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  1. The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Great Gatsby
  2.    
  3. This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
  4. most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
  5. whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
  6. of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
  7. at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
  8. you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
  9. before using this eBook.
  10.  
  11. Title: The Great Gatsby
  12.  
  13. Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
  14.  
  15. Release date: January 17, 2021 [eBook #64317]
  16.                 Most recently updated: January 26, 2025
  17.  
  18. Language: English
  19.  
  20. Credits: Produced by Alex Cabal for the Standard Ebooks project, based on a transcription produced for Project Gutenberg Australia.
  21.  
  22.  
  23. *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT GATSBY ***
  24.  
  25.  
  26.  
  27.  
  28.                            The Great Gatsby
  29.                                   by
  30.                           F. Scott Fitzgerald
  31.  
  32.  
  33.                            Table of Contents
  34.  
  35. I
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44.  
  45.  
  46.                               Once again
  47.                                   to
  48.                                  Zelda
  49.  
  50.  
  51.   Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
  52.   If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
  53.   Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
  54.   I must have you!”
  55.  
  56.   Thomas Parke d’Invilliers
  57.  
  58.  
  59.                                   I
  60.  
  61. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice
  62. that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
  63.  
  64. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just
  65. remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages
  66. that you’ve had.”
  67.  
  68. He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative
  69. in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more
  70. than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a
  71. habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me
  72. the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to
  73. detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal
  74. person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of
  75. being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild,
  76. unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have
  77. feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by
  78. some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on
  79. the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least
  80. the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and
  81. marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of
  82. infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I
  83. forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly
  84. repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out
  85. unequally at birth.
  86.  
  87. And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission
  88. that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the
  89. wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded
  90. on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted
  91. the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I
  92. wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the
  93. human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was
  94. exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I
  95. have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of
  96. successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some
  97. heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related
  98. to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten
  99. thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that
  100. flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the
  101. “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a
  102. romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and
  103. which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out
  104. all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust
  105. floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my
  106. interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
  107.  
  108. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  109.  
  110. My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle
  111. Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a
  112. clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of
  113. Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s
  114. brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil
  115. War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father
  116. carries on today.
  117.  
  118. I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with
  119. special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in
  120. father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of
  121. a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that
  122. delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the
  123. counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being
  124. the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the
  125. ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond
  126. business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it
  127. could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it
  128. over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said,
  129. “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance
  130. me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I
  131. thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
  132.  
  133. The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm
  134. season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly
  135. trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a
  136. house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He
  137. found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a
  138. month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and
  139. I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a
  140. few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who
  141. made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to
  142. herself over the electric stove.
  143.  
  144. It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more
  145. recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
  146.  
  147. “How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
  148.  
  149. I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide,
  150. a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the
  151. freedom of the neighbourhood.
  152.  
  153. And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the
  154. trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar
  155. conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
  156.  
  157. There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to
  158. be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen
  159. volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they
  160. stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint,
  161. promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and
  162. Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other
  163. books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a
  164. series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now
  165. I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become
  166. again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.”
  167. This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at
  168. from a single window, after all.
  169.  
  170. It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of
  171. the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender
  172. riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where
  173. there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of
  174. land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in
  175. contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most
  176. domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great
  177. wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the
  178. egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact
  179. end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual
  180. wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more
  181. interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular
  182. except shape and size.
  183.  
  184. I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though
  185. this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little
  186. sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the
  187. egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge
  188. places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on
  189. my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual
  190. imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one
  191. side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble
  192. swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was
  193. Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a
  194. mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an
  195. eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I
  196. had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and
  197. the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a
  198. month.
  199.  
  200. Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg
  201. glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins
  202. on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom
  203. Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom
  204. in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in
  205. Chicago.
  206.  
  207. Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of
  208. the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a
  209. national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute
  210. limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of
  211. anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his
  212. freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago
  213. and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for
  214. instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake
  215. Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was
  216. wealthy enough to do that.
  217.  
  218. Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for
  219. no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully
  220. wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a
  221. permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe
  222. it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift
  223. on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of
  224. some irrecoverable football game.
  225.  
  226. And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East
  227. Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house
  228. was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white
  229. Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at
  230. the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile,
  231. jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when
  232. it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though
  233. from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French
  234. windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm
  235. windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with
  236. his legs apart on the front porch.
  237.  
  238. He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy
  239. straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a
  240. supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established
  241. dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning
  242. aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding
  243. clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill
  244. those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could
  245. see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his
  246. thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
  247.  
  248. His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of
  249. fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in
  250. it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who
  251. had hated his guts.
  252.  
  253. “Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to
  254. say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We
  255. were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I
  256. always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like
  257. him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
  258.  
  259. We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
  260.  
  261. “I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about
  262. restlessly.
  263.  
  264. Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the
  265. front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half
  266. acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped
  267. the tide offshore.
  268.  
  269. “It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again,
  270. politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
  271.  
  272. We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space,
  273. fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The
  274. windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside
  275. that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through
  276. the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale
  277. flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the
  278. ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow
  279. on it as wind does on the sea.
  280.  
  281. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous
  282. couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an
  283. anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were
  284. rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a
  285. short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments
  286. listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a
  287. picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the
  288. rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the
  289. curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the
  290. floor.
  291.  
  292. The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full
  293. length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her
  294. chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which
  295. was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes
  296. she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring
  297. an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
  298.  
  299. The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly
  300. forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd,
  301. charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the
  302. room.
  303.  
  304. “I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
  305.  
  306. She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my
  307. hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was
  308. no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she
  309. had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was
  310. Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people
  311. lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less
  312. charming.)
  313.  
  314. At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost
  315. imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object
  316. she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her
  317. something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips.
  318. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned
  319. tribute from me.
  320.  
  321. I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low,
  322. thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and
  323. down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be
  324. played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it,
  325. bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement
  326. in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget:
  327. a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had
  328. done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay,
  329. exciting things hovering in the next hour.
  330.  
  331. I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East,
  332. and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
  333.  
  334. “Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
  335.  
  336. “The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel
  337. painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all
  338. night along the north shore.”
  339.  
  340. “How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added
  341. irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
  342.  
  343. “I’d like to.”
  344.  
  345. “She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
  346.  
  347. “Never.”
  348.  
  349. “Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
  350.  
  351. Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped
  352. and rested his hand on my shoulder.
  353.  
  354. “What you doing, Nick?”
  355.  
  356. “I’m a bond man.”
  357.  
  358. “Who with?”
  359.  
  360. I told him.
  361.  
  362. “Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
  363.  
  364. This annoyed me.
  365.  
  366. “You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
  367.  
  368. “Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at
  369. Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something
  370. more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
  371.  
  372. At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that
  373. I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the
  374. room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned
  375. and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
  376.  
  377. “I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long
  378. as I can remember.”
  379.  
  380. “Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to
  381. New York all afternoon.”
  382.  
  383. “No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the
  384. pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
  385.  
  386. Her host looked at her incredulously.
  387.  
  388. “You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom
  389. of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
  390.  
  391. I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I
  392. enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with
  393. an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward
  394. at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked
  395. back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming,
  396. discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a
  397. picture of her, somewhere before.
  398.  
  399. “You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody
  400. there.”
  401.  
  402. “I don’t know a single—”
  403.  
  404. “You must know Gatsby.”
  405.  
  406. “Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
  407.  
  408. Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced;
  409. wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled
  410. me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
  411.  
  412. Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two
  413. young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward
  414. the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the
  415. diminished wind.
  416.  
  417. “Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her
  418. fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She
  419. looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day
  420. of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in
  421. the year and then miss it.”
  422.  
  423. “We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the
  424. table as if she were getting into bed.
  425.  
  426. “All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me
  427. helplessly: “What do people plan?”
  428.  
  429. Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her
  430. little finger.
  431.  
  432. “Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
  433.  
  434. We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
  435.  
  436. “You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to,
  437. but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a
  438. great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
  439.  
  440. “I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in
  441. kidding.”
  442.  
  443. “Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
  444.  
  445. Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a
  446. bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool
  447. as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all
  448. desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a
  449. polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew
  450. that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too
  451. would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the
  452. West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its
  453. close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer
  454. nervous dread of the moment itself.
  455.  
  456. “You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass
  457. of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or
  458. something?”
  459.  
  460. I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in
  461. an unexpected way.
  462.  
  463. “Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve
  464. gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise
  465. of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
  466.  
  467. “Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
  468.  
  469. “Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is
  470. if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly
  471. submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
  472.  
  473. “Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of
  474. unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in
  475. them. What was that word we—”
  476.  
  477. “Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her
  478. impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to
  479. us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will
  480. have control of things.”
  481.  
  482. “We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously
  483. toward the fervent sun.
  484.  
  485. “You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom
  486. interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
  487.  
  488. “This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are,
  489. and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a
  490. slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the
  491. things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all
  492. that. Do you see?”
  493.  
  494. There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his
  495. complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more.
  496. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler
  497. left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned
  498. towards me.
  499.  
  500. “I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically.
  501. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s
  502. nose?”
  503.  
  504. “That’s why I came over tonight.”
  505.  
  506. “Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher
  507. for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred
  508. people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it
  509. began to affect his nose—”
  510.  
  511. “Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
  512.  
  513. “Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up
  514. his position.”
  515.  
  516. For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her
  517. glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I
  518. listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering
  519. regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
  520.  
  521. The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear,
  522. whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went
  523. inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned
  524. forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
  525.  
  526. “I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an
  527. absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation:
  528. “An absolute rose?”
  529.  
  530. This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only
  531. extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart
  532. was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless,
  533. thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and
  534. excused herself and went into the house.
  535.  
  536. Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of
  537. meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!”
  538. in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the
  539. room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to
  540. hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down,
  541. mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
  542.  
  543. “This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
  544.  
  545. “Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
  546.  
  547. “Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
  548.  
  549. “You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised.
  550. “I thought everybody knew.”
  551.  
  552. “I don’t.”
  553.  
  554. “Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
  555.  
  556. “Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
  557.  
  558. Miss Baker nodded.
  559.  
  560. “She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time.
  561. Don’t you think?”
  562.  
  563. Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a
  564. dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at
  565. the table.
  566.  
  567. “It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
  568.  
  569. She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and
  570. continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic
  571. outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a
  572. nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing
  573. away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
  574.  
  575. “Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light
  576. enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
  577.  
  578. The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head
  579. decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects,
  580. vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes
  581. at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I
  582. was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to
  583. avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but
  584. I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain
  585. hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill
  586. metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation
  587. might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone
  588. immediately for the police.
  589.  
  590. The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss
  591. Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into
  592. the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while,
  593. trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed
  594. Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In
  595. its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
  596.  
  597. Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and
  598. her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that
  599. turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be
  600. some sedative questions about her little girl.
  601.  
  602. “We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even
  603. if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
  604.  
  605. “I wasn’t back from the war.”
  606.  
  607. “That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick,
  608. and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
  609.  
  610. Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more,
  611. and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her
  612. daughter.
  613.  
  614. “I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
  615.  
  616. “Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you
  617. what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
  618.  
  619. “Very much.”
  620.  
  621. “It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was
  622. less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of
  623. the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right
  624. away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I
  625. turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a
  626. girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be
  627. in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
  628.  
  629. “You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a
  630. convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I
  631. know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.”
  632. Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and
  633. she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m
  634. sophisticated!”
  635.  
  636. The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my
  637. belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me
  638. uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to
  639. exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a
  640. moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as
  641. if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret
  642. society to which she and Tom belonged.
  643.  
  644. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  645.  
  646. Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at
  647. either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the
  648. Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running
  649. together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and
  650. dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as
  651. she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
  652.  
  653. When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
  654.  
  655. “To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in
  656. our very next issue.”
  657.  
  658. Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she
  659. stood up.
  660.  
  661. “Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the
  662. ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
  663.  
  664. “Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy,
  665. “over at Westchester.”
  666.  
  667. “Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
  668.  
  669. I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous
  670. expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the
  671. sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard
  672. some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I
  673. had forgotten long ago.
  674.  
  675. “Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
  676.  
  677. “If you’ll get up.”
  678.  
  679. “I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
  680.  
  681. “Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a
  682. marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you
  683. together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push
  684. you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
  685.  
  686. “Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a
  687. word.”
  688.  
  689. “She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let
  690. her run around the country this way.”
  691.  
  692. “Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
  693.  
  694. “Her family.”
  695.  
  696. “Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s
  697. going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots
  698. of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be
  699. very good for her.”
  700.  
  701. Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
  702.  
  703. “Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
  704.  
  705. “From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our
  706. beautiful white—”
  707.  
  708. “Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?”
  709. demanded Tom suddenly.
  710.  
  711. “Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we
  712. talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept
  713. up on us and first thing you know—”
  714.  
  715. “Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
  716.  
  717. I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes
  718. later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood
  719. side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor
  720. Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!
  721.  
  722. “I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were
  723. engaged to a girl out West.”
  724.  
  725. “That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were
  726. engaged.”
  727.  
  728. “It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
  729.  
  730. “But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again
  731. in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be
  732. true.”
  733.  
  734. Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even
  735. vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one
  736. of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old
  737. friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention
  738. of being rumoured into marriage.
  739.  
  740. Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely
  741. rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove
  742. away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out
  743. of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such
  744. intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman
  745. in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been
  746. depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of
  747. stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his
  748. peremptory heart.
  749.  
  750. Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside
  751. garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and
  752. when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and
  753. sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had
  754. blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the
  755. trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth
  756. blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered
  757. across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I
  758. was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of
  759. my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets
  760. regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely
  761. movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested
  762. that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was
  763. his of our local heavens.
  764.  
  765. I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and
  766. that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he
  767. gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched
  768. out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was
  769. from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced
  770. seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute
  771. and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked
  772. once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the
  773. unquiet darkness.
  774.  
  775.  
  776.                                   II
  777.  
  778. About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily
  779. joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as
  780. to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley
  781. of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and
  782. hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and
  783. chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of
  784. ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery
  785. air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track,
  786. gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the
  787. ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable
  788. cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
  789.  
  790. But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift
  791. endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.
  792. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and
  793. gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face,
  794. but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass
  795. over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set
  796. them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then
  797. sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved
  798. away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun
  799. and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.
  800.  
  801. The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and,
  802. when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on
  803. waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an
  804. hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute, and it was
  805. because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress.
  806.  
  807. The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His
  808. acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular cafés
  809. with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with
  810. whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire
  811. to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one
  812. afternoon, and when we stopped by the ash-heaps he jumped to his feet
  813. and, taking hold of my elbow, literally forced me from the car.
  814.  
  815. “We’re getting off,” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”
  816.  
  817. I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon, and his determination
  818. to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption
  819. was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.
  820.  
  821. I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked
  822. back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s
  823. persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of
  824. yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact
  825. Main Street ministering to it, and contiguous to absolutely nothing.
  826. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an
  827. all-night restaurant, approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a
  828. garage—Repairs. George B. Wilson. Cars bought and sold.—and I followed
  829. Tom inside.
  830.  
  831. The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the
  832. dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had
  833. occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind, and that
  834. sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead, when the
  835. proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands
  836. on a piece of waste. He was a blond, spiritless man, anaemic, and
  837. faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his
  838. light blue eyes.
  839.  
  840. “Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping him jovially on the
  841. shoulder. “How’s business?”
  842.  
  843. “I can’t complain,” answered Wilson unconvincingly. “When are you
  844. going to sell me that car?”
  845.  
  846. “Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.”
  847.  
  848. “Works pretty slow, don’t he?”
  849.  
  850. “No, he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it,
  851. maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.”
  852.  
  853. “I don’t mean that,” explained Wilson quickly. “I just meant—”
  854.  
  855. His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage.
  856. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish
  857. figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was
  858. in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her flesh
  859. sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark
  860. blue crêpe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there
  861. was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of
  862. her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking
  863. through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom,
  864. looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without
  865. turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:
  866.  
  867. “Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.”
  868.  
  869. “Oh, sure,” agreed Wilson hurriedly, and went toward the little
  870. office, mingling immediately with the cement colour of the walls. A
  871. white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled
  872. everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom.
  873.  
  874. “I want to see you,” said Tom intently. “Get on the next train.”
  875.  
  876. “All right.”
  877.  
  878. “I’ll meet you by the newsstand on the lower level.”
  879.  
  880. She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with
  881. two chairs from his office door.
  882.  
  883. We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days
  884. before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was
  885. setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.
  886.  
  887. “Terrible place, isn’t it,” said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor
  888. Eckleburg.
  889.  
  890. “Awful.”
  891.  
  892. “It does her good to get away.”
  893.  
  894. “Doesn’t her husband object?”
  895.  
  896. “Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so
  897. dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.”
  898.  
  899. So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not
  900. quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom
  901. deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might
  902. be on the train.
  903.  
  904. She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin, which stretched
  905. tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in
  906. New York. At the newsstand she bought a copy of Town Tattle and a
  907. moving-picture magazine, and in the station drugstore some cold cream
  908. and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive
  909. she let four taxicabs drive away before she selected a new one,
  910. lavender-coloured with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from
  911. the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she
  912. turned sharply from the window and, leaning forward, tapped on the
  913. front glass.
  914.  
  915. “I want to get one of those dogs,” she said earnestly. “I want to get
  916. one for the apartment. They’re nice to have—a dog.”
  917.  
  918. We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John
  919. D. Rockefeller. In a basket swung from his neck cowered a dozen very
  920. recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.
  921.  
  922. “What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly, as he came to the
  923. taxi-window.
  924.  
  925. “All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?”
  926.  
  927. “I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got
  928. that kind?”
  929.  
  930. The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and
  931. drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.
  932.  
  933. “That’s no police dog,” said Tom.
  934.  
  935. “No, it’s not exactly a police dog,” said the man with disappointment
  936. in his voice. “It’s more of an Airedale.” He passed his hand over the
  937. brown washrag of a back. “Look at that coat. Some coat. That’s a dog
  938. that’ll never bother you with catching cold.”
  939.  
  940. “I think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. “How much is
  941. it?”
  942.  
  943. “That dog?” He looked at it admiringly. “That dog will cost you ten
  944. dollars.”
  945.  
  946. The Airedale—undoubtedly there was an Airedale concerned in it
  947. somewhere, though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and
  948. settled down into Mrs. Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the
  949. weatherproof coat with rapture.
  950.  
  951. “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately.
  952.  
  953. “That dog? That dog’s a boy.”
  954.  
  955. “It’s a bitch,” said Tom decisively. “Here’s your money. Go and buy
  956. ten more dogs with it.”
  957.  
  958. We drove over to Fifth Avenue, warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the
  959. summer Sunday afternoon. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great
  960. flock of white sheep turn the corner.
  961.  
  962. “Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.”
  963.  
  964. “No you don’t,” interposed Tom quickly. “Myrtle’ll be hurt if you
  965. don’t come up to the apartment. Won’t you, Myrtle?”
  966.  
  967. “Come on,” she urged. “I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. She’s said
  968. to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.”
  969.  
  970. “Well, I’d like to, but—”
  971.  
  972. We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds.
  973. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of
  974. apartment-houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the
  975. neighbourhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other
  976. purchases, and went haughtily in.
  977.  
  978. “I’m going to have the McKees come up,” she announced as we rose in
  979. the elevator. “And, of course, I got to call up my sister, too.”
  980.  
  981. The apartment was on the top floor—a small living-room, a small
  982. dining-room, a small bedroom, and a bath. The living-room was crowded
  983. to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for
  984. it, so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of
  985. ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an
  986. over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock.
  987. Looked at from a distance, however, the hen resolved itself into a
  988. bonnet, and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the
  989. room. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table together with
  990. a copy of Simon Called Peter, and some of the small scandal magazines
  991. of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant
  992. elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk, to which he
  993. added on his own initiative a tin of large, hard dog biscuits—one of
  994. which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all
  995. afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whisky from a locked
  996. bureau door.
  997.  
  998. I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that
  999. afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it,
  1000. although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful
  1001. sun. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the
  1002. telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some
  1003. at the drugstore on the corner. When I came back they had both
  1004. disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living-room and read a
  1005. chapter of Simon Called Peter—either it was terrible stuff or the
  1006. whisky distorted things, because it didn’t make any sense to me.
  1007.  
  1008. Just as Tom and Myrtle (after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called
  1009. each other by our first names) reappeared, company commenced to arrive
  1010. at the apartment door.
  1011.  
  1012. The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty,
  1013. with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky
  1014. white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more
  1015. rakish angle, but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the
  1016. old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about
  1017. there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets
  1018. jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary
  1019. haste, and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I
  1020. wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed
  1021. immoderately, repeated my question aloud, and told me she lived with a
  1022. girl friend at a hotel.
  1023.  
  1024. Mr. McKee was a pale, feminine man from the flat below. He had just
  1025. shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he
  1026. was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He
  1027. informed me that he was in the “artistic game,” and I gathered later
  1028. that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of
  1029. Mrs. Wilson’s mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His
  1030. wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible. She told me with
  1031. pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven
  1032. times since they had been married.
  1033.  
  1034. Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before, and was now
  1035. attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream-coloured chiffon,
  1036. which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With
  1037. the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a
  1038. change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage
  1039. was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her
  1040. assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she
  1041. expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be
  1042. revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.
  1043.  
  1044. “My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, “most of
  1045. these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I
  1046. had a woman up here last week to look at my feet, and when she gave me
  1047. the bill you’d of thought she had my appendicitis out.”
  1048.  
  1049. “What was the name of the woman?” asked Mrs. McKee.
  1050.  
  1051. “Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people’s feet in their own
  1052. homes.”
  1053.  
  1054. “I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. McKee, “I think it’s adorable.”
  1055.  
  1056. Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.
  1057.  
  1058. “It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I just slip it on sometimes
  1059. when I don’t care what I look like.”
  1060.  
  1061. “But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,” pursued Mrs.
  1062. McKee. “If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could
  1063. make something of it.”
  1064.  
  1065. We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson, who removed a strand of hair
  1066. from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr.
  1067. McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side, and then moved
  1068. his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.
  1069.  
  1070. “I should change the light,” he said after a moment. “I’d like to
  1071. bring out the modelling of the features. And I’d try to get hold of
  1072. all the back hair.”
  1073.  
  1074. “I wouldn’t think of changing the light,” cried Mrs. McKee. “I think
  1075. it’s—”
  1076.  
  1077. Her husband said “Sh!” and we all looked at the subject again,
  1078. whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.
  1079.  
  1080. “You McKees have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and
  1081. mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep.”
  1082.  
  1083. “I told that boy about the ice.” Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair
  1084. at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. “These people! You have to
  1085. keep after them all the time.”
  1086.  
  1087. She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to
  1088. the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, and swept into the kitchen, implying
  1089. that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.
  1090.  
  1091. “I’ve done some nice things out on Long Island,” asserted Mr. McKee.
  1092.  
  1093. Tom looked at him blankly.
  1094.  
  1095. “Two of them we have framed downstairs.”
  1096.  
  1097. “Two what?” demanded Tom.
  1098.  
  1099. “Two studies. One of them I call Montauk Point—The Gulls, and the
  1100. other I call Montauk Point—The Sea.”
  1101.  
  1102. The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
  1103.  
  1104. “Do you live down on Long Island, too?” she inquired.
  1105.  
  1106. “I live at West Egg.”
  1107.  
  1108. “Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named
  1109. Gatsby’s. Do you know him?”
  1110.  
  1111. “I live next door to him.”
  1112.  
  1113. “Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s. That’s
  1114. where all his money comes from.”
  1115.  
  1116. “Really?”
  1117.  
  1118. She nodded.
  1119.  
  1120. “I’m scared of him. I’d hate to have him get anything on me.”
  1121.  
  1122. This absorbing information about my neighbour was interrupted by Mrs.
  1123. McKee’s pointing suddenly at Catherine:
  1124.  
  1125. “Chester, I think you could do something with her,” she broke out, but
  1126. Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way, and turned his attention to Tom.
  1127.  
  1128. “I’d like to do more work on Long Island, if I could get the entry.
  1129. All I ask is that they should give me a start.”
  1130.  
  1131. “Ask Myrtle,” said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as
  1132. Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. “She’ll give you a letter of
  1133. introduction, won’t you, Myrtle?”
  1134.  
  1135. “Do what?” she asked, startled.
  1136.  
  1137. “You’ll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can
  1138. do some studies of him.” His lips moved silently for a moment as he
  1139. invented, “ ‘George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,’ or something like
  1140. that.”
  1141.  
  1142. Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear:
  1143.  
  1144. “Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”
  1145.  
  1146. “Can’t they?”
  1147.  
  1148. “Can’t stand them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “What I say
  1149. is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them
  1150. I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”
  1151.  
  1152. “Doesn’t she like Wilson either?”
  1153.  
  1154. The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle, who had
  1155. overheard the question, and it was violent and obscene.
  1156.  
  1157. “You see,” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again.
  1158. “It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and
  1159. they don’t believe in divorce.”
  1160.  
  1161. Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the
  1162. elaborateness of the lie.
  1163.  
  1164. “When they do get married,” continued Catherine, “they’re going West
  1165. to live for a while until it blows over.”
  1166.  
  1167. “It’d be more discreet to go to Europe.”
  1168.  
  1169. “Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed surprisingly. “I just got back
  1170. from Monte Carlo.”
  1171.  
  1172. “Really.”
  1173.  
  1174. “Just last year. I went over there with another girl.”
  1175.  
  1176. “Stay long?”
  1177.  
  1178. “No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of
  1179. Marseilles. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started, but we
  1180. got gyped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an
  1181. awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!”
  1182.  
  1183. The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the
  1184. blue honey of the Mediterranean—then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee
  1185. called me back into the room.
  1186.  
  1187. “I almost made a mistake, too,” she declared vigorously. “I almost
  1188. married a little kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was
  1189. below me. Everybody kept saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s way below
  1190. you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d of got me sure.”
  1191.  
  1192. “Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down,
  1193. “at least you didn’t marry him.”
  1194.  
  1195. “I know I didn’t.”
  1196.  
  1197. “Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that’s the
  1198. difference between your case and mine.”
  1199.  
  1200. “Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.”
  1201.  
  1202. Myrtle considered.
  1203.  
  1204. “I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said
  1205. finally. “I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t
  1206. fit to lick my shoe.”
  1207.  
  1208. “You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.
  1209.  
  1210. “Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy
  1211. about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that
  1212. man there.”
  1213.  
  1214. She pointed suddenly at me, and everyone looked at me accusingly. I
  1215. tried to show by my expression that I expected no affection.
  1216.  
  1217. “The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made
  1218. a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and
  1219. never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he
  1220. was out: ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘This is the first I ever
  1221. heard about it.’ But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to
  1222. beat the band all afternoon.”
  1223.  
  1224. “She really ought to get away from him,” resumed Catherine to me.
  1225. “They’ve been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom’s the
  1226. first sweetie she ever had.”
  1227.  
  1228. The bottle of whisky—a second one—was now in constant demand by all
  1229. present, excepting Catherine, who “felt just as good on nothing at
  1230. all.” Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated
  1231. sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to
  1232. get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight,
  1233. but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident
  1234. argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet
  1235. high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed
  1236. their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening
  1237. streets, and I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and
  1238. without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible
  1239. variety of life.
  1240.  
  1241. Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath
  1242. poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.
  1243.  
  1244. “It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the
  1245. last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my
  1246. sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather
  1247. shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked
  1248. at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his
  1249. head. When we came into the station he was next to me, and his white
  1250. shirtfront pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call
  1251. a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into
  1252. a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway
  1253. train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live
  1254. forever; you can’t live forever.’ ”
  1255.  
  1256. She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial
  1257. laughter.
  1258.  
  1259. “My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you this dress as soon as I’m
  1260. through with it. I’ve got to get another one tomorrow. I’m going to
  1261. make a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A massage and a wave,
  1262. and a collar for the dog, and one of those cute little ashtrays where
  1263. you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s
  1264. grave that’ll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won’t
  1265. forget all the things I got to do.”
  1266.  
  1267. It was nine o’clock—almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch
  1268. and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists
  1269. clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out
  1270. my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the spot of dried lather that
  1271. had worried me all the afternoon.
  1272.  
  1273. The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes
  1274. through the smoke, and from time to time groaning faintly. People
  1275. disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost
  1276. each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet
  1277. away. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood
  1278. face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson
  1279. had any right to mention Daisy’s name.
  1280.  
  1281. “Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I’ll say it whenever I
  1282. want to! Daisy! Dai—”
  1283.  
  1284. Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his
  1285. open hand.
  1286.  
  1287. Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women’s
  1288. voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of
  1289. pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the
  1290. door. When he had gone halfway he turned around and stared at the
  1291. scene—his wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled
  1292. here and there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and
  1293. the despairing figure on the couch, bleeding fluently, and trying to
  1294. spread a copy of Town Tattle over the tapestry scenes of
  1295. Versailles. Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door.
  1296. Taking my hat from the chandelier, I followed.
  1297.  
  1298. “Come to lunch some day,” he suggested, as we groaned down in the
  1299. elevator.
  1300.  
  1301. “Where?”
  1302.  
  1303. “Anywhere.”
  1304.  
  1305. “Keep your hands off the lever,” snapped the elevator boy.
  1306.  
  1307. “I beg your pardon,” said Mr. McKee with dignity, “I didn’t know I was
  1308. touching it.”
  1309.  
  1310. “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll be glad to.”
  1311.  
  1312. … I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the
  1313. sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.
  1314.  
  1315. “Beauty and the Beast … Loneliness … Old Grocery Horse … Brook’n
  1316. Bridge …”
  1317.  
  1318. Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the
  1319. Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune, and waiting for
  1320. the four o’clock train.
  1321.  
  1322.  
  1323.                                  III
  1324.  
  1325. There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights.
  1326. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the
  1327. whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the
  1328. afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or
  1329. taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats
  1330. slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of
  1331. foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties
  1332. to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past
  1333. midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to
  1334. meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra
  1335. gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers
  1336. and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
  1337.  
  1338. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a
  1339. fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left
  1340. his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in
  1341. the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in
  1342. half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a
  1343. butler’s thumb.
  1344.  
  1345. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several
  1346. hundred feet of canvas and enough coloured lights to make a Christmas
  1347. tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with
  1348. glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of
  1349. harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark
  1350. gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and
  1351. stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that
  1352. most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.
  1353.  
  1354. By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair,
  1355. but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and
  1356. cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have
  1357. come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from
  1358. New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and
  1359. salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colours, and hair bobbed in
  1360. strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is
  1361. in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden
  1362. outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual
  1363. innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic
  1364. meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.
  1365.  
  1366. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and
  1367. now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of
  1368. voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute,
  1369. spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups
  1370. change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the
  1371. same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave
  1372. here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp,
  1373. joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph,
  1374. glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and colour under
  1375. the constantly changing light.
  1376.  
  1377. Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail
  1378. out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like
  1379. Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the
  1380. orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a
  1381. burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda
  1382. Gray’s understudy from the Follies. The party has begun.
  1383.  
  1384. I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one
  1385. of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not
  1386. invited—they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out
  1387. to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there
  1388. they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they
  1389. conducted themselves according to the rules of behaviour associated
  1390. with an amusement park. Sometimes they came and went without having
  1391. met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that
  1392. was its own ticket of admission.
  1393.  
  1394. I

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