Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound.
The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the moonlight.
I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.
I couldn’t talk about Daisy without arousing Gatsby’s curiosity.
If it wasn’t for the mist, we could see your home across the bay, said Gatsby.
But the decision must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand.
I walked out the back way—just as Gatsby had when he had made his nervous circuit of the house half an hour before—and ran for a huge black knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric against the rain.
Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-colored suit.
For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery, and devil-may-care veil.
I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes.
He stood up and finished his drink, and there was a dime on the floor that he picked up without bending.
He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third.
Dressed up in white flannels, I went over to his lawn a little later, and he came out immediately to join me.
‘Your place looks like the world’s Fair,’ I said. ‘Does it?’ He turned his eyes toward it absently. ‘I have been glancing into some of the rooms. Let’s go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car.’
I was more annoyed than interested. ‘We’ll go at once,’ I insisted. ‘Just as soon as I make a better connection.’
The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain.
He shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye.
They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening, too, would be over and casually put away.
I heard a taxi go up Broadway, and then the omnibuses and the cars of the elevated.
‘It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s ‘
She was referring to something farther away. And than something happened.
One thing’s sure and nothing about it mattered any more, Golf, tennis, polo, had ceased long ago.
It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on the air.
I saw now that this had been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
‘An Oxford man!’ He was incredulous.They aren’t’?’
And it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested—it was a complete accident.
‘Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years.’
‘Your wife doesn’t love you,’ said Gatsby. ‘She’s never loved you. She loves me.’
‘She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me.
‘I love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.’
This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it.
First Daisy looked at Tom, flashing momentarily in her eyes. For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face.
‘I don’t think she ever loved him.’ Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly. ‘You must remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon.
‘We haven’t met for many years,’ said Daisy, her voice as indistinguishable as her face.
I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song.
Dead men don’t come back from a trip to the grave, so it must have been his ghost who attended Daisy that afternoon.
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.
He went out of the room calling “Ewing!” and returned in a few minutes accompanied by an embarrassed, slightly worn young man, with shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair.
You must remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon.
Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes.
‘I did it for him,’ said Tom crossly. ‘Though he treats me like a son-of-a-bitch most of the time. I’ve got a nice place here.’ His eyes roved gradually around the room.
Through all the yards and the churches, by God, we’re going to look at the place where myrtle’s body was just discovered.
‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.
I heard Tom Buchanan’s voice on the phone.
‘What about?’
Be First to Comment