsby.
-Mr. Gatsby's dead."
-
-There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an
-exclamation . . . then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.
-
-
-I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz
-arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was
-leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.
-
-It was Gatsby's father, a solemn old man very helpless and dismayed,
-bundled up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His
-eyes leaked continuously with excitement and when I took the bag and
-umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse
-grey beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on the
-point of collapse so I took him into the music room and made him sit
-down while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn't eat and the
-glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.
-
-"I saw it in the Chicago newspaper," he said. "It was all in the Chicago
-newspaper. I started right away."
-
-"I didn't know how to reach you."
-
-His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.
-
-"It was a mad man," he said. "He must have been mad."
-
-"Wouldn't you like some coffee?" I urged him.
-
-"I don't want anything. I'm all right now, Mr.----"
-
-"Carraway."
-
-"Well, I'm all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?"
-
-I took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there.
-Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall;
-when I told them who had arrived they went reluctantly away.
-
-After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth
-ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and
-unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the
-quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the
-first time and saw the height and 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 upstairs; while he took
-off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been
-deferred until he came.
-
-"I didn't know what you'd want, Mr. Gatsby----"
-
-"Gatz is my name."
-
-"--Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body west."
-
-He shook his head.
-
-"Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in
-the East. Were you a friend of my boy's, Mr.--?"
-
-"We were close friends."
-
-"He had a big future before him, you know. He was only a young man but
-he had a lot of brain power here."
-
-He touched his head impressively and I nodded.
-
-"If he'd of lived he'd of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill.
-He'd of helped build up the country."
-
-"That's true," I said, uncomfortably.
-
-He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the bed,
-and lay down stiffly--was instantly asleep.
-
-That night an obviously frightened person called up and demanded to know
-who I was before he would give his name.
-
-"This is Mr. Carraway," I said.
-
-"Oh--" He sounded relieved. "This is Klipspringer."
-
-I was relieved too for that seemed to promise another friend
-at Gatsby's grave. I didn't want it to be in the papers and draw
-a sightseeing crowd so I'd been calling up a few people myself.
-They were hard to find.
-
-"The funeral's tomorrow," I said. "Three o'clock, here at the house.
-I wish you'd tell anybody who'd be interested."
-
-"Oh, I will," he broke out hastily. "Of course I'm not likely to see
-anybody, but if I do."
-
-His tone made me suspicious.
-
-"Of course you'll be there yourself."
-
-"Well, I'll certainly try. What I called up about is----"
-
-"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "How about saying you'll come?"
-
-"Well, the fact is--the truth of the matter is that I'm staying with
-some people up here in Greenwich and they rather expect me to be with
-them tomorrow. In fact there's a sort of picnic or something.
-Of course I'll do my very best to get away."
-
-I ejaculated an unrestrained "Huh!" and he must have heard me for he went
-on nervously:
-
-"What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if
-it'd be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You
-see they're tennis shoes and I'm sort of helpless without them. My
-address is care of B. F.----"
-
-I didn't hear the rest of the name because I hung up the receiver.
-
-After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby--one gentleman to whom I
-telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was
-my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at
-Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor and I should have known
-better than to call him.
-
-The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer
-Wolfshiem; I couldn't seem to reach him any other way. The door that I
-pushed open on the advice of an elevator boy was marked "The Swastika
-Holding Company" and at first there didn't seem to be 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.
-
-"Nobody's in," she said. "Mr. Wolfshiem's gone to Chicago."
-
-The first part of this was obviously untrue for someone had begun to
-whistle "The Rosary," tunelessly, inside.
-
-"Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him."
-
-"I can't get him back from Chicago, can I?"
-
-At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolfshiem's called "Stella!"
-from the other side of the door.
-
-"Leave your name on the desk," she said quickly. "I'll give it to him
-when he gets back."
-
-"But I know he's there."
-
-She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up
-and down her hips.
-
-"You young men think you can force your way in here any time," she
-scolded. "We're getting sickantired of it. When I say he's in Chicago,
-he's in ChiCAgo."
-
-I mentioned Gatsby.
-
-"Oh--h!" She looked at me over again. "Will you just--what was your name?"
-
-She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway,
-holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a
-reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me
-a cigar.
-
-"My memory goes back to when I first 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 sid. He ate more than four dollars' worth of
-food in half an hour."
-
-"Did you start him in business?" I inquired.
-
-"Start him! I made him."
-
-"Oh."
-
-"I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right
-away he was a fine appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told
-me he was 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."
-
-I wondered if this partnership had included the World's Series transaction
-in 1919.
-
-"Now he's dead," I said after a moment. "You were his closest friend,
-so I know you'll want to come to his funeral this afternoon."
-
-"I'd like to come."
-
-"Well, come then."
-
-The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly and as he shook his head his
-eyes filled with tears.
-
-"I can't do it--I can't get mixed up in it," he said.
-
-"There's nothing to get mixed up in. It's all over now."
-
-"When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way.
-I keep out. When I was a young man it was different--if a friend of mine
-died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that's
-sentimental but I mean it--to the bitter end."
-
-I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come,
-so I stood up.
-
-"Are you a college man?" he inquired suddenly.
-
-For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a "gonnegtion" but he
-only nodded and shook my hand.
-
-"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not
-after he is dead," he suggested. "After that my own rule is to let
-everything alone."
-
-When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg
-in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found
-Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his
-son and in his son's possessions was continually increasing and now he
-had something to show me.
-
-"Jimmy sent me this picture." He took out his wallet with trembling
-fingers. "Look there."
-
-It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with
-many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. "Look there!" and
-then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think
-it was more real to him now than the house itself.
-
-"Jimmy sent it to me. I think it's a very pretty picture. It shows up
-well."
-
-"Very well. Had you seen him lately?"
-
-"He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in
-now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home but I see now
-there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him.
-And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me."
-
-He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute,
-lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from
-his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called "Hopalong Cassidy."
-
-"Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows
-you."
-
-He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see.
-On the last fly-leaf was printed the word SCHEDULE, and the date
-September 12th, 1906. And underneath:
-
-
-Rise from bed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6.00       A.M.
-Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling . . . . . . 6.15-6.30   "
-Study electricity, etc . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.15-8.15   "
-Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.30-4.30  P.M.
-Baseball and sports . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4.30-5.00   "
-Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it 5.00-6.00   "
-Study needed inventions . . . . . . . . . . .  7.00-9.00   "
-
-                GENERAL RESOLVES
-
-No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
-No more smokeing or chewing
-Bath every other day
-Read one improving book or magazine per week
-Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week
-Be better to parents
-
-
-"I come across this book by accident," said the old man. "It just shows
-you, don't it?"
-
-"It just shows you."
-
-"Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or
-something. Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was
-always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once and I beat him
-for it."
-
-He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then
-looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the
-list for my own use.
-
-A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing and
-I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did
-Gatsby's father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and
-stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously and he
-spoke of the rain in a worried uncertain way. The minister glanced
-several times at his watch so I took him aside and asked him to wait
-for half an hour. But it wasn't any use. Nobody came.
-
-
-About five o'clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery
-and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate--first a motor hearse,
-horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and 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 someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked
-around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found
-marvelling over Gatsby's books in the library one night three months
-before.
-
-I'd never seen him since then. I don't know how he knew about the
-funeral or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses and
-he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled
-from Gatsby's grave.
-
-I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment but he was already too
-far away and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy
-hadn't sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur
-"Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on," and then the owl-eyed
-man said "Amen to that," in a brave voice.
-
-We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-Eyes spoke
-to me by the gate.
-
-"I couldn't get to the house," he remarked.
-
-"Neither could anybody else."
-
-"Go on!" He started. "Why, my God! they used to go there by the
-hundreds."
-
-He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and in.
-
-"The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said.
-
-
-One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from prep school
-and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than
-Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o'clock of a
-December evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up into
-their own holiday gayeties to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember
-the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This or That's and
-the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as
-we caught sight of old acquaintances and the matchings of invitations:
-"Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?"
-and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands.
-And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul
-Railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside
-the gate.
-
-When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow,
-began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the
-dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace
-came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked
-back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our
-identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted
-indistinguishably into it again.
-
-That's my middle west--not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede
-towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street
-lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly
-wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a
-little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent
-from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are
-still called through decades by a family's name. I see now that this
-has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and
-Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some
-deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
-
-Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware
-of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the
-Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the
-children and the very old--even then it had always for me a quality of
-distortion. West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic
-dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at
-once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging
-sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress
-suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a
-drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over
-the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a
-house--the wrong house. But no one knows the woman's name, and no one
-cares.
-
-After Gatsby's death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted
-beyond my eyes' power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle
-leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the
-line I decided to come back home.
-
-There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant
-thing that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I wanted to
-leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent
-sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and
-around what had happened to us together and what had happened
-afterward to me, and she lay perfectly still listening in a big
-chair.
-
-She was dressed to play golf and I remember thinking she looked like a
-good illustration, her chin raised a little, jauntily, her hair the
-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
-goodbye.
-
-"Nevertheless you did throw me over," said Jordan suddenly. "You threw me
-over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now but it was a
-new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while."
-
-We shook hands.
-
-"Oh, and do you remember--" she added, "----a conversation we had once
-about driving a car?"
-
-"Why--not exactly."
-
-"You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver?
-Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me
-to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest,
-straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride."
-
-"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call
-it honor."
-
-She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously
-sorry, I turned away.
-
-
-One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead
-of me along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a
-little from his body as if to fight off interference, his head moving
-sharply here and there, adapting itself to his restless eyes. Just as I
-slowed up to avoid overtaking him he stopped and began frowning into
-the windows of a jewelry store. Suddenly he saw me and walked back
-holding out his hand.
-
-"What's the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?"
-
-"Yes. You know what I think of you."
-
-"You're crazy, Nick," he said quickly. "Crazy as hell. I don't know
-what's the matter with you."
-
-"Tom," I inquired, "what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?"
-
-He stared at me without a word and I knew I had guessed right about
-those missing hours. I started to turn away but he took a step after me
-and grabbed my arm.
-
-"I told him the truth," he said. "He came to the door while we were
-getting ready to leave and when I sent down word that we weren't in he
-tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I
-hadn't told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his
-pocket every minute he was in the house----" He broke off defiantly.
-"What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw
-dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy's but he was a tough
-one. He ran over Myrtle like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped
-his car."
-
-There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact
-that it wasn't true.
-
-"And if you think I didn't have my share of suffering--look here, when I
-went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting
-there on the sideboard I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it
-was awful----"
-
-I couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was,
-to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused.
-They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and
-creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast
-carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other
-people clean up the mess they had made. . . .
-
-I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as
-though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewelry store to
-buy a pearl necklace--or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons--rid of my
-provincial squeamishness forever.
-
-
-Gatsby's house was still empty when I left--the grass on his lawn had
-grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never
-took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and
-pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to
-East Egg the night of the accident and perhaps he had made a story
-about it all his own. I didn't want to hear it and I avoided him when I
-got off the train.
-
-I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling
-parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the
-music and the laughter faint and incessant from his garden and the
-cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material car
-there and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn't
-investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the
-ends of the earth and didn't know that the party was over.
-
-On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer,
-I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once
-more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a
-piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight and I erased it,
-drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the
-beach and sprawled out on the sand.
-
-Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any
-lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound.
-And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away
-until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered
-once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world.
-Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had
-once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams;
-for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the
-presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation
-he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in
-history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
-
-And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of
-Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of
-Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must
-have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not
-know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity
-beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under
-the night.
-
-Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by
-year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow
-we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine
-morning----
-
-So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into
-the past.
-
-
-
-THE END
-- 
2.47.0