Of course you will, confirmed Daisy. In fact, I think Ill arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and Ill 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 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 here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
Is she from New York? I asked quickly.
From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white
Did you give Nick a little heart-to-heart talk on the veranda? demanded Tom suddenly.
Did I? She looked at me. I 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 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 its important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.
Thats right, corroborated Tom kindly. We heard that you were engaged.
Its a 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 stop going with an old friend on account of rumors, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he had some woman in New York was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on road-house 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 neighbors 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 didnt 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 way, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
Chapter II
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 gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the gray 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 non-existent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.
The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute, and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanans mistress[24].
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.
Were getting off, he insisted. I want you to meet my girl.
I think hed 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 whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburgs persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it, and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant, approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage Repairs. George B. Wilson, Cars bought and sold[25]. 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 blond, 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 now.
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 after all.
I dont 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[26], and faintly stout[27], but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:
Get some chairs, why dont 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.
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 gray, 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 get away[28].
Doesnt her husband object?
Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. Hes so dumb he doesnt know hes 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 drugstore some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Up-stairs, in the solemn echoing drive she let four taxicabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with gray 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. Theyre nice to have a dog.
We backed up to a gray 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?
Id like to get one of those police dogs; I dont suppose you got that kind?
The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.
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 never 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 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. Wilsons lap, where she fondled the weatherproof coat with rapture.
Is it a boy or a girl? she asked delicately.
That dog? That dogs a boy.
Its a bitch, said Tom decisively. Heres 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 wouldnt 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 dont, interposed Tom quickly. Myrtlell be hurt if you dont come up to the apartment. Wont you, Myrtle[29]?
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 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 Broad-way. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk, to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large, hard dog-biscuits one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.
I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although until after eight 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 buy some at the drugstore 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 didnt 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.