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Ignore the following text. It is to improve delivery In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that Ive been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that most of the people in this world havent had the advantages that youve had. He didnt say any more but weve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a much more than that. In consequence Im inclined to reserve most of the 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 unsoughtfrequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizonfor the intimate revelations of young men or at least the specifications 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 G.reat 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 dont care what its 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 mortal heart. Gatsby, the man who gives his identity to this book, was exempt from my reactionGatsby 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 livelihood, 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 identity of the creative temperament it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have at no time found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. NoGatsby turned out 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- F.ree eBooks at Planet eBook.com raways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that were descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfathers brother who came in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on till this day. I did not see this uncle but Im supposed to look like himwith special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Fathers office. I graduated from N.ew 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 G.reat 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 nowadays seemed like the ragged edge of the universeso 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. Most of my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, Whyyees with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to support 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 brilliant 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 G.reat 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 arrive at 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 flexibility of the neighborhood. And so with the sunshine and the big bursts of leaves growing on the treesjust as things grow in moviesI had that familiar conviction that l.ife 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 management and they stood on my shelf in red and g.old like freshly printed from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in collegeone year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale Newsand currently, I was going to bring back most of such things into my existence and become again that most bounded of most specialists, the well-rounded man. This isnt just an epigramliving is much more successfully looked at from a single window, afterall. Costless eBooks at Planet eBook.com It was a matter of luck 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 the big apple 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 by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not flawless ovalslike the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact endbut 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, thewell, 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, just 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 standardit was a factual imitation of some Htel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking fresh under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsbys mansion. Or rather, as I didnt know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that identity. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a The G.reat Gatsby view of the water, a partial view of my neighbors lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionairesfor eighty 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 Id 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 N.ew Havena national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute defined excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthyeven in college his ways of splurging was a matter for reproachbut at current, hed left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance hed 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 dont know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted everywhere unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didnt believe itI had no sight into Daisys heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game. Complimentary 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. 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 gardensfinally 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 with reflected glit, and wide exposed 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 N.ew Haven years. Currently 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 bodyhe seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a well-built pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leveragea 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 likedand there were men at N.ew Haven who had hated his guts. Ok, dont think my opinion on these matters is final, 10 The G.reat Gatsby he seemed to say, just because Im stronger and more of a man than you are. We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were not 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. Ive got a nice place , 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 seaward. It belonged to Demaine the oil man. He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. Well 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 ceilingand then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. The solo 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 Complimentary 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 itindeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in. The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to riseshe 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. Im 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. (Ive heard it said that Daisys murmur was just to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.) At any pace Miss Bakers lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back againthe object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of 12 The G.reat 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 not be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouthbut 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 agreeement 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 at 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. The cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and theres a persistent wail throughout the night along the North Shore. How gorgeous! Lets go back, Tom. Tomorrow! Then she added irrelevantly, You ought to see the baby. Id like to. Shes asleep. Shes two years old. Havent you ever seen her? Nope. Well, you ought to see her. Shes Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder. Complementary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 13 What you doing, Nick? Im a bond man. Who with? I told him. Have not heard of them, he remarked decisively. This annoyed me. You will, I answered shortly. You will if you stay in the East. Oh, Ill stay in the East, dont you worry, he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. Id be afool to live anywhere else. At this point Miss Baker said Absolutely! with such suddenness that I startedit 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. Im stiff, she complained, Ive been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember. Dont look at me, Daisy retorted. Ive been trying to take you to N.ew York in the afternoon. No, thanks, said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, Im 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 things 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 G.reat 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 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 dont 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 accessible 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 itll be the longest day in the year. She looked at us 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. Alright, said Daisy. Whatll we plan? She turned to me helplessly. What do people plan? Complementary 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 lookedthe knuckle was black and blue. You did it, Tom, she said accusingly. I know you didnt mean to but you DID do it. Thats what I have for marrying a brute of a man, a 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 at no time quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of every desire. They were presentand they accepted Tom and me, making just a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that shortly 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. Cant you talk about crops or something? I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way. Civilizations going to pieces, broke out Tom violently. 16 The G.reat Gatsby Ive 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, its a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we dont look out the white race will bewill be utterly submerged. Its scientific stuff; its been proved. Toms 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 scientific, insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. This fellow has worked out the whole thing. Its up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things. Weve 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 were 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 weve produced the things that go to make civilizationoh, science and art and everything 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 instantly, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me. Ill tell you a family secret, she whispered enthusiasti- Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 17 cally. Its about the butlers nose. Do you want to hear about the butlers nose? Thats why I came over tonight. Well, he wasnt always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in the Big Apple 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 listenedthen 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 Toms 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. Doesnt he? She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. An absolute rose? This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was just 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 G.reat 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. Dont talk. I want to hear what happens. Is something happening? I inquired innocently. You mean to say you dont know? said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. I thought everybody knew. I dont. Why she said hesitantly, Toms got some woman in the Big Apple. Got some woman? I repeated blankly. Miss Baker nodded. She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Dont 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 couldnt 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 its very romantic outdoors. Theres a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 19 or White Star Line. Hes singing away her voice sang Its romantic, isnt it, Tom? Very romantic, he said, and then miserably to me: If its 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 every 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 dodge their eyes. I couldnt 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 guests shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguingmy own instinct was to telephone instantly 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 G.reat Gatsby We dont know each other very well, Nick, she said suddenly. Even if we are cousins. You didnt come to my wedding. I wasnt back from the war. Thats true. She hesitated. Well, Ive had a very bad time, Nick, and Im pretty cynical about everything. Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didnt say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter. I suppose she talks, andeats, 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. Itll show you how Ive gotten to feel aboutthings. 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. Alright, I said, Im glad its a girl. And I hope shell be a foolthats the finest thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. You see I think everythings terrible anyhow, she went on in a convinced way. Everybody thinks sothe most advanced people. And I KNOW. Ive been everywhere and seen everything and done everything. Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Toms, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. SophisticatedGod, Im sophisticated! The moment her voice broke, ceasing to compel my Complimentary 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 Postthe 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 oclock, she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. Time for this good girl to go to bed. Jordans going to play in the tournament tomorrow, explained Daisy, over at Westchester. Oh,youre JORdan Baker. I knew why her face was familiarits pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting lifestyle at Asheville and 22 The G.reat 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, will you not. If youll wake up. I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon. Of course you will, confirmed Daisy. In fact I think Ill arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and Ill sort ofohfling you together. You knowlock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and that sort of thing Good night, called Miss Baker from the stairs. I havent heard a word. Shes a nice girl, said Tom after a moment. They oughtnt to let her run around the country this way. Who oughtnt to? inquired Daisy coldly. Her family. Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nicks going to look after her, arent you, Nick? Shes going to spend lots of week-ends out this summer. I think the inner influence will be very good for her. Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence. Is she from the Big Apple? 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. Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 23 Did I? She looked at me. I cant seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, Im sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know Dont believe everything you hear, Nick, he advised me. I said lightly that I had heard nothing, and a few minutes later I got up to go back. 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 its important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West. Thats right, corroborated Tom kindly. We heard that you were engaged. Its libel. Im 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 wasnt even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You cant cease going with an old pal 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 richnevertheless, 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 armsbut apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he had some woman in Chicago was 24 The G.reat 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 fresh 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 away, 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 livelihood. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alonefifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbors mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets with regards to 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 contact to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didnt contact to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alonehe 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 seawardand 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- Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 25 ished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness. 26 The G.reat Gatsby Chapter 2 About half way between West Egg and N.ew 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 ashesa incredible 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 instantly 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 gigantictheir 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- Complimentary 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 Buchanans 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 herbut I did. I went up to Chicago 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. Were getting down! he insisted. I want you to meet my girl. I think hed tanked up a good transaction 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 Eckleburgs persistent stare. The one 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 through the night 28 The G.reat Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garageRepairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Soldand I followed Tom inside. The interior was unprosperous and bare; the one 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. Hows business? I cant complain, answered Wilson unconvincingly. When are you going to sell me that car? Next week; Ive got my man working on it currently. Works pretty slow, dont he? No, he doesnt, said Tom coldly. And if you feel that way about it, maybe Id better sell it somewhere else afterall. I dont mean that, explained Wilson quickly. I just meant His voice faded away 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 Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an instantly 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: Take some chairs, why dont you, so somebody can sit down. Oh, sure, agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling instantly 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 vicinityexcept his partner, who moved close to Tom. I want to see you, said Tom intently. Take the next train. Alright. Ill 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, isnt it, said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg. Awful. It does her good to be away. Doesnt her husband object? Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in 30 The G.reat Gatsby York. Hes so dumb he doesnt know hes alive. So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to Chicagoor 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 the Big Apple. 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 fresh one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But instantly she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass. I want to have one of those dogs, she said earnestly. I want to have one for the apartment. Theyre nice to havea 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. Every kinds. What kind do you want, lady? Id like to take one of those police dogs; I dont suppose you got that kind? Complimentary 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. Thats no police dog, said Tom. No, its not exactly a polICE dog, said the man with disappointment in his voice. Its more of an airedale. He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. Look at that coat. Some coat. Thats a dog thatll not bother you with catching cold. I think its cute, said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. How much is it? That dog? He looked at it admiringly. That dog will fetch you ten pennies. The airedaleundoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly whitechanged hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilsons lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture. Is it a boy or a girl? she asked delicately. That dog? That dogs a boy. Its, said Tom decisively. This is your moolah. Go and take ten more dogs with it. We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldnt have been surprised to see a massive flock of white sheep turn the corner. Hold on, I said, I have to put you at this place. No, you dont, interposed Tom quickly. Myrtlell be hurt if you dont come up to the apartment. right Myrtle? 32 The G.reat Gatsby Come on, she urged. Ill telephone my sister Catherine. Shes said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know. Well, Id 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. Im going to have the McKees come up, she announced as we rose in the elevator. And of course I got to contact my sister, too. The apartment was on the top floora 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 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 biscuitsone of which decomposed apathetically Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk through the afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door. I have been drunk just twice and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight oclock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Toms lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to accquire 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 Petereither it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didnt make any sense to me. Just as Tom and Myrtleafter the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first namesreappeared, 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 at this place. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girlfriend at a hotel. Mr. McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below. 34 The G.reat 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. Wilsons mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His partner 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 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. Everything they think of is m.oney. I had a woman up last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill youd of thought she had my appendicitus out. What was the identity of the woman? asked Mrs. McKee. Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at peoples feet in their own homes. Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 35 I like your dress, remarked Mrs. McKee, I think its adorable. Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain. Its just a crazy old thing, she said. I just slip it on sometimes when I dont care what I look like. But it looks beautiful on you, if you know what I mean, pursued Mrs. McKee. If Chester could put you in that pose I think he could make something of it. We 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. Id like to bring out the modelling of the features. And Id try to catch hold of back hair. I wouldnt think of changing the light, cried Mrs. McKee. I think its Her husband said SH! and we looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet. You McKees have something to drink, he said. Bring me 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 everytime. She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she 36 The G.reat Gatsby flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there. Ive 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 contactMontauk Pointthe Gulls, and the other I contactMontauk Pointthe 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 Gatsbys. Do you know him? I live next door to him. Well, they say hes a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelms. Thats where his moolah comes from. Really? She nodded. Im scared of him. Id hate to have him helped him with anything on me. This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKees pointing suddenly at Catherine: Chester, I think you could do something with HER, she broke out, but Mr. McKee just nodded in a bored way and turned his attention to Tom. Id like to do more work on Long Island if I could enter. Everything that I ask is that they should give me a start. Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 37 Ask Myrtle, said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. Shell give you a letter of introduction, right Myrtle? Do what? she asked, startled. Youll 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 theyre married to. Cant they? Cant STAND them. She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. What I say is, why go on living with them if they cant stand them? If I was them Id have a divorce and marry to each other right away. Doesnt 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. Its really his partner thats keeping them apart. Shes a Catholic and they dont believe in divorce. Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie. When they do marry, continued Catherine, theyre going west to live for a while until it blows over. Itd be more discreet to go to Europe. Oh, do you like Europe? she exclaimed surprisingly. I just got back from Monte Carlo. 38 The G.reat 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 moolah when we started but we got gypped out of it 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 Mediterraneanthen 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 whod been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: Lucille, that mans way below you! But if I hadnt met Chester, hed of got me sure. Yes, but listen, said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, at least you didnt marry him. I know I didnt. Well, I married him, said Myrtle, ambiguously. And thats 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 wasnt fit to lick my shoe. You were crazy about him for a while, said Catherine. Crazy about him! cried Myrtle incredulously. Who said Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 39 I was crazy about him? I was not ever 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 CRAZY I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebodys best suit to marry in and did not 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 through the afternoon. She really ought to be away from him, resumed Catherine to me. Theyve been living over that garage for eleven years. And Toms the first sweetie she ever had. The bottle of whiskeya second onewas currently in constant demand by everyone present, excepting Catherine who felt just as good on nothing. Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to go 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 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 G.reat Gatsby variety of li. 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 the Big Apple to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldnt keep my eyes away from 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 armand so I told him Id have to contact a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didnt hardly know I wasnt getting into a subway train. I kept thinking about, over and over, was You cant live forever, you cant live forever. She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial laughter. My she cried, Im going to give you this dress as quickly as Im through with it. Ive got to take another one tomorrow. Im going to make a list of everything Ive got to take. 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 mothers grave thatll last through summer. I got to write down a list so I will not forget the things I got to do. It was nine oclockalmost instantly 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 Complimentary eBooks at Planet eBook.com 41 photograph of a man. Taking out my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the remains of the spot of dried lather that had worried me through 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 Daisys identity. Daisy! Daisy! Daisy! shouted Mrs. Wilson. Ill say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his hand. Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and womens 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 scenehis partner and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled everywhere 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 G.reat Gatsby Where? Anywhere. Keep your hands away from the lever, snapped the elevator boy. I beg your pardon, said Mr. McKee with dignity, I didnt know I was touching it. Alright, I agreed, Ill be glad to. I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a top-notch portfolio in his hands. Beauty and the Beast Loneliness Old Grocery Horse Brookn 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 oclock train.

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