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Hello ,

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PRIVACY | TERMS & DISCLAIMER

Ignore the following text. It’s here to improve delivery… 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 fa- The Great
Gatsby ther 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 shortwinded
elations of men. My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this
middle-western city for three generations. The Car- Free eBooks at Planet
eBook.com raways 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—yees’ 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 The Great Gatsby 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. Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 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 The Great Gatsby 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. Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
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,’ 10 The Great Gatsby 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
snubnosed 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 rosycolored 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 Free eBooks at
Planet eBook.com 11 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 12 The
Great Gatsby 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. Free eBooks at Planet
eBook.com 13 ‘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 afool 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- 14 The Great Gatsby 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?’ Free eBooks at Planet
eBook.com 15 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. 16 The Great Gatsby ‘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 enthusiasti- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
17 cally. ‘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 18 The Great Gatsby 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 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 19 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. 20 The
Great Gatsby ‘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 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 21
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 22 The Great Gatsby
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. Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 23 ‘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 24 The Great Gatsby 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 van- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 25
ished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness. 26 The Great Gatsby
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 sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27
emn 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 28 The Great Gatsby 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 Free eBooks at
Planet eBook.com 29 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 30 The Great Gatsby 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?’
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 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,’ 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?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘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 Free eBooks at
Planet eBook.com 33 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. 34 The Great Gatsby 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’ 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.’ Free eBooks at Planet
eBook.com 35 ‘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 36 The Great Gatsby 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.’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 37 ‘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.’ 38 The Great Gatsby ‘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 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 39 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 40 The Great Gatsby 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’ 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 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
41 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. 42 The Great Gatsby ‘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.

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